Last weekend two long longed-for visits happened all at once. Some of you may know that I have a bit of a “thing” for the gloves knitted in the Scottish Royal Borough of Sanquhar, and I had always wanted to visit the local Tolbooth Museum where there’s a lovely display of these gloves, with a wealth of information. So you can imagine I didn’t hesitate when Professor Lynn Abrams asked me to give a presentation at a Knitting in the Round event set in Sanquhar itself.

Sanquhar High Street circa 1860 – the building with the clocktower now houses the Tollbooth Museum

The event was very informal and convivial. Lynn Abrams presented on knitting in the Scottish landscape – wool has always been very important in Scotland in many different ways. I did a presentation on the history of Sanquhar knitting, and how the old patterns and gloves to this day have inspired knitters the world over. A very tasty lunch was available in the café of the A’ the Airts Centre, where the event was hosted.

A gallery of Sanquhar Gloves

The Tolbooth museum had a small but perfectly formed permanent exhibition on the gloves. They also had a handling collection, which contained, amongst others, a number of gloves belonging to one lady cyclist. Most of these were darned on the palm side; you can imagine I was elated to see these!

Cycling gloves with darning

Also on display were some carpets made in nearby Crawick. Originally the gloves were knitted with left over warp threads of the carpet manufacture, which explains the hardwearing qualities these gloves were famed for (within limits, as evidenced by the above gloves…)

A carpet made in John McQueen’s Mill, Crawick

However, the absolute highlight of the day for me was meeting May McCormick. Mary still knits Sanquhar gloves to a very high standard, and indeed, she is the very person who knits the gloves for the Coronet who leads the riding of the marches, an annual event taking place in August, going back about 400 years, when Sanquhar became a Scottish Royal Borough. I was too excited to talk to her and get some hints and tips from a master knitter to get a picture with her. However, to make up for it I can share with you the beautiful display she made:

Mary McCormick’s Sanquhar Knitting Display, showing all the different patterns, including samplers, scarves and stockings

So, what about that other visit, I hear you ask? Well, I also got to meet a good friend whom I had not met before. How? In the age of email and internet, this is possible. Through our mutual friend Dr Felicity Ford, better known perhaps as KNITSONIK, I have known Kate Davies for a few years now, and we’ve worked on Wovember together. We have been scheming to meet up in real life for such a long time, and my visit to Sanquhar finally made this possible.

We spent many happy hours together, talking about small things and large, eating food and drinking tea, and going for a long drive.

My first time in the West Highlands and I could tick off all typical attractions in one go: castle ruin, tick; loch, tick; glenn, tick; mountain, tick!

The George Hotel at Loch Fyne

We had a gorgeous lunch at the George Hotel at Loch Fyne – the only place that Samuel Johnson managed to enjoy when he visited Scotland.

If this has made you curious about the knitting in Sanquhar, then keep an eye out for my next blog post, where I will go into a bit more detail of the history of Sanquhar knitting.

In my last post I talked about my participation in the Sanquhar Workshop, organised by the Knitting in the Round initiative from the University of Glasgow. Today I’d like to tell you little bit more about the history of knitting in Sanquhar and how I got interested in this subject.

The Knitting Reference Library holds a small handling collection of Sanquhar gloves – image taken courtesy of the Knitting Reference Library

About five years ago I learnt how to knit gloves, and like many knitters, I started browsing Ravelry for nice patterns. That’s where I first encountered the amazing Sanquhar gloves. Never having done any stranded colourwork, I’m not sure why I ordered all four available patterns from the Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes not soon after. It was a steep learning curve for me, but at the same time as I was struggling to knit my first pair, I researched the knitting tradition of the town of Sanquhar, which incidentally, can also claim to have the oldest post office in the world, dating back to 1712.

HISTORY AND TRADITION

The first knitters in Scotland were highly paid craftsmen of the 16th and 17th century, but by the mid 1700s knitting skills had spread throughout the country and created a thriving cottage industry, mainly producing knitted stockings. The entire Scottish hand-knitting industry declined dramatically in the late 1700s, due to a variety of reasons, amongst others the loss of trade to the American Colonies, and the increasing industrialisation of spinning and processing wool. It was most probably around the late 1700s that the distinctive two-colour patterns developed as an attempt to create a product that stood out and thus protect the livelihood of local knitters.
Thomas Brown, a Sanquhar printer,  noted in his Union Gazeteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1807), that the stockings were ‘almost peculiar to the place…parti-coloured and of great variety of patterns.’ Mittens, and rather later, gloves were made in the same manner.  One feature of good eighteenth-century stockings was that the customer’s name or initials could be worked into the tops. This may be the origin of the Sanquhar practice of working these into the wrists. Although Brown doesn’t mention it, this was a feature by the 1890s. The gloves were knitted from a yarn referred to as ‘drugget’ and this appears to be a wool/linen or a wool/cotton blend. The knitters sourced this yarn from the nearby John M’Queen’s Mill in Crawick, where it was used in the production of carpets.

Sanquhar gloves usually have the initials of the wearer stitched into the wrist – these gloves are from the handling collection of the Tollbooth Museum in Sanquhar

Hand knitting as a cottage industry died out in Sanquhar during the 19th century, but the tradition has survived. The presentation of specially knitted gloves to the Cornet and other principals during the annual Sanquhar Riding of the Marches Festival is still an important part of these celebrations, when all the horse riders of Sanquhar ride around the boundaries of the burgh. Today Sanquhar knitting is rarely made for sale. Nonetheless the style remains a favourite with keen knitters, with pattern leaflets available from the Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes and other sources found on the internet.

SANQUHAR STITCH PATTERNS

Sanquhar knitting is worked in two shades throughout. Although black and white are most common, other colour combinations regularly found are yellow and brown, and red and green. The patterns show a resemblance to other erstwhile thriving cottage industries in Cumbria and the Dales; small and intricate, the two yarns are worked into a close fabric, with no long strands. One particular refinement of the gloves are the small finger and thumb gussets, which improve fit and relieve stress points in the fabric where the fingers join the hand.

The little finger gusset is shown here at the base of the ring finger - image taken courtesy of the Knitting Reference Library

The stitch patterns can be divided into two main types. Firstly the so-called dambrod patterns: a grid of black lines on a white ground, filled in with diamond or saltire variations. Secondly check and tweed patterns: all-over patterns in diagonal checks, and small motifs scattered on a spot pattern background. It’s likely some of the patterns were named in honour of local benefactors and visiting dignitaries, like the Dukes of Queensberry and of Buccleuch, who gave large orders for gloves, and the Prince of Wales, who was entertained by the Duke of Buccleuch in 1871. The Glendyne pattern was named after Robert Nivison when he took the title Lord Glendyne of Sanquhar. The cuffs are knitted in black and white ribbing or broken ribbing. It is customary to work the wearer’s initials in the wrist.
As the patterns fit around the gloves just so, the size of the gloves is altered by changing the tension: thicker needles for larger gloves, thinner needles for smaller gloves.

The Sanquhar gloves come in a wide range of patterns as this display at the Tollbooth Museum shows – dambrod patterns at the top; tweed patterns at the bottom, with the exception of the Duke glove fifth from the left

SOME HINTS AND TIPS ON KNITTING SANQUHAR GLOVES

First and foremost it’s important to knit a decent sized tension swatch in the round. Read through your pattern and work out how many stitches go round the hand, as sometimes this is more than the number of stitches you cast on. Measure around your hand and work out what your tension should be for a good fit.
The most common alteration to the traditional patterns is probably the cast-on: one way to avoid the cast-on edge curling over,  is to use a variation of the long-tail cast-on sometimes called twisted German cast-on, followed by two rows of purl, before starting the ribbing.

An other alteration often seen on the Ravelry Sanquhar group is to stagger the finger gussets at the correct height according to the wearer’s hand, rather than all on the same round. A personal alteration is to decrease 5% in the black round after the cuff to narrow the wrist. Then, after knitting the wrist, I increase back to the original number of stitches. This makes for a more comfortable fit, especially as ribbing in stranded colourwork doesn’t pull in.

My gloves in the Prince of Wales pattern – the fingers each start at the right height

You can read more about the Sanquhar knitting tradition on the FutureMuseum website, the Dumfries Museum website, and about Riding of the Marches on the committee’s website.

Earlier this year I posted about a book that my dear friend and comrade in wool, Felicity “Felix” Ford, wanted to publish.

I was honoured to be asked to help her along the way, and I’m so proud to say that Felix’s hard work has paid off. The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook is now published! Congratulations to Felix!

Note: Scroll all the way to the bottom of this post to find links to where you can buy UK and USA hard copies, and a worldwide PDF download.

The Beautiful cover of Felicity Ford’s KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook

The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook explains in clear and easy to understand steps how to create your own stranded colourwork patterns, inspired by everyday things. There are lots of working examples to show how to approach this, and plenty of suggestions and exercises to help you if you feel a bit stuck.

As I was privy to the development of her book and the KNITSONIK System, I decided I wanted to knit a swatch to share with you in this blog post, in which I asked Felix some questions, and she gave me some insightful and detailed answers. So you had best make a brew before continue reading this post!

This gouache titled “Forty Faces” by Brighton-based artist and illustrator Faye Moorhouse, was my inspiration source for a KNITSONIK Swatch Sensation

Tom: why did you ask me to do hack your KNITSONIK System when I told you about my swatch plans?

Felix: when developing guidelines for a creative process there is usually some tension around rules. Rules can be extremely helpful and supportive, offering a framework for creativity or a set of criteria to which a brief can be fitted; but they can also sometimes seem restrictive. This tension between rules and openness was important to explore while working on The KNITSONIK System and when I was working on the early drafts, I felt your feedback and comments almost continually pushed for more open-ness.

Our discussions on this theme were really to have and I think that because of them the final text for The KNITSONIK System achieves a nice balance between offering useful rules without being overly proscriptive. While refining the system, I was looking for appropriate ways to visualise a good balance between rules and openness and I kept returning to the metaphor of a map. What I love about a map is that it does offer you some reassurance when you head into new lands, but detours are always allowed and getting lost or stumbling on wonders that are not marked are always possible! So in the final text for the book I have presented the system as a map, and an invitation to hack it is included in the introduction: there are plenty of reminders that the rules I have created really aren’t meant to hem anyone in.

However in spite of these developments I remained slightly haunted by the objections you raised to my rules in the early writing stages and I wondered what might be produced through entirely abandoning my rules or working in opposition to them. When you said you wanted to make a swatch, it felt natural to me to suggest that you hack the system in the process.

The bottom half of my KNITSONIK Swatch; from bottom to top:

A row of the faces, but without features. This part was knitted flat, and used intarsia.

An attempt capture the flow of watercolour ink fading out on the paper. I used a mix of knit and purl stitches to blend the colour transitions a bit more, a feature often seen in the beautiful Bohus sweaters.

The start of what could become a grid of faces, the circles are knitted on a separate needle and the last row is knitted in with the main colour.

Capturing how the black ink bled into the yellow face in one of the forty faces. You can see the face in question in the gouache in the bottom row, second from the right.

A row of an enlarged mouth from one of the red faces.

A row showing the top knot of one of the faces.

A block of houndstooth check: the mouth chart two rows below reminded me of a houndstooth check, so I started exploring this further. The background contains all the shades that move from red via pink to white.

Tom: Have you hacked it yourself, or perhaps you felt safer sticking to your rules? How do you feel about the KNITSONIK System and its rules? How have they helped you, and how did they hinder you?

Felix: I find my rules very useful but will abandon them in an instant if they are encumbering a good idea! For me the rules really are only there to help and where they come into their own is at the outset of a project where my only thought is “I want to create stranded colourwork based on X”. I love that now I have a practical method for dealing with that impulse, and I truly enjoy the process very much. I used to faff about for ages trying to plan everything in advance whereas now I just grab all the colours I want to use and cast on, drawing designs in my notebook and refining them as I go. I find this really liberating and hope that other knitters using the book have the same experience.

I also like the discipline of trying to follow the rules around stitch widths included in the book because apart from anything else I think this is great practice for applying stranded colourwork to garment patterns. I am ultimately thinking towards applying personal stranded colourwork to garments and in this context the ability to understand the size of your canvas and adapt patterns to it is key. And although it’s not strictly necessary to make all the stitch patterns factors and multiples of one another, I enjoy the visual sense of rhythm and accents that occurs when they are.

Sometimes the rules are unhelpful though, and I have zero interest in sticking to them purely for the sake of it. For example the dandelion chart involves some long strands on the back of the work on a couple of rows, and I created an idea for celebrating my biscuit tin lid which is 18 stitches wide and therefore not a factor of 48. I also ignored my own rules about tall vertical columns of stitches while working on the Art Deco chart because the long verticals really are the whole point of that type of ziggurat 1930s architecture!

The biscuit tin swatch with the offending stitch repeat of 18 stitches.

It’s all about that word balance; for me a framework gets me into a practical frame of mind and gives me a great jumping off point from which to innovate. A series of little briefs – pick colours; design a pattern; cast on; play with shading – is more inviting and manageable than a wide open idea.

I find that when a creative brief is too open the uncertainty will normally push me towards what I know and produce predictable results. Conversely I’ve discovered that if I set rules, manoeuvring within them forces me to innovate and often produces wondrous surprises. I think our Aleatoric Fair Isle project is a good example of this: the rules that we imposed on ourselves resulted in some very experimental Fair Isle knitting which was instructive and fun to create but which we could not easily  have been generated outside of that framework. The rules pushed us into new areas of knitterly thinking and problem-solving and I loved that!

The top half of my KNITSONIK System swatch. Here I went completely off-piste. For most rows I used three colours per row, I didn’t chart anything, and the colours were added in at random. It’s a reflection of the (seemingly?) random choice of colour in the inspiration source. The larger squares in the bottom half of this picture all have two edges in a darker shade (even the black ones!) to mimick how the watercolour is never one solid colour. I also tried to keep the ratio of colour to white (the paper in the original) fairly similar.

Tom: I’m also thinking here about our experience with the Aleatoric Fair Isle where we found that we wanted to rebel against the rules we set out ourselves.

Felix: In a way rebelling against the rules of any system is just another way of creating a framework; but I love the energy and friction of rebellion! To me your amazing MEGASWATCH reads as a really elaborate and wholly positive critique of The KNITSONIK System; it has its own rules (must be a random number of stitches wide; must involve both flat and in-the-round construction; must use more than two colours per round; etc.) and I love how deliberately working outside of my rules has pushed your ideas about palettes and pattern into such exciting realms. There is a wonderful exuberance and thoroughness about the MEGASWATCH!

Two Aleatoric Fair Isle Swatches: Felix and I were inspired by a composition by John Cage and used similar ways to “compose” our swatches. Using a set of rules and the roll of the dice we left pattern and colour choices to chance.

Felix: I have questions for you though: did you find you had to create a set of guidelines for yourself and how did you approach the construction of your beauteous swatch?

Tom: we had a lot of discussions about how strict or free your rules in your book should be, and I feel that we both benefited from this. These discussions meant I had a good understanding of your system, which was important to start hacking it. However, my rules weren’t quite as strict as you imply (“must be a random number of stitches wide; must involve both flat and in-the-round construction; must use more than two colours per round; etc.”) I took a very organic approach to it and I hardly planned anything; there were no “musts.”

To me the most obvious hack would be to go against the stranded colourwork technique and knitting in the round. So, perhaps predictably, I quickly ended up using intarsia for the first hack. Then I moved on to knitting separate pieces (the row of circles are knitted on a separate needle in garter stitch).

Then I started to become more and more intrigued in how to depict the colour washes, and the bleeding of one colour into another. For this I wanted to use more than one colour per row. And in some areas I even twisted a short length of darker yellow around the bright yellow and knitted with that to get a good sense of the bleeding of the colours.

I was inspired by the uneven coverage of the gouache inks and how some of the colours have bled into each other.

Of course, the one big rule in your book is to chart and chart again and refine them with each iteration. I hacked this big time! Apart from the big faces in intarsia and the houndstooth check (which I developed by blowing up one of the mouths) I didn’t chart anything. This really helped me reflecting the random colour choices of the faces in the original gouache.

Felix: do you wish I hadn’t asked you to HACK THE KNITSONIK SYSTEM?

Tom: I was more than happy to hack the system for you! It gave me a chance to really get into the underlying system, as I had to understand the rules first. Also, for me it shows how strong your book is. Yes, it does offer easy-to-follow steps and guidelines, but what it really highlighted to me was that you need to LOOK at things, and then inspiration will come, possibly with the aid of some exercises if you need some encouragement to get going. However, although not explicitly stated, I feel that the over-arching “take-home” message is that you can apply this to any type of knitting. Not just stranded and other colourwork such as intarsia, but with a bit of thinking about the different kind of rules you might need, you can easily apply your design process to textured knitting such as cables, or to lace knitting. And why stop with knitting? You can also feel inspired to create your own original crochet, needlepoint, or quilt designs. To me, that’s what I really learnt from the KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook.

If you want to know what others had to say about Felix’s book, then the other blog tour stops are listed below:

28th and 30th Oct – Ysolda Teague
31st Oct – Brenda Dayne
2nd Nov – Jamieson & Smith with Ella Gordon
4th Nov – Donna Druchunas
6th Nov – An Snag Breac
8th Nov – Fine Lightness
10th Nov – Perfect Weather for Spinning and Knitting with Deborah Gray
14th Nov – Deb Robson
28th Nov – Tom of Holland
30th Nov – Fyberspates
31st Nov – Editions of You with Lisa Busby
4th Dec – Lara Clements
6th Dec – Spilly Jane
8th Dec – Ella Austin
12th Dec – Susan Crawford

The book is available in the following formats:

UK hard copy
USA hard copy
Worldwide PDF download

Dear readers, first things first: a happy new year to you! I hope 2015 will be full of many fullfilling spinning, knitting, darning, and other crafty pursuits. I’d like to thank you all for following my blog and leaving me comments; I really appreciate your interest and support.

It’s a time for reflection, so I want to share with you some of my 2014 highlights, and also talk about what I have planned for 2015. I hope you will be as excited about that as I am!

2014

Looking back at my blog posts, I find I have done a lot of things, and I also realise there are a fair few things I haven’t even got round to share with you.

In chronological order here are some of my personal favourites of last year:

Creative knitting

A linen swatch, exploring Mary Walker Phillips’s book Creative Knitting

Returning from my parents after Christmas 2013, I had found out about Mary Walker Phillips, who wrote, amongst others, Creative knitting. For somebody who usually does a lot of planning and swatching this was a refreshing approach. After knitting this linen swatch I have been taken her philosophy to heart, and it’s given me a sense of freedom and let things happen as they come. As I always need a balance in my practice, I have also started a jumper with the largest amount of planning and swatching I have ever done. Using these different approaches side by side means they inform each other and make me value them both more than I did before.

Playing with wool with Deborah Robson

Deb Robson in her element: wool and spinning wheels, and a captive audience

2014 was the first time I went to Fibre East as I really, REALLY wanted to attend Deb Robson’s class on wool types. I almost didn’t make it, as I had an awful flu the days before, but I’m glad I went, as half a year later my head is still spinning (pun intended!) with all the possibilities of wool. Deb Robson is most generous and amazing in sharing her knowledge and knows how to get anybody interested in wool. Unfortunately I did not have much time for spinning since, so this is something I would really like to remedy in 2015.

Friesian darning samplers

One of the many darning samplers I saw at the Fries Museum

When the textile conservator of the Fries Museum, Gieneke Arnolli, invited me to view their collection of darning samplers, I couldn’t wait to get on the plane! I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and Gieneke’s hospitality. I learnt so much from it I had to write not one, not two, but three blog posts about it. It has inspired me to learn more about repairing cloth in the coming year.

A visit to Sanquhar

Darned Sanquhar gloves, what a treat!

I have a bit of a “thing” for the traditional gloves from Sanquhar, so I was more than happy to attend the one-day workshop in Sanquhar itself. I gave a presentation on the Sanquhar knitting tradition, met a lot of interesting people, and developed a bit of a “thing” for Scotland – to be fair the first seeds for that were sown a long time ago.

Hacking the KNITSONIK System

A swatch made according, or against, the KNITSONIK System, depending on your point of view

My comrade in wool and good friend Felicity “Felix” Ford, published a book on how to find inspiration for stranded colourwork patterns in everyday things. She asked me to hack her system and I enjoyed taking on this challenge. As I had helped her out a bit with the book, we have had many conversations on rules and guidelines you can set yourself, and on how strict her instructions in her book should be. I think we both learnt a lot from this, and it has added a new perspective on my quest to be a more creative knitter and trying to let go of rules and planning.

Mending

Of course my year is not complete without some mending and repairing, and I have worked on two very special commissions this year, so they deserve a special mention.

“A Mother’s Work” repair commission for a private client

“A Mother’s Work” was a very special repair commission that went much further than simply fixing a jumper. Being asked to repair somebody’s jumper made by her mum who has passed away proved to be a very intimate experience.

Knitting & Crochet Guild Repair Commission

The other special repair was commissioned by the Knitting & Crochet Guild, and it allowed me to use some traditional techniques, which I have highlighted by using naturally coloured undyed yarns.

And apart from the things I did blog about, I have done some other things that made 2014 a great year for me: I made a jumper with a graphic design on the front built up in single row stripes and other technical details; I have been interviewed a few times by PhD students, magazines, and newspapers, which helped me think about and better understand my own practice; I volunteered at the monthly Brighton Repair Café, which I thoroughly enjoy, so I’m looking forward to many more meet-ups to come (incidentally, the next one is on 31 January 2015.)

2015

I’m much looking forward to 2015, as I have plenty of things I’d like to get done, such as:

Repairs

Late last year I met up with my good friend and repair comrade Bridget Harvey, and we have started a repair dialogue. We want to explore the difference between functional and non-functional repair, using a pair of tatty tea towels.

My visit to the Fries Museum has given me an insight in repairing cloth, and also about the way you can learn to repair, and who traditionally performed repairs of household items and clothes. I want to learn more about repairing and darning cloth, using some early 20th Century Dutch lesson plan books I have.

Spinning and creative knitting

Spinning and creative knitting will meet each other this year, as I have a project in mind that involves first spinning up British rare breed fibres, and free-form-knit them up in some sort of mythological cloak. I want to learn more about the role of clothes in myths, sagas and folklore at the same time.

Finishing things

There are also some things left over from 2014 that need finishing. Most importantly a Shetland fleece spinning project that’s currently on hold; I have started a jumper in brioche stitch (this is the project I mentioned earlier, for which I’m doing a extraordinary amount of swatching and planning.) I’m also knitting a  version of my Tom of da Peathill cardigan in a more roomy version; I have one sleeve left to do!

In summary, 2015 will be a year in which I will be doing a lot of personal, slow craft projects. Some of you may know that I also have a full-time office job, so in order to make sure I get to do the things I want to do to grow as a maker and mender, I have decided to run fewer darning workshops this year. I’m sure I’ll keep myself busy with planned things, and any surprises that might pop up. I hope you are looking forward to a new year as much as I do!

Having lived in the UK for almost fifteen years, I’ve come to understand the importance of Tea. Not the “tea” I was accustomed to drink in The Netherlands: a tea bag is briefly suspended in a glass cup of water gone off the boil, resulting in a light-brown warm liquid. Of course, the tea bag is used to make not one, not two, but three cups of said liquid. Adding milk is only for children under ten. Tea it ain’t! It’s like taking your shoes off and dipping your toe in the sea, and pretending that’s the same as doing a mile-long swim in the sea. Not only that, I’m quite sure it’s only the British who solve any emotional distress with a “cuppa to cheer you up.” Luckily I have seen the error of my way a long time ago, and now much prefer a “builder’s tea” without, however, the regulation two spoons of sugar.

Wool is a good way of keeping your tea warm!

We regularly make a pot of tea here at Casa Tomofholland, and in order to keep it hot, I wanted to make a tea cosy. For some reason most tea cosies in the UK seem to be the kind that fits around the pot, with openings for the spout and the handle. Or maybe that’s just something that knitters do to show off their knitting prowess?

A tea cosy knitted in Foula wool; my way of showing off the beautiful, natural shades of Foula wool

However, we’ve been collecting Wood’s Ware crockery for a while now, in the Beryl colourway. Wood’s Ware is another English institution: it was the crockery of choice for many canteens in schools, hospitals and other communal spaces. Although it is no longer made, it’s easy to find the pieces secondhand and they’re not very expensive as so many were made over the years. Although of a most unassuming colour and shape, I like the simple lines of the cups and saucers, tea and coffee pots, plates and tureens. I didn’t want to cover up my beloved teapot and hide what I like so much about it.

A few pieces of our evergrowing collection of Wood’s Ware in Beryl

So I cast my mind back to when I was very young, and remembered the more usual tea cosies we used to use in The Netherlands (so there must have been a time where the Dutch drank proper Tea after all.) In Dutch they’re called a “theemuts,” which translates as “tea hat.’ And that’s really what they are: a hat for your tea pot, to be removed when you want to pour another brew. And what better material to make it from than wool? A perfect project for using some old handspun yarn; small skeins I had made a long time ago, trying out a few techniques.

My Tea Hat spotted in its natural habitat: a breakfast table with toast, marmalade (lime jelly marmalade if you must know,) some books to read and a random skein of yarn

The grey is coarse Herdwick: a sturdy fibre with excellent insulating qualities. The creamy white is lustrous Wensleydale: also surprisingly sturdy, but very soft, too. Apart from the appeal of using British rare sheep breed fibres, I was also reminded where the fibres came from when I knitted this up. The Herdwick was a gift from Victoria of Eden Cottage Yarns fame (who apparently has a shed full of fleeces.) The Wensleydale was a gift from my dear friend and woolly comrade Felicity “Felix” Ford. She gave this to me when I became interested in spinning, and she was very enthusiastic about it, in a way only Felix can be. It was very infectious! It comes from Julia Desch’s flock of sheep, and her Wensleydale really is something else.

I also wanted to try out knitting two-colour brioche, and take another opportunity to do some free-form knitting. Apart from taking some rough measurements I didn’t plan anything upfront. It soon became apparent that the very bulky Herwick yarns would not stretch to a whole Tea Hat in brioche stitch, so I ended up using a variety of stitches. Some stocking stitch on one side, some garterstitch with woven in strands at the other. After the pompoms were made, I had quite literally used up all of my yarns, apart from the small scraps I trimmed off after sewing in the ends!

The luminosity of the Wensleydale is accentuated by the matte Herdwick

I’m really pleased with this little folly of a Tea Hat. The interplay between bulky and thin yarn, the contrast between the rough Herdwick and slick Wensleydale, the lustre of a creamy longwool against the matte appearance of a fibre most often used for carpet yarn. I’m sure it will provide its warming service for years to come!

In the past few months I have been thinking a lot about what I do as a maker. Throughout the coming months, I want to blog a bit more about what my creative practice means to me.

Using knitting to mend knitting: a private commission

Thinking about what I do means I have updated my ‘About‘ page, and I’ll use this as a guide to write these blog posts:

Tom is a self-taught textiles practitioner, with an emphasis on creating and repairing knitted objects, working mostly with wool. He is currently based in Brighton, UK. Tom’s craft practice is slow, allowing him to gain a deep understanding of material qualities and the traditional techniques that he uses for making and mending contemporary objects. Through his combined interest in sustainability and the rich textile history around wool in Britain he has started to question when the life of a woollen garment (and by extension any object) starts and ends. By exploring the motivations for repair Tom shifts the emphasis from the new and perfect to the old and imperfect, enabling him  to highlight the relationship between garment and wearer. His interest in using traditional techniques for creating and repairing (woollen) textiles mean that in Tom’s practice creating and mending textiles are in constant conversation with each other.

A complex pocket repair, learnt from a book on clothes repairs

Many people assume I have a textiles background and studied textiles or fashion at college. As I firmly believe anybody can do what I do, it’s the first thing I wanted to say about myself: I’m a self-taught maker. I originally trained as a radiotherapy radiographer and have worked in a hospital to treat cancer patients. Nowadays I work for one of the companies that make radiotherapy treatment machines. All my making and repairing started out as a hobby and it’s been a very exciting journey so far, and one that is far from finished.

Ever from since I was a kid I have been creative and dabbled in all sorts of things such as drawing, caligraphy, crochet, origami, knitting, and whatnot. And I have always done minor repairs to my clothes, usually with very little thought behind it. Then, about eight or nine years ago I was inspired by a hugely expensive designer scarf to knit my own scarf, as I vaguely remembered knitting as a child. I got myself some needles and yarn and a learn-to-knit-in-ten-easy-steps book.

A Cornish knit-frock: made according to the “recipe” in the Cornish Knit-frock book by Mary Wright

And from then on, I discovered the wealth of information contained in books and on the internet. I was encouraged by people around me to explore and try out things and not be afraid to fail; I feel knitting is really very suited to the inquisitive mind. It doesn’t have to cost much, and it’s easy to try something out and if it doesn’t go to your liking, you can simply rip back and try again.

And even if there is nobody around to discuss and learn from face-to-face, there is still so much help to be found around you: regular readers of my blog know I love old needlecraft books, and then, of course, there is the internet. I have learnt a lot from the forums on Ravelry (including, what books might be of interest to me.) It has opened my eyes to what knitting can be, and the potential that each knitter carries within in them.

An exploration of Mary Walker Phillips’s work; I would never have heard of Mary Walker Philips if it wasn’t for the internet

The above swatch would not have happened if I didn’t have access to the internet. It’s how I found out about Mary Walker Phillips’s work. It’s how I learnt about her book Creative Knitting, which has been very inspiring and revelatory. It’s how I learnt isn’t always necessary to start a new adventure with rigorous planning and calculating and worrying things won’t work out. Sometimes you just need to cast on and get going.

I truly believe that anybody can become a great knitter and I hope that sharing my knitting projects on this blog is testament to that. It’s great to get comments on my blog posts that show it has inspired you go on your own knitting adventure: may sticks and string lead you down unheard of avenues and be ready to be surprised. I have a lot of fun this way, and I hope you do, too!

Today is International Women’s Day, which got me thinking about all the inspirational women in my life. Although the field of knitting is dominated by women (attending the In the Loop conferences is a good example of where I’m in the minority as a man) there are a lot of issues around how people view women artists and makers, and how the things they produce are valued. Here is a list of some of the women that inspire me and inform my knitting directly or indirectly. I’ve listed them in alphabetical order as they all inspire me in different ways. I could easily write a long blog post about each of them, so instead I hope you will follow the links and see for yourself.

Amy Twigger Holroyd: Amy managed to take away my prejudices against machine knitting, but mostly I feel inspired by seeing her practice, in which she combines many interesting things, from experimenting with knitting, thinking about sustainable fashion, and her belief in the power of the amateur maker.

Both Amy and I presented at the MendRS Symposium in 2012

Anna Maltz: some people may know Anna as sweaterspotter, as she loves taking surreptitious pictures of gorgeous knitwear. I love Anna’s colourful approach to knitting and life, and I’m always amazed to see what she has on the needles.

Felicity Ford: Felix is my comrade in wool, and whenever we hang out together, we bounce off each other about wool, knitting, and finding inspiration in the most unlikely places. Not only that, she’s also a sound artist, and somehow she has managed to show the world that sounds and knitting are not mutually exclusive.

Felix in a woollen outfit for her inspirational Slow Wardrobe project

Elizabeth Zimmermann: Elizabeth Zimmermann is one of my knitting heroes. Reading her books opened up my mind about what knitting can mean and how you don’t need restrictive knitting patterns to create beautiful knitwear. Her knitting allowed her to start a knitting business that is still going strong, with another inspiring woman at the helm: her daughter Meg Swansen.

Kate Davies: Kate creates beautiful knitting patterns, often inspired by the places that she loves. However, what I particularly like is that her designs show a integrity of design, material and construction and are meticulously researched.

Kate and I went on a beautiful country drive when I visited her last year

Louize Harries: I met Louize at Prick Your Finger, a yarn shop and gallery which she co-founded. She taught me about wool and keeping an open mind, and has always been very encouraging of my own textile endeavours. Currently she is concentrating tapestry and weaving, the slowest art known to man (to paraphrase her slightly).

Mary Thomas: Mary Thomas wrote two important books on knitting back in the 1930s, and they should be on every knitter’s bookshelf. Her technical knowledge is unsurpassed yet clearly explained to the reader. Her pattern for gloves is still by far the best in my opinion.

Mary Walker Phillips: the New York Times obituary says it so succinctly: What Miss Phillips did, starting in the early 1960s, was to liberate knitting from the yoke of the sweater. Where traditional knitters were classical artists, faithfully reproducing a score, Miss Phillips knit jazz. In her hands, knitting became a free-form, improvisational art, with no rules, no patterns and no utilitarian end in sight.

Mary Walker Phillips knitting

My mother: alas, my mother doesn’t write a blog, so no links here. My mother is a very good knitter and when I was a child, she would always knit me the most amazing jumpers. She would allow me to select pattern, yarn and colour, which meant I never suffered from the dreaded “itchy jumper” syndrome. Instead, I was always impatient for her to finish her latest creation for me!

Rachael Matthews: Rachael founded Prick Your Finger together with Louize Harries, and Rachael, too, has always been very encouraging of my own work. Prick Your Finger was where I had my first exhibition, and my first darning workshop. I have met many interesting people through Rachael and some of them have become close friends.

Rachael second from the right, during a panel discussion on leading a creative life

This list is by no means exhaustive, and I think if you read my blog regularly, you will find many other inspirational women mentioned.

Some time last year I wrote about my intentions of knitting a sweater, based on a picture from an 1950s Dutch knitting book called Het Breien in Betere Banen, or A Better Course in Knitting:

Although this book deals with knitting, it doesn’t contain a single pattern for garments. Nevertheless, it is scattered with inspirational outfits, one of which was this beautiful sweater, knitted in alternating textural stripes of brioche rib and honeycomb brioche.

As you can see, the original sweater is very much of its time, with its high waist and tight fit. Not a shape I would want to wear, but almost everything else about it I love: the texture of brioche stitch, the zips, the small pockets at the waist line, referred to in the book as “ticket pockets” and the collar. The only thing I wasn’t so keen on were the chest pockets, but they could easily be left out.

Me posing in a decidedly urban setting

For this sweater I spent a lot of time swatching and calculating, to arrive at the right fabric and shape. Apart from the hints and tips from the Dutch book, I also used a lot of ideas from Catherine Lowe’s book on couture knitting techniques The Ravell’d Sleeve. I thought a lot about the right selvedges to use to make seaming up easier, using bound edges to create a finished look, and using many needle sizes to make a good ribbing and transition from ribbing to main fabric.

The sleeve cap has been fully shaped for a nicely set-in sleeve. You can also see the waste yarn at the ribbing that helped me make a very nice tubular cast-on

One of the things I’m particularly happy with, are the sleeves. Knitting is a very forgiving fabric as it is so stretchy, and many knitting patterns nowadays do away with a curved sleeve cap as things will kind of find their way after a few wears. It is also a nightmare for pattern writers to write up the instructions for a fully curved sleeve cap, as the decrease rate changes every few rows, so many knitting patterns don’t bother. But as I didn’t have to worry about that, I could do exactly as I pleased and I made fully curved sleeve caps (as an aside, some knitting pattern writers did use nicely shaped sleeve caps, such as James Norbury.)

Tubular cast-on and 1×1 ribbing and about five different needle sizes to keep the ribbing under control

I’m also really pleased with the ribbing on the sleeve cuffs and the welts. I decided to use Lowe’s preferred method of a tubular cast-on with waste yarn. I find that using the waste yarn method (you can still see it in the picture of the unseamed sleeve, as I only took it out after final assembly) it is much easier to be consistent with the cast-on. I used to favour the Italian cast-on, also sometimes known as the alternate cast-on, but that relies on attempting to be consistent with the tension whilst casting on. A bit of a challenge when casting on roughly 180 stitches! As a tubular cast-on looks very nice, but isn’t necessarily that resilient, Lowe advocates the use of a very small needle size for the casting on, and then gradually increasing the needle size as the ribbing is worked. To make the transition from ribbing to main fabric smoothly, the first inch or so of the main fabric is also knitted in a smaller needle size than the bulk of it.

The collar of the sweater has bound edges for a neat finish

Another area where I used graduating needle sizes was the collar. The outside edge of the collar was knitted on a large needle size, and then I gradually moved to smaller needle sizes to give the collara curved shape. It’s barely noticable I used this trick, and that makes it extra satisfying. No decreases to distort the honeycomb brioche! Speaking of which, I found Nancy Marchant’s book on brioche knitting indispensable in chosing the right increase and decrease techniques. Brioche stitches are not like your regular knitting, as they are built up by slipping stitches whilst making a yarn-over at the same time, alternated with knitting together the slipped stitches with their buddy yarn-overs. This has all sorts of implications, which Nancy is much better at explaining than I am.

The set-in sleeve cap, with perfectly matched stripes

I also managed to perfectly match the stripes when I seamed the sleeve into the armscye. I wasn’t sure whether this would work out, as this area of pattern matching was elusive. I haven’t found any resource that explains how you can ensure that the shaping you come up with for sleeve cap and armscye will allow you to match stripes perfectly. All the tutorials I found were for sewing patterns, and they all start with: check that your sewing pattern is suitable for stripes, otherwise you will not be able to match them at the armscye seam. But surely somebody must have designed it to be so to start with?

The brioche sweater was knitted in merino, a surprising choice for me!

The author of the Dutch book, De Vries-Hamburger, explained how she feels you arrive at the best results if you think about the fabric you want to achieve and then find yarn to match rather than starting with the yarn and then hoping to find a suitable pattern to go with it, and I wanted to put that theory to the test. And I ended up with a surprising choice: merino! Im not usually a fan of merino. It’s often only good at two things: it’s very soft, and it takes colours well. I don’t find it performs very well as a hand-knitting yarn. It’s often superwash treated, which affects the handle, and it often starts pilling very quickly. The Blacker Swan merino 4-ply I chose, however, seems to be different from what I’ve experienced before and it is more lively, and a has nice handle as well as being soft. So far I don’t regret my choice!

A few days ago I met up with my dear friend and comrade in wool, Felicity “Felix” Ford, and we had a lot of fun taking these pictures, so I’ll part this blog post with some more gratuitous photographs of my sweater. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much I did taking them with her!

The triumph of the set-in sleeve

The collar with its bound edges

The ticket pocket

Today is Fashion Revolution Day, and like last year, I’d like to spend some time thinking about all those expert skills hiding behind all those cheap clothes we expect to see on The High Street.

Fashion Revolution Day: who made my clothes?

When I was writing my new artist statement, I spent a lot of time thinking about motivations for repair, captured in the following sentence:

By exploring the motivations for repair Tom shifts the emphasis from the new and perfect to the old and imperfect, enabling him  to highlight the relationship between garment and wearer.

There are manifold motivations for mending, ranging from societal issues through to the very personal: concerns about environmental impact of the clothes life-cycle, concerns about living conditions of people making cheap clothes, budget constraints, sentimental value; I’m sure you can add more to the list.

A darning sampler in the form of socks from a time that repair came natural to people; from the Fries Museum

The people behind Fashion Revolution Day ask you to think about who made your clothes. For me personally, this question can more and more be answered by: I made my clothes. I have made my own boxershorts, trousers, numerous socks, cardigans, and sweaters. With less success I’ve also attempted to make some shirts, and it’ll be some time before I feel happy to tackle a jacket or coat.

Making my own clothes has made me realise that it takes a lot of time, skill and effort to create garments I’m happy to wear. Of course, I’m not a professional tailor, so I’m happy spending my whole Christmas holiday on one pair of tweed trousers. I don’t know any shortcuts or tricks to make things go faster and I don’t feel the need to use them, either. Every time I make something, I learn something. How to make a nice welted pocket; how to bind edges on knitwear; how to copy a pattern from an existing garment.

Boxershorts made from ripped sheets: the softest cotton you can get your hands on! The pattern was copied from a pair of boxershorts I already owned

Making my own clothes has made me realise, too, that those cheap t-shirts, jeans, and other items were made under very different circumstances. The shops we buy these from are mostly trying to get a decent profit margin. At the same time, their customers demand a low price for these items. Something is going to get squeezed somewhere. You will notice that when you buy cheap clothes, their material quality might be poor, seams might fall apart easily, or the finishing isn’t great. This is not because those people in sweatshops like Rana Plaza don’t have the required skills, but because they are constrained by time or poor quality materials.

I believe therefore that clothes made by those people deserve the same respect as that carefully hand-knitted sweater you made at home. When I do buy new clothes (I mostly shop secondhand now), I try to buy something made to last, but I know that’s not always possible. And I myself have not always been in the position to buy less, but of higher quality. It happens. I try not to feel too bad about it (some people in the sustainable fashion corner worry about what might happen if suddenly nobody buys cheap clothes anymore: thousands of people in developing countries would suddenly be without a job.)

An early Visible Mending example

There is no one solution to these ethical questions, and I think we should all do what is within our reach. For me this means I will repair my clothes, including cheap ones. When repairing clothes, my mind often starts to wander and I think about who made the item. It might be me, a dear friend, or indeed, it might be an anonymous seamstress.

So, even if you will never find out who made your clothes, you can still think about this person.

Pay them respect and repair your garments.

In the last twelve months or so I have started to gain an appreciation for Taking Time. Although (hand-) knitting probably isn’t the fastest craft known to man as it is, I have never shied away from projects that take a particularly long time to complete, such as this holy communion shawl.

A Shetland Lace Shawl in Cobweb weight yarn

However, I’m now more consciously slowing down. As I become more interested in using specific traditional techniques for specific tasks, I also feel an urge to take my time to to do the best job possible.

I think my interest in this started when I took up spinning. Working with wool is a tactile experience I enjoy, and now I’m seeking out opportunities to enhance this experience. Taking time to handle the fibre at the various stages allow me to explore its material qualities.

Of course, knitting in itself allows me that tactile experience by its very nature. But instead of using a skein holder and ball winder, I now prefer to use my knees to hold the skein, and wind a ball by hand. The rhythm of winding, going from left knee to right and back again, feeling the yarn glide through one hand, feeling the ball of yarn grow in the other, I can get to know the yarn I’ll be knitting up later. How smooth is the yarn, how bouncy is the ball? I dream about the project that it will become, contemplate how I can enhance the fibre’s inherent qualities.

Handspun yarns and handwound balls

But as a spinner I can create even more opportunities to explore these tactile qualities. I love getting a raw fleece and process it from scratch. Laying out the fleece, sorting it, scouring it, preparing it for spinning; this all requires a lot of handling. Raw fleece feels greasy and at places, dirty, and smells strongly of sheep. It takes me right back to my childhood, visiting my grandparents’ sheep farm. During the scouring and drying the fibre transforms through its contact with water and soap. This process can’t be rushed, and it creates space to think about what this fleece might want to become.

Consciously taking time when performing tasks makes them more meaningful to me. It clears the mind and allows me to contemplate the more esoteric aspects of my work. Preparing and spinning Shetland wool makes me think about the importance of wool in Shetland’s economy and society and particularly how it affected women’s lives (if you are interested in this subject, then Myth And Materiality in a Woman’s World: Shetland, 1800-2000 by Lynn Abrahams is a good place to start.)

Knitted darning samplers in the Fries Museum

When I’m darning, I think not only about when this was a necessity, but also about the amazing darning samplers I have seen at the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. Young girls were taught to knit and darn and had to take time to create perfectly executed darning samplers. I also noticed during my visit to the Fries Museum, that the clothes in their collection were rarely repaired to the same high standard. I can only assume that the women couldn’t afford to spend a lot of time on this task, undoubtedly one of many when running a household, big or small.

Things become more personal when I take on a specific darning commission, the most poignant example perhaps being the repair of Bernadette’s jumper.

Bernadette’s jumper visibly mended

Just a normal jumper to most people, even if they recognise the good knitting skills that went into it, this jumper is very valuable indeed to Bernadette. One of the few items made by her mother that she still owed, and a botched attempt to turn it into cushion cover made this a very special mend.

As Bernadette had given me the background story of this jumper, her relationship with her mother, and why she attempted to turn it into a cushion cover, the repair felt very intimate. While preparing the pieces of the jumper for repair I let my mind wander and it allowed me to refine my repair approach. I wanted to show that this was not repaired by the person who originally made this jumper, and I used a variation of the cable stitch pattern to highlight this. Although I had never met her mother, taking my time to perform a beautiful repair, allowed me to contemplate this woman while I picked up stitches she had knitted many years ago; a very intimate act.

A Shetland Lace Shawl for my Mother

In summary, giving yourself permission to take time has, I believe, many benefits. There is time for contemplation, exploring material qualities, and re-inforcing the connections between all the things I do. It makes my work a creative, deep and rich experience that I wouldn’t want to miss for all in the world.

Cecelia Campochiaro may be a name you have not heard of, but I think this is about to change. She has written what I believe will become a future classic in the knitting repertoire: Sequence Knitting. I first clapped my eyes on some of her designs on Ravelry, completely by chance. I was intrigued enough to take a gamble and placed a pre-order of this book with Schoolhouse Press. When it finally arrived I was bowled over by Cecelia’s book, and I’m very pleased that she agreed to an interview.

Warning: get yourself a cup of tea before proceeding, there was much to talk about!

Cecelia Campochiaro, author of Sequence Knitting

Tom: first of all, could you give us an introduction to the concept of sequence knitting for those readers of my blog who are not familiar with it?

Cecelia: Sequence Knitting is simply about taking a sequence of stitches like “K3, P1” and repeating that sequence again and again to create a fabric. Any kind of sequence is possible, but it should be of a fixed length or the knitting will grow or shrink dramatically. The sequence and the way the sequence is repeated can both be varied to create an endless number of fabrics.

Moss stitch (or seed stitch, depending on which side of the pond you live) is an example of sequence knitting we are all familiar with: repeat K1, P1 over an odd number of stitches, end with K1. 
Tom: your attention to detail is self-evident throughout the book, from the lay-out through to the text and the knitted items presented. You frequently refer to other books that make a point about details and choosing just the right technique for the job at hand, such as June Hemmons Hiatt‘s The Principles of Knitting, and Catherine Lowe‘s The Ravell’d Sleeve; both among my personal favourites for this very reason. How have they (and perhaps others) influenced your work?

Cecelia: We knitters are so fortunate to have wonderful people like June, Catherine, and of course Elizabeth Zimmerman willing to put their thoughts to paper. I devoured Elizabeth’s books in the 1990s, then I took a workshop from Catherine in the early 2000s in Menlo Park. She introduced me to the idea that knitters create the fabric, unlike sewers, and she also introduced me to June’s book. It was out of print, but I invested $350 to get a used copy. It was the most expensive book I had ever bought and I read it from cover to cover. Other influences were Kaffe Fassett, Barbara Walker, Montse Stanley, Setsuko Torii, Britt-Marie Christoffersson, and The Mason-Dixon ladies Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne.

Tom: in a previous email you mentioned you have a 60+h job and that this can make creative thinking difficult. As somebody who also has a full-time office job alongside my creative practice I have developed my own strategies and I’d be curious to know how you managed to ensure time for being creative, and write a whole book?

Cecelia: in my high-tech life I developed complex machines used in computer chip factories. These machines are created by many engineers working over a period of years. This taught me that with a good plan and continuous effort, big things can happen. When I was I writing, I would wake up early and spend an hour in the morning before going to work, and perhaps another hour or two each evening. I also traveled with a personal laptop on business trips – long flights are great for getting things done. As the book got closer to completion I had to start creating my own deadlines, and I spent many weekends working straight through to meet them. I also had a lot of help from two amazing and talented women: Vanessa Yap-Einbund, who did the book design, and Renée Lorion, who did the editing. I loved doing this project so much it really never felt like work.

Sequence Knitting, with a whole raft of tasty scarves on the cover

Tom: your book is a beautifully produced hardback (as a bibliophile I particularly appreciate the sewn binding.) Kate Davies has recently blogged about independent publishing in the world of knitting (link to the first of three consecutive blog posts on the subject) and she discusses the different ways of independent publishing and some of their pros and cons. What has been your motivation for independent publishing and how did you settle on the format?
Cecelia: thank you. Kate’s books and her blog are terrific. I read her articles on self-publishing with great interest.

My mother was a librarian and I was raised to value and love books. I never thought I would write a knitting book, but the concept of sequence knitting seemed so fundamental and important that I decided I had to share it in the best way I could. Once the scale of the book became clear, I wanted it to be comfortable to hold, to lay flat, and be durable. It also had to be beautiful as an object by itself. Knitting books from Japan and photography books published by Steidl were my aesthetic inspirations. I was so glad to work with Vanessa Yap-Einbund. She has a great eye.

I did not approach a traditional publisher for many reasons: I was a complete unknown in the knitting world, and I did not think anyone would take me seriously, but the bigger reason was that I was figuring out how sequence knitting worked as I developed the book. I used InDesign to write the book in spreads, and would rewrite some pages as many as 10 times as I clarified my thinking. I don’t know how I could have shared the process with anyone else given my personal learning curve and the constraints of my career in technology. Working in technology also enabled me to pay upfront for the printing.

Before I embarked on the writing, I also found out that I could have Unicorn Books and Crafts be the distributor. One of the barriers to self-publishing is distribution. There was no way I could take on the storage and shipping of books, so I really appreciate having a resource like Unicorn Books.

This also touches on the subject of how we value and pay for books. In a small communities like knitting, books are crucial for sharing information. However, several yarn shop owners have told me that they are no longer carrying books because they cannot compete with discount prices and free shipping from big companies. For now, Sequence Knitting is not available through any discount-sellers to encourage yarn shops and small on-line businesses to carry it.

A swatch in tweed knitting I made last year; this turns out to be a form of sequence knitting

Tom: last year I have been exploring something I called “tweed-knitting” after a 1953 Dutch knitting book; I now realise this is a flavour of sequence knitting. And although most of the swatches in the book are in a plain grey yarn, you clearly love using colour. What’s the connection between sequence knitting and colour?
Cecelia: I saw that post and would love to see that book!

Some sequence knitting stitch patterns create a framework within which color can easily be explored, like broken garter. The Mason-Dixon ladies have written about improvisational color work and I share their love for starting something where the journey to make it will have color surprises, as in the version of Colormill shown further down. I spent a year just working broken garter patterns and playing with colors. Using Eisaku Noro’s yarns with sequence knitting is another way to create and enjoy amazing colors.

The swatches are all in neutral grays because I want the reader to impose their own color ideas on the stitch patterns. To me, having the swatches in a strong color predisposes the reader to think about the pattern in a biased way, and I hope people will explore many colors of their choosing. In addition to color, the fiber is important and provides another level of variety in terms of gauge and texture.

Cecelia knitted this version of the Andrus Scarf by holding a strand of ombré fingering with a strand of a silk-mohair blend

Tom: you have approached the sequence knitting concept very methodically, and as somebody who has attempted to study maths many moons ago, I can really appreciate this. I imagine I would have a lot of fun putting together the tables with all the possible variations. Could you tell a bit more about the maths behind sequence knitting?
Cecelia: as long as one stays with knits and purls, the math is all binary just like computers. Think of a knit as a “0″ and a purl as a “1.” So a 2-digit binary number can be 00, 10, 01, and 11– and a 2-stitch sequence can be K2, KP, PK, or P2. However, many of these different combinations are redundant, which may or may not be important depending on the situation. I figured a lot of this out empirically and I’m sure I still don’t understand it all. A friend who is a statistician, Karen Biagini, helped me, and I hope some knitter-mathematicians will really do it justice in the future.

Bach Scarf detail: this shows that using a plain colour yarn doesn’t mean the end result is plain, too

Tom: I find your concept very inspiring; it’s beautiful in its simplicity and got my mind racing about all the possibilities. I think it would translate easily into stranded colourwork substituting knits and purls with two different colours, but I have tried a few swatches with lace. As we’ve discussed by email, this turns out to have its own problems, and for your book you’ve made the choice of playing with knits and purls only. How come? And what other possiblities have you tried that haven’t made it into the book?

Cecelia: lace, colorwork, bobbles…the possibilities are endless! Once I decided to write a book, I had to decide how broad the scope could be. If I included lace and other ideas either the book would be longer or the descriptions would have to be shorter and it just seemed like keeping to knits and purls (with a few slip stitches) was a logical place to constrain the content. I have a lovely team of sample knitters and ideas keep coming, so we have been busily working on what I hope will be book 2. My guiding principles are first that the process must be simple, and second that the end product must be lovely. The balance between these two criteria is a fascinating puzzle. So far book 2 has some colorwork and new ways to repeat sequences. I am still pondering whether to include any lace…

Colormill Scarf detail; knitted in a broken garter stitch sequence, which enabled Cecelia to explore improvisational colourwork

Tom: last but not least, where is the book available from?

Cecelia: in the US it is available from many sources including local yarn shops, Schoolhouse Press, Imagiknit, Jimmy Beans Wool and others. I do not yet have a UK distributor, but Loop in London just started carrying it.

Thank you so much for asking me to be a part of your blog. I’m thrilled with the ways you are expanding on sequence knitting!!

Tom: thank you Cecelia, it was a pleasure to feature you, and I’m already looking forward to the next book!

Last year I went to the Fries Museum to see their collection of darning samplers. Little did I know that almost a year later, I would own my own antique darning sampler. Note: if you want to see the following pictures in close-up, simply click on them to see the larger version.

My darning sampler was started in 1892 by ‘EAE’, but never finished. I have very little additional information about it

A good excuse to read up on darning samplers and I’d like to share with you some of the things I’ve learnt.

Making darning samplers seemed to be particularly popular in The Netherlands, although you find them also in other countries. What follows comes from Dutch books that specifically talk about darning samplers (listed below) and reflect how things were in The Netherlands; I can only assume things might’ve been similar elsewhere.

Darning samplers seem to have been part of any girl’s education, rich or poor. All women were supposed to help out with household tasks, which included maintenance of clothes and linens. Girls and women ought to keep themselves occupied with useful things, and for those who needed to supplement their income, needlework was a respectable way of earning some extra money.

A fancy darn with different patterns in the arms of the cross

Girls were often sent to a small girls’ boarding school (they were often called “French Boarding School” as the girls were also taught French), where needlework was part of the curriculum. It was also taught at orphanages to ensure orphaned girls would be able to look after themselves once they left. For those girls who were too busy during the day (they might have a job as a maid, or help run a household), there were also evening darning and sewing classes.

Needlecraft lessons included embroidery, knitting, sewing, and mending. Often girls started with a cross stitch sampler, practising the letters of the alphabet. Many households sent their laundry to the laundry house and by marking all the linen, they could all be returned cleaned and bleached to the rightful owners. Often these samplers started with the alphabet repeated a few times (making sure the letters were embroidered exactly the same and lined up: an exercise in counting the threads), and then little motifs were added, which could be used for decorative purposes.

As I understand it, girls started with the easier embroidery sampler first, and then moved on to the darning sampler. And in the darning sampler there was also a build-up of complexity in technique. One started off with damask darning, which is nowadays still used as a decorative technique. This simply required the darner to pick up threads from the sound fabric. You can see this in the centre square of my sampler: each of the borders show a different damask darning pattern.

The centre square shows the relatively easy technique of damask darning

The back of the centre square shows that using star stitch (a reversible stitch) for the initials and numbers makes for a very neat finish

After the damask darn they moved on to the real deal: darning across an actual hole. A hole was neatly cut out and the edges whipped to stop them from fraying. First all the vertical threads (the warp, so to speak) were put across the hole by starning some simple damask darning a bit away from the hole, span the thread across the hole and then darn in a bit more on the other side. When turning direction to work back, a little loop was left at the end. Used linen was usually washed a lot, so wouldn’t shrink anymore, but the new darning thread used for the repair would shrink upon the first wash, so these loops allowed for that. The horizontal threads were woven in in a similar fashion, weaving them over and under the warp threads. The first hole (top right in my sampler) would be done in a simple even weave, and then slowly the complexity increased to other weave patterns, such as twill weaves, bird’s eye, satin, and checks.

An even weave darn. The irregularity suggests this might have been the first proper darn made on the sampler

The back shows whip stitched edges, loops to allow for shrinkage, and also a decorative hem

Colours and materials for repair change through the centuries according to fashion. These practice darns were usually done in coloured threads on a plain white or unbleached ground, so that it was easy to see what you were doing, but also allowing the teacher to spot any mistakes more readily. Old darning samplers often used fine silks, linen or cotton threads on a linen or cotton ground. Less common was the use of wool, although it became more popular when the ‘Berlin wools’ came into fashion for needlepoint. Older darning samplers were often executed with very fine threads, and the holes repaired were rather large and therefore presented a real challenge. The threads used are slowly getting a bit less fine, and likewise the fabric used became coarser throughout the centuries; the variety of techniques seemed to go down as well. Old darning samplers included complex repairs at the edge of the fabric, and the most difficult of all was the darning of a corner. A length of ribbon or tape was used as a corner edge, which was sometimes removed after the darn was completed. Later darning samplers don’t show these complicated repairs, and also the size of the holes to be darned became smaller. This could be due to a number of reasons, but one of them is that for larger holes and corners a sewn-in patch is a much stronger repair than a hand-sewn darn could ever be.

A bird’s eye darn in two colours

The bird’s eye darn looks just as neat at the back

My darning sampler seems to be typical of its time: no complex edge or corner darns, and none of the holes are larger than 3x3cm. For whatever reason, this one was left unfinished. One darn in the lower left corner only has the warp threads darned in in a herringbone pattern, and there also the start of repairing a diagonal slash. This repair was complicated, as the edges of the slash are on the diagonal, so liable to stretch out. This darning sampler would’ve been worked on over a good few months. Girls would usually have darning lessons a few hours a week, and it took them about a year to complete a sampler. I will never know why my darning sampler was never finished, but the research in the books I have show that often girls either couldn’t afford the fees, or were not able to attend classes due to other duties taking higher priority. In the country side for instance, there were no lessons during harvest time as everybody, young and old, had to help bring in the harvest.

The start of a herringbone darn, shown on the back

The vertical threads were already completed on this diagonal slash, and the horizontal threads were just started

The diagonal slash darn is the only one that shows a knot

The mystery remains, and that is part of the beauty of it. Even if I don’t know a thing about who made this sampler or why it was never completed, it represents an important part of young women’s social history, and will provide me with food for thought and inspiration for years to come.

The back of the darning sampler shows neat finishes

Short bibliography (apologies to non-Dutch readers, but all these books are in Dutch):

Kipp, A; Schipper-van Lottum, MGA; Van der Vlerk, L. Nuttig en Fraai; Zuidhollandse merk- en stoplappen. Becht, Haarlem, 1987.

Schipper-van Lottum, MGA. Merk- en Stoplappen; schoolwerk van Amsterdamse meisjes uit vier eeuwen. Second print, Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam, 1980

Schipper-van Lottum, MGA. Stop- en borduurlappen; geschiedenis en techniek. Becht, Haarlem, 1987.

Smith-Sanders, B. Merk- en Stoplappen uit het Burgerweeshuis Amsterdam. Venlo, 2013.

My vintage-obsessed knitting comrade Susan Crawford embarked on an exciting project about three years ago: she has taken 25 20th century knitted pieces from the textile collection of the Shetland Museum and Archive and turned them into 21st century knitting patterns.

In order to fund the costs of making the book, Susan started a Slushpub fundraiser, which has already well exceeded her initial target! The additional money will go to more of the photoshoot costs,  a second photographer to take ‘behind the scenes’ footage of the photoshoot to enhance the book further, additional research to make the book even better, and image licencing to increase the number of historical images included in the book.

As part of this blog tour to promote the book and raise funds, Susan has asked each contributor to share some of the bloggers’ favourite garments in the book. Originally I was going to knit one of the sample garments for the book so I’ve seen all the garments before as Susan gave me the choice, but unfortunately I had other priorities and in the end I didn’t get to knit a garment after all. So, here’s a shortlist of my favourite garments:

Short-sleeved jumper

This short-sleeved jumper appealed to me because of the unusual design, which combines a classic “all-over” with stripes and a border of diamonds. All the diagonal lines really pull the design together.

Casual cardigan with inset pockets

This is such a classic cardigan! It’s possibly one of the most typical Shetland knits in the collection, but I love the quiet elegance and the large collection of peerie patterns, punctuated by the recurring diamond pattern.

Golf stockings

How could I not like a pair of knee-high socks with some darning? Against better judgment I once knitted a pair of socks from woollen spun Shetland wool. I wore holes in them after only a few wears, and they’ve been in my mending basket for almost two years now. I wonder whether these golf stockings were knitted from a worsted-spun yarn instead.

But in the end, the garment I wanted to knit most, was the “Prisoner of War” jumper.

Prisoner of War jumper

When I attended Shetland Wool Week in 2013, this jumper was on display in the Shetland Museum. I had already seen pictures of it from Susan, but that didn’t quite prepare me for the impact of seeing the real deal. It’s knitted from fine wool, and as you can see, it’s been mended a lot, and being able to see it failry up-close was a humbling experience. This jumper was knitted for Ralph Paterson by his wife. He was wearing it when he was taken prisoner of war in Hong Kong. It brought him comfort, and reminded him of home. It must’ve been very precious to him, as it has been mended in many places, using odds and ends of yarn.

Darning to keep loved ones in mind

An unexpected pop of colour

Not all holes were darned on this jumper; perhaps Ralph Paterson might’ve been on his way home again when he discovered this hole?

I’m looking forward to seeing Susan’s book, and you can probably guess which pattern I’m itching to cast on!

All pieces – each with their own unique story to tell – have been developed into comprehensive multi-sized knitting patterns, complete with instructions, technical advice and illustrated with colour photography shot in Shetland. With an introduction reflecting on the story of each hand-knit item this book is a treasury of Shetland knitting patterns and an insight into Shetland’s rich textile traditions.

The blog tour continues with Kate Atherley‘s blog on Wednesday, 29 July.

Please see the list below for all the stops along the tour past, present, and future:

I made a sweater. And for a humble sweater, it brings together a lot of ideas and people, hence my conundrum on the title of this blog post.

A Heraldic Sweater made from Clara Yarn Shetland 1.0

When I got my lucky hands on some Shetland 1.0 by Clara Yarn – an occasional, exclusive, and always interesting yarn range from my dear friend and fellow Comrade in Wool, Clara Parkes – I wanted to play with colour, but I also wanted to eek out the yardage as much as I could. So the most obvious approach, stranded colour work, was out of the question: I wanted every inch of yarn to be knitted into a visible stitch. The second option was intarsia, and for a long time, I thought that this would be the solution.

Suddenly, a lot of things came together: I remembered my swatch of “tweed knitting”, a method of creating a tweedy fabric using a mistake rib, which I had found in a 1950s Dutch knitting book.

“Tweed knitting” from A Better Course in Knitting, a 1950s Dutch knitting book

My interest in knitting patterns from the 1980s:

A cozy cardigan by Jane Wheeler, shown in Rowan’s Design Collection; Summer & Winter Knitting, edited by Stephen Sheard

Tapestry Sweater, designed by Susan Duckworth, from her book Floral Knitting

I implore anybody who shudders by the thought of 1980s knitwear to take a closer look. If you can see past the oversized boxy shapes, a rich world opens up. I don’t see a nadir in knitwear design, but an exciting and heady mix of texture, colour, and technique. Young knitwear designers and labels such as Artwork, Kaffe Fassett, Annabel Fox, Bodymap, and Patricia Roberts, to name just a few, explored exciting new things. Rowan yarns started to make a lot of new yarns in a variety of fibres, texture, and colour. No technique was considered too complicated. It’s full of inspiration for me. I particularly like the colourwork designs where the different areas of colours are accentuated by the use of a different stitch, or a yarn with a different texture, such as the Tapestry Sweater by Susan Duckworth. In my sweater, though, I wanted to stick to using the Shetland 1.0 only, so I started playing around with texture and colour.

An early swatch combining blocks of colour with contrast in texture – with apologies for the poor quality of my phone picture

As I now knew where I wanted to go, I made a start with knitting, even if I hadn’t worked out the detail yet, hoping that I would find a solution along the way. I had finished the back and one sleeve when I found out about Sequence Knitting, a knitting method explored and documented by Cecelia Campochiaro in her book. I had a flash of inspiration! Why not try out some sequence knitting by knitting swatches, which I could then incorporate into the front piece? To knit this unhampered by attempting to match stitch and row gauge, I would block the swatches and the back piece, and that way I could work out how to knit the front piece with matching holes, into which I could then sew the swatches. And that’s just what I did:

The front piece puzzle, using a wide range of knitting sequences

As you can see, the front piece blocked out a bit larger than planned, so sewing together was a bit more of a challenge than I had anticipated. Huzzah for my endless stash of coil-less safety pins.

Sewing the swatches into the front

When I had completed the sewing up, the front looked less than presentable. Lots of puckers along seam lines, and fabric pulling into all sorts of directions. But such is the power of The Second Blocking (after sewing up and adding button bands or collars, I always block again) that all puckers and warping disappeared, as I knew would happen; I had, after all, used the largest gauge swatch I could make: the whole back piece.

When I showed my nearly finished jumper to Anna Maltz, she declared it looked “very heraldic.” It all made sense:

Shield Sweater and Cardigan, from Sandy Black’s Original Knitting, knitted in stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch. The shield is on the front of the sweater, and the back of the cardigan

A bold design, and a contrast in texture by using different stitches: I believe I have managed to take what I like in 1980s knitwear, and make it into something new.

A well-shaped sleeve cap, and a mock-turtle neck

There’s also a lot of shaping hidden in this sweater. The sleeve cap has a “proper” bell shape, like for a sewn shirt, and of course making the holes on the front meant using lots of different rates of increasing and decreasing: I learnt a lot about that, too! The mock turtle neck was knitted by graduating the needle size: at the picked up edge I used 3.5mm needles, and every few rows I went one size smaller until I reached 2.75mm. The part that’s folded to the inside is knitted on one needle size smaller throughout, from 2.5mm through to 3.25mm.

Me looking a bit smug in my Heraldic Sweater

I thoroughly enjoyed bringing all these disparate things together in one sweater, and the Clara Yarn Shetland 1.0 was a dream to knit with. I hope to wear this sweater with much pleasure for years to come!

During a paper I gave at In the Loop 4, I mentioned a blurring of boundaries: when does a garment start, and when does it end? Musings about Taking time, Woolly Comrade Felicity ‘Felix’ Ford’s Slow Wardrobe project, and having conversations with other friends who make clothes to last, have culminated into my own thoughts about a Slow Wardrobe.

My Brioche Sweater: a recently completed garment. Or is it?

Since I started repairing with purpose, I’m slowly but surely drifting away from the idea that once the last loose end has been woven in, a garment is finished. Over time, clothes start to develop signs of wear, of having been washed, of having been used. Inevitably, an edge starts to fray, a seat wears thin, or a hole appears, and the time comes I’ll be getting out my darning needle. By making my mends visible, I continue adding to the garment. A beautiful mend can be worn as a badge of honour, and in my view, augments and alters the garment repaired.

Darning the threadbare yoke seam of a flannelette shirt

A shift of focus from trying to keep things looking new and perfect to favouring the old and imperfect, means I’ve stopped looking at repair as a chore, but as a creative challenge in its own right. Instead of fixing something that is broken, which implies the item was finished, I now continue working on something that wasn’t complete yet. This idea is perhaps easier to embrace where it concerns clothes I made myself, but I now extend it to the clothes I buy. I frequently purchase secondhand clothes, and they already show signs of wear, and the time to repair something usually comes along sooner.

Spinning a yarn

Conversely, making my own clothes has made me question at what point a garment starts. When you buy something, you could be led to believe that your garment’s life starts when you’ve handed over your cash. But this, of course, isn’t true. Somebody somewhere has laid out cloth, cut it up, seamed it, pressed it. Most likely different people were involved in different stages and many things are now mechanised.

When making your own clothes, you get to choose the fabric or yarn, the pattern, the buttons, and put it all together into a garment. You could argue that the item starts its life when you clapped your eyes on that beautiful tweed, or when you dreamt up that Christmas jumper and you started looking for the right yarn. Now that I also spin, even if as yet I haven’t spun enough of one yarn to make a whole jumper, my boundary has shifted even further back: it is possible to make a garment-specific fibre, so really, its life starts there. In fact, we can take it back right to the beginning: wool, linen, silk, and cotton are all fibres that theoretically I could grow or farm myself.

Roger from Diamond Fibre Mill spinning a yarn or two

So even if I’m not personally involved in all the process steps from farming to harvesting to processing of fibres, and subsequently turning the resulting cloth or yarn into a garment, I’m aware that all these steps are part of the story. If you want to get an understanding of some of the issues around the fashion industry, then there’s no better way than trying to make something yourself. When you wash your raw fleece, you’ll notice how much water you use. When you spin a yarn, you understand how difficult it can be to get something just right. When you sew a shirt, you get a feel for how complicated sewing can be. Try and imagine any of these processes on an industrial scale, and soon all sorts of questions pop up: how can we grow/farm fibres in huge quantities? What happens with waste water from processing fibres and dyeing it? What happens to by-products and waste from the spinning process? How can somebody sew 50 shirts a day? How are prices of clothing set on the High Street?

These are just a few questions, and answering them is difficult, and fixing things that appear to be a problem is also very complicated. So what can I do about it myself? Talking to people such as Sarah Corbett from the Craftivist Collective, or reading John-Paul Flintoff’s book Sew Your Own, made me realise that there will be things I personally cannot influence, but there are other things I can do something about. I can run workshops, I can volunteer, I can decide what goes into my wardrobe, and I can share my experiences in this blog.

A follow-up post is in the making, in which I want to share with you my thoughts about my Slow Wardrobe: what does it mean to me? Sewing and knitting my own clothes, making things that last, repairing things, and thinking about long-term style, not short-term fashion.

Previously I spoke about the concept of a Slow Wardrobe, and how I’m changing the way I’m looking at the boundaries of where clothes begin and end. I was pretty confident that I knew where I was going, and what I would write in this follow-up post. However, at that time I wasn’t aware of Karen Templer’s Slow Fashion October initiative. She really opened up the topic of Slow Fashion. Some aspects I hadn’t really given a lot of thought before, while other aspects have been shown in a different light. This has left me not quite knowing how to give shape to my Slow Wardrobe — however, that’s something I embrace: I deliberately chose the title Slow Thinking as I’m still shaping my thoughts and I’m in no rush to come up with “the answer” any time soon; in fact, there is no one right answer.

Hand-spun yarn from Jacob fleece, acquired through Ravelry

Some of the most pertinent discussions for me revolve around a number of topics, and as I’m still working out where I stand on them, I just list them here (I feel Karen captured some important discussions in the this round-up post. Warning, following this link will send you right down a Slowtober rabbit hole with many avenues to explore):

1. The “privilege” of repair and wearing repaired clothes, or wearing the same outfit frequently; and what is acceptable where (eg office vs home, uniforms (workman clothes, but also high earners, such as Steve Jobs and many a fashion designer who always wear the same outfit), suits/office wear and gender differences therein)
2. The notion that one should buy less, but spend more on individual items: does a higher price tag always equate to better quality? But also: not everybody can afford the initial lay-out
3. The all-or-nothing way of thinking. Just because you can’t do everything, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything at all. There are many entry points to make a difference to suit different budgets (read this post about knitting yarns by Karen to see what I mean, even if most of her examples are US based)
4. Making your own clothes is another thing that gets mentioned a lot. Again, it is not a solution that can work for everybody: nowadays, making your own clothes comes at a high cost, which you could express in money and time. Some people have neither, others have one but not the other

So with that in mind, I would like to share what certain aspects of a Slow Wardrobe mean to me at the moment. This is mostly about when I want to make something new, but I’m conscious that there’s another side of my wardrobe, which is all the clothes I already have. I tend to wear clothes for many seasons, and they are important, too.

Materials

When I make my own clothes, I have more control over the materials I use for the garments. I can choose to use mill ends, secondhand, repurpose, or buy fully traceable materials. Obviously this depends on what I want to make. For example, when it comes to wool yarn for knitting, I can take it as far back as buying a raw fleece and do ALL the processing myself. Money-wise this is a very cheap option, but it is extremely time consuming. This would be a very different story for eg cotton fabrics; I would not be spinning and weaving cotton to make, for instance, boxershorts, so then I can look around for another solution.

Boxershorts made from old sheets

Labour

When I make my own clothes, I know there’s only one person involved in the making of it: me. However, I do realise that any materials I use will have been made by somebody, quite possibly not me. So I can do my best to make sure to use “labour-friendly” materials. In addition, I can take my time, which will allow me to get things just as I want them to be.

In a completely natural and unstudied pose, I show off some items that each took me a long time to make: socks, trousers, jumper, and gloves were all time-consuming projects

Style

I will need to have a long-term view when it comes to the style of the garments I’m making. I’m no longer a skinny teenager, and if I want to make clothes to last, then I will need to take into account that my body shape might well change over the years. I can make sure that making size alterations in the future will be easy, and keep styles easy and perhaps a bit on the roomy side. I’d like to make clothes with long-term style in mind, not short-term fashion. Obviously, visibly mended clothes will play a big role in my wardrobe.

Longevity

Looking after my clothes is important. Make sure they are washed and stored appropriately and they can last a long time indeed. There is a lot of information available on how to take of your clothes, and the Love Your Clothes initiative is a good place to start. In my practice, creating and mending textiles are in constant conversation with each other; if my clothes acquire a darn or a patch along the way, then that can only be welcomed!

I’d love to hear what you have to say about this topic, and I hope that you, like me, are planning to join Karen Templer in Slow Fashion October next year. It will be interesting to see how my thinking will have evolved between now and then.

Edited to add: although this post puts the emphasis on adding new clothes to my wardrobe, I feel it’s important that I believe my existing clothes are the starting point of my Slow Wardrobe. Using what I already have is, from a pure sustainability point of view, probably preferable over adding new things, however “slowly” made. What that means for me as a creative person with (wearable) textiles as my main practice I’m not sure yet. 

I’m very excited to announce a extraordinary Visible Mending Programme collaboration with one of Brighton’s finest vintage clothes shops: Wolf & Gypsy Vintage. I have been shopping at Wolf & Gypsy since they first opened their doors many a moon ago, so it was only a matter of time I’d walk in with some visibly mended clothes. Laura, the owner of Wolf & Gypsy, loved the look of my repaired French workwear so much, that she asked me to create a micro-collection for her. And that’s exactly what I did.

May All Your Dreams Be Indigo, at Wolf & Gypsy Vintage Boutique, Brighton

All four pieces I repaired are of an indigo blue, and I think they were all dyed with a chemical dye rather than actual plant-based indigo. I decided to provide a contrast by using vintage Japanese natural indigo-dyed fabrics; by only using yellow sewing and embroidery threads I highlighted all the hand stitching.

All garments have been repaired visibly, and the Visible Mending Programme logo is handstitched into each garment

Laura carefully hand picks all the garments for her shop, and I have used the same attention to detail in making the repairs. Although the fabric I used for patching is Japanese, I steered clear of employing Japanese embroidery techniques, such as sashiko and boro. Instead, I found my inspiration from my old, and very Western, needlework books.

I’d love to share some before-and-after pictures:

KLM Overalls

Being from The Netherlands, I could only ever repair some overalls originating from my home country. KLM (Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij) is the Royal Dutch Airlines.

A crumpled KLM overalls in dire need of some TLC

Rejuvinated overalls: new button, fraying cuffs dealt with, small holes turned into eyelets

Overalls repairs: fraying cuffs rebound with fabric, small holes highlighted with eyelet embroidery.

Friendship Sweatshirt

Although there wasn’t any actual damage on this sweatshirt, it did look a bit dull. To remedy this, I added a colourful darn to be worn as a badge of honour. “Friendship” is the unknown-to-me label of this sweatshirt

The Friendship sweatshirt is looking for some pizzazz

A beautiful darn to be worn as a badge of honour

Sweatshirt repair: darn in multiple colours, created with my Speedweve.

French Workwear Trousers

These are very similar to the trousers I walked into the shop with and which led to this gig to start with. I’m happy with the look of the binding around the pockets (see picture above), and a fabric patch which shows fading. Most of all though, I love the tailor’s buttonholes, handstitched in a perlé cotton to make them stand out.

These French workwear trousers needed a fair bit of attention

I love the fading on the patch, which I’ve sewn in using the flannel patch method, more commonly used for, you guessed it, flannel!

I love working proper tailored buttonholes, and this commission was a good excuse to really make ’em stand out!

Trousers repairs: fraying pockets rebound with fabric, fraying buttonholes restitched, hems re-sewn, patches, waistband cord ends replaced.

French Workwear Jacket

Possibly my favourite of the series: the pockets had a lot of tiny holes in them, so these got covered up by pocket-sized patches. One sleeve had a very ugly and stiff iron-on patch. This peeled off easily, and I replaced it with a classic felled patch.

The jacket sported a really rather ugly iron-on patch and some holes were crudely sewn together

Luckily the patch came off easily, and a new patch was inserted with felled seams

Patches on the pockets, and the patches behind holes, which have been delicately outlined with a half-back stitch

Jacket repairs: buttons replaced, various patches, fraying cuffs rebound.

If you find yourself in Brighton during the month of November, then you can avail yourself of one of these fine Visible Mending Programme garments. Each one comes with a special card that details the repair materials and techniques used. I hope four lucky people will enjoy wearing these as much as I enjoyed repairing them!

Currently on at the Pitt Rivers Museum is the “Preserving What Is Valued” case display and museum trail. It demonstrates how people from all parts of the world repair their material culture. Conservators study objects in great detail and part of their role is to determine at what stage a repair has been made. If the repair was made by the originating community while it was still in use this provides an additional level of information and can give the object a deeper resonance. Identifying an original repair can raise questions that make us think about the object’s history differently.

Gourd vessel, decoratively repaired using beads, collection Pitt Rivers Museum

I was invited to run two darning classes as part of the events around this display. My name is Tom and I’m a self-taught textile practitioner, and one of the things I do is run the Visible Mending Programme. Through this programme I seek to highlight that the art and craftsmanship of clothes repair is particularly relevant in a world where more and more people voice their dissatisfaction with fashion’s throwaway culture. By exploring the story behind garment and repair, the programme reinforces the relationship between the wearer and garment, leading to people wearing their existing clothes for longer, with the beautiful darn worn as a badge of honour.

“A mother’s Work…” repair commission for private client. You can read more about it here.

The darning classes were well attended and the participants were taught two classic knitwear repair techniques: firstly Swiss darning, also known as duplicate stitching, which is a good way to reinforce thinning fabrics such as elbows on sleeves, or to cover up stains.

Swiss darning in action by one of the participants

The second technique taught was the classic stocking darn, using a darning mushroom. It creates a woven patch that is integrated with the knit fabric, and is a good way to repair holes. Of course this is best known for sock repairs.

A completed practice swatch, showing a stocking darn and rows of Swiss darning in bold colours

Throughout the class, I shared many hints and tips on repairing, such as what tools and materials to use for best results, examples of my work, and how to look after your woollens. Half-way through the class we had a break, and everybody was encouraged to see the display cabinet and follow the museum trail to find original repairs.

The Pitt Rivers holds many repaired objects in its collection, from all over the world. Here shown a delicate muslin handkerchief with some rather crude darns, and a tortoise shell comb repaired with a riveted metal strip

I found the repairs very inspiring: an inventive use of locally available materials such as baste fibres, small decorative additions such as beads, or the neat way stitching cracks, the use of staples, or even items made in such a way that they could be easily repaired in the future. I won’t go into too much detail, as it’s fun to go and see it all for yourself!

The Preserving What is Valued case display and museum trail at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 29 June 2015 – 3 January 2016. More information here.

At the end of the workshop, all participants proudly show off their new skills!

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This blog post was originally published on the Education Pitt, Learning for Schools, Families, Communities and Adults blog.

Three years ago I met Anna Maltz at my first In The Loop conference. As I remember it, she was wearing some dazzling knitwear: a matching skirt and top in many colours. We clicked and stayed in touch, and soon a beautiful friendship blossomed. I have seen Anna taking her tentative first steps as a knitwear designer, and now she has released her first collection of knitting patterns: Penguin, A Knit Collection.

Every time over the last year or so that I visited Anna, she had yet another intriguing looking project on the needles; always inspired by penguins, and we discussed the ins and outs of the patterns, technical details, and how it might become a collection. So here it is!

Penguin, A Knit Collection, by Anna Maltz

As a friend, I’m proud of her for making this amazing book; and as a knitter, I think this book is full of great projects and a Q&A with Anna seemed to me the best way to finish 2015 on my blog.

Tom: hi Anna, for those blog readers who don’t know you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you fell into knitting?

Anna: I got told off recently for someone not realising that I, as one and the same person, had done all of the following – being sweaterspotter on instagram, writing a quarterly column in PomPom Magazine, starting Ricefeld Collective with friends and knitting those nude suits. My grandfather was fond of saying, “call me anything you want, except late for dinner” and I’m happy to go with that too.

As for how knitting and me happened, ‘fell’ might be the wrong term. It’s always felt quite intentional and has always been present in my life. My mother and other family and friends taught me when I was 5, knowing it was an interesting and productive thing to do that I would enjoy, while helping me develop patience and the über important skill of being able to entertain myself.

I started knitting regularly a good 20 years ago, at a time when people would marvel about how long it had been since they saw someone knitting or that they were surprised to see someone of my tender age engaged in an old lady pursuit. It’s thrilling that in our current climate, I’m just as likely to spy a fellow knitter on the tube as provide the trigger for someone’s reminiscences about bygone family members. And to anyone inclined to make the old lady comment, I now have the wherewithal to patiently explain that it’s because society went through a moment of stupidity where it seemed like equality meant ‘letting’ women to do things considered ‘man things’ while continuing to belittle ‘woman things’, rather than saying, let’s teach and encourage everyone to do it all, because it’s all useful stuff. We’ve also gone through high-speed industrial and urbanisation that makes it appear more economical to buy things rather than make them. It may be in the short term, but looking at a bigger picture, it really isn’t. That’s why I make things and do my best to inspire others to do so too.

The Pinglette Hat and Cowl set, taking linen stitch into new territory

Tom: Penguin, A Knit Collection, is your first book, and leafing through it, I get a real sense of fun. The book design has fresh colours, there are penguin photographs and watercolours, and a photo essay. As a result it draws me in and makes me feel I’m part of a community. Why is community, in the widest sense of the word, so important to you?

Anna: I know a lot of amazing people and it seems like a waste to not involve them. It’s so much more interesting to not have to do everything myself. It’s amazing to work with other people and witness first hand what they do best. I have learnt so much through the process. Even before the wool reached the friends I worked with, it has been on sheep and through the hands of shepherds, shearers, washers, carders, spinners, dyers, winders and distributers. It seems inconceivable to me that community might not be important. Knitting is intrinsically about community. As I say that I’m not sure whether I’m drawn to knitting because of its community-ness or whether I see it as a community thing, because of how important I think community is. Knitting allows my work to occur for a large part in my community, for my community and as the result of that community – I wanted my book to reflect that.

For me, knitting transitioned from being a hobby when I made it part of my work at art school. I did that because I felt frustrated by the lack of making skills being taught and what that meant for the strength, diversity and options within my creative community. Also I was troubled by the stereotype of the artist, usually a male ego maniac loner starving (or otherwise suffering) in an attic, strapped to their easel or else womanising their way round town. Knitting you can do anywhere and it’s history is not with the elite: it’s about warmth, care, sharing, skill, resourcefulness, generosity and conversation, in other words, community.

Goofing around with fish – the Adelie hat in two different colourways

Tom: another thing that makes the book so welcoming, is the informal way you introduce the patterns, the helpful hints and tips scattered throughout, and not least the words of encouragement. We have talked about this in the past when we worked on some patterns for the Ricefield Collective together. How did you manage to get the right balance between making the patterns legible, yet putting in those additional bits?

Anna: I find that there is something quite powerful in being able to reimagine the skills you have at hand, rather than believe you have to make a huge leap into taking on a whole new set. As with the rest of life, often we feel like giant changes have to happen, when actually making small adjustments and reconfiguring what we already know can provide the interest and change needed. We can do a lot with the knitting skills we already have, by combining them in unexpected ways.

Deciding what information to put in the book and what to leave out was a hard balance to strike, but I didn’t need to work all that out myself, I had a bevvy of test knitters, editors and tech editors helping me. I wanted to be generous with the tips I gave while also being aware there is now so much info readily available online. That really freed me up to feel like it didn’t all need to be in the book. I very much wanted it to be a book of patterns that would convey and inspire you to try new things or combos of things, rather than be a dictionary or beginners guide. I wanted to do something that while being accessible was inspiring in suggesting what you can do with the regular skills you’ve already picked up or know where to find the answers. A book that celebrated where we’re at and the confidence we have or should have, in our own making.

The Rockhopper shawl combines clever shaping techniques that are within every knitter’s reach, to create this visually stunning shawl

Tom: what I love about your patterns is that you often combine colourwork with texture or lace, in unexpected ways, and keep the construction easy. Penguins, however, only have a very limited palette, and seem so smooth. How did you get on with such restrictions as an inspiration?

Anna: funny, I really don’t think of penguins as smooth – they are underwater, but on land they are also fluffy, spiky, sleek, dense and shaggy. There is also so much variety between the markings on the different breeds. They do have a fairly limited palette of fairly safe colours, which I like because I think they provide a good jumping off point. Like a black and white film, they encourage you to see the colours yourself, not have them feel prescribed. Hopefully it will help people not to get too hung up on their knit needing to be exactly the same as the ones in the book. I can’t wait to see the other colour combinations that people decide to knit these patterns in. In the book I’ve suggested hashtags for people to use on social media, so we can all share and see and be inspired by each other. And of course there is always Ravelry.

As I see it, handknitting is pretty much divorced from the necessity of keeping us warm – it’s no longer part of limited options for survival. We can (in a blinkered way) more cheaply and efficiently buy what we need to keep us warm. This means handknitting is all about the entertainment. I like my patterns to acknowledge and embrace that. The journey of making should be equally as fun as wearing the result. As the fun of wearing can’t be guaranteed, you should really make sure you enjoy the making! That’s why I try to work in various elements to keep the journey of making engaging and interesting: a comfortable challenge.

Anna proves me wrong about “smooth” penguins with the Teenguin cardigan

Tom: if I’m not mistaken, the Humboldt sweater is the first pattern in which you introduce Marlisle formally. Can you explain a bit more about this knitting technique?

Anna: the Humboldt sweater did get me to cook up Marlisle. It’s one of those things that when you do it, it seems odd it isn’t widely used, but so far, I haven’t managed to track down other examples of it. I would be so curious to see them. They must be out there.

The term is a mash-up of “marl” – two noticeably different shades of yarn plied or in this case, held together – and the “isle” from Fair Isle. Regardless of geographic origin, Fair Isle 
is often used as a catch-all for stranded colourwork. (And what an honour, that such a tiny place gets to lend its name to a whole technique that has its origins spread all over the place.) Marlisle allows this circular knitted sweater to have small patches of pure white on the front, but not the back without working intarsia, yet spread over distances that would be unworkable using regular stranded colourwork, because the floats would be epic. This was inspired by the fact that the humboldt penguin has a solid back, but speckled front and I wanted to find a way to knit that in one piece.

To achieve this, a strand each of charcoal and white yarn are held double and worked in garter stitch for the majority of this bottom-up sweater. The white yarn is separated out where required and worked akin to stranded colourwork in stocking stitch to produce that pop of single colour. Because you are always carrying both colours around, you have both colours available to use individually at all times. The density of the fabric changes little, as the yarn is always double thickness thanks to the floats behind the colourwork section.

The Humboldt sweater, using Anna’s Marlisle technique. Incidentally, this picture also shows one of Anna’s other Instagram interests: matching yarns to old cars

Tom: last but not least, where can people buy the book, and find out more about what you are up to?

Anna: it’s really lovely that a growing number of yarn shops around the world are stocking my book. When you get a copy of the book, it comes with a special single use download code, so that you can keep a PDF copy on your computer or other electronic gadget – or print out certain pages, if you want to scribble on them like mad or crumple them in your project bag. For now the PDF is only available when you purchase the book, not as download only. I’m too excited about the fact that it’s a real live beautifully printed book to not want everyone to experience it that way.

If you want to keep abreast of what I’m up to, my website is a good place to start and links out to my instagram and sweaterspotter blog, which I use for outpourings that need to be covered in greater length and permanency than makes sense on instagram. You can of course also order the book, straight from me, through my website here.

Tom: thank you Anna, for a lovely chat!

And to show that Penguin, A Knit Collection, really has something for everybody, I’ll finish with a picture of Pinglewin, a cuddly toy penguin that can take its tuxedo off!

Pinglewin is the cutest penguin, and he can take off his tux!

Happy new year to all my blog readers! Now that it is 2016, I would like to reflect on what 2015 brought me, and my thoughts about the year ahead.

A knitted ‘tea hat’, made from my handspun yarn, was the start to 2015

The year just gone has been really rather busy for me, despite wanting to take it a bit slower. But then there were so many exciting places to go, amazing people to see, and creative projects to make! Here are some recurring themes in my year:

Community

Darning Master Class at the Pitt Rivers Museum

First and foremost I feel part of a textile community, and 2015 really reinforced this belonging. Attending events and venues such as Edinburgh Yarn Festival, Shetland Wool Week, Pitt Rivers Museum, and In the Loop 4, where I managed to meet up with friends old and new played a big part in this.  They all provided fertile ground for discussions about knitting, fibre, and wool. But it wasn’t all serious, it was a good way to catch up with old friends, and meet others for the first time, even if I knew their work well, or knew them through social media. It always feels good to meet like-minded people, discuss shared interests, and continue the conversations afterwards. It was nice to see friends taking on new projects and run away with them, and being able to help them out.

Creativity in Technique

Creativity in technique: my Heraldic Sweater, combining sequence knitting and patching

In 2015 I learnt a lot of new things and many of these revolve around technique. Some bigger than others, ranging from a new-to-me superstretchy cast-on (double needle cast on, see June Hemmons Hiatt’s Principles of Knitting) to a whole new way of creating complicated textured fabrics using simple techniques, called Sequence Knitting. My interest in 1980s knitwear has blossomed last year: once you can see past the boxy shapes, a heady mix of technique, colour, and texture is revealed, and nothing was deemed too complicated. A collaboration with Wolf & Gypsy Vintage allowed me to explore the repair of woven textiles.

hand-stitched patches, and a tailored buttonhole in this piece for Wolf & Gypsy Vintage

‘Slowness’

Handspun yarns from a workshop I attended at Shetland Wool Week, with apologies for the poor picture quality

Last year I’ve been thinking a lot about taking time in my creative practice. In a shift of focus from trying to keep things looking new and perfect to favouring the old and imperfect, means I’ve stopped looking at repair as a chore, but as a creative challenge in its own right. Instead of fixing something that is broken, which implies the item was finished, I now continue working on something that wasn’t complete yet.

‘Slowtober‘ has given me a lot of thought about the materials I use, whether these are secondhand or new, and as I explained in the linked post, there is lots of food for thought. One material that made me really happy, though, is Louise Spong’s South Down Yarns. The sheep that provide the wool roam the South Downs near where I live, and if you read my interview with her and Jenny Dean over on the Wovember blog, you will learn about the provenance of the yarn, and the sensitive way how it is dyed.

And this leads me neatly to the year ahead.

And for 2016…

Frozen in time: a mend on an antique darning sampler that will never be completed

In 2016 I will continue walking down the slow path I’ve turned onto, taking step after thoughtful step. Some of the plans I had made for last year didn’t come to fruition, so this year I’m going to be even more careful with the time I have for being creative. As I want to take things slow, it doesn’t bother me unduly that I didn’t start certain things, and it’s always good to have plenty of ideas. Here are some of them:

I would like to spend more time spinning; I have plenty of fleece to keep me busy, and I’d love to spin a sweater’s worth of yarn.

The Wolf & Gypsy Vintage collaboration, my interest in antique darning samplers, and my old books on clothes repair mean I would like to spend more time teaching myself more sewing skills, and I’d love to make a modern version of a ‘plain sewing’ sampler.

I also have more ideas for creative knitting, and like the Heraldic Sweater pictured above, they combine technique with elements left to chance. As always, I look forward to sharing my pursuits here on my blog, and I hope you will enjoy strolling along in the most leisurely fashion. Happy new year!