Rambles Around Knitting Today and Yesterday

Rambles Around Knitting Today and Yesterday

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Joined-up-knitting has a Folksy shop

Baby merino jumper 1-2 years


There's no stemming the flow of little hand knitted garments and baby shawls coming off  my sister Katharine's knitting needles. So now there is a little selection offered for sale in the Joined-up-knitting shop on Folksy. If you are looking for a little present and haven't got time to knit one up yourself you might find one here....

Knitting bag with interlocking knitting pins


I'm adding them as fast as I can but really busy just now getting out knitting bags in time for Christmas too.
cheers
Woolly Facade

Saturday 13 November 2010

Scandinavian Rhapsody

As a first step in the attempt to recreate some of the well loved family woollies of yesteryear I thought I would have a go at a “brick pattern” jumper which was one of Grandma’s favourites. It was a good way of making odd ends of different coloured wools go a bit further.

I’m wearing one of these in the Down by the Sea photo (front row middle). I think it was probably getting a bit on the tight side by the time the photo was taken. But in those days everything had to last a bit longer.

My sister assures me Grandma used slip stitches rather than Fair Isle knitting. By way of a little research I delved into my recently acquired copy of Odhams Encyclopaedia of Knitting by James Norbury and Margaret Agutter (1956) and came across a very short entry for Bohus knitting which makes particular use of slip stitches to build up multi-colour effects.

It looked quite obscure, but I have since learnt Bohus was very significant. having been developed in a small area near Gothenberg, Sweden during the depression in the 1930’s to help provide an income for families when the local quarries they relied upon closed for business.

Led by Emma Jacobsson the work of the Bohus Stickning produced highly prized, couture quality garments in the finest yarns from the late nineteen thirties up until 1969. (This is going to be another great area to explore...more later)

As a warming up exercise I had a go at an example given by Norbury. I was only using miss-matched scraps of  yarn  - so not really representative of the original, very beautiful thing. But…Voila! my first attempt at “Scandinavian Rhapsody”

Monday 1 November 2010

Down by the sea

Constance and Edmund Kimberley
and grandchildren c.1955-6
me between Grandma and Pam Pam
By the time of my first memories of Grandma and Pam Pam they were already "retired" and spent part of the year looking after their holiday seaside bungalows amongst the grassy fields and dykes at Ingoldmells in Lincolnshire. This was not long after the Great Flood of 1953 which caused havoc all along the east Coast and took the lives of 300 people. (Found some great images and accounts of this event in the Skegness Standard 50th anniversary supplements at http://www2.skegnesstoday.co.uk/sites/floods/floods1.html)

Billy Butlin had already built his holiday camp before the flood, up by the Roman Bank but it was still quite a sedate affair. Not all the roads had too much tarmac then and cockerels called the time of day at the farm next door - before Tommy Bingo arrived.

Probably only a quarter of an acre but with two bungalows, a chalet and caravan let out to holiday makers and another chalet for family accommodation  and the “Waney” shed, it was another world, well heaven actually - when you were five years old.

Electricity ran to the bungalows but all else relied on bottled gas. The soft light from the gas mantles was not dissimilar to the low energy lamps of to-day but they were so much prettier. As for plumbing; the out door Elsan toilets may have had some resemblance to oil drums but were emptied on cue every week into a tanker wagon. Pam Pam wasn’t a smoker but he would carefully leave 2 Woodbine on the lid to reward the men from the council for their trouble. There was a water pump out in the garden but I don’t think it worked, I only remember using water from a tap. Flush toilets did come later.

You could still smell the sea air in those days, it would hit you as you got within a few miles of the coast. The excitement mounted in the back of the car, the only little misgiving was the knowledge that the scary steep downhill turn off the Roman Bank, with the dykes on either side, on to the unmade roads of “Beach Estate” had still to be negotiated. The dykes were big and full of reeds, one came right up to the side of the bungalows, they always fascinated me.

Inside, I remember being taken up too by the imitation stained glass made from some sort of translucent paper that decorated the back door of “Seaholme”. I can still sense the intense aroma of the sunroom at the front. It wasn’t damp but it was “woody”. It had earlier been a verandah. There were two levels but it had been built in and you could take your pick of large Victorian armchairs or just jump up and down on the steps or swing from the wooden pillars.

Much of the furniture was Victorian; the marble topped wash stands in the bedrooms were resplendent with fine pottery toilet sets comprising wash bowl, pitcher and soap dish with a matching “gazunder” parked within.

All this was complemented by two very important features. The hand pegged rugs which decorated every room and took the chill off the lino covered floors and the amazing knitted bed covers which bedecked every single and double bed.
All of these were worked by Grandma and Pam Pam and there were dozens of them.

The bedspreads were knitted by hand on fine needles in a silky yarn. Knitted in large sections, usually in two or three colours, the designs were often based on squares and joined. I have never seen others like them and unfortunately none appear to have survived. It would be good to try and replicate one while there are still some who can remember them well.

While Grandma knitted Pam Pam pegged the rugs from thrumbs. This involved not just pegging but coming up with an attractive workable design from a jumble of loom end threads which had to be cut. This was no “Readicut” man, a sign writer by trade, he was a craftsman. Today these items would command a high price if offered in an arts and crafts market. Then, they were simply a joy and a way of life.

Woolly Facade