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History

“The Visiters’ Book”

In June’s ‘Family Tree Magazine’  I will have a  piece about crafts done by ancestors in asylums. Here on the blog, I like to share those fascinating bits and pieces from my research that I can’t shoehorn into my writing. Amongst the documents I used for the research, was the ‘Visiters’ Book’ [sic] of the […]

Categories
antique textiles Dales dales knitting

The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales

It still doesn’t feel real, to me, but… The new edition of ‘The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales’ is here! Our new edition reproduces the text of the 1951 First Edition, but we have added a Dales glove pattern and an Introduction, which gives biographical information about the previously mysterious writers/illustrator, Misses Hartley and Ingilby. […]

Categories
History

Found In A Ghastly Shape

I took up the challenge to trace the previously elusive Dr Richard Lloyd Pinching; a rather sinister presence who figures in the embroidered rants of Lorina Bulwer. Pinching was a surgeon from Northern Ireland who practiced in Walthamstow for over twenty years, surviving scandal (it came to light that he had sent a series of […]

Categories
History

Lorina Bulwer, “A Properly Shaped Female”

“I MISS LORINA BULWER WAS EXAMINED BY DR PINCHING OF WALTHAMSTOW ESSEX AND FOUND TO BE A PROPERLY SHAPED FEMALE ”  [From Transcript of one of Lorina Bulwer’s embroidered letters]. Last year, someone asked me to go look at a fascinating textile  – some kind of embroidered sampler – they had in storage at the […]

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antique textiles Halifax Hand spinning History West Riding

Pop Goes The Weasel

  ‘Yarnmaker’ No 18 is just out, and with it a piece I did about Great Wheels .   On a Ravelry thread in the Yarnmaker Group this week, someone referred to this picture, (above) and asked what the elderly lady was doing. The answer is… that is a click  or clock reel. AKA “weasel”. […]

Categories
Dales swaving

Knitting the Old Dales Way – Talks & Workshops

This weekend, I’ll be mostly going on about the history of Dales knitting. So just a reminder to anyone who fancies a day out at the Yorkshire Museum of Farming. It’s Country Crafts weekend, so there will be various living history folk, and craftspeople in costume, around the museum. I will be there in full […]