PENELOPE HEMINGWAYNot usually much of one for princesses – to the point I throw up at first sight of a Disney princess – but this is one who had her own spinning school! Got to admire a woman with her own spinning school! I’ve been researching much lowlier spinning and knitting schools of the 18thC and […]
It looks like I’ve been neglecting the knitters for the genealogists here, so I wanted to post today just for the patient knitsters. Here are the famous Hawes knitters from ‘The Costume of Yorkshire Illustrated By A Series of Forty Engravings Being Fac-Similies of Original Drawings’ By George Walker, 1814. I do so love a […]
This article was first published in ‘Family Tree Magazine’, in 2010. It tells the story of two of my ancestors – Sgt James Brumby, and William Potter. One was a law abiding marine, accompanying the Third Fleet convicts out to Australia in the 1790s and the other – one of my ‘favourite’ ancestors, although he […]
Well I suppose a shaggy dog story was inevitable, at some point, for me! This one happened to William Nattriss, farmer. He married Ann Guy who was an ancestor of both of my parents, by some bizarre quirk of fate. ‘Bizarre’ given the fact my dad was from Leeds and my mum from Ryther. […]
The latest Yarn Forward, No 33, features the mysterious and elusive Bob Jenkinson. Some time ago, Filey Museum’s lovely staff gave me permission to use this photo. But there was no real provenance for it – just amongst a batch of things donated long before there was a protocol in place to record the whos […]
More wartime knitting. And it’s been a productive week. Here’s dad in Palestine in 1947. Not entirely the sort of place you’d need fingerless gloves, or balaclavas. Although I’m sure he was very glad of them when he got back to rainy old Leeds, later this same year. He does remind me of the men […]
We’re going Balaclava crazy here. Maybe because we’re still enjoying the Yesterday channel’s Colditz fest. Maybe because it’s bally cold out there chaps, what? It all started with my attempts to knit an Edwardian balaclava, from M. Elliot Scrivenor’s 1903 ‘Knitting & Crocheting Book’. Even though what I was meant to be doing, was knitting […]
In which one of the Thompson brothers gets handy with a gun, back in 1836. One for the genealogists and historians today! Knitters beware – the balaclava is coming on apace. And will be blogged very soon! Some time back, I wrote about my American relatives in Illinois, being victims to an accomplished horse stealer, […]
Here it comes again! ‘Sunk Island’ (my Humber/Ouse kids’ gansey) has just been re-published in ‘TheKnitting Collection 2’. Available from W.H. Smiths or via Yudu. You can see it on the back cover, in rather nice company, bottom row. It’s second from right. No 5 son thought it a bit surreal as when we picked […]
How to keep this place warm whilst I work on a paeon to the late, great James Norbury? Thought you might enjoy these lads. Not a Norbury pattern – so far as I’m aware! Although he did get everywhere in the 1950s! Something marvellously camp about them. My husband spotted this first, rummaging in a […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 