“…These men have a decided provincial character; and their galloways also, which are always overloaded, have a manner of going peculiarly their own…”
“A Manner of Going Peculiarly of their Own”

“…These men have a decided provincial character; and their galloways also, which are always overloaded, have a manner of going peculiarly their own…”
“…I researched and wrote in the spirit of honouring lives that historians have often ignored and also in an attempt to understand something, however infinitessimal, about what ordinary people wore, or how their lives related to textiles; what their textiles could say about them and society…”
Here are the upper and lower case alphabet charts, I use for knitting Dales gloves. They could be used for anything where you need letters that are only a few rounds/rows deep. These are trickier to figure out than alphabet charts where you have a few more rounds for manoeuvre. Thought I’d share them here, […]
That title’s with apologies to Stevie Smith. Today, an interruption in putting up photos of the gansey patterns in ‘River Ganseys’. Thought I’d put everything I have about swaving here, in one post. This is ongoing research and by no means complete so not the last word on the subject- just the first few […]
First published in ‘Knit Edge’, No 3, May, 2013. Putting a name and finding the life story to one of one Dent knitter. Margaret Thwaite: A Knitter of Dent in the York Retreat Asylum “…remains without material change. July 28 .. She still knits away with a piece of string and pieces of wool and […]
Or: or “How The New Edition of This Book Beloved By Knitters, Came About….” Today I thought I’d give an insight into how we put together the new edition of “The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales”, that classic, much-loved book on the history of Yorkshire knitting… Ella Pontefract and Marie Hartley produced six books together, […]
Got a parcel, this morning. Getting parcels is always brilliant, but this was a particularly brilliant parcel. Some print copies of ‘The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales’. These will be distributed around the shops of museums in the North of England who helped us during our period of research. I will put up details soon. […]
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. […]
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 […]