PENELOPE HEMINGWAY
International Women’s Day today, so I thought I’d write a little about a pioneer woman in my family tree, Jane Moses Wood Roodhouse. Few letters home or journals survive from women pioneers – so it is interesting to know anything about the day to day lives of those women who upped sticks, crossed oceans, then […]
Knitting and sewing have always been feminist acts. Sometimes, it has been about activism as well. As a sort of historian, I’ve written on the blog, and will continue to write, about nineteenth century women who used crafts to escape the ‘cage’ of domesticity. It always fascinated me that needle arts were seen, culturally as […]
On the day we got our (catastrophic) election results, I thought I’d hoist the red flag (well, red petticoat) and talk about living history then and now, and the random thoughts I had whilst re-modelling a piece of ‘costume’ from the 1980s. Comrades, the Red Flag is at half mast today. But the red petticoat […]
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 […]
“Victorian parlour ladies” has become a derogatory phrase when it comes to describing the history of crafts. I wrote this some time ago for Love:Crochet. Crochet is not ‘my’ craft but it was interesting to look at its history, as it was so beloved of the “Victorian parlour ladies” of the 1840s and sheds some […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 