PENELOPE HEMINGWAY
As promised long ago, here are some gansey alphabet charts, for anyone wishing to knit initials. These are 15 rounds deep. I prefer a serif. Some motifs are solid, some in moss (seed) stitch. These are solid. Spacing here is arbitrary – decide what looks good to you, when planning your gansey. Clickable PDFs proved […]
Last week, my new gansey pattern came out, in ‘The Knitter’. It’s published in the supplement. I’ll put up some gansey alphabet PDFs for initials, for anyone thinking of knitting it – or any other gansey – in a day or two. But for now, here’s some info about the gansey itself. It was knitted […]
Yet again, these blog posts are like buses. Nothing for ages then two come at once. Yesterday, someone contacted me to ask where they could find the pattern for Bob Jenkinson’s gansey. I realised I never got round to figuring it out – other things intervened. So, whilst eating my tea, I did the […]
What do we want from a gansey cast on? We need it to be: Strong – maybe with double or triple yarn Elastic Attractive Historically, the simple Backwards Loop Cast On seemed to be popular. It was certainly a cast on described in some of the earlier knitting manuals of the 1830s-40s. […]
What’s not to love about a man with a log pile? To be honest, after several months sawing logs almost daily I’m definitely more into the logs than the (admittedly lovely) model. As someone else did all the hard work sawing them… I digress. Snaky cables were not really a Big Thing along the rivers […]
In the next week or so, I am putting up images of all the patterns in ‘River Ganseys’ – if you’re knitting one, or planning on knitting one, the Comments here will be a handy place for questions – and the larger images will be helpful to intrepid knitters, I hope. If you only […]
Finally, here it is. River Ganseys – Striking t’loop, Swaving, and other Yorkshire Curiosities Revived From the Archives is out on Ravelry. Your actual hard copies will hopefully be ready for Rhinebeck (The New York State Sheep & Wool Festival). The rather wonderful Schoolhouse Press will be stocking the book. That makes me happy on […]
Knitting the Old Dales Way. How To Use a Knitting Stick or Shetland Knitting Belt: workshop A rare chance to learn this brilliant, simple but obscure method of knitting. Let’s keep this old Yorkshire craft alive! For its opening weekend, the Yorkshire Museum of Farming is holding a Country Crafts event, and I’ll be doing […]
Knitting history is a special corner of textile history, for me, as it tells the story of ordinary people. Knitting was – and remains – something seen as disposable; comparatively cheap to make, so gets used up, worn out and discarded. Pieces of knitting turn up in the archaeology, and finding out about and reconstructing […]
“If the youngest daughter in a family is married first, the eldest had better unravel one of her garters; knitting the same, mixed with other wool, into something a man can wear. This she must present to the one she has special regard for, and it will most likely incline his heart to her.” [Yorkshire […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 