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 […]
Category: ganseys
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 […]
Back up to Whitby this weekend. I wanted to take one last look at the stockings, hat and mittens on display at The Captain Cook Memorial Museum, before they return to Gdansk, at the end of this month. I wanted to take a close look (through the display case!) and take some notes, […]
CREDIT: All photos (except the blurry one) taken by Nate Hunt. Last weekend saw the now annual event, Propagansey. Gansey collector and expert Deb Gillanders fills the old St Stephen’s church in Robin Hood’s Bay with ganseys for a weekend, in September. Some are from her collection and many are loaned by local people. One […]
Now look what I’ve gone and done…. http://www.family-tree.co.uk/ In this month’s ‘Family Tree’ magazine (October issue), an article about tracing your knitting ancestors. If you have any ancestry in a fishing port, or along the rivers and canals and inland waterways of the UK… this may be for you! I took a stroll (metaphorically) through […]
Few scholars, costume historians or keen students of knitting history seriously believe for a minute that English ganseys (or any knitted jumpers for seamen) existed a long way prior to the back end of the 18thC. But the myth does get promulgated, occasionally on places like ‘Ravelry’, and neophytes may get taken in. And I like to think of myself as a kind of iconoclast…
Wondering about the discussion elsewhere re. fancy sheaths, I had a quick trawl of the 19thC Newspapers archive from the British Library. And I found this, for Darlington (Teeside, bit further North of Yorkshire) about an agricultural show and its prize categories, several times in the 1870s: Middleton-in-Teesdale Floral, Horticultural, and Industrial Society held its […]
Filey, yesterday. This time we parked up at the country reserve and walked down, which meant crossing the Ravine on the lovely Church Bridge. Nice because this brings you in to the town via the old fishermen’s cottages: From there, it’s a short walk to the Museum. Passing this: I did spare a thought for […]
The myths around traditional knitting are worth exploring. One new one seems to be the idea that Tudor, even medieval, sailors or fishermen wore a forerunner of the gansey. I’m going to explode a few myths in a forthcoming book, so should keep my powder dry – but here’s a few thoughts and woolgatherings that […]
Here’s the pattern for Sunk Island, the gansey from Yarn Forward, Issue 18. Enjoy! Sunk Island Gansey How To (PDFs for charts, below). Pattern as written is for gansey on the right – only difference between v.1 and v.2 being the less cluttered sleeves on v.2. You could, of course, knit the sleeves plainer or […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 