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 […]
Category: guernseys
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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…
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 