… “I was too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.” Stevie Smith, Not Waving But Drowning So, what is “swaving”? In the words of the oft-quoted passage from William Howitt’s ‘The Rural Life of England’ (1838): “…As soon as it becomes dark, and the usual business of the day is over, […]
Category: History
“A tribute to the merit of Captain Raynes, of the Stirlingshire militia, was paid on the 4th … as an acknowledgement of … his indefatigable and unabated zeal in bringing to justice a number of those infatuated creatures calling themselves Luddites.” [Caledonian Mercury, Monday, November 30th, 1812]. In 1812, Yorkshire became the fulcrum of a […]
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“Authoress and Designer”
I’m wondering if I have found the UK’s first ever fabulous person who, self-described as “Designer” on a Census? It’s fun to go hunting well known 19thC knitting manual writers, on Censuses. Whether it is 1841 or 1881, you often find them as “Berlin Wool Dealer”, or next to an occupation described as “Berlin Wool […]
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Remembering
This is my Great Uncle, William Boothman, Gunner X8 Battery of Trench Mortars in the Royal Field Artillery. His unit were nicknamed ‘the Suicide Squad’. Men joining it, reckoned their remaining lifespan in days or weeks. He survived several years… William ran away to join up and was fetched back home, at least once. This […]
Today I thought I’d journey back in time to the 19thC wool shop/yarn store. Why don’t you come along for the ride? When I was a kid in the 1960s, there was an old fashioned draper’s in our village. I used to be enthralled by that shop; all the shiny wooden shelves, and unchanged Victorian […]
In this month’s ‘Yarnwise’, I took a look at the knitting sticks in the collection of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, here in Yorkshire. And came to some interesting conclusions about the knitting sticks, and the Brontes’ experience of knitting. One conclusion I came to was that at least half of the […]
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Miss Ryder Rides Again!
This pattern, based on instructions by Yorkshire knitting writer, Miss Elizabeth Ryder, was originally a downloadable elsewhere on the net. Figured it out last year, and thought I’d put it up for anyone interested in arcane stuff like how to knit an 1860s’ stripey sock. Stockings with vertical stripes were fashionable around the 1790s. Into […]
Two weeks ago today, we were privileged to spend the weekend doing living history at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, where William Wordsworth and his family lived from 1799-1808. Wordsworth was a revolutionary; writing about ordinary people going about their everyday lives; finding poetry in the mundane and his environment. He wrote about beggars, leech-gatherers, the disenfranchised, […]
22nd Dec. 1801 Tuesday 22nd Still Thaw. I washed my head. Wm [William] & I went to Rydale for letters, the road was covered with dirty snow, rough & rather slippery… As we came up the White Moss we met an old man, who I saw was a beggar by his two bags hanging over […]
In June, we are travelling back in time to 1800. At Dove Cottage, in Grasmere, during Woolfest weekend, a small group of us are descending on Mr. Wordsworth’s neighbour, Mr. Fisher, and we hope to spin on the Great Wheel and knit, 1800-style. There may be some undesirable beggars a-calling, as Miss Dorothy Wordsworth describes […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 