Teasles seen on a bit of wasteland, near Escrick, North Yorkshire, yesterday. They were growing deep into a high ridge of brambles; too inaccessible for us to go and get a closer shot, but here are some teasles in the wild. On Saturday, we were Luddites at Armley Mills, Leeds Industrial Museum, for the launch […]
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The Tazzle Man
A few months ago, at a car-boot sale in York, I stumbled on a very battered and dirty volume of the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. I maybe paid 50p for it, if that. The reason I picked it up was, I saw it contained an article called ‘The Yorkshire Teazle-Growing Trade’, by R.A.McMillan. Teazles […]
Mithrandir Fingerless mitts Simple diamond patterned fingerless mitts, knitted in the round. I wanted to use up leftovers of 5 ply guernsey yarn, but realise not everyone has that lying around so made the same pattern, with the same sized needles, using DK as well. As you can see, the guernsey 5 […]
Got a parcel, this morning. Getting parcels is always brilliant, but this was a particularly brilliant parcel. Some print copies of ‘The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales’. These will be distributed around the shops of museums in the North of England who helped us during our period of research. I will put up details soon. […]
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A Pink Dog Lead
What was your first piece of knitting? Mine was… a pink dog lead! For many knitters, our craft becomes intricately purled together with their life stories and personalities. We all have a story in stitches; here’s mine. Like so many women (and men), I learned to knit from my mother at around the age […]
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Spinning The Wheels
Last month we were lucky enough to see the Grand Depart of the Tour de France, in Yorkshire. Hardly been off our bikes since. And the month has been more Tour de France than Tour de Fleece, round here. I forgot all about this pattern, til today when, cycling along, I remembered I’ll […]
We’ve spent some time looking at the workhorse Great Wheel of the common woman – and ‘professional’ spinner – as far as any 18thC spinner was ‘professional’… So… How about them there fancy spinning wheels? York became a centre of excellence for wheelmakers in the late 18thC and early 19thC so I didn’t have to […]
The records of The Retreat asylum, in York, present some fascinating data for textile and costume historians. Possibly the most valuable of all the tens of thousands of pages of records, are the Patients’ Disbursement Books. These recorded patients’ spending money and also monies patients earned from work, themselves. In the late eighteenth and earlier […]
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Hanging On By A Thread
This month’s ‘Family Tree Magazine’ (UK) has a piece I did about crafts in eighteenth and nineteenth century asylums. Whilst researching, I stumbled on these amazing Native American autographs, in The Retreat’s ‘Visiter’s Book’, made by visiting Seneca nation dignitaries, in 1818. Couldn’t shoehorn them into the piece, so here’s one for all of […]
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Spinning the Boss Cow Way
This week, I’ve mostly been spinning gansey yarn. Here is some of it on the clothes horse. It’s been washed and is dried unweighted. That is the extent of ‘blocking’ for knitting yarn. Why is commercial guernsey yarn always 5 ply? Because guernseys came about post Industrialisation. By the 1820s, most yarn in England was […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 