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, […]
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Trunk No. 8
My blog posts are like buses – nothing for ages then two come at once. This is another pic found on my sons’ machine. Dad, outside his house, in Leeds, would be early 1930s. This house was technically a ‘back to back’ so it had two addresses. This side of the house I never […]
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…
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Girls Holding Their Knitting
I’m ridiculously excited as the first in my ‘Knitting Genealogist’ series is out in the current issue of ‘Yarn Forward’ magazine. (Yarn Forward 29). In it, we featured this undated photo by Lewis Harding which, using my basic sleuthing powers, I was able to date to the early 1870s. I won’t say much about it […]
I learned one thing this week. Never take your old family photos for granted! I’ve always had this photo in a box, somewhere. It is my grandma, Lillie and my dad and we always called it ‘The Grumpy dad Photo’. I’d assumed it was taken by my grandad, Billie, and thought nothing more about it […]
So many new spinners are only used to spinning bought commercial dyed tops, that they feel daunted when the time comes to actually become a ‘real’ spinner, and take it from raw fibre to finished product. This is the basic guide to wool-sorting I wish I’d had in 1983!
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 […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 