The sun came out, so yesterday I washed about 1lb of fleece for the ‘Spinning For Beginners’ Workshop, here at the Farming Museum this weekend! In the morning, we have our first ‘Like Fair Isle… But Yorkshire!’ workshop, which is going to look at Yorkshire two colour knitting. In the afternoon, Beginner spindlers will be […]
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The Brontes’ Knitting Sticks
Today (April 21st) is the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Bronte’s birth. To celebrate, here is the text of a piece I wrote for a magazine, in 2012. This piece concentrates on the knitting sticks in the Bronte Parsonage Museum’s collection. As well as sticks, there are extant Bronte textiles, including knitted items. Recently, […]
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Hemingway Mystery
One day, I’m going to have to get the death certificates. But check out the death dates on this gravestone. These are my great grandma, Annie Hemingway’s, siblings. The children were buried at Hensall, in the old West Riding. Their parents were William Hemingway and Charlotte nee Lambert. The Hemingways were Master Wheelwrights for generations, […]
If you’re a descendant of the Lavelles/Lavells, of Ballyknock, County Mayo, do get in touch. I have something of your’s! Occasionally, at the local car boot sale, I find some lost genealogical treasure and often think it would be cool to re-unite it with its rightful owners. My parents’ generation threw away old certificates “because […]
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Shepherd’s Hut & Other News
This year, I’m Writer/Crafter in Residence at the Yorkshire Museum of Farming. So I’m starting a separate blog – we’ll have old farmhouse recipes from my farming families’ handwritten books (I have a couple of these); fascinating delvings into the archives of the Museum, and the occasional wander round the Museum’s exhibits, reserve collection, the […]
Like many people who lost a parent in childhood, I don’t have much flotsam and jetsam from childhood. I did stumble on this school book, though. I was 8 and as you can see, utterly lacked literary promise. I also lacked artistic ability. But since when did we let minor details like that get […]
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Bob Jenkinson’s Gansey
Yet again, these blog posts are like buses. Nothing for ages then two come at once. Yesterday, someone contacted me to ask where they could find the pattern for Bob Jenkinson’s gansey. I realised I never got round to figuring it out – other things intervened. So, whilst eating my tea, I did the […]
What do we want from a gansey cast on? We need it to be: Strong – maybe with double or triple yarn Elastic Attractive Historically, the simple Backwards Loop Cast On seemed to be popular. It was certainly a cast on described in some of the earlier knitting manuals of the 1830s-40s. […]
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Parthenope
Today I’ll continue putting up some pictures of the patterns from ‘River Ganseys’. And also hopefully give an insight into how a pattern evolves. This design was eventually published as “Parthenope”. I wanted to name the ganseys in the book after actual river vessels. Here’s one I called “Parthenope” (p.175ff). But in an earlier incarnation, […]
That title’s with apologies to Stevie Smith. Today, an interruption in putting up photos of the gansey patterns in ‘River Ganseys’. Thought I’d put everything I have about swaving here, in one post. This is ongoing research and by no means complete so not the last word on the subject- just the first few […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 