Celebrating Scotland 2014

Like I haven't enough to do, I pledged to create a quilt for this exhibition for Loch Lomond Quilt Show for 2014, my Chinese Whispers quilt should hopefully be there now.  It is to reflect what I believe to be the best of Scotland and in the usual way I go about designing a quilt I'm kind of musing on it all the time, the thought is there at the back of my head.  These are my aimless wanderings so far. 

Not tacky but old style - grace and balace.  Colours - soft purple, green, blue, grey, gold - heather, moss/grass, sea sky (grey), granite, sun/barley.
Piecing - shetland fairisle patterns
Pictoral - Tay Bridge, Shanwell Woods, Glenisla, Bellrock,
Embroidered birds that I love - blackbird, goldfinch, blue tit, great tit, housemartin, geese, oyster catchers, rooks, herons, buzzards
Otters, red squirrels, seals, wildcats, deer, sheep (soay, North Ronaldsay), cows (Aberdeen Angus, highland), highland pony. 
Rowan, scots pine - alba

First fabrics brought from The Sewing Station in Broughty Ferry along with 2 I already had.  Goodness fabric is expensive.  Maybe this is why I paper piece, it uses every last scrap!

Catching up!

Well, I haven't stopped being busy, just posting.  So this is a catch up on the things I've been creating.

Firstly I was dead pleased with my beautiful DROPS studio waistcoat, photograph to the left.  The pattern is now called Misty Vines and was easy to knit in one way because it's done in the round, this means that the sides and the back are knitted as one piece up to the armholes then it splits and the only seams are on the shoulders.   The tricky bit was the leaf patterning, I eventually had to note everything down carefully so I knew exactly what I was doing on each round.

DROPS studio are a Norwegian company that produces beautiful Nordic style designs.  They produce their own wool but I used Jarold Heritage DK wool #132, a wool I've used before for a pair of lovely soft navy flipover gloves that I put down somewhere and failed to pick up again.  Bah!  The buttons came from Austria, from the dressmaking shop in St Johann im Tirol that I visit every time we go to Soll.

They were also the designers for what turned out to be two beautiful hats, both using the Halifax pattern.  The story is that these are fairisle stranded knitting which tends to be thicker, so between me measuring Scott's head for the hat, deciding on the Medium / Large size and me knitting it it didn't fit.  So that hat is now shared between me and Caitlin and I went back to knitting, this time the Large / XLarge.  Both were knitted in Sirdar Country Style 4ply black and Rico Design Superba Chinee #008 green, a variegated yarn which knitted to a soft mottled effect.  Luckily I like a challenge, fairisle is a bit fiddly and I probably would be a lot faster if I learned to carry my wools across my fingers right but I'm happy with my plodding pace.  These were an easy introduction to fairisle and are good for beginners to the technique as there are only two colours involved. 

Then, since I'd lost my glittens I made a new third pair in the variegated silver grey / charcoal Fingerless Gloves / Glittens coloured dk yarn James C Brett Woodlander L4, I don't know how many times I've used thispattern by Dawn Beck and I haven't tired of it yet.  The combination of fingerless gloves, actual gloves rather than the handwarmers which don't have the individual fingers, and flipover part make them ideal for me as I bike a lot and have terrible circulation, here in Scotland they are still in use in what passes for May.

And I'm knitting for my sister, well, for her new baby, it's a surprise but I don't reckon she'll ever look at this so that's fine!   I was originally creating an afghan from squares but it looked amateurish, then I found this pattern called The Fish - return! on the Knitting Arrows.  I can do about 3 fish in a night and am sewing them together as I go along.  I'm using various baby wools, although the blue is causing a problem as it's thicker than the others.  Oh well.  I'm actually using double pointed needles rather than knitting needles as they're shorter, at its longest the fish are only 23 stitches wide and that's just as you're about to cast off.  The colours of the picture are a bit off, the lighter blue is a soft aqua.

Margaret's socks

Margaret's socks

Stitch markers

Finally finished my first pair of socks, knitting for my husband's grandmother.  Margaret is a very much beloved matriarch in her 90s, 3 children, 7 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren and another on the way.  But what do you buy for someone who really doesn't need anything else?!  Margaret was once an avid knitter, our daughter has the most beautiful cardigans from birth right up until now, but it's now too much for her.  Last year it was a quilt, so this year was socks.  It combined my wish to try the unknown, knitting my first pair of socks, with the need to give her something knitted with the love we all have for her.  One of my favourite online shops, Rainbow Silks, does scrumptions Opal sock knitting kits which provide you with a set of 5 double pointed 2.5mm needles, the loveliest stitch markers I think I've ever seen, full easy to follow instructions and a ball of yarn.   The yarn is patterned so the pattern is about as simple as a pair of socks can be, a bit of double rib round the top with the rest in stocking stitch.  I ordered my kit with Opal's Schafpate IV #5483 which is spun from the wool of rare breed German Schafpate sheep and ordered a second ball for myself of Opal's Vincent Van Gogh in #5436: Gauguin's Stuhl (mit Kerze), or, in English, Paul Gaugin's Armchair With Candle.  If you look at the yarns you'll realise why it too me simply hours to choose!  Despite my worries I turned my first heel and hope she loves them as much as I do.  £7.99 sounds a lot but you only need one ball per set and there's some left over.  And they feel lovely.  Now darling child wants a pair...

Chakras and my voice

I have two friends who are dead into Reiki,  I don't understand how or why it works but it does.  When I acted as guinea pig (with no reluctance at all!) a few weeks ago they found that my throat chakra was blocked but my crown chakra was wide open.  I've had time to reflect on this and it does correspond with my current feelings of frustration.  Sahasrara, the crown chakra, is concerned with connectedness to the universe, the mystical chakra connected to higher consciousness.  Basically I'm wired in to the universe, that figures.  On the other hand Vishuddha, the throat chakra, is to do with communication, fluent thought, growth through expression.  The block here means I am connected to the universe and have the vision I want but am unable to express it, and this is I am very well aware the source of a lot of my rage, fear and frustration.  To be able to see and not speak what I can see, to always be mediated through others who can speak it better than I can.  To be a ghost in my own life.  The only remedy is to do in the face of the difficult feelings is to keep keeping on and to embrace them.  My fear is my teacher.

I will create my book.  This will be a book collecting my journey, part diary.  I currently have a desk diary which I write in daily and staple in newspaper clippings, write in knitting patterns, but IT ISN'T WHAT I WANTED TO SAY!  I have so many words, what I think about the newspaper articles, why they mean something to me.  What I am knitting, stitching, seeing, how it feels to be doing that.  I want to speak of my train of thought, of events of the day without feeling self conscious and pretentious, oh, look at me, I think I'm Samuel Pepys, like what I have to say is important enough for everyone to hear.  I'm not a king or queen, I just need to speak, to hear my own voice.

My grandmother once gave me a book she'd created.  It is very simple.  The cover is two pieces of card joined by a spine of webbing, white paper glued over the inside of the end boards.  The pages consist of cut up pieces of lined paper with two holes punched in one side.  A lace is threaded through the holes and through eyelets punched through the back cover, so these can be tied and the pages easily added to.  My original thought had been to create a side bound book the same as Jan Messent's Celtic Influences book from her beautiful and inspiring Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery, a collection of illustrations of her multimedia books exploring different types of ancient British embroidery.  She uses four eyelets punched through the front and back of the book, but my grandmother's mean's the lacing doesn't show on the front.  Mine will be bigger, A4 in landscape.  So let's go...

Shetland gloves - 'almost too good to wear'

Left hand glove showing back and right hand glove showing palm

So said my friend Jim as I took these very beautiful gloves out for the first time this year.  I was biking into Dundee from Carnoustie, a not too hilly 11 mile ride with a number of alternatives on the route, and decided to wear these and being fingerless they are perfect for biking, but it was with a sense of trepidation that I unwrapped them from their tissue paper.  They made my outfit, it's not quite cold yet so I was wearing an a-line wool skirt with a grey poncho over the top and cavalry boots.  The bike helmet spoilt the look a little but needs must!

My mum bought these for me in Shetland and they are knitted in the undyed colours of the wool which vary from white through these delicate shades of brown and beige to black, the shading used in these gloves is just exquisite, and I'm not even sure whether I love the lattice work on the palm or the nordic star on the reverse more.  They smell vaguely and not unpleasantly of sheep and are a most cherished gift.  It's funny to think that wool from these hardy sheep was once a necessary staple, and is now a luxury!

Crochet - watch this space

The one thing I haven't tried which you think I would have is crochet.  Yesterday Caitlin taught me how to.  Book now on order from library, and I suppose I'll have to get used to my 8 going on 9 year old knowing more than me.  Though thanks to the current school project I do know a lot about wolverines, sea otters and bobcats...

Hannah's Austrian outfit

Hannah the Hedgehog sat on my shelf

When I was in hospital I sat and sewed an outfit for my daughter Caitlin's toy hedgehog.  3 years earlier on our last holiday to Austria I had made Hannah from a kit I bought in Jedburgh years earlier while staying with my best friend who had just moved to the Borders.  At the time we went into St Johann (im Tirol) where there is a good haberdashery shop and Caitlin and I chose fabric and buttons to make Hannah an Austrian outfit but never got round to it.

The fabrics and buttons are very typical, silver and wood are traditional materials used in Austria for buttons, the edelweiss (meaning pretty white flower!) was an obvious choice.  It should be noted that the mountain gentian, not the edelweiss, is the national flower of Austria.  It's not all Sound of Music!  These fabrics are very typical, complementary plains and stripes with lots of flower and leaf patterning.  In Austria clothes are very expensive and the traditional dresses with apron (dirndl) are often made from bought fabric so the St Johann shop always has a tasty choice.

So finally I was marooned and the action of hand rather than machine sewing was a wonderfully meditative one, like sewing Evie's quilt, getting each stitch just so.  It's like drawing, and if you're sewing people tend to come over and ooh and aah then leave you much alone.  I strongly believe the enforced downtime was a form of message and this luxury of time was deeply healing.

To hand sew I used cotton thread and what are known as betweens.  These are needles designed for hand quilting that are shorter and narrower than regular sharp needles which have a small eye, they make a lovely small neat stitch.  The fabric was all cotton and I added an apron which was just a rectangle of fabric pleated and held in place by being stitched into a band along the top.  A traditional Austrian dress is sleeveless with a usually white blouse worn underneath with puffy sleeves and lace around the neckline.  For Hannah's dress I adapted the attached sleeves to look like this by putting elastic in the cuffs so they pulled in and could be pushed up.  You can actually see from the picture where the same fabric was used 3 years apart.  When I made Hannah I lost one of the pieces for the base of her feet and cut a piece of replacement fabric from the green fabric I was going to use to make her dress.  Then I made the dress 3 years later!  Fabric choices and directional choices were all Caitlin's, pleasure and pleasedness all mine!