Bowland KAL (knitalong)

I’m delighted to announce our first specific garment KAL and by popular demand it is of course, Bowland. The KAL will commence on Monday 8th June. You can have already started knitting your Bowland or you can commence at any time during the KAL.

As we all have a complete cardigan with steeks to knit I’m going to run the KAL for a three month period to give everyone time to get the entire project knitted, steeked and finished. I will be doing periodic blog posts about the design and tutorials to help people with the trickier aspects of the knitting process. 

To share details of your project on twitter please share with @astitchintime and use the hash tag #bowland to be sure I see it. On instagram share with @susancrawfordvintage and again use the hash tag #bowland. At the end of the KAL I will publish a special blog post featuring all the projects. 

Sharing your cardigans on Ravelry

Please feel free to share colour choices/swatches/works in progress on the main KAL thread on my Ravelry group. I will also set up a separate thread for finished Bowlands. Any questions can also be directed to the main KAL thread. If enough people are interested we can even do a live chat room discussion via the group about the project.

So what do you need to join in?

Well first of all you will need the pattern which you can get from my online shop or ravelry.

The cardigan is knitted in Excelana 4 ply wool and uses the following quantities:

2 (2, 3, 3, 4) 50g balls shade Sweet Chestnut - A [318 (318, 477, 477, 636) metres]

1 (1, 1, 2, 2) 50g balls shade Nile Green - B [159 (159, 159, 318, 318) metres]

2 (2, 2, 3, 3) 50g balls shade Alabaster - C [318 (318, 318, 477, 477) metres]

1 (1, 1, 2, 2) 50g balls shade Damson Wine - D [159 (159, 159, 318, 318) metres]

1 (1, 1, 2, 2) 50g balls shade Land Army Green - E [159 (159, 159, 318, 318) metres]

1 (1, 2, 2, 2) 50g balls shade Dark Mandarin - F 159 (159, 318, 318, 318) metres]

If you are substituting a different yarn, be sure to choose a ‘sticky’ yarn and preferably wool to aid the steeking process. I’ll explain this more fully when we get to cutting our steeks open. 

The yarn for the project is available in kit form from my shop and I will be adding and sharing some other colourways over the next few days.

I’ve already seen some wonderful swatches on ravelry and am very excited to see what ideas everyone has. I’m off to pick a new colour palette for my next Bowland!

for now

Susan xx

Lithuanian Knitting and how Knitting brings the Past into the Present

I'm very excited about the forthcoming publication from the extremely talented Donna Druchunas and equally talented co-author, June Hall.

Lithuanian Knitting Continuing Traditions promises to introduce us to Lithuanian knitting techniques and traditions as well as introduce us to the knitters, weavers, spinners and sheep of this fascinating country. To top it all there are 25 knitting patterns celebrating this rich knitting heritage. One of my favourite patterns from the book are these beautiful mittens.

Donna has kindly written a blog post for me, telling us more about this book and how you can get involved in its publication.

Donna: I'm not the kind of person who is nostalgic or dreams of the "good old days." I love living in a modern world with the internet and cars and antibiotics and so many life-improving inventions. But I do think there are some things we've lost in our frantic rush into the future in the Western world. One way I connect to the past is through knitting.

Mezgimas, the most popular vintage knitting book in Lithuanian

Boy wearing knitted outfit from the Mezgimas knitting book

Vintage knitting designs provide me a window into a life that was slower and less commercial. Where people took time to make things for themselves, and often this was less expensive than buying a similar garment in the store! On the personal side, I think about my grandmothers and their mothers sewing, knitting, crocheting and doing so many other handicrafts and with each stitch I make in my own newest knitting project, I make another stitch in my memory letting me connect with loved ones who are no longer with us.

If you're familiar with my work, you will know that in addition to having a passion for knitting, I also love history and storytelling. Most of my books are cross-genre with stories and history as well as a collection of knitting projects that are used as illustrations to the story. I'm continuing this trend with my newest book, Lithuanian Knitting: Continuing Traditions. In this book, I take my connections to the past and my family history even further back in time, to Eastern Europe, where all of my great grandparents were born.

In 2007, I made my first trip to Lithuania. I was the first one in my family to return since my ancestors came to the United States in the first years of the twentieth century. For over one hundred years, we were Americans. I'm still an American--how could I not be after living in this country for 53 years--but after visiting Lithuania, I feel a strong connection to the lands of my heritage. In Lithuanian Knitting: Continuing Traditions, I explore this heritage through knitting, along with memoir, travel essays, and lots of information about what's going on in the knitting world of Lithuania today. 

June and Donna with Marija in Lithuania

My co-author, June Hall, is also partly of Lithuanian descent. She brings an English perspective to the book. I could not have created this book without her collaboration. June's experience raising sheep, being a member the Wool Clip fiber-artist co-operative in Cumbria, organizing WoolFest, and serving on the board of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust in the UK make her uniquely qualified to offer us a glimpse into the world of Lithuanian sheep breeds and their wool. June is also a fiber-artist in her own right, and has had her articles and designs published in magazines in the UK and the USA.

June with a gift of Lithuanian wool

I hope you'll join us on our adventure and check out our Pubslush campaign to raise the funds to print this book in Lithuania and give back to the local economy. We are 95% funded with about a week to go, so don't miss your chance to be one of the first people to get this book and receive some really special bonus rewards, too!

Thank you Donna, and I'm sure you'll all agree that this is going to be one heck of a book!

for now,

Susan xx

New Pattern Release - Heywood Hill

My wonderfully talented collaborater on Knits for a Cold Climate, Tess Young, has created a stunning shawl pattern for the collection featuring a bold art deco colourway and striking stripes. I'll pass you over to Tess for the rest of this blog post to tell us about the inspiration behind Heywood Hill:

The Heywood Hill shawl takes its inspiration from the use of bold colour blocks and simpler cuts and shapes characteristic of 1920s and 1930s fashions. Influenced by modernist avant-garde artistic movements, such design features were a stark contrast with the Edwardian pastels and more complex, structured garments.  It is perhaps this degree of contrast that slowed the move from innovative turn of the century haute couture, to wider adoption. Although the relative speed of change in women’s social position and roles precipitated by World War I, also appears to have shifted expectations and accelerated change in women’s wardrobes.

Simple to knit this shawl is also incredibly simple to wear as the ‘V’ shape ensures it sits flat at the neck and drapes nicely over the shoulders to the front and at the back. The beaded tassels give it an added elegance and restrained glamour. 

The two colourways used for the samples, the bolder colours for the large and the subtler colours for the medium, show the versatility of both the design and the Fenella yarn palette. 

The Heywood Hill shawl is named after the Mayfair bookshop where Nancy Mitford worked in the later war years of the 1940s.

This coincided with her perhaps most productive literary period immediately prior to the publication of The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949) and perhaps signaled a timely change in her literary fortunes. 

Nancy’s marriage to Peter Rodd in 1933 came to be characterised by his numerous affairs. Nancy herself suffered miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in a hysterectomy. In addition her experiences as a relief worker during the Spanish Civil War had cemented her anti-fascism and the outbreak of World War II had divided the Mitford family and seen Rodd commissioned and overseas.

Thus Heywood Hill appears to have been not only a place of convalescence but also of literary escape.

Her sister Debo recalled this period:

It was the best fun in the world. She earned £3 a week and lived in Maida Vale and often walked home to save the bus fare.” 

Family connections with Heywood Hill developed at this time continue as a result of Nancy introducing Debo’s then new husband Andrew Cavendish to the bookshop. By the 1990s he was a major shareholder in the shop and instituted the Heywood Hill Literacy prize which continued until his death in 1990 when its last recipient was Beryl Bainbridge. The Heywood Hill prize was awarded to a writer, publisher or anyone else deserving of recognition for their contribution to 'the enjoyment of books'. The shop is now completely in the family since Debo and Andrew's son Peregrine 'Stoker' Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire became the sole owner of Heywood Hill. 

I can just imagine Nancy working at the shop with a Heywood Hill shawl draped over her shoulders and then wrapped around her snuggly as she walked home. 

Pattern details:

You can buy the PDF  pattern from the Susan Crawford shop here 

OR

You can buy the pattern from Ravelry here. (You do not need to be a member of Ravelry to make a purchase from the site.)

The PDF pattern costs £4

You can also purchase or take a look at all the possible colour combinations of Fenella in the shop here and a kit will also be available shortly from the Susan Crawford Vintage shop.

Materials Required:

Susan Crawford Fenella 2ply wool, 100% British wool
(124 metres per 25g skein)

Large

5 skeins of shade Myristica

1 skein of shade Atomic Red

1 skein of shade Phthalo

1 skein of shade Limoncello

Medium

3 skeins of shade Roman Plaster

1 skein of shade Delicot

1 skein of shade Columbine

1 skein of shade Constance Spry

Needles and Notions Needed

1 pair of 2.75mm (US 2) needles 

1 pair of 4mm (US 6) needles 

1 removable Stitch marker

Beads (optional ) Gutermann Rocailles 9/0 -

Large: 3g each of colours 1265 (yellow) 8360 (light green), 4295 (light red)

Medium: 9g of clear beads (col.1016)

I hope you enjoy Heywood Hill

Tess

Announcing a Barn Sale!

Over the years I have managed to collect a huge amount of 'stuff' and after vainly attempting to upload just some of this onto Ebay,  I decided a much less time consuming and much more fun way of finding it all new homes would be by opening our barn doors to the public for the first time and having a Barn Sale.

There will be mountains of yarn for sale, fabric, patterns, books, vintage bric-a-brac, a little furniture, lots of ex-display garments, clothes - vintage & otherwise, handbags, jewellery, haberdashery, handbags, shoes, CAKES, plants, farm produce, free range eggs, and possibly more.

There will be refreshments for sale - homemade cakes, snacks and soup, hot and cold drinks and mini tours around the farm to meet the sheep, chickens and ducks throughout the two days.

If you would like to come along here are the details:

The Barn Sale will be taking place at Monkley Ghyll on Saturday 6th June and Sunday 7th June from 11am - 4pm each day.

You can find full details and useful information on my website here. I have also gathered some information about places to stay as some people have already expressed a wish to make a weekend of it. If you register your interest via the email on the website and let me know that you need accommodation information I can forward that to you too.

It will be a wonderful opportunity to welcome every one to the farm for the first time before we formally open for workshops etc later in the year. I'm really excited about it and I hope to see some of you here.

for now,
Susan xx