My Newfoundland crafts safari

I promised to tell you more about my Newfoundland adventure, when I'm on holiday I love hunting out the local handicrafts and especially the local yarn/knitting shops as skeins of the local yarn make perfect holiday souvenirs.

I knew that there is a tradition of knitting in Newfoundland, although yarn is no longer produced locally the traditional patterns for warm mittens, hats and socks is kept alive. 

Of course selling the knitted accessories to tourists is what keeps the tradition alive, I took these photos in a shop attached to an extremely popular restaurant in Rocky Harbour, while waiting for an hour for a table!

I somehow failed to take a photo of the 'thrummed knitting', here's a link to give you an idea of what it's like. Roving (carded but not spun fleece) is looped along the reverse side of the work making a thick fleece lining. It is used to make EXTREMELY WARM gloves and slippers! I put my hand inside some thrummed mittens and almost overheated (we were there in a heat wave! so I wasn't tempted to buy them). I regret this now, but I'm sure I could find the materials needed and have a go at making some one day.

We did a good bit of research before travelling to Newfoundland but somehow I missed appreciating how significant 'Grenfell' is to the town of St Anthony at the far end of the Great Northern Peninsula. By luck we'd booked a room at the Grenfell Heritage Hotel and Suites which is right next door to the Grenfell Interpretation Centre, so we had a chance to find out all about Dr Wilfred Grenfell.

Briefly, Dr Grenfell was a newly qualified doctor from England who travelled to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1892. He was shocked by the poverty and lack of medical services - there were no hospitals or doctors; so he made it his life's mission to bring medical services to NW Canada and his legacy still serves these remote areas today. You can read more here.

Dr Grenfell and his wife Anne and their children lived in a lovely 'arts & crafts' style house on the hillside behind the present day hospital in St Anthony. I could have stayed there for hours looking through the original photo albums and letters in this beautiful gallery/verandah running the length of the house.

Dr Grenfell needed to raise money for his plans to set up hospitals and fund nurses and doctors to cover the remote settlements. One of his main fund-raising ideas was to teach people to make things using traditional handicrafts and sell these to raise money and get lots of publicity. The crafts had to be high quality so patterns were designs for the makers to follow - although they were encouraged to interpret the designs and make them unique. Embroidery, beadwork, carvings, leatherwork and most famously rag-rags, made the Grenfell Mission famous.

High quality materials were in short supply, so Dr Grenfell asked women in England and the USA to send their laddered silk stockings to Newfoundland to be dyed and cut into strips and made into intricate rag-rug pictures. Dr Grenfell became an international celebrity - his daring exploits made him an action hero - and tirelessly worked to make the lives of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador better and healthier. 

I particularly loved this map design and it reminds me of our Newfoundland adventure.

Also at the northern end of the Great Northern Peninsula, not far from St Anthony, is L'Anse aux Meadows where 1000 years ago, Viking adventurers built a staging post where they could repair there ships and gear.

In the museum there is a spindle whorl and a broken bone Nalbinding (a fore-runner of knitting) needle which is evidence that the Vikings were doing some kind of wool-craft. I read somewhere that this is evidence that women had been living in the settlement, as Viking men would never had spun wool or made socks. I'm not convinced, I suspect that a Viking far from home could have spun some thread and mended his socks is the need arose.

Intrigued by this and by the reproduction woolen caps the 'Vikings' at the msueum were wearing, I wanted to know more about Nalbinding. I found a small kit in the museum shop, consisting of a birch wood needle, some yarn and a page of instructions. This turned out to be 'Coptic stitch' which didn't make a fabric like the Viking caps, more research was needed!

Back home, and determined not to be beaten! I've poured over YouTube videos of Olso Stitch and eventually managed to get the hang of it. A breakthrough was using Twool instead of wool, the stiffer yarn makes learning much easier and I managed to make a little storage bag.

Practice makes perfect ... maybe not perfect but an improvement at least ... and I've Nalbinded a bag, the button was bought in Alaska 2 years ago and is made of Moose horn ... which I though apt.

More souvenirs! Patterns to make traditions Newfoundland mittens and a book about Rug Hooking in Altantic NW Canada. I really want to have a go at rag rug making, or even just make a small hooked picture panel.

Our adventure began and ended in the Newfoundland capital and only large town, St Johns. But being weekends and with most shops shut on Sundays, shopping opportunities were limited! However I managed to find a lovely yarn shop, Cast On Cast Off, that I'd checked out online before the holiday – it was a good walk out of town! I bought the grey and red skeins of Briggs & Little Heritage so I could knit some Newfoundland mitts. And then treated myself to the gorgeous hand dyed sock yarn in blue/green/ochre to remind me of the island, it's by Fleece Artist from Nova Scotia. Also I couldn't resist a small skein by Rhichard Devrieve - just because it would have been wrong not to! and the colours reminded me of the painted houses of Newfoundland.
The terracotta and the black skeins are also Briggs & Little yarn bought as souvenirs from the Grenfell Handicraft Centre in St Anthony.

I have yet to decide what I'm going to make with all the lovely yarn; but when I do use it, it will bring back some wonderful memories.

Celia
xx

Random thoughts while traveling to Alaska - #2 Musk Oxen are surprisingly small!

I had heard of Musk Oxen but hadn't given then much thought before encountering them at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Centre, which we visited on our way from the port of Whittier to Anchorage on our Alaskan adventure.

I was shocked to see that Musk Oxen are surprisingly small!

I imagined they were cow-size, but they are short, in fact they are closely related to goats.

This is a bedraggled Musk Ox . . . it was raining (in fact it rained rather a lot!) when a Musk Ox is dry it is fluffy, like this stuffed one I met in Anchorage Museum. You need to be prepared to meet a lot of stuffed animals if you go to Alaska.

Baby Musk Oxen are incredibly fluffy and very cute! 

Musk Oxen look as if they have walked out of a Neolithic cave drawing – square bodies, short legs and comedy horns! In fact the horns are very useful . . . if the herd is threatened the adult Musk Oxen stand in a circle facing outwards with the calves in the centre, creating an armoured wall with their horns. 

I'd heard a rumour that yarn made from Musk Oxen fibre is very special  . . . in fact it is the warmest fibre in the world!

In summer Musk Oxen shed the fluffy under hair, it hangs in dreadlocks and must feel very itchy and uncomfortable.

The Musk Oxen at the Wildlife Centre have convenient car-wash brushes to scratch themselves on . . . and leave the precious fibre so that it can be processed into yarn.

Earlier in our holiday we'd visited Skagway where I'd found a shop selling Qiviut, the name for Musk Ox fibre. I was invited to hold out my hands and some un-spun Qiviut fibre was placed on the back of my hands - not on my palms, as my hand oils would contaminate it. It was like having a little heated cloud over my skin, my body heat was being reflected back by the fine dense hairs.

The Qiviut yarn was available in some beautiful subtle colours, the brown fibre isn't bleached before dying so the shades all have an earthy quality. And Qiviut isn't cheap, at nearly $100 an ounce it is a luxury yarn . . . I was tempted but decided not to buy. 

At the end of our holiday in Alaska we were briefly back in Anchorage and I had time to visit this little shop . . .

Oomingmak is the HQ of the Musk Ox Producers Cooperative and it sells hand knits made by cooperative members scattered in isolated communities mainly in the far west of Alaska.

Like other traditional knitting such as Aran and Guernsey, each community has its own designs. Traditional Qiviut scarves are knitted in natural undyed yarn, the lace is blocked on these printed cardboard grids.

I wish I'd had more time (and also that I wasn't coughing so much from the cold I'd gone down with!) I would have loved to chat with the Oomingmak knitting ladies who were sorting through piles of beautiful lace scarves around the table in the little wooden cabin.

However, I did buy some souvenirs . . .
some unspun Qiviut fibre, a 1 gram skein of yarn and a little purse which I'll use for keeping my stitch markers.

So, like me, you probably now know far more about Musk Oxen than you didn't know you didn't know before!

If you would like to know even more, here's a cute film from the Oomingmak web site.

Celia
xx

Allegorical knitting

Knitting has become my favoured way to unwind during long dark winter evenings;  slowly transforming beautiful yarns, from special places and people, into something wearable. 

I've just completed this shawl, the yarn was a swap with one of the other designer-makers at Made & Found last autumn – Debbie Orr, aka the Skein Queen, who dyes the most beautiful yarns in colours that have amazing depth and complexity. I searched Ravelry for a pattern, a shawl that would show off the silky camel and silk yarn, in grey the colour of faded driftwood and a wonderful sea-blue; the pattern I chose was Queen of the Underworld by Magdalena Kubatek.

I then realised the motifs included beadwork. Special yarn deserved special beads, so I enlisted the help of Emma (she knows a thing or two about gems) who took me to The Beaderie in Cambridge, where I selected Labradorite faceted beads. We also had a delicious lunch and went to lots of other little shops along Bridge Street – more lovely memories to knit into my shawl.

I was intrigued that the pattern starts with a paragraph about Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld, so as I knitted I read more about the myth . . .

Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, she lived with her mother in a land of perpetual spring-time, surrounded by beautiful flowers. Her uncle, Hades the King of the Underworld, fancied Persephone and wanted her to be his wife; one day he thundered out of the Underworld in his chariot and abducted Persephone as she was picking flowers. It happened so swiftly that no-one knew where Persephone had gone, she'd just disappeared. Her mother, Demeter, was grief-stricken and angry; she roamed the earth in search of her daughter, destroying crops and and felling trees.

The Sun God, Helios, had seen what had happened and told Demeter that the King of the Underworld had taken Persephone to be his bride, this made Demeter even more angry and she forbade all plants to grow ever again – the earth would remain barren unless her daughter returned.

After a while, Zeus realised that mankind would die of starvation if this went on, so he sent his messenger Hermes down to the Underworld to find Persephone and bring her back. 

Persephone had refused to become Hades wife and had been on hunger-strike since arriving in the Underworld. When Hermes arrived to collect her, the King of the Underworld agreed to let her go home, then as a parting gesture Hades offered Persephone a pomegranate as a snack to give her strength for the journey home, she couldn't resist eating some of the juicy seeds . . . but it was a trick . . . anyone who eats the food of the Underworld can never leave! 

Persephone was stuck in the Underworld, the Earth was cold and dead – climate change of the most extreme kind!

Granny to the rescue . . . Rhea, Persephone's grandmother, came up with a sensible compromise - Persephone should return to the World and Demeter should allow the plants and crops to flourish, BUT each year for three months Persephone must go back down to the Underworld. Each time her daughter was absent, Demeter made the earth cold and the plants died – but when Persephone returned she made them grow again. Seasonal change restored.

Millennia ago, people needed to explain the seasons and give themselves hope that Spring would return and their food crops would grow. They needed someone to blame for the destructive power of nature – the cold weather and the dying plants. Without long-range weather forecasts and satellite images tracking the jet-stream, they needed hope that Persephone would return and that Demeter would allow the plants to grow again.

As I knitted and watched the evening news reports of the destructive power of storm after winter storm lashing Britain and floods destroying crops and threatening livestock with starvation, I thought about our confusion and need to blame something or someone.  

We are too educated to blame Hades abducting Persephone, too knowledgeable about weather patterns and anticyclones. But frightened by the realisation that there are powers of nature beyond our control. The stories of the great winter storms of 2013/14 are intertwined into my shawl.

The reverse side has a texture like an ancient woven kilim and the colours look faded by time.

My new shawl has the feel of an old treasured fabric.

I'll wear it in winter and know that Spring will come.


Celia
xx

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here we are in day two of a new year . . . it feels a bit like the old one, but who knows what the coming months may bring?

This time last year I was keeping a secret - that there was going to be a feature about me in Country Living magazine the following December. I was busy working on my 'Garlands' Christmas card designs and waiting to hear from the photographer assigned to do the photo shoot.

This year I'm working on another secret commission (I've had to sign an NDA, so no peeping!) and I'm busy planning new designs for prints and cards . . . starting with the 2014 Valentines hares and birds.

Thank you to everyone who ordered cards from my etsy shop during November and December - especially if you found me via the Country Living article (if you missed the magazine, you can read it here). It got very busy and there were regular late evening packing sessions, after which I relaxed by sitting down and doing some knitting. But I must have been a bit tired, you would not believe how many times I un-ravelled and reknitted this shawl!

But it's done now and I blocked it at the weekend - TA-DAH!!!

The pattern is Halyard on Ravelry, I devised my own colour scheme for the stripes - those flipping stripes!!!! they look easy but take your eye off the task for a second and it's very easy to drop a stitch when you do a star-stitch! And what's more, fudging it and thinking it doesn't matter, won't work . . . believe me it won't work.

I dithered about doing the deep lace edging, thinking it may look a bit "Marie Antoinette" but I wanted to knit the lace pattern and was pleased I did . . . compared to the stripes it was a doddle.


SO . . . onward into 2014 . . . no resolutions as such, but I have got a plan to help me do regular blog posts through the year, all will be revealed in the next post.


Celia
xx

Perfect winter weekend = walk + bake + knit

On Saturday we decided to venture west for a walk in the Midlands, Cliff did a quick search on the web and found a good location . . . Pitsford Water in Northamptonshire.

 

We started our walk at the popular Brixworth Country Park visitors centre and circumnavigated the southern half of the reservoir, a total distance of 7.5 miles – just the right sort of distance to blow the cobwebs out of the mind and put roses in our cheeks!

On the way we passed some recently done hedge-laying . . .

and lots of birdlife, including a large flock of Lapwings (including one of two Golden Plovers) and these beautifully plumaged Greylag Geese . . .

After our walk we went into Brixworth village to see the church, it's set on the edge of the village on the crest of a ridge which overlooks the surrounding farmland, and it is huge . . . and very very old!

Brixworth church was build at least 1200 years ago, only a couple of hundred years after the the Romans upped and left Britain; the Saxon builders reused Roman terracotta tiles to make the massive semicircular archways. The large ground level arches (which have been infilled with stone and windows) where originally interior entrances into small side rooms, chapels or shrines off the main nave of this great basilica, maybe built when Offa was king of Mercia.

Just think how long it's stood here . . . it was over 300 years old when the Normans invaded Britain! Look at how carefully the tiles and stones have been placed to make those simple archways.

Maybe I was still thinking about those Saxon arches when I made this pear up-side down cake for our Sunday lunch?

It was easy to make . . .
- spread creamed butter and soft brown sugar over the base of a lined cake tin;
- over it, lay slices of pear and glacé cherries in pattern;
- make a sponge mixture (100g softened unsalted butter/100g caster sugar/2 eggs/100g self-raising flour) and spoon carefully over the fruit;
- bake at 180˚C for about 40 minutes until the sponge is firm;
- cool slightly and turn out onto a plate;
- eat with a generous helping of freshly made custard.

 

. . . and even easier to eat!

On Sunday evening I finished the shawl I've been knitting from Kauni yarn; I've been knitting this for months; it has been knitted and unraveled a couple of times because it wasn't quite right and I'm a perfectionist; it has traveled with me on trains down to London and up to Liverpool many times, until it became far to big to carry easily.

The shape and size were inspired by the shawls in a Kaffe Fassett knitting book from the 1980s. I chose two colourways of the Kauni yarn and then used a Fair Isle technique to create the patterns, which I made up as I went along and then repeated a few times.


Let's see it outside in natural light where the wintery colours really glow . . .

I was fun to knit, and became cosy and organic as it grew and grew. I worked on 1 metre long double pins, but by the end it was quite a struggle to manipulate all the stitches; so although I still have some yarn over, I decided it was big enough. I probably have enough to make a hat with the leftovers.

And lastly . . .

Thank you to everyone who signed up to get my studio newsletters, there are over twenty who missed the mailing, so I'll be sending out another batch later this evening. Then the next one will be sent at the end of February.

Celia
x

Making Monday – mitts for posh paws!

At the start of each week Natalie of The Yarn Yard hosts "Making Monday" and puts together a list of links to lots of busy bloggers' projects. In week one I shared my knitted lace shawl made with some of Natalie's beautiful lace yarn.

I said that I had some yarn left over after finishing the Rock Island shawl – well, here's what I've made, and completing them has luckily coincided with Making Monday 6 . . .

Pretty lace mitts with jewelled edges – the pattern is called Lady of the Woods and it's available on Ravelry.

I can't say they were easy to knit! But I persevered and eventually I got there . . . then because I have two hands and I'm not one to give up, I persevered all over again.

They are very pretty (they don't really go with my printmaker/gardener fingernails, so that's why I've modelled them palm-side up ;-)

And there's still some yarn left over (Natalie – is this magic yarn that never ends?) probably enough to knit another pair of Lady of the Woods mittens . . . but I won't be doing that! I'll use it to make something easier. No, I've a better idea, I'll pop it into my stash box and wait until I find it some friends to knit a multi-coloured lacy something or other.

Now to start a new knitting project (I've slipped hopelessly back into knitaholism) with some cleverly shaded Kauni yarn – something big and easy – I can even manage without my specs!

Celia

x