Since writing my first Cowlicious post, I’ve finished my Baileys trellis cowl, which I’ve now officially named the: ‘ Baileys Quilted Lattice Cowl’ 🙂  It is super, super soft and squishy and I love how it worked up with Malabrigo Worsted Merino, which is my go to yarn for cowls.  I especially love how the trellis strands look with the yarn’s single ply construction – so perfectly chunky and lofty, which you can see in this close up:

I’m now writing up the pattern, which I’m going to make available on Ravelry.  This will be my second pattern since registering for a designer’s account – get me!  I’ve been absolutely blown away by how much interest there’s been in my first pattern, which I offered free.  The pattern for my Reversible Chevron Scarf was uploaded on 5th November and, so far, it has been favourited 447 times and downloaded 1,028 times – wow!  If you want to add to that number, you can download it here.

I’ve made a lot of progress on my yellow shaded tweed stitch cowl too, which now also has an official name: ‘Shaded English Rose Tweed Cowl’.  Here it is at the point where I’d just begun the 3rd and penultimate section:

I’ve now finished knitting, have grafted the two ends together and I’m feeling very happy with it.  Can’t wait to see how it looks when I’ve worked in all the loose yarn ends and it’s on the model form!  I’m also planning to write up a pattern for this one, but would like to get it test knit before I publish it, so if anyone out there reading this would like the pattern for free so that they can road test it for me, please get in touch!

As usually seems to happen with me, while working on this shaded cowl, I had an idea for another cowl, inspired by this beautiful Versace dress:

I had to immediately give way to my instincts and find and order the yarn I’d need to make what was in my head.  I couldn’t find the colours I wanted in my favourite Malabrigo cowl yarn, so went for Rowan’s Creative Focus Worsted (blend of 75% wool and 25% alpaca), which I’ve worked with before and know I like:

The silver thread is to add into the grey section only, to imitate the rhinestones on the waist of the Versace dress.  Soon, my precious, soon…

Isn’t this Folio Society edition of the Brontë novels beautiful?  If you could choose just one to read, which would it be?

I guess that most people are more likely to select either Charlotte’s passionate and dramatic Jane Eyre or the black romance of Emily’s Wuthering Heights, given that these two novels have been incredibly popular for a very long time.  I’ve read and studied both these novels and have come to value and appreciate them for what they are, but the writers’ voices don’t speak to me personally – they’re not really novels I enjoy.

Anne Brontë is much more to my taste and I’m currently re-reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Academic opinion is that this was one of the first sustained feminist novels and grounded in realism – neither of which you could really accuse Charlotte or Emily’s works of being, even though many real life ‘things’ happen in them and they are concerned with the lives of women.  I also find a gentle humour in Anne’s writerly voice that is absent in those of her sisters’, whether she’s exposing the less attractive side of her characters’ personalities, or holding up her candle to illuminate the gritty details of everyday life, which some critics of the day considered to be ‘coarse’.

After Anne’s death, Charlotte prevented the republication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall saying that it “hardly seems to me desirable to preserve … the choice of subject in that work is a mistake.” and I can’t help wondering if that was genuinely her reason, or if her successful author’s vanity was threatened by Anne.  Was Anne more modern, less self-obsessed, more realistic and worldly than her more famous sisters?  These were qualities that were becoming ever more popular with the reading public and I wonder if her work would have ultimately been more critically successful if Charlotte hadn’t stopped republication when she did?  I also wonder what Emily would have been capable of, had she lived to learn more of life, and her craft.  I suspect that her immense imagination could have produced something quite incredible that would have been more accomplished in an authorly sense than is Wuthering Heights.

There is one passage at the beginning of Chapter 5 that also made me think about just how much we modern female makers and artists have in common with our Victorian counterparts like the novel’s heroine, Mrs Helen Graham.  The hero, Mr Markham, has come to the hall to visit Mrs Graham and her son and is looking over some of her paintings in her studio when they have this exchange:

 ‘You have almost completed your painting,’ said I, approaching to observe it more closely, and surveying it with a greater degree of admiration and delight than I cared to express.  ‘A few more touches in the foreground will finish it, I should think.  But why have you called it Fernley Manor, Cumberland, instead of Wildfell Hall, —shire?’ I asked, alluding to the name she had traced in small characters at the bottom of the canvas.

But immediately I was sensible of having committed an act of impertinence in so doing; for she coloured and hesitated; but after a moment’s pause, with a kind of desperate frankness, she replied:—

‘Because I have friends—acquaintances at least—in the world, from whom I desire my present abode to be concealed; and as they might see the picture, and might possibly recognise the style in spite of the false initials I have put in the corner, I take the precaution to give a false name to the place also, in order to put them on a wrong scent, if they should attempt to trace me out by it.’

‘Then you don’t intend to keep the picture?’ said I, anxious to say anything to change the subject.

‘No; I cannot afford to paint for my own amusement.’

‘Mamma sends all her pictures to London,’ said Arthur; ‘and somebody sells them for her there, and sends us the money.’

 Of course, makers today have a much more convenient time of things selling online, whether from their own web sites, Facebook, Etsy or other marketplaces.  But like many makers who are home raising their families, Mrs Graham doesn’t allow the restrictions on her mobility in the physical world hold her back from using her creative abilities to support herself and her son.  As you read the novel, you discover that she also clearly finds a solid sense of independence from this self-sufficiency: she draws upon it to strengthen herself, to recover from her ordeals during her marriage, to overcome the loneliness of her current circumstances, and the disapproval of her neighbours who know nothing of her troubled past.

Whether or not you’re already a Brontë fan, if you’ve never read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I’d urge you to give it a try – you can read it for free in various formats via Project Gutenberg here.  There’s also a very good 1996 BBC dramatisation of the novel staring Tara FitzGerald, Rupert Graves and Toby Stephens, if you’re the kind of reader who enjoys seeing a novel’s story before reading.

If you don’t know much about  the often tragic and sad lives of all the Brontë family you couldn’t do better than to read Juliet Barker’s biography, The Brontës A Life in Letters, which I found very absorbing as a biography of the family, as well as a well researched and detailed look at life in the mid 19th century.

 

It is very strange how I seem to attach myself to one craft at the expense of another.  I started my working week sewing zipped pouches and it was all I could think about.  However, things didn’t go so smoothly and after unpicking just about every line of sewing that I put down over a few hours, I just knew that I needed to stop and go and do something else, regardless of how much I didn’t want to.

I picked up my knitting instead on Monday afternoon and am now deeply entrenched in it.  Not that the knitting went that smoothly to begin with…  I already had a design idea for a new cowl and the yarn to make it with.  Inspired by the Purl Bee’s trellis scarf (which I’ve already made a sparkly version of with Rowan Kidsilk Haze Eclipse), I was planning on making a cowl in that stitch pattern, using Malabrigo’s Worsted Merino in ‘Simply Taupe’, which I like to simply call: ‘Baileys’, because it’s pretty much the same colour as that delicious beverage.  My plan was to work in the round and I’d already swatched and converted the stitch pattern, so I simply wound the first skein of yarn and got on with it.  Sadly, after working a 4 row edging and 2 pattern repeats of 8 rows each over 300 stitches, I decided that I didn’t like how the stitch pattern was looking – or at least how it would look when worn.  By 6pm, I was ripping it all out…

Purl Bee’s trellis scarf:

Refusing to be cowed by my cowl fail, I started Tuesday in a positive mood and cast on the trellis cowl with straight needles and a provisional cast on.  By yesterday, I was on my second skein and the cowl was over 20 inches long – hurrah!

Now I haven’t given sewing another thought since quitting on Monday, and I’ve told myself that this week can be all about knitting.  Having thus given myself permission to stay in the knit zone, my mind felt free to wander around in it and, hey presto, I have another idea for a new cowl design.

Ever since knitting several stitch block cowls (here’s Emma’s):

(and Joanna’s):

(and Sue’s):

(and Joanne’s):

I was quite taken with the ‘tweed’ brioche stitch pattern from the 3rd section of the cowl and always wanted to use it in another project, but with just one colour, to see how it looked. Here it is from the original Purl Bee cowl design, worked in 3 colours:

Apart from being a pretty stitch in itself, it works up quickly.  For another thing, it creates a kind of airy and light fabric – even using a lovely lofty yarn like Malabrigo Worsted Merino.  So my first thought was: “Hey, why don’t I make a cowl with that one stitch for the whole thing – bet that would look nice”.  Of course, the natural next thought was, which yarn to use, and it didn’t take long to work that out since I love the quality, softness and colour range of Malabrigo Worsted Merino.  Then, which colour to use?  Do I really want to use just one colour?  True, I could use a semi-slid or a variegated to add lots of interest, but was that enough?

Enter another Purl Bee project the Cashmere Ombré Wrap:

Now, I can’t afford the cashmere to make this and the idea of so many rows of seed stitch makes me want to scream, but I love the idea of lots of shades of one colour, so off to the Malabrigo site I went and I decided on a range of beautiful yellows – from creamy to orange shades.  I’ll start with ‘Butter’:

Move on to ‘Pollen’:

Then ‘Cadmium’:

And, finally, I’ll finish with ‘Sunset’ – which is fitting!

Really looking forward to these yarns arriving and starting another cowlicious project – always assuming that my knitting doesn’t go haywire and send me back to the sewing machine 🙂

This week, Mark’s been on holiday from work so we’ve had several trips out, walking and visiting various places.

On Tuesday, we were incredibly lucky with the weather and had a lovely walk in the autumnal sunshine around Flatford Mill, taking in Constable country.  When we first walked past the famous mill scene, all looked so calm and lovely and it was easy to imagine Johnny Constable with his sketchbook in hand:

But then, after our 1st walk around the fields full of cliché ridden grazing sheep (cute and fluffy, all the same), we walked around the back of the mill thinking we would have a walk across the Dedham Vale, only to find a lot of it under water and bullocks having a paddle.  There had been a lot of rain and, to compound the problem, the National Trust are in the process of renewing the lock gates.  The sky was also pretty Constable-esque:

On Thursday, being relatively confident that we should have another fine day (we believed the weather forecast –  you have to live dangerously) and wanting to get our moneys worth from our annual National Trust memberships (we are from Yorkshire, don’t forget), we planned to visit a couple of National Trust houses in Suffolk.  We started out at Ickworth, which is an incredibly imposing place with a lovely park (picture from the National Trust site):

We arrived before the house was open so decided to do the 4 mile walk through the park and woods.  It is a lovely walk, but was a little muddy – especially in the woods.  It also felt like more than 4 miles but as we didn’t track it, I can’t say for sure – maybe we were just slow sliding through the mud.  This photograph of the rotunda was taken from the woods we were walking through, across the park.

Sadly, by the time we finished the walk, I was splattered with mud, a bit over heated and looked like a tramp – just the time to join lots of clean tourists for a look around the house!   I have to say that I wasn’t that taken with the house – can’t really put my finger on why specifically – perhaps because it was built to be a showpiece by the Hervey family, rather than a home (they lived in the east wing and just displayed their treasures here).  I would have liked to have had a little more about the infamous Lord Hervey, Georgian rake and lover of Stephen Fox.  I read and thoroughly enjoyed Lucy Moore’s biography of him (Amphibious Thing: The Life of Lord Hervey) some years ago, but he didn’t really feature at the house – perhaps they’re trying to live down his inflated reputation!

One thing I did enjoy inside was that we were just in time to see a couple of costumes on display from the ‘Connecting Threads’ exhibition, which ends at the beginning of November.  This is a lovely 30s bias cut evening dress in gold.  The bias cutting is mind boggling!

This beautiful jewel encrusted dress from the House of Worth was from an earlier age, but just as lovely:

We then moved on to our second house of the day – Melford Hall at Long Melford.  This was a truly lovely place and one we will certainly return to.

It started life as a monastic hunting estate and was visited by Elizabeth I in 1578.  After being sacked during the civil war, it was requisitioned during World War 2 and the north wing was burnt down in 1942.  The Hyde Parkers, who still live in the house, brought it back to life and their famous cousin Beatrix Potter visited them there.  She would bring a menagerie of animals with her, who stayed in a little turret room, just off her usual bedroom, the ‘West Bedroom’ (photograph from the National Trust site):

The original Jemima Puddleduck stuffed toy is on display and I admit that my heart leapt a little when I saw it, even though it is being displayed in a little room that has been made up as a mock nursery rather than the ‘real’ one.  There are also a number of Miss Potter’s watercolours of the house and several of her well known animal characters.  Unfortunately, these are all displayed in a corridor near her bedroom, which isn’t the ideal place to view them… This one (again from the National Trust’s site) is a self-portrait she drew to amuse her little cousins – she was said to do nothing but sleep when she visited:

This little picture hangs in the actual bedroom she used.  The bed hangings at the time were obviously also a yellow silk, like the ones that the National Trust have there today.

I think my absolute favourites were these lovely little place settings on a dining table.  The way they are set out on the table makes it look as though Beatrix has just that moment walked by and placed them there, to amuse her cousins when they come in to eat – so much nicer than seeing them in a glass case 🙂

 

 

 

 

If you make things – any things – I’m sure you know the creative urge.

Without the urge, I guess we wouldn’t create very much at all, so I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but why does it frequently turn up at the most inopportune times?

My creative urge frequently shows up just as I’m dropping off to sleep, or more often for me, when I first wake up early in the morning (usually due to a visit from a cat).  Once it arrives, it refuses to leave until something has been done – as does the cat, I might add…  First you have to get awake – properly awake – you will NOT be going back to sleep for some time, if at all.  Then you have to focus in on what the urge is and begin to refine it: what is it I want to create; what will it look like; what will it be made from; what colours will I use, what are its dimensions, what will the finishing touches be?  These are just a handful of questions that must be answered – NOW!  In these circumstances, I don’t usually take the process much further than developing a mental picture of what it is and deciding when I will create it, although I know other makers who would have to immediately write everything down, or even go and begin making it.

The other circumstance when I am most often struck with the urge, is when I have a million and one other things that I absolutely have to get done and have no spare time for ‘playing’.  This was what happened this weekend when I was struck with the dreaded but essential urge.

Amongst several other pieces I’m finishing off, I am trying to finish an order from the lovely Jessica for 14 embroidered and embellished wool felt Christmas star ornaments to decorate her tree in her antiques booth in Charlotte, North Carolina.  On Friday, I got together everything I needed and, in the mood for a little sparkle, I made up a little mood board from all my materials and took a photo:

Looking at the white felt and the iridescent sequins, I was reminded about a half thought out idea I’d had for an embroidery whilst cruising Pinterest.  I had a stern word with myself and pushed the thought away, tidied away the mood board and got started on Jessica’s stars.  When fully awake, the urge has to work harder to take control!

By the end of the day, I’d cut out all the star fronts, traced out the main elements of the designs, basted them to the fronts and completed the embroidery for half of them.  By Saturday afternoon, those 7 were all embroidered and embellished:

But, during all that time, the Pinterest inspired embroidery idea was nagging away at the back of my mind.  I told myself that I wasn’t allowed to play and would give way to the urge only when I’d finished Jessica’s stars, but that urge is an untameable beast and will not be denied!  By Sunday morning, despite wanting quite badly to go for a morning walk in the woods, I found myself on the couch at 8am, surrounded by embroidery threads and with my inspiration picture in front of me.  Here it is:

Isn’t Foxy lovely?  After first seeing this picture, which was ages ago, I kept thinking about it and somewhere along the way through the cables in my mind, the image  found itself on a white wool felt background and surrounded by iridescent sequins.  So I stitched like a fool until lunch time (and lunch was late as a result) and finally created what the urge had driven me to create:

Somewhat amusingly, after all that angst and effort, I’m not really that happy with the result!  It’s okay, but other than the colour, I think Foxy looks more like a Wolfy and the little line of sequins at the bottom that were intended to suggest a mound in the foreground, are more suggestive of a row of sequins sewn on a bit crooked than the intended mound…  But this isn’t a bad thing!  I’m not unhappy about it at all – I had an urge and surrendered to it.  Sometimes it comes out good, sometimes not so good, just as long as I keep having the urges, that’s okay with me! 🙂