Ten guilty pleasures, part the second

Still waiting for specialist’s appointment, so time to fit in a few more guilty pleasures between painkillers and bouts of feeling dizzy. What do we want? Neck transplants! When do we want them? Now!

Of course, feeling like crap warmed up doesn’t stop me indulging in pleasure number 6. It should, but it doesn’t. It has stopped me going to Wonderwool Wales next weekend – though in fairness, other factors have been involved there. So why shouldn’t I go for GP6? Hm?

6. Buying yet more yarn.

I know, I can’t knit much. I know, I’ve got plenty in my stash. I know that I shouldn’t. But – and I’m not making excuses here, honestly – I needed another ball or two of silk/mohair to make a scarf from my latest pattern book purchase. I was given a multicoloured ball, partly unwound, and added the orange; the blue and red come from the stash. So I am using stash as well. Or I would be if I wasn’t emitting so much static at the moment that actually using a yarn as flighty and floaty as Kidsilk Haze is almost impossible. So why am I justifying myself? Well, possibly because of this:

Noro Kureyon Sock. Bought to knit another shawl from the recent purchase because I was emitting so much static etc, etc, etc…

I decided I wanted to move out of my colour comfort zone a bit. Blues, jades, purples: not my usual choices. But very cheerful to those awaiting neck transplants and/or results of MRI scans so they can safely get on with flipping physiotherapy / osteopathy and stop the room whirling or their heads exploding.

Enough already. I think I need another pleasure. Ah, yes.

7. Sweets.

I know I’m not alone in this. Books have been written confessing to a passion for sweets; programmes have been devoted to them, on both TV and radio. Traditional local sweets have been tracked down and saved from oblivion. The Scottish boiled sweet tradition (Hawick balls, anyone?) has been celebrated. But my current weakness is Fruitella:

Nostalgia is a major factor. From milk bottles (never liked those) to soor plums, from cherry lips to Black Jacks which turned your tongue deep purple, from flying saucers to sherbet fountains – you could blow sherbet at your friends through the liquorice stick – the sweets bought on the way home from school have a special resonance for years. Haribo sours? Yum. But you do have to be careful. It’s not just a question of what you like, or it isn’t for me. Many of the chewy, fruity sweets for which I have such a weakness involve gelatine. And I don’t particularly want to be eating pork or beef gelatine in my gummy bears. And yes, I do limit myself!

8. The Wicked Lady.

Not the dire Michael Winner (ye gods!) remake, but the 1945 original with James Mason and Margaret Lockwood (I keep confusing her with Margaret Rutherford for some reason, which conjures up a whole different vision, eek). I love this movie, possibly because James Mason is fantastic as the splendid highwayman Captain Jerry Jackson, or maybe because I seem to have developed a bit of a problem with actors named James: see point 5 of the previous post. There isn’t a wrong note in this bravura 1940s tale of Restoration Britain and of bold, bad Lady Barbara who inveigles her way into marriage with a rural nobleman and then takes to highway robbery and James Mason to assuage her boredom.

The acting is great if verging towards high camp at times; the sets are wonderful – the frost fair defined my conception of Restoration London for years – and the costumes are frequently amazing. In fact, extensive reshooting was required for the US release as there was trouble with the censors over the decolletages. They are accurate to the period, and even understated if you check out the portraits of the ladies of Charles II’s court, but were far too low for 1945 America. I’m just amazed that Margaret Lockwood stayed in her bodices. Glue. Sellotape?

The Wicked Lady was also quite bold in other ways – Barbara’s venality and cynicism, her ennui, her quite obvious use of sexuality and power, her (shock, horror) extra-marital affair with Jackson, depicted without real moral judgement – quite dreadful. And it was the most popular film with British cinema audiences in 1946.

Plus, of course, it has James Mason in it as a highwayman. I mean, purleease. That voice. The Alan Rickman of his time.

9. Lippy.

I suppose this ought to come here, because one of the most remarkable things for me about the portrayal of seventeenth-century Britain in The Wicked Lady is the perfect 1940s Hollywood makeup of Barbara the Bad (maybe it’s one of the ways you can tell she is bad – her lipstick).

In the 1990s, Philippe Delerm published a little book which everyone in France was reading – La  premiere gorgée de biere et autres plaisirs miniscules – about the small pleasures of his life: reading on the beach, Sunday evenings, the ‘trottoir roulant’ at Montparnasse station. Well, lippy is one of mine. It’s a specifically guilty pleasure because I’ve spent far too long searching for the perfect red. You know, the one that’s just right, that makes you look and feel great.

Then I found it.

Then Lancome discontinued it.

And if anyone out there has Lancome’s Rouge Cubiste sitting around, unused but useable, do let me know. In the meantime, I’m still hunting. Your skin tone doesn’t stay the same for ever, and there’s no guarantee it would still suit me…

10. Magazines.

It’s Saturday, I’m in town early, I’ve done some shopping and I fancy a coffee.

So I buy a magazine to read with my drink. I’m careful; I like to scan them first just to make sure there’s something I find interesting (I have managed to wean myself off the glossies and the home style mags, except in France where I buy the house beautiful ones like no tomorrow). Then I take my mag to the coffee shop, settle down – and discover that, oh, about 75% is devoted to ads. The worst offender is Garden Bloody Illustrated but I still can’t resist it when I flick through, and the best is British Archaeology, though that’s off the hook because it’s specialist. But I don’t seem to be able to stop buying GBI. They could help me, though – they could wrap it in plastic, because I don’t – er, by and large – buy anything I have to rip my way into before I discover it’s full of ads.

So that’s my ten guilty pleasures. I’m sure I can come up with many more, but possibly after my neck transplant…

Ten guilty pleasures – well, the first five…

I have a sore head. I have damaged my cervical spine (well, did it 18 months ago or maybe even longer ago than that, but it was masked by other things and has chosen now to manifest itself, thanks a bunch, vertebrae) and am beset with headaches and drugs that either don’t work or don’t suit me. Waiting for specialist’s appointment or possibly Dr House. Can’t bend my head. Need something to cheer me up. This got me thinking…

Now, we all have things we love which are either silly, stupid or downright embarrassing and, no, I am not confessing to a deep love of Maggie Thatcher, boy bands or Vesta curry with sultanas in it. But they are also things which comfort us, which make us feel better when we need to snuggle up on the sofa with a blankie and a cup of tea. Things which are, basically, life-enhancing, and boy do I need my life enhancing at the moment. So I’m confessing. It’s good for the soul (allegedly). And a couple of them are even woolly, but there are more than enough for two posts. So here are my first five.

1. Buying more knitting patterns and/or books than anyone could reasonably need or, indeed, fit on their bookcase.

This is my latest addition, and it’s excellent. Yes, there are patterns that I would need a head transplant to contemplate (possibly on the cards at the moment), but there are also some which are yummy and have gone straight on the to-do list. The list which is 85,743,000 miles long, OK? My WIPS (works in progress, for anyone unfamiliar with knitting-addict jargon) are still in single figures, so I may cast something on. When I can bend my head, that is.

2. Comic books.

I love them. This is possibly genetic; they’re an art form in France and there are festivals devoted to bandes dessinées all over the Francophone world. I grew up with Asterix – Breton, freedom fighter, what’s not to like? – but was not allowed Tintin. Dodgy political attitudes, both in the books (Tintin au Congo – eek) and in the author’s past. But who needs boy reporters when you’ve got a whole village-full of stroppy Celts,

some of whom live on your kitchen windowsill?

I have an equal addiction to some of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ masters and mistresses of the genre too. Comic strips aren’t that far removed, and I love Peanuts. Posy Simmonds’ work is closer to the froggie tradition and her Tamara Drewe, Gemma Bovary and, for kids as well, the wonderful Fred are masterpieces. I used to be into more conventional comic books but they have fallen by the wayside now. Why, I’m not sure, but give me Gemma Bovary and Asterix any day over Watchmen and superheroes, however dark.

3. Oh, this is really embarrassing. 1950s war films.

Preferably featuring John Mills, possibly in a vest. For anyone who doesn’t know the work of John Mills, this is nothing like Bruce Willis in a vest; apart from the vest, which will be dirty, they could not be further apart. But I am discriminating in this choice; there are a lot of terrible 50s war films which do not bear rewatching, and there are the 1960 and 70s variants which are often in colour (no thank you), are much less nuanced, and make no concessions to the fact that they are supposed to be set in the 1940s. I’m thinking Susanna Yorke in Battle of Britain, for example, or Ian McShane – nooooo – in the same film. Wrong. Just wrong.

No, lips have to be stiff, the acting might be even stiffer, women are largely absent or silent, and Kenneth More is somewhere in there, possibly in naval uniform. If anyone puts their sherry down on a mantelpiece half-drunk you know they’re not coming back. Similarly, show your mate a shot of your sweetheart and you will be the next one to get it. Own a labrador? Give it away before you take off; it will save time and trouble for the people who have to sort out your effects. And never, ever, send your uniform off for cleaning, because that is completely fatal.

4. Sigh. Nail Varnish.

Paradoxically, I don’t often paint my nails – except in summer, that is, when I do my toenails. When we have summer, that is. But I inherited from my mother a deep love of nail varnish. She, however, was satisfied with always wearing almost the same colour, or clear. I am not.

What I do have, irritatingly, is an ability to buy the same shade and not realise I already have it. To which end I did, at one stage, take to carrying around a little card with coloured splodges on it. It didn’t make much difference; I still bought 37 variations on a theme of brown. Brownish. I have now put a ban  on all further purchases and, above all, there is to be no revisiting of the almost-black shades of red. Not even if they are by Chanel.

5. Ah, yes. James Spader in Boston Legal.

To anyone (female) who has seen this series, this choice will not seem unusual. Guilty, possibly; unusual, noooo. To any woman who has not seen it, get it. To any blokes, just leave the room, OK? Particularly during the extraordinary closing speeches. Amazing.

A male friend of mine just didn’t get it. ‘He’s fat,’ he objected, ‘and he looks sort of seedy…’. Indeed. That’s kind of the point, dur. Seedy, sexy in a bad way (interpret that as you will), brilliant, intellectual, principled, and did I mention sexy? But Boston Legal isn’t just about James Spader. It’s also got William Shatner and Candice Bergen and more great acting than you can shake a stick at, and more wonderful actors too. It plays with the genre; it’s bright, ironic, sharp, funny, moving, sassy… Yes, parts are dated or were all-too obviously separated by ad breaks in the original. But the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Just perfect for a sore neck.

So, before I embarrass myself further in part 2, what are your guilty pleasures?

Find the Easter criminal…

I knew I couldn’t keep sheep out of this for long. You can’t keep them out of anywhere for very long.

Some friends of mine were away for a few days, down in the exciting metropolis of Cardiff. When they got back, the gate was open and they had a marked lack of crocuses where there had once been crocuses. However, the culprits had left clues behind them:

No sign of the owner of the fluff in the rest of the garden. No hoofprints either, but they’re a little redundant when you’ve left traces of your, er, clothing everywhere. No culprits along the lane, or just off it.

I suppose they could have nipped in, noshed the crocuses and nipped out a couple of days earlier, but the clues were quite fresh – and, for any spinners out there, the one in the photo above was really soft but with a suspiciously short staple length. It was also quite close to the ground, meaning its owner was probably quite small, but being trained in bad habits by the taller one. So we went hunting.

Some suspects simply hoofed it,

while others relied on being unbearably cute and seasonal and radiating innocence:

though I’m not entirely convinced by the slightly sly look of the lamb at the back; I have a feeling it knows more than it’s letting on. Like how to open gates, perhaps? (Though the gate in question could probably be opened by being leant on and – in all fairness – it’s a little like the Siegfried Line and the Nazis: you can just go round it if you want.)

Some were showing early promise in the wall-climbing and escapology stakes,

but that is not enough to convict.

This, on the other hand, probably is:

There’s a gate that clearly needs a fencepost hanging from the bottom.

This post is something of an antidote to all the footage of the appalling conditions and dire consequences facing hill farmers elsewhere in Wales (and other parts of Britain) as we have one of the coldest springs in years. We’re lucky here, close to the western coast; crocuses or no crocuses, the lambs are, by and large, fine, as are their mums. The in-lamb ewes are fine, too; no snowdrifts with us. Unfortunately it’s not the same elsewhere.

And thanks to everyone whose comments after my last post encouraged me to go for it…

Wither Woolwinding?

Bear with me, if you don’t mind…

I’ve been thinking a lot about Woolwinding; it feels a little as though it’s lost its focus – or perhaps it’s me that’s lost my focus, or maybe I’m out of kilter with the focus the blog has developed all by itself. Maybe it’s got the two-year twitch. When I started Woolwinding, I didn’t want it to be another knitting blog (among many) packed with projects – for one thing, I couldn’t knit very much due to injury. I wanted to explore some of my specific interests such as colour, history, archaeology – and all though the filter of textiles. I wanted to celebrate working with fibre, and I still do.

But now I want to do a bit more than that. Yes, I want to claw it back from the ‘look what I’ve knitted’ territory it sometimes seems to be straining towards, but I also want to broaden it in other ways. Due to formative journalistic training – don’t use the first person too much, and preferably not at all – and the sometime presence of a cyberstalker, I am not inclined to add too much more of my private life. And, above all, I do not want it to become what a blogging friend calls a ‘perfect life’ blog. You know the sort of thing: perfect husband (emphatically not partner), perfect house, perfect children, perfect garden, perfect baking on perfect tablecloth, perfect bunting and perfect pictures that could come from Country Living. The sun always shines but not so much as to mess up the photos with awkward contrast; snow is picturesque and not slushy; even the writer’s adolescents are delightful and never answer back, have smelly feet or smoke dope. I know just what my friend means. There are loads of them out there, and I always suspect that they’re slightly fake, on ‘methinks the lady doth protest too much’ grounds.

Enough already.

Then there’s the essence of blogging: it’s immediate. As a trainee I once messed up a funeral report but was comforted by the sub who reminded me that it would be round someone’s cod and scraps by the following lunchtime, and everyone would forget that I’d matched the wrong wife to the wrong man – he was actually unmarried but widely suspected of having an affair with the woman in question (oops). Obviously the chip-wrapper analogy is not exactly true these days, with online archives and search tools, but I’d like to be able, for instance, to find the post I wrote on retired pirates and the dye trade without riffling through various tags or trying to remember when I wrote it. The immediacy is great, but I’d like some of my posts to have a longer life, for my own convenience (and to respect the research involved) if not for anyone else’s interest.

I had thought, fleetingly, about merging Woolwinding with Beangenie, my gardening blog. But that won’t work – for one thing, Beangenie has a tight focus and an equally focused readership. Many of them (I know) are also interested in textiles and quite a few are knitters or spinners, but garden blogs are garden blogs, and wittering about plant choices, speculating about soil conditions or seed selection doesn’t always transfer over, and vice-versa. And I know, too, that the woolly element would soon be submerged beneath a tide of trowelling, tomatoes and the type of trivia which interests only gardeners. So that’s not an answer.

But what do I want to do?

Well, I want to introduce a bit more variety. I’m not just inspired by wool, I’m inspired by the landscape around me, by the people I know and love and respect, by the country in which I live, by fact that when I’m stuck in a traffic jam behind an idiot driver who failed to understand the meaning of a large sign reading ‘unsuitable for caravans’, I can gaze out of the window and watch a heron flying down to land. I want to include more images, photographs of things other than wool. I want to make it easier to write a post when I’ve lost my woolly mojo, something that happens to all of us (OK, most of us), from time to time. At times I have done this, perhaps bringing in a winter walk or a stay in Shetland, and it’s gone down well – but I’ve always felt that I’ve not stuck to the brief, as it were. My inner editor is breathing down my neck again.

So I’m going to give my inner editor a sabbatical, I think. Probably about time. She can go and carp about colons somewhere else.

I’m going to try and broaden the focus, bring in more Wales, more colour, more images, more history, more – well, more generality. I’m also going to create some specific pages referencing particular topics and linking to relevant posts. There’ll be one, for instance, for vintage: vintage patterns, vintage buttons, vintage garments like snoods (is a snood a garment?). There’ll be one for history and archaeology, everything from spinning prostitutes in Ancient Greece and maids spinning in eighteenth-century Wales to the iniquities of the truck system in Shetland. There’ll be a page where I can link to my posts on colour. And there’ll still be a lot of knitting and spinning, a lot of fibre, a lot of wool and quite a few sheep (try keeping them out). It’ll take a bit of time but I’ll get there.

At least that’s what I think at the moment. What do you think?

I’ll end with a quick and completely unwoolly shot. Happy Easter, everyone!

Book review: Crochet One-Skein Wonders

This is soooo embarrassing, because the sound you hear is me eating my words. I don’t crochet, I can’t crochet, attempts have been made to teach me to crochet, and I still can’t crochet. So there. Only I was sent this book to review, edited by Judith Durant and Edie Eckman and featuring designs from lots of people, and I am clearly going to have to learn.

Despite not being a crochet queen, I can still review it to the extent of saying that it has patterns in it which I would like to use. This, for me, is a real plus, and something of a first.

For me crochet has traditionally lurked in Golden Hands territory, all nasty colours, acrylic yarn, 1970s waistcoats and toilet-roll covers. However, I have clearly not moved on. Here there are patterns for eminently covetable necklaces, fingerless gloves, headbands, bags, cushions, kids’ toys (love Louis the lobster, and particularly Sam the big-bottomed bunny)… In fact, the toys are absolutely gorgeous, but we don’t all have kids of a suitable age to make them for, though I wouldn’t mind Sam or sweet kitty for myself.

But I’m transferring my affection to the jewellery, especially the beaded pieces.

See what I mean? Not a hint of a 1970s loo-roll cover. And there are 99 other patterns to choose from, too.

Like all the other One-Skein books, this is usefully divided by yarn weights, is well illustrated and has clear instructions, but whereas the others had a few crochet patterns, this one is entirely devoted to hooking yarn. Now because I don’t / can’t / won’t crochet, I asked my knitting group to have a look at it and give some much better-qualified feedback which I could pass on, and they were as positive as I am. There was even a scramble for the book and a brief argument about who was going to use it first.

One person, for instance, pounced on it because she had always wondered how you got a crochet edging on things made of fabric, and hadn’t been able to find any clear instructions. She’d squinted at pieces of work and thought she might have worked it out, but found clear confirmation and instructions here (you blanket stitch around the fabric and attach the crochet to the blanket stitch). Another person spoke highly of the instructions for Tunisian crochet. But everyone felt like I did, and just loved the patterns. I have a distinct feeling that Niles the Crocodile (hee hee)

will be first off the hook, when my crocodile-loving friend has prised the book out of the hands of the fabric-edger…

We had a wonderful day at the Llyn Guild of WSD on Thursday, so I thought I’d share the blog post I did for them about it. Yes, I bought stuff. Of course I did. Sari silk. Some of the green fluff, third photograph, top left. I know, I know…

The Llŷn Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers

The weather forecast for Thursday was not good – the return of winter was predicted – and we were to host a sampling day with Wingham Wools. Not only did they have to get to us from Yorkshire and return home safely, but we also knew that spinners were planning on coming from other North Wales guilds. Happily the worst of the weather was delayed, which was just as well…

We can use two rooms in the Penygroes hall, which meant that Winghams had plenty of room to spread out their goodies,

and the spinners had plenty of room to set up their wheels or twirl their spindles.

There were over 30 wheels in the end, and quite a few spindle-twirlers.

So what did we find to play with? Plenty:

like these merino/silk blends, with very helpful samples of them spun and knitted up – thanks, Ruth.

Or how about…

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Book review: The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs

Oh dear, I have been quiet. Unfortunately there’s an explanation – my hand’s been playing up again, following osteopathy. It has to recover soon, because I cannot wait to try out some of the suggestions in Sarah Anderson’s book…

Now, there’d been quite a bit of fuss about this among the spinners on Ravelry, a flurry of anticipation, people obtaining early copies from the US and whetting everyone else’s appetite, tantalising us with descriptions and occasionally with photos. A friend had one, and I had a quick flick through at the Sunday Market Spinners; it looked OK… And then my own copy arrived, and I was quite prepared to be disappointed, deciding that for once I would be realistic – after all, you build something up, and it’s rarely as good as you hoped.

No need. It’s marvellous. It’s clear, beautifully laid out and mouthwatering. I was initially slightly surprised that I found it so because when it comes to yarn, I’m deeply in love with colour. The samples here are all in white or cream, giving the book a cool, rather Scandinavian appearance.

That’s completely deliberate – ‘colour can be a distraction’ – and it’s not to say that the book is devoid of colour; far from it, but it is used judiciously – and is all the more emphatic for that.

From the descriptions I’d read, and even from my brief flickette, I had formed the impression that The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs was entirely devoted to art yarns. There are a few other books on the subject – for me, they’re mouthwatering but impractical – and I’d expected to find another, but it’s much more than that. Incidentally, I’d never have thought of myself as a ‘yarn designer’ (ho ho – lumps, bumps and strange overspun stretches do not a yarn design make, IMO) but, as Sarah Anderson says, ‘People who make yarn are not only spinners, they are also yarn designers.’ So there. Preen.

Yes, it’s great on ‘art’ yarns (more later) but, completely unexpectedly, it’s fantastic on the basics, too. In fact, and I hesitate to say this, being very loyal to the books which helped me start spinning a couple of years ago, but it’s brilliant on the basics. Better than many of the basic books, with the added advantage that it takes you onwards. The illustrations are so clear:

And it’s not just the illustrations; the text is clear as well. The author uses, for example, a knitting analogy to help explain twist: if you use to small a needle, you get tight fabric; use too large a one, and your knitting is too large, too loose and too floppy – though that depends on what you want to do with it, of course. Too much or too little twist, and the same applies. And even I can follow this book’s instructions, and that’s saying something, and the 64 reference cards provided are amazingly useful. Oops, no I didn’t try anything, I’ve not been fiddling about and anyway I kept my brace on. Officer.

When you start spinning, your main concern is to produce something that you can actually use, and not something that is either so loose that it falls apart or so tight than it looks like your sister-in-law’s dreads (sorry, F, but it did). Then there are the mad spirals, the unfortunate inclusion of thorns from the fleece that create the Yarn of Pain, and the ones where you fail to work with the colour properly and produce yarn the colour of mud from iridescent roving. You can’t quite believe that you will get beyond this stage, and so the beginner books are fine. But pretty soon it all comes together and, unless you’re me and hurt your hand so badly that you need surgery, you are off into another world.

A world full of texture and form and interesting effects, from comparatively straightforward to more demanding ones.

Yes, they are demanding, especially on your coordination, and they’re often challenging, but there’s nothing wrong with that; you’ve got to push yourself. Some are amazingly beautiful, some are intriguing and some are so beautiful in themselves I’d not want to knit them up (I have a definite weakness for cocoons). Short of having an experienced and patient tutor sitting over your shoulder, I cannot imagine a better or more practical way of exploring the possibilities of fibre.

Oh, all right, I admit it. I’ve had a tentative go already, in defiance of sanity. Tentative. Nothing has worsened. OK?

A late photo addition, following a request. These are the cards, before I broke them up for use:

No idea how these could be handled in the Kindle edition, but maybe you wouldn’t need them in the same way? Intriguing – any kindle owners, let us know!

 

 

Happy St David’s Day – but even so…

and Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant Hapus, too.

Saint’s Day or not, there’s no excuse for some things. These, incidentally, are supposed to be for a Barbie-type doll. Looks more like Sindy to me (anyone?). Hmm:

Note the inability to grapple with knitted flags – well, if a thing’s worth doing… And I find the position of the dolls’ eyes, quite frankly, worrying. But then I always found dolls worryingly sinister (except for my Big Mary, Little Mary and Judith, who were perfect). Even if they’re knitted:

Hmm squared. Either the wee Scots lassie is wearing a nappy or she’s had an accident.

Have a lovely St David’s Day, and don’t forget to feed your local dragon. Any more of these patterns, and that could be me.

In praise of garter stitch

I never used to use garter stitch, or at least not since I was eight and had to knit a scarf for a brownie badge (a searing experience – and not just because I was a willing participant in a paramilitary organisation – which led to me putting down the needles for some thirteen years). I thought it was just, you know, too basic. Too boring. Knitting every row? Oh, purl-ease….

Ahem. Sorry about the pun. Anyway, I was wrong. It is basic, but it is not boring. And it is worthy of being so much more than an entry for a ‘golden hands’ (yuk) badge.

I have flirted with garter stitch in the past, but it was this cherry-red cardigan that began, sneakily, to change my mind. Of course it helped that it was in one of my favourite cuddlesome yarns, Rowan’s Kid Classic, and though a garment knitted in garter stitch can drop like a particularly heavy elephant thrown from a great height, this one didn’t. Gauge can vary with wear, too, but again this was stable. I put this, and my fondness for the cardi, down to the yarn – and almost dismissed garter stitch again.

It was a few months before I found myself using the stitch again in a giant, subtly ruffled, shawl made from handspun. Garter stitch, because it has more rows to the inch than stocking stitch, uses more yarn – a lot more yarn (there are usually twice as many rows as there are stitches in a 10cm garter stitch square). Yes, it can look good but, my lordy, it eats yarn. I even had to stop when knitting this:

and spin up some more. Admittedly it is enormous, but nonetheless, pheew. So I cast aside childish, brownie-badge knitting things. For a while.

And then I needed to knit something simple, something I could do without looking down every row or checking a pattern frequently, and I also wanted to use up some of my stash. I hit on a hitchhiker shawl  which would conveniently use a single ball of grey-green variegated wool I had (Lang Jawoll Magic – a single, but a thick sock yarn) lurking in the stash, and how beautifully the garter stitch worked with the colour changes.

I then, of course, had to knit another – but in a very different yarn to see what effect it would have.

This time the yarn was a more standard 4ply, and had been hand-dyed in much shorter bursts of colour, which gave a radically different effect.

I wasn’t sure at first, but now I love it. I’d originally intended this to go into stock, as it were, but it’s definitely for me. I love the colour changes, the way you see golds and reds and oranges and browns all interlocking. Then there are all the other advantages of garter stitch, seen at their best in shawls and scarves – in my opinion, that is, and with the exception of my vile childhood experiment. It’s completely reversible, of course. It lies flat. It’s got great elasticity lengthwise… when you want it to (and if you don’t, as in a garment, just bind the seams and face the edges). It seems to me that if you marry garter stitch with the perfect yarn – of course this is true of any stitch, mind you – you can get something wonderful.

It’s had its uses in the past, making the welts at the top of stockings as long ago as the 1500s (they’d stretch more to go around a thicker part of the leg, and would then be held up by garters) and was often used for the front edges of garments, to prevent them rolling. There are examples of this in the V&A,

such as this, allegedly made for the young Charles II (there’s no actual evidence of this), or this splendid stranded knitting, also seventeenth century (1600-25):

where the front openings are done in garter stitch so they lie flat.

And garter stitch has been an essential part of ‘traditional’ knitting for centuries, featuring in panels on fishing gansies, for instance, or making the centre of Shetland hap shawls. Mary Thomas even goes so far as to describe it as being ‘characteristic of Shetland knitting’ and it is certainly true that many fine lace shawls have a garter stitch base. And that comes down to its reversability and lying flat, I guess.

I’ve now got a load of projects that I want to knit in garter stitch, especially since I bought Sally Melville’s book The Knit Stitch. It’s a superficially simple book – no, damn it, it is simple and that’s an art in itself, but it is very effective and I have several things lined up from it. Unfortunately the same is not true of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knit One, Knit All – I find her garments’ construction ingenious but they don’t appeal to me personally. What is also interesting about that book is the fact that EZ floated the idea of a book based on garter stitch for ages, and nobody picked up on it. It was years before it saw the light of day. Maybe everyone made the same assumption I did? Or maybe you have to hit on that combination, the serendipitous alignment of pattern, stitch and yarn to get garter stitch to sing to you? Hm, that, and not be scarred for life by a huge scarf knitted at the age of nine. Yup (see above), that’s not a typo: it was started when I was eight, but I grew faster than it did.

Yummy.

To Wonderwool, or not to Wonderwool?

That is, indeed, the question.

I have a dilemma. Wonderwool Wales is wonderful. But sometimes it isn’t quite so wonderful, and I don’t know what to do about this year. I have to make up my mind soon, and I think I know which way I’m tending…

This is my dilemma in more detail, in the hope that spelling it out might help me determine what to do. In the autumn a few of us decided we’d like to go to both the Saturday and the Sunday this year, and a provisional booking has been made at a B&B convenient for the showground. We now need to pay up, which means I need to decide if I’m going – or if I’m not. And I honestly can’t make up my mind.

Firstly, the reasons why I might not go.

Although my health is now well on the way to full recovery, it’s still a bit fragile. I’m trying to put that to one side, though, as a lot can change between now and the end of April. Next, last year’s Wonderwool was problematic. It was freezing, and not just cold, but bone-chillingly, mind-numbingly, purse-clenchingly, freezing. I know that’s out of anybody’s control (and if it is down to anyone reading this, kindly ensure no repeats for this year, thank you), but the catering situation was dire. Cold weather equals a need for hot drinks, unfortunately, and the catering stands were utterly overwhelmed. A friend and I waited in shifts for coffee and a cake – we couldn’t face the long queues outside for hot food, and couldn’t get anywhere near more filling inside options – and it took us over 45 minutes. Frustrating and exasperating.

Then I feel that the show may be getting a little unbalanced. I’ve been for loads of years now (I missed the very first one, but that’s all). There really are a lot of indie dyers, and it seems to me that every year there are more and more. Now, many of my friends are indie dyers, and I dearly love a luxury single skein, but I’d like to see more variety, more stalls where you can buy enough for a garment without either breaking the bank or dealing with colour matching problems. There are a few, and they are almost always mobbed, so I’m evidently not the only one who feels this way.

Plus, of course, there’s the fact that I have the willpower of a maggot. My stash isn’t enormous by comparison to some, but nonetheless I’ve had stash problems (some yarn has been in my stash so long that it’s rotted, possibly due to conditions while all my stuff was in storage a few years ago), and really need do to knit up what I’ve got. I have just discovered some alpaca, for instance, that I bought at WW four years ago. How on earth can I justify going and possibly buying more? Given that I won’t be able to resist?

I mean, who could?

And there’s the expense factor in addition to the maggot-willpower factor: travel, the B&B, two days’ entry, plus all the general stuff I’ll just have to buy.

Positives? Well, the reverse side of all of the above. It will be life-affirming. It might not be cold. I might be able to get something to drink, something to eat and manage to find somewhere to sit down with my friends. There might be new and different stalls (and I don’t mean more people selling things which aren’t really remotely wooly or related to craft). I might be able to resist buying enough stash to soak up the Irish Sea, and I might win the lottery.

Then there’s the craic factor. The people, from the minute the doors open (which is when you stand the best chance of investigating things like which spinning wheel suits you the most).

People you haven’t seen for ages. People you’ve only spoken to on the phone or have only met in the virtual world. People you last saw two hours ago in the car but who have bought lots of exciting things since at stalls you somehow seem to have missed, and who can point you in their direction. People who can help with wooly problems, whether spinny, knitty or sheepy. People whose enthusiasm for what they do or sell carries right over and inspires you too.

There’s the rich variety of stalls (no, not those selling handbags). They can point you in all sorts of directions, make you consider – perhaps – more dyeing experiments, or working with different materials.

I suppose it’s the inspiration factor. Colour, colour, colour and more colour. Textures. Natural fleece colours. Alpaca in all its variants. Silk – and what silk. More unusual things like bamboo, hemp, milk protein. Buttons: contemporary, vintage, ceramic, bakelite, bone, pearl… Books, books current and books out of print; back issues of US magazines…

So:
Option 1: go, and stay over, and de’il tak the hindmost.
Option 2: give it a miss this year and come to it fresh in 2014…
and maybe, just maybe, there’s an
Option 3: go for one day, on the Sunday, with other friends who aren’t intending to stay over.

Help!