That time of year
My birthday yesterday was spent in London with a dreadfully early start to attend the first meeting of the re-formed Early Knitting Group (which is not limiting itself to any time period but will consider the entire history of knitting). The room was full of published authors and other erudite folk with a serious amount of knowledge between them. I consider myself a groupie as I have never done any original research, but just pick other people’s brains.
The morning was spent introducing ourselves. Though there were fewer than 30 of us there, this took a long time as everyone was asked to identity their particular interest and this sparked questions. It was a very informal gathering with a chair who banged his gavel when necessary. There were curators, university librarians, ex-knitwear designers, reenactors, costume makers and independent students. And after the introductions we had the opportunity to show things we had brought along. There was a knitted corset (commercial not hand knitted) yes complete with bones whose provenance unfortunately was not known, new knits from original mid 20th century patterns and pictures of items in museums. I took a mismatched pair of Tudor netherhose as I had failed to find a pair of either my blue or orange ones. The chair asked if my jumper has handknitted by me. Of course I was wearing one of my handspun, plant dyed cardigans, purely to show off to folk I expected would appreciate the work! Modest, well no. (pattern from Alice Starmore's Celtic Collection)
The three of us from Kentwell bought butties and ate on a bench in Hyde Park, aghast at the number of joggers on the main drag. When we returned we found an auction going on so I succumbed to two big cones of a murray colour yarn. After setting fire to some of it I know it is acrylic. The afternoon was business talk to work out what format the new group was taking. Hopefully there will be two meetings a year so that is something to look forward to!
The morning was spent introducing ourselves. Though there were fewer than 30 of us there, this took a long time as everyone was asked to identity their particular interest and this sparked questions. It was a very informal gathering with a chair who banged his gavel when necessary. There were curators, university librarians, ex-knitwear designers, reenactors, costume makers and independent students. And after the introductions we had the opportunity to show things we had brought along. There was a knitted corset (commercial not hand knitted) yes complete with bones whose provenance unfortunately was not known, new knits from original mid 20th century patterns and pictures of items in museums. I took a mismatched pair of Tudor netherhose as I had failed to find a pair of either my blue or orange ones. The chair asked if my jumper has handknitted by me. Of course I was wearing one of my handspun, plant dyed cardigans, purely to show off to folk I expected would appreciate the work! Modest, well no. (pattern from Alice Starmore's Celtic Collection)
The three of us from Kentwell bought butties and ate on a bench in Hyde Park, aghast at the number of joggers on the main drag. When we returned we found an auction going on so I succumbed to two big cones of a murray colour yarn. After setting fire to some of it I know it is acrylic. The afternoon was business talk to work out what format the new group was taking. Hopefully there will be two meetings a year so that is something to look forward to!
posted by Rachel @ 8:15 pm
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