Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Fat Tuesday

It has been an unexciting but fairly profitable day. My beloved cleaning woman and (to a lesser extent) I began clearing kitchen cupboards for the Great Excitement to come (when my new kitchen is installed). She was very firm about throwing away everything with a use-by date of 2016 or before. I managed to cling on to some unopened miso.

The soon-to-expire Ball Five has managed two more repeats of the eight-row pattern in the centre of the baby shawl, and will get me some way forward with the next one. The pattern doesn’t seem to be showing up very clearly – Amedro does it in st st; I’m doing the whole thing in garter. That may have some effect. But blocking works wonders with lace.

And today is Fruity Knitting day! It’s another good episode. We’ve had an interview with a Swedish expert in twinned knitting – where you knit with both ends of a ball of yarn, twisting them around each other stitch by stitch. I have heard of the procedure, and am not in the remotest degree tempted by it, but it’s always interesting to learn of another traditional technique. Is there a book?

The episode ends with an interview with a shepherdess from the north of England. The Fruities do an awfully good job of varying their interviews. I haven’t watched that bit yet, but it promises well.

Just at the moment the Mindful Chef recipes seem awfully fancy, and I long for a potato.

                   When you have nothing else to wear
                   But cloth of gold and satins rare,
                   For cloth of gold you cease to care –

                   Up goes the price of shoddy.

11 comments:

  1. Schoolhouse press and Amazon have twined knitting books. There's also a Craftsy class with Beth Brown-Reinsel.
    https://www.craftsy.com/knitting/classes/twined-knitting/40762
    I bought her pattern for twined mitts recently but I haven't attempted it yet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I believe it makes a dense hardwearing fabric, ideal for mittens. Like you I haven't been tempted to actually try it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9:24 PM

    I took Beth’s class on twined knitting a long time ago. I am glad I took it as she shared a lot of knitting history and was a wonderful teacher, but twined Knitting did not inspire me at all! As I told my daughter, “I’m glad I know how to do it, and now I know I never want to do it again!”

    Barbara M. In NH

    ReplyDelete
  4. I did a tiny sample of it - out of curiosity. There is no way I would want to attempt an entire item out of it. It was very firm - and I am an "average" knitter. It is also very slow - or perhaps the technique just made me even slower than I normally am. Still, it was interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous9:58 PM

    Ditto re twined knitting. Not my thing. However, now that you’ve got me on the subject of bobbles (aren’t you sorry?) there is a fabulous design by Cheryl Murray in the Noro Lace book using columns of bobbles to great affect on an otherwise simple (i.e. repetitive) shawl. There are a LOT of bobbles. If I ever attempted it I would make myself an expert on backwards knitting (not hard, just be sure to use the throwing method). Or maybe you could substitute a similar stitch. (Sorry, I just think it looks so cool in the solid red example and is teaching me to never-say-never in knitting.) Chloe

    ReplyDelete
  6. Have a potato then? I'm sure it's not compulsory to eat every dish on the allocated day, you could make a couple up to freeze for "emergency" days when you don't feel like cooking.

    ReplyDelete
  7. A simple bake potatoe dressed with cheese or a bit of salmon. A fabulous meal,

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have taught a class on Twined Knitting, and made some mittens and wristers. The product is wonderful, but the process is a bit fiddly. The end result is double weight, as in stranded colorwork, but more flexible, and there are no floats.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ivar Asplund, the Swedish knitter, whose blog is asplundknits.blogspot.com has a fondness for twined knitting. He has just started a sweater shown on his most recent blogpost. And in the photo shown of him carrying an armfull of yarn he is wearing a sweater done in twined knitting. If you scroll down a little you will see three smaller items which illustrate the beauty of the technique. Often it is done using S plied yarns.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Like you, I am fascinated with twined knitting but not particularly interested in trying it:). And also like you, I follow Fruity Knitting and am a big fan. Feel the same about Kammebornia (from Sweden with subtitles), The Gentle Knitter (a French Canadian former test knitter who has a full time job with a natural museum in Ontario, Canada I think and who has the most beautiful projects on the needle), and The Fat Squirrel Speaks from somewhere in the middle US (a very funny woman once you get on board with her pace of speech, LOL:)). Just thought I'd share:).

    ReplyDelete