Danish Nightshirts – Vivian Høxbro - Ep. 110 - Fruity Knitting Podcast

[Music] do [Music] welcome to fruity knitting i'm andrea and i'm andrew we hope you're having a wonderful christmas or holiday time and we're really happy to be releasing episode 110 so that you can sit back and enjoy watching it during this very special season and we do know that many people around the world are not able to celebrate in person with their extended family or friends we feel very lucky that we're able to spend christmas together so andrea and i and our daughter madeline but we do hope that wherever you are around the world that you still feel connected to your extended family and friends and we also hope that our program today brings you lots of comfort and joy so we're still running with the danish theme today and we're presenting our second feature interview with vivian herksburg so back in episode 109 we explored vivin's extensive contribution to domino or modular knitting and today we're going to learn all about the traditional danish night shirts this is a really fascinating topic because whereas shetland and other scandinavian countries have been able to preserve their knitting traditions and their feral patterns the danish shirt patterns were lost when the when people stopped wearing the garments and they were beautiful garments there were sweaters with very intricate patterning all over them they were only worn by women in the 18th and 19th century and nowadays most of those garments are just hidden away in museum archives because they're so old and fragile and they were almost completely forgotten about so vivienne who's danish herself wanted to change all of that and bring them back out into the world and so for three years she examined around 80 historical garments with the aim of writing a very comprehensive book on the topic and she did do that here it is so it's available in danish and in english and she not only documents the history of the night shirts but she also includes over 200 traditional pattern charts so modern knitters can now use them and design with them and just bring back this really great knitting tradition bring it back to life yeah it's it's a really fascinating interview and vivian is the perfect person to be speaking about it she is so enthusiastic so dedicated on this topic so that's coming up you might recall in episode 108 that andrea was dressed up in a stunning bridesmaid outfit in the traditional fenu style including the the beautiful headdress which was actually sewn into her hair well inferno every year there is a festival called fenika taga which celebrates the cultural heritage of the island and the costumes play a really central role in that today in the show we've got a segment where we're going to be looking at these costumes really closely how they were made um the role that they played and we've got two really fascinating guests it's a really fun and interesting segment so that's coming up i have to say i'm not keeping up with my knitting so i've got nothing to show myself but andrea has finished her uh paisley copter which you can see right here so she'll be showing you that she's also prepared a little uh tutorial on a really fun technique that she used in that so that's coming up and our daughter madeline is going to be joining us she's been working on her project so she will be giving you an update on that too uh before we get into the knitting first of all maybe i have to say again i'm sorry about my voice i'm going to get to the doctor next year in the new year i'm going to go to a doctor and see if we can do anything about this voice because it's not so good anyway we just have to bear with it i did want to give you a quick update on my health situation and if you're new to the show the the background there is that in early october i was diagnosed with a brain cancer um so brain tumor and yeah the situation now is things are kind of stable um i haven't got any major new symptoms and the symptoms that i have had so the the dizziness and the um balance problem um the i have a problem focusing my eyes um fatigue and appetite and those sort of things they're kind of stable they're kind of staying maybe up and down a little bit day to day but not changing majorly in any way so it's kind of good as far as that goes it has been about 10 weeks 10 or 11 weeks since i got the diagnosis which in some ways is a long time to be sick but in the context it's not that long um andrea and i are really seeing is very much a mental and emotional challenge and i think as time goes on we're really learning to be very assertive about confronting that challenge and really maintaining a positive attitude we have had some ups and downs it's definitely not not easy but we're sticking it out we are determined we're resolute and um i am i can always say i'm so grateful to have andrea with me to um to be here as i go through this we're really going through it together i'm incredibly grateful yeah so yeah yeah so we don't want to get too deep and personal on you but we do know that some of you really do want to know how we're going so we just thought we'd give you the quickest update i certainly um have gone through some pretty dark times when you do get a diagnosis like this it is very easy for a great dark cloud of of fear and doubt and panic to just descend on you and it can sometimes completely overwhelm you and that certainly has happened to me but i've been able to get myself in a better place now a place where i'm feeling way more hope and gratitude so i'm very happy about that one of the main things that's helped that to happen is just for me to consistently be anchoring my mind and my thoughts onto faith that is that's been really significant for me and it's funny because faith as a word or as a concept used to be sort of confusing to me or i didn't really understand it as a concept i didn't even really see a practical use for it in any way but i can truly say now that um faith is my lifeline so just to summarize in on our updates so we're just going to keep it short but we're going well and sort of emotionally and spiritually we're both we're in a good spot aren't we yeah yeah we're in a really good spot and we are completely grateful very very grateful for your ongoing support and your well wishes and your prayers so thank you very much so it's very exciting to be able to include bring in brag in this episode bring and brag is where we show off our finished objects and as you can see i'm wearing my finished paisley costa by cecil heryavik all finished so this garment it's got so many strange memories attached to it because of everything we've been going through so most of the time i just knitted it in the complete days without any concentration so there are quite a few mistakes sort of here and there i haven't done the pattern right and yeah but that's how life goes and i actually didn't get my heart wasn't in it when i was knitting it and i didn't get any pleasure out of it i have to make sure i have to make this clear that it's not because of the design it was just because of my emotional state but it wasn't really until i'd finished the design i'd wet blocked it and then i'd pinned it out to dry and just after a couple of days i walked past it in the in the living room here and i looked at it again with fresh eyes and i just got a lot more joy out of how radical the colors are and how they play together because it's it's pretty busy you've got the paisley patterning on the front you've got the checkered pattern on the sleeves in the back and then i've done another variation on the checkered pattern on my collar here but it's still elegant but yeah so just looking at it then i started to get a lot more joy from it and this this green this lime green really reminded me of the new life in a forest in springtime just those buds that just come up everywhere and how intensely bright and iridescent the green is yeah so this this jacket's a rebirth darls it's like us it's symbolizing rebirth and new life so i'm really happy with it okay so as you know i've done some minor modifications to it so i just want to go through one last time and just go through all of the changes that i've done on the jacket so just to remind you here's a picture of the original design and the obvious change that i've made was just to make mine a crop jacket that sits in my waist but i want you to look closely at the original and if you look at the paisley motifs on the front of the jacket and then around the cuffs on the sleeves you can see that they've been embroidered around the edges in pink yarn using a chain stitch and you'll also see that sequins have been sewn in the middle of all the little dark green flowers that are inside the paisley motifs there's also quite a lot of extra crochet that was done along the that's done along the button bands and sizzle's designs are only ever knitted in two colors but because she just loves to make her designs as colorful as possible she adds all the colors in at the end through embroidery and crochet i haven't done a lot of embroidery or crochet on my finished knitted garments before so that's actually why i picked this design in the first place just to get more experience to do that but when i finished knitting the garment i really loved the way it looked without any embroidery because i mean you have to admit that this lime green is a pretty radical color and then on top of that like i said you've got all of these busy patterns with the paisley and the checkered and then i've got the collar on here as well and you also have to admit that the bright pink and the cobalt blue is a radical contrast color to put together with the green isn't it yeah so but i still love the way it looks i think it looks really striking but i really like the white and i think it looks really groovy and i particularly because you've got the bright pink and the colbert blue creating such strong lines you can see that really on the back i'll take it off a minute and show you so here's the back of the of the jacket and i think it just looks really crisp and groovy with this bright pink and cobalt blue lines down here the eyes sort of drawn to these strong lines and i didn't want the embroidery to take away from that so that's why i haven't done it i did try it out i did the pink on the on the sleeves around these paisley motifs but i was right it took your eye away from these strong lines so i took it back out again but i wasn't i didn't want to completely give up on the idea of embroidery so i tried to embroider in around the edges in the same dark grain color because i thought okay i won't be adding any extra color in i'll just be giving it extra texture but it's funny it really did not look good when it's done when you do the chain stitch in the bright pink it's obvious what you're doing and it looks neat and looks good but when i did it in the dark green it just looked like really messy knitting as if i'd done a whole lot of mistakes so that came out as well and then i decided i wouldn't put sequence on it because in my mind when you've got all the sequins in there the chain stitch around the outside just kind of frames it in so i've just left mine plain but i think it's good now the collar is my addition the original doesn't have a collar so i want to talk about that now so here's a close-up picture of the collar and i wanted the collar to look like it's been made out of a different thicker fabric so i took the checkered pattern on the sleeves and knitted it in garter stitch and this is a really exciting thing to do because it's always surprising how different the pattern will turn out if you look closely at the lime green on the collar it's like there's two thin lines and then a column of thicker bumps followed again by two more thin lines so it looks completely different from the sleeves but all i did there was knit the same checkered pattern that's on the sleeves but instead of doing it in stocking stitch i did it in garter stitch so it was really exciting to see how that turned out and then i did a reverse double crochet stitch in dark green around the edge of the collar that's also known as crab stitch and it's just a great way to finish the edges so it just gives it a really neat crisp kind of scalloped finish so thistle does the front bands and the collar band all in one but because i added a collar to mine i had to do my front bands differently but i started off in the same way that she does them so the garment is knitted in the round so there's a stick going up the front so she starts off by knitting a steeped sandwich and that's what you can see here in this light green and on and she does this really well she does this by the inside color she makes a contrasting color and so this one here is it's bright pink and i love the way it just sort of flows down and joins into the lining on that um goes around the waistband so you start off with a steak sandwich and i've actually done that a few times as you know and i've also done a pretty in-depth tutorial on it so patrons you can go to the patreon site to see that tutorial but actually an easy way of finding it is going to go to fruityknitting.com and if you look on normal desktop browser towards the top left there's a whole lot of links for patrons that says that and there's one that says tutorial index so that takes it yeah so click there and then you'll see stick sandwich and you click on that and then you'll get directly fast to that tutorial okay so that's a fun thing to do and and when you do it it just gives the most tailored kind of crisp edge and i loved it so much i almost just stopped there because i just liked how sort of square it looked but i did want the the garment to be practical and winter and to be able to shut it up so i reluctantly continued and then i did in the bright pink i did two rows of double crochet and then a row of double crochet in the light purple and then again i did the crab stitch or the reverse double crochet stitch on the edge so my button bands don't overlap i'm not using buttons i'm using clasps here i just like the way those stripes of color sort of balanced like that so i didn't want them to overlap and these clasps i've used before i use them on my morningstar bridal jacket and i really like the way they work so i've used them here as well only thing is because i was in a daze i sewed this this part of the clasp on back the front so instead of the hook being out like that it's in like this which is a lot harder to use so i'm going to have to at some stage undo them all and redo it but so yeah so that's the button bands and i really love them you can see how it looks underneath there so you get a flash of this and you see more color it's great okay so there's just one more thing that i want to talk about or want to show you and that's a typical feature that sissel does in a lot of her designs and that's introduce extra color through vertical stripes so i've done a quick short uh a short tutorial for you on how i do that and that's coming up right now and then straight after that we're going to go to fair new again for dress-ups which is super fun which andrea loves so this design is the paisley copter by cecil heywick and sissel's designs only ever used two colors in a row which makes stranded knitting much easier but she likes to add lots of extra colors to the design by embroidering and crocheting onto the finished knitted fabric at the end and a typical feature of her designs is to have vertical stripes in contrast in colors and she's done that on this design here with this purple chain stitch that runs along the outside edge of the front panel this is super easy to do and i have to do it on the other side here to make it balanced so i'm going to show you how it's done so when you're knitting the fabric you need to knit a column of purl stitches you can see this column of knit stitches here in the dark green well to the left just in there is a column of purl stitches but pearl stitches always want to recede inside the fabric so that's why you can't see them so clearly but when i pull them apart like this you can see that the purl stitches give you a ladder with lots of little bumps and these are very easy to do the chain stitch on with a crochet hook so cecil recommends that you use a 2.75 millimeter crochet hook with this design i don't actually have that size so my hook is four millimeters and i'm just going to try to work my stitches a little bit tighter so what i want is i want my purple stitches that will sit next to these green stitches i want them to be the same size as the green stitches so i'll just use the green stitches as my guide so with my purple yarn i'm just going to do a slit knot and you just leave a fairly long tail so it's very easy to down in at the end and then i get my crochet needle and i put it through from the front of the fabric through to the back where i want to start the crochet chain and i put that slip knot on to my crochet hook and pull it tight and then i pull it back through to the front of the work like that now what i'm going to do is just put my crochet hook back through the material just one stitch higher so just over the top of one bump and just so that you can see what goes on the back i then wrap the yarn over the top of the crochet hook and pull that yarn through again and now i've got two loops on my crochet hook and i just pull that second loop through the first loop and that creates what looks like a knit stitch exactly the same as the green one that's next to it so that's how simple it is now just keep repeating that process going up one stitch at a time so again i put my knit crochet needle over the top of that next bump through to the back i wrap the yarn over the top of it pull the yarn back through it's a little bit tight i've got two loops on my needle on my crochet hook and then i pull that second loop through the first so i'm just repeating this process all the way up the column of purl stitches right until i get to the top [Music] so and now i've just done my last stitch so you pull the last stitch through just to make it a very large long loop and then you cut your yarn from behind and then i pull the tail through to the front and now i'm going to use the tapestry needle and i'm going to put the tail back through to the back again and finally just weave the tail end in along the purple stitches on the back of the fabric so there we are it's a super easy trick to get extra color into your knitting so i hope you have fun playing around with that new technique [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] every year on the second weekend in july a very special festival takes place here on the island of fenu and that's fairne kategan fernika tegan is a traditional event with locals who are known as fernica dress up in traditional costumes dance to traditional music and eat lots of traditional food and the fernica tegan association has a large collection of costumes which are lent out during the celebration and my two guests here kiss and klaus are responsible for looking after and repairing all of the costumes they've got a lot of expertise in this area and today they're going to show us and talk about the costumes and as you can see they've dressed me up in a costume which i'm thrilled about [Laughter] so kiss and klaus thank you so much for inviting us here thank you welcome so kiss can you start and just tell us a little bit more about the activities that take place during fenneka tagan yes we have the celebration of what what we say dane is the fenega day and these are going on from friday to to sunday and on the harbour front we have a very big tent set up for music and dance and some smaller tents for food for coffee drinking for sales or merchandise and in the middle of in nobu in the village hall there the women will gather to to get their borrowed dresses on and we also offer them help with the tying of the head and neck scarf and that will take us about four hours and then saturday evening in the same village hall we have our traditional dinner and a play then followed with a big bowl and that will go on until the wee hours of the night that sounds like a lot of fun it is say something about the dancing and and the music yeah we have a long music and dance tradition over here and we have two dances only two sun horning and the fennek and it's couple dances and it it's showing how the sailing ship is moving on the big ocean we have about 200 different pieces of music to accompany those two dances and that will go on the whole evening as i told you and it's very special the music is played in two for speed but the dance is going on in three-four speed that's very interesting and you said something about when you look from above that that it's all in a circle and it and the couples are dancing in waves yes because the dance is going around in a big circle and if you stand and look down you can see the circle move like this like a big wave but also if you only see one couple dance they are also doing like this very beautiful really beautiful and you get you get i would say high yeah because you do that the whole night turning around yeah well the costumes are very much part of venue's living cultural heritage and it really must be such a highlight to see a couple of hundred people and children all dressed up beautifully together so tell us a little bit more about the costumes now fennica dayne owns about 200 costumes and we lent out the 130 of these and they have to be fitted and adjusted to the fennica days so we have a lot to do what you will see now is klaus he is our tailor and he is making a quite new jacket we are still sewing new jackets what he is doing now is the edge from the arm coming down and here you will see the sleeve it is like a bended arm so you can use it whenever you are working this is for a finer finer dress but bend it it has to be this is a jacket for a lady and it's a jacket for a lifetime and the shape you can see on the back is there the whole life but the piece of material to go onto the front is too big and then you will make a pleat to fit her and if you should get pregnant or fatter you can take it out again the material quite new is made of silk but in the front and on the sleeves you will see those ribbons they are very old about 200 years old so we still are making new jackets and use them a lot [Music] so now you're going to see some different types of the fan and woman's costume she was wearing due her life first for for the daily work you will find a cotton fan of woman dressed in cotton mayan and this is not just for for daily work at home this is for going out to the beach for digging for worms for fishing and this is a very special costume on the head you can see a mask this is to protection for wind and sun and sand coming into your face and here you will see her red skirt this is for harvesting it it was really a day for everything was fine the sun was shining and everybody was harvesting so fine colors your skirt are red and a white piece in on the front and lift lift your arm now you when you're harvesting you have to bend over and not to get dirty you have a ribbon tied around you so you can lift up your skirt and apron so it will not get dirty in the hand as you can see we have the little ask the little bag for lunch and for everything else this dress is for a sunday afternoon at home little finer as a the daily dress in cotton this is also cotton but made finer there is amber on the front and on the back you can see the skirt now it's green with a green ribbon down below so now it's more specific i think we should take the little girl first come on this is ronya she is wearing a little girl's dress made in cotton and as you can see she is not wearing the scarves until you start the the school age school of age you you will start wearing the scarves but until then you are wearing a hat it's called a hedeline and turn around please look the little girl has a red skirt the little girl are wearing a red skirt mommy tuck and this is for the wedding festivities this is the bride's maid she is wearing the very special headpiece and if you turn around we can see on the back side and turn your head a little bit back over bend yes like this now you can see the mirror that means her boyfriend she has to have a look at her boyfriend those days and also on the back there will be the small pearls to keep away spirits bad spirits and the bridesmaid she is wearing her finest jacket with a white apron made in pleasey and she also wears a green skirt a finest green skirt thank you beautiful bender she is going to the wedding she is wearing her finest dress made of silk the the apron is made of silk and very fine wool for the jacket on the head she is wearing silk scarves her husband the sailor he brought the materials home as a materials as well as the scarves from far away and turn around and here you will see the green fine green skirt with a green ribbon and and today we are wearing silver buttons and on the lining you will have the tipper she got from her wedding day and what is a fan of woman what what does he have under all this on the first you will see the green skirt then you will have the white skirt and after that the trouser and sometimes you even have two to three more big skirt under the men over here they were sailors they sailed the seven seas so they were more internationally dressed um as a captain win ashore he shoot negotiating for cargo shipments he would get dressed in his black suit trouser half long jacket white shirt and west so he could grow as your as a fine man and what is kiss wearing this is really more set because this dress i'm wearing first of all some of the parts are from my wedding day this is my wedding jacket underneath i have another jacket this is to be used as a widow's jacket on as a skirt i have my bright skirt and this could also be used for widow skirt and today i'm wearing a black apron and as you can see this jacket is a little more different as we use it up here in norway this is a jacket from sonoho that's why it's open in the front and i'm not wearing a belt buckle i'm wearing a long piece of material with tipper on my head i have the head from my confirmation when i put these things together i can baptize i can go to church caring a child for baptizing and then i can also when the female woman passes i'm going to be buried in it so it is [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] welcome back i have to say i have really fond memories of our time on fenu and particularly recording that segment we were there for quite a long time during the day a lot of different people different parts and both kiss and kels are really lovely and both fascinating people yeah you know kiss has traveled the seven seasons yeah yeah she worked on i think she worked on cargo ships so and she's a harbour master too isn't she okay i think she is sure yeah but yeah fascinating people really really lovely so we had a great time there um the fenu knitting festival is on it september every year so if you ever get a chance to go there too uh it was a great experience for us even though it was actually cancelled when we when we still had a great time yeah and i'm sure you'll see kiss and klaus and all of their friends out on the streets in their costumes they don't miss an occasion to get dressed up so make sure you go and say hello and i'm sure they'd be happy to meet you yeah and you can see i've got changed i'm wearing my morning star bridal jacket which is a design by crystal safer and this was inspired by the traditional jackets that were worn in the southern part of fairness so around sonderhood so it's similar to the to the jacket that kiss was wearing herself that had an opening here so i i love that idea of the opening but i exaggerated my opening so it's a lot wider and mine's ended up looking like a wine glass doesn't it a perfect wine glass so i love this this jacket it's definitely one of my favorite and and as kiss would say it's my finest jacket that's right yeah so i hope you enjoyed that segment and i think madeline's going to join us now so i mean i have to give up my spot you have to give up your spot temporarily you can come back thank you so madeline's here she's going to tell us about her project hello what have you been knitting well i've been working on a design by kim hargraves called inviting and you can find it in her book covert capsule collection number seven it uses rowan's brush fleece which is a blend of wool and alpaca you can see it here it's extremely soft and very very light and fluffy so it'll be a very comfortable jumper when i finish with it and the design itself is very simple so it's an easy knit and i actually said this last episode that was one of the reasons that i actually picked it in the first place because well in the past i have done more complicated designs but mom's always been there she's explained every single step of the way and whenever i messed up she would help me but now she's a bit too busy because she's driving dad around to different appointments and of course you also have your own work to do um so we decided i should be a big girl and figure things out on my own it's a good way of learning yes it is you'll learn pretty fast so hold up what you've done that's the back right up to the shoulders so it's very simple and it's just going to sit in your waist yeah and this is the front a little bit past the under arms yeah that's cool so have you been going with it because i haven't helped you at all yeah well apart from one time you gave me a little tip because overall i went pretty well um but there was one part where i was supposed to increase the number of stitches and i did that by making one stitch i don't know how you can make one yeah you pick up the bar that runs between the stitches and then you're supposed to through the back loop but i needed through the front loop and i did that a few times so when i looked at my knitting i just had several fairly significant holes so i had to unravel that i didn't understand how that happened mum told me to knit through the back though yeah it's because knitting through the back loop will twist the stitch and tighten it up so there won't be a hole there yeah yeah i didn't know that but it is gorgeous wall you're going to look like a bunny rabbit in it yeah yeah and it's been fun to knit and because it's such a neutral color white um and it's such a simple design it'll be a very versatile and useful addition to my very colorful closet yeah so i'm glad i'm knitting it but every everybody's probably wondering what you're wearing right now so this is the luggage by marie wallen yeah which looks stunning yeah yeah so this is a fair old design um and i do miss knitting pharah because it's just a bit more challenging it's not it's a bit more difficult and you get to work with all these different colors and and have these lovely patterns uh come up yeah but it's fun isn't it so this is the the garment you started before the bressa and you stopped it why did you stop it again um because i messed up i made a mistake and i didn't understand what i'd done wrong i ended up having i i'd knitted up to here roughly i was supposed to start because i was supposed to start the ferrule on both sleeves but one of the sleeves had a higher stitch count than the other and also it was longer than the other and i couldn't understand how that happened um mum was too busy like i explained before to help me so we just said okay we'll put it aside and once i've finished the inviting i'm going to pick it up again but in the meantime since i finished my paisley jacket i thought i'd figure out what the problem was and get it going so i've i've figured it out they're both even now this it's amazing because the body and the sleeves it's actually knitted it looks machine knit because it's knitted on a 2.25 millimeter needle so it's very very fine and it really does it's so fine isn't it it's amazing and then i just did the fair island both sleeves and i've just done the row that joins it together and that's a real nuisance because there's often things are wrong and i've done something wrong here too because the pattern hasn't hasn't sorted itself out right so i need to know if i've done if i've got too many stitches in the wrong area or i've done the first row of patterning wrong but this is kind of tedious so i thought i'll just set you up so it's all perfect and then you can have fun doing the top half of the year i have to keep an eye on her because i actually thought i'd do this part myself and mom likes to take over projects sometimes but she's promised i get to do the rest of the jumper yes i do take over people's knitting okay but it's going to look gorgeous isn't it yes absolutely it's going to be really great yeah cool okay so actually in australia my younger sister who is 14 years younger than me fiona that family her she and her husband and her two little kids their start because of the lockdown probably they've started to binge watch fruity knitting yeah haven't known yes and um the eldest so the girls are my cousins of course and the eldest one is seven simba she's actually been inspired to start knitting herself yeah she's really keen yeah so she wants her first project to be a poncho and my aunt fiona so my sister has also been looking at some kim hargraves designs we'll see whether she'll pick one of those yeah but we can't wait to see what they get started with so my i've got two sisters i've got an elder sister who's two years older and fiona who's 14 years younger so my elder sister and i we grew up and we did a lot of knitting and crafts because my grandmother was still active she was in her 70s and she taught us a lot and then when my younger sister came through my grandmother was in her 90s so she had less energy and i think fiona missed out on a lot of the crafting that we enjoyed so she hasn't done a lot of knitting but she's really inspired to now so she's actually going to start on a king kim hargraves pattern this pattern here which is one that i plan to knit myself so we might uh knit along in tandem but anyway we want to do a special shout out to simba because it's so cool she's seven years old she goes to a steiner school yeah um in german and germans might know the steiner school better as the valdosta yeah yeah but they do a lot of crafting and gardening at the steiner school and fiona i think is having a ball doing that with her two little girls so this is a special shout out to simba we thought she'd love to see herself on the big screen on television so here she is sitting on the couch with her mum fiona knitting her very first project and her knitting looks really neat so well done simba that's fantastic we're so excited and we're going to really look out for your progress on on your poncho yeah good on you she's even joined our ravelry group yeah so simba you have to post photos of your little poncho and we'll be rooting for you yeah actually they've been sending us photos of their house in in byron bay in australia and it's a typical open plan big australian house with lots of light pouring in and we've just been thinking how beautiful it looks and how we'd love to be there soaking up the sun yeah especially dad soaking up some vitamin d yes well we should we should call dirt back again yeah so i'm back i just wanted to mention really quickly we put on live events for our chaplain patrons or particularly for our shetland patrons we've had a couple of really good ones just recently um one was with marie wallen and then we had another a couple of weeks later with clara parks both really well attended which was great um these are open it's a live session question and answer session with the guests where our chaplains can attend online we also make an audio recording of those sessions and andrea edits that out and we make that available as an audio podcast and that audio podcast is available to our shetland patrons but also to our marinas i think we've got 43 episodes of the audio podcast out now they're a really great resource um because it is a question and answer session it's different to what we do in the youtube interview kind of different nature of stuff so there's often really good information in there so if you're a mourinho or a shetland patron make sure you check them out if you go to fruityknitting.com again there are these links at the top left click links for patrons that says and there's one that says audio podcast index if you click on that you'll see a list of all of the episodes by the name of the guest so you can pick out whatever guests you're particularly interested in and have a listen they are really good there's a lot of extra information technical information comes out in those audio podcasts so it's a definite resource that you want to make a lot of use of and we just want to remind our patrons that that's their the the shelling and mourinho patrons because we are trying to put out content whenever it is at all possible but we haven't been able to work the way we used to work because of andrew's health condition but um we also want to say now that marie wallen who is one of my all-time favorite designers she's always been up there as one of my favorites she reached out to us because she wanted to help us and since our patrons provide us with a stable income which we so appreciate right now marie is offering fruity knitting patrons a very generous 50 discount of all her ravelry patterns for the month of december so when this comes out there's still a few more days in december for you to make use of that that generous offer and we are so grateful for marie to do for doing this for us now likewise carol sunday also reached out to us to help us and we featured carol sunday in our new releases segment back in episode 65 and carol is a very experienced designer with a prolific output of very beautiful and elegant designs and she also has her own yarn range which is humanely sourced and expertly spun in italy they're very very beautiful yarns so carol also wanted to support us during this difficult time and for the complete month of january carol is offering a 30 discount of all her patents in her ravelry store and a 10 discount of all her yarn and kits from her webshop so patrons will find the full details of both these discounts on our patreon page so thank you so much to both carol and marie i did want to say thank you once again for all of the different support that we've been receiving over the last month now messages um comments on the youtube channel or are on instagram so many things also things like designers contributing their profits for some period of time obviously very generous i'm really very much appreciated again we have to say we're not able to respond to all the messages or the contacts that we get please we can only ask you to understand that um we've got a lot to channel at the moment so yeah um but we really do appreciate and we i think we managed to read everything that comes in so yeah we really very much appreciate that and just to go over it very quickly once again um if you enjoy the show and we hope you do please support the production of the show by becoming a patron that is our regular income it's what we depend on so you can do that by going to patreon.com fruity knitting and if you'd like to make a one-off donation towards our health expenses then you can do that by going to paypal dot me fruity knitting both of those links will be in the description below the video or you can find them at fruityknitting.com and we really appreciate all of the support it's been very very generous it really makes a huge difference yes thank you so it's been a privilege for us to spend some time with you again we hope you had a what have or had depending on where this comes out a wonderful christmas and a really happy new year and coming up now is the interview with vivian which you'll love and we hope to see you very soon so bye [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] welcome to fruity knitting i'm here again with the danish knitwear designer teacher and author vivian herksburg in our last interview together we covered vivian's career in general and her extensive contribution to domino knitting in today's interview we're going to learn about the traditional danish night shirts and vivian's book traditional danish sweaters was published in 2019 and it's available in both danish and english and i think it's a great book apart from covering the history of the danish night shirts it has over 200 traditional stitch patterns there's 10 different sweater designs and what's really fun there's instructions on how to design your own traditional danish sweater i'm really interested in this topic so i'm thrilled that you're joining us again to share your research and your knowledge on the subject so thank you thank you very much chance too good now i would love you to start with a little bit of history on knitting in denmark so i have danish ancestry and when i first came to denmark one of my aunts told me that knitting was actually outlawed here in denmark for a period during the 16th century and i also read uh the story i read somewhere the story about queen sophie who would row herself out to her own private island so that she could knit in secret now i'm pretty sure it's a fanciful version of history but you do have ancestors who knitted and worked in the profession so perhaps you can also use their story to illustrate some danish knitting history yeah well it is it's not true question iv were desperate in need for money because he needed to he was in war and he wanted to build beautiful buildings that you can see the day today in copenhagen so what he did was he um he he sort of he makes up made some uh what they call it um restrictions and in science 1639 and in order to to reduce the import of luxury goods and some of the luxury goods were this like this the beautiful silk natures that the the rich people imported and they were almost their most expensive garment at all and it was knitted perfectly in silk and with gold and silver embroidery this is a danish though but it is in a norwegian museum in oslo and um the other story that you are referring to is rose tremaine and her book um and of course she's an author she can tell a story and she doesn't need to be true yeah but the queen was expecting christian the fourth so of course he had hadn't forbidden anything by then and and so there's another thing in it that he wrote the restrictions in german and he said that stricken is forbidden and stricken is a german word and it means the act of knitting and the actual needed items yeah and it wasn't the act of knitting that was written like it was importing the balance so that's that's how he was and he was restricting imports so that his own population could have an income yeah and he even uh established an orphanage for children for boys where they could learn how to knit for a living so he didn't forbid knitting yeah it's a yeah it's a lie and you've got ancestors who knitted and yeah well everybody knitted at that time but not not as there is a um what do you call it for living but in a certain area of jutland where there was only there were only heather and it was a poor the sorry was really bad but the only thing they could they could have was sheep so they started knitting and in 1939 1839 there was an author who was asked to travel around and see how it was and he figured out that 40 000 people would have knitting as their full-time job and it was children and women and men and elderly people everybody and 40 000 people is as many as in the medium large city of denmark so it was quite a lot and not very far from there my great-grandfather and great-grandmother lived in a tiny little house and he was i don't know what the name is in in english but he was selling woolen goods he would walk a long way from the middle of jotlin all the way around the island of feunen and i don't know if you know it but denmark is a country of islands so he walked a long long way and you know how the wrong way it is to sell his goods and um because it was a hard life a terrible life for him and he died very quite young he did and my cousin and i we we did this wrote this book about him and his terrible life um based on his letters to his wife 15 years of letters to his wife which was really interesting i wouldn't be able to read them though but my cousin could we have these books for our great great grandchildren so that they can see and remember that there was our ancestors work very hard i think it's a good idea to be reminded of that that's true okay now the method of knitting actually uh in denmark changed over time so i think there was three different ways that knitters would hold the yarn and the needles so can you just quickly show those three different ways yeah i'm sure knitters will recommend them and then say what the advantages of each of them are and why you think it has actually changed over time i'll show i'll tell you about uh isla sundt it's he's a vicar and he was traveling all over norway to study craft in norway in the 18 middle of 1800 and he went to vicarage and he saw that that the vicar's wife she would knit what i would say the english way i don't know i'm not very good at it though but you know growing like this constantly keeping going and his uh the peasants the the what we call them the those who helped in the kitchen yeah they were peasants they would into need stitch one throw knit one stitch and then cross it yeah yeah and the biggest daughters they would knit what we call the continental way with the yarn and the left hand yes and he he realized that the continental way was the fastest way and as he went all over norway he told people do it in this way because it's faster in that case you can earn more money but in denmark in when our night shirts were needed they were needed the old way yeah or maybe the english way i don't know but not the continental yeah so many knitters won't have heard about the traditional danish night shirts so can you describe what they looked like and say who wore them and in what historical period they were worn yeah they were one after when you saw the the silk night shirt from the from 15 1600 and then what happened is of course that that the young women the peasant women they saw the beautiful silk shirts and they wanted to make their own and of course they couldn't use silk so they used the water from their own sheep and they needed these beautiful sweaters and they they were short at least after 1810 they became short so if we find a longer one we know it was from 1700 and they are very tight very small today if we look at them they look like children's sweaters but they were smaller at that time the peasant was they were smaller they didn't get the same food as we did today they were knitted very tightly you saw the peasant way of knitting and they knitted them in white and then afterwards they were died and right in this city this little town there were four die houses in the middle of 1800 but if they wanted it red which was the most beautiful color they had to dye them in copenhagen okay so what other colors would they have dyed them in uh green okay red some of the blue some of them black mostly the elderly people had black and they were all knitted in beautiful patterns some of them not so many patterns but most of them really many sophisticated patterns and i find it really strange that they needed all those patterns and then they dyed them and then this is the only thing you can see of a faster woman from this island fausta is my island and on this island this is the faster woman and this is the only thing you can see in the night shirt so she wears it underneath the vest and then you only see the top of the sleeve she would only have a little a little linen thing underneath okay now it's called a night shirt it translates to night shirt from danish the original danish word is how do you say it no nato yeah natural meanings in that night shirt yeah yeah so but they weren't just worn at night because there wasn't a big differentiation they didn't have pajamas in other words no there weren't any night shirts yeah they had wore it all day long and all night long and of course the houses were cold it wasn't even in summer it was cold in the houses so they would wear them all day long and um yeah and it was only a garment for for women only for women yes yeah so that's different from other traditions yeah the fact that at the end of 1800 it stopped and then the fashion was ready where close and for those of them who could who could afford it they would buy radio wear clothes and and the period of the night shirt were over and in recent times the danish night shirt isn't well known so how did you first discover it and what led you to write a book on it well i have always been interested in in knitting history and of course when my cousin and i wrote the book our my interests were more i was more interested and i saw these poor little books with beautiful books and it had all it needed in it but these are the books we had about the danish night shirt and when i saw when i saw the books from about fairies uh norwegian shetland all those beautiful knitting traditional knitting books i thought we needed a book i wanted a book for the danes to be proud of that was my goal yeah can i show the danish book yes okay so here's the danish book that's my my grand granddaughter on the front but i just wanted a really beautiful really beautiful book yeah to bring it to wider attention now what was your process you told me that you went to a museum that had these night shirts and you studied them tell us a little bit about that yeah actually on these islands we have the largest collection of natures in denmark i think we will there be like 130 in the whole then country of denmark but here we have 60 of them i don't know why but that's the fact so when we moved to here to this island i asked the museum if it was possible for me to study them and and i was and they said yes and i was i sat at the museum every thursday for more than a year and studied one night shirt at the time so i looked at it i measured it i draw it i draw every little because it's hard to see because they were so felted yeah so i draw them and i charted all the patterns i wanted all the patterns to be in the book they're all there and i want the danes to be proud of their ancestors and their what they could do and especially i need to tell you especially on these islands they knit the the traveling stitch lots of lots of really really difficult patterns and when i teach it today i realized that it's really really hard to do and this is an example of that yeah so the traveling it's like a one stitch cable so let's talk now about how the night shirts were constructed and the different or the special techniques knitting techniques that we used yes well i've used two local garments and i'll share with you show you this first this is from austral very nearby here so it's from my island and they will they would begin by casting on the german twisted castle and then they would knit one row of twine knitting in order to get it strong yeah okay so twine knitting for uh non-scandinavians because scandinavians know twined knitting quite well it's just when you're twisting you work with two strands and you twist the the the yarn threads in between each stitch yes yeah exactly and they then there they would knit this ribbing and the the front and the back are knitted flat and then when the ribbing is is done they would um they would knit in the round so they had to join them and some of them unraveled here but this lady she this woman she figured that if she would knit the stitches few stitches together here it would be stronger and then they would knit um in the stockinette stitch in the rounds with six eight double pointed needles and when they're almost at the under arm right before the armhole start patterning and that's where the complicated look at this traveling stitch patterns begin and i don't know if you know it but it's really hard when you when you knit traveling stitches on the wrong side where you can't see anything but they could do it so this was knitted flat then exactly yeah yeah and that's another special things issue for this island when they are at the neckline they bind off and the oldest of them has has the seam here the shoulder seam here but this woman has figured that she wanted to make the nice shape here and then she stopped here and now we're going to the sleeve and they'll start again with a german twisted and then twined knitting and here is a special sleeve pad with an edge pattern or hem pattern and then the sleeve here is very short some of them are longer but most of them are short and they have this cross and star pattern at this at the sleeve and of course they're increased but they would increase integrated in the pattern so not like we do with sort of a seam but they would integrate it in the pattern and again knitted in the rounds and then so the pattern motifs like a star pattern would just gradually get bigger exactly yeah you can see the long sleeves you you get this will get very easily get bigger what you do is you have one star on one needle cross on one star on one and a cross on one and when you finish one star you in institut what you've got increased two stitches on every needle here we have a little sort of triangle so you just continue it with a triangle as a gossip yeah and of course when i design i know exactly how wide this is going to be because i i can calculate it on the computer but they did they couldn't do that so they would just sew in the sleeve and then they'll continue until it fitted okay at least i think that's what that's a reason why so they don't know how wide it's going to be here on the sleeve so they stop here they sew it in and then they continue knitting the back piece fixing around to fit it yeah so that's why the sleeve seam is not on the top of the shoulders but towards the front and the sleeve seam is that you turn inside out and then what you call it yes we need a binder yes that's it yeah yeah which only a few are not knitted together which i also find quite bright yeah so that's beautiful it is okay now this garment is a replica of an original historical garment isn't it island the janus figure yeah and that's the reason why it's bigger because it is a very tiny little one the original original yeah okay now this one has got some uh ribbon around the neck yeah this one is also a replica isn't it it is oh almost almost yeah again it started with the twisted german and the twine kneeling yeah and then the hem is different on this island they had all sorts of different hems and then there's there would always be a vertical um border border and it started with a twisted uh one twine knitting and it ended up with a twine knitted knitting and then all over uh you have the the what you call it um star cross i call it cross and star pack okay and this is a very typical cross and star pattern but of course they did all all sorts of style cross star patterns and another thing about this is that i love the little gossip here this is a little gossip and you see this is the waist and that's the reason why i can see that this was from before 1810 so maybe it's even it it's a copy of a 1700 sweater and then that's because it goes lower than the weight lower than the waist yeah otherwise it would have began here it would just end at the belly button so to speak okay and then you see the nice it started with what we call a mustache yeah and then it turned into another pattern it needs to be another pattern and yeah i really find it beautiful so this is just the way to do the shaping to make it wider yeah yeah it's very beautiful and the sleeve well i i need to tell about this silk ribbon many of them has silk ribbons and of course they were very expensive so not all of them had the city women and they would would typically be something that you'd get as a gift from your fiance so and i know when i bought it it was quite expensive so this is early lingerie [Laughter] and the sleeves this is not a copy because i i hadn't figured out how to increase it's inside okay so i did it differently and here again you have the the beginning is is on all the others and then you have a little zigzag border like the half of it and a little pattern all like smaller than this it's very very nicely done very design is beautiful now i can see on this one and you have done some replicas of a few different designs again you've got some form of checkered pattern yeah along the border was that typical to put the check in this is from sealant okay this is from sealand from korea south just south of copenhagen yeah this one is from my island here and it was so strange i had never seen anything like it look at the pattern here with the sleek little stairs oh look at that that's beautiful and isn't that beautiful it is and look at the stars they are longer this this designer i call her designer must have been really really bright and see the cross and star pattern is completely different from all the others and even under the sleeve she has a little a little pattern here and then this little border that goes all the way up and sort of i don't know how to say it but it it finished the design for me yeah yeah and it was you can't it was sewn so that you couldn't see it okay so grafted yeah it looks exactly looked exactly like it was knitted all the way all the way up yeah and did she also do this no you did that there are no uh no edgings at the neckline on the old sweaters okay so i did that in order to get it well useful and on this one i did a little um crab stitch what you call it moss stitch oh no yeah crochet fingers crab stitch whatever but i didn't i finished it now what looks to be typical on all of the designs is this split hem exactly exactly you see that all over the country but this was had a very beautiful way of putting it together i think only two stitches are knitted together well it's been just so great to see the different examples of them and and to see how they're made and they are really different from other scandinavian sweaters they really are quite unique in their own aren't they yeah for me it's been like in heaven to to study all the sweaters through denmark and the first time i remember the first time i opened the box and there was all the beautiful sweaters it's just like a message from i mean from the history and i almost cried and so it has been a blessing for me to work with the sweaters yeah okay now we've got to talk about star motives because star motives were the most popular motiva or pattern to be used on night shirts and you did write in your book that out of the 87 historical garments that you examined 54 of them had star patterns so what did stars represent for danes during that historical period and can you show us some different star patterns and explain how they've been knitted yeah we all know about um the star that led the three wise men to to mary and jesus and of course that is a religious meaning but the passage in denmark in the winter time it was really really dark and if you look up at the sky you see these bright stars on the sky and they they thought they were holes in heaven right up to paradise so of course it's it's a protecting symbol and i saw it on almost every sweater sometimes on the sleeves and sometimes on the front but mostly on the sleeves and they all most of them have have stars and of course to write a book like that i have had to make a tons of sample swatches many of them are here this is a decoration i made for an exhibition and some of them are here and if you look at this little star that is what i'll call the basic star and that's what you see most it's uh there are um eight legs in the star and and it's separated with a twined twisted stitch and here it's it looks when you just look at it it looks the same but it is a little different so this woman has just made it a little bit of difference in it yeah she's put in extra sort of lines here this way instead of this way yeah so but and this and actually there are only one of them on that sweater i don't know why and then this one is also a simple one with eight legs and mustache in the middle and if you look at it if you draw this chart it it'll be completely square but when you knit it it becomes flat because of the gauge and this one is from it's a sweater from a tiny little island called femu and it's she made it longer so that when it's knitted it's sort of squared and how did you figure that out i i just don't get it and here's another one where you have the traveling stitch pattern it's a very nicely designed and look at this how beautiful it is yeah and and this one again and the twisted stitches and this one well this is just this this is just absolutely fantastic it is very fantastic it doesn't look like a pineapple or something yeah exactly you've got the she's really sort of spread spread them out so you've got the the four legs here and four legs there and then and that was on sleeves and it was so felted because they felt because they they are used so much that i couldn't see really but but i could photograph it and push it up on the computer and see wow what is that so it's it's really special so in your book you have a section giving knitter's advice on how to design their own traditional danish sweater which sounds like a lot of fun and you've got as i said over 200 different uh patterns including the the border patterns and all of the chat the star charts there that people can combine and put together so can you give us an overview of the process of doing that and then share one or two more detailed tips for knitters to get a really successful result because everybody can design it's not only for designers and just look at the old sweaters and see that everybody could design everyone had to design yeah hundreds hundreds of years ago of course you can design too my recommendation would be find a sweater that really fits you and that you like to wear put it on the table and measure it and then then draw a schematic and put your measurements on the schematic so that you have the basic ready and then go to the get some yarn and choose the yarn you want to to use and if you want to make knit and pearl patterns make sure you have yarns that shows it really nicely like this you can easily see the patterns here and then you need to figure out your gauge if your basic pattern will be stocking stitch then that will be your your basic gauge and then make sample swatches choose in the book choose in the book some of the patterns you want to play with and knit sample swatches with it and you've got sections of whole sections of border patterns and and stars exactly there are there it's organized like star patterns or vertical patterns or horizontal and border patterns and all that and i'll i recommend that you look closely into the many of the patterns let's see some of them i'll show you later some of the border patterns are very when you look at them they're nice on the right side if you turn them on you'll see they're even more beautiful on the wrong side so make sure you just use all the fantasy you have and play with it i want everybody to make their own sweater and use the star patterns in a modern way so i gave my knitting group the instructions of how to do your own sweater and i gave them all the patterns and i asked them if they would like to make their own star sweater and some of them did this is the one annie made and it's very nice i like that a lot she has so many design elements nice border the bottom hem here is with two little cable twisted cable pattern and then she made the the horizontal border the zigzag and then she she connected the the borders here and then continued upwards um and it's really really nicely done it's very fine and beautiful and she's continued this twisted cable all the way up yeah so she ordered then she made made it all in in vertical patterns and different styles she wanted to make different styles instead of just the same star and for instance this star is a funny star because one of two of the legs are just turned upside down so it looks a little sad it does and on the back because she got this even one more star yeah a little one yeah and then the sleeves uh sort of very nice not very very simple but very nice and instead of the three needle bind off on the wrong side she did it on the right side and that's really nice so that's annie's sweater that's a very very successful beautiful elegant it is she's done that really well okay this is a jacket it's actually a replica except for the opening because the wrapping pad was not opened but it was not born with an opening it was cut through and then so but this is born with an opening you can steal from the patterns in the book there are 10 sweaters well nine sweaters and one shawl in the book and some of them are replicas and some new designs but you can steal the ideas and it's a good way for someone who's less confident to start to take a pattern that they like and then just swap out one or two motives for example for instance i saw this one when i gave my last talk and she didn't want to have the star pattern on the sleeves so she just made it very simple and with stuck in that stitch on the sleeves and it was really really nice so you can you can make your own decisions now this one is really fanciful and looks very modern it's a modern take on the traditional sweater and this is your design it's almost like a crazy quilt in knitting but it's my design and i played with the patterns and just look at this this was the right side of the original pattern and then when i turned it around it's different and i like that better and here this is just a little bit three rows of reverse garter i'll put it up a little bit there yeah and uh and then i have this vertical little vertical patterns and the vertical um twisted it looks like a spider but it's sort of a it's a traveling stitch pattern a little complicated though and i liked this little pattern here on the side goes all the way through the sleeves and make it very movable to wear and the middle here the center part of the front and the back and the sleeves are the same cross cross and star pattern and afterwards i've embroidered and what do you call the stitches uh duplicate stitch duplicate stitches yeah just not everybody just some of them just random yeah bit of color and i made the edge uh double because well the edge i always like it double because it's stronger and it's the same pattern as under the sleeve so i like it a lot that's very beautiful i think this is a great design and it's my collar i love that collar yeah it's hairs with yarn okay so they're putting in a little bit of color now here you're using more color which i really like that's uh one of my knitting palettes is kirsten who made this and she wanted it so she looked at the at the red sweater and made sort of the same border pattern that's different look at the back yeah and then the horizontal pattern and the cross and star pattern and again as i do the knitters like the little side pattern that goes all the way up and she change colors just a little bit um to make a little difference from the from the original which i think looks great and made the neckline double again and yeah with a different color it's supposed to be wide and easy to wear and then this one is it's um well i just wanted to show that you can also make it in colors just like the shetland sweaters or the norwegian sweaters so this is stars i changed a lot of colors here on the base the base the the yellowish the background yeah just like the the shade and sweaters and then the stars and here you see the edge it's a long edge it's it's a white sweater it's a sort of what you call them one side fish size fish all right oversized yeah and then here you have the pattern of the edge and this is the back of it which is really nice and the color is very large and so you bend it over you see one pattern and now the other pattern so i like that i like the way you've just got one stripe that's me with different colors and that lovely orangey red that's really great now there's just one more i want to show quickly and this is actually on the cover okay the english yeah and here you've even incorporated beading inside yeah the stars many of the stars have mostage in them and mustache it's very easy to put to sew beads i've sewn them in to sew beads in moss stitch in you sort of mustache has little holes in them yeah but only a few and very subtle just a little bit um to make you to make a style show more yeah well thank you so much for showing us this and talking about your research with our audience this is really fascinating and really special and i think it's fantastic that you've done this collection put all that hard work into collecting all the motives because it really is through knitters nowadays using it that it'll continue on that's that's how it keeps the knowledge of it keeps getting continued on so i'm very excited to make my own danish swa a star sweater i might make one for andrew as well so we really appreciate you being on the show and sharing your knowledge thank you very much i'm happy to be here good let's say goodbye bye bye [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Fruity Knitting

Views: 102,310

Keywords: Knitting

Id: 9wMDjM-vGyI

Length: 91min 43sec (5503 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2020