Sanquhar Gloves, Lambing & Japanese Knitting - Ep. 78 - Fruity Knitting

[Music] [Music] welcome to fruity knitting this is episode 78 I'm Andrew and I'm Andrea and you might be wondering from the title of this episode how sang choir gloves lambing and japanese knitting all fit together well they don't really except to show you how incredibly varied our world of knitting is because that's the common theme sothank why gloves are beautiful hand knitted Scottish gloves that date back to the 1800s and they were used for riding and driving horses as well as for being born during the sport of when you're playing the sport of curling on ice and our future interview guest beth brown rensil has been fascinated with knitting techniques used in historical european garments during the 19th century and her focus has been on teaching knitters these techniques and during the interview she shows us a collection of traditional garments and mittens that use these techniques including the sink wire gloves so that's that bit now we're in the month of May at we're at the end of months of May and every year roughly from March to May so during springtime or whenever springtime is around the world a whole lot of little lambs are being born all around the world which is pretty exciting but this can be a really intense and exhausting time for shepherds because suddenly they're working day and night to keep their flock healthy and happy and as the cycle goes on new fleeces are growing and we get to knit with beautiful woolly yarn so today we're going to hear from two shepherdesses about what their life is like during lambing season we think it's a fantastic segment because you'll see a little lamb being born and then taking its first drink from mum it's very very cute and while the shepherdesses are talking to us they have a bottle lamb on their knees so that's great and we think it's actually a real privilege to see birth so that's why we wanted to do this segment and and share it with you and it's also interesting to know some of the issues and struggles that shepherdess is faced during this time because like I said all of this has before we get the privilege of knitting with beautiful woman young yep and then we're going to Singapore to meet Bernice our guest on knitter's of the world who's been fascinated with Japanese knitting from the age of six we've also got two completed projects for our brigand brag segment and we've got two new projects coming up so we think it's gonna be a great show and we really hope you enjoy it yeah so last episode I just started my Camden hat by the hat designer wooly worm head and now it's all finished it's looking great I'm really super thrilled with it though yes it's a really good design and I encourage you to knit it if you like it the yarn I used is the countess ablaze Aran weight yarn and not surprisingly she's given it a very sexy name it's called I want you to want me and it is a very luscious sort of red orange brown colorway so I think it's a cool cool hat now as I predicted the hardest bit of supreme the brim and once you've got over that the rest of it is really easy peasy to knit so you do the brim and then you cast on extra stitches for for the rim of the Hat and that's all done in a 1x1 twisted rib you can see there and that twisted rib also goes over the front of the brim which i think is really cool it kind of holds it there and and gives it a bit of extra shaping on the slanty hat and then when you've done that it's simply just stocking a reverse stocking stitch body of the Hat with six twisted knit stitches going up to the crown and right in the center of the crown is a little button for Trude classical cap style and you do this by knitting a piece of fabric which is sort of in the shape of a diamond and I used a two centimeter button and then you wrap the material around sew it on and then sew it onto the Hat itself and you might notice that I've done my I've put my the knit side of the fabric on the button to go with the brim and I think that looks a little bit stylish a little detail there yeah cool so last episode I told you about the saga of trying to find the right shifting material for the brim and how Andrew went out and and and got me the right stuff and we inserted and and all was good so I won't repeat that but there is something I forgot to tell you about that I do want to tell you about and that is the hardest part is closing the brim and but I finally figured a way of how to do that so if you can help me by holding it like that yep and I'll sort of explain what the problem is and I'll explain it so it looks good for you but it'll be a little bit wrong when I show you for me so the first thing you do is you do a provisional cast on you knit the fabric of the brim you fold it in half and you insert your stiff material and then you join the two edges of live stitches by knitting them together so in your left hand you will have if you can hold it sort of like that you'll have two needles with live stitches on them and your right hand needle knits one stitch from each needle together and that's how you go along and you close the top of the brim but because the brim is really stiff it's got a stiff fabric there it forces your needles or three of them to lie horizontally like this and there's no wriggle room and that's not how we naturally knit so that makes it extremely hard to do that maneuver so and because when we need to be normally just hold our needles at right angles so I struggled with that until I figured out okay what I need to do in my right hand needle I use a very long cable and then I sort of pull it through and I drape it down below and then I get to hold my right hand needle at right-angles it still kind of held fairly stiffly so you only get to knit maybe up to three stitches at a time and then what I have to do is pull my needle through and I would be pulling these stitches down onto the cable and then I drag my needle like that again and knit another three stitches and then do the same procedure so you just go along and you close close up that seam that way there's only a set amount of stitches to do so it won't take you that long but it is a bit of a struggle and so if you are going to do it and if you like it I thoroughly encourage you to do the pattern that's that's how it worked for me that's an interesting problem it is an interesting problem you don't realize it until you're there and you're doing it and you figure out okay so now I'm gonna try it on so you can get to see what this great cat looks like I think it's a hat that will suit quite a lot of people I think it suits me yeah listen to you yeah yeah and the nice little neat cat brim yeah I think it's really crude really groovy yeah and I'd sort of also get the impression that it goes really well with your hair although you did mention that it also looks good on Willy herself and she has only got a quaver different hairstyle yeah so she's she's shaving off her hair here and she just has a quaff but she still looked really good in it so that's why I think it'll look good on a lot of people yeah now Andrew I have a question early this colorway this is my I want you to want me hat yeah so when I wear it do you want me to wear one she does I want you all the time so I didn't need to miss it no make me want you I should have used a different colorway I don't know wonder what you've got to choose from there I know she's got some good target there okay so that's the Camden hat it's my turn I'm bringing bragged although I have to admit this as a combined it's a joint project and this is the tiger designed by Martin story it's obviously a beautiful sweater for a child this is actually for our niece Simba she's gonna be getting this for her 5th birthday which is coming up very soon so for me it was largely a stocking stitch and seaming project and I actually delegated this beautiful color work section to Andrea which i think was a really good idea now more than even more than beforehand knowing what's gone into it so Andrea will tell about that in a moment the yarn here is the sentence doer which is a 50% cotton 50% wool yarn Norwegian and I think it's really beautiful I think it's a beautiful material that we've got but our niece and your sister live in Byron Bay yes yeah it is quite a hippie area of Australia and it's a very warm climate but they do have a small time of winter and actually Australia is going into winter now so it'll be perfect for her yeah yeah I think it's a really yeah it's a beautiful material I think it's gonna be just right for them in that situation and sim does a really fun kid so I think she's gonna really enjoy it I hope she likes I'm really pleased to be sending this off to her so why don't you tell us about this yeah Holloway okay so before I even started the tiger face one of our viewers Greta Jensen who is ma9 on Ravelry wrote to me to tell me about an alternative technique for stranding floats behind long sections of single colors or a single color and I'd seen this technique before but I didn't know what it was called and I've never tried it before so I was really eager to check it out and some of you will already know it it's called the ladder back jacquard technique and it comes from machine knitting but it transfers very easily into hand knitting and so the letter back jacquard technique allows you to do invisible stranding behind long sections of one color by using extra hidden stitches and because the problem is normally when you're doing stranded knitting and just trapping the floats like you normally do sometimes the color of the floats can show through on the front of the fabric particularly if the main color is really light like this one and the floats are really dark like the tiger face so as you know I really love trying new techniques so I was really eager to do it and I actually did a combination of stranded knitting and the ladder back technique and I think it worked really really well because the pattern just said all all the pattern said was to do the tiger face using the technique of intarsia and when you're working intarsia you for something like this you'd have a ton of little bobbins and that's absolutely no fun to work with you only want to do it if you absolutely have to and it doesn't always even give a really good result because if you think of every little bobbin is you're using a bobbin for a tiny motive and always around the edges of that motive if you're going to get just a small amount of puckering just a slight bit of pocket puckering and then at the end you've got a ton of ends to weave in and weaving they're men even if you're very careful will also create a little bit of a distortion on the fabric so I don't even think it's it's a good idea to do it that way so I use as I said I used a combination of normal stranded knitting and this ladder back jacquard technique which I think has worked super well yeah yeah if you haven't heard of this technique I'm sure that you are just dying to go and look it up especially since I've been waffling on about it so I've done a short tutorial to show you exactly how easy it is and that's coming up right now yep and straight after that we're gonna meet Kim and Jennifer from fleece and harmony farm which is on Prince Edward Island in Canada they're gonna tell us about sheep midwifery and bottle lands and we're also gonna see a little bit of the cycle of life yeah we do want to mention if you're a little bit queasy or a little bit sir what do we say there's about five minutes into this section there is a birth saying which we think is really wonderful and great to see that just in case it's not your thing we thought we would just shut your eyes for about one minute five minutes in and you'll be right [Music] I'm going to show you how if combined to color work techniques to create this gorgeous tiger face I've used a combination of stranded knitting and the ladder back jacquard technique which is a technique taken from machine knitting so where the two colors are worked really closely together like on the cheeks here around the eyes and on the forehead I've mainly used the stranded knitting and caught the floats on the back of the work in the typical stranded knitting way and in the areas where there's a long section of only one color for example across his nose here or on the upper lip or in the ears and even a cross between the ears I've used the letter back jacquard technique so the normal technique of trapping floats can sometimes result in the contrast color showing through especially if it's a very dark color that goes behind a very light color as it does in my Tiger face another really interesting thing to know is stranded knitting creates a less elastic fabric but the ladder back jacquard technique allows the fabric to be much more elastic when I turn the work over you can see that these sections here and there are knitted by catching the floats in the normal way and these sections there there and there use the ladder back technique and if I take my needle and just slip it behind a lot of a technique you can see that there's a second layer which looks like a web and is separate from the main fabric and because it's separate the fabric is much more elastic so the ladder back technique basically just creates hidden stitches that won't show on the front but are there for the sole purpose of catching and holding the float that isn't in use but still needs to be carried behind the work I'll show you how to do the ladder back jacquard technique on this piece of knitting here you can see just below I've done some normal stranded knitting and the back side you can see some floats but now I'm going to knit a little white cross here and then about 18 stitches across I'll do another white cross and that would mean that normally I'd be carrying my white behind about 18 stitches or I'd have to weave it in but with the lettering technique I'll create a hidden stitch about every five stitches along so I've needed six stitches in blue which is my main color and now I'm going to bring the blue yarn around to the front of the work this is really important and the next thing I'm going to do is knit into the stitch below the stitch that's on the left hand needle and I can either do that by turning my work over and knitting into the purl bump at the back just like that with the white yarn okay or another way is to lift this stitch that's below the stitch on the needle up onto the needle like that and then knit into it it gives you the same result both ways once I've done that I then take my main color and bring it around and I wrap around that stitch that stitch is going to be a hidden stitch and then I just knit a few more stitches okay so now it's time to do it again I bring the main color around to the front of the work I get my contrast color and I knit into the purl bump of the stitch that's below the stitch on the needle like that and I bring my main color around back to the the back of the work which is going to hide that and I keep going these two white stitches here and here are the start of my little white crosses but these white stitches here are just the hidden stitches that are going to do the lettering stitches at the back if you have a look at that column there of blue stitches in that column of blue stitches there right close up together so you can see that that stitch will end up being hidden so now I'm going to show you how to work the following rows with these ladder stitches so because I'm knitting in the flat my next row is a purl row so I pull right up to that extra ladder stitch that I made and then I bring my main color underneath the needle and leave it at the back of the work which is the the right side of the fabric and with the contrast color I simply just purl this white stitch and then I bring my yarn my main yarn back under the needle to the front of the work for purling and that's going to wrap it and keep it hidden and then I pull along to the next stitch so you can see it's a very easy procedure so again you put the yarn to the back of the work you take your white yarn and pull that stitch you bring your main color yarn back to the front and then you continue purling working those hidden stitches on the knit side of the fabric is pretty much the same procedure I knit up to the white stitch there it is there I put my yarn my main color yarn to the front of the work and then I knit the white stitch and then I put my main color back underneath behind and continue i finished my little white crosses that one's better than this one I forgot to do two extra stitches here but it doesn't matter this is just a swatch to show you the procedure and now I want to finish my color work and I want to get rid of these extra hidden stitches so now that I finished the cross motif I'm only working in the blue yarn so I knit right up to the first hidden stitch here it's very easy and I just simply knit it together with the stitch the blue stitch to its left like that and the blue stitch then becomes in front of the white stitching you won't see it so you just go along the row here's the next one so I'm going to knit the white stitch together with the blacks with the blue stitch and it's hidden there and just keep going here's my finished swatch with my two crosses and you can't see any white from those hidden poking through it all if I turn it round on the back you can see that's where we created those hidden stitches and then we worked them here and that's where we got rid of those stitches so if I get my needle you can see if I put my needle through here it's completely free from the front fabric and you can see that it looks very different from the stranded knitting below when we go back to my Tiger face again you can see that I've started and stopped these extra ladder stitches whenever I needed to fill in gaps of long stretches of one color so I started some extra ladder stitches here which is on the back of the upper lip and I used them until I didn't need them anymore and then I eliminated them you can also see here that I changed the ladder stitch from being blue to white you can also do that and then when I didn't need them I eliminated them and continued on with some stranded knitting and carrying the floats and then again for the nose section I created new hidden stitches and worked them for as long as I needed them so there I stopped that one and this one was longer to here and then continued on with floats and created some more ladder stitches for this upper area so you can see this is a really nifty little trick to know about and you can use it as an alternative when you're doing color work that involves combination of intarsia and stranded knitting and it can be used both when you're knitting in the round and knitting flat [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi everybody I'm Kim and I'm Jennifer and this is Roger our bottle lamb yes that were the owners of fleece inharmony a woollen mill in Belfast Prince Edward Island Canada we also have obviously have sheep on our firm yep and we run the mill and spin yarns made from our own flock sheep and other sheep that live on Prince Edward Island the main breeds that we spin our Corey Dale with cordell crosses with border Lester usually we have a ram that is a border Lester and we also use Canadian our cut and reto are caught places to make our yarns so we're here to talk about lambing today and we'll just give give a quick explanation of the lambing process so we start lambing in April of mid April we may choose that time on purpose because we want our lambs to be weaned and then out on grass so because of the weather here in Belfast in Prince Edward Island that's about the right time to chill lamb and the length of time that you're actually doing the lambing depends on how long you've left the RAM in with the flock Jennifer's in charge of that schedule yeah so we typically leave our RAM in for two full cycles so the Sheep of you does have like a menstrual cycle during which they have days where they are fertile and when they're not so we just like to make sure that the RAM has two chances to catch them so that everybody gets pregnant so that we get as many lambs as as we're expecting yeah and if you're right on the ball you take the RAM out as soon as you figure that you're use have been all caught but this time we left our RAM one of our Rams in with the flock for a little bit longer than we should have so right now we're paying the price for that which is we have three use that caught late and we're still doing burn checks every night because we have three use but haven't had their babies yet yeah so during the birthing time when we we count days and it's about 140 days until the sheep give birth once they've been bred and so when we were expecting birthing to begin soon or lambing we set up cameras we have four cameras we have audio and video going into the house so that we can hear any activity out in the barn that sounds like it might be somebody giving birth and then we also set alarms so that one of us goes out every four hours just to make sure that we haven't missed anything because some sheep do stay quite quiet when they're giving birth and others definitely let you know and they want your help and the time is quite scientifically decided on its because if it's cold out a lamb can probably last about four or five hours just burning the brown fat inside its internal fat that it's born with without getting hypothermic and starving to death but after that they definitely need an external source of milk so we want to go and often enough to make sure that if they're needing milk we get there in time and get them set up with their mom so that they are able to stay alive yeah and sheep are pretty self-sufficient so they can have their lambs themselves but sometimes they do need a little bit of help and that's mostly if there's multiple lambs in the in the room and they need to be that they sometimes are in the bad position and then the you tries to push out the lamb but if it doesn't come out easily then they can get tired and then they they can give up trying to deliver so usually if we have to help or there's challenges those are the kind of things that were that we're doing and definitely the size of your hands this is what makes you the person that gets to gets to do the helping and what's not so I have the smallest hands on the firm so I become the obstetrician yeah of the bunch yeah and when we're if you do need to help a lamb you don't always know exactly what position they're in so you do have to do that by touch so you get pretty used to feeling lambs and trying to make sure that you've what position the lamb is in and also if there's multiple lambs in there that you're when you're feeling around that you're you make sure that you have the legs and body and all of the same land because sometimes they can be on top of each other and you might have the front legs of one lamb ahead of the the body of another so you just have to sort that out and it really is by touch you can't see what you're doing and Jennifer I heard Jennifer talking about to somebody about when I'm helping you that I actually close my eyes when I'm doing that and I didn't even know but that I did that and then we noticed that our vet uh actually has the same yeah I think it's helpful just to narrow down the stimuli to what you're really trying to focus on so the eye is being closed really helps I'm just using just the touch sense to figure out what's going on in that in that little hole that we're trying to deal with yeah exactly so and usually there's usually it all turns out well you just give a little and you don't really they say pulling lambs but you're actually not usually it's not really very it's not really pulling that you is still you know contracting and so forth and they come they come out they just need like a little bit of help a little guidance a little guidance right so and then when the lamb is that we also if they're if they're tired if they it's been a long birth and we make sure that we're like we're rubbing them with towels and stuff to help stimulate them and the moms help with that too they're licking them quite quite vigorously to help them to stimulate to take that first breath and to to get used to the outside yeah and then we leave the lambs in the pens with the mom for a few days so that they mother up and that they'll bond and they'll understand which lamp is in the hairs and who they're looking after and if the mom decides that she's not interested in feeding that lamb it becomes a rejected lamb and that's like Roger here who's the bottle lamb because his mom didn't want to feed him she got a little bit confused and decided he wasn't hers after all yeah and we would never be able to separate a lamb and have it in the shop like this if they were actually mother not properly because they would be squawking incessantly for their mom but as you don't see he's quite used to people because we've been looking after him since he was born yeah and when the Lambs are bottle limbs it's a lot of work so they do need to be fed every two to four hours for the first few days just to try to mimic that healthy small meals that they would typically get from their mum and then as they get on more solid food which happens quite quickly within the first week usually we're able to cut those bottle feedings back so that we can get hopefully a little bit more sleep but it's really important not to overfeed your bottle lambs or they'll get diarrhea which we called scours and they can have all kinds of health problems so it is a little bit trickier because they'll eat yeah as long as you offer them the Box pretty much yeah they get to be real bottle hogs yeah so you have to be careful to watch that you don't spoil them yeah so that's about it and Roger like we said is three weeks old so you can see he's pretty hearty solid healthy so he's lives in the burn with the rest of the gang but he just gets fed fed by us and you can see it doesn't have any adverse effect if you're that's a good chunk yeah so you know it's a tiring time lambing but it's also a time of lots of miracles every day yeah in the burn so yeah and we find that it keeps other things going on in the world and quite good perspective because it is a lot of life and death decisions that are being made and really all you care about at that time is the health of your sheep and the health of the lambs that you're looking after so it does allow you to zone out on some of the other problems of the world and just really appreciate the privilege of being a shepherd yeah and no matter how many times you see it the miracle of birth is is really a miracle yeah it's all really enjoyable yeah yeah so alright thanks everybody bye-bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm glad Jennifer mentioned that Roger is not being sport because I have to say I wouldn't have been sure we saw him about three weeks ago and I think he's doubled his body weight in that time so he's certainly doing very well I did think Jackie our dog if he free caught him at a time when he was kind of overdue for a haircut he'd fit in there just perfectly both from appearance and also from the behavior yeah jumping around because he's a poodle and he does look like a little lamb yeah at a certain growth I think you'd love it yeah it is funny saying this this beautiful sort of chunky healthy lamb sitting on Jennifer's knee and getting all these cuddles and and her saying you can't spoil them but as Kim and Jennifer said they spin yarns from their own flock of sheep but also from the local farming sheep farmers on Prince Edward Island and Kim is the spinner and from talking to Kim I get the impression she's a real perfectionist and a lot of care goes into spinning their young which is exactly what you want if you want a good quality yarn and Jennifer does or the hand dyeing and they have a ton of colors they've got very pastel colors and then muted colors and then completely out they're bright almost neon colors and you might remember Andrew knitted the car before Madeleine last year in this stunning bright orange color which I completely love so this is their wall and it's knitted in the Aran weight yarn and we were really impressed with this it's a really great yarn to knit with it's very soft and very sort of squidgy and bouncy isn't it and but it's also really hard wearing because as you know you've probably seen me I like to give my rub test to see just any pilling and there isn't and Madeleine has worn this a lot and you can see it looks really good so that is a personal recommendation because we've actually used it and done it and so yeah that's that's super yeah Kim and Jennifer do also have their own fleece and how many podcast on YouTube where they talk about their farm life and also their own knitting project I'm really sure I think it's entertaining and informative and I'm sure a lot of our viewers would love it definitely fruity knitting patrons will also be super excited to know that Kim and Jennifer are offering a 15% discount of everything in their online store and they've recently brought out a great new sock yarn which is a combination of 80% wool and 20% mohair for extra strength they've also got lace weight yarns worsted Aran and bulky and all of them are in a ton of colors so thank you so much to fleece and harmony FF said during the last couple of episodes andrew has finally handed in his notice so that he can join me full time on the production of rigidity which were both thrilled about we unfortunately though he does have to work an extra couple of months to work out his notice but we had to make this decision or else I would have to stop the show and fruity knitting wouldn't continue and that's because of the huge amount of work it was too much work for me to be doing all the time and then him to be doing when he came home from a full-time job and over and over we do get feedback from people that they had no idea of how much work must be going on behind the scenes and that is a really hard thing for us to give you a clear idea about without sounding complaining so I thought of another sort of an example to perhaps give you an idea and that is if you compare when you buy a magazine that might come out every three months so there's four issues in a year and that's been worked on by a team of people if you compare the content of that magazine with the content of our episode which we bring out every two weeks and we bring out 24 episodes in a year then you have to realize how much work must go on behind the scenes and it's important for us if we want fruity knitting to be stable especially now that andrew is joining us full-time that the financial support of the show is spread across more of our regular viewers so if you are regular viewer please we do need your support please become a patron yeah and obviously there's a lot of our viewers who have taken that step and have helped us get this far and helping us keep going into the future so a really big THANK YOU from both of us to you I've started a new garment project which I'm really happy about because I love garments it's a really meaty one for me to get my teeth stuck into and it's going to take me quite a long time because it's needed on a really fine gauge the gauge is 32 stitches for ten centimeters well yeah yeah so it is a design cord st. Loup negra kay and it's by jennifer bill who's been on the show twice before in our new releases segment she always does very complicated challenging but exciting designs so I'm thrilled to be finally doing one of hers and she comes from Newfoundland in Canada that's I know it's meant to be said something like Newfoundland but that feels so weird for me to say so I'll just keep saying it wrong sorry but st. Loup negra ke is a town in Newfoundland and so I looked it up and it's got 640 people there and every time I see these remote little towns I think gosh I'd like to go and visit it it would be so much fun yeah you'd meet the whole population in an afternoon at the pub probably maybe maybe actually Andrew had a school friend who lived for a while in Newfoundland and we'd always plan to go and meet him there but now he's moved back to Australia yeah we kind of icebergs in the morning just look at the sea and see how how exotic okay so now let me tell you about the pattern this here's a picture of the design it's worked bottom up with a color work circular yoke with lots of textured patterns on the body and Jennifer used a light-colored speckled yarn for the body and the geometric strand of pattern on the yoke and a very dark contrasting color to show off this the speckled stranded pattern on the I don't actually knit with speckled yarns very often but I really liked the ornate look of this sweater I liked how it was a really busy result when you use a softly speckled yarn on a textured stitch pattern and the body has an all-over eyelet basket weave so I talked more about the design when I've actually got some knitting to show you but the the yarn I'm using is nature's luxury and it is on stage long met Raj is the blend it's a blend of or the base it's a blend of wool silk and camel and the colorway is legends of the fall and I love this colorway it's just a beautiful it's a variegated yarn but all the colors just sort of melt into each other very easily and and smoothly so that's kind of exciting and I wanted to show you a picture of my knitting so you can see up close if you look closely at all the stitches on the needles each one is a slightly different shade and it has 20% camel and camel is a beige color and when you die all the different colors over a common background that's beige it makes the colors more uniform or they just sort of melt in they don't have harsh edges between the different colors and it looks like they're gently melting into one another I really love it and then because it's 30% silk all the little stitches are sort of shining and they're glimmering on the needles I think it says extremely pretty and my contrast color surprise surprise is this beautiful shade of green here and you may know the owner of nature's luxury she's Danika and her husband is a professional horse trainer and this colorway is called the horse whisperer so he must be the horse whisperer in his honor in his honor perhaps yeah we don't know I'm just assuming so that's the green color that's going behind this I've been doing some swatching as I said the the wreck Walt the gauge is 32 stitches for 10 centimeters recommended needle size to start off with is to point to five millimeters so I started off doing that down here and that was actually too tight I had too many stitches and so then I went up to 2.5 millimeters that was still too tight I had too many stitches so I went up to two point seven five millimeters and I got the right gauge here but then in the eyelet basket-weave I actually need to get a perfect gauge of 32 stitches I actually need a needle that's somewhere between 2.5 and 2.75 so what would that be two point six two five I would say spontaneously so if anyone has a pair of two point six two five millimeter needles please send them in chuggers or you could adjust attention though no I'm not gonna do that I'm actually gonna I'll talk more about it next time when I'm gonna do something I've got ideas in my head it's how I'll tell you about that next next time when I've got more knitting to show you this is what I've done so far yeah it's gonna be exciting I'm also starting a new project having finished a tiger and my project is called the miracle by Olga Mariah aphelion it sounds about right yeah I think that's right it's a really simple pattern which is really good for me because I essentially only knit when I'm brain dead so the pattern itself is a whole lot of parallelograms all right so it's just a regular pattern of parallelograms but the story behind it is really interesting I think the name mirror comes from Corey O'Meara who is a Japanese astrophysicist and he developed this way of folding starts off as paper but it's actually used for folding things like the solar panels for satellites and they're also talking about using it for flat pack furniture or for something like medical surgical devices so stents and things and the thing is long you can fold it up really compressed and then you can stretch it out into flat fing really easily so when they send it up on a satellite they just need one motor to stretch this thing out into a big panel so that's a really fascinating story and it's a it's all part of what they call rigid origami anyway that's the background to the project that I'm doing that's where I'm up to now and it's gonna be really cool yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi my name is Bernie I live in Singapore the climate is tropical it's warm and humid throughout the year my first experience of young happen when I was about six years old I was in my aunt's house when I found a Japanese crochet book a ball of yarn and a hook I opened the book and saw through the graphs of beautiful crochet lace doilies that seem to mesh diagrams of symbols in the second half of the book I was very curious but I didn't understand the Japanese language so I studied the diagrams and figured out how each symbol worked soon I was making one body after another after I finished using up the ball of yarn I stopped crochet for a long time little did I know that that experience would be the beginning of a lifetime of love for yarns as a child I've always loved doing art and creating with my hands in university I study architecture it opened my eyes to the discipline of design and understand half form function construction and details made good designs after working as an architect for a few years I made a switch to teaching art because I actually enjoy working with materials in a more direct way and in a more intimate skill so I set up an ad studio to teach art from home it was during that time that I started making it is hard to explain my fascination with Japan and the Japanese sense of aesthetics I guess it all began when I opened that crochet book when I was six I've been going to Japan almost every year now I have also picked up the language because it gives me access to art and design materials in Japanese I now own many Japanese knitting and crochet books this vest that I'm right now and this crochet pullover are designed from a favorite designer Michio the patterns can be found in this book in just two pages mostly in diagrams and just a few lines in Japanese knitting instructions for this vest is written there are no lengthy instructions this is typical of Japanese and crochet books this pest designed by cosmic hobo is made with three rectangles after joining parts of the three rectangles together you get a garment you may be able to tell that some of my designs that I'll be showing later are influenced by the way Japanese networks are constructed the woman humid climate in Singapore means that most of the projects that I do our summer projects I love summer yawns the best summer yawns my opinion are from Japan I hardly returned home from Japan without some summer yarn through my luggage my first design began with one of such yarns it is a silk yarn by Hasegawa I love the drape of the yarn so much and was inspired to create a design there was in my head it had not to be a lightweight top perfect for layering with a scoop neck laced on the back and strengths for fastening at the neck opening it was well-liked by Anita's in Instagram where I first showed pictures of the garments they were interested in the pattern so I bought it for six sizes and named it to clementsl which in Japanese means everlasting summer it is not too difficult to find any patterns for summer tops and fingering yawns but even fingering young garments can feel too warm for the weather here decides for ratios are usually shows are very sheer or lacy garments I had a hard time to keep her penance for based on comments that do not require an underlayer sometimes the weather is so warm that wearing two layers can be one the year too many when I was given a beautiful skin ablation by and alia Alia pottery from Indonesia and that there's so much that I wanted to use the yarn to create my idea Malaysian garments so I designed Batavia it is knit in one piece from him to him with reverse stockinette on one side simple lace on the show with an opening wait for the neck made in the same way as a button hold I said this is like a huge buttonhole the lace continues over the back followed by textures popular stitches the whole piece is then folded and seemed on both sides I wear this top a lot because the fabric is light but not too sheer male see it is good to go on its own this is a design that I submitted to the Amelia magazine when there was a call for submissions for the Summer 2018 issue the pictures in a mood bot reminded me of photographs that I had taken during a summer vacation in the French countryside so I developed a design based on memories of the place it has lace on the shoulders and upper back and a sea of plains teachers to show off the beautiful drape of the silk yarn by Hibou textiles spits are made on both sides for lace inserts in more hair I love this design because I think it is really feminine and romantic this is my latest design I've been looking at various ways of saw the constructions and became interested in setting sleeves and seemed governs for the fit and structure they said to have I thought seams would work really well for very soft and drapey yarn floating vibe for keeping warm which I loved so much that I really wanted to have a garment made using the yarn so we've seen sunset in sleeves in mind I created a comment with details that I liked the hem and in just below the waist fittest least and the edge the elbow and a v-neck that is slightly wide and flattering there is a lace design on the back and a delicate cable design that runs from the head to the heart and frames the neck opening it was meant to be a one of his just for myself because I know that writing instructions for setting sleeves and grading them can 13 years and the construction of this design goes against the current trend of top-down seamless construction I thought meters were gonna say that's very sweet but I don't like seeming after showing pictures of a garment online and saying that there was no intention to create a pattern for it the response that I got was a surprise meters are actually interested to make it so for them the pattern was made the design is called lariat for this part of the sweater that really looks like the long elegant necklace with a pendant and chains running from it the pattern is very technical at the moment and will be released in early June I'm happy to share my work with all of you from my little country of everlasting summer let's go up and take a look [Music] [Applause] [Music] we often have viewers asking us for recommendations for warm climate designs and Bernice has some stunning summer top designs there so that is really your answer keep an eye on Bernice yeah and actually I can really understand her fascination for Japanese designs and yarns because so often when I am looking at just a page of Ravelry designs a couple will really stand out to me they're just unusual or they look like this sort of cutting-edge fashion and sure enough they're Japanese I think there's a real yeah that there's a real flair there and I think Beneatha's also got a real flair for designing she's only just starting but I do think you should keep your eye on her you know and see what she brings out I really like the long tunic with with the mohair lace yes yeah it's super elegant you could do that in or different kinds of colors and it would just look beautiful like just such a great top and also her latest one with the twisted stitch cable that sort of inner in a shape of a necklace with chains coming down I think that's also really great so beneath is offering fruity knitting patrons a 25% discount of her self-published patterns and both the Lariat which is the design with the look-alike necklace and Luber on the design with the mohair side splits will also have a 25% discount for our patrons when they're released and they'll be released on the 5th of June into her rubbery store so there's not long to wait for those two designs and then you'll be able to add them to your collection if you love them so thank you so much to beneath for your great contribution so coming up now you can learn about traditional knitting techniques with Beth Brown rensil who's been teaching workshops on this for years I know she was at Shetland wool week last year and right now she's actually doing a teaching tour of China which I'm sure would be a fascinating experience for her in itself andrew has already mentioned the Scottish sink her gloves which I reckon I have to knit they're really there yes charlie now Scottish heritage yeah um there's she's also gonna tell us about what have we got there yeah Canada okay and the - Latoya yeah and we've got the Norwegian father cardigan again their silver mittens she shows us Latvian mittens a couple of other types of mittens so there's a ton of traditional garments and mittens that she talks about look which is really interesting and she's also recently written a book all about Ganz's called knitting Ganz's or Guernsey knitting something like that but all of this information she's got quite a lot of information you'll find on her website which is knitting traditions and Beth is offering our patrons a 25% discount of herself published patterns in her Ravelry store and a 15% discount of her knitting kids at her online store on her website which includes some of the lovely mittens and gloves so kits for those that you're going to see very soon and all the exact details of this you'll find as usual on the patreon site under patreon specials now because Beth is presently teaching in China and she's just working by herself she's a one-woman band if you want to order a non-digital Prout product to order it now but then just wait have a little bit of patience for her to get back from her teaching tour and package it up and send it out to you but now it's time for us to say goodbye and see you again in two weeks yeah so thanks for being with us today we've enjoyed it we hope you have too and we'll see you in the next episode already bye [Music] welcome to fruity knitting my guest today is Beth Brown Rendell from Vermont in the States Beth is the author of the book knitting Ganz's Beth also designs and she really loves to teach and her main focus has been to educate knitters about historical European knitting techniques so over the years she's created many workshops that are based on different traditional garments where you learn all the techniques needed to knit them so in this interview Beth is going to introduce us to a variety of these traditional garments and then show us how they're constructed so welcome Beth it's really good to have you with us thanks for having me so over the years you've studied and compared the different European knitting traditions particularly the ones that developed in the nineteenth century and you've also called your website knitting traditions so lift up by you telling us how you first became interested in the topic and what the fascination is for you well Michael Pearson's book traditional knitting came out in 1984 and a friend of mine brought a copy over for me to look at and I immediately fell in love with the Gansey that I saw there and all of the traditional techniques that were used there were so many variations for like the shoulder joins the neck bands and that very intriguing underarm gusset so that year I started knitting a lot of fancies the next year Priscilla Gibson Roberts book knitting in the old way was published and it inspired me to look at other sweaters from a historical context so I developed my Gansey workshop and then went on to develop one or the Irish Aaron and the Scottish fair isle jumper I love teaching knitters and so I wanted to expand my class offerings and the next logical step was to look to Scandinavia so in the 1990s I travel to Denmark Norway and Sweden to look at several different garments and I expected to see Museum garments that were knitted in the round from the cast onto the shoulder with sticks and I was so surprised I didn't see any cease so one of the curators explained to me that if one cuts one's knitting the yarn cannot be repurposed for a later garment so this was a great lesson for me I realized that I was operating under preconceived notions and I've tried ever since to have an open mind when I'm researching that's a really interesting point so apparently the garment that we know of today is being the sweater first emerged in the 19th century simultaneously in a few different cultures so what can you tell us about those very early sweaters for example what garment did they evolve from what countries were first wearing them were they a unisex garment or was it only men with the only working-class people who were wearing it what can you tell us well in most cases it's considered that the 19th century sweaters evolves from undergarments and Richard rut in his book a history of hand knitting writes about the Gansey that feminine feel for the decoration in dress evolved the fine pattern that became the pride of their men folk who doffing their jackets exposed the ornamental knitting of the shirt the underwear then became outerwear the garments were most likely knitted by women for their men this is the case with the Gansey it was knitted for the fishermen I was working garments and the Danish not thrower was knitted for women who wore them and it was based on a beautiful silk finely knitted undergarment that the elite wore at that time the couch and sweater from Canada which emerged during the late 1800s was spun and knitted by the women for the men women and children and many of the classes that you're teaching are about learning the techniques needed to knit these traditional sweaters that you've just mentioned and your students learn the special construction features and and patterning by knitting a miniature sweater sample so can you just show us some of those little sweaters and say something about each of their traditions and then talk about their unique construction sure so the Norwegian fauna cardigan developed in the Bergen area of Norway around the 1850s it's a blend of two different men's garments a white garter stitch sweater a cardigan that was worn for special times and an everyday striped pullover the fauna was knitted in very fine yarn a two-ply with really small needles at first and it was knitted with naturally colored yarns from the Sheep but later on more colors were used by 1930 this garment was standardized and everybody wore it not just men and during World War two the people of Bergen wore this garment as a symbol of solidarity against the Nazi occupation so in my class the students knit a solid colored ribbing and then the base of the button bands are put on holders and the stake stitches are passed on and then the Thurmond is joined in the ground there are three different areas of patterning the blocks the dotted bands and the Stars and there are many historical variations of these motifs once the garment is knitted up to the shoulder all the stitches are put on waste yarn and the sleeves are knitted from the cuff up to the Armel facing then the students based the arm holes and the neck line and then so all these areas that are going to be cut on a sewing machine the button bands are picked up and knitted with attached facings up to the neck band which is also picked up and then all of the facings are sewn down to hide the cut edges but Yanzi was developed in Scotland and England and the first written record of it is 1832 it has an impressive variety of patterning and they were usually knitted around seven stitches to the inch or more the construction is rather sophisticated because of the use of so many gussets and it was in the round and seamless so in my NZ class they start off with the Channel Island cast on and then they met garter stitch welts two of them flat back and forth then they're overlapped and joined in the round and the lower body is knitted including an initial for the intended wearer the patterning begins as well as the underarm gussets and they're shaped with paired increases when the gussets reach the full width then the body is split the gussets are put on holders and the front and back are knitted flat to the shoulders and the gussets are in a diamond shape aren't they for the Gansey that's right they are the first half knitted in the body the second knitted in the sleeve and then the neckband is picked up from live stitches and two little tiny gussets are knitted at each side to make a snug fit the construction of the Danish knife thrower is very similar to the Gansey and not throw your means nightshirt these were worn by women during the night but they were also worn during the day underneath under clothing like vests so that the pattern sleeves would show and these wool sweaters were knitted at ages of eight to twelve stitches per inch although I suspect they had even higher gauges sometimes some of the motifs were enormous up to 70 stitches wide so it meant one had to have very accurate knitting so that the purl stitch lines the diagonal lines would intersect properly the knot Troyer is similar to the Gansey in that it has welts and underarm gussets but these are triangular they're more like half gussets now in my research I saw two different scenarios for the sleeve and the gusset one was that the gusset was knitted in the sleeve and one where the gusset was knitted in the body the neckline can be left as is or the student can 20 purl around it or crochet around it but in many of the old garments the the neckline and the cuffs were covered with fabric or ribbons oh that's very pretty in Vancouver Island in British Columbia Canada the couch and sweater was developed in the late 1800s it was a pullover at first and became a cardigan later on the women's spun the wool from their sheep and the sweaters have traditionally been natural colors usually three to a sweater they hand-spun see yarns on large spindles like Navajo spindles until they figured out that they could convert treadle sewing machines to bulky yarn spinning wheels they knit English style and they strands the yarns weaving them every other stitch and it creates a very firm fabric and sometimes intarsia is used as well if there are really large motifs that has long floats between them the shoulder joints used for these sweaters can hold a lot more weight because the stress is situated over two columns of stitches because these sweaters were quite heavy the shawl collar is usually made in three parts and the two front parts are knitted as they're being picked up and then the back of the collar is created with short rows connecting them all together well that's really interesting a lot of the techniques are interchangeable between the different cultures which is it's interesting to hear now you've also got some classes where you've got one class that you teach called traditional beginnings Karstens from long ago which sounds really intriguing so could you just show us a couple of those cast ons and say what they're good for sure the Channel Island cast on which I've used in this sock probably came from the hand knitting industry which basically made stockings but also gloves in halves and that industry lasted from the 1400s up to the 1800s so this was in use before the Gansey came along but it's very decorative and it's strong because it takes three strands to create the cast on and I've used it at the beginning of gloves and mittens at the beginning of hats on the ends of washcloths and of course on Ganz's the knotted cast on is another Gansey cast on that is very hard-wearing because when it's made two stitches are occupying the space of one stitch and that means that there's an increased surface area which helps to resist abrasion so it's very flexible as you can see and it would be great for any edge that's going to take a lot of wear essentially you use a long tail cast on and knit two and bind one often in two and bind one off so you can see it gets rather tedious but the trick of this cast on is to cinch it down fairly firmly so that the little knot will come forward otherwise it's very loose and sloppy looking the Swedish twined cast on from the phone's thickening tradition which is about four hundred years old is a beautiful cast on that that works for a lot of different edges socks and mittens and hats and even garments and it's made of three yarns as well one contrast color and two main color yarns coming from one ball the braided cast on comes from Finland and I don't know the date of it but it's a lot of fun to do and it can be made in three or four colors and it also uses long tail cast on I'm going to make a slipknot of all three yarns and with that one my needle and then I'm going to work with two yards for the moment with the third yarn held out of the way so I create the Caston and then I'm going to rotate the yarns in a clockwise manner so that means that the yarn that was just hanging out now going to be on my thumb the garment was on my thumb will be on my index finger and the yarn that is on my index finger will be hanging out waiting for its turn again so some people get concerned that they're going to get confused but if you could just remember the yarn on your index finger is going to make the stitch on the needle and you can go by the order that's already established of the stitches that are on the needle well that's such a pretty mitten that you've just shown us there it looks gorgeous and you do have quite a few workshops or so on traditional mittens so can you just show us a couple that you that you've got just a little selection of different mittens and again say something about their patterning and their tradition a little bit about each of their traditions one of the few knitting traditions that can be definitively David is the cell boom in which was designed in 1856 by a 16 year old girl for her employer the Selby mitten has certain elements that tie all of them together under the heading of Silverman first there's the striped ribbing and then there's a little motif that goes all the way around the mitten before the main patterning begins so usually there are two stars or roses as the Norwegians call them and there are seam stitches that go all the way up to the pointed tip and on the back small geometric motifs are on the palm there's a thumb gusset and the sum has two different types of patterning in it so there were also other subbhu mittens that were much more intricately patterned and I find them very challenging to knit because the repeats are pretty much non-existent each row is different the Scottish cyber gloves developed in the lowlands and it was worn by and the elite of light from the mid-1800s to around 1920 there knitted in two colors and they were often named for prominent people in the area such as Duke which this pattern is and also principled Wales and also Rose which was designed to commemorate Princess Margaret roses birth in 1930 clean Elizabeth's sister so it starts off with corrugated ribbing the cuff has two parts the second part is in sort of a salt-and-pepper pattern that the date or initials or a word can be knitted into and then the patterning starts as well as the thumb gusset and each column of motifs feeds up into a finger so this glove has a static architecture which means if it's just a little small you can't just add a few extra stitches you have to change the needle size and the yarn size in between the fingers there are little gussets called four shots and the fingers end with three triangles they look like very smart gloves yes I love knitting them and wearing them Latvia is one of the Baltic States and it has four geographic areas each of which has their own preferences for the colors used motifs used and the the patterns in the cuffs it's not known when Latvian mittens became an important part of Latvian traditional society but they have a lot of meaning even today and giving a pair of mittens to someone else implies esteem and friendship so in in traditional ambient society young girls started knitting these mittens as soon as they could hold the needles because they needed to fill their dowry chest it's estimated between 50 and 200 pairs of mittens were needed for the wedding day which actually the wedding could last three to four days and so the mittens were given to the minister people who brought the food and even the bride would hang up mittens in her new home to bless it so there are many wonderful motifs that have been designed and the cuffs are also always interesting they are knitted in the round on very fine needles and there are braids at the beginning or the picot hem the diagonal ribbing the scalloped ribbing fringe there are so many colors used in Latvian mittens you can easily find three colors in a round this one has four colors in around and I've seen some that have five colors in around which is a challenge to knit absolutely traditional Latvian mittens had a very high gauge for instance a man's mitten might have a hundred stitches in it so very fine needles and very fine single or two ply yarns so modern live-in mittens aren't knitted as finely but they're still works of art so that was very interesting for me to see an overview of a selection of different traditional mittens and sweaters all at the same time so thank you so much for showing us your collection and sharing your knowledge with us I want to finish off the interview now talking about teaching because you have been teaching and putting on workshops for many many years what would you say the biggest challenges and surprises are that your students experience during the workshops and what do you love most about teaching I think one of the biggest surprises my students face is how uncoordinated and awkward they feel when learning a new technique and that's perfectly natural I tell them to keep practicing and muscle memory will develop pretty quickly I love working with knitters teaching them about knitting traditions and I feel so gratified when the students are so thrilled with what they've been able to accomplish in class one of my goals is to tell them about the knitters of the past whose shoulders we stand on we're part of a lineage of needle workers and I think when one is aware of that connection knitting has a lot more meaning that's definitely true yeah we've got a lot to be thankful for when we when we look back at what people have discovered and learnt and developed before us and we're continuing to do that it's amazing to see how people take right now in this knitting boom how people take brioche and they combine it with mosaic or they change things around and develop completely new things so it's absolutely exciting how that happens thank you so much for being with us on fruity knitting we've really enjoyed hearing your knowledge and seeing your your beautiful garments and mittens so we'll say goodbye to the audience now bye it was good to be here thanks a lot [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: Fruity Knitting

Views: 52,648

Keywords: Knitting, Japanese

Id: Ybz1Ax-OgZQ

Length: 81min 45sec (4905 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2019