Trains of thought

Early yesterday morning, while dealing with some of my business email before breakfast, I was reading a message from a customer who was apologising for being late with a payment – she’d been distracted by her wedding plans.

It’s can be quite interesting where email ‘conversations’, sometimes with people totally unknown to us, can lead. The first thought that came to mind was “I wonder when she’s getting married?”. This was quickly followed by the recognition that I’d got married in January myself, and I soon was recalling the stifling Northern Victorian heat of the day, and the wedding reception afterwards, held at Mitchelton Winery. At first it slowly dawned on me that it must be close to my own anniversary, but when I looked down at the calendar on my computer desktop it then hit me with the force of a freight train. Today was 30th January. Today was my 19th Wedding Anniversary. AND I’D FORGOTTEN IT.

Oh my goodness! The first time I’ve ever forgotten our anniversary. 

So, I dashed off a reply to my correspondent thanking her for what she’d (unwittingly) done. It was 7.30am, and  she’d given me time to redeem myself by getting a card before my husband returned from work.

I then wondered whether my husband too had forgotten the significance of the date – he’d left for work without any hint of recognition. But no, by mid morning he was on the phone to me saying that, as I was sleeping like a log when he left, he’d decided to leave me be. At that point, the thought crossed my mind that I could pretend I’d never forgotten at all ? I thought wiser of that and confessed my sins, but explained how it was words of a total stranger that led me to remember before it was too late. That all the ‘daydreaming’ (that he often accuses me of) can actually be a useful tool.

A Cellular Automaton pattern by any other name….

Knowing I had to endure sitting in the waiting rooms of a Melbourne ENT specialist on Monday, I decided it might be wise to take my own reading matter with me. I didn’t want to take knitting, as I haven’t anything that’s small enough to cart around by train & tram, nor light enough to be hauled through the  streets when I’m on foot.

I opted instead to pop into Borders, close to where the consulting rooms were, and pick up a magazine to keep me occupied.

Has anyone yet seen the latest Vogue Knitting -Winter 06/07 ? The cover has an interesting piece from the talented Norah Gaughan, constructed from modular pentagons. At first glance it may appear a little complicated, but is actually quite simple to work and quick to knit.

Anyway, I somehow managed to persuade myself to part with $17.95 for this ‘air freighted’ copy  of Vogue (remember, the cover price of this mag is just US$6.99, or equivalent to about AU$8.95) -  and then continued on my way.

When I sat down to read my magazine, I was also drawn to this design:

Initially, because it was worked in Colinette Point Five   but when I started looking at the directions something else caught my attention. Though there were no attributions for the inspiration, it seemed to me that the stitch pattern was basically a variation on Debbie New’s Cellular Automaton patterning.

From Debbie’s book Unexpected Knitting: “Cellular automata are systems where each small unit behaves according to a rule applied to the conditions in its immediate surroundings.” Debbie goes on to give examples of how to invent self generating patterns by applying a single rule to your knitting. What I particularly like about the principle is that you don’t even have to write out or chart your stitch pattern – you just need to remember your rule. You can set up a foundation row in any sequence you choose, then the rest of your knitting is by the rule. And it can be applied to colour work, lace or cables, and just ordinary plain and purl knitting.

As an example, here’s a rule from her book: knit the next stitch as (col)A if one, and one only, of the three stitches below is A. That one rule is applied right throughout the piece. Now, though this does seem a rather random way of producing stitch patterns, you’d be surprised at the complexity, and sometimes orderliness,  of patterning that can emerge from your work. Whilst most of Debbie’s examples are applied to the stitches of the row previously worked, she has also discussed using external influences to determine stitch patterns. One of hers which comes to mind was something along the lines of: Every time your partner picks up the TV remote control, work a stitch in A, with all other stitches being worked as B. In some households, that would result in a very busy pattern:-)

So, what rule does Julie Gadding use in her pattern in Vogue Knitting ? She calls the stitch pattern a random lace pattern, but it’s far less random than one might at first believe. She tells the knitter to work in stocking stitch EXCEPT when the next stitch is formed with a thin segment of the yarn, then work [yo, k2tog] on RSrows or [yo p2tog] on WS rows.

Julie’s stitch rule relies on the texture of the Point Five yarn (it’s a thick & thin yarn). At first glance it looks like the slubs might be of random length and distance apart, but just knit up a stocking stitch sample in this yarn, and you’ll notice that your textured pattern will actually start  repeating (sometimes annoyingly!).  To reduce this effect (if so desired) you can use the same principle as when knitting with hand dyed yarns: work from 2 balls at once, knitting in imaginary stripes.   

Another feature of this particular pattern in Vogue Knitting is that it’s a top down raglan – a method probably brought to popular attention by Barbara Walker.  It’s interesting to look at knitwear designs in current magazines and consider where each designer has drawn their inspiration from. Whilst we may work in isolation,  there’s a certain connectedness between knitters across the planet. Whilst some designers would like to believe their work is entirely unique, we are surely all influenced by all that has come before us – and not just from the knitting world, but from fashion history, architecture, nature and such.   There is also a lot of ‘parallel invention’ likely to be going on. Whilst one may hope you’ve dreamed up a totally new stitch pattern or knitting technique, there’s more than a fair chance that someone elsewhere in the world is working on exactly the same concept ! Likewise, the styling of knitted garments is a cyclical affair, just as fashion in general is; whilst many knitters may think the recent popularity of draped designs was quite unique, the very same look will be found amongst the patterns of the 1920s.

After I’d finished with the doctor, I went on to meet my partner for a bite to eat, and we then went to see Babel at the Cinema Nova in Carlton. In Babel the issue of connectedness crops up yet again. Whilst it provides extreme contrasts and comparisons between the four countries in which it’s set, the threads are slowly drawn together that unite a number of individuals from each of those countries, though most are not (and will never be) even aware of the other’s existence.

It’s said that we can each connect to anyone else anywhere in the world through no more than ’six degrees of separation’.  I suspect that the knitting world is even smaller.

 

Itching for a swim

I have been buying yet more books. Actually, this latest batch  I’m really justifying as being a Christmas present to myself. Why do I always feel this surge of guilt every time I bring a new book into my life? Why should I have to justify every purchase with a good reason, or a work cause? No, the truth is, I fell in love with this book when I first saw it on the shelves in Melbourne.

Yes, I bought it because I love it.

However, what I couldn’t justify at the time was the $90 Melbourne price tag so, when I later searched for the said book on Amazon, how could I turn it down at just US$26?  Of course, to make the purchase worthwhile, and to spread the cost of international postage, I couldn’t just stop at the one book, could I? So I also bought the latest Nicky Epstein publication,  ‘Knitting Over The Edge’, plus the two Nancy Bush publications, ‘Folk Socks’ and ‘Knitting Vintage Socks’.

Roaring Twenties Fashions: Deco, by Susan Langley, covers that glorious period between 1925 and 1929 – commonly regarded as the Flapper Era. This book is a fabulous combination of vintage images (ie real people photographed at the time), of present day photographs of surviving pieces of fashion, as well as period artists’ illustrations. There are bountiful collections of head-hugging cloches, and of bejewelled shoes.  There is page upon page of flapper dresses in silks and sequins. And then there are a lot of these too:

Knitted woollen swimsuits. 

There’s very little knitwear in this book overall, but there are plenty of examples of  knitted swimmers.

And the most horrific memories came rising to the surface. You see, I used to have to wear one of these things as a little girl. It was made of navy blue wool, scratchy, heavy, and it wrinkled like mad. It used to drop downwards when it was wet, and used to give me the equivalent of rope burns when my mother pulled the wet suit off my little body after we’d swum in the sea or the Thames. My mother in the UK even has family snapshots of me in the blessed thing. I can remember how  real my embarrassment was at having to wear such an unstylish costume. But what’s puzzling me now, since these memories have resurfaced, is what on earth was a child in the late ’50s/early ’60s  doing wearing a costume that was possibly obsolete by the late 1930s ?

Apart from the perverse thought that it might have been some sort of ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment, I suspect it was really no different from most of my other childhood clothes: a hand-me-down.  Just who the previous owner was, I haven’t a clue. Like many families, clothes in our household were handed down from the eldest (6 years my senior) to the middle child (3 years my senior) to me. Unfortunately, both my elder siblings were boys, which meant that, more often than not, I was togged out in baggy trousers and androgenous ‘Ladybird’ brand T-shirts & tops. (Remember, readers, androgenous was fashionable in the ’20s, but it didn’t really become hip again until the ’70s. ) I’ll never forget the day that I stood outside the local toy shop, aged about 8, gazing into the window at all those things I’d never have pocket money enough to buy, when a nearby child asked of his mother what ‘that boy’ was looking at!  I was mortified that someone should think I was a boy ! That always short haircut of mine wouldn’t have helped my cause, but what was more distressing was that the child’s mother obviously couldn’t discern my gender either, as she never offered up a correction to her offspring.

I also used to get hand-me-downs from friends of our family, but these weren’t much better: brown bloomers (you know, those baggy things with a bit of a leg, made out of heavy jersey fabric ) that must have been some poor unfortunate’s school uniform. Yes, you can imagine the taunts when I used to hang upside down on the monkey bars at primary school, second-hand knickers exposed.  If the style alone wasn’t enough to condemn me, the fact that they were poo-brown most certainly drew plentiful and unwanted attentions. Another sure winner was khaki or grey socks – my mother must have loved them, as they didn’t show the dirt. For years I begged to be allowed to wear white socks,  just like all the other girls at school, but to no avail.

But back to that woollen swimsuit. I had a little look around the internet in search of some answers that might explain how I came to be wearing such a thing so long after their demise, when I came upon this page:

The Wool Bikini Set To Make A Splash

My God ! It’s not even from some severe Eastern European regime, but here in Australia. The website is that of Australian Wool Innovation Ltd and it’s an Australian designer who has whipped up some merino wool swimmers for  us to enjoy splashing around in this very Summer.

Now, if only I could lay my hands on those lovely wool swimmers I once had….