Author Archives: gillianknitter

Even Barbara gets the blues…

I seem to have entered my blue period the last couple of weeks. I have just moved from one hat to another on the same three balls of wool (Patons Classic Wool worsted, as usual), replacing them as they run out, making sure that if I change balls, I do it where it is unlikely to show any potential dye lot change. I am becoming increasingly unhappy with the limited colour palatte that I have available at the place I buy this yarn. I may be in the market for another brand of wool soon if things don’t pick up. I think I will stick with worsted weight for the hats though..any suggestions? I hate fashion,.. my kind of colours are only “in” once in a while and I have to wade through times where I don’t “get”or “feel” the current colours. Now seems to be one of those times. Give me back my pure hues, please, these shades are killing me!

Ok, here we go. Heather, aka my harsh little critic, was pretty scathing about the concept of this first hat. When I explained what I was going to do I got “don’t worry, this one will stay in the freezer forever because no one will ever want it”. When I was photographing them today, she actually put it on…something she rarely does any more and actually came close to admitting it wasn’t terrible…it accommodated her high ponytail completely. She did say she liked the pattern, which is Stripe and Spot pattern, pg 56 above Basket Rib, pg 17.

spot and stripe pattern

I completely did not understand these next two colour change patterns when I read the instructions. The 50 year old black and white photography does not do them justice in the book. I charted them out just to make sure before I started knitting, something I rarely do any more. For the first one, I used Tricolor Fabric Stitch, pg 56, I also used Basket Welt, pg 17 at the bottom of the hat and Double Basket Pattern, pg 18 at the top of the hat.

The next hat, I used 4 garter stitch rows at the bottom of the hat then did the Double Tricolor Fabric Stitch, pg 57. I put four more rows of garter stitch, then Elongated Rib Check, pg 18. I was unhappy with the way the decreasing looked at the top so I put one of my I-cord roses on the top (for instructions, click here).

Double Tricolor Fabric Stitch

For the next hat, I actually started thinking the Squared Check Pattern would stand alone at the bottom of the hat, but it just didn’t look right so I picked up on the cast on edge and knitted four rows of garter stitch in dark blue to set it off, this way I had a live round needle at both edges of the hat:

picking up the cast on edge…

still unhappy, and in an i-cord kind of mood from the last hat, I added an i-cord rope at the bottom edge, then I did four garter stitch rows on the other needle to continue up the hat and firnished off with Swedish Check, pg 20.

My last hat is a pretty simple one with Swedish Block Pattern, pg 19 below Ripple Stripes, pg 55.

ripple stripes

Just to round things out, I did another baby sweater, using Tamerna Stitch, pg 115 for the ribbing, and Mrs Hunters Pattern, pg 150. I also used Horseshoe Cable, pg 243 on the front.

I must say, I am still finding this project endlessly fascinating and I think the stuff I am making isn’t terrible.

Village life….special visitors

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Last weekend was spring planting weekend at the village, we had 10 extra teams of horses to help prepare and plant the fields. Some were retired employees, some international ploughing match entrants. We are having the ploughing match really near here this fall and the teams are getting in practice. Luckily Alan came down to the village so he could take some pictures for me as he doesn’t wear a costume.

My favourite visiting horse team was the Wensink twin’s Belgians.

Beautiful Belgians

I was working in the Louck’s kitchen last Saturday with Barb. Her 5 year old granddaughter, Hadley, got into costume and spent the day with us. For obvious reasons she was a huge hit with the visitors.

Churning butter

On Sunday we had a visit from Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Federal Liberal Party, and his family. They spent the day at the village and apparently enjoyed themselves. Heather had no idea who he was when he purchased his ticket and rode on the train.

from Justin Trudeau’s facebook page…

Village life…looking out my windows

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I have been in a few different buildings in the last couple of weeks. A couple of weeks ago we had the Queen’s birthday celebrations. This picture was taken out of an upstairs window at Cooks Tavern where our village sedentary militia was assembled behind some visiting members of the Brockville Infantry and the Brockville Rifles.

Queen’s Birthday

One thing that is GREAT for me this year is that my daughter, Heather got a summer student’s job at the village. It is an hour drive in each direction and it is wonderful to have company and someone to drive half the time. She is regularly on the miniature train, but about once a week she is being put in my old building, the woollen mill. She is obviously comfortable in there as she has known the guys for many years. My best friend at the village, Lynda has also just replaced me for the summer in the mill. Here is Heather dressed for a day in the mill. Her dad took these pictures as it would have been much too public for me to.

Last fall I did a temporary placement in the McDiarmid House, which is hand spinning and weaving. I am now going to be doing a day in there now and then when the regular artisan is on her days off. I was in there last week and I couldn’t resist going into the bedroom to take a picture of the young Brownies and Girl Guides as they trooped past. No pun intended. Really.

I made my first (totally passable) rhubarb pie in the bake kettle with no one else around to help me. I have used bake kettles before, but never without supervision. I was surprised how well it went and how straightforward it seems to be. Hopefully it wasn’t just beginners luck.

My first rhubarb pie…yeah!!!

The bake kettle after use

Barbara Walker catch up…dolls bed

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A while ago I made the coverings for my doll’s bed. I made them very early on in the project. I actually stopped because I realized that I wasn’t really making anything but tension squares.

Here is the doll’s bed with all its bits and pieces:

Dolls bed and cradle

I have already talked about the blankets in a previous post. The two bed pillows and the blanket for the cradle were all done using dmc pearl cotton and 1mm needles. The cradle blanket is Dewdrop Pattern, pg 149.

doll’s pillows

The white pillow was made of Roman Rib Stitch, and the red one Roman Stitch, from pg 13.

The cradle pillow was made using Ripple Stitch, pg 13, Mettler Quilting thread and 0.75mm needles.

Knitting with sewing thread and 0.75 mm knitting needles

A week in the life of the village-in drag

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In drag for a day in the Grist mill

I have been moving around the village a bit, things are unsettled in the first couple of weeks as staff shifts around and new people get incorporated. I had a visit to costuming so I could go into the flour mill in drag. They had me outfitted in less than five minutes. There is no real way to interpret around some positions as a woman, so we have to dress in men’s clothes once in a while and I spent that particular day in the grist mill.

costuming department

Costuming is always busy in the mornings just before work. They are standing by for mending, supplying hairpins, last minute re assignments that require special outfits, etc. Later in the day they often have to outfit large groups of visitors that will be spending time on site in costume as part of their programs-overnight groups of school children and their teachers or girl guide troupes. Later in the season they have to outfit the kids from the overnight camps. Thirty kids a week with two complete outfits per child. They also have a lot of work to do on special event weekends where regular staff need clothes representing people of a higher social class than they usually portray, and visiting extras need to be clothed in period costumes.

I enjoyed my day in the grist mill where they grind a hard, red Ontario spring wheat that is high in gluten and protein. They produce flour for our on-site bakery and our gift shop as well as a few local bakeries who like the authentic stone ground flour our grist mill produces. It makes REALLY good bread that usually sells out at our gift shop, sometimes within minutes.

Grist mill interior

I spent 4 days in my old job in the woollen mill, then moved into my new position in the cooking unit. I am at the completely opposite end of the village this summer in the kitchens down on the farms. I baked my first cake in the wood cook stove and thankfully, it turned out fine..nice and moist and not burned, which had been my fear. This picture is before I added a brown sugar icing.

A week in the life of the village–opening week

Barbara Walker…week 10

Barbara Walker…week 9

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Only two items this week…I haven’t really made baby sweaters since my kids were babies. And we all know they are not that any more. There are only two kids in the next generation so far and my sister Jane is a knitter herself, so there was no real point. Gotta say, hats are WAY easier….there are so many more stitches in this sucker than any hat. Also way more design choices, potential problems. Having to rip back a few times only adds to the psychological issues. I probably should have aimed for newborn size instead of the second size, less knitting….BUT, I used three whole stitches from “THE BOOK” (A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. Barbara Walker. 1968). Wheat Ear Rib, pg 43, Cloverleaf Eyelet Pattern, pg 169, and Eccentric Cables, pg 241. I thought I had been making too many hats, and I needed to leave my wheelhouse for a bit. I have made over 200 hats without patterns now and I make design choices almost automatically, for good or ill. It almost never takes longer than walking to the kitchen to make a coffee to get me unstuck anymore. Also, I couldn’t figure out how the wheat ear rib would be done in the round. I think I have figured it out, but I thought it was cheating if I wasn’t sure it was the same stitch exactly. I have to follow my own arbitrary, fictitious rules on this project, after all.

I have an issue at the back of the collar. We are going to Toronto this week to pick the kids up from university, so I will try to visit the only grandniece I have and see how bad the problem is. I am pretty sure I can jury rig it easily enough. I am pretty vigilant these days about writing down the hat patterns, but I figured this was a dead loss and I quit writing it down somewhere near the middle of the raglans. I am not really fussed about the look of the raglan edge, but better done than perfect as someone used to say. A lot.

…a wam hug

On our way home from Quebec City, we stopped in Plessisville at the Brassard et Fils weaving supply store Near the cash they had this (sadly discontinued) Misti Cotton which is a blend of pima cotton and silk. It felt so soft I couldn’t leave it there, so I bought three skeins. I immediately knew that I wanted to make neck warmers with it. I also knew that I had to break into the cable chapter, so I did this to use up a whole bunch of different cables. I started at the bottom of the collar part with Classic Mock Cable, pg 115 and Four Stitch Cable Crossed Every Fourth Row, pg. 241. Just before the collar part finished, I turned around as if to do a short row so that I flipped back and front. I continued down the yoke part turning the mock cable into 4 x 4 cable then 6 x 6 cable. I turned the 4 x 4 cable into 6 x 8 cable then 8 x 10 cable. I was just trying to constantly increase as I went along. I had measured and knew that I had to end up with about 2 1/2 times as many stitches at the bottom of the yoke as I had on the collar part. I created new cables between the old ones which started as mock cables and transitioned into 4 x 4’s. At some point I was REALLY glad I wasn’t trying to follow someone else’s pattern instructions because I would have had to think too much. With the baby sweater, this takes care of all the simple cables….yeah! And it feels like a warm hug so, double bonus points.

Barbara Walker… week 8

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Jah Rastafari

Heather was home last week between classes and exams. She mentioned that she will be going to a scout moot next weekend with the theme “Reggae vs DIsco”. I immediately thought “do I have a stitch for you!”. I knew this, Tricolor Wave Stripes, was the next stitch in Chapter Four, Color-Change Patterns. It may have been good to do another slouch, but it is difficult to get slouchy with such a dense stitch.

My next hat went from COLOUR! back to white, It uses Basketweave from Chapter Two, simple Knit-Purl Combinations and Braided Rib from Chapter Three, Ribbings.

Braided Rib and Basketweave

I tried my best to stay in the pattern as I decreases at the top, but it was difficult to maintain the integrity of the stitch whilst decreasing the number of stitches per pattern repeat. I don’t mind the top, but I think the basketweave got lost.

disappearing the basketweave

My last hat of the week uses Reverse Cross-Stitch Ribbing in combination with Mock Cable Rib (as suggested in the book). I also broke into Chapter Nine, Eyelet Patterns with Zigzag Eyelet Pattern below the Simple Eyelet Pattern.

I played a bit with the top from last week. Disappearing 14 stitches toward each other in four sections. This time when I got to the top of this part, I continued up with slip 1, knit 2 together, psso to the top. Not actually that much different than the top last week’s hat.

disappearing eyelets

I didn’t get too far this week because my knitting guild challenge is due tonight and I had to finish up my entries on the weekend. My entries are very much also-rans this year, but someone has to lose, right?

Barbara Walker….week 7

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Black and white sampler-side view

For these first two hats, I cast on 108 stitches using Patons Classic (worsted weight) wool and 4 1/2 mm needles. I like 108 stitches if I am doing something that pulls in a bit, like cables or colour work. 108 has a lot of ways to be divisible 3 x 36, 4 x 27, 6 x 18, 9 x 12. For more ordinary tension stitches, I usually cast on about 100 stitches, which covers stitch repeats of 4 or 5 nicely. or 98 or 105 for a stitch repeat of 7, 102 for stitch repeats of 6.. These first two hats used 9 different stitches, all from Chapter 4, Color-Change Patterns. For the first hat I started at the bottom with Pin Stripe Pattern. I did a total of 14 rows of each colour, then joined back in to the cast on edge. I continued up the hat with Three-and-One Tweed, Corn on the Cob Stitch, Pin Check, Pin Check Variation, and finished with Waffle Check. I separated each section with a knit row, then a purl row of black. I like how the hat fits and it is really cozy and warm…not that we need THAT any more this year, YEAH!!. Here is the top of that first one:

Black and White sampler-top view

I liked how the pinstripe looked, but I felt the band could be less puffy. I experimented on the second hat and did 7 rows of knit 1, purl 1 ribbing before doing 8 rounds of each colour in the pinstripe pattern and joining back to the cast on edge.

Another black and white sampler

I continued up this hat with Maltese Cross Stitch, Waffle Check Variation, and finished with Dotted Ladder Pattern. I did a two stage decrease at the top, and I liked the effect (for each quarter of the hat, I decreased on 2/3 of the stitches with the decreases heading toward each other, then when these stitches were gone, did the same thing on the remaining stitches).

Another black and white sampler…top view

I was pleased with how that looked, so decided to do the same basic thing on my next hat, this time doing half the stitches first, then the rest, but without the visual distraction of the colours.

Quaker ridging slouch hat-back view

I like how this top looks, but unfortunately maybe not on the hat I did. I used Little Hourglass Ribbing from Chapter 3, Ribbings for 14 rows, then switched to Quaker Ridging from Chapter 2, Simple Knit-Purl Combinations. As I was knitting this hat, it struck me that it was a pretty flexible stitch and the purl sections might roll up like my socks from a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it might work well as a slouch hat, which I did.

Quaker Ridging slouch hat-side view

Heather and my friend Jen both liked the slouch thing, so I decided to do another using Cross-Stitch ribbing and Banded Insertion Pattern.

Banded Insertion Pattern-side view

J decided for this one to just let the stitch itself tell me how to reduce it, even though I still have some ideas related to the last cast off. I will save them for the future. I have made notes so I don’t forget. I quite like how the back turned out.

Banded Insertion Pattern-back view

	Lisa Leblanc on My day job (during tourist…
	gillianknitter on Lace…it will be the end…
	gillianknitter on Lace…it will be the end…
	Lynda Mc on Lace…it will be the end…
	Carole C. on Lace…it will be the end…

gillianknits

…mostly hats