Plenty of Nothing

Mega Mendung

Swirly clouds with graduated tones show up wherever Buddhism has been an influence. You see them in the corners of Tibetan thankas. This design is on a batik cloth from Cirebon on the north shore of Java. For more about mega mendung (roughly: cloudy clouds) see here and here.

Victoria and Albert Silk Designs

The author of Spitalfields Life has accomplished something Heather has always wanted to do -- go to the textile department of the Victoria and Albert museum and root around in the design books. These drawings were made in the year 1741/2.

For my money Spitalfields Life is everything a weblog should aspire to be. The writing is original, humane, humble, curious and local. The author posts daily about some aspect of life in his neighbourhood, and has committed to do so for ten thousand posts, or until 2037. By returning constantly to the particular, he is building up a picture of the universal. And after only a year and a half it is already a feast.

Moscow Rules: Buy it When You See It

Canada Day weekend we idly wandered around a craft show and flea market. Due to work-weirdness-that-shall-not-be-named, I was pretty much a zombie and forgot to bring money.  I kept bumming cash from Douglas to pick up a couple thing that fell within the Mosow Rules for shopping.

I picked up a bit of needlework that's in bad shape--water-stained, spotted, and faded--and the condition was reflected in the price.  This was cheap and I'm unlikely to see another one.

Although this was probably intended for a pillow cover, the wear suggest that it hung in a sunny spot for a while and then later lay flat and maybe folded when it was water damaged.  It's stitched in two types of thread--silk for the flags and cotton for the centre piece--and probably by two hands. 

The flags give away the dates--it would have been stitched in Canada between 1914 and early 1917.

And since I'm always about to get into trouble in museums by trying to look at the underside of things, here's the back view.

Heather

Do You Think One These Would Fit Into Our "Decor"

Wonder if something like this is eBayable?

Seen here. Via plep's feed.

Heather

The Mountain Witch's Mittens, Part One

Leave it to a Frenchwoman to make dressing up as a Tolkienesque sorceress look authentic, practical and fashion forward.  Black?  How seventeenth-century.  She and the rest of her fellowship can be found here, tromping around a French mountainside.  You can tell from her expression that somebody stands in imminent danger of a blast of goddess wrath.  And she would seem to offer an answer to that ancient conundrum, Can you cast a spell with mittens on?  From a textile perspective, that pointy cranberry felted witch hat is an enticing project beyond my capability, but the mittens I can manage.  I have the burgundy and apple green wool already.  The checkerboard pattern presents a couple of problems though.  First, when knitting in two colours, you have to carry one colour behind, but with these large squares it means there will be long loops of yarn behind the pattern, long enough to tangle your fingers.  If you catch the second strand behind, say, every third stitch, you run the risk of creating furrows of tension in the pattern.  (See below.)  The second problem is how to close off the top without abandoning the checkerboard design.  My first idea was to make the mitten eight squares around, four green and four burgundy, then at the top to reduce the burgundy squares to triangles, causing the four green squares to come together at the corners, creating a single square space at the top to be knit over in burgundy.  Here's how that looks:

See the pressure ridges?  I'm going to have to start over and this time I'm going to try carrying the yarn behind every stitch, and I'll also use more needles to make the jump from one to the next less angular.  I'm not thrilled about the square at the top either.  It's single instead of double knit, and kind of corner-y.  I'm also going to have to find the manual for this camera and figure out how to photograph with natural light.  All the faults I wanted to highlight tend to smooth out and disappear with the flash.

Douglas

Rouge et Or

These got favorable notice from the wool shop lady in Kingston, who turned one of them inside out like I hoped.  They were knit on four needles from Alafoss lopi with an improvised Norwegian/Nova Scotian design.  They're a men's large.

Douglas

You May Want To Avert Your Eyes

Last year's green stripey pair have been joined by these.

I hope the other more sedate unders don't start to feel neglected.

Heather

Knitting Music

I saw this over at Knitnut and as someone who lives with a man who knits, it made me giggle. But there's something off about the music. What, though, would count as knitting music?

First Lost Mitten of Winter

The Underside

It was a slow week for reading around here and several books went back to the library unfinished. From the portion I read, I’d say Mary Gaitskill’s Two Girls Fat and Thin covers similar ground as Veronica in its exploration of two unlikely friends. The reworking of similar characters was part of why I wanted to read it. I may borrow it again when I’m in the mood to put up with the Ayn Rand character that drives the early parts of the plot.

The most interesting thing I did finish was Gather Beneath the Banner, a catalogue from a 1999 Textile Museum. The catalog is strong on the images; high-level on the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; and oddly light on the details of the construction of the banners. Not a single photo of the back of a banner. (Why, yes, I have made security guards nervous by trying to peep around at the backings of tapestries. Looking very closely is not touching.)

While my great-grandmother belonged to a temperance society (somewhere around here I have her pledge card), it’s unlikely that I’d ever pass muster. Even so, I’m curious about the contradictions at the heart of the nineteenth-century WCTU: I’d like to better understand how its members sustained the contradiction between arguments for equality when it came to female suffrage and arguments of difference with when it came to race and eugenics.

(Note to self: some research possibilities identified here.)

(Another note to self: wonder if there’s a text out there somewhere that talks about the way politics and textiles intersect in public spaces (banners, expedition flags, badges). Must be. )