KCG Trunk Show September 2017

From time to time the team at the Knitting and Crochet Guild (KCG) Archive arrange "Trunk Shows", where a selection of items from the collection are made available to view by interested groups and organisations throughout the country.

One such occasion a few weeks ago, I accompanied Barbara Smith (Publications Curator) to a trunk show in Harrogate. Barbara had selected items from the archive and prepared a talk for a group on a knitting tour of Yorkshire, organised by Susan Wolcott of Trips for Knitters. My role on this occasion was easy, helping organise and display items for the presentation.

Barbara presenting the Trunk Show talk 

Here's a list of the items. Followed below by some photos and a brief description of each.

1. Pence jug
2. Knitted lace doily
3. Irish crochet bag
4. Irish lace collar
5. Yorkshire Dales gloves
6. "Welcome Home" tablecloth
7. Crochet and knitted rayon jumper
8. 1930's Childs Fair Isle cardigan
9. Royal Baby's Fishermans sweater
10. Marianne Kinzel knitted tablecloth
11. Steve's jumper
12. Pink disco dress
13. Kaffe Fassett waistcoat
14. Cacti

1. Knitted Pence Jug, a container for pennies from the 19th century.

2. Knitted cotton doily with a triangular pattern insert (see image below) called "Print o' the Wave" in Shetland lace. Doily's were popular and knitted throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

3. Irish Crochet Lace was introduced in Ireland by nuns to provide an income for girls and women of poor families in rural areas. Motifs are worked separately and then joined together. Fashionable during the early 20th century unto 1914. 

Theatre Bag

Lace Collar

Collar detail

4. Knitted Yorkshire Dales Gloves, similar to the the Sanquhar designs of Dunfries and Galloway The Dales gloves held in the KCG collection are very rare and are featured in the book Old Hand Knitters of the Dales by Hartley and Inglby

5. Crochet "Welcome Home" Tablecloth. Example of patriotic WW1 filet crochet with a military theme.

Image courtesy of Barbara Smith

Image courtesy of Barbara Smith

6. Knitted and crochet rayon jumper typical of knitwear fashion around 1920's. Rayon (usually called art silk) is very slippery to work.

7. Knitted child's Fair Isle cardigan from just before WW2.

8. Royal Baby's Fisherman's jumper knitted in the 1940's with a gansey construction. The pattern was published in the Daily Telegraph, the royal baby probably being Prince Charles.

10. Marianne Kinzel tablecloth. This design is "Rose of England"  knitted in cotton.

11. "Steve's jumper". Knitted around the mid 1950's, the pattern is thought to have come from the Radio Times but has not been found by the archive team yet. 

12. Pink Disco dress probably published by Patons around 1970. This example came to the collection from a charity shop. 

13. Knitted Kaffe Fassett waistcoat. Donated by Kaffe to the collection (and knitted by the man himself) when he became patron of the Knitting and Crochet Guild in 1999. 

14. Cacti, these were designed and knitted by Jan Messant.

Image courtesy of Barbara Smith

Knit one, post one

Bletchley Park the home of codebreaking, were asking knitters earlier in June to contribute items to their Knit one, post one campaign to help with set dressing their historic site. Hand knit garments and accessories from authentic 1940's patterns such as cardigans, hats, mittens and gloves were required. 

Items were to be used in a variety of ways:

1. Part of seasonal displays in the set dressed areas of the park, such as the Huts and the Mansion.

2. By Bletchley Park Education Team for public outreach programs.

3. For wearing as costumes by Bletchley Park staff for live interpretation or living history events, such as 1940's weekends.

As a thank you, a free season ticket was being offered to each knitter who contributed to the campaign.

I''ve always had a interest in the history and mistique of the WWII codebreakers. The oportunity to contribute and receive a free ticket to visit Bletchley Park seemed a good offer and an interesting knitting project to research and make.

Due to the shortage of time available, a set of mittens were my quick knit option. I asked the help of Barbara the Publications Curator at the Knitting and Crochet Guild (KCG) Collection for some assistance selecting a suitable 1940's knitting pattern.

Bestway and Femina are a couple of the brands available from the era and are held in the KCG archive. 

Eventually I settled on this Bestway pattern for a Fair Isle design set of mitts. 

1940's patterns were generally knit with 4ply and few used thicker than double knitting. In order to keep the character of the pattern I decided to use a 100% wool yarn called Spindrift by Jamieson's of Shetland. 

I happened to have some grey (Granite #122) Spindrift available and ordered a contrast green (Verdigris #772) to go with it.  This pattern has a fairly bold fair isle design on the back with a small repeating motif on the palm, a solid strip around the edges and an after thought thumb.

These are the finished mitts ready to wrap and post to Bletchley.

Once I've scheduled a trip south for a visit, another blog post might be in order with an update and pictures of the 1940's knit wear at Bletchley.

Behind the scenes...

Regular readers may remember in February I mentioned my visit to the Knitting and Crochet Guild (KCG) Collection in West Yorkshire - two blog posts, you can find them in the links here Part 1 and Part 2. There was so much to see during the few hours of the visit and so much more I didn't have time to see. 

Since then, I've been back to the archive on a number of occassions as a volunteer. This has given me the opportunity to see close up some of the work going on behind the scenes. Hopefully, in this post there's a snap shot of what I've been involved in helping with during the last few months - but it is just that only a snap shot. 

I've been helping to sort and record a small fragment of over 50,000 items of printed material going back to around 1900. These include amongst others, knitting patterns from the early 1980's to the 1930's.

The pattern "brands" or "spinners" range from Emu, Jaeger, Hayfield, Patons, Rowan. Names I'd heard of but there are many more from the past such as Golden Eagle which I'd never heard of.

In 2014 the Guild was delighted to receive the archive of the Patons pattern collection, it is the largest collection of Patons leaflets anywhere. 

Here's a sample of the thousands of Patons knitting patterns from the 70's and 80's. It's been fascinating working on this era and taking a trip back to my childhood knitted memories. 

Fairisle is so popular just now, it's interesting to see from these '80's patterns that it has probably never gone out of fashion. Here's a selection of patterns I was sorting through which caught my eye because of the yoke colourwork.

Just this week I was making a list (for the digital record) of the pattern numbers held in the collection for Golden Eagle, a popular spinner in the 30's and 40's. 

Here's a few of the styles that caught my eye...

Note the feather and fan stitch here on this 1930's era design, a stitch so popular currently.

Members of the Knitting and Crochet Guild can have access to a large number of patterns from the collection. See the KCG publications page for information about what's available - here.

Barbara Smith is the Publications Curator with a wealth of knowledge about the collection and history of knitting. She regularly writes articles about the collection on her blog Knitting Now and Then. 

There's so much more at the archive including actual knit and crochet samples, shade cards, a library with over 2000 books, tools and accessories. 

Hopefully, I'll be able to tell you more soon about volunteering at the archive.

In the meantime, there's lots of information on the Knitting and Crochet Guild Collection website.

Swedish Bohus Knitting KCG Collection

 

If you read the previous post about the Edinburgh Yarn Festival I mentioned the Knitting and Crochet Guild (KCG) display which featured Bohus knitting. This is a style of knitting I had heard of but knew little about. Trish who was volunteering on behalf of the KCG told me a brief history. 

Originating in the Swedish province of Bohuslan, Bohus knitting began as a cottage industry to provide income for poor families. Run as a knitting cooperative it was active from 1939 to 1969. Emma Jacobsson was the founder and leading light who recruited artists and designers to produce designs for the cooperative. During the 1940's the distinctive multi coloured style was developed. Eventually, Bohus became highly fashionable with celebrities of the day among the clients such as Ingrid Bergman, Eartha Kit, Grace Kelly to name a few.

The basic knitting technique is very similar to knitting stranded Fair Isle. Whereas stranded Fair Isle colour work is generally knitted in stocking stitch with a smooth finish on the right side. Bohus has rows of purl stitches on the right side giving a texture of raised stitches. Trish was in the process of knitting a small sample which you can see below. The purl stitches are arranged on the right side of the work, both in rows and waves across the sample.

The main display board shows stitch patterns of garments in the collection. If you look to the lower right hand corner you'll notice a photo of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman.

Bohus sweater design worn by Ingrid Bergman.

An example was on display, no less, of that same sweater design Ingrid Bergman is wearing in the photo above (not the actual sweater though).

The sweater was originally designed by Anna-Lisa Mannheimer circa 1940. The pattern is called The Red Edge and is reproduced in "Poems of Color: Knitting the Bohus Tradition" by Wendy Keele.  Published in 1995 this book has 46 patterns, is full of historical information and photographs from the era. Examples of projects and patterns can be found on the book's Ravelry page.

Further items on display include a hat, scarf and gloves in the distinctive pattern and colour combinations. Items were probably purchased in Sweden around the 1950's and were part of the Coats archive.

I found the display to be inspiring and informative. This is a knitting style I'd like to try, just need to find more hours in the day to fit in the knitting projects I have in mind...

 Useful links:

Bohus Stickning Wikipedia

Angora Garnet

Bohuslan Museum

Kate Davies - Brilliant Women