Knitted Advent - Day 2

DECEMBER 2nd - Waiting hopefully

Knitted Advent

In the run-up to Christmas, with all the pressure to get ready for the festive season, the period of Advent can sometimes get squeezed out or obscured. Yet it is an important time of quiet waiting. Waiting for the light of Christmas, with its renewed promise of a presence of Love at work in the world. Waiting for the dark of Winter to pass and the first signs of renewal and growth to arrive. On the way there is the Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, which this year began at sunset today; and on December 21st, the Winter Solstice, which marks the shortest day of the year and in some traditions is seen as the beginning of a New Year.

The traditional Advent Calendar has a picture for every December day up to the 24th, reminders of what it is we are waiting for, although these days the calendar is more likely to contain chocolate! This year I've decided to offer you a Knitted Advent Calendar. I hope you will appreciate taking a moment of stillness each day to enjoy the pictures and to celebrate this special time.

DECEMBER 1st - Winter is Here!

November - my new favourite month

I've been a "silent blogger" for the past two months, busy with work and knitting projects for work colleagues who are embracing motherhood for the first time. City and Guilds has been a bit on the back-burner but did inspire a full-on exploration of entrelac, which led me to select this Debbie Bliss pattern for one of the baby knits. And before things got so frantically busy, I enjoyed designing my own combination of stitch patterns like this one for Module 6.

It has been a rich although sometimes confusing time and I've been wondering about my life's purpose along the way. Things suddenly became much clearer on Tuesday and I now have the sense of a vision of the way forward, that includes knitting and my connection to Shetland. This picture of a sculpture in London that we saw during birthday celebrations for my other half's 50th in September sums up the exuberance that I'm currently feeling (even though it looks a bit windy and my sense of balance is a bit dodgy!).

The conference on Shetland in September was wonderful - awesomely good weather and a splendid crowd of people attending and presenting. This is honestly a picture of Lerwick Harbour during the event, with some of the conference participants enjoying the sunshine. There is so much interest in Shetland knitting traditions and it was really good to watch people discover the place for themselves. There was a write-up in The Knitter (issue 24) and probably elsewhere too. We took possession of our new house while we were up there and the picture below is the view from my bedroom window there, down at the south end of the mainland near Sumburgh Head.
On a clear day you can see Fair Isle. There are two sandy beaches close by and on one of these I found this beautiful image.


Now it's November, the clocks have changed and the days are shorter. I've always found this a challenging time but this year I've decided to change my attitude to it. After all, there's lots to celebrate: the witchiness of Hallowe'en is swiftly followed by All Souls' and All Saints' Days at the start of the month, then Bonfire Night, if you like it (although actually I don't because of the distress that the loud fireworks cause to pets). This is undoubtedly easier when the weather is as sunny as it's been today. Back in Oxford, we went for a walk in the woods at Shotover Country Park and then I did some work in the garden. It was magical outside, with a strong sense of the longevity of the trees all around us, not dying but shedding old growth so that new can rise up. At home in the garden I found new growth pushing through at the base of a sedum plant that is still burning with its glorious autumn colours. So now November is my new favourite month, a time of winter ritual and celebration, getting ready for Advent, the transformation and promise of Christmas and renewal of spring.

Heading for the Northlands - again!

So where did the summer go? Summer School was fantastic - a group of amazing women produced some amazing knitting. You can see some pictures here:

Now it's back up to Shetland for the
In the Loop Conference 2010 - as featured on Woman's Hour. I'm really looking forward to it.

Preparing for Summer School

The Oxford Summer School is nearly upon us and New Directions in Knitting is almost fully booked. I'm really looking forward to it and think it is going to be good fun. There are still one or two places left if you want to join us and find out what you can do with an empty Pringles tub and some lollipop sticks...

Promote Shetland

The Jam Factory Knitters' tour to Shetland was a great success. The weather was astonishingly kind to us, so much so that my more southerly friends don't believe it is ever wet and windy up there... We stayed right in the centre of the capital Lerwick, next door to the fabulous Shetland Museum. We did suitably "knitty" type things from Lerwick and up on the West and North Mainland for the first few days, including a tour of the Museum, a visit to Jamieson's Woollen Mill and Shop and a visit to the delightful little museum at Tangwick Haa. Then on 1st June we headed off to Fair Isle. We had a rough but memorable trip on the ferry over the notorious bit of sea from Grutness but once we were there the climate was positively Mediterranean! We stayed on a croft with Kathy Coull who gave us the most wonderful time and introduced us to many of the other talented people there: knitters, spinners, musicians and makers of traditional spinning-wheels and straw-backed chairs. We had lessons in spinning and Fair Isle knitting in the round using a knitting belt - and the opportunity to gain a little insight into life in an isolated yet creatively stimulating environment.

This was a pilot trip to Shetland for Stile Knits and we will certainly repeat it - more details on the website soon. Here are some of my pictures from the trip. Ross's Travelblog also has some excellent pictures and inspiring writing about the experience.

Meanwhile there is another interesting opportunity for knitters to visit Shetland in the very near future as the In the Loop Conference 2 is being held at the Shetland Museum and Archives from 1 to 5 September. This is being organised jointly by the Museum and the University of Southampton. The programme looks enticing and the two knitters we met on Fair Isle - Kathy and Anne Sinclair - are both presenting papers about their knitting interests. It should be a really good week. See http://www.soton.ac.uk/intheloop/ for more information.

Contact me if you are planning to go as I hope to be there and may be able to give you some advice and help about accommodation etc. You can find more information about visiting Shetland at Promote Shetland.

3-D Knitting

Because we often knit flat pieces,then sew them together, it can be easy to forget that knitting is a three-dimensional craft. I've been reminded a few times lately that when we knit we are creating yarn sculptures. I've just completed Module 5 of my City & Guilds course (hurrah!) and part of that has been to manipulate paper into 3-D shapes as a prelude to designing assessment pieces. I always struggled with the geometry aspects of maths at school and this has brought back memories of all that frustration. I once asked my maths teacher what use symmetry would be to me in the "real" world and he had no answer. If only he had mentioned textiles!

NEW DIRECTIONS IN KNITTING is my Oxford Summer School course, which will explore knitting as sculpture along with other techniques - but no school maths, I promise!

You can find out more and register at www.oxfordsummerschool.com or by contacting Liz Bryant, 10 Foxburrow Lane, Hailey, Witney, OX29 9UN Tel. 01993 704345

Mathematics is also connected with weaving, which I finally tried out last week at the Oxford Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, inspired by my visit to the new Textile Gallery in the Ashmolean Museum. I was really pleased by the slight ikat effect I produced once I started using two colours on a rigid heddle loom ably taught by Angela Pawlyn. I'd like to do more. The Ashmolean display is a delight, too, if a little hard to find (just off the restaurant in the basement). It's so good to see all these lovely textiles on display, including Central Asian coats which drew my attention in an exhibition there over 15 years ago. The display includes this panel on Textiles and Mathematics: "Making textiles requires mathematical skills: both arithmetic and geometry are used to translate a pattern into a woven structure or textile surface design. The relationship of warp to weft creates the surface of the cloth, and the weaver learns to translate this into patterns...(these) may also require counting skills and sophisticated planning of space...Counted stitches are the basis of...embroidery and principles of symmetry are essential when designing printing with blocks." Now, why couldn't Mr Rogers have told me that?!!!

In my own knitting, I've also been experimenting with sculptural form, working on projects that are knitted in the round and can be completed without any sewing up. My main aim has been to find and design projects that I can enjoy as I'm knitting them as well as being satisfied with the finished product. Knitting five pieces of flat fabric and then sewing them together is not always the best way to achieve this for me. For a long time now I've wanted to design a waistcoat knitted on "no-sew" principles and my sister-in-law's 50th birthday provided an ideal excuse. I used Rowan 4 Ply Pure Wool in a fashionable turquoise (Pantone Colour of the Year!) and some contrast burnt orange wool from my stash. I developed the design from a lace vest by Sarah Dallas in her Scottish Inspirations collection for Rowan, using a Sasha Kagan base pattern for the waistcoat with her signature twisted rib back. I'm really delighted with the way it has turned out and I thoroughly enjoyed planning and constructing it. I also learned a lot on the way. I love that blue and orange complementary colour contrast. When I looked back at my photos from the day out to the Bath Fashion Museum last August I found that there was a Sarah Dallas waistcoat there in blue and brown mixed yarns with an orange trim - a subliminal inspiration?