Thursday, April 29, 2010

Peggy-Sue


Peggy Sue is a lovely vintage-look cardigan designed by Linda Wilgus which features in The Comfort Issue. A Peggy Sue will see you through the spring and into the summer evenings over a pretty dress or with a top and jeans.Inspired by the pin up sweaters of the 1950s, this is a quick knit with DK yarn. A cropped style, with a ribbed cable pattern to add shaping to the waist, this cabling detail is duplicated along the cuffs and at the collar.


This pattern has become one of the most popular of Issue 10's designs, with 21 projects on Ravelry already in a wealth of colours, so why not go and join them and knit yourself a Peggy Sue!

Ingrid

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Sunday, April 25, 2010

Steampunk Knits

Have you heard of Steampunk? I was introduced to the idea by my friend Pete last year. As Wikipedia puts it...

The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used — usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era England — but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date.
I went to a recent exhibition of steampunk art in Oxford which was great fun: here's a link to give you a feel of it.

But why am I talking about this, you ask... Well in the Ravelry group Steamy Knits (no, not that sort of steamy), they have mentioned quite a few patterns from The Comfort Issue as being Steampunk knits. Njordgirl mentions that

Busker, Champs Elysees & Eiffel Tower Handwarmers, Evangeline, Lace Cap and Venta all caught my eye…


What do you think? Will you be knitting them up in a Steampunk style? I'll be interested to see what they come up with.

Ingrid




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Where to find us on the Interwebs

Please do join us to discuss the magazine, your favourite patterns and features, and any other knitting related topics. Tell us what you would like to see on knitonthenet.com

Follow us on Twitter or add photographs of your finished objects to our Flickr pool. Check out the latest happenings here on the knitonthenet blog, our Facebook fan page and we are members of Subversive Yarn too. On Ravelry we have a knitonthenet group with discussion forums and where you can check out how other people have made knitonthenet patterns. If you're a fan of vintage knits, you might also like our sister group A Stitch in Time 2008 where we discuss the patterns from knitonthenet editor Susan's book. We're currently holding a knit-along over there too, so do check that out.

Hope to see you out there!

Ingrid

Thursday, April 22, 2010

'...a chair where she can always find her needles'

It's 1952: Britian is still under rationing, space in the home is at a premium and advertising voiceovers are delivered in a condescending manner to the housewives of the day.

Forgiving the blatantly chauvenistic overtones of this piece of film from the British Pathe archive, wouldn't you just love one of these chairs with a hidden extension for your knitting?

FURNITURE EXHIBITION



Here's the link to the site in case you can't watch it here. Skip to 53 seconds for the chair.

...I wonder if they still make them?

Ingrid

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

...and the winners are

Thank you to everybody who entered our competition to win one of three copies of 'Knit, Purl, Save the World' by Vickie Howell and Adrienne Armstrong.

The draw has been made by random number generator, picking out entry numbers 83, 149 and 162 which were Kate Ruloff of Pembrokeshire, Mary Evans of Shropshire and Anne Jones of South Yorkshire.

Well done to you three ladies!

Ingrid

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Friday, April 16, 2010

Competition Deadline Looming! Enter Now!

Just a reminder for all of our UK readers that tomorrow is the last chance to enter our book give-away.

If you would like the chance to win one of three copies of "Knit, Purl, Save the World" by Vickie Howell and Adrienne Armstrong, courtesy of publishers David and Charles please send an email to:

issuetencompetition (at) knitonthenet (dot) com with the subject as Eco Knits and your name and mailing address as the content. The first three readers pulled out of the hat on 18th April 2010 will receive a copy of the book.

Closing date: 17th April, 2010.

This competition is open to UK residents only and books can only be despatched to the UK address given in the email. No cash alternative is available.

Click here to read a review of this book.

Good luck!!
Ingrid

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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

New Home for the Textile Conservation Centre

Conserving Textiles at the TCC. Image © Christine Maurhoff

There is exciting news regarding the UK's only Textile Conservation Centre. You might remember that the centre, formerly part of University of Southampton was forced to close its Winchester base in October 2009. In some great news, it will reopen in Scotland at the University of Glasgow with a new student intake for September 2010. You can read more about it by following this link.

The Textile Conservation Centre is close to my heart, as I trained there for my MA in History of Textiles and Dress a few years ago. The TCC Foundation was set up to support textile conservation research and education in the UK. Originally based in Hampton Court Palace, the TCC moved to Winchester with a 1998 merge with the University of Southampton.

The University of Southampton took the decision to close the Textile Conservation Centre in 2009 which was met with enormous concern: the closing of the centre meant that it was no longer possible to train as a textile conservator in Britian. The move to Glasgow is brilliant news for potential textile conservators and for textile historians.

Happy knitting and conserving
Ingrid


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Sunday, April 11, 2010

Mrs Miniver and the Plateaknits

Ingrid with the Giant Jeeves and Wooster Sock © Giles Babbidge Photography

If you're in London this month, pop along to Prick Your Finger which is a brilliant and quirky yarn and haberdashery shop in Bethnal Green in London. I'm lucky enough to have an exhibition up in their window for April entitled 'Mrs Miniver and the Plateaknits'. The shop is run by Louise Harries and Rachael Matthews (who wrote a great piece for us in this issue: Louder than Bombs). I went up to London last Wednesday to put the show up with lots of help from my chap, Giles who was also kind enough to document it all for me. Rachael and Louise and their shop staff were lovely and made us very welcome with cups of tea throughout the day and put on a great private view in the evening.

I’m showing both a series of socks called the Mrs Minivers which talk about relationships between people (both real and ficticious), and also the final pieces from @platea's online art performance on Twitter this past January: #plateaknit. The performance crowdsourced a knitting pattern through Twitter and makers interpreted tweets into finished knitted items: I made two hats, wrist warmers and a scarf from them.

In the photograph at the top, you can see one of my Jeeves and Wooster socks. I used a 1930s pattern called 'The Wondersock' which has detachable toes and heels to save on darning: the idea is that you just knit more when they wear through. A clever idea and quite strange to knit: they really only came together to look like socks when I sewed them up at the end. They came out absolutely enormous too despite swatching! Did 1930s men have extra large feet??!

The exhibition is on at Prick Your Finger for the rest of April, so if you are in London, please do visit and let me know what you think.

Happy Knitting!
Ingrid

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Wednesday, April 07, 2010

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

I just re-watched this video on TED the other day and although it isn't new, I think that if you haven't seen it or heard about the Hyperbolic Coral Reef it will blow your mind.

Margaret Wertheim talks about how she led a project with her sister, Christine to re-create the creatures of the coral reefs using a crochet technique invented by a mathematician. In this ongoing project, which started in 2007, they celebrate the amazingness of the reef, and dive into the hyperbolic geometry underlying coral creation.

Did any of you take part when it was in London two years ago?



Happy Crocheting!
Ingrid

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Sunday, April 04, 2010

May the Bunnies be with You!

Easter Eggs. Image copyright Giles Babbidge Photography


Wishing a very Happy Easter to all of our readers!

Love from Susan, Gavin and Ingrid xxx
the knitonthenet team

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