Bath in fashion

Its been a while but here are some photos I took of some yarn bombing in Bath last week.

Crochet Unravelled - a new edition!

I was really pleased to find out that my favourite 'teach yourself' crochet book has come out in a revised edition. I first bought Claire Bojczuk's 'Crochet Unravelled' at Spin a Yarn in Bovey Tracey (marvellous shop I used to visit frequently back in the old days when I had a job - how life moves on), and I have used the book ever since. It is small (A4 size, 64 pages) so easy to carry around, yet it contains just about everything you will ever need to know, including really clear diagrams for both right and left handers. The new edition has a cute crocheted pineapple on the cover - and Claire sent me a crocheted pineapple along with my order. I am keeping one book for myself so there are nine for sale on my website.  

Inspiration

We went to the Bristol Botanical Gardens for their Bee Festival last weekend. Click her to see more info: bristol botanic garden

The colours of one of the borders in front of the Victorian house were stunning:

The last picture does not do justice to the orange (dahlias and canna lilies), yellow (rudbeckia) and purple (verbena). I have these colours in Petra so I think I will have a go at making something with them (I have some very cute DMC amigurumi patterns that I want to try out).

A knitted octopus

I have just finished a knitted octopus for Nancy's daughter (Nancy loves to crochet, hates to knit).

Here he is, crawling around my mother's sitting room ....

This is the picture from the book - I made him with Petra size 5 (available on my website!) and size 2.5mm needles.

And this is the book he came from  - Amigurumi Knits by Hansi Singh. I enjoyed making this creature and I love the finished piece, but you do need to be an experienced knitter to make these - and using thinner (and slippery) yarn and small dpns made it even harder (the pattern is for double knitting, easier to do but I think the small scale improves the look).  

More blanket

I just wanted to share my favourite squares plus a beaded amulet triangle:

How lovely is that! 

Tatting ... or frivolite

Since my mother gave me a tatting shuttle, some threads and some tatting she had done (see the blog earlier this month) I have been looking at tatting. And I have ordered some new shuttles for the website and am looking at threads too.

So what is tatting? Well I will start by passing on the introduction from  'Learn to Tat' from J & P Coats of Paisley in Scotland, which is undated but looks very '50s to me.

I love the models matching nails and lipstick!








So here is the introduction:

Frivolite is the charming name that the French, with their nice sense of the apposite, give to the needlework we know as 'tatting' - and a very much more appropriate word it is! The art of tatting seems to have originated on the Continent where an early form of it was very popular in the elegant, second half of the eighteenth century and, when it crossed the Channel, prim English ladies possibly considered that the adoption of the Continental title might provoke unseemly misunderstanding. Certainly 'Miss Emma is at her frivolity' would have sounded an altogether indecorous statement to an early Victorian mamma - and so tatting it became; but tatting is hardly descriptive of the exquisite, frothy result a good needlewoman produces with the little instrument called a tatting shuttle.

It was the Victorians, about a hundred years ago, who first revived the art and considerably improved the process of working. The great Mrs Beeton, who died in her twenties, having produced her monumental treatise on Household Management when scarcely more than a girl, also planned a comprehensive book on needlework, and she considered the subject of tatting so important as to devote the first considerable section to it. This book, completed by other experts, was published after her death.

After the first world war, however, all things Victorian, good, bad or indifferent were lumped together and classed as 'stuffy'. As a result many fine needlework arts were forgotten, until a few years ago women began to rediscover what might be called the more feminine handicrafts. So it was, that about the time when the so-called 'new look' began to turn the fashion world upside down, tatting, one of the most enchanting of such handicrafts, was revived and began to enjoy a new lease of life. As one would expect, it was smart Frenchwomen who first saw the many exciting possibilities of tatting for present day use but they were speedily followed by the fashionable in England and America, and this fascinating form of needlework is now being used to glamorise clothes as well as household linens of all kinds. Tatting has become, for the third time in a hundred and fifty years, a modish pastime and it looks likely to be an enduring vogue - as it deserves to be. It is a simple enough process and, with practice, proficiency comes quite soon even to the not so neat fingered: considering the elaborate effect obtained this is decidedly gratifying. 

A modish pastime indeed - I can't wait to get started!



Here are a few more pictures from 'Learn to Tat'.

Nancy again

I just wanted to share this beautiful pendant bird that Nancy has made. It is really tiny and exquisite.