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[msjoat]

[msjoat]

sometimes in knitting you just have to go 'nobody but me will notice this mistake' and keep going

[msjoat]

[msjoat]

Quick reminder on why it is never a good idea to piss off a fiber artist:

Go ahead. Insult a crocheter. Say their craft is somehow inferior. Remember a crocheter can use their hooks go Ancient Egyptian on you and rip your brains out through your nostrils, except we won't bother to mummify you first.

Knitters will not stab you with their needles because some of them are rather fragile, but they will knit you a fetching sweater...a CURSED sweater...THAT cursed sweater...and purposely make it about 5 sizes too small and strangle you with it. It will hurt, but you'll look amazing.

Embroiderers and any sort of seamsters use a sharp object to stab something thousands of times to make it pretty. Do you want to be made pretty? Do you? We WOULD REALLY LIKE TO MAKE YOU PRETTY...

Weavers can make your death shroud from scratch. We're talking sheep to fabric. All they'll need to do is make sure you are in the proper state to be buried. Know that it takes only a moment to make that happen.

Spinners make what is varying thicknesses of rope. Do you know what can be done with rope? Do you really want an answer to that question?

Here is the True Golden Rule: Thou shalt not demean those who work the fiber and expect mercy, for we shall have none. Your destruction will be made of ten thousand knots and each a curse upon your name and your house.

And, we heed the call to protect one of our own with the ferocity of angry bees.

Just be nice to your local fiber artist.

Chances are you'll get something warm out of it.

[msjoat]

More about Jim’s jumper!!

These are all from Sandy Higgin's public IG - (handle is vintagestiches40s) - and what a remarkable peek into the process of designing and knitting Jimbriel's sweater. She really dug deep into history and knitting tradition to incorporate Good Omens themes!

[msjoat]

New piece! Am calling her “Skör” (fragile in Swedish).

Assembled from strips of lace, a doily, and some fiddly needle lace and crochet for the teeth. Starched with diluted wood glue.

Perfect in time for Halloween!

[msjoat]

WEE JOHN KNITTING YOU ARE EVERYTHING TO ME. MY FIBER ARTS FRIEND [x]

[msjoat]

Look at this shit

Beautiful crocheted coat, right? Interesting textures. Clearly some color work you can have some fun with.

But wait.

It goes fucking balls out.

Because this is how you contstruct it:

LOOK AT IT

[msjoat]

Get yourself a fabric store that will light your fabric on fire for you

No but legit I asked what the fiber content of something was and the guy didn’t know so he cut a chunk off and lit it on fire and felt the ashes and was like. Yeah this is mostly cotton with a lil bit of silk. And that was the moment I knew. This is it. This is the fabric store for me. Also that guy is marriage material. Not for me but damn some person is gonna be so happy with him.

[msjoat]

Finished project: Rosemary

I was scrolling through my own blog today (as one does) and realized I never did a proper round-up post for Rosemary. So this is a bit of a retrospective I suppose! Click through for my notes on the project if you're interested - otherwise, I hope you like the pictures!

This is certainly one of my favorite pieces that I've done. I think it really turned out beautifully! But, it also stands out in my mind for having a foul, foul, truly foul number of broken threads that had to be replaced in the middle of the work. I think at least 6? The ideal number of course being zero. At the time, this sucked. I had no idea what I was doing - you can see in one of the pictures that I was referencing three different books at one point trying to figure out how the heck to fix the dang things. But in hindsight, it was valuable experience! I got a lot of practice splicing in new threads, and I also stopped being so afraid of it happening. (Though of course one still likes to avoid it...)

I am not sure why so many threads decided to part company with their fellows, but I have some theories. I'm fairly sure it's not because of putting too much tension on the thread, because it didn't snap under pressure so much as just kinda fray and drift apart. My prime suspect is the bobbins - something about this style of bobbin makes it really hard (for me, at least) to prevent them rolling wildly all over the pillow during the work, which runs the risk of untwisting the thread. This is very sad for me because I love these bobbins. But I haven't given up hope that I can still make them work. They seem to roll less on my box pillow, so maybe they can just be reserved for that pillow. Also, I'm on that "it was a bad batch of thread" copium 😅

This was also the first time I tried mounting the finished lace onto fabric, which I was very worried about screwing up but it wound up not being so bad! Sewing is definitely not my strong suit, but I got through it and am pleased with the result.

Technical Notes

Pattern: "Rosemary" from A Visual Introduction to Bucks Point Lace by Geraldine Stott

Thread: Egyptian cotton 80/2 in bright white

Gimps: 8 ply of the base thread

Pins: .5 mm pins for the picots and motifs; .8mm pins for the ground and footside

Picots: 5 twists

Started: September 14, 2020

Completed: August 11, 2021

(If you've made it this far and you somehow haven't heard enough about this project, you can check out the "rosemary" tag on my blog to see my other posts about it.)

[msjoat]

Went to a knitting history conference recently and there was a really interesting paper presented from Australia by Lorinda Cramer called 'Foy & Gibson: The Search for Australian Style'. The big takeaway I took was that there was an active attempt to create Australian fashion in that period and they did that via wool - Australian wool was considered the best in the world. Sportswear was important as that outdoorsiness that we associate now with Australia was formed in this period and the clothes influenced its practicality. It was a really fascinating paper and I'd suggest anon go look up her work.

Do you know (or does/do one/some of your history/fabric mutuals know) if Australian fashion followed English fashion from the 1850s-1950s? I’ve done some poking around on the internet and looked into interlibrary loan, but I like to see if other people have resources or a rant locked and loaded. Thanks!

I would imagine so? But I don't really know.

Australian dress history mutuals, assemble!

[msjoat]

Look at my lace boy

[msjoat]

"It takes 35,000 stitches to make a pair of socks, so that's 35,000 actions you're doing to produce this item that will hopefully take care of somebody, it's kind of like magic." 🔮✨🐇🧶❤️

I love this project - they complete UFOs left behind by loved ones.

[msjoat]

Who wants to hear about my new obsession? Great. Textile people, knitting folks, fiber peeps, history of those things lovers, and archives/special collections comrades, this is for us.

So a few weeks ago, in the midst of A Big Sad, I set out on the simple distracting mission of giving my mom the link to something I want for Christmas. Long story short, I failed. I fell down a deep rabbit hole on traditional Estonian knitting and ended up ordering a book on the subject from Estonia for myself. Anyway, it arrived and holy shit.

300 pages of fiber/knitting/history nerdiness. The first hundred cover Estonian knitting history, including archaeological finds (bog body knitwear!), regional traditions, dyes and colors, museum collections and patterns reconstructed from them!

As an archivist, I lost it when I saw this, a helpful guide to searching Estonian museum collections for English speakers. Vocabulary for knitwear collections! Navigating the search features! MIND BLOWN. In the history intro section, they recommend books on knitting history with the website link to libraries with free digital copies. They are pulling me farther into the rabbit hole and I am here for it.

And because I am a knitter and an archivist, they included a basic guide on preservation and care of vintage knitwear. I am crying rn

Ok, history is cool and all but what about the knitting??? It is amazing. This volume is not complete patterns but more of a stitch/pattern encyclopedia that can be added to other projects. It includes tips on color palate while providing reference to various traditional plates of different regions of Estonia

So these are suggested stranded colorwork patterns for mittens. But use them wherever

Stranded colorwork, intarsia in the round, lace, cables, interlay, enterlac, fringes, brioche, boarders/edging, several cast-ons I had never seen

The second volume (hard to find) is all on socks/stockings, and volume 3 (which has just been released in English) is all about mittens and I might have ordered it this morning.

It is not the easiest book to track down, nor the cheapest. As I said, I ordered it from Estonia. Amazon and Amazon owned Abe Books both had it for around $70. I, personally, refuse to give bezos money and, in this case if you are considering buying it, I encourage you to order it from this shop in Estonia. Even with international shipping, taxes, fees, and such, it was actually about $10 cheaper.

[msjoat]

despite the fact that i have more yarn than i need, i want more yarn.

[msjoat]

YOU KNOW WHAT BOTHERS ME

when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeople’s clothing as “homespun” or “rough homespun”

“homespun” as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME

they didn’t have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise she’s spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.

and “rough”??? lol just because it’s farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved ain’t no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth she’s gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS

come to think of it i’ve never read a fantasy novel that talks about textile production at all??? like it’s even worse than the “where are all the farms” problem like where are people getting the cloth if no one’s doing the spinning and weaving??? kmart???