There’s a common complaint amongst knitters, that knitting with linen
can hurt your hands, or be uncomfortable, because the fibre is
inelastic. Knitters look for wool (or other animal fibre) blends to
balance the lightness of the linen with the bounciness of the wool, and
make for a pleasant knitting experience.
I’ve
done very little knitting with plant fibres in my time, but I was
positively drawn to the colours and sheen of the beautiful Kalinka linen
at Wild and Wooly in Clapton – the shimmering petrol blue demanded to
be purchased, and ultimately knitted in a drapey and cool wrap.
I
chose the Bernstein pattern, originally a garter stitch pattern, with
two separate stitch patterns worked in, and true to form, I modified
it. In my version, it has become a stockinette stitch shawl with just
the 1 stitch pattern (a mesh pattern) in panels. The designer does not
speak English as a first language, and some of the shorthand and
abbreviations used in the pattern are German, which was a little
confusing in the beginning, so I re-wrote the instructions into more
common knitting English.
The
linen was lovely to work with. It’s a substantial feeling
fingering/sport weight yarn. I enjoyed hand winding the skeins into
round balls to work from – in fact, there are lots of recommendations on
the internet (therefore taken with a grain of salt) that the more you
work the yarn, even from the skein winding stage, the softer the linen
becomes. The internet also recommends some pretty rough treatment of the
finished shawl to get the linen to soften further, but I have not been
that brave. I have washed it roughly and ironed it through a pressing
cloth. There’s still a long way to go to truly soften the shawl, but it
feels lovely and cool on the skin, and still gleams.
I
used almost 2 full skeins of the yarn, or about 565m, and have ended up
with a shawl longer than I am tall, which is my preference. I also
like that the shawl is not too deep, and it only comes down to my
mid-back if I wear it with the point all the way to the back.
Kalinka has released a wool/linen blend, which I am keen to get a hold of and try
Each night 40-50 people are let in to the Tower of
London (for the grand total of £1 per booking) to watch as the Yeoman
and beefeaters secure the Tower for the night, a series of steps call
the Ceremony of the Keys and Geoff and I booked 10 months in advance to
attend (yes, really, and that was for a Thursday night).
After
a security and a bag check, Yeoman Watts (who later told me that he had
only joined the ranks of Yeoman in the last few months) told us some
stories about people have met their fate within the walls of the tower
(generally in a gruesome manner) and then explained the ceremony.
After checking for the umpteenth time that our phones were switched off
(imagine the embarrassment if your phone rang during the silence), the
ceremony that has endured for the last 700 years began.
There
are 2 sets of wooden doors that are locked before the Chief Yeoman was
visible to us, in a knee length red coat, tudor bonnet and carrying a
lamp. He approached a handful of armed guards, and answered the
necessary questions before being allowed to pass. He proceeded through a
gate and was met by more armed guards, and after he waved his bonnet
and announced that the Queen was safe, the last post was played by a
sole bugle player before the Yeoman took the keys through to safety.
It
was a fantastic experience (that you are not allowed to photograph),
and I would recommend booking in if you have enough notice of a trip to
London!
When it comes to accessories, I rarely knit the same pattern twice.
However, when it comes to garments, the opposite is true. I love to
find a basic pattern that I can tweak through stitch patterns, yarn
choice and by lengthening/shortening the different elements.
One
such pattern is the Whisper Cardigan, designed by Hannah Fettig and
first published in Interweave Knits in Spring 2009. If you click
through, you will see that the Whisper has bell sleeves, wispy, curly
tails in the front and is quite cropped (8 inches from the underarm if
memory serves). None of these elements are particularly appealing, but I
really liked the idea of the cardigan. So I set about making it work
for me, and then knit it twice more for good measure. My modifications
are sleeve shape, increases on the body rather than the short rows,
edgings to minimise rolling, and some lengthening.
Firstly,
the sleeve shape. Instead of casting on vastly more stitches than
required, I cast on almost a sock cuff and knit ribbing for more rows
than I cared to, before switching to stockinette and knitting increases
at set intervals to the underarm. I knit as per pattern across the
back, as I really like the little gathering detail, and as per pattern
for the ribbing all around the shrug portion.
On
to the body, rather than knitting short rows and ending up with
considerable ‘tails’ on the front, I knit increases on the skirt –
starting with every right side row for 3 inches and then tapering off to
every 3rd right row, then every 4th, until the
end. The increases are immediately after the edging stitches – which is
another modification that I have repeated (though with different
patterning) to minimise the rolling. I did garter rib on the first
Whisper but for numbers 2 and 3 I’ve used seed stitch. I kept the first
stitch as stockinette on the right side and then had 7 seed stitches of
edging. I then used seed stitch on the bottom of the cardigan, for 10
rows. I like the seed stitch edging as it lies flat on the sides and
doesn’t pull in so the cardigan still drapes nicely.
The
yarn was heavenly – a little cashmere sure makes a difference! Lovely
to knit with, and I alternated skeins through the back (flat knitting
only) but didn’t need to because the dye is consistent. The red is a
great true, blue-based red, almost my perfect colour, and the little
cardigan is just the thing for a London summer (or a Melbourne spring).
This past weekend Geoff and I spent a very enjoyable, and sunny bank holiday weekend in Canterbury and Whitstable.
We
stayed very close to the castle ruins, and set off to explore them
after we had put our bags down where we were staying. The castle was
built in about 1070 and was a prison for much of its useful life,
eventually being a ruin sometime in the 17th century. It’s
quite accessible – you can wander in, climb most of the way up a tower
and marvel at how small it is inside as those stone walls are incredibly
thick.
During what shaped
up as a gloriously sunny afternoon, Geoff and I meandered along the
‘Great Stour’, a trickle of a stream that does not deserve either the
moniker ‘great’ nor ‘river’. We had a delicious lunch from The Goods
Shed, and ate cake and drank coffee in the sunshine. The Goods Shed was
positively laden with local produce, gleaming red strawberries,
luscious asparagus and heavenly smelling bread and biscuits, and we
partook across the board. A pity it was not open on Monday, as we would
have liked to taste more of the offerings.
We
attended the Choral Evensong service at the Canterbury Cathedral, and
enjoyed the choir and surroundings. The Cathedral is undergoing
significant repair, and likely will for some time, so the scaffolding
impinged on the view of the Cathedral as a whole, but it was lovely to
explore nonetheless. We were on the hunt for the most recently buried
person, but couldn’t come up with anyone in the last 500 years!
On
Sunday we took the bus to Whitstable, about half an hour away from
Canterbury and on the seaside. It’s difficult to describe it as the
beach, as it was mostly rocks in place of sand. A very crowded
boardwalk runs between the fisherman huts and the boats, and the tide
was a long way out when we arrived. We explored the little marketplace
at the harbour, and enjoyed some delicious oysters, as well as a
milkshake and donut (Geoff can be relied on to find them). Finally we
worked up enough of an appetite to enjoy simply delicious fish and chips
at a little cafe on the beach – a piece of cod, a piece of skate, and
very freshly cooked chips that were nice and crispy. Skate is a tricky
fish to eat deep fried, but we managed to enjoy it rather inelegantly!
Monday
was the only let down, weather wise, but we enjoyed our overcast walk,
nice coffee and delicious lunch before heading back to London.
