A surprise not knitted by me.

 

I arrived home early Friday afternoon, after coffee with a keen gardening friend, feeling a bit low because health issues are making gardening difficult for her. It's a common enough story amongst our peers, and she will adapt. It's still sad.

In my letterbox were two parcels. One I was expecting but the other was mysterious. To my astonishment it was a shawl, knitted by a US friend - for me! 

It is beautiful. The subtle blend of colours, the softness of the yarn, the precision of the knitting, the size and drape - a winning combination.

It's hard to display shawls. The best I have found is to use a large, open safety pin to gently pin them to the fly screen to get the light behind them. This at least gives a sense of size and shape.

Close up, it shows the pattern - which reminds me of bees, hives and honey. The gold yarn is finer and shinier that the surrounding yarn when you look closely.

The colours change against different fabrics and different angles of light. Here is looks dark brown, but it is also grey and purple

A perceptive friend hit the nail on the head when she said it reminds her of heather.

The top edge has a soft, almost woven feel to it. 

It shimmers when the light catches it.

I wrapped the shawl around myself immediately. I happened to be wearing a deep purple jumper and a necklace of wood and metal. Both seemed to be just waiting for the shawl.

I spent the afternoon, wrapped in love and luxury, giving thanks for the many threads of friendship that hold us together across oceans, time and troubles. 

Thank you Melody. So grateful.

Flannel Flower Tote in Fennel & Saltbush

 

This is the second colour way I bought of the Ink and Spindle Flannel Flower line. This is a mid-weight linen, a little lighter than the Spice but still sturdy.

I picked perle 5 threads in greens, cream, yellow and blue, trying to capture the colour of the actual flannel flower.  It's illusive. The overall sense, in my memory, is of slightly misty green.

This time I worked two centres on each side, mainly because the flowers on this print were more evenly distributed, and I thought two provided better balance.

I tried different combinations and stitching order on each one. At the moment this is an exercise in experimentation.

In the top left, I began with a yellow centre in each of the printed bluey circles, then worked out using a green thread with a fair amount of blue, adding in cream and another green to fill gaps. In the lower right I used much the same threads, but worked yellow and cream first, then added in green and a little blue. 

The other two used two shades of green more on the yellow end. I don't have a preference, and I suspect that Flannel Flowers probably vary as much as my experiments!

I made this one up using a cream linen, very close to the colour of the petals for the sides, base and lining.

Again, I used the square size, almost 40cm square. It's a good size to work with, and   means I can cut four bags from the piece of fabric I ordered, as long as I use a plain fabric for sides and base.

This is not as bold as the first bag in Spice, but it does have a calming feel and a quiet charm - a bit like a Flannel Flower!

And yes, it looks as if there will be a few more to come, with a bit of variation. I have a charity event in mind, as well as gifts - and maybe the Guild SALA Exhibition. As well as enjoyment in the making.

Flannel Flower tote

My apologies for a font variation in this post which I have been unable to resolve. 

Ink and Spindle recently released a new linen, printed this time with flannel flowers. 

Actinotus helianthi, for readers outside Australia, are native to our East Coast, particularly around the Sydney area. The flowers are usually 5-8 cm across and have a furry texture - a bit like flannel. The centres appear greenish from a distance and the leaves grey. On close inspection they have blue, yellow, grey and beige elements. They were very much part of my childhood and I have always loved them.

Ink and Spindle have produced this linen in several colour ways and I bought two of them with a view to making tote bags. 

I wanted to add a little embroidery, but not much, to keep the beauty of the linen print to the fore. I thought I would just embroider one flower centre on each side and checked lots of photos of flannel flowers online first to decide what threads to use. 

To my surprise, I discovered there is a pink flannel flower, Actinotus forsythii, which I have never seen. It is less common, but germinates in strength after fire, and has been prolific in the Blue Mountains since the 2020 fires.

I decided to use this as my colour way for the Spice linen piece and the conventional greeny colours for the other piece. 

French knots were a no-brainer, so I used various shades of pink perle 5 cotton to embroider one centre. I began in a very literal manner, using the printed pattern and working from a dark centre to lighter in the background.  While I was pleased with the result, a closer look at photographs suggested the colours weren't as ordered as that, so I varied the arrangement when I tackled the other side.

This got closer to the photographs but it still misses the hazy effect. The dark centres are also still too regulated. Variegated thread might work if I found the right range. This doesn't need to be realistic but it's satisfying to keep experimenting.

I did most of this stitching at night, and found the directional light I recently bought at Aptos Cruz was very helpful in this detailed colour work.

I stuck with my notion of only embroidering one centre on each side of the bag. I found some plain linen to both line and create handles, sides and base.  Construction was straightforward, particularly as I was able to use a single strip for the sides and base.  

I'm delighted with this result. I think the colours work well and the single centre embroidery feels right to me.

This bag is also squarer than I usually make - cut a little shorter in length to accommodate the fabric cut. I really like the shape. It is still practical and certainly fits this design. I have enough linen to make two bags this size in each colour. It might even become my default.

I'm now turning my attention to the other colour way, what Ink and Spindle call 'Flannel flower in Fennel and Saltbush'. 

                            

Early Women of Books bag

I have been down a fairly large rabbit hole with this project. 

It began when I read The Gilded Page by Mary Wellesley, an extraordinary book for anyone interested in Medieval History, telling stories about the making of books before the printing press, of those who laboured in the industry, and those who commissioned works. Amongst these are stories of at least nine significant women, largely overlooked in their times. 

Of course, my first thought was that I could make a bag, featuring the names of the nine women, along the lines of the Voices of Women bag I made in January. When I mentioned  this to a friend from my 1965 undergraduate Early English Literature and Language Course, who was also reading the book, she wanted a bag too. I began to wonder if it would be possible to photograph the finished bag and somehow print the photograph on to fabric. While I thought about that I got on with the embroidery

I began by cutting two bag sides from the remaining fabric, and fusing some webbing to the back of each. I drew the nine names in pencil on the sides where they would fit, then mounted one piece in a hoop. I used Quaker stitch to embroider the first name. Leoba was an 8th Century English nun who sent, in a letter to St Boniface, a poem she had written. Boniface was related to her, and she later joined him as a missionary in Germany, ending up as Abbess at Tauberbischofsheim. Her letter to Boniface makes her the first named female  English poet. She had learned to write poetry from Eadburga, a skilled scribe and Abbess at the Thanet monastery, which supported a scriptorium.  

I used red perle 8 thread, and worked the names, dates and occupation of each woman. The dates are mostly estimations of the years they lived, but in Leoba's case, the date of her letter to Boniface. I used a darker red to embroider the one book title included, Encomium Emmae Reginae (In Praise of Queen Emma). This was a book commissioned by Queen Emma, to tell her story and secure the future of her dynasty. Emma's story is also extraordinary

It took me a couple of days to embroider each side and another to make up the bag, lining it in black linen.

I had worked out, as I embroidered, that I would need to do something to tell the story of these women. The original bag used names of, and quotations from, women well known to most of us, whereas these women were largely unknown to even those with a background in Medieval History.

I therefore began to create summaries of the nine lives, using The Gilded Page as a base, but adding and checking with other books and Internet sources. I put these together with photos of the embroidered faces and published a booklet entitled Early Women of Books on Blurb. It can be purchased as print-on-demand or in pdf form. I have no royalty on it, so the price is that placed by the printer. The whole book can be previewed free on the site, but it does take a long time to load in full. 

I have also been experimenting with the notion of a printed bag. I used photographs of the earlier bag to test out sites that offered printing on to tote bags. At first, the only site I found that would print both sides of a bag would only print to a section of the bag.    That was OK, but not quite what I wanted.   

After a lot of searching, I found a more customisable option and tried again. It was ordered from Melbourne, took about 3 weeks, was printed in China - and was what I was looking for. The background colour is more mauve than appears in the photo. The bag is quite large.

I have now ordered a small number of Early Women in Books bags to be printed. I will report back when they arrive - estimated to be at the end of April. When they arrive I will have the original embroidered bag, a booklet about the women, and four printed bags. It's been a very deep rabbit hole for the past couple of weeks. I've learnt a lot. 

The Guild is having an exhibition in August as part of SALA (South Australian Living Arts) with a theme of Divergent Textiles. It occurred to me today that these bags might be my entry! I think they qualify as divergent - crazy might be a more accurate term.