I am finding the new "All Creatures Great and Small" series a fairly solid B- — adding in backstories etc. for characters like Mrs. Hall is all right, but a few points off for non-period dialogue that's full of pesky Americanisms (why on earth don't the older folks in the production crew let the writers know that you didn't "call" people in Britain of the 1930s, not even in Britain of the 1980s, you "rang" them?!), and even more points off for rewriting scenes from the book and taking much of the sparkle out of them. But the cast is excellent, the scenery is gorgeous of course, and in most respects the production values are very good. And there are lots of knits, many of them handmade! there is that, of course.
Helen (Rachel Shenton) and James (Nicholas Ralph), pretending they aren't flirting.
Tristan (Callum Woodhouse) looking quite louche, as one might expect!
Mrs. Hall's knitting is alarmingly chunky for the 1930s. Points off for letting her wool roll about on the floor, which I don't think any self-respecting Yorkshire housekeeper would do, but points back for the crochet squares on the table. I was a bit alarmed that her right hand is over the needle when so very many English ladies at this time and for some years later held their right hand under the needle, but apparently that was a "posh" thing, and so it seems quite likely after all that a country woman would have held it the way Anna Madeley is doing.
Tristan seems to get the lion's share of the hand-knitted slipovers!
Well, this is actually a pretty characteristic thing for book-Tristan, actually …
A truly splendid Fair Isle-style scarf, in gorgeous colors too!
I don't really know why barmaid Maggie (Mollie Winnard) should be holding a donkey on a rope halter, but perhaps that will be explained later — what I am interested in at the moment is those very fetching Scandinavian-star fingerless gloves!
I am enjoying watching 1930s and 40s programs while I knit on the Rae slipover for Julia, so it's all good. The Palette is loosely-spun and a bit splitty, but I'm hoping that most of the inconsistencies come out in the wash — and it is surprisingly soft even still on the needles. These are some of the craziest "Fair Isle" patterns I've ever seen, but there is no question about it not being "1940s"!
I couldn't get enough of the "Oregon Coast" in the same dyelot, and I also had a bit of trouble matching the gauge of the single-color bands to the gauge of the two-color ones, so I solved both issues at once by working the single-color bands with two balls of the same color but one each from the different dyelots. I don't think the difference between the two is quite as apparent in real life as it is in the photo, or perhaps the random-ish alternation is working its magic.
And for a bonus, a flashback to the original series, here with a very young Peter Davison as Tristan — now that I look at it, the slipover has a rather 1980s look to it in gauge and length! but it is still very charming —
A Bluestocking Knits 
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