A Bluestocking Knits

Historical Costuming, Needlework, Sewing

An Elizabethan Shirt and Smock

Published by

Bluestocking

on

2nd April 2012

It has been quite a long time since I finished the first part of our Elizabethan garb, and I have let myself get distracted from even starting the rest of it, but here are the shirt and the smock — David's and mine respectively.

There are a number of shirt and smock patterns available for free on the internet — both Grace Gamble's shirt pattern and the one from the Elizabethan Smock Pattern Generator seem to be historically accurate and used often by re-enactors — but I decided to stick with the basic patterns from The Tudor Tailor book.

These are both fairly simple to scale up from the graphs, as almost every piece is either a square or a rectangle. I made the shirt with a plain collar and cuffs, and the smock with a ruffled collar and cuffs; both have tie fastenings.

I used the IL019 linen — 5.3 oz per yard — from Fabrics-Store.com, and washed and dried it in the machine three or four times before cutting to soften and pre-shrink it. It is the mid-weight linen, with a bit of that lovely linen slubbiness and heft but is not too heavy.

I decided to flat-fell all of the seams, which with french seams are the two most common period seams. I like the look of them, and the flatness. They turned out well on the whole, although working the underarm gussets was a bit awkward, and so I did them a little differently from the book's. I attached this square gusset as instructed, but instead of sewing the side seam first and then inserting the sleeves, I started working the flat-fell at the bottom of the underarm gusset, sewed up the front of the armhole to the shoulder and down the other side, and then straight into the side seam, all in one go. Trimming this for the second pass of the flat-fell was a little awkward, but it turned surprisingly neatly, towards the back on the side seams and towards the sleeve on the armholes.

I'm in two minds about the ruffle — it is obviously too short to iron, so that it has a kind of solidity to it which is not especially handsome, but under a waistcoat will perhaps not be so obvious.

David was looking at my blackwork sampler one evening and said, "You know, I really like this one. And this one. I like all of them. Can you do some on my Ren Faire shirt?" Well, this was like saying, "Honey, could you knit me some socks?" — of course I said yes, although I didn't really know at the time if it would be as simple a matter as it seemed. The biggest problem was that all of the borderlike patterns I knew of were a bit girly, so I thought of Celtic knotwork and wondered if I could find a chart.

This was actually quite fun once I realized the trick of it. I couldn't find any suitable chart online, so I had to "unvent" a couple. I liked a twist-straight-twist-straight sequence I saw somewhere, so adapted that, a narrow one for the cuffs and a wider one for the collar.

You can see my thought processes in the page of sketches below. The top one (which has a height of 10 stitches) is finished at the left edge and increasingly draft-like as you go towards the right. Basically, all you have to do is draw the squares, then fill in the edges slanting to the right or left depending on whether the ribbon should cross "over" or "under". This seemed quite miraculous to me when I saw how it worked!

In theory, this is infinitely expandable, although the ends of the border would have a greater and greater number of "unconnected" ribbons depending on how many you use. The 4-stitch border (which is the one I used for the shirt cuffs) has only one ribbon, the 8-stitch border (which I used on the collar) has two, and the 12-stitch one has three. (Whoops, I see a mistake on that one now!)

I actually did the blackwork without my contact lenses. The only benefit I have ever found to being extremely near-sighted is that of having Super Microscopic Up-Close vision. If I look at something at a normal hand-working distance without my glasses, it would look like this —

but if I hold it within, say, two inches of my unaided eye, it looks like this —

which as you can imagine is perfect for counting those very fine threads of linen! (And for removing splinters, but that's another story.)

I worked this particular piece in two strands of regular embroidery floss, each stitch over four threads of the linen. I'm not entirely pleased with this result, but for a first effort it's not bad. The pictures above are my sample — when I worked the shirt, I basted the "safety box" one stitch out from the design, as stitching into it sometimes incorporated red fibers into the black floss which remained behind when I pulled it out. I highly recommend the basted outline, by the way — enough said, I think.

I added a "turning" in the knotwork at the center back of the collar as I was working it, in order to lengthen the design enough to fill the ends of the collar, but I think unless you actually count the turns you'd never know.

I did do all of the blackwork before cutting the pieces to size, for ease of handling, having heard this advice from a number of sources, luckily for me well before-hand!

The man's shirt differs from the woman's smock mostly in that it has neck and side gussets. I'm not sure why women don't need the neck gusset, but the side ones, because of the shirt's much shorter length, need a little extra room and reinforcement at that point to keep from tearing. Also different, at least in the Tudor Tailor versions, is that the shirt is gathered a little between the collar and the straight top of the shirt, whereas the smock has a curved neckline and fits smoothly where it joins the collar.

I haven't decided yet what kind of ties to put on the shirt — for my smock, I simply braided three strands of crochet thread, but I was thinking for David's I might try a lucet braid.

Mistakes: I wasn't very careful when I cut the shirt pieces, and so the front and back are slightly on the bias and don't sit quite straight. I had no idea how to set in the side gussets — maybe this was after I decided to flat-fell all of the seams, which then meant that the "flaps" at the bottom of the shirt had turnings that sometimes had to go first one way (for the flat-fell seam) and then the other (for the turned edge) — I sewed in one of the side gussets and hand-sewed the other one simply on top of the seam and turnings, but wasn't especially happy with either method. I assumed that the generous-seeming size of the shirt would mean that it would fit the 5'11" David easily, but the collar is barely long enough, and the length of the shirt itself is a bit on the short side. I haven't seen anywhere what a "typical" length is for an Elizabethan man's shirt, but the book's illustration is just above knee-height (the idea being that the side slits allow you to wrap the tails between your legs, fore and aft as it were, and this is what serves as underwear).

I cut the neck slits the length in the pattern, which is far too long. Since at the time I was sewing it was approaching winter, I also ran up a version of the smock in flannel just to use as a nightgown, and made the neck slit half as deep, which is much more comfortable and a lot less drafty.

Right! On to kirtles and doublets!
“Knitting with D.E. Stevenson”, Books and Reading, Knitted Lace, Shawls and Scarves

Works-in-Progress

Published by

Bluestocking

on

31st March 2012

This is the sand-dune-y landscape of a Burberry-Inspired Cowl, which unfortunately got stalled when I cut the ends of wool just too short to graft together, so that I am now resigning myself to ripping out the last balls' worth in order not to have to splice in yet another length. The good news is that the whole thing took only a few hours to knit, so once I get up the nerve to pull the needles out, it shouldn't take long to actually finish.

Another work-in-progress is the Brahms German Requiem, which we started rehearsing the week before last. How very lucky I was to be able to sing this in high school — how lucky I still am, to be a part of it again.

This is a lovely version, a yummy Romantic tempo, and the parts are beautifully balanced. It's interesting, the different perspectives you get, from the chorus or from the audience; I have to not look at the video at times, as it can be distracting, although educational. That is some serious stink-eye Nikolaus Harnoncourt gives even before he lifts up his hands! Rather consoling, in a way, to see that even the Vienna State Opera Choir has trouble with getting their eyes off of their music.

I'm currently reading a "medieval noir" that I found on the new-book shelf at the library the other day. I think I've got spoiled by Ellis Peters, as I find this one more than a little anachronistic in vocabulary — "décolletage" for example, a late-Victorian word at the earliest, or even more jarring, "gifted" (in the sense of having presented something as a gift), at the same time that the characters say things like "'How fares your good wife?'" and "'Is that the weapon that committed this most foul deed?'". There certainly can be a good argument for writing a historical novel in the modern vernacular, since at the time period of said historical novel, the way that people commonly talked was in fact "modern" — compare, for example, the 1920s Charles Archer translation of Kristin Lavransdatter with the 1990s one by Tiina Nunnally. And there can be an argument that people in the Middle Ages talked more like the Wife of Bath than like Brother Cadfael, too, I suppose. Still, there it is.

I went to the library, in fact, for the omnibus Mapp and Lucia volume, thinking that I wanted something terribly, terribly English and 1930s. Have not read any of them before.

I'm also reading one of D.E. Stevenson's "lost" novels again, Emily Dennistoun, the current book of the Stevenson discussion list at Yahoo. The more I think about it, the more I think this was not only an early work of Stevenson's, but a very early work, and one that she may have not bothered to dig out of the drawer because the things she wrote later were so very much better. Anyway, here is my choice of something late-1920s for my virtual Stevenson "knitalong" —

I think that Emily Dennistoun would be rather shocked to think that her underwear might be discussed in public, but it is not at all unlikely that she would have actually knitted such things herself. I was surprised at first to see the number of patterns for "vests and shorts" out there — this is one of dozens from The Vintage Knitting Lady. I had not in fact given much thought to knitted underthings, but upon reflection suspect that in Scotland at least, where this novel is set, one might want such things more often than not.

As for "real" knitting, I did start the Kid Mohair Wrap the other day. Found a number of mistakes in the pattern right off, but once that settled down it has gone very quickly, so quickly that I am rapidly nearing the end of the first ball of Kidsilk Haze and at the same time am becoming increasingly alarmed that I will not finish nine repeats of the crossed-eyelet section, as the pattern assures me I can do, before I get there.

Well, we shall see!
Books and Reading, Shawls and Scarves

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade”

Published by

Bluestocking

on

25th March 2012

(Might be about time to read Great Expectations again ….)

Finished The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen, a blithely quick read, but interesting. The title is somewhat misleading, as there is not really much theft involved — it is about a project to trace all known copies of Shakespeare's First Folio, the famous 1623 first "collected works" of Shakespeare. There were 750 copies in the run, of which only 232 are known to still exist, so Rasmussen has made it something of a life's work of his to not only find them all but to examine them minutely, even to the marginalia scribbled by innumerable hands down the centuries, partly just for the fun of it, but partly also so that in the very-real possibility of theft not only the books themselves but the individual pages are identifiable. He has a light, breezy style that sits somewhat oddly, to my mind, with such a scholarly obsession, but it certainly makes for a good popular introduction to the subject.

I am now working through the four "historical" novels of Joanna Trollope that my public library has — I say historical in quotes to distinquish them from her "modern" ones, called somewhat disparagingly "Aga sagas" by some. I pay that no mind, as I've always found her to be an interesting writer, serious yet not at all without humor, and some of her novels I count among those I have reread a number of times. I did not, I regret to say, much like the first of these historicals I read, Eliza Stanhope, which I thought more than a little formulaic and with little to distinguish it from any other Regency romance writer except perhaps a good ear for dialogue. I was a little relieved to find out that it was her very first novel. The Taverners' Place was an engrossing multi-generational family saga, stretching from the 1870s to the 1930s, which I quite enjoyed, although I was rather depressed to realize towards the end that very few of the many marriages were happy. The third one I read — because I had (characteristically, I suppose) arranged them in chronological order by historical period — was the Boer War drama The Steps of the Sun, about which I had very mixed feelings, thinking it well-written but finding it surprisingly difficult to tell the main characters apart — although in Trollope's defense, this may have been only because I seemed to have the time this past week to read only in three- or four-page bursts, and therefore could never really get involved in the story. I am now in the middle of The Brass Dolphin, set in World-War-II-era Malta, and am much involved in it, interested in the characters and appreciating Trollope's easy hand at describing the Mediterranean beauty of the island.

Knitting? Well, yeah, I'm thinking about it, actually. Got two balls of Kidsilk Haze yearning to cover my shoulders this spring. Only two.

Nona's Tie One On from knitty?

Plain-but-pretty, probably a quick knit. Useful too — and I mean that in the best way, in that the trapezoid shape will actually stay on your shoulders.

Or the Kid Mohair Wrap from Susan Cropper's Pretty Knits, excerpted in Canadian Living?

Perhaps a little impractical? can you actually do anything with this fallng off of your shoulders all the time? But rather spectacular, certainly, and a lot of wow for only two balls of Kidsilk Haze.
Books and Reading, Girl Scouts, Movies and Television, Socks

This and That —

Published by

Bluestocking

on

1st March 2012

We had a booth sale the other day, and I managed to get a good way down the leg of a Welsh Country Stocking — this is is Paton's Kroy, a bit heavier than the original wool, so I've had to adjust the stitch counts considerably.

But other than this I haven't done much knitting, still absorbed in Swedish church-books. Found this the other day, which amused me greatly —

Imagine the ruckus when papa found out that little Stina had been looking for a piece of paper and decided to make do with one of those old books in the vestry….

And in bookish news, I haven't seen "War Horse" yet, but came across this charming little video in which three of the actors talk about the book and their childhood reading — that Tom Hiddleston was rather precocious, it seems!
Girl Scouts

A Familiar Sight All Over the Country —

Published by

Bluestocking

on

22nd February 2012

Yes, the Christmas train is still up….

No, it's Girl Scout cookie time! Support your local Girl Scouts! Portions of their proceeds go to their local Councils and directly to their troops —
Family, Socks

Read Any Good Church-Books Lately?

Published by

Bluestocking

on

22nd January 2012

I haven't been knitting much lately, because I admit I've been distracted by my recent discovery of the Danish church-books to be found online at Statens Arkiver. Even if you are not much interested genealogy, you can probably understand the fascination of something like the page above — which is a beautiful thing in itself, and all the more when it is one's own ancestors (even if only by marriage). The Danes, bless their record-keeping hearts, required local ministers to keep track of births, marriages, and deaths from quite early on, the late 1600s in some parishes, and later they also recorded movements to and from the parish and of smallpox vaccinations (which were in fact not only sensible, but a requirement for getting married). This is of course a genealogical treasure-trove. A birth record such as the one above gives not only the date and name, but the parents' names and residence, the age of the mother, and the names and residence of the baptismal sponsors, who were often relatives as well — so that it is often only a matter of following the trail back to the previous generation, and on. Quite satisfying.

Of course, it isn't always as simple as that. After 1814, they had printed books to fill out, so that things are arranged quite tidily, but before that it was up to the individual priest, and instead of something as clear as the above record, readable even if you know little Danish, you get ones like this, from the early 1800s —

— which takes a little more work. It's funny, though, that since starting this post a week or so ago and thinking of how much time it took me to decipher the above page, it looks a walk in the park to me now, compared to this one from 1777 —

So, well, no, I haven't been knitting much. But I did manage to finish these socks, plain ones with a Dutch heel and round toe, in the Deborah Norville Serenity Sock yarn in the Violas color. I won't say how long ago I started them, but it's been a while. This yarn feels a little different from the Acquamarine pair from a year or so ago, a bit sturdier, soft but less squishy. I do like this color, too.

And here is something I found in a church-book that amused me, one of those little non-genealogical gems that you get every so often —
Knitting in the Movies, Shawls and Scarves

“Rescued by Rover”

Published by

Bluestocking

on

19th January 2012

This little gem – "Rescued by Rover", a 1905 film by Cecil Hepworth — was posted to the HistoricKnitting list recently, because of the hap shawl the beggar woman is wearing in the very first scene. It is worth watching for that, although knitters might shed a tear over the ragged state of the shawl, but the whole thing is full of interesting details. It's obviously a little moral lesson on the evils of smoking and hanging about with soldiers, as well as the evils of drink, and more positively on the benefits of having a family dog.

I love that the father puts on his topper before dashing out to follow Rover —

Many of the details are hilarious now — that the maid pulls the baby carriage instead of pushes it (because of course if she did it properly she would see the beggar-woman snatching the baby), that both the dog and the father completely ignore the nearby bridge and instead either swim or row across the stream — but imagine how amazing this would have been in 1905, to people who had literally never seen a moving-picture. Apparently the film was so popular that not only did Hepworth (who played the father as well as directing) have to reshoot it twice because the negative actually wore out making so many copies, but it also started a trend for the name Rover for family dogs, and for canine movie stars such as Rin Tin Tin and Lassie. (I wonder if the Lassie directors ever saw this. "What is it, Lassie? Timmy fell down a well?!")
“Knitting with D.E. Stevenson”, Books and Reading

Cardies and Blue Sapphires

Published by

Bluestocking

on

11th January 2012

The D.E. Stevenson listers at Yahoo are currently reading The Blue Sapphire, first published in 1963. I fully meant to participate in this discussion, indeed was delighted when this was the next book proposed, as I not only own it but have enjoyed reading and re-reading it — but alas, time ran away with me, and they are three-quarters of the way through before I've had a chance even to start.

Nevertheless, for my virtual Stevenson knit-along, here is a 1960s mohair cardigan with sweet-yet-modest scalloped edges, very suitable for the shy Julia Harburn, whose rather dull life is changed when one spring morning she has an unexpected conversation with a stranger on a park bench. It is, I think, a classic Stevenson novel — a light, rather madcap romance yet with serious moments, full of lively characters and a bit of poetry for good measure.

(Image from Musings from Marilyn.)
Historical Knitting, Mittens, Gloves, and Hats

Thoughts on Some Late-Mediaeval Mittens

Published by

Bluestocking

on

29th December 2011

Since we were heading off to Lake Tahoe after Christmas, and the snow last year was over people's heads in places, I decided to make some mittens. Of course I had been intrigued by the late-mediaeval mittens in the January/February 2010 issue of Piecework magazine, and so I decided to make those. The patterns was written up by Susan Strawn from a mitten in the Museum of London, dated to the 1500s. It is different from the usual (modern) method of mitten knitting in that you start from the tip of the fingers and work down to the thumb, then start the thumb separately, also from the tip, attach half of that by a three-needle bind-off, then pick up the rest of the thumb stitches as you continue down to the cuff. The cast-on is a variation of the one used quite often by Elizabeth Zimmermann, which she called Emily Ocker's cast-on — this variation does not use a crochet hook but starts the stitches directly on the first knitting needle.

This wool is some leftover Lamb's Pride worsted in bright red, with a bit of Lion Brand superwash in black for the patterned band.

I made a few small modifications to the pattern. It seemed to me that having a clever way of starting the thumb and still using a relatively clumsy way of casting on the hand didn't make sense, and so I started both the hand and the thumb with the circular cast-on method given in the article; I started with 9 sts for the hand (an odd number to avoid that slippery second-loop), then knit 1 round, increased to 16 sts, knit 2 rounds, increased to 32, and carried on with the pattern as written from there. I don't think you need to turn both the mitten and the thumb inside-out, as the pattern says — only the mitten — you just need right-sides together.

I had some trouble with attaching the thumb, and didn't get the stitch count right either time, so had to fudge it a bit, because I was unusually impatient that day for some reason and couldn't be bothered to pick out the 3-needle bind-off and do it again correctly. I also worked 9 rounds after the colored band, for a little extra length.

Do leave a long tail when joining the wool back after adding the thumb, as the holes left by this method are significant!

Here is the original mitten (of course there is only one, it's a child's mitten!) at the Museum of London:

"Small knitted woollen mitten. The wool is pale brown. There is a line of black wool decoration around the wrist. Date: 1500s. Knitting appears to have become common only in the 1500s, but then it rapidly increased in popularity. It was a new activity in working people's lives and soon also became a valuable source of income for many. This knitted child's mitten is a rare survival. It is knitted from the top of the finger-pouch in the direction of the wrist and decorated with three rows of black wool in a simple pattern around the wrist. Poorer people could find a bargain at the second hand clothes dealers ('fripperers') in Houndsditch, but many relied on home-knitted woollen clothes. This garment offers an insight into how children were protected from the cold. Place of collection: Hill Street, Finsbury, London [Islington] Measurements: L 130 mm; W (including thumb piece) 70 mm."

There is some discussion about this mitten on the HistoricKnit list, including a different redaction of the pattern. The gauge of the original is approximately 8.5 sts per inch. One lister notes about the color, "It is soft white wool, stained brownish by iron salts and peat acids, and has a very simple color-pattern band which is probably of natural-colored black wool," and another lister adds, about the identification of the pattern band color as black, "This keeps getting repeated, which is unfortunate. If you look at it under magnification, it's actually purple, and appears to have been lichen-dyed."

And this got me intrigued enough to work another pair to the second pattern, this time in some Paton's Classic wool. I dyed a few arm's-lengths in grape-flavored Kool-Aid to use for the patterned band. Since the wool was originally this oatmeal color, the purple tends to look a bit brown in most lights, but has a pleasing purpliness at times.

The gauge on the Paton's was different enough to allow more shaping in this mitten than in the other pair. I did modify this pattern a bit as well, as I really liked the other cast-on. This one does a more familiar waste-yarn thumb-hole, then working the thumb up from there to the point.

Alas, though, there is not a speck of snow where we are, and the ski runs are all man-made stuff, so that I could not pose the mittens on an impressive snow-bank, but there was a bit of frost on the dock this morning, enough to make it sparkle very pleasingly in the dawn light.

And here is the sunrise this morning off of our balcony —
Miscellanea

Polheim

Published by

Bluestocking

on

14th December 2011

Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting at the South Pole, 14th December 1911. The photo was taken by the fifth member of the Polar party, Olav Bjaaland.