Today is Epiphany, also known as Twelfth Night, and no self-respecting bluestocking can resist a little Shakespearean fun on this day — and so here is a photograph from a production of, of course, "Twelfth Night".
This one is from a 1979 Royal Shakespeare Company production, with Kate Nicholls, on the left, as Olivia, Jane Downs in the center as Maria, and John Woodvine as Malvolio with some truly, er, impressive cross-gartering.
Well, David and I were up until two o’clock the night before Laura’s birthday, but her dollhouse was finished on the day, only a year or so after I first mentioned it, which I think in dollhouse years is not bad atal. We started building it about two months before the day, to the plan I’d intended, the Victorian Town House in Venus and Martin Dodge’s New Doll’s House Do-It-Yourself Book. The idea was to build a pleasant but not elaborate house with a basic setting in each room, so that if Laura enjoys it she can add to it over time, and that if it does go over well with the girls, we will make another one in a year or so for Julia, reversing the plan so that the two houses can sit side-by-side, windowless sides together with the doors opening on the respective left and right like a cupboard.
This particular house plan is meant to be for the beginning builder (more about that in a moment), and to be played with, instead of being a collector’s showpiece. The rooms are large, and there is no staircase so that there is more space for furniture and for playing, and there are windows on one side only to allow for more wallspace. (The fact that this makes for easier building is a bonus!) I liked what Dodge said about most dollhouses being "a mixture of the homemade, the affordable, and a few ‘special’ things," and this is what it has turned out to be.
One of the things I enjoyed most about building this is that the things I rather dreaded turned out to be interesting and challenging, but not particularly difficult. I built the door myself, after David cut a piece of 1/8" plywood to size and ripped some 3/32" basswood into strips, which I cut and glued, then painted and fitted with a charming brass door knob and plate. I would say, though, that a complete woodworking novice should have an expert nearby for the duration of the project, as there were a number of things, such as cutting out the windows, that required a far surer hand than mine in the workshop. Luckily for me, David’s years in scene shops and his natural inclination towards building things (and taking them apart) have made him very handy. There were still things that puzzled him for a while, though, and he also wondered about better ways to do things, and "bashing the kit" as it were, so he made the window frames a bit more elaborate, and the whole thing a bit more sturdy. The front is still not attached, as I thought that the eaves looked stingy in the book, so David extended them, and then when it came time to put the front on he realized that the eaves had been so shallow because otherwise the front won’t open!
We postponed the windows due to the lack of time — although frankly, Laura hasn’t missed them, and looked rather surprised when I mentioned it. The house is also not fitted with electric lights, as I didn’t want to over-complicate things for David and myself, nor for Laura, really.
(The weather these past few weeks has been for the most part uniformly glorious — clear and cold, with a few hours of rain here and there, almost always at night — but the winter sun is so low towards the southern horizon that the light for photography is very chancy, and I see that I missed the few moments of brightness in the living room, hence the somewhat blurry photos.)
The "tile" floor (actually PVC) was easy to lay down with Tacky Glue, and looks quite professional. I see now that I have quite forgotten the kitchen skirting/baseboards, which I suppose are still on David’s workbench in the garage awaiting a few coats of paint. (Tch.) The table and chairs are by Carriage House Miniatures, and the baskets from Magic Cabin (the clothespins and apples are by Handley House, as are most of the other accessories, except the white mixing bowls which are shaft locks from the hardware store, with the metal insides pried out). I crocheted the rug myself from Kitchen Cotton in "Denim Swirl" and was pleased to see that it does look very much like a braided rug from a distance (my first attempt at crochet in quite a few years, so bear with me)! The kitchen dresser is an unfinished piece from Michael’s — not in scale, I realized once it was in place, but will do for the nonce, as it cost a mere dollar, minus 40% with the Sunday coupon!
The photograph is of course Our Dear Queen, in a frame that I made of basswood scraps with David’s new miterbox and saw (yes, he got new tools out of this project!). I meant to paint it with the same chocolatey brown paint that I used for the floors in the parlour and bedroom, but a first coat on the white primer had the unexpectedly delightful effect of perfect woodgrain, so I left it at that. I also made the mop, with fine dowelling and crochet cotton — this is I think Julia’s favorite piece, as she’s mopped the entire house numerous times since Laura’s birthday.
The stove is made from directions in Jean Nisbett’s A Beginner’s Guide to the Dollhouse Hobby, a sort of ur-Aga from a block of basswood with nonworking doors made of heavy cardstock rectangles glued on and painted of a piece with the rest — the hinges and latches are sewing hooks and eyes.
The wallpaper in the parlour is "Jan" from Broadnax, who have a wonderful selection of minature prints for wallpapers and fabrics. I was hoping to find what Dodge recommended, two similar colors of the same print, but despite the wide selection available at my local store, this was not possible, and so I chose two of a similar color and tone that once in place actually work pretty well together, despite their differences. The Biedermeier table is a Mini Mundus kit, which I finished quite amateurishly, but due to the quality of the kit still looks very pretty — I wanted something "heirloom" but still sturdy enough to be played with, and Biedermeier is heftier than, say, Queen Anne or Chippendale! — and the tea set regretfully has no maker’s name on the box, for it is quite wee and charming. I did super-glue the tiny lids to the teapot and sugar bowl, and Laura asked me to glue the cups to their saucers as they tended to fall over frustratingly easily. The three doilies were a Christmas present from a crocheting friend, and put my kitchen rug quite to shame.
All of the gilded picture frames are by Unique Miniatures — the painting is a detail from a Gainsborough landscape postcard from the Huntington, and the little photographs are Victorian ones scaled down in PhotoPlus and set into charm bracelet frames. I made the tchotchke on the mantel with a large pearl bead and a brass fitting from the hardware store, and the chair is loosely based on instructions in Nisbett.
The piano is a music box that was given to Laura some years ago — personally, I’m not sure about the little kitties, but Laura loves it, and that’s what counts!
The 3-inch Diana Barry doll is by Avonlea Traditions (available through Northern Gifts), which I bought at our local children’s bookstore some time ago.
The wallpaper in the bedroom is "Nellie" from Broadnax — I followed Dodge’s lead and cut off the top border and laid it on a diagonal to follow the line of the peaked ceiling on the back wall. The wallpaper was the other thing I dreaded, but was actually fairly simple — thank goodness I had another pair of hands, though, as that made things much easier. We used the mucilage paste the shop recommended, which allowed quite a bit of adjustments as it stayed sticky for a long time.
The painting is another postcard, a detail from the portrait of Penelope Acton by Romney, also at the Huntington. The wardrobe is also an unfinished piece from Michael’s; the brass bed is by Handley House, and was along with the Biedermeier table my two "nice" splurges. The small rug is a Victorian floral gros point reproduced on felt by What’s Next. I made the fine-gauge wool bedspread from the pattern for a baby washcloth in Knitting Loves Crochet by Candi Jensen, which I’d conveniently borrowed from the library a week or so before.
It’s all very addicting, I must say!
Some time ago, I promised Laura a pair of knitted socks, and when I saw this purple Supersock from Cherry Tree Hill, it was Fate.
I originally wanted to make socks with a ruffle around the cuff, and set my heart on the one from a Jaeger book a few years ago, which in small doses in the Supersock looked lovely, but in a long-enough length to fit around even Laura’s slender ankle drooped most unbecomingly. I fiddled, tried a few other edgings, and then thought of this one from an old Debbie Bliss sailor jacket, turning it sideways. Picking up the stitches in the middle of the edging is in fact an dodge to head off that droopiness that comes with an unsupported edging, but after a while I got interested in the sideways-ness as a design element in itself.
Afterwards, Laura confessed that she actually liked this sock better than the ruffled one, anyway.
The pattern, which is available in the Original Patterns album in the sidebar, is sized to fit girl’s small, medium, and large, or approximately 5 1/2 in. /14 cm (6 1/2 in. /16.5 cm, 7 1/2 in. /19 cm) foot circumference. If you use Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, I would recommend not drying these socks by machine, as the slight haze that will result would obscure the lace of the cuff.
Well, here we are on this ninth day of Christmas, and the busy-ness, like that snow we’ve been hearing so much about lately, doesn’t show signs of stopping — the list of things to do sort of expanded to fit the little extra time I had, what with school and the holidays and Brownies and ballet. Laura was in the "Nutcracker" for the first time this year, as a little angel, which meant late nights of rehearsals and performances but she enjoyed it immensely (except for washing off the make-up at ten o’clock at night), and we were impressed at her composure during most of it. I got volunteered to be Cookie Mom for Laura’s Brownie troop, so I’m slowly reading the mounds of paperwork in preparation. Not to mention the backlog of blogs that I did not get to read during the past three months! But I did get a bit of knitting done on my little break — not much, but will post about it in the next few days — and our first dollhouse.
And the wool is Colinette’s new "Jitterbug" in Velvet Plum, fairly soon to be on the sock needles.
Peder Severin Krøyer, "Havepartie med Marie Krøyer (Marie in the Garden/Les Roses)," 1893.
I find that I need to take some time off from blogging for a while — nothing terribly interesting (except possibly to me), just some quite polite requests for my time from other people and things in my life at the moment. I hope to have lots to post when I return — maybe even a new pattern or two!
The moment I saw this scarf at Knitty.com, I knew that I had to make it for a friend of mine whose birthday is on Halloween, and is fascinated by the holiday and death customs throughout history. We’ve traipsed around cemeteries any number of times, doing genealogical research and teaching each other things about history and archaeology, and having a grand time. Anyway, needless to say, she has a lot of folk art and artifacts, with quite a collection of sugar skulls, so the Yorick scarf will fit right in.
It’s an easy knit — the shaping of the inner holes is a bit strange, when one is used to trying to keep holes out of one’s knitting! but it comes together very quickly. I’ve never fulled anything before, at least not on purpose, and so that was an interesting half-hour, too. I filled the sink with hot water and a nearby basin with cold water and ice, and alternated bashing the scarf around between the two. Julia was very interested in the process, and helped rub the scarf for a while, until she got tired of that and had more fun with the bubbles, and so she would play in the cold water while I had the scarf in the hot, and then we’d switch, so it worked out all right. It probably took about twenty minutes, maybe a bit less — the same amount of time for a pot of water on the stove to boil, and the pasta for our lunch to cook, really — with a finish in the washing machine. (The skull on the left in the top photo is the reverse side, and the other the right side.) The stockinette edges do still curl under a bit along the scarf edges, but on the whole I’m quite pleased at its skulliness and the interesting stiff-soft feel of the fulled angora.
Here’s a new knitting meme started by Grumperina, ten "knitterly" things you probably don’t know about me.
1. I’ve started my Christmas knitting already! Can’t show you, of course.
2. I’ve got a bad case of the knitting jitters lately — you know, when you can’t decide what project to do next, and you start one only to look longingly at another, and another, and maybe even another. A shawl? Jaywalkers in Shepherd Sock "Lakeview," perhaps?
3 and 4. I dreamed about this last night —
It’s from Romantic Style by Jennie Atkinson. I bought the book for this pattern, although luckily it has a lot of other interesting things as well, because I try not to buy knitting books unless I want to make at least half of the things in it.
5. I answer almost every comment made here, and for those I don’t answer specifically, I return a comment on that person’s blog. This comes from my feeling that this blog is supposed to be a dialogue as much as a monologue, and also that if a reader takes the time to comment, I can take the time to reply. (I apologize to anyone whose comment I apparently ignored the past couple of weeks — TypePad’s notification feature hasn’t been working again lately, and so I haven’t seen a number of the comments.) The knitting-related part comes in because I regard this blog as a knitting-group substitute, and enjoy the back-and-forth of commenting very much. (That said, I’m actually not much of a talker, and don’t seem to comment much on the blogs that I read. I’m trying to change this.)
6. Like Grumperina, I find myself often baffled by Rowan’s designs. But then a lot about Rowan baffles me. Why is 4-Ply only 2-ply? Why if Yorkshire Tweed is "a classic" is it being discontinued already? What color is "Turbid," anyway?
7. My oldest unfinished project is at least ten years old. No, maybe not that long, but it’s old. Many years ago, I bought up just about every bit of the extra-fine wool at Super Yarn Mart, in hopes of some day knitting a Norwegian luskofte. After making a Swedish Halland-style sweater, and not being able to wear it more than two or three times a winter, if that, I thought of making a luskofte-style scarf, using Elizabeth Zimmerman’s sock-toe scarf idea from Knitting Without Tears and some of the Setesdal luskofte charts in Sheila McGregor’s The Complete Book of Traditional Scandinavian Knitting. It’s still a pretty good idea, I think, and a nice scarf, but it is so fine and the needles so tiny that it makes my hands hurt and it takes forever to work even one round.
Well, I can’t even find the scarf, it’s been so long, but here’s the Halland sweater —
8. But since I started blogging, I finish a lot more things than I used to. Maybe I’ll pick up that scarf more often.
9. I learned to knit two-handed on the Halland sweater, so it was 1989 — but for some reason I’ve never tried to knit Continental on its own.
10. When I had long hair and wore it in a knot, I used to stick my needle in the knot instead of setting it down beside me. Sometimes I’d forget and walk around with it there half the day. It was very handy, though, and I miss my hair so much that I’m letting it grow out again.
My eccentricities, as I’ve implied recently, tend to whisper rather than shout. I love the idea of those little details that you don’t see right away, like an interesting curtain bracket above a window or the glimpse of a Fair-Isle sock cuff just under a skirt hem. Some time ago, when I saw a ribbed sweater of Teva Durham’s and the Random Stripe Generator within an hour or so of each other, my subconscious rather liked the two ideas together. Thus, the Random Rib Sock,
at first glance with an ordinary rib, but in fact a randomly-generated series of ribs, different on either sock. The pattern has been written up in a wide variety of sizes, from woman’s small to man’s extra-large, and includes a unique rib for each sock. The shaping itself is quite straightforward; the rib requires a fair amount of attention, as it does not of course settle into a repetitive rhythm, but it is not difficult once the sequence has been established.
I modified the pattern slightly from the written-up version for the socks in the photos because David has a high instep, and this made the generic sock sit very low over his ankle — it was a simple matter of lengthening the heel flap to his heel measurement, and then continuing the gusset decreases down to the indicated number of stitches.
I don’t (yet!) have a PDF writer, and so I’ve merely added the instructions to the photo description, in the new Patterns album in the sidebar.
Now, I knew when I chose Shepherd Sock for the Nether Garments that things would happen, that with the shaping of the piece the color shifts would go in different, even unexpected directions. It’s the nature of hand-painted wool, of course. I figured that I would just be kind of zen about it, and let the colors go where they would.
Along the ankle and calf, I like this. It’s pleasing and fairly regular.
This, at the knee, I can live with — it has a little jolt where the calf shaping begins, but it sorts itself out.
This is getting weird —
And this, above the thigh shaping, is just bizarre.
I’d been thinking that I’d use the tights for yoga, being warm and close-fitting, you know, but I don’t find anything about these flashes the least bit meditative. Want to see the full effect? —
The moral is, you never know.
Now, that said, the garment itself is very comfortable so far. It looks a bit bulgy at the top, but that’s from the circular needles pulling it in; the above picture is a view of the front, with the thigh shaping at the inseam. It fits my leg perfectly, of course, being made to measure, and with Elizabeth’s careful planning and simple formulas it all went together without a hitch.
Here is a photo of the shaping, the back of the knee at the right and the beginning of the inseam at the left.
And I like the Shepherd Sock, too. It’s a bit splitty on the fine needles, but it feels nice in my hands. I was thinking, even as late as when I turned on the computer this morning, that I might keep up with it, finish it anyway, not wanting to give up on my Almanac project for this month (and I have eight skeins of the wool!). But the colors are just not working for me this way — lightning bolts on the thighs! I don’t think so — and I don’t see how I could reknit it — maybe working with alternate balls, it could work! — and still finish by the end of the month. These Nether Garments didn’t have much appeal to me at first, but now after actually trying on at least a part of it, it is not uninteresting. (This may seem a little like Westley’s remark in the Fire Swamp, something along the lines of "It’s not too bad, really," but I’ll leave it there.) Mary at The Knitting Zone very kindly calculated the yardage for the Shepherd Sock for me, and it looks like eight would be plenty, as I’ve only just added the third one — I was going to acknowledge her help in the final post on this project, but I think that for now this is it. For those who might pass this pattern over, it’s worth another look. In a lighter wool like Shepherd Sock, they would make excellent yoga wear or ballet leg warmers, for those in less Wisconsin-like climates, or something warm and cozy in a thicker wool for those long winters in the North. Like with the Chainmail Sweater in the March Chapter, yarn selection can make the world of difference! I would only suggest a solid color….
Eva, thanks for the link to Zimmermania, a new knitalong dedicated to Elizabeth’s patterns and wisdom. I’ll join when I feel a little less incompetent!
I needed a bit of a confidence-booster last night, and this came off the needles only an hour or so past my bedtime — another Odessa, with beads this time. The blue is the color Julia chose for her hat, and Laura’s will be the lilac-pink.
"Knit on"!
But enough about books (for a while at least) — Booking Through Thursday wants to know what else do you read?
Magazines? Newspapers? Professional journals? Cereal boxes? Phone books? Purchase invoices? Homework? (Please be specific. There may be a test later.)
My extra-book reading is rather staid. I subscribe to a number of magazines, with a special fondness for what they call "shelter magazines" for some reason — a less-inspiring name could hardly be found. I get "Better Homes & Gardens", "Cottage Living", "Interweave Knits", "Martha Stewart Living", and "Real Simple", and I buy occasional issues of "Country Living" and "Natural Home" and other things that catch my eye here and there, if something in it is worth saving. I have quite a weakness for the UK edition of "Country Living," too. My mom gives me her old copies of "Sunset", which is one of my favorites. Nothing literary, alas — I keep hoping that "Civilization" will start showing up again. I don’t read parenting magazines anymore — not that I know everything, I just don’t have the time! — although I did pick up "Wondertime" the last few months and found it very appealing. I am very disappointed — and told them so — that Martha Stewart has decided to cease publication of "Kids," which I thought was a wonderful magazine and one of the few that I save whole. I also read David’s "National Geographic" and the "Westways" that comes with our Auto Club membership, and the girls’ "Ladybug" — we’ll be adding to their list as birthdays roll by. I’m looking forward to my Christmas present to David of "The Economist", for which we unexpectedly found a discount coupon in Laura’s Brownie fundraiser!
I read the Los Angeles Times every morning, although to be honest I usually have time only to browse the front page, and read the local and Calendar sections, although I do love the Food and Home sections on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
I use to read cereal boxes a lot when I was a kid (Quisp! Cap’n Crunch!), but I usually eat homemade granola or toast for breakfast these days, so no boxes —
Knitting, reading, other stuff.
