Tidewater Knitting Guild of Virginia November 2010 Newsletter

Tidewater

Knitting Guild of Virginia N

Nov. 1 Meeting

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President’s A Farewell from Pam

Dear Guild members, The last few months I have written the president’s message, I have either been Meet and Greet, 7 p.m. on the way out of town, or just back. This time I am out of town, hoping to get a Business Meeting, 7:15 p.m. peek into a yarn store in Knoxville, Tenn., Program will be as I accompany my youngest son on his apartment search. I will promise him I will only stay a few minutes (Ha!) if I get to go into one, just long enough to squeeze one or two luscious skeins of yarn. You can We meet the first Monday of the imagine the look on his face will be as he month (except for holidays) at answers, “Yeah, right Mom, two minutes.”

The Lynnhaven House, So the yarn stores may have to wait this Colonial Education Center, trip and hold till the next.

4409 Wishart Road, Virginia What cannot hold and wait until the Beach. next time though is what I have to say to you all in my last message. Thank you, Check tkgv.blogspot.com to Guild members, for allowing me to serve as confirm the meeting date. We your President for the past 12 months. I may use the lot of the church have had an enjoyable, interesting and next door as overflow parking. occasionally trying time doing so and I President Pam St. Clair gets ready to Questions? Please email us at would not change the experience at all. I slice a cake to celebrate the Guild’s tkgv1@yahoo.com. birthday during the Oct. 4 meeting. think I have done some things right, maybe some things not so right, but it has been an enjoyable process along the way and it has been a terrific learning experience for me. I have been very fortunate to have a wonderful board to work with. Trink, Peggie and Lisa have all worked very hard for the Guild’s benefit and I could not have done anything without them. Trink has shown herself to be the absolute lamb’s baa in organizing programs and arranging for our future knitting instructors. Peggie has diligently taken the notes and provided us with accurate and complete minutes of every meeting, posted them online for all to see and has done so even as her job sends her traveling frequently. Lisa has been fantastic as our treasurer. She has been on top of every nickel and dime, and the membership information and business is always at her fingertips. Jobs well done, ladies, and thank you for doing your jobs with enthusiasm. (continued on p. 3)

What’s in Lora’s Closet?

Treasury

Charity Fund: $151.83 General Fund: $3,024.66 Total Funds: $3,176.49

Reminder: Annual dues of $20 are due in November. The Guild will prorate new members to get everyone on schedule. -- Lisa Roberts

Member Birthdays This Month Rae Struebing Nov. 2

Susan Wilkins Nov. 13

Myra Barnes Nov. 25

Dora Young Nov. 3

Brenda Bunting Nov. 14

Bobbie Berryman Nov. 25

Lisa Roberts Nov. 4

Rachel Skurzewski Nov. 15

Melanie Perez-Lopez Nov. 27

Cheryl Cauthen-Bond Nov. 13

Wanda Gunnoe Nov. 18

Sue Von Ohlsen Nov. 28

Sandra Thrul Nov. 24

Mark Your Calendar s Guild meetings start with Meet and Greet at 7 p.m., followed by the Business Meeting at 7:15 p.m.

Nov. 1 Meeting – Installation of officers. Program: What’s in Lora’s Closet? by

Lora Marin.

Nov. 6 Festival – Fiber Arts Celebration, presented by Cornerstone Farm

Alpacas, LLC, which participated in the Guild’s Knit Out in

June. Workshops include tapestry weaving, lace knitting, intro

to crochet and beginning drop spindle spinning. 9 a.m.-4

p.m., 26298 Spivey Town Road, Windsor, Va. For more

information, see www.cornerstonefarmalpacas.com.

Dec. 6 Meeting – Holiday Party. And don’t forget to bring your hats for the

Caps for Kids Contest.

Jan. 2011 Meeting – Program: What’s in Sue’s Closet (or Store)? by Sue Von

Ohlsen.

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O f f i c e r s f o r t h e T K G V 2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2 Y e a r :

President: Allison Hunt

Vice President: Trink Dahl Prince

Secretary: Katie Gerwien Treasurer: Kathy Brown

President’s Message, continued from front page All of our committee members have done a wonderful job this year. We have had up-to- date charity knitting business and information, fantastic raffles featuring yarns from our LYShops every month, thoughtful attention to the needs of our Guild members suffering a loss or illness, information provided to us about programs in our community and about us as we support knitting and the fiber arts in our community, and we have the most attractive and informative newsletter out there, full of birthday greetings, wonderful historical knitting articles and patterns, calendars and ads.

As I hand the gavel to Allison, and her board, Trink, Katie and Kathy, I hope you will join me in supporting them as they endeavor to provide enthusiasm for the Guild activities, programs for the members, activities for the Guild members to get involved with and more. I know they will do an outstanding job and I look forward to the new directions they will lead us.

Thank you, thank you, Guild members, for a memorable year!

Fondly,

Pam St. Cla ir

Keep Knitting Those Caps for Kids

It’s almost time for the annual Caps for Kids holiday contest. Hats are needed in all sizes to donate to local children's charities. Please bring your completed hats to the December meeting. Twenty-five-dollar gift certificates for a local knitting shop will be awarded in the following categories: most creative, technical merit, best in show and most hats knitted. * * * * * Reminder: We continue to tally the number of items knit and donated to any charity by a Guild member. Let Jackie Scott (jackieknits@cox.net) or Debbie Henderson (hendersonjb@cox.net) know of your charity items so they can be counted. Include “charity knitting” in the subject line of your email. Also, a sign-in list is available at every meeting for you to register your charity count.

Survey: Where Should We Meet?

Maureen Cahill recently emailed Guild members a link to a quick survey. Please respond to the survey as soon as possible to help the Guild determine the best place to hold meetings. It’s just one question.

A NOTE FROM YOUR EDITOR ...

Please send your questions, comments, suggestions, photos, stories and patterns you’d like to share to Sonja Barisic at snbarisic@gmail.com or 734 Delaware Ave., Norfolk, VA 23508. Thank you, and happy reading and knitting.

Sonja Ba risic

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR DEC. NEWSLETTER: NOV. 15 3

Historically Speaking Submitted b y K aren Richardson.

T h e a u t h o r, A n n e k e L y f fl a n d , g a ve h e r p e r m i s s i o n t o r e p r i n t t h i s a r t i c l e.

L y f fl l a n d l i ve s i n S t o c k h o l m , S we d e n , a n d wo r k s w i t h d a t a b a s e s. S h e g r e w u p i n Ta l l i n n , E s t o n i a . T h e m e d i e va l f e a t u r e s o f Ta l l i n n’s O l d To w n k i n d l e d h e r i n t e r e s t i n h i s t o r y. S h e b e l o n g s t o t h e S o c i e t y f o r C r e a t i ve A n a c h r o n i s m , wh e r e h e r f o c u s i s t a i l o r i n g, b o o k b i n d i n g a n d s u n d r y fi b e r / t e x t i l e a r t s.

A STUDY OF A 13TH-CENTURY VOTIC KNIT FRAGMENT

By Anneke Lyffland citikas@yahoo.co.uk

Abstract A piece of a 13thcentury mitten was found in a Votic cemetery in Jõuga in 1949, but remained largely unknown until the beginning of the 21st century. A brief study has been published that describes the properties of fiber, yarn and color. The knitting aspect of this mitten remains unknown. I would like to share a few facts about this fascinating piece.

The yarn was spun from local wool using worsted method, in which all the fibres are aligned. Two z-spun singles were s-plied to achieve a 1.4 mm thick yarn. Some of the yarn was dyed with madder, some left natural. The blue yarn was produced with a ~50/50 blend of natural white fibre and indigo-dyed fibre. The use of red yarn is significant, as the colour red was believed to have protective magic. The mittens also contain fibre coloured with expensive imported dye, making them even more precious.

The mittens were knit in round using Eastern method. The colour pattern is stranded, and colour floats are carried above the white. The mittens appear to have been made by a skilled knitter for special occasions, such as a wedding or a funeral. The knitting is consistently even and of a fine gauge (2.5 stitches / 3 rows per cm).

Introduction In Estonian Institute of History textile collection is a fragment of knitting from the 13th Century (AI 4008 XXII: 156). It was excavated from Votic cemetery (zhalnik-grave XXII, skeleton K) at Jõuga in North-Eastern Estonia in 1949. This burial was dated to 1238-1299 using Novgorod chronology. Some aspects of this find were published in an article about textiles from Votic cemeteries; details about knitting style, techniques, etc. used to make this fragment have not been published until now. In this paper, I intend to establish the knitting techniques used to create this late 13th-Century Votic knit fragment.

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HISTORICALLY SPEAKING, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 Extant knit items are rare, early knit items even more so. It is very exciting to discover new pieces and to find new information about this subject. Each new find carries the potential to increase this knowledge in leaps and bounds, although the scarcity of extant items it is also a liability. There are so few items available for comparison, and it is very easy to draw wrong conclusions from such a limited base.

Bishop Rutt has written a thorough account of knit items and fragments known in the West. However, he does not mention Estonian knitting even though there were published materials available at the time of writing his book. To be fair, these materials were published in Soviet Union, and it is unlikely that Rutt would have had access to them. With this study, I hope to fill some of the gaps in Western knowledge about knitting in Estonia.

Background There does not appear to be a clear date of origin for the practice of knitting within the current territory of Estonia. The socks (ERM A 445:4) and mittens (ERM A 445:5) of Rabivere Bog find, dated to 17th century, were considered the oldest knit items in Estonia for a long time. Later excavations at St. Michael's Nunnery and Pirita Abbey have produced some bronze knitting pins. One pin from Pirita Abbey is exhibited in Tallinn City Museum, second floor Medieval Room, Pirita Abbey section. It is double-pointed, about 20 cm long and ~2.5 mm in diameter. This evidence, combined with this knit fragment, suggests that people in the towns and rural areas of Medieval Estonia were at least aware of the practice. As a new craft, however, knitting was probably not very common.

The knit fragment that I have examined was found in a burial of a woman at her hand and was identified as a piece of a mitten/glove cuff. It is more likely that the fragment was originally part of a mitten, because gloves do not appear in Estonian peasant knitting in until the late 18th century.

The original report on Votic cemeteries in North-Eastern Estonia and on this fragment claim this fragment (and some nalbound mitten fragments) were parts of special burial mittens. Others disagree and say that there were no special burial clothes; people were buried in their everyday clothes, although they concede that women were sometimes buried in their wedding attire. Mittens that were knit specially for such occasions would have been decorated more ornately than normal work mittens. With these things in mind, it is reasonable to conclude that this mitten was knit either for a wedding or a funeral.

Yarn The yarn was spun from local wool with median diameter of 28Îź. As is visible on the scan, the individual fibres lay parallel to each other. This is a characteristic of a combed top or yarn spun from the lock. There are no surviving records that indicate Estonians using wool combs, but we know that wool combs were used in earlier Viking cultures as well as in Western Europe, so it is possible that Vikings or later conquerors introduced this technology to the Estonians. Wool cards came into use in Estonia after Middle Ages. Two z-spun singles were s-plied to the final yarn thickness of 1.4 mm.

Some of the yarn was dyed with madder, some with indigo and some left natural white. The colors have changed in the soil, but the red and blue of madder and indigo are still recognizable; the natural white has turned pale yellow. The indigo blue yarn contains about 50% undyed wool.

The yarn dyed with indigo was precious because the dyestuff had to be imported at great cost. Thrifty spinner blended some natural fiber

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HISTORICALLY SPEAKING, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 with the blue to increase the length of the blue yarn. Red color was associated with blood in Estonia and had magical properties. It was believed, that disease and evil spirits could not penetrate an area bound by red.

Color Pattern This pattern differs from later ethnographic mitten patterns that cover the whole area of the mitten and have different design principles. It is similar in overall effect to embroidered cuff patterns on 18th and 19th Century Estonian nalbound mittens and embroidery on Tuukkala mitten from Finland. There also is a strikingly similar color pattern used on mid-19th-century wedding gloves from Petseri County; both have a strong resemblance to a double-sided comb.

The published text specifies two purl rows under the first row of blue/white pattern.

Close examination of the fragment established that there are no purl rows; there is a white row of plain knit stitches below the first pattern row.

The published picture shows a row of purl, four rows of blue/white, a row of solid blue, a row of solid red, two rows of white/red, three rows of solid white and a row of solid red. Careful counting of stitch rows of the front and the rows of floats on the back of the fragment resulted in two blue/white rows after white row and before blue row.

This suggests that the comb pattern is symmetrical. There could also have been a single blue row below the comb pattern to echo the single red row above. Decorative elements on peasant clothing in Baltic area tend to be symmetrical, therefore it is likely that this pattern also was symmetrical. Furthermore, the pattern on Petseri gloves is symmetrical, having equal number of rows in comb "teeth" and no single rows of colour on either side.

Knitting Technique There is one crossed stitch in the solid red row. It is most likely a mistake, since all other identifiable stitches are uncrossed. This type of right-slanting cross can be made by mistake only if the stitches lay on the needles open to right, a method of knitting Bishop Rutt classifies as Eastern. In addition, the eastern knitting untwists an s-spun yarn, this effect can be observed in stitch close-ups.

Since there is no cast-on or selvage, it is uncertain whether this mitten was knit flat like the Rabivere mitten (ERM A 445:5) or in round like Rabivere sock (ERM A 445:4). My opinion is that it was more likely knit in round, because: 1. The extant western medieval gloves are knit in round; 2. The knitting Madonnas depict knitting in round, making it the proved method of knitting existing at that time; 3. The Rabivere sock is patterned and there is a jog in the pattern, indicating it was knit in round; 4. The extant Estonian needles are short and double-pointed, therefore more suitable for knitting in round.

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HISTORICALLY SPEAKING, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6 The fragment also does not contain any decreases or a thumb opening. Therefore there is no certainty as to how the mitten was constructed, or what techniques were used to make the thumb or the closure of the tip.

The pattern is stranded — the floats are not twisted around each other.

The colored yarn is carried above the white yarn.

The knitting is consistently even, and there are no gaps between the purl rows at the back of the fragment. Gauge is 2.5 stitches, 3 rows per cm with slight variations introduced by distortions and breaks in fabric.

Conclusion I intended to establish the knitting techniques used to create this late 13thcentury Votic knit fragment. There are no other comparable items and, in the light of new finds, my conclusions could be proven wrong. In this study, I also plan to start filling the gap in Western knowledge about knitting in Estonia. Scant information is a certain improvement over no information; and inaccurate data can be revised.

The original account and pattern drawing are somewhat faulty. Careful examination of the fragment revealed that the comb pattern was, in fact, symmetrical and there are no purl rows before the blue/white comb pattern begins. It is likely that there was also a blue row below blue/white rows.

The knitter was not a beginner; the floats and stitches are even in size. The single mistake could have been made due to poor lighting conditions. The knitter used eastern method of knitting to produce this item. Since there are no surviving cast-on, selvage or cast-off stitches, it is impossible to say how the mitten itself was constructed. The mittens were most likely knit with double-pointed needles in the round, since comparable western items were knit in the round and there have been finds of double-pointed needles in Estonia.

This item is definitely knit and not produced by nalbinding. The fragment was a part of a special mitten — mitten knit especially for burial or a wedding. The knitting is fine and is executed with skill that shows practice. The pattern uses smooth yarn dyed with valuable pigment — indigo. Red yarn, dyed with madder, was associated with blood and had magical protective properties.

(Editor’s note: The original article included extensive footnotes and a glossary. To read the entire document, go to http://tinyurl.com/2ungq4x.)

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So many things to knit… so little time. Get on in here and we'll get ya started!

We have brand new solid colors of Lana Grossa sock yarns, as well as many new and exciting beautiful ribbon yarns just perfect for the holidays.

Are you an avid lace knitter? Do you want an easier wayto do your entrelac designs? We have THE workshop for you on Nov. 13 at 1 p.m. Cost: $10.00. No material purchase required. Bring your yarns and needles.

We also will be running the ever-poplar finishing techniques workshop once again, on Nov. 20. Cost: $10.00. Homework required.

Don't foget to get your ticket for the drawing to be held on Nov. 20. To celebrate our eight year, we are giving away a set of Addi Natura Clicks.

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