Life must be filled up

How clever an idea is this? In The Button Box: Lifting the Lid on Women’s Lives Lynn Knight, beginning with her Grandma’s button box, describes the clothes worn by members of her own family and all the sewing, altering and mending that went on. From this family story she develops a history of women’s clothes, fashions (not at all the same thing), domestic lives and working conditions. For instance, a linen button, taken from the box, leads to an account of what they were used for, how they were made and what life was like for the women who made them. This is social history anyone can enjoy; it’s as easy to read as a novel. I very much like the way quotations from novels are used to illustrate a point.

For people of a certain age (me), there’s a lot of nostalgia in the sections dealing with the fifties onwards. Cuticura! I can’t even remember what it was (something for nails, I imagine), yet the name leapt off the page at me. Paper nylon petticoats! Coty L’Aimant! I even wore that myself in the sixties. Lynn Knight is very good at describing women’s longing for clothes they can’t have/afford, especially in wartime. She is in no doubt that clothes *matter*.
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The sock yarns which I ordered from Black Sheep Wools on Friday arrived the next day and I cast on. These are plain socks with a cable cuff. They don’t look like anything yet but at least I’m knitting again and quite keen to get on with this project.

This photo shows most of yesterday’s non-food purchases at the market. First up, a master class in buying at boot sales.
Me: ‘How much is this?’ (the Monica Dickens book).
Seller: ‘£1.50.’
Me: ‘Too much,’ (puts book back in box).
Seller: ‘50p.’
Me: ‘OK’ (hands over money).

One of my favourite sellers there had what were for him unusual items: three boxes of 45s, all apparently from the sixties. Two blokes (it’s always men) were already looking very carefully through them but I didn’t have the patience. Since the price was ‘three for a pound’ I thought I would just get a few. Amusingly, the giant of a man standing next to me kept handing me records he’d already looked at. ‘Del Shannon?’ ‘Do you like the Everlys?’ When I asked how he could judge my tastes so accurately, he replied, ‘I’m guessing you’re about the same age as I am’! Flattering? Probably not.

The last buy was one I really shouldn’t have made: more knitting patterns. I do not need any more knitting patterns and I have no room for them.

Rather grandiose, to use Hopkins for a post about knitting but I love the poem. At the market yesterday, I bought a Cath Kidston thread tin, which contained some old Sylko threads. The threads are now in my thread box (an old shoe box), though why I keep them when I do so little sewing, I don’t know. I spent part of the evening sorting out all my knitting accessories to store them together in the tin. Who knew I had so much? Tape measures, sewing needles, cable needles, a crochet hook for picking up dropped stitches, stitch holders, stitch markers, four different row counters, those little rubber things that stop your stitches falling off the ends of the needle, needle gauges …and more. Where did it all come from? The tin is full and now quite heavy. And why do I have more than one of almost everything I need? Before reorganising, I had to rummage in my two knitting bags for what I needed so I hope this is an improvement. Are you a tidy knitter?



I also bought a large bag of yarn. It really is time I started another project.
See also What’s in your sewing box?.

In spite of the foul weather, there were plenty of buyers and sellers at the market. Last week, I had to make an informed guess that the filthy, grey objects viewed in semi-darkness were actually lovely blue Whitefriars vases. No need for guesswork today as this one came with a label and was mine for £5.00. I think it needs a second clean-up.



Cheap sparklies, £2.00. I love the bracelet.



Five knitting magazines, £1.00.



Three DVDs for those long, dark evenings when there’s nothing on television and I want to knit.



Stamp album that would only interest me. I saved £10.00 off the sellers’ prices by haggling. You don’t ask, you don’t get.

While on the subject of shopping, let me recommend a product I’ve just bought: Uniqlo cord leggings. They look like trousers but they’re pull-ons (with belt loops), you don’t know you’re wearing them and they’re nice and skinny. And cheap!

Steve McQueen and The Beatles made an unlikely connection between two BBC4 programmes I’ve watched this week: Knitting’s Golden Age and Neil Brand’s series Sound of Cinema.

I was disappointed by the knitting programme. The films were good, especially the old black and white shots of women knitting Fair Isle patterns at astonishing speed while herding sheep at the same time. It was the voice over which was the problem; I felt it had a slightly mocking tone throughout which was at odds with the seriousness of the knitters. As for the old patterns, I seem to have most of them! The Beatles appeared because they popularized black polo neck (roll neck, according to the prog.) sweaters which everyone then wanted.



Polo necks were cool, as shown by the fact that cool people wore them, like Steve McQueen in Bullit.



I confess I still think black polo necks are pretty cool, also Cuban heels. Blue, not so much. I couldn’t agree with the programme makers that knitwear went out completely in the 1980s and 90s.



This oversized sweater by Nicole Farhi is from that era, as is this BikBok cardigan.



The Beatles turned up again in Sound of Cinema, illustrating the innovative use of pop music in films; in their case, using their own songs in A Hard Day’s Night (still one of my favourite films) instead of employing a composer. We also had a brief glimpse of Adam Faith in Beat Girl, Yay! I’ve yet to see that film. Then there was Steve McQueen, in his blue polo neck, epitomizing cool to the soundtrack of Bullit. I’m enjoying this film series very much but there should have been a health warning before yesterday’s episode. Viewers of New Tricks this week were warned that it contained ‘upsetting’ scenes. What? It was nothing at all, you see worse things on the news every day of the week. No warning, though, that Sound of Cinema would include scenes from films by Quentin Tarentino. I had to look away; I could never watch anything of his.

Yesterday was the Horticultural Society’s ‘Spring’ Show. It’s been the worst growing season I can remember and yesterday the worst day for a show: relentless rain and the kind of wind that blows your umbrella inside out. Nevertheless, the people who grow to show managed to produce a wonderful display. I chickened out; just couldn’t face crawling around in the cold and wet to find the perfect primroses for the bench. Instead, for the first time ever, I entered some knitting.
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Black Sheep Wools have Regia sock yarn for £2.49 a ball. I couldn’t resist.

I’ve just been reading Joy and Josephine by Monica Dickens. In the book, she emphasises just how irritating one character is by having her refer to her crochet work as ‘crosher’. I don’t share this snobbery about people who call crochet, crosher and here’s why.

I learned to knit when I was about six and never forgot how to do it. In the seventies when crochet was suddenly fashionable, I decided to teach myself, with this very book which cost 20p.



Oh dear, I didn’t get on very well and so, on top of all the million other things I did at the time, I enrolled in an evening class. Our teacher was lovely. She did exquisite work herself but was endlessly patient with our clumsy efforts. And she always said, ‘crosher’.

As a result, I embarked on a crochet storm of shawls, multi-coloured cushion covers and a tea cosy. The shawls were either presents or were later given away (fool!), the cushions ended up lining cat baskets until they were just fur pads and fit for nothing. All I’ve got left is the ancient (vintage!) tea cosy.



Now I look at it and ask, How you did that? There’s a new crochet part work out. As the first issue is only 99p and includes pattern book, DVD, yarn and hook I thought I’d give it a go. So yesterday evening, a warlike evening of The Wartime Farm followed by The Bletchley Circle, I tried making a square. First it was a semi-circle. The next attempt was wedge shaped. Then the yarn got knotted. I gave up. I can do all the stitches, I just can’t make them into anything! I think it will be back to the old Patons book, which gives much clearer instructions than this new magazine. Also, the yarns and hook supplied are cheap and nasty, which you’d expect, really. Luckily, I already have every size of crochet needle there is and a fair amount of yarn. All I need is to recover my long lost skillz.



I won't make this, though. Ha ha!

I've just posted this on Ravelry. The pattern for the hot water bottle cover is from Jane Brocket's book The Gentle Art of Knitting and it's easy peasy. Jane has knitted Literary Hotties to match grey Persephone books and orange Penguins. Here's something more lowbrow. It looks orange but is actually bright red; the light is terrible today. The buttons are vintage ones from my stash.