Ex-Knitteryarn

A scrapbook of the knitting related things & times and events while the knitting was taking place. 

Filtering by Tag: Rowan Mohair Haze

Twenty-Fifteen Vision...

Isolde Wrap 

By Gemma Atkinson in Rowan Mohair Haze

from English Yarns

Actually when I was nine, I took Isolde as my confirmation name. I was sure I picked it myself, but I suspect now that my mother (recipient of this wrap) played a far greater role in the choice than I knew.  My classmates were taking Bernadette, Brigid, Anne, Catherine - you were supposed to pick a saint’s name - but my mother had an interest in celtic folk tales and I knew the story of Tristan and Isolde....  And the way I was raised, attention seeking was considered especially bad in girls, but showing off what you knew educationally fell in a different category .... VG/Excellent at any age or gender... She said I chose it but...

You don’t always see everything as it plays out, but nor does passage of time always make for accuracy either, and on that score a new political mini series is bothering me over what's excluded.   It's a biopic attempt to explain the allure of a contentious Irish political figure of the late '70s and early '80s.... The acting is mostly great, the storyline mostly clear, but thin ...  news clips interspersed from the time add flavour but visually it's romantically pastel and slightly misted (which it just wasn't) and then an accent is jarringly now, definitely not then... .....Then, when things were dark, cramped, flock wall-papered, heavily carpeted, definitely there wasn't soft tasteful light... Then, when most people hadn't two pennies to rub together but there was an aspiration to swank... ...Swank, where cars were big, steaks well done, in butter, followed by black forest gateau and suited pomp abounded in every back room snug... and not just there, but everywhere, cigarettes, cigars and pipes were a way of life... Windows stayed closed to keep in heat and children choked on unfiltered smoke on the top deck of buses or in the back of grey cars. ... 

Some makes the series but the, erm, totality of the situation somehow seems stilted (and you possibly need to be Irish and of that era recognise that very hackneyed political phrase).... 

...And in every Irish town and village, the pub was the nerve centre, meaning politicians and public were inextricably linked and often one and the same. The old bar in the parliament of that era was no exception and fulfilled all the requirements of a local shebeen....

So far at least, it hasn't merited even a mention....****  There's what I assume was purportedly the restaurant (although it's too appealing and harmonious by far), but...no low, pokey dive heaving with vital  action that would never feature in any formal report on exactly how decisions were reached - It's the story of the leader and it's true that you wouldn't often see the leader in the visitors' bar, but his satellites certainly kept it busy and were even busier carrying back all they found out there.  

It was a dingy windowless room at the end of a back corridor, and on sitting days opened with a startlingly brisk trade in heavily fortified morning coffees  before business commenced at 10.30am - absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to encounter public figures kickstarting their day in this way. Clearly many didn't too, but that was a literal measure of an era that didn't seem to bat an eye over entrusting matters of state to men with glaringly evident health troubles.  In fact, it would have been perceived as bizarre, the height of bad manners or pure meanness of spirit to have passed any remark and here's my impression of the best way venturing that kind of question might have gone...

"What?! That's just how it is... goodbye..."

dial tone...

All of which I think was linked to the level of unchallengeable male power which still prevailed to an extent quite unimaginable now (and in my opinion imposed pressures on both genders that were unreasonable), and also goes a way to explain how much faith could have been placed in one man.  What men said went then: they were believed, even as women believed we were becoming incredibly liberated.  Very sexist environments still existed wholesale all over the country and people had faith in them: political life was simply a reflection, and if men saw fit to run the country from the bar, well weren't they the wise ones.  Politics and journalism saw a small number of women make it on merit alone but they were few and exceptional (in my opinion, all the more admirable for that).  Women who properly flourished in that world mostly tended to be wealthy with independent support systems, or connected to existing political men or male dynasties and there were an awful lot of opportunistic sex arrangements. One of those features in the storyline, but seemed remarkably idealised to me. 

 

Odd what comes back once you begin delving - it also completely slipped my mind that once I'd been taught to embroider.  I picked up a needle to try a green zig-zag and was astonished that it came so easily - and only then it came to me that I was taught at school sometime around the era I gained the name Isolde.

 

**** it got one very brief reference in a subsequent episode 






Nearly Made It...

Stanza

by Sarah Hatton from Rowan Knitting & Crochet Magazine No. 56

in Mohair Haze 

Aoife liked this pattern, so I got knitting right away for her birthday and belatedly for her success in graduating as a BSc.  This is a really interesting yarn worked on 3mm needles.  It's 70% mohair and 30% wool and knits into a fine and springy fabric which really does have a haze-like sheen.  You need to be careful, though, especially in reverse stocking stitch because every little glitch will be visible (to the knitter at least!).  However, it doesn't make me sneeze for which I am grateful because I don't always fare so well with mohair or angora.

And I was making great progress until I ran out of wool...  for the last few balls I had a sense that this was a likely scenario, but just clacked on in hope until there was no more...  (do a tension square?) (me?!) So my new order's in and more wool's on the way... apparently...  but it's been almost a week now and still no sign. Aoife's birthday has come and gone and now I'm growing despondent. Knitting a lot - especially in white -  can unhinge you slightly - I know that:  you keep your hands very clean and anyone wandering about with plates of food or, god forbid, a pizza box becomes a potential foe - so perhaps it's no harm to take a break. 

Congratulations and best wishes to Aoife on all her achievements - the present indian summer is a fitting back drop for all her causes to celebrate (along with the fact it's not quite sweater weather yet).   

 

Post script - 2 x 25g of wool finally arrived and I've no idea what's happened my tension, which is generally there or thereabouts, but I needed both.  Daytime photo is at the top of this post and thanks also to Milla of The Stitch Shop for sewing it up and covering over some of my mishaps  -  not for the first time too.

 

 

 

 

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