brontë Archives - Lucias Figtree

The Emily’s epilogue

Lucia & Francesca / March 1, 2017November 5, 2020 / Patterns, Stories, Travel

I finished the blanket about a week ago, but I wasn’t so pleased with the quality of the pictures I took indoor. The weather has been quite poor (surprise, surprise) and I couldn’t photograph outside, but I managed a couple of hours’ window on Monday and I got a few pictures. You must be wondering why I am so obsessed with outdoor’s photography; it is because my blankets are very much just about colors, and it matters a great deal to me for the images to be as ‘real life’ as possible.

I wish I had the time, last week, to go back to Haworth and photograph the blanket there, but I have been busy, and it is a long round trip from Glasgow. Said that the next time I am down in Yorkshire, I would!!. As an alternative location, I thought of Pollok Country Park , Glasgow’s largest park ,which features the impressive Pollok House as well as the renowned Burrell Collection. Both Pollok house and the Burrell collection are closed, at the moment, and under renovation, but the gardens are still open to the public.

It is a beautiful place, well worth a trip if you are visiting Glasgow.

Anyway back to the Emily:

The blanket measures: 140cm x180 cm, in total, the border is 14cm deep. There are nine squares by 12 rows for a total of 108 squares.

The yarn used is a combination of STYLECRAFT ALPACA TWEED DK, SPECIAL DK, and LIFE DK.

14 Colors used which are:

ALPACA TWEED DK: ocean, dusky pink, sea breeze, sage.

SPECIAL DK: copper,plum,mocha,pistachio.

LIFE DK: heather, stone nepp, chocolate nepp, pebble nepp, gorse nepp, mixture charcoal.

QUANTITIES:

one 100gr ball for each color plus five balls of mixture charcoal.

PLEASE NOTE: mixture charcoal is used for ALL the first 2 rows of the squares, the joining, and the border.

CROCHET HOOK size 4 . the squares measure 11cm

The squares measure 11cm

SQUARE PATTERN:

the square is my design:

ROW 1: 6 chains join in with an ss

ROW 2: in the 6 chain ring work as follow: 3 chains (that makes the first treble),1 treble,1 ch *2 trebles,1ch* repeat ** 7 times. ( 16 trebles and 8 ch1 spaces)

ROW 3 : *puff stitch in each of the ch1 space of row2 ,2ch*, repeat ** 15 times (16 puffs, 32ch)

ROW4: *4 trebles cluster in the ch2 space of round3,3 ch*, repeat **15 times (16 clusters, 48ch)

ROW5: we add the corners as follow: start in any of the 3ch space of round 4 and work* 1 dc,skip the cluster,3ch,1dc in the next 3ch space of round 4.; next we make the corner: in the next ch3space work: 5trebles,3ch,5trebles;1dc in the next ch3 space of round4,3 ch* repeat ** 3 more times (4 corners, 12 dc, 8ch3 spaces)

ROW6 and final row: start on the corner and work: 2htreble,2ch,2htreble, 5 back post half treble on the 5 trebles of row5,1 half treble in the space between the 5 trebles of row 5 and the dc of row 5, 2dc on the ch3 space,1 dc on the dc of row5,2dc on the next ch3 space,1htreble on the space between the dc of round 5 and the next corner .repeat all around.

REMEMBER ROW1 AND ROW2 ARE ALL IN CHARCOAL.

The others row, please alternate the colors, as usual, choose any of the two methods I had listed before in the past blankets I posted.

You have plenty of yarn to make the blanket, and some left too.

JOINING:

with mixture charcoal, a simple dc join.

THE BORDER:

ONE foundation row around the blanket of dc in charcoal to set the border then follow the diagram below:

a note about the pattern for the border:

I found the pattern on Pinterest. It is what I believe a shawl. I tried to go back to the source of the original designer, but I haven’t been able to find out who is. The watermark is too feeble, and I got nowhere with that either.I went as far as finding what I assume is a Japanese pattern, but again has been posted and re-posted several times on Russian/Romanian sites, and I can’t read Cyrillic or Japanese so , I am afraid, I have no idea.

PLEASE if you do know the designer behind the diagram, let me know, and I will credit her/him. THERE IS NOTHING OF MORE ANNOYING THAN PILFERING OTHER DESIGNERS HARD WORK WITHOUT, AT LEAST, THE COURTESY OF ACKNOWLEDGE THEM!

following what I wrote above I am adding this here, on the 3rd march, 1917:

I just got a message this morning from a nice lady called Lynette Williams, she found the original designer on Ravelry. I am very happy to say it is a free Ravelry download pattern so I havent infringed any designer’rights. This is the link to it : http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/erigeneia

the designer is called: SILKE TERHORST, and the shawl is called : ERIGENEIA which means “Early-born” and is an epithet to the greek goddess Eos – the goddess of the Dawn. How nice is that? I love the name and the story!

THANKS AGAIN LYNETTE!!!

Has the Emily been a success? Can I imagine the blanket sitting in a corner of the parsonage? maybe yes or maybe no. All I know is that has been a lovely journey and the blanket will always remind me of my trip to Haworth and how much I love the Brontës sisters.

That is all, thank you for reading my blanket’s adventures, for been patient with what I believe, are quite pedestrian, and often sketchy pattern details. I will get better, I hope, with practice!

Happy crocheting!!!!

Lucia xx

More about the Emily…

Lucia & Francesca / February 19, 2017November 5, 2020 / Patterns, Stories, Travel

I thought I’d write an update on the blanket I’m currently making. I must say it has not been plain sailing, maybe it is because the task to transform an idea into reality, especially if it is something that you are passionate about, is never easy.

If you have read my previous post, you might recall the 14 colors I had selected. I had to make some adjustments as the tomato was too bright and highjacked the colors combination.

In the picture you can see why, it is out of focus in purpose so you can see the ‘tomato effect’. I substituted the bright hue with a tweedy chocolate which works much better and, consequently, I had to do a fair bit of ‘frogging.’ Chocolate browns, pale greens, dusty blues and some copper, they are all part of the interior of the parsonage and the surrounding area. One of the rooms I liked most was the hall. I remember reading Ellen Nussey’s ‘Reminiscences’, how “…the hall floor and stairs were done with sandstone, always beautifully clean, as was everything about the house…” and she describes the walls as being “not papered but stained in a pretty dove-coloured tint’. The restorations of the house revealed that it was more of a pale blue-gray that had been introduced and it is what you can see today.

Next was the pattern for the actual square, again several attempts and LOADS of samples later I came up with something I quite liked. The first thing I wanted to do is for the square to have a rugged feel of the Yorkshire landscape and outdoor clothing. My attention was drawn by some of the original garments wore by the Brontës that I had seen displayed in the museum.

The reason why so many sisters personal items, utensils, and clothes which in normal circumstances would have disappeared have been preserved is that a cult and interest for everything that involved the sisters became quite prominent very soon after they died. Fuelled not only by the extraordinary success of their novels but also by the publication of the first biography of Charlotte Brontë written by Mrs.Gaskell’s in 1857 just a few years after the death of the sisters.

It wasn’t only the sisters but it was also theirs surrounding that became of interest. Virgina Woolf wrote in 1904 following a visit to the parsonage:”Haworth expresses the Brontës; the Brontës express Haworth; they fit like a snail to its shell.”
I digress…
Back to the blanket. As I said I wanted to have a feeling for the landscape and the clothes, but also I wanted to have some lacy aspect also to celebrate the very popular at the time, Irish crochet that adorned not only their clothes but also their homes.

On the subject of Irish lace, I also got inspired by some amazing examples I saw in the archive of the Knitting and Crochet Guild on the Friday when I visited Stylecraft.

Irish lace became popular around 1830 when an English businessman, Charles Walker, brought several lacemakers to teach the craft in Limerick, Ireland, drawn to the area by the availability of cheap, skilled female labor. Walker’s business thrived: within a few short years his lace factories employed almost 2,000 women fuelled by the increasing demand.
The hues of my blanket are quite demure, as nothing of Emily makes me think of frivolity, the yarn is tweedy, warm and quite substantial, like their clothes made for long walks on the moors but also some femininity, hence the lacy feeling of the pattern, with a round 3D center and lighter surroundings.

Still, on the lacy theme, I was going to use a flat braid to join the squares, but it didn’t work for me at all, the squares became quite misshapen and had to be unraveled once again.

Then I thought about something curious I saw at the museum: a letter which was written by Anne Brontë to Ellen Nussey, actually, quite poignantly it was going to be her last letter as Anne was terminally ill, the note was a beautiful example of cross-writing, the letter is written with lines both horizontally and vertically, a common practice to save on postal costs.

The pen marks and pattern of the letter inspired my joining method: mixed charcoal, a beautiful organic color, became the chosen hue and a crisscrossed pattern to join the square.

In the next few days I am going to tackle the border..I have a couple of options and i will have a try and see which one look the best.

Until the next, thank you for reading!

Lucia xxx

‘Emily’ my February blanket: a humble homage to the Brontë sisters.

Lucia & Francesca / February 6, 2017November 5, 2020 / Lifestyle, Patterns, Stories, Travel

As you probably knew already, last weekend, I went to my first STYLECRAFT’S BLOGSTARS meeting.

It will take all week for the experience to sink in and I am still in the process to write a blog entry about what I saw , who I met and millions of ideas and exciting new projects, but today I am going to give you an update on my plans for the February blanket.

Stylecraft’s HQ is in Yorkshire in the north east of England, a wonderful rugged landscape well worth a visit if you got the chance.

While I was there for the weekend, I decided to stay an extra day and fulfil a wish that I had wanted for ages.

I went to Haworth to see the Brontë Parsonage.

As with all the things that you put up off for a long time, I had developed some sort of concern that there was a possibility of disappointment. And that my experience wasn’t going to be what I expected. But I m very pleased to say that it was not the case for this visit.

I wanted to see the house in winter, and also I wanted to see it when it wasn’t too crowded because in a very selfish way it was quite an important pilgrimage for me.

I was very fortunate, I arrived there at twilight ,just before closing, beautifully quiet, as the museum had just reopened last week and many are not aware of it.

It was wonderful to be standing in solitude in their very front garden.

You are wondering why a 50 something year old woman is so fascinated by the Brontë sisters?

Well I, have been fascinated by them for most of my life, since I read their novels and poems when I was a teenager, I never saw them as a gloomy trio of unmarried women in a isolated village in the Yorkshire’s moors telling tales of love , despair and sometimes happy endings.

I thought of them as witty , intelligent and also quite troubled women, well ahead of their time, raising topics that are still pertinent today , 200 years later. Drawing attention with their novels on subjects such as; choosing your own path, independence and being true to yourself .

The Brontë sisters have all an extraordinary ability to express their emotions so intensely about, not just love , loss, and passion; but also about rage, madness, and domestic abuse, and the reality of working just with the sole purpose to survive.

What also appeals to me a great deal is the fact that you can be an extraordinary individual without living a life full of epic experiences.

So back to my visit…

I was standing at twilight in the front garden of the parsonage and looking at the colours, the light, the moss on the tombstones, the interiors of the house with their soft dusty blues , greens and purples, the books, paintings, clothes, kitchen utensils and objects of an ordinary life and I felt so content in being there.

To capture in a tangible way how I felt , I m going to dedicate my February blanket to my favourite Brontë sister, Emily, a blanket to remember my visit to Haworth on a beautiful winter afternoon.

I selected the yarn , a mix of tweeds and solid colours , some soft alpaca mix for comfort against the gloomy weather, and a general mood for the blanket.

the tomato looks more like an hot pink in this picture…which is not right but it give you an idea, hopefully in the next few days if it is not raining I will be able to take a better picture.

The pattern is nearly there too; I am still tweaking with it. It is going to be different from what I normally make but hopefully will work . more updates as the week progresses.

Love you all Lucia x