Sprung Rhythm

Good morning, bore da, and happy St David’s day, which is also the first day of meteorological spring. This week I heard the first skylarks singing in the dunes above Machrihanish, and yesterday I saw my first Jacob lambs near the Laggan. In Kintyre at least, it definitely feels as if spring is just about to . . .well, spring!

There will be cold weather for a good time yet, however, and you might just appreciate today’s springy design for keeping the chill off: Sprung Rhythm

I’ve wanted to have a go at designing one of these useful accessories – part collar, part cowl – for a while now, and here is the result.

Sprung Rhythm begins by knitting two ribbed panels, back and forth . . .

. . . each of which is edged with an integrated i-cord, for stability.

When your desired panel length is reached, the two pieces are joined for working in the round . . .

. . .and a deep cowl with a woven twisted stitch pattern is worked upwards.

Scrunch or fold the textured tube cosily around your neck . . .

. . . while the ribbed panels sit neatly inside your coat or jacket, warming front and back.

One great thing about this type of neck accessory is that you can wear it with a jacket that is otherwise rather neatly-fitting, and retain its silhouette.

The other obvious benefit is the instantaneous warmth that it provides, around neck, chest, front, and back.

Tom said we really needed to show you the length of Sprung Rhythm’s tubular cowl, without any folding or scrunching. This model is always happy to oblige.

He was particularly pleased with the next shot, in which the shape of the cowl is echoed by that of the mill. I suspect our neighbour, passing on his tractor, rather enjoyed it too.

You’ll note that the twisted stitch motif used here is the same as the one which featured on yesterday’s Smocket.

It’s a motif whose interwoven twisted stitches have a wonderful rhythmic texture, leading me to the name of this design, which has been lent to us by innovative nineteenth-century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

In Hopkins’ poetry, sprung rhythm is a metrical system in which a line’s irregularly stressed syllables match the dynamic rhythms of spoken, everyday English, rather than the artificial cadence of (say) iambic pentameter. You can see sprung rhythm at work in Hopkins’ sonnet, Pied Beauty:

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty (1877) 

While Sprung Rhythm as a pattern name speaks to me of the movements of a knitter’s hands and needles forming twisted stitches, Hopkins’ sonnet celebrates a two-tone world both natural and human. With its collection of dark and light coloured patterns, its exploration of shade and illumination, Making Light has been all about the dappled things that get us through the winter, and it makes me happy to introduce its final pattern with a poem I’ve loved throughout my reading life, without sharing the religion of its writer. At its heart, I think, these joyful lines are a powerful celebration of difference: delighting in a material world whose wonder is to be found in the way that things rub up against each other. It’s also an extraordinarily vital poem, alive with the energy of the seasons, and their inevitable change.

To my left, you can see the unfurling tips of the tulips that I planted by my doorstep last autumn begining to emerge, alongside some valiant stems of muscari. The hundreds of tulip bulbs I planted through grass seem to be taking a little longer, but I suppose that is to be expected in Scotland’s cold ground. Here in Kintyre, spring is definitely on its way, and I hope that, wherever you are in the world, you are enjoying the sight of your own welcome signs of seasonal change.

I’ll conclude with hearty thanks to Maylin, who knitted the version of Sprung Rhythm that I’m wearing here, and who has worked incredibly hard these past few weeks, supporting all of our club members. Thank you, Maylin! This is the final pattern in the collection, but it’s not quite the end of Making Light: I’ll be back with a post or two to round off the club next week.

Have a lovely weekend!