Tag: History

  • Firth o’ Forth

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Ahoy from the Firth o’ Forth! This cardigan is the second in my series of my Edinburgh-inspired designs, and it is named after the important estuary that marks the city’s northern boundary. The Firth was a major feature of the decade we spent in Edinburgh: we lived in sight of it – just up the…

  • images of knitting #1

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    I have a small (but ever growing) collection of prints and postcard in which knitters, and the activity of knitting, are represented. Some of these are really very interesting, and I thought I’d occasionally share them with you here. This card, which was posted with an Austrian stamp in 1916, depicts a ‘continental’ knitter working…

  • thinking time

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Well, I had a fantastic time in Shetland. As I was on my own, I stayed in Lerwick. I really enjoyed meeting up with Shetland friends old and new, and pottering about toon. But I was there to work — I have a couple of writing commissions in the pipeline, one of which involves producing…

  • The Sixareen Kep

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Hello from Shetland, everybody! Wool Week is in full swing, and it has got off to a great start. I thought you’d like to see the pattern we produced yesterday at the Shetland Museum — named and photographed by the workshop participants, and modeled here by the lovely Tania — the Sixareen Kep. In the…

  • suit of the day

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    This Poiret suit is from 1914. I love its lines so much. I know I would be rubbish at actually walking in that skirt, though. Bring on the 1920s, and the knee.

  • 60 North

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Just dropping in quickly to say that the new issue of 60 North is out! What? You’ve never heard of 60 North? The name refers, of course, to Shetland’s line of latitude, and is a really well-produced magazine put out by my friends at Promote Shetland. Features in the magazine explore many different aspects of…

  • Textisles is out!

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    WHOOT! I am exceedingly happy to report that Textisles Issue 2 is now available! In this issue you receive: Two patterns (for the Betty Mouat sweater and the BMC) and four feature articles (three by me, and one by Susan Crawford). There is also a “meet the maker” interview with Griseldis Schmitthuber, who, with a…

  • woolly thinking: part 2

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    (Mid- eighteenth-century glazed Norwich worsted wools: Bruxelles, Belles Illes, Martiniques, Blondines.) As we’ve seen throughout WOVEMBER, the way that textiles are named and sold can be misleading and difficult to understand. In a rush to make a chemical innovations integral to a brand, or to lay corporate claim to a particular spinning or weaving process,…

  • Woolly thinking: part 1

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Wool snood at French Connection containing 0% wool and 100% Acrylic. We’ve had some WOVEMBER feedback suggesting that we are being overly dogmatic in our insistence that the word wool should pertain to sheep’s wool only. These comments are useful to read, and very interesting since they suggest how wide the application and understanding of…

  • smocks galore!

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    So, here is my surprise — the Warriston pattern is now published, and when you buy it you will also receive a copy of a new digital magazine, produced and edited by me. Since 2007, Textisle is the name I’d been using for a large academic project. It is too good a name to go…

  • pockets

    pockets

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    I have been knitting pockets. I am designing something which requires a pocket of a certain kind and I spent most of yesterday testing out several. By mid-afternoon, after creating a curious sampler composed of several different kinds of mini-pocket, I had a mild eureka moment, and devised what I reckon is the the perfect…

  • Christie Johnstone

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    This sweater is all about colour and pattern. I have already mentioned the unconscious influence of a blanket, but, in a conscious way at least, what I was inspired by were the shor’ goons (short gowns / blouses) that were worn by Newhaven fishwives. I’ve seen a couple of surviving late nineteenth-century examples, which are…

  • acquisitive

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    To my mind, historians have to be acquisitive – history is basically curiosity – a getting-hold-of the answers to the questions one has about the past. In my case, these acquisitive tendencies can take a very literal form — I get my teeth into an idea, and if that idea can be relatively cheaply fleshed…

  • racy mending

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    I have been playing around with ideas about mending and darning for a forthcoming article, and have been turning up some interesting tangential things in various digital collections. Pictured above are “Chicago’s top models for 1922” who have been co-opted to advertise the novel innovation of the seam ripper. The caption reads “Ripping is a…

  • finlaggan

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    When I considered the Islay walks I’d be capable of doing, the first place I thought of was Finlaggan. On the boat over from Kennacraig, I was longing to go, and we drove there as soon as we made landfall. During the Middle Ages, Western Scotland retained a strongly independent Gaelic culture whose political centre…

  • sticks

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    If you stood the course through my radio burblings the other day, you might have heard me mention the thing that I’d like to contribute to the BBC / British Museum’s History of the World in 100 objects. I thought you might be interested to see it. While I was researching my piece for the…