A shoal of ganseys

'The Mo', the museum of the North Nofolk fishing town of Sheringham, is currently hosting an exhibition all about fishermen's sweaters, A Shoal of Ganseys.

A gansey is a particular type of sweater or jumper, knitted in the round with no sewn seams, most often (but not exclusively) in navy blue, using fine wool at a tight gauge or tension. They were worn by fishermen all down the east coast of the Great Britain, along the whole route of the herring fishing fleet from the Moray Firth in Scotland to Sheringham and Cromer in Norfolk. They were also knitted and worm elsewhere, including inland waterways, the channel islands and the Netherlands.


The exhibition is absolutely splendid. It displays 70+ ganseys in amongst the boats and artefacts that form the museum's permanent displays. The overall effect is very attractive to look at and very evocative. Detailed attention has also been paid to each individual knitted item; the knitting nerd can see where and when each comes from, and care is taken to demonstrate the range of different styles and techniques that were and are used, rather than reducing the tradition to one single model that all ganseys are supposed to have followed.

There's a handling collection of labelled knitted samples upstairs, so there's a chance to see the knitting up really close (with low lighting levels in some areas of the museum this was particularly welcome!) and to take away detailed inspiration for future projects.

I'd thoroughly recommend this exhibition if you're interested in knitting, coastal heritage and history, or if you're just passing through Sheringham or North Norfolk. Sheringham's lovely, too, if you like chips, ice-cream and gulls. (And who wouldn't?)

The exhibition runs until 10 September 2014. I haven't found details of these online, but the exhibition leaflet advertises knitting on the prom on Saturday 14 June, children's knitting sessions on Thursdays during the summer holidays, and a symposium 'Gathering Ganseys' on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 September.

The results are in

You may remember that back in March I set loose on the world a knitting pattern, designed by my own fair hand, for library-inspired fingerless gloves.  This was an entry in the LIS New Professionals Network library advocacy competition, but it was also a good excuse for me to devote some time to knitting. 

The results of the competition have now been announced, and I'm really chuffed to receive an honourable mention from the judging panel: it's seems unfair to be commended for something I had such fun doing!  The winning entries thoroughly deserve their success.  First place has been awarded to Jacqueline Barlow's That's Not Online project, and second place to Annie Johnson's Putting the Pieces Together advocacy-through-jigsaws scheme.

Knit one, purl one: advocating for libraries the knitterly way

Hopefully you've already heard that the LIS New Professionals Network (LISNPN) is running a library advocacy competition. New professionals are invited to create library advocacy of any and all kinds: "an article in a newspaper, or on a website, or [...] an event, or an art-work, or anything at all. The only criteria are that it should raise awareness about libraries or librarians, and try to reach new audiences".

The competition was announced very shortly after I'd had a double-echo-chamber-escape few weeks, with an article in the Guardian and a talk at Ignite London 4. Fun as those both were, they were quite hard work, and I thought that for my competition entry I'd do something a bit more like recreation, and a good deal more off the wall...

...Introducing 'Classmark mittens', a librarian's answer to cold working environments and a compulsion to knit.

 

Why on earth write a knitting pattern?

Firstly, it's fun. Secondly, it's a way of connecting with lots of new people. There's a social network for knitters (and crocheters, spinners, designers and so on), Ravelry, with over 1,000,000 members in lots of countries. It's a brilliant resource - with hundreds of active fora on specialist and general topics, an enormous (and gorgeously organised) patterns database, yarn databases, space for members to record their projects and yarn and what patterns they own and the like, and space for designers to publish their own patterns.

So, for my LISNPN competition entry I've designed a library-inspired knitting pattern, popped a wee smidgen of library advocacy into its introductory text, and set it loose.

You can get the pdf here without needing to be a member of Ravelry.

Ravelry's pattern database contains over 200,000 patterns: these are all catalogued with relevant metadata including the sort of yarn they use, the type of garment, size/age/fit/gender, amount of yarn needed, pattern source and availability, needle size needed, and so on.  That's one way that I hope people will find the pattern - by browsing for a pattern that meets their specific requirements.

I've also publicised the pattern by using a pattern testers group to find volunteer test-knitters who've ironed out lots of typos and unclear bits in the pattern as well as created their own project pages for it, including difficulty and pattern quality ratings.  I'm also posting to various relevant groups that have threads for designers to show off their new patterns. I'm not expecting this pattern to become a blockbuster like some (Ravelry's most popular pattern, 'Fetching' by Cheryl Niamath, has 17,640 registered projects), but it might reach a few people, and that's not bad for something I really enjoyed putting together.

Anatomy of a Mitten

About the mitten

The pattern is for a fingerless mitten with a thumb gusset (not an afterthought thumb) and a mid-length buttoned cuff in a mistake-rib pattern.  The cuff is knitted flat and the knitting is then joined in the round for the hand and thumb.  The hand and thumb are knitted in stocking stitch and finished with a mistake-rib and garter-stitch edging.

The pattern on the cuff is inspired by the appearance of bookshelves.  After extensive swatching, I decided I just couldn't work out how to represent 'information services' in knitting, and opted for the easy (and stereotyped) option!

I'm not really sure if a knitting pattern, of all things, help to dispel the grumpy-grey-haired-bun-wearing-cardigan-toting-librarian stereotype, but probably everything that keeps libraries in people's minds is a good thing.