While I was visiting my grandmother, I got curious about a piece of woven carpet that she has on her wall. I knew a little bit about it, but everything I knew prompted me to ask more questions!

Hanging on the wall

Here’s what I knew, to start with:

• This was an offcut/remnant of a larger carpet (sized to fit a large room, wall-to-wall) that a female ancestor made in the 19th century
• She did the entire production herself — scouring and dyeing the wool, spinning the yarn, weaving it, and seaming the finished carpet
• The large carpet is on display at the local museum in Perth, ON — we went to see it sometime in the early 1990s when we were in town for a Scott family reunion
• Various members of my extended family have inherited pieces like the remnant on my grandmother’s wall

Those little fragments of knowledge led to lots of questions:

• Who WAS the female ancestor?
• How did she make this giant carpet?
• When did she make it?
• What dyes did she use? The colours (even on the carpet in the museum, which was heavily used for many years) are still very bright; was it naturally dyed, as my grandfather believed, or were some of the colours from chemical dyes?
• How unusual IS this carpet? Is it just uncommon for them to survive, or was it a rarity in its own time?

Made into a wall hanging by my grandmother

Granny told me that she had received a piece of carpet remnant from my grandfather’s sister, who never married/had children, and that Granny herself was the one who cut up the remnant and made it into this wall-hanging herself, and gave pieces to her children (including my mother). I asked her about the tassel; she couldn’t remember for certain, but thought that she had also received some yarn that had never actually been woven into the carpet. It’s definitely the same yarn used, though. (If my handspun ever looks that even…!)

Anyway, enough about the remnant — let’s look at the actual carpet! Granny has a scrapbook of photos from this side of the family, and we sat down with it to do some searching.

The carpet itself!

The back of the photo reads, in unidentified handwriting:

1992. Aug 22/92. Jack Scott + Jean McDonald at 72 Harvey St. with carpet from “Maple Hall Farm” woven from raw wool about 1887 by their grandmother Ellen “Beatty” Scott.

Carpet donated to Perth Museum.

Carpet purchased by Jessie Scott from Bill Scott for $2000 at the time he sold the home farm in 1974.

As you can see, that carpet is not just a little area rug — it’s massive.

This is Maple Hall Farm, where Ellen Beatty Scott lived (more about her later). The carpet covered the floor of an entire wing of the house!

Maple Hall Farm

In the scrapbook of photos that Granny and I were poring through, there was also a snippet from a newspaper, which identifies “The Scott Rug” as 17′ by 18′. SEVENTEEN by EIGHTEEN FEET. There isn’t a room in my house that is that large! To my mind, this is no “rug”, this is a full-on CARPET.

An undated notice from an unnamed newspaper about the Perth Museum, which identifies "The Scott Rug" and its size

So, we know that the creator of this carpet was Ellen Beatty Scott, and that she made it around 1887. Surely, such a thing would have taken her years?

The carpet keeps cropping up in other family photos. Here’s Ellen’s daughter, Jean Scott, marrying Maxwell Gibson, in 1910; look what they’re standing on. (Incidentally, Jean and Maxwell were the parents of my mother’s father. They moved to Saskatchewan after their wedding, and my grandfather, the middle of 5 children, was born in 1914.)

The back of the photo reads: "Jean Scott & Max Gibson married at Maple Hall Farm on Jan 12/1910 Note the carpet on the floor"

Another wedding, in 1943, shows another Jean Scott marrying Leslie McDonald, standing on that distinctive carpet. (Jean McDonald and her brother are the ones holding the carpet on the lawn in the photo above.)

The note next to this photocopy of the photo reads: "Jean (Scott) McDonald & Leslie McDonald married in 1943 at Maple Hall Farm. This picture taken in the room with the carpet on the floor."

Let’s backtrack just a little… I’ve figured out by now that Ellen Beatty Scott was my great-great-grandmother. Her mother was another Ellen, Ellen Armstrong, who married William Beatty in 1835. (There was a “Grandmother Beatty” who came from Paisley, Scotland, to Perth, Canada, in 1821. I think she must have been the Scottish Isabel Robb/Rabb [born 1775] who married Irishman Walter Beatty/Beattie [born 1776] to form lineage 395 in this list. That would make her William Beatty’s mother, Ellen Beatty Scott’s grandmother., and the first of this side of my family to come to Canada.)

Here’s Ellen Beatty, and her husband, William Armstrong Scott. (There are two different bunches of Armstrongs, I think. And a lot of Williams, Ellens, Jeans, and Jacks.) They married in 1877.

Ellen Beatty Scott, alone (R) and with her husband, William Armstrong Scott.

William and Ellen Scott had three children, Jean (my great-grandmother, the one in the 1910 wedding photo above), James/Jim, and John/Jack.

I’m guessing that it was around the time of this photo that Ellen went away for a summer to weave the carpet. (We know she wove it about 10 years after her marriage; I’m guessing by the ages of the children that this picture must have been taken roughly that long after, as well.) She went to stay with someone (her father, I think, or possibly an uncle) who had a loom.

Jean Scott Gibson with brothers Jack and Jim -- the children of Ellen Beatty Scott

There’s a lovely shot of Ellen with her three grown children. Not too long after it was taken (maybe a few years, not more), Jim was killed in a farming accident at age 33, leaving his wife and two young boys. One of them was the Bill Scott who sold the carpet to his cousin Jessie (one of Jack’s daughters?) in 1974.

Ellen (Beatty) Scott (far right) with her children: Jean (Scott) Gibson, James William Scott (Jim), John Beatty Scott (Jack)

And here’s my favourite picture of Ellen herself. That grin! Those smiling eyes!

Ellen Beatty Scott, 1839-1913, maker of the Scott Carpet

Now, back to the carpet. Here’s where the sleuthing really heats up!

I’m no weaving expert, but I can tell you that it was woven in strips, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2-3′ wide, and seamed together. The stripes are the weft (?) — they run across the strip of fabric. And yet, when you see the whole carpet together, the seams are practically invisible, and the stripes line up perfectly! What looks in the remnant like a slightly random set of stripes does, in fact, repeat along the length of the carpet, too.

The carpet was in place in Maple Hall Farm for something like 87 years. It has stood up remarkably well, and the really amazing thing to my mind is that the colours are still so vibrant.

Woven stripes, intense colours!

I would really love to know what sorts of dyes Ellen would have had access to in the 1880s. My late grandfather (her grandson) and his sister both told my grandmother that it was “vegetable dyed” from Ellen’s own plants — but surely, surely, those vivid, glowing reds and oranges didn’t come from her garden? I can certainly imagine that the brownish shades (golds, browns, sage-y greens, etc.) were plant-based and home-grown, but the others?

I know that there’s a whole rainbow of natural dyes available, but the only brilliant red I know of is cochineal, which, being a beetle from South America, is not likely to have been in Ellen’s garden. Madder certainly would have been available, but I’ve never seen such an intense shade from it.

It seems to me that the dye might have been Alizarin crimson instead — the carpet was made over 15 years after it was first synthesized, though I have no idea if it was widely available in Canada by the time Ellen would have been dyeing her wool.

I’ve seen a brilliant, fairly colourfast yellow made from onion skin, but I don’t know if the natural dye process and the chemical dye process could have been used in tandem to combine yellow and red into the bright orange. (Would it work, or would the chemicals involved interfere with each other?)

There’s a bright pink, too — possibly a paler version of the red? I can more easily imagine this being dyed from some garden plant than any of the other vivid colours.

And then there’s the teal-y blue-green colour. It’s not an indigo blue, that seems fairly certain to me; for one thing, I doubt indigo would have lasted this long. I don’t know enough about dyes to guess at what else might make this kind of colour…

I am really interested to learn more about this carpet, and the tools and technologies that my great-great-grandmother would have used to produce it. It looks like I’ve got a fair bit of research ahead of me!

Post-script

Ellen was one of 12 children; one of her younger sisters bears mentioning here, too. Her accomplishments were of a completely different sort than Ellen’s — but highly admirable. Elizabeth Rabb Beatty was one of the first female med school graduates in Canada, and the first female medical missionary to India. She never had children, so I suppose I’m as close to a direct relation to her as anyone!

Elizabeth Rabb Beatty, centre, was Ellen's sister

Post-post-script:

If all this genaeology stuff with the multiple repeated names, is as clear as mud, I’ve made a quick family tree chart of this branch of the family, to keep all the names and dates straight. I’ve highlighted my direct line of descent, and I’ve stopped with my parents’ generation…

(I have to apologize for the photo quality of some of these images — I didn’t have a scanner with me in Ottawa, so I just photographed the photos, and sometimes there’s glare/reflection/distortion…) 

Natalie and me at Yarn Forward

Natalie picked me up on Saturday morning, and took me out to “her” LYS, Yarn Forward, in Kanata. (She doesn’t own the place, but she has been known to hang out there, you know, on occasion.) What a sweet shop!

Natalie's String of Pearls shawl hanging in the window, with a selection of her patterns

It’s a storefront in a strip mall, and the window is festooned with samples of Natalie’s shawl patterns. Inside, there were long rows of yarn shelves, with sample knits aplenty. At the back there’s a big cheerful table (complete with a tin of cookies).

The shop interior

Did I mention the welcoming atmosphere? I’ve come across three broad kinds of yarn shops, in my (albeit limited) travels.

1. There’s the kind that always smells a little bit dusty, stocks mainly workhorse yarns, and looks askance at any knitter under age 70 who enters the shop. (Okay, I’m exaggerating a little, but you know exactly the shops I mean.)
2. Then, there’s the super-chic shops, with sleek, highly-designed displays, where they take the knitting-is-the-new-yoga image to the extreme, and the salesgirls look like they’ve stepped out of the pages of Vogue Knitting.
3. And finally, there are the places that may be slightly jumbled, but you know that it’s only because there’s a swarm of knitters plucking skeins from the shelves in every corner of the shop. The kettle’s on, the regulars are ensconced with their knitting, and the shop is as much about the knitting community as it is about the yarn that’s on display.

My local LYS, Shall We Knit? in Waterloo, is the perfect embodiment of this kind of shop. Yarn Forward is cut from the same cloth. (They have a Rav fan group, which should tell you something.)

Francine and Natalie, knitting away

Sarah (Habsgirl on Ravelry) and Francine (PurpleHaze on Ravelry) were both in the shop on Saturday, and between them and Natalie, I was soon settled in at the big table. Francine made me feel like a total ROCK STAR — she had heard that I would be coming (!) and had brought her copy of Jane Austen Knits for me to autograph. That was a first for me, and admittedly, I couldn’t stop grinning!

Freshwater pearl shawl pin by Francine

I think I gave Francine a little smidgen of that same feeling when I picked up one of her lovely shawl pins — this one is black freshwater pearls and silver wire/silver plated pin — to take home for myself. I’m a big fan of shawl pins that are all one piece, so I can’t lose the pin (Romi’s penannular spiral is still my most-used shawl/sweater closure), and how could I resist this? The sweet packaging doesn’t hurt, either… Nor does the price. (Francine, if you’re reading this, you should totally be charging more for these!)

Ecco Cashmere

I was also followed home by two skeins of Ecco Cashmere – I swear, I had nothing to do with it, they just hopped into my bag (after delivering my debit card to the cash register)! I have vague but delectable plans for these.

Pretty Thing cowl in progress

And, in case anyone should think that I didn’t actually do any knitting on my adventure, here’s the Pretty Thing cowl that I cast on during Wednesday’s train ride to Ottawa. I only have about 4 rows plus the binding off to do, then it’ll be done! (Perfect travel knitting — compact, didn’t require additional tools or reams of printed charts.) I would be finished it already, except I was worried about running out of knitting to do, so I restricted my knitting time early in the trip.

Addendum: Natalie has blogged about my visit, too!

We moved to a new house on December 1, and in the midst of all that chaos, knitting was a welcome respite, but not one I got to indulge in very often, or for very long at a stretch. I gave myself a ‘get out of jail free’ card and knit nothing that had a deadline, nothing that had to please anyone but myself. Don’t get me wrong, I love knitting for others, but no matter how generous the intent, I think most knitters are familiar with that eleventh-hour moment when the project’s not turning out quite right, and you want nothing more than to chuck it in the bin and rain curses down on whoever you’re knitting for!

Anyway, in the month of December, I only managed to knit one thing: a hat for myself.

Ripple hat

It’s the Ripple Hat by Wendy Bernard, done up in bits and pieces of Koigu KPPPM. (Yup, still obsessed with that stuff.) Full details are here. It’s big, slouchy, floppy, and miraculously able to settle on my head without mussing up my (very fine, very prone to mussing) hair.

Oooh, ripply!

I don’t entirely know how much yarn this took, but suffice to say that it used up LOTS. Probably double what a fitted ribbed beanie/toque would take! But it’s a lovely brainless knit, and it was perfect for my December.

One note about the pattern is that the band is knitted in garter stitch, not ribbing, so it’s prone to stretching out, and not to shrinking back in as much. I resolved that by sewing in a polar fleece lining (like a little wee headband inside the hat), but if I’d been thinking ahead, I probably would have just used ribbing in the first place.

That's the garter-y band on the left.

]]> http://anniebeeknits.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/selfish-december-knitting/feed/ 6 anniebee Ripple hat Ripple hat Ripple hat http://anniebeeknits.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/cameos-your-way/ http://anniebeeknits.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/cameos-your-way/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:13:22 +0000 Annie Bee http://anniebeeknits.wordpress.com/?p=428 Continue reading →]]> The Chawton Mittens are, I hope, utterly Austen. But they really don’t have to be. Cameos are really trendy these days, whether they feature classic Grecian goddesses or something a little more quirky. There is absolutely nothing saying that you have to knit the Chawton Mittens as designed; you could easily use them as a framework to show off your own allegiances.

Catch the trend…

I’ve been using Pinterest to catalogue some of the cameo-centric ideas that have caught my eye over the past few months. (The images below link to their respective pins, which in turn link to the original source as much as possible…)

Some people have really taken the Jane Austen silhouette and run with it, as in this totally adorable but completely over-the-top tea party (if you’re having a party like this, I’m absolutely inviting myself):

Tea party, Austen-style

Or there’s this example, where a pair of similarly-traditional silhouettes are used for a very Austen book cover:

Emma book jacket

But then there are the other cameos… the ones that are quirky, non-traditional, even zany. Some folks have done cameos of their pets, like these cats and dogs:

Cats in profile

Dog profiles

Spoonflower did a contest for fabric design based on cameos, and some of the submissions there took the idea even further into left field: there were wild animals and even dinosaurs!

Wild animals (look out for the sasquatches!)

Rarrr! (Psst: Cameos look pretty darned cool in bright colours too, eh?)

Still other people have taken cameos into the (sci fi) future, like this (click through to see a phenomenal collection of papercut characters):

Luuuke, I am your silhouette...

Make it your own!

There are all kinds of tutorials online for how to make your own silhouette — whether you prefer to work digitally or do things the old-fashioned way with a bright light and a sheet, it’s relatively easy to capture the outline of anything you’d like.

Because I’m feeling generous, I’ve stripped down the mitten chart to create a blank graph of just the cells that are inside the cameo, so you can play with your own designs for the interior. Print it out and grab your pencil and eraser, and start doodling.

Chawton Mittens Blank Cameo Graph (PDF download)

Bear in mind as you work that each knit stitch is a V-shape, not a rectangle. That means that slopes that follow the line of the V will look really smooth, but slopes that run counter to it will look jagged. When you’re making a picture out of those little Vs, it’s difficult to capture detail — not only is the picture pixellated, like a grainy image, it’s got this extra complication. Don’t try to include too many details, just focus on one or two aspects of whatever you’re portraying that make it identifiable. (E.g., does your dog cock its head when it looks at you? You may not be able to translate the exact silhouette of its head, but if you capture that angle, the picture will still be YOUR dog.)

The other thing is that the 2-3 stitches around the outside of the chart, especially on the upper half of the cameo, will get pulled into the cabling of the frame. Make sure that you keep a few stitches around the edge of your silhouette so it doesn’t run into the frame.

Apart from that: have fun! Swatch out your design in advance, or put in a lifeline and be willing to frog back to try variations as you work.

In my initial sample for the submission, I did the usual fair-isle trick of ‘locking in’ long floats by twisting them with the working yarn every few stitches. It was… not entirely satisfactory.

Original submission

I was knitting with a thicker, rounder yarn than I used for the final version (but knit tightly, at the same gauge), and even so, you can see that the silhouette is all rumply and puckery, with little dark spots everywhere the floats were caught.  Catching the floats worked fine in the dark area around the silhouette — the dark colour doesn’t show the light colour nearly as much as the other way around — but clearly, I needed another strategy for the final pattern.

Here’s what I came up with:

While you’re knitting, leave long, loose floats behind the silhouette:

loooong loooooose floats — mitten turned inside out for illustration purposes

When you’re done knitting, turn the mitten inside out, and thread a darning needle with a length of yarn.

Weave the yarn in on the diagonal

Start weaving the yarn through the floats, back and forth on the diagonal. It doesn’t have to be precision work, but make sure you catch each float at least once every few passes.

Make sure the work is looooooose

Every so often, tug the mitten back and forth in all directions to keep the woven strands loose. If your work is too tight, the silhouette will be all bubbly in the front.

Weave along the other diagonal too

Do the same along the other diagonal, too. Again, make sure the work is loose! Weave in the ends by catching them in the woven section.

The finished, blocked mitten, turned inside-out

And voilà! The final product isn’t quite reversible, but at least it’s tidy, and there’s nothing there to snag your fingertips on.

I just got word that instead, today, November 8, is the day that Jane Austen Knits SOLD OUT.*

And today, November 8, is the day Interweave is going back to press to print 5000 more copies.

Just… WHOA.

* Lots of LYSes put out their copies as they received them, or held them by request for specific individuals — like mine did — so they’re already re-ordering. There may still be copies on local shelves, but the publisher is sold out!

The call for submissions for Jane Austen Knits came out last fall, and I was immediately captivated; I have an inordinately geeky soft spot for Jane, specifically, and the Regency period in general. I’d only barely dabbled in design, at that point, but I knew I wanted to at least try to design something for this publication.

My mind initially went to creamy, frothy lace, and I was mulling over shawl design possibilities — which shape? Which stitch patterns? What would make it quintessentially ‘Jane’?

Then, one evening, I was talking to Ms. Robotaday at my local knit night. (You’d never know from her robots that she’s a devoted Janeite too.) We got onto the topic of cameos, which I associate very strongly with the Regency era, and started thinking about colourwork — and then these mittens popped, nearly fully-formed, into my mind.

Original sketch

There’s a very famous silhouette of Jane that is about as iconic an image of her as one can find:

Jane Austen silhouette

I had to fudge a few of the details in the process of translating that into a knitted design. Knit stitches are not only pixellated, they’re little Vs, not squares, so details are easy to lose, and curves go jagged. One moment, her nose was too sharp, the next, her hair in a low bun made her look hunchbacked. I spent a long time with a pencil and eraser… In the end, though, I think (I hope!) that I managed to capture the essence of the silhouette in my version.

Gentleman?

For the lady’s gentleman-companion, I had a bit of a puzzle. I had imagined him in a top hat, but quickly realized that a man in a top hat is, proportionally, a much larger image than a woman with no hat. That is, if I wanted the man to fit into the cameo frame, the lady would appear very small by comparison if she was depicted at the same scale; if I wanted the lady to fill the cameo frame, the man’s hat would never fit. Also, I wanted the man to feel stronger and less delicate, without being too boxy. Again, I hope I managed to strike a reasonable balance with my little gentleman.

Lady and Gentleman

 For the cable that frames the cameo, I wanted to give the appearance of an unbroken oval. I had Eunny Jang’s Tangled Yoke cardigan in my mind — I wanted the top and bottom of my frame to look as seamless as her cables. However, I added the twist of a two-colour cable, with the contrast colour always over the background colour, to make it really pop. This looks pretty tricksy, but honestly, it’s no more difficult to work than any other cable. (I would not, however, recommend trying to cable without a cable needle at this fine gauge. I used a round toothpick, sanded slightly, as my cable needle — not the most elegant solution, perhaps, but entirely functional.)

Then, there was the question of the background. Ms. Robotaday was instrumental here. She got me onto the trail of dollhouse wallpaper sites, which offer reproduction wallpapers at a very fine scale. Those images helped me settle on the allover diamond pattern with the larger diamonds inset — and also formed the basis of the stripe I used on the thumb.

As for the basic structure of the mittens, I had recently finished making SpillyJane‘s Mystery and Manners mittens for my sister. You might recognize the basic shape — and the extended cuff that I chose to work on those ones, too. The thumbs more or less came from Elliphantom‘s Herringbone Mittens With Poms (pdf link). The thing is, at its heart, any charted pattern is two things: a shaped grid, and the colours that fill in that grid. The SpillyJane mitts gave me the basic shape and proportions, but my gauge was finer, so I had to enlarge the grid somewhat.  The Elliphantom mitts gave me the basic thumb shape I wanted, but again, they were written for a different gauge, so I used the shape but at a different scale.

There’s a story behind this particular recipe. See, my husband and I met online, during a time when I had cataracts in both eyes and he had mono. On our first date, he drove up to meet me at my parents’ house, where I was living, and we had tea and a fresh batch of these cookies before he needed to take a nap on the couch. (Not knowing what first-date etiquette might be for when one’s date has nodded off for a 2-hour nap, I went into the kitchen to muffins and wash dishes until he woke up.) When he woke up, we had dinner with my mother (whooo! stir fry! rice!) and then he drove home. (Yes, sizzling romance, I know.)

Anyway, it’s nine years this month since I baked him these cookies, and we celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary in August. The cookies have therefore become known as Man-Catching Cookies. (We’re living proof that they can work – but YMMV.)

Without further ado…

Man-Catching Cookies

Chocolate Chip Raisin Cookies (AKA Man-Catching Cookies)

Note: These are very nice without the raisins, too. In fact, I think the Infamous Man-Catching Batch may have been sans raisins.

1 c. butter
¾ c. white sugar
¾ c. brown sugar

Mix until smooth, then add:

2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. salt
2 ¼ c. all-purpose flour

Beat well, and set aside for a moment. Stir together the following, then add to batter:

1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. hot water

Add:

2 c. chocolate chips
nuts/raisins, according to taste

Bake at 375F on greased cookie sheets.

Drop by spoonfuls on sheets. Flatten with wet fingers to 1 cm thick.

Bake 10-12 minutes.

Kitchen Sink Dyeworks is another talented indie dyer who’s putting away the dyepots in favour of design and other life priorities. Another dyer whose products I’m tempted to hoard! (Yes, there’s a sale on.)

I heard today that the lovely Stephanie of Van Der Rock yarns is closing up shop with regard to her element-inspired hand-dyed yarns. She’ll still be designing* (phew!) but this is the last chance to grab her fab kits (on deep discount, no less.) I had to snap up a kit for her Zermatt vest, which in my size is now $28, instead of $57. I’ve been coveting that vest since its first appearance at the Knitters’ Fair, but I still feel bad about profiting from her closure.

* I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that Stephanie is the designer behind the gorgeous Meryton Coat in Jane Austen Knits…

Van Der Rock Merino Sock; Colourway: Arsenic

Van Der Rock Merino Sock; Colourway: Arsenic

There are also rumours floating around that Viola is or will soon be taking a break from dyeing; her Etsy shop is currently in vacation mode, and I don’t see anything official in her Ravelry group, but word is, she’s overloaded and either needed to expand or step back for a bit to find some balance.

Viola Merino Fingering (Superwash merino) Colourway: Raven

Viola has pretty much the CUTEST yarn/fibre labels in the biz

Then, of course, Waterloo Wools (my dear friend Lindsey) is on a temporary hiatus — she’s on maternity leave with wee Evan! I still miss her constant stream of hand-dyed loveliness, though the cute sprog is a darned good excuse.

Waterloo Wools Niagara fingering weight, Peacock Feathers

Corriedale 2-ply handspun from Waterloo Wools; Colourway: Tunnel Vision

And there’s my other good friend Johanna of Lofty Fibres, whose dyeing output has taken a back seat to the recent passing of her mother. She’s been dealing with some other challenges and stresses too, and hasn’t been able to update her shop for some time.

Lofty Fibres "Sapphires at Midnight"

Lofty Fibres Twisted Pairs

I’m thankful that my stash has goodies from all of these talented dyers, which should last me for a good while.

Plus, I’m grateful that we still have a wealth of other great dyers around Ontario — such as IndigoDragonfly, Sericin Silkworks (right down the street from me!), Apple Laine, and, of course, a little company you might have heard of called Koigu. What other indie dyers do you turn to locally (wherever “local” is for you)?