If you follow me on Twitter (@JenACKnitwear), the you will have perhaps seen my excited tweeting about Susan Crawford's new book, Vintage Shetland. She's running a Pubslush campaign to fund the book's production, and as of the time of writing this post (sometime on Wednesday...) the project is already 137% funded! That shouldn't stop you from heading straight over to her page and entering your card details, and here's why:
- Susan makes incredible books. Have a look at A Stitch in Time volumes 1 & 2, if you don't already own copies, you should!
- Vintage Shetland is recreating patterns for a selection of garments from the archives of Shetland's museums. These are garments with interesting stories, not simply beautiful designs. Susan plans to tell these stories in the book.
- If you want a copy before Christmas, then the only way to be sure of having one is to donate through the pubslush campaign (open until 6th August 2015). The book will go on sale more widely after Christmas, but why wait?!
I've already seen many of the garments that Susan is working on, since I did some charting for her at the start of the project, and there are some incredible stories behind them. Today I've chosen to tell you a bit about two of the cardigans that I particularly love. These are both designs from the 1940s, and both cardigans use a background of black with an amazing colour palette.
I don't know what it is about these designs, but they really remind me of Granny Thackray, my paternal grandmother. She died when I was just 10, so although I remember her, my memories aren't very detailed. I think it must be something about the colour-schemes, with the bright pops of colour against such a dark background. Possibly they remind me of an object from her house, or perhaps a cardigan she once wore. The age of the designs would have been perfect as she would have been in her 20s in the 1940s - newly married but before the arrival of her children. Somehow I can just picture her wearing beautiful cardigans like these.
The stunning OXO and peerie design on the left was knitted as a shop sample and uses an incredible array of colours - I wonder whether it was a sort of sampler to show the patterns that could be created? I look forward to reading more about it in November when my book arrives.
You can buy a kit to knit the Roses are Red cardigan (right) as one of the rewards of the Pubslush campaign. Donations over £155 would qualify you for this (how tempting!), and the package includes 10 shades of Fenella required to recreate the cardigan along with vintage buttons, ribbon, a copy of the book, a project bag and various other bits. Other rewards include simply copies of the book, pdf and print packages, and even small tokens for non-knitters, starting at £5.
This post is part of a blog tour that is visiting Shetland and Back from now until the end of the Pubslush campaign at the start of August. Tomorrow's post is at Maja Karlson's blog in Sweden! You can see the full itinerary over on Susan's blog at JustCallMeRuby. Thanks for inviting me to be involved Susan! I can't wait to get my hands on my copy. Is November nearly here yet??
