Shooting From The Hip: Genoa 27/10/2010

The fountain in Piazza De Ferrari is a constant source of inspiration. I took these two pictures next to it within seconds of each other on my lunch break today. The girl at the top was rather ostentatiously taking photos with her vintage camera; I very surreptitiously took one of her with my faux vintage camera. The couple at the bottom are just about to embrace and leave in opposite directions.

Hand in Glove

I realised I hadn't taken any modelled shots of my Farinelli gloves (previously seen in this hands-free post), so I thought I'd remedy this omission.

These gloves are total winners in terms of warmth, glamour, and my evident desire to coat myself fully in the creations of Ms Old Maiden Aunt, but they do have one small drawback: I have to peel one off - with appropriate languorous insouciance - every time I need to use my iPhone (either that or use my nose to operate the touch-screen, which I have grown embarrassingly adept at doing). Until, that is, I read this post over on le petit hibou. An embroidery kit which allows you to keep your gloves on while using a touch-screen phone: what an utterly genius idea! How handy! I'm crossing my (gloved) fingers that she'll be able to ship a kit across the Atlantic to me, so I can keep my opera gloves on this winter. 

Shooting From The Hip: Genoa 26/10/2010

The cool, gilded elegance of the Durazzo-Giustiniani archive in Genoa, where I have been reading the household account books of a sixteenth-century noblewoman.

Tealeaves in the treeleaves

I'm back in Genoa for a little while, doing a bit of history and taking orange buses that hurtle around hairpin hillside bends barely wide enough to fit a weasel. Before I left Cambridge, though, my friend Simone and I photographed some of each other's knitwear...

Behold the Tealeaves Cardigan by Melissa LaBarre, knit in Orkney Angora St Magnus DK. I'm a big fan of this angora/lambswool blend, having used it to make three Rose Red berets, but this sweater-sized green pile sat in my stash for a very long time before I decided what to do with it. I wanted a pattern simple enough not to detract from its fuzzy vibrancy, but pretty enough to do it justice; I think this fits the bill.

This cardi was very nearly a stress-free knit - the body sent me into such a stocking stitch coma that I blithely knit two inches too far on it and had to rip back. The buttonbands, however, gave me no end of gyp: I knit not two but five of them before I had a pair I was satisfied with.

I think I look a bit like a startled woodland creature in the above photo.

I used two vintage buttons I bought many moons ago in Loop, which are glittering crystal as opposed to the frog-spawn they appear to made of in this photo. All in all a stash-busting success!

Leaving knitting aside for a moment, I can't seem to stop taking photos, so I'm thinking of sharing them in a sort of 'picture of the day' series. Unless, that is, you are all heartily sick of Hipstamatic, in which case speak up now!

Dyeing drying

I let my freshly dyed yarn luxuriate in its cochineal soup for about 32 hours before rinsing it out and hanging it up to dry. For some reason, as I was doing that, I had this obnoxious reggaeton song stuck in my head, with 'gasolina' replaced by 'cochinilla' (as in 'A ella le gusta la cochinilla/ Da me mas cochinilla!/ Como le encanta la cochinilla/ Da me mas cochinilla!'). As Jane commented, cochineal is indeed the product of thousands upon thousands of dead beetles, making it a somewhat unethical choice for a vegetarian... Oh well, all in the name of elaborate procrastination historical research. In honour of its entomological origins, though, I hereby call this colour 'Beetlejuice'! It looks like it's going to be a deep rose, a colour lacking from my wardrobe.

But what to make with 874 yards of rose-tinted fingering weight yarn? I've been eyeing up Laura Chau's Honeybee Cardigan for a while; I especially like fernknits' pullover version. I am drawn to pullovers at the moment, possibly because of a buttonband 'mare which I'll tell you all about soon. 

I've been dyeing to tell you...

Yesterday was 20/10/2010, an appropriately momentous date for a hugely exciting couple of packages to arrive. 

Firstly, down at the bottom right of the photo collage, two skeins of superwash bluefaced Leicester yarn, creamy and naked and natural. I have never used bluefaced Leicester before; in the skein it feels crisper and possibly hardier than merino - I shall be curious to see what it's like to knit with.

Secondly, a selection of treats from DT Craft and Design: at the top left, sodium carbonate and alum, and at the bottom left, 10g of powdered cochineal.

I received the packages at lunchtime, and, without wishing to sound melodramatic, went straight home to dye. I was only slightly guilty about leaving the library: really this is not so much fun with fibre as a very serious and studious piece of research for my PhD, actually. I have been reading A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield, which is all about the quest for a vivid red dye in the early modern period, and the importing of cochineal by the Spanish conquistadors. Cochineal had been used in Mexico for centuries to dye all manner of things from cloth to food to prostitutes' teeth. It was eagerly received in Europe as an improvement on existing Old World dyestuffs: madder often yielded autumnal russets or oranges rather than true reds, and brazilwood and orchil gave impressive initial results that were disappointingly quick to fade. By the 1580s, the tiny black grains transported across the Atlantic by enterprising Spaniards had virtually eclipsed all these other options: as Butler Greenfield puts it,

The priest's red velvet chasuble, the dandy's red satin sleeves, the nobleman's red silken draperies and the countess's red brocade skirts - all were now coloured with cochineal.

In my kitchen, I felt like an apron-ed alchemist, mixing up potions, stirring in crystals, engaged in the mystical process of turning one thing into another thing. It was thrilling to feel practically connected to the early modern dyers I read about, and indeed the Aztecs, who used alum as a mordant and cochineal as a dye exactly as I did, though they did not order their supplies off of the internet, or use a microwave to practise their art. I followed the excellent leaflet included with dye, and have left my yarn to steep in the fabulously crimson dyebath. I'll be sure to update you on the progress of this first dyeing experiment of mine.

Actor's Nightmare; Knitter's Dream

I am in a play at the moment called The Actor's Nightmare (any Cambridge readers, do come to the Corpus Playroom at 7.30, tonight through Saturday). The script, by Christopher Durang, is admirably short and well-crafted, not least because it affords the knitting actress superb little pockets of time backstage to work on the above top-secret gift project.

I always look forward to stretches of knitting time, be they on public transport, snuggled up in my room listening to podcasts, or in freezing and fustily furnished green rooms. Where have you been snatching moments to craft recently?