Knitting Letters : A to Z

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75384906094191031632012-01-26T13:46:25.335-05:00Knitting Letters : A to ZAn abecedarium of knitting, history, typography & book arts.Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-66830619000469243182010-11-14T11:14:00.028-05:002010-11-17T06:55:04.403-05:00U is for Union Pearl

his is my namesake post-my opportunity to write about what “Unionpearl” means. I hope you won’t mind the reflexiveness of it, but as you might imagine, it is rather central to this abecedarium; my pearl and purl. First and foremost, and this won’t be a big surprise, Union Pearl is the name of a font-a metal font. And my perfect focus for typography and knitting because it invokes elements of

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-16813015085813132352009-11-07T23:35:00.081-05:002009-11-21T15:15:49.831-05:00T is for Turkey

T is for Turkey, and as far as I’m concerned, there simply is no other T imaginable. This post has been a long time coming, but I don’t mean for its lengthiness to be a way of making up for my silence. I have very close, fond feelings about this remarkable country, and there is just so much to write! I spent seven formative years there as a child, beginning with my family’s first stay when I was

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-83419850947553698822009-02-08T20:50:00.011-05:002009-02-09T07:07:37.658-05:00S is for Suzani

S is for suzani, but also for silk road and ’stans (as in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan). An essential form of embroidery in Central Asia, the suzani has grown out of a rich textile tradition that dates to the time of the medieval silk road trade, and continues today to represent essential concepts of home, hearth, and female kinship.Susanne’s suzaniI first learned the word

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-28220107348177475502008-11-22T11:29:00.035-05:002009-02-24T21:17:01.579-05:00B is for Bohus, Revisited

I’m breaking with my established pattern and the usual sequencing of the alphabet by looking back at one of my first posts and updating it. I suspect that once I’ve finished the abecedarium (extended with typographical symbols, of course), I will probably revisit several letters, but this one has asserted itself as a priority. I wrote last January about Bohus Stickning, and have finally had the

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-87876220188049742092008-11-15T09:22:00.016-05:002008-11-21T02:48:03.418-05:00R is for Red Letters

Lively, assertive, challenging, alluring, frightening, gorgeous, shocking. Red is all that and so much more. So utterly central, this primary of primary colors contradicts and unifies, attracts and repels, radiates and absorbs. It symbolizes life and death, transgressions and sanctity, luck and doom. It’s virtually impossible to feel ambivalent about red. You either love it or you hate it. I love

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-65202077856512621282008-09-27T18:12:00.015-04:002010-08-21T05:45:12.694-04:00Q is for Quatrefoil

Not trefoil, not cinquefoil, but quatrefoil, the architectural equivalent of a four-leaf clover. I want to thank Dee D and Carrie K for this most excellent thematic suggestion.In English, the letter Q rarely appears alone, but the OED has of course tracked down innumerable instances, one of which I find oddly compelling: “Q in the corner. . . a person who or thing which sits in the corner, one

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-16807640138096113972008-08-30T16:14:00.022-04:002009-11-08T16:42:07.732-05:00P is for Peru

Peru is a land of two cultures, where colonial heritage and creole culture thrive by the sea, and where earflaps (as imitated at left), Quechua, camelids, Incan ruins, and textiles thrive in the highlands & mountains. Peruvian knitting owes much to both cultures, as the process was a European import, but it has long since taken on a remarkable, independent life of its own. Although the Spanish

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-85957107557088559332008-08-02T08:54:00.011-04:002008-08-30T18:35:43.544-04:00O is for OXO

OXO. Not Oxo, as in the beef bouillon cubes (although they play a small part in the story), but OXO, as in OXOXOXOXO, a time-honored combination of knitting & letters; as in Ohs & Crosses, a traditional, ubiquitous Fair Isle pattern repeat.The pattern is really a combination of lozenge shapes (Os), joined together with diagonal stripes (Xs)—which is why it’s OXO and not XOX. It is really a

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-74279013110135137222008-06-29T17:12:00.024-04:002008-07-07T12:59:52.953-04:00N is for Nantucket

I’ve never been to Nantucket, but envision it as a place firmly rooted in its own complicated history. Which means I do definitely want to go there. The subject of this letter “N” is not so much Nantucket the island as it is Nantucket—New England—Needlework. And perhaps the image has hinted at the subject that underlies the others: American samplers. Letterforms, pens, needles, fiber,

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-26498253240740033372008-06-08T06:33:00.020-04:002008-11-13T06:21:11.190-05:00M is for Mantinia

Mantinia is an electronic font. Never existed in metal. Existed in stone and paint, but never in metal (unless retrospectively). It was, in short, born digital. Typographer Matthew Carter designed Mantinia as a tribute to the Paduan painter and printmaker, Andrea Mantegna (1430/31-1506). Mantega for his part was a passionate antiquarian, which in the fifteenth century meant that he was fascinated

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-33910303486487036552008-05-27T21:20:00.012-04:002008-06-09T07:06:56.973-04:00L is for Lopi

The concept of Lopi is so central, so basic, so reliable: take the fleece of Icelandic sheep, the product of eleven centuries of controlled breeding in a climate guaranteed to produce hearty wool, card it into roving, and just knit with it. No spinning necessary! Need thicker yarn? Knit with two “strands” of unspun Icelandic. Need more? Make it three.In Icelandic, this unspun knitting wool is

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-13138557058703493672008-04-26T22:19:00.039-04:002009-11-18T21:23:33.081-05:00K is for Kelmscott

I have long wanted to knit a William Morris design, but have yet to find a pattern. This “K” is my first, embryonic attempt to pay homage to Morris through a knitting pattern, and of course, I’ve done it in Fair Isle (of course, because Fair Isle is my preferred knitting “medium” and of course, because I have more colors of Shetland yarn than any other weight in my stash; they’re my tubes of ink)

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-11275136298153186662008-04-09T23:00:00.013-04:002008-05-14T17:14:27.382-04:00J is for Jacquard

Jacquard knitting—by hand‽ (that’s an interrobang, by the way, a new addition to my typographic arsenal, although it doesn’t seem to display properly in Internet Explorer). It’s also a pair of inter-locking, italic J’s (Centaur font, Italic Swash Caps). Centaur is a 20th century font designed by Bruce Rogers, but based on the designs of a famous “J”: Nicolas Jenson, the celebrated 15th-century

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-50204029937794561002008-03-30T07:48:00.021-04:002008-03-30T09:11:34.823-04:00I is for Inspiration

How do you represent inspiration? as a letter? number? picture? symbol? What does inspiration actually mean, anyway? I’ve come across lots of books—and particularly knitting books—that invoke the words “inspired” or “inspirational” in their titles. Inspirational seems in that context to refer to something abstract, untouchable, awe-inspiring (there it is again!). For me, inspiration is spark. I

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-88036484868868772412008-03-21T22:15:00.015-04:002008-03-23T19:06:57.624-04:00H is for History

There are so many kinds of history—social, economic, political, art—but what I want to explore is literally material history: a sweater’s history. I firmly believe that things—in this case, sweaters—have lives that evolve and that their experiences leave legible traces. Their real meaning changes along with them as they lead valued lives. This particular excursion is inspired by a book I bought

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-28518735736260278902008-03-08T09:53:00.019-05:002008-04-09T17:28:49.183-04:00G is for Gansey

The gansey is such a paradigm for knitters. It is the ursweater. A fisherman’s garment, it was as essential to fishing life as nets, hooks, even boats. You don’t say “gansey sweater,” just “gansey.” Its simple name conveys at once its nature, history, design, construction, and use. Gansey, apparently, is a Scottish version of guernsey. The OED gives the first published version of the word as 1886

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-12037482808381566862008-03-01T06:25:00.024-05:002008-11-13T06:21:13.457-05:00F is for Fair Isle

Is Fair Isle a technique, tradition, pattern, style, or geographical origin? Well, all, really, and it’s a pleasure to appreciate all its dimensions. For the purposes of this post, I’d like to focus on Fair Isle knitting as a technique. Patterns developed in the Shetland Islands (of which Fair Isle is an outlying member) during its origins in the mid-nineteenth century have endured for over a

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-65967649197867420892008-02-22T21:19:00.019-05:002008-04-03T06:45:37.271-04:00E is for Ends

For a long time, this was the Endless Fair Isle sweater, but I’m very pleased to say that it is now the sweater that has reached an end...without ends.I bought the yarn (Rowan Donegal tweed 2-ply, sadly no longer manufactured) in at least four different stores in England and the U.S., and began work on it in August of 1997. A month later, I brought the project with me on a cross-country trip to

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-3711239909478273742008-02-16T10:06:00.012-05:002008-04-03T06:53:46.198-04:00D is for Danish Damask

D stands for quite a lot of things in the knitterly world: Dutch, Dalarna, Delsbo, Dales (as in Yorkshire) or even Design, but since my husband’s family has roots in Denmark, I have settled on two: Danish & Damask. The test square pictured here is a damask “D,” a sketch for an eventual Danish garment for my husband. I’m afraid at this stage, that’s all there is to it.Textile scholars generally

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-76902771903420433492008-02-09T09:22:00.003-05:002008-09-21T09:51:23.879-04:00C is for Cable

I think of the cable as an elemental part of knitting, perhaps because the pattern abbreviations tend to look like fugitives from the periodic table (P2K4C2P2), but really, because the cable is one of knitting’s core elements. The cable plays an architectural role in knitting at once an intrinsic building block and a decorative element.Something so basic to knitting, I felt, must have a long

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-24329375991356512472008-01-26T15:55:00.005-05:002008-11-22T13:27:38.701-05:00B is for Bohus

Bohus StickningImportant note: I have updated much of the information below with a new post!A Swedish knitting cooperative in operation from 1939 to 1969. The knitters developed a distinctive style that makes use of sophisticated colorwork, especially in combining color with knit/purl changes.So many wonderful thoughts have been written about Bohus and Bohus-style knitting. I don’t have much new

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538490609419103163.post-30709874302921405282008-01-26T10:37:00.001-05:002008-11-13T06:21:13.932-05:00A is for Artichoke

Artichoke. Cynara scolymus.Mascot of the Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, Arizona.Royalty of the vegetable kingdom.Grown extensively in Castroville, California (home of the annual Artichoke Festival)And a really great design motif.William Morris created a number of artichoke designs, the most memorable of which is the Artichoke Tapestry in the Morris Gallery, Walthamstow. See Beth

Unionpearlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11702181509750327364noreply@blogger.com3