My Persephone Shawl and the Books that Inspired it. . .

I've written before about my love of Persephone Books (see here and here for example), so when I thought about matching the patterns from Karie Westermann's This Thing of Paper with inspiration from my own bookshelves, this was the first project that came to mind.  I have been collecting Persephones for over ten years and they are the most elegant and beautifully produced books that I own.  I knew I had some cream and grey yarn in stash (Titus 4ply and Lichen & Lace 4ply) but had to have a real think about how to convey the unexpected and colourful endpapers that are a real design feature of Persephone books.

The solution was a skein of Ripples Craft 4ply Assynt yarn which has just about every colour in it!

The Psalter Shawl was the perfect design to combine all three skeins. I love how the mosaic middle section mimics a patterned print between the solid grey and white. Mosaic knitting, which is essentially slip stitch knitting, is also a lot of fun to do.  I was a bit worried about running out of the grey (I only had one skein), and so I did shorten the border by a few rows.

However the shawl has come out in a lovely size and is very cozy around the neck. These are not colours that I usually wear, but I think it's a very gentle, wintry type of palette and I am enjoying wearing this.

As for Persephone Books - do check out their list and website. They publish the most interesting, forgotten gems - not exclusively by women - from all over the world and in many different genres. Their books are also lovely to hold and read - beautiful paper, nice fonts and those endpapers! If you get on their mailing list, you'll receive their biannual magazine, always filled with interesting articles and short stories, and their website is a treasure trove of letters and posts about interesting exhibits, articles, and reviews relative to their books, authors, history, literature and London life.  You can easily get lost for hours on it and that's even before you get to the books!  And if you are ever in London, do visit their gorgeous little shop on Lamb's Conduit Street. It's not too far a walk from the British Museum and Bloomsbury and just a few streets away, if you are visiting the Dickens Museum, you can also pass the blue plaque showing where Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby lived (Persephone Book #76 is Holtby's The Crowded Street).

If you are new to Persephone or are pondering one of their books for a gift, I have two excellent suggestions to get you started.  Their 100th celebratory book - The Persephone Book of Short Stories - is the perfect taster for some of the more obscure writers that they've championed, alongside well known authors such as Katherine Mansfield, Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker to name just a few.  And then as a primer to why so much of what they publish is important and, more importantly, just great writing, pick up a copy of #78 A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman, the founder and brains behind Persephone Books.  I read this years ago when it was published by Virago, drawn in by its cover, a film still from Brief Encounter (one of my favourite films).  It's a fascinating study of women's writing between the two world wars and will have you itching to discover many of the novels mentioned - no surprise that several have now been brought back into print by Persephone. There is a particular fondness for Dorothy Whipple.

While they have just published their 125th book, I have lagged behind a little in my reading.
I probably own about one hundred and have only read around thirty. Nevertheless, I have never been disappointed by any of their books and really applaud the fact that they are committed to keeping all titles in print.

For what it's worth, here are my favourite top 10 (in no particular order):

#1 William - an Englishman by Cicely Hamiliton.  The first Persephone I bought and read and still so powerful. It fed into my interest in both suffrage and literature by women about the first world war.
#16 Saplings by Noel Streatfeild.  Several novels published by Persephone deal so well with trauma faced by children and this is one of them. Heartbreaking.
#28 Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski.  Ditto.
#7 The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. A fascinating novel about a married couple - she really wants a career and he really wants to stay at home with the children, but they don't realize it until circumstances force them to confront society expectations.  This was published in 1924.
#5 An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43. I went on a pilgrimage to see her house when I visited Amsterdam, so moved was I after reading this diary of a courageous and spirited woman in the darkest of times.
#30 Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll.  While many Persephones will make you cry, some will make you laugh, including this delightful collection of essays on food and etiquette in the 1920s.
#56 They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple.  Another heartbreaker but a page-turning one. The film version, while very different in some ways, is definitely worth a viewing too. James Mason in all his best sneering charm.
#92 Midsummer Night in the Workhouse by Diana Athill.  One of the few books they've published by a living author, albeit one who just celebrated her 100th birthday. She's still writing!  This is a very enjoyable collection of short stories and I love that the endpapers were taken from the author's own curtain fabric.
#42 The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.  A great psychological thriller. I have yet to see the film version titled The Reckless Moment. It also stars James Mason.
#98 A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf.  Yes, I already owned a much-thumbed copy but how could I resist a Persephone edition?  The endpapers are taken from the original jacket cover designed by Vanessa Bell.


Currently reading (to celebrate 100 years of some UK women getting the vote): #94, the suffrage novel No Surrender by Constance Maud.

Daytripping: Victorian Manchester. . .

This post is mainly to extol the virtues of the many volunteers that work so hard to keep England's literary and historical heritage alive and accessible.  Earlier this month I made a day trip to Manchester with my bookish friends to visit two such sites that have been saved from demolition and decay by the hard work of many passionate people.

Our first stop was the recently reopened house of novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.

I blogged earlier about a trip to Knutsford, the town that inspired Gaskell's Cranford, but she actually wrote the book, along with North and South, Ruth, Wives and Daughters and her biography of Charlotte Bronte, in this house - 84 Plymouth Grove.

While there is still a lot of work to be done on restoring the house, you will not meet a nicer, enthusiastic or more knowledgeable group of volunteers, greeting you at the door, answering questions in each of the period rooms and taking their turns serving tea in the delightful basement tea room (you get to pick your own china tea cup).  Most of the ground floor has been restored and they are working on recreating one of the bedrooms upstairs.  Plans are also well under way on the garden as well; a place that Gaskell loved for its privacy as this plaque celebrates. 

Just a short walk from Gaskell's house is another major restoration work in progress - the Victoria Baths, originally opened in 1906 and left to decay after it was closed in 1993. The Friends of Victoria Baths have worked tirelessly to save the building.  We managed to get a glimpse inside on the last weekend it was open to the public before shutting for the winter.

The building has a gorgeous facade and originally had three separate entrances; one for First Class Males, one for Second Class Males and the final one for Females.

This is the Females Pool which was the smallest of the three.

I love the beachy feel of the change rooms that lined the side of the pool.

The whole building has remnants of beautiful decorative features from distinctive tiles along the landings and stairways to mosaic floors and stained glass windows.  There is a workshop in the basement where volunteers are learning how to repair and restore the stained glass.

Even the old supervisor's rooms have some gorgeous features like this beautiful fireplace.

The basement also houses the Turkish Baths with their beautiful blue and teal tile work.

Both sites are well worth a visit if you are in the Manchester area.

Daytripping: Conwy and Llandudno. . .

Whew - it's been a busy two weeks hosting my friends from Canada but we had a lot of fun exploring Liverpool and the environs, as well as having a Yorkshire weekend taking in Saltaire, Haworth, Leeds and York. 

 

One of the best places for a simple day trip out of Liverpool though has to be Conwy in North Wales, and this was one of the first places we took them.  I blogged here about the gorgeous walking in the hills just behind the town  but you can easily spend a day exploring the streets contained within its walkable walls.  It's an extremely pretty town sandwiched between the mountains and the sea. 

 

First up, you definitely must visit the castle. Built by Edward I in the late 13th century, it is absolutely magnificant.  Usually all that remains of most castles is the shell of the outer wall, and perhaps a tower or two. But when you are walking around this one, you really can get a sense of the dimensions and layout of the inner rooms. As ever, I'm always amazed at how much has lasted for so many centuries on this island.

You can also climb several of the towers - be careful if you suffer from vertigo - and the views in every direction are just fantastic.

 

The jackdaws seem to like the view too. There were several perched on the battlements.

 

And where modern meets medieval: I loved this huge sculpture of Edward I entitled The King's Head by Gideon Peterson. 

In complete contrast, Conwy also hosts The Smallest House in Great Britain.  I love the traditional Welsh fabric used as a curtain.  It hasn't been lived in for over a hundred years, but still has all the essentials, and is quite fun to quickly peep into.

There are lots of good fish and chip shops in Conwy along with delicious ice cream parlours and quirky independent shops. Walking along the quayside looking at all the boats can't help inducing a holiday mood. Fortified by a good lunch, we then drove a few miles to the seaside resort of Llandudno which claims to be not only where Alice Liddell went for childhood holidays before inspiring her namesake in Wonderland, but also Bill Bryson's favourite seaside resort. To get the best view, we took the tramway up the Great Orme.  You can also go up by cable car.

Here's the view at the top looking roughly south east.

And roughly southwest.  We didn't have time to play, but isn't this a fabulous mini-golf course?  Or crazy golf as they call it in the U.K.

Llandudno also has the longest pier in Wales. The arcade was sadly shut by the time we arrived, but it was still fun to stroll along the planks.

And here's two beautiful views of the town from the pier.

For geographical and historical impact, these two towns certainly gave my guests the wow factor and put us all in the holiday mood!

More Successful Knitting. . .

I've been knitting up a storm lately and really enjoying it. It's definitely become my latest obsession but completely relaxing and creative and fun.  And with every new project, I always try a new technique, so my knitting skills are improving bit by bit.  I'm working up to that sweater!  There are two projects I've completed recently that turned out as good as I'd hoped and I really LOVE wearing them.  The first came about when I learned to make a bobble.  And immediately thought a bobble scarf would be really fun for winter.  I had three skeins of this really soft baby alpaca and this was the result, which I designed myself (not that it's a particularly difficult design, but what I love about knitting is that with a bit of patience and some tweaking and swatching, you can really create exactly what you want).  This scarf is so warm and cozy.  My recent hat attempts were all in aid of matching this.

My colleague gave me a very funny Christmas gift this week - the DVD of the Royal Wedding.

We were working a conference in Jasper, Alberta at the time (which is seven hours behind the UK) and sharing a hotel room.  Now, I really like watching these spectacles live and since the coverage was starting about midnight, I decided just to stay up all night.  I wanted to see ALL the hats.  Perhaps though, this was not the best choice when I had to work the next day and the last time I pulled an all-nighter was decades ago.  My colleague was a great sport about it insisting she could sleep through the light of the television which was turned down low.  However, she  could not sleep through my loud curses at about 2am when it started to snow outside and the storm knocked out ALL the channels, just as things were getting exciting.  I was flipping madly and getting only static until for some reason at the very high numbers, I got some sort of specialty U.S. channel  (TLC maybe?) that was carrying it (with fairly stupid commentary, but at least I got the visuals).   I woke my friend up as requested when Wills and Harry left the palace and all went well.  We watched up to the balcony kiss, while ordering breakfast via room service, and made it to work on time.  I was extremely tired that day, but I'll always remember how much fun it was watching it with L. and discussing it ad nauseum with my other good girlfriends on that road trip.

Okay, what does this have to do with my knitting?  Well, do you remember a few days later, Kate was seen shopping at Sainsburys wearing this?

That shawl inspired many knitters to get busy. There are lots of patterns out there, but I loved the one by Vancouver designer Cat Wong, entitled The Milk Run Shawl.  It's a free pattern but she had the terrific and appropriate idea of asking instead for a donation to a local food bank, which I was more than happy to do.  The pattern is great - full of options for creating something slightly different versions - and full of good tips and funny instructions (the last one is to brush your hair until it shines before wearing it).  You can get the pattern here.  I chose to knit mine in a Donegal tweed, more olive-green-brown than Kate's version, and I was a bit worried about whether it would drape as nicely, but I'm very happy with how it turned out. I like to wear it around my shoulders when I'm reading at night in bed.  It was my first time doing ruffles (which go on FOREVER) but it was exciting when it all came together.

Into the Brilliance. . .

It's been a magnificent week so far for filling my head with awe and admiration for some of Canada's incredible writers and thinkers.  On Monday night, I headed over to Wade Davis's event at the Toronto Public Library. His new book Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest is definitely in my top 10 books of the year.  He's an incredible speaker and accompanied by a slide show, he really brought the stories of the twenty-six men who were part of the Everest expeditions in 1921-1924 to life, particularly the horrors they'd suffered in the First World War.  The book is incredibly detailed and researched (he's been working on it for over ten years) but after hearing him speak, it's clear that his mission was to really honour the incredible lives of these men, each of whom could have had a biography all to themselves; attempting to climb Everest in many cases was the least of their accomplishments.  The grandson of Arthur Wakefield, a military doctor on the expedition who had spent a number of years in Canada working in the isolated communities of Newfoundland and Labrador, was in attendance and he brought a pair of thick mittens and Wakefield's wooden ice pick/pole that had gone to Everest with him. I got to handle the latter and it gave me goosebumps. Wakefield's story is really heartbreaking; he was working in a casualty station just behind the front lines during the Battle of the Somme where the Newfoundland regiment - many of whom he knew personally - was decimated during that horrific day.

Davis, who holds the wonderful title of Explorer-In-Residence for the National Geographic Society, also wanted to tell the story from the Tibetan point of view and he spent a couple of months living and researching in Tibet. It's as much a book about the arrogance of British imperialism as it is about exploration and the post-war culture of England. And yes, even the Bloomsbury set shows up. What I found engrossing about the talk was Davis' excitement at the strange turns his research took him. After all, this is definitely not the first book on George Mallory.  But by delving extensively into the war records of all these men, he was able to bring new perspectives to their motivations and actions. AND he was able to unearth the diaries of Canadian surveyor Oliver Wheeler who he credits with finding the approach to Everest that the expedition eventually used.  If you don't have time to read the book, you can hear the whole of his amazing talk (accompanied by slides) in three parts, Part One, Part Two and Part Three.  Well worth a listen.

Have you been listening to this year's Massey Lectures by Adam Gopnik ? (American born, but Canadian raised, so I'll claim him for this country).  His theme is Winter: Five Windows on the Season and while I've only heard three of the lectures so far, I know I'll definitely be buying the book.  Tuesday's lecture on Radical Winter and the culture of the polar expeditions, from the race across the Arctic of Frankenstein and his monster, to Apsley Cherry-Gerard's The Worst Journey in the World,  was fascinating, particularly in light of thinking about how heroism and exploration changed between those Antarctic journeys of Scott and Shackleton, and the Everest attempts outlined by Davis just a decade later, but with the horrors of the First World War sandwiched in between.  Davis notes interestingly, that several survivors of Shackleton's trip actually applied to join the Everest expedition; others of course had enlisted and been killed in the trenches. 

I think I need to go and buy Davis's The Wayfarers, his 2009 Massey Lectures.  Heck, in honour of the 50th anniversary I should go back and read them all.

New books on the First World War. . .

While browsing in my local independent bookstore this afternoon, I came across two interesting newish books. Doris Lessing's latest, Alfred & Emily is part novella and part biography of her parents - both of whom were haunted by the First World War. Alfred was injured fighting, losing a leg; Emily worked as a nurse at the front lines and lost her fiance. The novella imagines what her parents' lives would have been like if the war had never occurred. This is followed by biographical sketches showing the lasting results of the war on the rest of their lives - and how it affected her own relationship with them. This blend of fact and fiction is intriguing to me - in some ways it seems the perfect way to tackle a subject that is inevitably elusive in its dependence on memory, stories, and the clarity (or not) of thoughtful hindsight. I tend to think of the war as so far away; nearly all the people who lived through that horror are gone now. But how could it not affect their children and grandchildren? With the 100th anniversary not that far away, I imagine many of the next generation will be examining the war - both in fiction and non-fiction - over the next few years.

Michèle Barrett's Casualty Figures: How Five Men Survived the First World War, was the second book I discovered. It also examines the long-term psychological effects of the war on the five soldiers that she profiles. I imagine it will be a heart-breaking read.

One book being brought back into print that I'm quite excited about is Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone which Hesperus is publishing at the end of this month. I collect women's writing of the First World War and have a 1930 edition of this book (first published in 1929). I think it's one of the best works of fiction to come out of the war by any writer, male or female. Borden was a nurse in France and this collection of short stories and prose pieces drawn from her experiences is so beautifully written and powerful; I hope this new edition will introduce her writing to a whole new audience. It makes a perfect companion piece to Hemingway's In Our Time, for example. "The Beach" is my favourite piece of hers. Borden led an absolutely fascinating life, actively participating in the Second World War as well. I wish someone would write a really good biography of her.