Making a fairisle cowl, Beatrix Potter at the V & A and a Cumbrian weekend

This post sounds all a bit of a mouthful…and it may turn out to be a bit of a ramble, but several things that began separately all seemed to conspire to form a whole, rather lovely adventure.

If you follow my blog, you will know that I am an occasional, but enthusiastic knitter with a penchant for those beautiful vintage fairisle knits which look so gorgeous but feel so intimidating to make. Last year, one of my new years resolutions in lockdown was to tackle this kind of knitting and I have to confess it is absorbing and challenging, but worth the effort. My first project was a pair of wrist warmers and you can read about them here and then I made a more chunky aran weight caplet which you can see here. This year, I returned to Marie Wallin patterns and decided on the the Rowan Cowl from the the Wildwood book. It seemed like a slightly bigger project without being overwhelming. I had my gorgeous selection box from Border Mill with an assortment of colours and I chose to roughly match the colours as best I could to the ones in the book. The autumnal greens and yellows combined with the warm caramel shades seemed perfect and as I had just bought a lovely minty green wool beret, I felt it would all work together. It has been a slow make. I am a slow but careful knitter and I have to confess that I did find the beginning of the colour work really hard. It takes about 6 rows before the pattern starts to emerge and you can relax a little.

The magnetic board and magnifying ruler are essential for me to keep things in order and I do get asked questions about this on instagram so I will put a link to them below if you want more information.

As the pattern emerged I thought it was absolutely beautiful. It has a faint hint of tartan in the way the vertical and horizontal stripes interlock and this adds to the ease of knitting as you can follow the pattern and pick up any errors quite easily. It is knitted in the round which is just so easy too and I do think I am getting quicker with the fairisle technique.

The colour palette is not my usual ‘go to’ set of shades either and this was interesting and refreshing to me. It is good to try something different and as my colours for this year are coral and jade (for our 35th wedding anniversary) it is ‘sort of’ on track. As my knitting grew, it was definitely starting to feel autumnal in it’s look. Considering we are approaching Spring, it seemed a bit odd and I thought about the fashion manufacturing industry where they work a couple of seasons ahead. This, I thought, gives me time to think about what I need to wear with it…..lol!

Just as I was approaching the finishing line…we took a weekend away to ‘The Lakes’ in Cumbria. This was a hangover from covid - on hold for more than a year, so we were looking forward to a weekend escape very much. Have you ever been to this land of poets and magical landscapes? It is just so breathtaking and the spectacular scenery is around every bend in the windy roads. Even in March, before spring as really got going, it was just stunning. What really surprised me though, was the fact that the colours of the woodlands and hills and lakeside plants was all rather like the colours in my cowl.

The clean air, wholesome pub food and woody waterside walks make for a fabulous weekend. We walked around one side of Derwent Water and up to ‘Surprise Point’ and the view was just immense. You can take in the full length of the lake and it’s beautiful surroundings.

A few weeks before we went away, another coincidence in this rambling story occurred. I came across a series of three BBC programmes by Frank Skinner and Denise Mina about the compelling friendship between William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, those most famous lakeland poets. It is a ‘road trip’ style series that finds the hosts travelling from where the two young men first met in Bristol, to London, to the Lakes and finally back to London again. It is visually beautifully filmed of course, but what really surprised me was Frank Skinner’s opening gambit of ‘I like Poetry’. As a child, I loved poetry books and making up little verses, but later in life as an 80’s girl in London, this was not ‘cool’ and my books have lain in a box for decades until recently. I don’t know if it is to do with the pandemic and all the ‘mindfulness’ type of pursuits we have been encouraged to follow, but the current explosion in wonderful poetry anthologies that pepper the shelves of bookshops everywhere now has encouraged me to return to this type of reading. Frank Skinner, it turns out, has a wonderful podcast about all kinds of poetry and it has been a really relaxing and informative thing to listen too. His love of Wordsworth’s poetry though shines through in the tv series and I have loved reading some of these glorious poems, most of them for the first time. Unfortunately Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage was still not open when we visited, but I hope to go back in summer to see it.

The lakelands generally though are fabulous to visit and it is easy to forget how good nature is for you and how sooting it is to actually escape away and leave buildings and people behind. As it happens though, the following week I was in London and the contrast is a vast. London is a giant of a city these days and you can really only tackle one or two things on a short visit. A visit to one of my favourite haunts, the V&A in Kensington was planned with my family. We went to see the Beatrix Potter exhibition that is currently running there.

Ms. Potter was born in 1866 to a wealthy family in London and was well educated and well travelled. The family seemed to spend long periods of time in Scotland and the Lake District and her love of all natural things was born of these trips. She famously said: "It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born. My brother and I were born in London...but our descent, our interest and our joy were in the north country'" She collected specimens, sketched, painted and photographed from an early age and always had an independent streak in her, that lead her to self publish ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ in her thirties. The rest of course is history. It is hard to take photographs (I’m not even sure you are supposed to) in dimly lit busy exhibitions, but I can say that it was a truly beautifully curated collection of paintings, personal possessions and old photographs that gave you a flavour of Ms Potter’s extraordinary life. The original watercolour illustrations for her book were so lovely to look at and the story of how she came to be the iconic writer and illustrator is woven gently along the exhibition interspersed with all sorts of things for example the collectors cabinet that she and her brother Bertram used to stash their treasure, shells, rocks, crystals, natural forms. It all fitted in rather nicely with my trip to the Lakes, the area she made her home for most of her adult life and worked tirelessly to preserve and nurture. I think she would be happy if she saw it today, even if the cars are a little intrusive, I don’t think the Lake District has lost any of its natural beauty in the intervening century. The exhibition is on for quite a while so I would highly recommend visiting if you have the chance. Of course there is also the charming film with Renee Zellweger in, which is always worth a cosy watch.

Now that my cowl is finished I would say that it was absolutely worth the effort. I can only encourage anyone who can knit a little, to try this technique - it is so gorgeous to wear and feels warm and stylish. I love teaming up accessories and this was made with my mint wool beret in mind - I think it is a success.

So after this ramble, I have thought about whether I am a ‘town mouse’ or a ‘country mouse’ - the conclusion: I think I am half and half… meanwhile, I’ll let Wordsworth sign off this post with a few ‘lines’ he wrote ‘in early spring’ ….see you soon for a ‘Plaidish Quilt’ project that has stolen my heart.

“Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,

The periwinkle trail’d its wreathes;

And ‘tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes”

Useful links:

Marie Wallin’s wonderful fairisle patterns are available on her website here

The Border Mill shop is here

You can read more about the Beatrix Potter exhibition ‘Drawn to Nature’ here on the V&A’s website

The magnetic board and magnifying ruler are available here

Wool beret is from House of Bruar here

Acorn necklace is from Alabama Chanin here