Russian Sledges

There are a lot of things I love in this world. Knitting is one of them. Vintage is another. History, yet another. When all of these things come together, it’s magical.

Such is the case with Susan Crawford’s latest project and upcoming book. It’s called The Vintage Shetland Project. If you’re a fan of vintage knitting, then you know Susan Crawford. She’s a renowned vintage knitwear designer and one of my knitting idols, and I’m truly honored to call her a friend.

She’s been working tirelessly for four years to bring this project to the world in the form of a glorious book, and I’m overjoyed to help introduce you to it today, as part of her “To Shetland and Back” blog tour.

Read on below to learn about her Pubslush campaign as well as lots more about the book!

The Vintage Shetland Project, © Susan Crawford

How you can help (and pre-order the book or a special kit!)

To help get The Vintage Shetland Project funded, Susan has opened up a Vintage Shetland Project crowdfunding campaign on Pubslush.

It launched Thursday and it’s been hugely successful already! In fact in just a couple of days, it reached its initial goal, which is phenomenal! However any little bit helps and will help cover other pre-publication costs which have been and continue to be immense for Susan (as you might imagine for a project so in-depth as this). So let’s keep the momentum going!

If you donate at a certain level you’ll receive the book once it’s published, so consider pre-ordering your copy! £15 for the ebook or £25 for the hard copy of the book, plus at other contribution levels you’ll get some other fun goodies! (Note to US readers, you may need to tell your credit card you’re making a UK charge; mine initially declined my donation so I had to confirm with them it was legit.)

Susan has been overwhelmed by all of the support this project has generated in a few short days. Keep reading below to learn more about a new exclusive kit she’s just been able to offer (hint: it’s a delightful 1940s cardigan)!

More about the Vintage Shetland Project

The Vintage Shetland Project has involved years of Susan’s research and collaboration with the Shetland Museum, traveling back and forth to Shetland and carefully studying knitwear in their collection and early 20th century Shetland knitting traditions and history. And she’s recreated 25 of those pieces as pattern for the modern day knitter. Every single stitch and row, meticulously and faithfully noted for all 25 items, most of which were not from commercially available patterns at the time. Each pattern in the book will also be accompanied by an essay, sharing more of the history of Shetland knitting with the knitter.

It shows an incredible love and dedication to knitwear history and knitting traditions, and we will all get to be the lucky recipients of Susan’s hard work, once her book is published!

The Vintage Shetland Project, © Susan Crawford
(I spy her wearing Ena’s Sweater from her A Stitch in Time Vol. 1!)

The pieces in the book will of course feature many beautiful fair isle designs (Shetland being the home of fair isle, both the knitting and its namesake island), but also lace and some pieces featuring beadwork. For each piece, Susan worked to replicate the color and type of yarn as close as possible, so the patterns are as true to the original pieces as could be. The colors of her Fenella line of yarn were designed to match up to the colors of the garments transcribed. It’s going to be a stunning lineup!

One of my favorite pieces from the book that I’m happy to share with you is this cardigan from the 1940s, full of beautiful floral motifs that pop out of the neutral shades of the background.

The Vintage Shetland Project, © Susan Crawford

Even damaged as it is, you can see the gloriously fine details and stitches of the knitter’s work.

The Vintage Shetland Project, © Susan Crawford

It even includes ribbon-backed button bands, with handworked buttonholes.

The Vintage Shetland Project, © Susan Crawford

If you’d like to knit this gorgeous cardigan yourself, Susan has created a new yarn kit via her Pubslush campaign! It’ll include the 10 colors of Fenella to knit the cardigan, vintage buttons and ribbon for the button band facings, as well as the book, project bag, lapel badge and postcards, priced at £155.

There’s only 5 kits and all the previous yarn kits were snapped up like lightening, so pop over to get yours! They will NOT last!!

Just like you might especially cherish a handmade item from your grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generation, something that’s gone down through the ages, there’s something so intriguing and wonderful to me about seeing all of these items from the Shetland Museum. They’re significant pieces of a culture and a rich and complex knitting heritage. And now Susan is bringing many of them to life for us again (in multiple sizes of course). It just gives me goosebumps thinking about it!

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All of Susan’s books are treasures in my knitting library. I know The Vintage Shetland Project will be, too. I absolutely cannot wait!

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you can imagine how the goals and success of this project are near and dear to my heart. I’m thrilled to help spread the word. For your next stop on the book tour, we pop from Chicago straight to Shetland, with Hazel Tindall, a lifelong knitter and knitwear designer of breathtaking fair isle work. Don’t miss her post on Monday!

To Shetland and Back: The Vintage Shetland Project Blog Tour

• Thursday 9th July – KnitBritish
• Sunday 12th July – Tasha of By Gum By Golly
• Monday 13th July – Hazel Tindall
• Wednesday 15th July – Ella Gordon
• Friday 17th July – Jess James
• Saturday 18th July – Jen Arnall-Culliford
• Sunday 19th July – Maja Karrlson
• Monday 20th July – Karie Westermann
• Tuesday 21st July – Rachel Atkinson
• Wednesday 22nd July – Woolly Wormhead
• Friday 24th July – Deb Robson
• Saturday 25th July – Julia Billings
• Sunday 26th July – Helen Magnusson
• Monday 27th July – Tom Van Deijnen
• Wednesday 29th July – Kate Atherley
• Friday 31st July – Jamieson & Smith
• Sunday 2nd August – Donna Druchunas
• Monday 3rd August – Felix Ford
• Thursday 6th August – Donna Smith
• Friday 7th August – Susan Crawford

 Find out more

• Learn more about the project on Susan’s blog: The Vintage Shetland Project Crowdfunder Campaign
• Susan’s blog post about the tour: Announcing the Vintage Shetland Project Blog Tour
• DONATE: The Vintage Shetland Project Pubslush campaign

Aren’t you excited?!! I can hardly contain myself!

Civic Centre, New Delhi, India, Competition Entry, Second Prize, 1966

(Ram Sharma)

goldenerasuits:

Font and back of “Magazin des Herrn”
Austria, 1934

It’s reasonable – and often necessary – to cut ties with people who are abusive or toxic. But there’s a difference between removing people from our lives because they’re causing us pain, and ostracizing people who are in pain because we feel overwhelmed or put off by it.

UPDATE July 13, 8:05 p.m.: Charges have been dropped. “Based on the totality of circumstances, however, including confirmation that the cartridges on said belt could not and weren’t intended to be fired, prosecutors dismissed the

The post ‘Real panic’ caused on MBTA bus by likely metalhead wearing a bullet belt and assorted spikes appeared first on Vanyaland.

If your device is always ready to hear your commands, does that mean it's always listening, too?

GIF – The Longest Possible New York Subway Ride?

The New York Subway is famous for having a flat fare for any ride within the system – be it for just a couple of stops, or an epic end-to-end trek. So long as you don’t pass through a fare gate, you can pretty much go anywhere!

WNYC is having fun with that fare structure to find the longest possible ride you can take without reusing a section of track. Their initial record – as shown in this mesmerising GIF – was 149.8 miles and required 55 transfers. Since then, the record has ben upped to 154.6 miles with one less transfer while still starting and finishing at the same two stations.  

datanews:

In Search of the Longest Subway Ride

We set out to calculate the longest ride you can take with one Metrocard swipe (not going over the same stretch twice), and after we posted it, someone’s browser found an even LONGER one!

ifuckinglovestvincent:

x

“this is really embarrassing”***

marlenedietbitch:

layer53:

“Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on.”

The Red Shoes (1948)

Night of the Comet (1984)

labrys2:

theniftyfifties:

1950s advertisement for trash cans.  

me sitting with my friends

afterstories:

there's no telling where the two girls are headed.
but that is of no matter, 
for the world wakes and changes along with your love

chjarudiluna:

The witches’ dream book

Why not? Now I need to find my old dominoes…

In exchange for their service, the university provides volunteers with complimentary apartment-style housing and five meals a week. In addition, volunteers are welcome to participate in the full life of the university attending concerts, recitals, plays, athletic competitions, and student life events. They are also welcome to use the library and recreational facilities.

Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser is back with his annual round-up of bizarre and ridiculous fireworks packaging which he has been faithfully documenting since 2007.

photos by Cabel Sasser

The crease pattern was designed using an algorithm by Demaine, Demaine, and Ku (2010), which describes how to efficiently fold any orthogonal “maze” (including word outlines like GUIDED BY INVOICES) from a rectangle of paper. Red lines fold one way and blue lines fold the other way. To experiment with other designs, try our Maze Folder.

Below are eight mathematical fonts, inspired by mathematical theorems or open problems. The first four are also puzzle fonts: in one form, reading them is itself a mathematical puzzle. All fonts are available to play with as web applications which run entirely in your (modern) browser, including iOS and Android. For more information, read our paper “Fun with Fonts: Algorithmic Typography”.

BOSTON — Mayor Martin Walsh is hoping to make City Hall Plaza a more welcoming place by adding a new "front lawn" for games, as well as music and food trucks.

On Wednesday, a 40-by-40 stretch of AstroTurf will be rolled out and will have lawn games, board games and new seating available. Walsh will cost a City Hall Plaza Party from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. to celebrate the new "front lawn."

Basé entre New-York et l’Islande, James Merry est un artiste reconnu pour ses broderies conçues spécialement sur les costumes de scènes de la chanteuse Björk. Depuis peu, il brode des motifs végétaux et floraux sur de célèbres logos de marques sportswear telles que Nike, Umbro ou Fila.

THIS IS A REAL PLACE IN ORLEANS, ONTARIO. YOU CAN STAND AT TH CORNER OF MULDER AND SCULLY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

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Two weeks after the US Supreme Court ruled to uphold the legality of same-sex marriage across the US, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party has unveiled a ‘straight flag’ to champion conservative values that rival gay pride.

The image, an explicit plug for heterosexuality, was on display for the first time yesterday (July 8) at the annual Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, an event organized by the Russian government that takes place in cities and towns across the country to boost traditional family values. The holiday, instituted in 2008 under former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, aimed to boost the country’s fertility rate and advocate for stable, two-parent households.

The hashtag emblazoned across the new flag, #НастоящаяCемья (or “real family”) features the silhouettes of a man, a woman, and three children.

Alexey Lisovenko, Moscow’s United Russia’s leader, told national news outlet Izvestia (via Newsweek) that the flag is “our reply to same-sex marriage, that corruption of the concept of family. We must to warn against gay fever in our country and support traditional values.”

“We must to warn against gay fever in our country and support traditional values,” Lisovenko said.

The flag, produced in the three colors of the Russian flag, was officially unveiled at a “traditional values march” in Moscow, where roughly 1,000 Russian families were invited to attend by United Russia.

Homosexuality has been legal in Russia since 1993, though the Russian parlament passed an anti-gay propaganda law in 2013 that bans promoting “homosexual behavior among minors.”

French social advocacy group La Manif Pour Tous, which opposes same-sex marriage, champions a similar flag, albeit with one fewer child.

In response to the Russian flag, same-sex marriage supporters on social media have given it a new spin:

I dimly recall staggering into the kitchen to find one of my cameramen passed out on the floor at a very awkward angle with his head stuck in the freezer. I reached over him to get some cheese, but left him as is.

© A. Tamboly


© A. Tamboly


© A. Tamboly


© A. Tamboly


© A. Tamboly

princesparklypants:

theotherwesley:

naturalshocks:

nevver:

World War Something, A. Tamboly

I….. I….. ….. I AM ALIVE FOR THIS

I think I’ve already reblogged this. Opps.