A Few Italian Knit, Crochet, and Mosaic Fashions
Chunky knits abounded in the streets of Ravenna and Venice last week. Girls wore mufflers and hats knitted at about 2-1/2 sts per inch. Trim sweaters were done in multicolor yarns at no more than 3 sts per inch. Mostly it was a little too cold for sweaters alone, so I didn’t see a lot of them.
I liked this Alpen-style jacket. It looks hand-knit. In other store windows, I saw several very lacy knit jackets with scalloped edges, obviously meant to be worn for looks rather than warmth!
Crocheters, it looks like we’re rising in the wake of the knitting craze. These granny square scarves brought me back about 35 years, to the time I was crocheting granny square drawstring handbags for sale in junior high. Higher fashion crochet included shawls with flower motifs joined with chains of mohair-looking yarns.
Oh, but I was there to learn about mosaics. Luciana’s studio was a community and family affair, with students, apprentices, English teachers moonlighting as interpreters, professional tour guides working as mosaic teachers, and her daughter, who works at a foundation for the preservation of Ravenna’s mosaics, acting as our tour guide one day. They took us to all the best places, like this mosaic shop, annafietta Mosaico Contemporaneo.
I loved how the artist combined colored glass with Venetian millefiori pieces. The frames, little boxes, and ornaments were beautiful, but I settled for the blue and gold refrigerator magnet. The shop sold supplies, too, including long millefiori stems by the kilo.
The Yarn Tourist in Italy
When you go to Ravenna, which you will surely want to after reading about it here, just remember that most shops are closed on Thursday afternoon. That was when I made my first trek to the yarn store, just across from one of Ravenna’s famous baptisteries. I stood outside in the drizzling rain, and it was all I could do not to press my nose against the windows.
Not easily deterred from seeking out yarn, I went back on Friday evening. “Casa della Lana e del Cotone,” the House of Wool and Cotton, was like a beacon in the gathering dusk. The shelves were stocked with all kinds of great novelty yarns. Most were Italian-made. I even found some corded cottons in pretty colors, to be knitted on about size 3 needles, which I haven’t seen around in the US for a long time.
One wall was devoted to very fine yarns in many shades of color. I assumed they were meant for combining, to achieve even more colors. They could also have been for machine knitting (though they were in hanks), or just for plain old very fine knitting.
One of the three ladies in the store knitted with the yarn around her neck for tension. She manipulated the yarn with her left thumb. The ladies didn’t speak any more English than I did Italian, but we understood each other well enough. I said, “Italiano lana es bella!” “The best!” agreed the boss lady.
I left with two souvenirs: the gray and pink Mondial and the black and rainbow Filatura di Crosa. Both are Italian yarns. Filatura di Crosa is the yarn manufactured under the name of the famous knitting Missoni family. I’d like to visit their design studio, factory, etc., someday.
It could only have been fate and luck, or maybe even divine guidance, that put this pretty little yarn store in my path in Venice. It is just off the Menin Square, before the Cortes bridge on the island of St. Marco. It was small, like most of the shops in Venice. Maybe that is why only one skein of each yarn color is displayed on the shelves.
Three masked men and women entered the train to Venice. No one on the crowded train even took a second look. Do people normally ride trains with masks on? Is it an Italian thing?
Wait a minute…the masks were golden. It’s February–Mardi Gras time. Imagine the cogs in my brain grinding slowly into position. Aha! It was Carneval day in Venice.
In spite of dire predictions of ankle-high water and missed connections, Dean, one of my mosaic classmates, and I took the train to Venice for the day. We arrived on time to find the station crowded with people wearing silly hats and masks.
Our destination was St. Mark’s Plaza, with the fabulous basilica, where the stolen remains of St. Mark are entombed. Having left our hotel too early for the wonderful breakfast, we stopped at a good-sized park plaza to have a coffee and a bite to eat.
“If we head off to the left, we can cross at this bridge,” said Dean, pointing to one of the three spots where a person can walk across the Grand Canal. We headed off to the left, and made our way through the narrow streets and across the tiny bridges of Venice.
Ages later, we crossed the Grand Canal. According to the map, we managed to go across town to the other major bridge, which would have originally been far off to our right. The city is like a maze with high walls and unexpected dead ends.
The crowds got denser and more beautifully dressed. Many wore 18th century costumes with elaborate headdresses and masks.
Sort of by accident we found St. Mark’s Basilica. We photographed it from afar, because the square was thick with people, performers, noise, people, hats, people, people, people.
Realizing that the crowds would only get worse as the evening approached, we headed back to the train station, stopping for lunch and souvenirs for our families on the way.
Long train rides, hundreds of thousands of people on a wintery day, primitive bathrooms, and a great, great time.
Chopping Marble and Glass
We finished our first mosaic samples today! Each student chose a color photocopy of an ancient mosaic. We traced the pieces onto wax paper with water soluble pen, then transferred the design to a moist hydrated lime base.
But back to the beginning. Monday morning we had a talk about tools and techniques of mosaic, and after a great lunch at a church cafeteria, we spent the afternoon chopping marble into small cubes. Practice, you know.
I felt pretty confident in my ability to chop mosaic materials, until we started our copies on Tuesday morning. Mine was mostly made with colored glass pieces (vitreous glass made especially for mosaic). To chop glass is different than to chop marble. I had a fine layer of tiny glass slivers all around me, and lots of waste. “This is part of the job,” said Annaliese, who is one of our instructors.
We made lots of progress on Tuesday, with another nice lunch at the same cafeteria. Today we hurried to finish, because our mosaics were to be transferred to a wooden frame. The cement and surrounding slurry of cement and sand, would have time to dry, before we go home on Friday afternoon.
We all had help from the mosaicists at the studio. It’s impossible to put into words all the little movements and adjustments you make, when you do mosaic (or knitting and crochet, for that matter). So it helps to be able to watch an expert at work.
Luciana Notturni, the master mosaicist at the studio, told us our class is exceptional. “You are calm, you are quiet, you do the work,” she said. The most exceptional thing about this class, is that we all get along very well! The group comprises two British sisters, a British friend of theirs, a Bostonian, and a Texan. All our lunches and suppers are spent together, enjoying delicious food and talking. Here, we can linger over supper for a couple of hours in a restaurant, and the staff consider it normal.
Tomorrow we make a small mosaic, directly onto cement. Then we have a tour of the mosaics of Ravenna, which are many and amazing.
Lots of pictures to be added when I get home!
First Moments in Ravenna
When I walked to my hotel in Ravenna today, I ran across a parade! Kids in costume were everywhere. Confetti and streamers and silly string were everywhere, too. Different schools had floats, which some kids rode on and more kids followed. All were wearing costumes. It was loud and colorful and fun.
I checked in and then went back out to see the parade and take pictures. The floats went around and around two big blocks, and then everyone went into a big park nearby.
My knitting eye saw lots of multi-color stranded caps on the kids, some with flaps (caps, not kids). Couldn’t tell if they were hand-knitted. Saw a couple of knitted shawls, and one was handmade for sure. And a pretty crocheted scarf. I will be on the lookout for a yarn store.
My workshop starts tomorrow! Ravenna is definitely a mosaic town. The hotel has one at the entry and a little park near the train station has a colorful mosaic column. The little signs on the trashcans have a picture of tesserae plus the name of the town.
Off to Italy
My girls are looking forward to ten days of canned ravioli suppers, movies, and fun with Dad, while I am off in Italy, attending the Mosaic Art School. They’ll have a good time. So will I.
My serious packing time has been devoted to deciding what projects to carry on the plane. The red paper poncho will go. See the white shett of paper in the photo? Those are my shawl instructions. I hope I can remember what these notes mean.
Just in case my circular needle doesn’t pass through security, I’m bringing natural dyed wool, which was a gift from my friend Helen Neale. If I can’t knit, I’ll do a little chopstick spinning.
For back up entertainment, Charles gave me part of my birthday present: a stack of Perry Mason novels. “Take several to read on the plane!” he said. I took three. “Take more! You’ll have a lot of time at the airport,” he said. If I have them, I will read them, so I said, “Charles, I don’t want to spend all my time reading.” He probably never thought he would hear those words tumble from my lips.
So off to the land of mosaics, fabulous Italian yarns, and cutting edge knitting design. If I can’t post from my hotel, I’ll see you all at the end of the month. Ciao for now!
Knitting to Enchanted Rock
This is Enchanted Rock. It is an enormous dome of pink granite rising out of the central Texas landscape. We were expecting cold, clear weather today, so we took the girls there for a climb. Believe me, it’s better to do it in the cold rather than the heat! We knew our ten-year-old, Eva, could climb to the top, but we weren’t sure about Ella, who is three. Ella wanted to be with Eva, climb rocks with Eva, hide in rocky tunnels with Eva, sit by the little pools with Eva. In short, she made it to the top—a six-tenths mile walk and a rise of 425 feet!
Here are some views, including lichen on a boulder, cactus, girls at one of the pools, and other plants that have taken over one of the water-gathering depressions, looking out into the distance. The wind was blowing hard at the summit. Down near the parking lot, where we had our picnic lunch, the weather was perfect.
So what does this have to do with knitting? I knitted on my Team Italy project most of the way there and back. It’s looking good!
We visited an antique store in the town of Llano on the way back. This little footstool peeked out from under a table. The top is knitted with crochet around the edge, attached to a padded piece of plywood, and trimmed with pom-pom fringe. The legs are attached to the wood with screws. Twenty-eight dollars.
I covered a stool with knitting, when we lived in England. We used to find nice pieces of furniture in skips, which are low dumpsters. Low, meaning that you can easily see into them, and pick out good stuff. Here it is:
At the same shop, we saw these shelves, with edges trimmed in buttons. Very cute!
Dallas Hand Knitters and Fiber Circle
As of Tuesday evening, the Dallas Handknitting Guild is 136 members strong, and growing. At least forty of those members were at the monthly meeting. I talked to the group about designing sweaters. “I’m not going to tell you how to calculate stitch counts,” I said, “because there are plenty of good books that tell you how to do that.”
Instead we discussed the process of design, which all designers (knitters, fashion designers, software designers, and architects, to name a few) go through, whether they do it consciously, or not. We talked about the design trio, time-budget-scope of work. Knitting Olympians, for example, have to plan their scope of work to fit within a strictly limited time frame.
Smiles, chuckles, and heads nodding in agreement made this great audience even more fun to talk to.
We talked about resources (guilds and other knitting groups being mentioned as invaluable resources), planning, and testing. Luckily for us, with a world of visual and intellectual stimulation around us, we can find much to fill our minds with inspiration: not once or twice, but regularly throughout our designing lives. Experience, accidental and purposeful, is a designer’s treasure.
“The only way to get twenty years of experience,” I concluded, “is to do a thing for twenty years.” So knitters, if you haven’t already begun, start designing now, and next year at this time, you’ll have a year’s experience as a knitting designer!
Earlier that day, my husband and I were in McKinney, Texas, to look at some equipment for his business. We were so close to the new INKnitters headquarters, we had to go see! Diane Piwko, the owner of Fiber Circle Publishing, showed us around the enormous old building that had once been the Odd Fellows Lodge of Farmersville.
Charles and I are fairly experienced old-house-renovators, so we could appreciate the work Diane and her husband have already done. We could see the incredible potential of the site.
Diane has named March 2, 2006, as the opening day for her new yarn store, which will feature cozy nooks for knitters on the balconies overhanging the ground-floor shop. Coffee, tea, and snacks will be on offer. Knitters are welcome to come and knit all day long. If they need to stretch their legs, they can stroll along the brick boulevard in downtown Farmersville, and shop at the antique stores.
The editorial offices of INKnitters and Crochet Fantasy are on the second floor. The third floor will be living quarters.
It was a great day! I look forward to being back in the area for the DFW Fiber Fest.
KnitAlongs and Screen Art
It’s so much fun to Knit Along! I’m joining the enormous Olympic knitting team, organized by Coach Yarn Harlot. I will be knitting for Team Italy. Why? I will in Italy, physically, actually, in person, really, really, during the Olympics. No, not to watch the Olympics, but to attend a mosaic workshop in Ravenna. It seemed cosmically correct to knit for the Italians.
Here are my training swatches. I’m finally using that red linen paper from Habu. I have 77 grams in all. My garter swatch is 0.92 g, and the lace edging motif is 0.43 g. (Thank goodness for my scientific husband, who has a very accurate balance.) I had to do some calculations to see how big of a wrap I could knit.
I’m making a poncho-shawl combination: a mitered corner in the back, straight across the front; garter stitch with the lace trim. The fiber is crispy! This will definitely be a stretch for me to finish, but I’m figuring on many hours to knit in airports and on planes.
It’s fun to watch little kids with sidewalk-chalk. The little ones aren’t so interested in drawing pictures as they are in coloring things. But sometimes they really draw! After three-year-old Ella colored as much of our curlicue-iron porch support, she turned to the screen door. Here’s her screen door art. I think it is in the best abstract, preschool tradition.
Cloths for Katrina Finally Done
…and it’s about time, too! Thank goodness there are still some places accepting donations for people who were badly affected by Hurricane Katrina. My two knitted washcloths went off in the mail today.
If you want to see some consistent, plentiful charity knitting, visit Woolwindings and Tikkupeitto. I am amazed at the work these ladies do.
Happy Birthday Mom!
My mother, Anna Thompson, turned 70 years old today. She taught me to knit and crochet, passing down the skills to another generation of our family. Her grandmother (my Groβoma) could knit socks with her hands under the table, while her eyes were occupied with reading. Her mother (my Oma) taught needlework in a German village school, where my mother’s father was the teacher.
Now my mom is the coolest possible, jeans-wearing Oma, who has long straight hair that is still dark, with a few highlights of silver. She encourages my daughters in their fibery and arty pursuits, and she is my biggest fan (just take a look at her comment on my last post).
Happy Birthday, Mom, and Thank You!