Dear Ann,
Everybody in the knitting world probably already knows about Eddie the Eagle (scroll down for the trailer), the upcoming movie about Britain’s first Olympic ski jumper, which hits U.S. theatres on February 26. The Knitting for E campaign has knitters and crocheters making E hats to promote the movie. Knitting as PR campaign: this may be a first. I don’t know about you, but I am all for anything that gets Hugh Jackman cheering for knitters. (Hugh: call me. I’m losing steam on this cardigan, and my shoulders are a little oochy.)
Well, guess what, Ann? Our friend Juliet Bernard knit the actual “I’m Eddie’s Mum” intarsia sweater worn in the movie. I know! The knitting world is so small that you can spot a knit in a flick and know the knitter who made it.
How did it happen? Juliet’s yarn company, Yarn Stories, in Yorkshire, England, got the call from a producer to design and make the sweater. And they did it all in a big hurry. Knitters: they get the job done. Very proud of you, Juliet! It’s good to know that Eddie’s mum’s sweater is made of Juliet’s beautiful merino wool. She deserves it.
Last Call for Kaffe Kwilts
I’m ringing the closing-time bell for anyone within hollering distance of Doylestown, Pennsylvania: this weekend is the last two days of a lovely exhibit at the James A. Michener Museum. It’s called Blanket Statements: New Quilts by Kaffe Fassett and Historical Quilts from the Collection of the Quilt Museum and Gallery, York, UK. After weeks of texting plans that kept getting rejiggered due to weather and whatnot, my pal Julie and I drove out to Doylestown yesterday, just in the nick of time.
It was fascinating to see Kaffe’s splashy, florid quilts paired with 19th century quilts from the UK. It was also a little jarring to think of patchwork quilts, so cemented into my mind as Americana, as a thing that was also happening across the sea. The old quilts were muted in palette but so lively and graphic; the immediacy of a good quilt does not fade with the fabrics. And the rest of the Michener Museum was delightful. Exquisite George Nakashima furniture, a collection of unsettling, glowing paintings by Linden Frederick, and a roomful of non-textile works inspired by quilts.
Time Travel
On our way out of town, we stopped at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, because how could you drive by a building like that, with a sign that said Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, and not stop?
A circa 1900 tile works, still operating pretty much the same way now as it did then.
I wanted to put on an apron and start pressing molds into local clay and dipping tiles in slip. Although I generally lack any inclination toward the woo woo, whenever I am in an old-school workshop environment–be it a letterpress shop or a low-ceilinged room in which clay is mixed using steam power, I feel quite certain that I have done that kind of work before.
Love,
Kay
Oh, those gorgeous quilts! They were at the Katonah Art Museum a couple of years ago, and I was lucky enough to catch the exhibit. ( But not Kaffe’s talk, which sold out in a flash.)
But I’m really writing ( first to comment!) to note that you, too, have phrases from Hamilton running thru your writing/speech and so, your head! I can’t stop listening to the soundtrack, or stop singing it and hearing it in my head. We saw the show in November. My violinist daughter had played in the pit back at the Public last spring, and told me I had to get tickets before it opened on Broadway, and I listened. Good move!
You were right in the neighborhood! I’m heading over there this weekend. Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for introducing me to Linden Frederick. After looking at the paintings on line (yay internet) I can see why you call them unsettling. I speak as one who grew up in a place like those he paints, and fled at the earliest opportunity. What a mixture of nostalgia and unhappiness. I’m jealous that you got to see these paintings “live”. Thanks for the tour.
I felt the same way, Kayt–instant recognition of the houses and other places he paints, from my own life. A feeling of fondness at the same time as running like hell. I like the way he sees these places as just as full of painterly light and interest as any castle or landscape.
I saw this exhibit the weekend it opened. So glad you got to go! I just adore Kaffe’s color sense. Wasn’t the interactive room neato? And that quilt-inspired multi-media exhibit in the next room… so wonderful. I was in heaven.
Yikes! I grew up a stone’s throw from the Michener Museum and was home for the holidays, but didn’t know about the show and missed it! Sometimes even one or two stitches of separation can be dropped …
I need to be a bit more timely with these posts! In related news, I have not been inside Omaha’s very lovely Joslyn Museum since I was a schoolgirl, despite at-least-annual visits home for 30 plus years. Some deep psychology at work, no doubt.
Love the new design of the blog.
However I find one big problem – the font is realllllllllly small.
I have viewed it on many devices from a computer monitor to iPad, iPhone, nexus, kindle fire. the problem is that there is no way to scale the page bigger – you know the finger pinch where you can increase the magnification of a page – doesnt work.
On a computer monitor one can use Carl + to make bigger … That option is not available on mobile devices.
Is there anyway this can be fixed? It means I can’t read your blog unless from a computer. Which is sad.
(I did email y’all but perhaps it got lost in the ether)
thanks
Oh, and for a less rant-y and more helpful short-term answer, some workarounds:
• Try using reading mode: many mobile browsers have a “reading mode” you can activate, which gives you a simplified view of the page’s text and photos, whose font size you can control. The representation of the site in reading mode can be wonky, and reading mode usually only works (or is available) on pages that look like an “article”. Some sites are designed in a way that blocks reading mode because it also hides ads. So it’s not perfect, but worth a shot.
– On iOS, you access reading mode by tapping the little icon at the left of the address bar that looks like lines of text (the icon only shows up if reading mode is possible for the page; once it’s activated, an “Aa” icon shows up at the right of the address bar — tapping that lets you adjust font size).
– On Kindle Fire, the Silk browser’s reading mode icon appears at the right side of the address bar, and looks like a small open book. You can change the font size for reading mode in the browser options.
– Sadly, Google Chrome doesn’t have a fully-fledged reading mode yet (it has an experimental feature that’s a bit complicated to turn on). But Firefox for Android does: its icon is also a small open book at the right end of the browser address bar. When you have reading mode activated, tapping anywhere on the screen will bring up options for changing the font size.
• Try your device’s accessibility features: Many mobile devices have settings that let you zoom/magnify the entire screen. Usually, this magnification can be turned on as needed using a special gesture (e.g., triple-tapping the screen). This can take some getting used to, and the implementation is better on some devices than on others, but again it’s worth a shot. To find out what’s possible, try web searches on “yourdevicemodel accessibility zoom” or “yourdevicemodel accessibility screen magnifier” or “yourdevicemodel accessibility magnification”.
I have the same frustration, on this site and others. User zooming is disabled because of a setting included in the underlying HTML. There are actually two ways to do this (both part of the viewport meta tag), and MDK’s blog theme has them both in action. User zooming could be restored by removing these settings from the HTML for the blog theme, but I don’t know if there would be undesirable side-effects (sometimes when a designer has disabled user zoom, it’s because they didn’t know a better way to solve a particular design problem).
Frankly, this is bad web design practice because it fails to place the user first and renders the site inaccessible. Worse, it often occurs simply because the theme designer didn’t fully understand the consequences of the code they used. These settings have wound up included in boilerplate code (especially for “responsive” web designs) that gets unthinkingly copied and passed around — a careless practice. There are a few special cases where using these settings can be justified (mostly related to building web apps), but in most cases they should be avoided. The various perceived problems caused by leaving user zoom enabled can and should be solved in other ways.
For this site, MDK could take the problem up with the outfit that made their blog theme, depending if that company was willing to offer post-sales support or tweaks. Otherwise, removing the setting and testing to make sure nothing else broke as a result would likely require the attention of a web designer who understands the relevant issues. I don’t know if doing any of this is a practical reality for Ann and Kay, right now! But in general, if you’re shopping for a blog theme, asking hard questions about accessibility-oriented design is a good idea.
Did you make it to Fonthill, or The Mercer Museum while in Doylestown? Both are well worth another visit to New Jersey. Fonthill was Henry Mercer’s home (made of concrete!), and The Mercer Museum is Mercer’s collection of trades, crafts, etc. that were in danger of disappearing with the Industrial Revolution. Imagine a Conestoga wagon suspended from the ceiling, or a room of Franklin stoves.
Let me know when you’ll be back and I’ll meet you there!
Years ago saw a quilt exhibit in an art museum by accident (I was scoping out the space before hanging a portfolio of photography the following month) and the huge quilt display was stunning and glowing and dazzling! Had really never seen anything like it before. I love the concept of the show you visited – thanks for taking us along! I wish the website would reveal the “one other” location where it will be shown…or maybe it’s already passed?
And what you said about “the woo woo” and the certainty of having done some kinds of work before, I know exactly the feeling you describe, though it usually happens to me in agricultural situations. I wonder if we all experience that sort of deep familiarity in some environments?
Loved the vicarious trip to the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works. It fills me with joy to know that such a place continues the same work, done in the same way for so many years, made by human hands. I want to buy something just to support it, although I have zero need for anything tile related. I think I may have been in that previous life you mentioned, making stuff in a place like that. Thanks for the lovely photos and the visit!
So fun to share the day with you! I dreamed about sewing last night, got to get back behind my machine. You left one thing out though, my initiation to Wegman’s, which made this morning’s trip to Whole Foods completely anticlimactic.
On another note, my Facebook this morning reminded me that two years ago today I saw Rosanne Cash in concert…what goes around comes around!
How odd that you said that about old workshops. I feel exactly the same way about old industrial workplaces, like mills, and yes, this tile works. They feel like home to me. I’m not particularly woo-woo either, but the feeling definitely makes me think that past lives might be possible! Hmmm, maybe we worked together…
So lovely! I have a small collection of Moravian tiles. I picked up an assortment featuring fiber animals, as well as several with Priscilla spinning on a spindle. I adore that place.
Ha! Love the Hamilton reference!
We need to add that place to our road trip destinations. Any museum named “James Michener” has to be a destination for me.
Visited the Mercer Museum in Doylestown years ago and saw some beautifully done tile as well as other crafts.
I can’t be the only one who read “Britain’s first Olympic ski jumper” and immediately translated “jumper” into British. A film about a ski sweater! In Dale we trust.
In reply to Quinn’s comment (and others may be interested), Kaffe Fassett’s Blanket Statement exhibit will be in California, before returning to England. The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles will host this exhibit March 12 – June 28. Those who missed the James Michener Museum showing in Doylestown, PA and who won’t get to San Jose may want to look at Kaffe’s book “Heritage Quilts.” It’s apparently about this exhibit.
Naturfal home remedy foor cat pee scent. This is aan excellent dish
for eliminating pet cat urine smell from carpeting.
Begin by blotting up as much of the pee as possible with old rags or paper towels.