I have few long overdue photos to share today for anyone interested in henges. On the last day of August I visited the Avebury henge, one of the largest prehistoric stone circles in Europe. Unfortunately someone also went and built a village in the middle of it. (There’s an aerial photograph here.) Still, it’s very impressive and worth a visit purely for the mind-boggling historical nature of the place. Nearby is the partially excavated West Kennet Long Barrow, one of the largest surviving British long barrows. I kept an eye open for wights but was disappointed - or should that be relieved?

I was reminded to post these by the recent news on Stonehenge’s construction date. Sadly (but unsurprisingly) the Stonehenge stones have been roped off since 1977, unless you make a special booking. At Avebury there are no ropes or barriers, although I imagine that attempting to climb the stones would result in your immediate removal!

Further reading: Avebury: a present from the past

After an exhausting week, during which I’ve managed to injure my hip and shoulder (temporarily, I trust), this weekend is going to be pure bliss. I intend to move very little, but might start spinning up this fat braid of chocolatey BFL roving, courtesy of The Yarn Yard:

Good enough to eat. But I won’t.

It’s been a wonderful weekend, the kind that makes you hardly begrudge the coming Monday (well, not much). On Saturday my sister and I travelled in on the Tube to St. James’s Park, and from there we braved the wind (this is no joke when a skirt is involved) to reach the Royal Horticultural Halls. We joined a long queue, waited around while it inevitably began to rain, and then were let inside to roam the stalls, admire the architecture, pet the Great British Sheep, and generally have far too much fun.

There was a knitted gingerbread house, raising money for Great Ormond Street Hospital:

Our livestock came in the form of an angora rabbit, which shuffled about its cage quite contentedly. Next to it I saw my first active spinning wheel, although I’m not sure if it was angora fibre being spun.

My main purchase was from the Fibre Harvest stand, which was piled high with skeins of undyed and dyed yarn spun at Coldharbour Mill. Seriously good stuff. I had a fondle of the goods, and then spotted a deep, dark purple amidst the 4 ply. Love at first sight! I’ve been looking around for a rich purple 4 ply to make Garland from Rowan 44 (yes, it has batwing sleeves; no, I care not) but it was proving a fruitless search up til now. It had to be just the right kind of purple, you see. Anyway, this was on sale, and it’s a soft merino, and I bought six (!) skeins, which is probably too much, but I wanted to be absolutely sure I had enough. (Garland is knitting up beautifully.) As an added bonus, it’s also water-wheel spun.

I’ve wanted to try spinning for a while now, and the iKnit day seemed like the perfect place to pick up supplies. There weren’t a huge number of spindles around, but in the end I settled on one from the Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop stall, carved by a neighbour of one of the women who sold it to me. Thank you to the nice girl - a fellow shopper - who advised me to go for the lighter spindle! I picked up a bag of Bowmont roving from the Devon Fine Fibres stall and had a little chat with the woman who raised the sheep - she was also very helpful, and gave me some good advice about fibre.

Speaking to the sellers, looking at all the local fibre and yarn, I had a wonderful sense of being connected - if that makes sense. Recently I’ve been thinking a good deal about where our clothing, food, and material ’stuff’ comes from. Food is becoming easier, as the shops are now labelling the countries of origin, but clothes are iffy. Technically you only have to sew on a label in this country for the item to be legitimately “made in England”, which is ridiculous. Super-cheap clothes are everywhere, and the resulting quality is equally low. Mass-production means we usually have no idea who made our clothes, too, and this has not always been the case.

Anyway, I think this is something I could go on about for a while, so suffice to say that I am very excited by the idea of taking local fibre from well-kept animals, spinning it by hand into yarn, and knitting that yarn into a garment, custom-fit to my shape and size. I’ll see what’s happening at every step of the way, I’ll have a full awareness of the time and effort it’s taken, and as a result I think I’ll cherish the thing more than anything shop-bought. (I’ll keep you posted!)

The other highlights of the day for me were the Yarn Harlot’s talk and the A Stitch in Time fashion show. Stephanie was so funny I think I cracked a rib laughing, but also thought-provoking and intelligent. I thought I’d enjoy it, but I had no idea how much. She’s a great speaker.

The fashion show was for designs from Jane Waller’s upcoming book, A Stitch in Time, which is inspired by clothing of the 1940s. This is right up my street, of course. The models were beautiful, the knits equally so. I didn’t get any photos myself, but there are some good ones in the iKnit Flickr pool, especially these.

If I’m honest, another part of the day that thrilled me was the knit-spotting. I felt like I should have been carrying a little notebook and writing down ‘Tangled Yoke: 1, Swallowtail Shawl: 5′, etc. Not only did I see some beautiful garments, but some people were kind enough to admire my Rambling Rose cardigan. (Er, I’ve not blogged it here yet! Will do soon.) I was really chuffed, and a little embarrassed, but in a good way. After all, Laura Zukaite designed the pattern, and I just did the easy bit. It was at this point that I made the startling discovery that everyone else was a knitter (or a crocheter, or a spinner). They got it. They knew what I was talking about! Glorious. And that, for me, was the joy of the day: people from all walks of life, getting together and sharing their craft. I can’t wait for next year.

Last week I went to Hampton Court Palace. I’ve been before, but only on a school trip as a child, so revisiting it as an adult who wanted to be there was much more exciting. I’ve never been really enthused by the Tudor period - I think that when I learned about it, it was (rather inevitably) overshadowed by the King’s six wives and their various fates.

My opinion changed slightly when I read Alison Uttley’s excellent A Traveller in Time. It’s the best kind of children’s book - it doesn’t talk down to or patronise the reader, and is therefore perfectly suited for adults as well - and has a wonderful dream-like fairytale quality. That was my first experience of historical fiction, and it made me realise that the dry lists of names and dates I was being taught at school actually corresponded to real people, with hopes, fears, and lives of their own.

In more recent years I’ve been reading Phillippa Gregory’s books on various Tudor characters. I find her writing a little bit hit or miss (and hated The Wise Woman, which seemed a huge deviation from her usual style) but for the most part, it’s good stuff, and although I’m no expert on the period, it feels accurate, which is important. I can’t count the number of historical novels - usually romances, actually - that I’ve laid down in disgust because of glaring errors, unusually modern heroines or ridiculous speech patterns. But then, I’m a pedant about that sort of thing (and I can’t stand the appalling TV series The Tudors, which seems to primarily concern itself with Henry’s libido). This is a rant for another time, though: long story short, my reading and research changed my mind about the Tudors, and made me very keen to visit the palace.

So, long preamble over, we come to the visit itself. I had a wonderful time. The Palace is easy to get to, the staff are friendly and knowledgeable, and the audio guides are excellent. I had forgotten about the later additions to the palace - William III and Mary’s apartments, and then later, George II and Caroline’s Georgian rooms (which are closer to my favourite historical period, the Regency). The layout of the rooms is fascinating - they are inter-linked in a long string, each getting you closer to the king’s inner sanctum. Very few one-door rooms leading off a central hall, as we’re used to, and therefore little chance for privacy. The intrigue and gossip of courtly life makes more sense when you see the way the courtiers lived.

I wanted desperately to take some of the portraits home with me, but I think someone might have noticed. Particularly notable were the “Hampton Beauties”, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and the “Windsor Beauties” by Sir Peter Lely. They are lush, rich pictures of beautiful women in equally beautiful clothes. Unfortunately I couldn’t take photos in that part of the palace, and can’t find any online either, but they are well worth a look.

Some of the costumes from The Other Boleyn Girl were on show. Here I could take pictures, and did.

The gardens were exquisitely kept, and although the day was decidedly grey, there were splashes of colour everywhere:

Of course, I made my way through the maze, too (why is getting lost with a bunch of strangers so much fun?):

Further reading:

• The Beauties of Hampton Court

  A guidebook from 1845 (PDF download, or read online)

• The Windsor Beauties: Ladies of the Court of Charles II

  Revised edition of the 1928 text (preview only), with short biographies on each of the Beauties

I don’t like to make Christmas into a big, all-consuming event, and I only celebrate it as a non-religious family-oriented gift-giving festival, but I am (rather surprisingly) feeling very festive this year! A trip into London last weekend helped this along, I am sure. I despise shopping centres with piped-in Christmas hits — Slade, Wizzard, and Wham! have a lot to answer for — but wandering around lots of individual shops, looking at gorgeous window displays in the large department stores, and visiting special Christmas events is a real pleasure.

First stop was the Winter Wonderland event in Hyde Park, which consisted of a small German market, various fairground rides, and ice skating. The market was pretty, but not especially inspiring, and by far the best thing there was the food. There was also mulled wine (which really took the edge off what was a freezing morning) and delicious sausage.

More shopping ensued, as did a necessary stop for coffee (it really was bitingly cold, sub-zero with the wind chill factor, and I was very glad I’d worn a scarf, hat and gloves). Covent Garden is always a favourite haunt of mine, and this year their event is called Christmas Deluxe. It was a little early for the food market to be properly open but I was still full from my sausage — and the queues would have been epic, anyway, judging from the number of people already there! The decorations in the piazza were beautiful, probably even more so at night.

And then, quite by chance, we stumbled across a sea of Santa Clauses in Leicester Square.

I did a little checking when I got home, and this is apparently a big pub crawl, possibly called “Santacon”. Brilliant.