The biggest news is that our long awaited, year-long project has come to fruition-”New Plimoth Worsted” is here!! One year ago we began coordinating with the folks from Harrisville Designs in Harrisville New Hampshire to develop an exclusive line of yarn for Plimoth Plantation. Swatches of naturally dyed wool in period colors were sent to the dye master to match, label designs were sketched and copy written.

The result is our very own yarn line, spun by Harrisville, in colors typical of the 17thC and labeled with period correct color names. (Watch for the “Goose-Turd Green” and “Rat’s Colour” !) “New Plimoth Worsted” made it’s debut on Saturday with an enthusiastic group from the Greater Boston Knitting Guild demonstrating knitting and interacting with visitor’s outside by the Craft Center shop. Stay tuned for an “official” launch later in November…

Enjoy the beautiful weather and happy knitting! Denise

From June to June, Plimoth Knitters’ have knit 29 pairs of stockings, 49 pockets, 14 hats and 23 pairs of gloves and mittens. A few pairs of stockings were even hand-spun! Our knitters’ have also learned to make lucet cord and cardweave trim and have luceted approximately 200 yards of linen cord for use in our Clothing and Textiles department.

Raffle prizes and a special “recycled” knitting-themed gift swap made for a fun evening-everything from knitting machines to favorite knitting books.

With all the delicious food we sampled at our potluck, another idea came up that Jeanne will be working on over the summer-she is busy compiling, printing and binding our knitters’ favorite recipes into the Plimoth Knitters’ Cookbook!

Now off for the summer to work on cleaning and spinning our wonderful fleece and developing our own specialty line of yarn and patterns. Plimoth Knitters’ will begin meeting again in September and will be knitting mittens for the Cranberry Hospice Festival of Trees over the summer.

Enjoy the beautiful weather and happy knitting!

                                                                                               Our “knitted pocket” cake!

About one month ago I received a call from a lovely woman out in the western part of the state. She has a small farm of Romney sheep which had been shorn and was interested in donating the fleece to an organization which would use the wool as part of their program.

Although I am not a spinner, I knew of the high quality of Romney fleece and many spinners who would love to work with it.

We set a time for her to bring along the wool and last Wednesday in came 12 bags of the most luxurious wool I have seen-natural, silver gray and the most rich beautiful black, all crimped and curled in individual bags with the name of each sheep lovingly attached.

We have set out a plan to have the wool skirted and carded and a volunteer board of spinners is ready and waiting. Plimoth Knitters’ will be knitting stockings, hats, and mittens for our 17thc Interpreters from this beautiful wool by fall-thanks to one woman whose generosity led us to her “golden fleece”.

Contributors from all across the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand created a room sized coral reef which travels on exhibit to art galleries and museums.

To find out more about the Hyperbolic Coral Reef  project visit crochetcoralreef.org
Enjoy the photos!
Denise

We began our second season as the Plimoth Knitters’ Club this January with several new members and lots of stockings on needles. In the past year our members have knit 49 pairs of stockings, 96 pockets, 43 pairs of mittens and 31 hats for our interpreters in the 17C English Village and on Mayflower II. Our members are local knitters as well as off-site friends from Nantucket to New York. We as a museum are so fortunate to have such a wonderful group of highly skilled dedicated members.

Our drop spinning workshop produced a new drop spinner amongst our group-Debbie B. has now not only knit us 14 pairs of stockings but has hand spun the yarn for 4 pair and is working on the 5th!

Last month we all learned how to make lucet cord on wooden lucet forks. Lucet cord is an ancient technique used to make linen, hemp or silk cording for lacing bodices, breeches and any other purpose a sturdy cord is needed. Many of our members became experts by the end of the evening and have produce three large balls of linen cord for use in our program.

Our community service project this year will be decorating a tree for the Cranberry Hospice Festival of Trees. Last season our ‘berry’ hat tree was a big hit with the hats distributed to the pediatric unit at Jordan Hospital. This season we will be decorating the Plimoth Knitters’ tree with mittens which will then be distributed to a charitable organization. Many of our members have also begun knitting hats and slippers for chemotherapy patients and will donate them as a group.

We have all sorts of things planned for the coming few weeks…stay tuned for a report on our cardweaving workshop coming up and a special visit from one of our 17thC friends!

Happy knitting…Denise

Behind each winding corner of the cobblestone road we found a knitting market. These are open-air (Tallinn was 0C. degrees) markets with local women selling their hand knit mittens, hats, scarves and sweaters on carts that are
packed and unpacked each day. Knit with wool in traditional Estonian patterns they kept our hands warm for the duration of our time in Estonia.

It was wonderful to share ideas with other history museums from Russia, Estonia, Poland, Sweden and Finland and to explore a town rich with wool and linen textiles.

The many “berry” hats for our “Very, Berry Christmas” tree will be accompanied by mini baskets of yarn (and thanks to Teegan’s great idea-miniature knitted swatch!) and tiny needle felted sheep and Santas(thanks to Kathy and Charlotte!)

The decorations and hats will be donated to an organization of our choice and the sponsor for the 7′ tree will contribute to the Cranberry Hospice program.

We look forward to next Wednesday to finish up the decorations and continue on with our 17thc knitting!

Wow is the summer over already?  We hope you got to enjoy your time with your family. 

The Season started on a new night, in a new room, with new faces!  We now are meeting on Wednesdays at 6:30-8:30,

in the Horticultural Center, it is a ground level room with easy access for everyone. I want to personally thank Lori for

her generosity in sharing her space..

  We are working on our calender and as soon as I get a few things nailed down I will try to post it here so you can keep up with us.

We are looking for more “pockets” to be made, these are items on sale in the gift shop that have been hand knitted by our members,

the pockets were a hit this summer and we are in need of more.  Keep coming back and checking in with us, if you are in the area,

please feel free to stop by one of our meetings.

See you Wednesday, bring your knitting and bring your friend…

Jeanne

knitting@plimoth.org

Sorry about the lack of blog  for the last month or so… I needed to finish up my classes and finals…now that those are done I can carry on with our club.

Is it really May already?  I can not believe  Summer is almost upon us. Speaking of summer, during the month of July and August the Plimoth Knitters’ Club will be meeting  just once a month.  We will be in touch about that. 

The textile weekend will be June 5 and 6.  On Saturday and Sunday we will have members of Our Plimoth Knitters’ Club working on various projects and speaking with guests.Charlotte Russell will be demonstrating drop and wheel spinning 10-12 both Saturday and Sunday. From 2-4 we will be making felted balls -lots of fun and something to bring home at the end!

Thats all for now!

See you Thursday, Bring your friend and bring your knitting,

Jeanne

But wait, we have more tricks up our sleeves,( Or in our stockings!)  We will keep you posted, or maybe we’ll keep it a secret just a little longer… We ARE working on the spinning workshop so once that is finalized we can share but thats it. I am a little mad at myself because I didn’t get any pictures of our last mtg with everyone trying to keep up and beads rolling off the table.. I will try to post the furry ones although they wouldn’t stand still, so we’ll see. 

So we’ll see you Thursday, bring your knitting and bring a friend!

Jeanne