Hawes part one ...Finding Fluff, Sticks and String in the Yorkshire dales

 

We have recently stayed in the Yorkshire town of Hawes for a few days to escape from reality and collapsing ceilings. This seemed like a good time to charge up my camera and go in hunt of anything textile related in this small town.

The first place to start is the The Dales Countryside Museum who kindly gave me permission to take photos and post here with a link to their site.

(This post will possibly be split into two or three as I was having so much fun with my camera)

The countryside museum has a small gallery celebrating their knitting heritage as well as other crafts like rope making and braid weaving.

In the past, this would have been a common sight along with water mills dotted along the rivers to power the machinery needed for spinning yarn .

 If you want to delve into the history of socks, caps. jerseys and bonnets being knitted in the Dales then The Old Hand Knitters of the Dales written by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby is a book to read. The book is available at the museum and on some second hand book sites ( hunt around as some versions are going for silly money but as far as I can see they are all the same book with different covers , I have seen it for £5.95 on one of the second hand book sites,

Knitting sticks/sheaths ( providing an anchor for a needle like a Shetland knitting belt ) were used to hold a needle so knitting whilst walking was possible. These varied from purely utilitarian to extremely ornate as given a love tokens at times. (I may have acquired one, more about this later)

Interesting also were the legwarmers used by the lead miners

A nice touch was the addition of information about the fleece.

 

and the dyes

and the pattern source

                 Examples of socks were also on show with the same helpful information.

Interestingly the museum does not have any of the Dales gloves in their collection , these knitted gloves always remind me of the Sanquhar glove in Scotland.

          I do have a book about the gloves and plan to attempt a pair at some point.There was a scattering of spinning wheels and associated fibre tools along with examples of other local crafts.

I will continue in the next post. The Museum does a week long ticket with concessions for over 60s and a discount if you belong to the caravan club. I certainly got my £3.50 worth !!