Liquorice allsorts

Well, all sorts really, hehehehe.

OK, I thought I would post about Guernsey today seeing as I had lots of photo's mainly of jumpers and the sea, but still.

Guernsey is a really gorgeous island, despite the fact that the weather was pretty horrendous the sea look so beautiful all the time:

I think it must be heaven in the summer, there are lots of fish restaurants there, which is just too exciting for me, seeing as I would live on fish and nothing else if I had my way, I had the best crab sandwiches in a little cafe over looking the harbor, just perfect.

There were a couple of reasons for the trip, one of which was some research into machine knitwear and also into Guernsey jumpers, and generally just be around people who have had very successful large businesses, its amazing what you learn from just listening to people, and their philosophies on business, especially in textiles. Mr B (travel partner and woolly best friend) says I always suck knowledge out of people, like I have an invisible sucker which I plant in their heads, which makes always me laugh, seeing as I'm only happy when I am learning or improving. I was so grateful to be given the opportunity to be able to listen and learn.

Anyway, in the guernsey factory, they had some original hand knit guernseys, some were from before the war, its amazing, they looked like new, they are very hard wearing, the special features are the necks, the way the underarms are knitted, the fact that they are knitted in an extremely tight fabric, and a bit like the arans, the patterns differ from region to region, mainly so that if fishermen wore them and drowned, they would be able to identify the bodies from the patterns on the jumpers, which was amazing, also on a slightly more positive note, the patterns on the jumpers were a sort of competition between women, see who could do the most intricate designs, and 'be better than the woman next door' lol. I liked that.

OK, here is a close up of the neck, I'm not sure if its good enough to distinguish from normal necks, but its longer at the edge, can you see it?

 

OK, so next here are some of the originals:

I love this one, but it was more decorated that most of the other ones I saw:

Have a look at the detail in the arm pits, and also the rib at the edge of the arm holes.

This is more typical of what I saw.

So there you go, and now I want to make a guernsey, I have some books to read, and I am going to try and get some yarn spun in a 5 ply, and if I can come up with some original patterns would any one be interested?

Any way I will be retailing machine knit Guernsey jumpers on the website, very soon, I just need to work out the prices, these will be shipped direct from Guernsey, how exciting huh?