Exciting Project for 2024
RNLI marks 200 years since its foundation.
Hello,
Welcome to 2024, is it too late to wish you all a Happy New Year? Probably…
Thank you for bearing with me while this newsletter was dormant, but I hope you will forgive me when I share my news. It has taken me a few months to put the pieces into place, but this year will be amazing. I will be writing a Gansey pattern, for release hopefully in October, to help raise funds for the RNLI here on the Isle of Wight.
What is the RNLI?
The Royal National Lifeboat Institute, started with what would be today crowd funding, and they had their first meeting in a pub in Bishopsgate, London.
The lead instigator of this was Sir William Hillary, who had a vision for safer waters around the UK.
‘in the early 19th century there were approximately 1,800 shipwrecks every year’
Sir William had petitioned the Admiralty in 1823 calling for a structured lifeboat service fully manned with trained crews, but they were unwilling to help. Which is when he appealed to the more philanthropic members of London Society.
It was initially called The National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck when it was founded in 1824. King George IV granted the ‘Royal’ prefix later that year and on the 5th October 1854 it underwent another name change becoming the RNLI, which is still known by today.
Which Design Am I Making?
This was a tricky one. I looked through the images in Noel Stimson’s book about The Lifeboat Heritage of the Isle of Wight available from Medina Bookshop here on the island, and there are some great images in there for inspiration, but I went back to the original image. The one that started me off down the Gansey rabbit hole, the group shot of the Ventnor Longshoremen taken on Ventnor Beach.
I have chosen to recreate the Gansey that T Cass is wearing, mostly because of the detailing on the cuffs and collar, but also because T Cass junior has similar detailing on his jumper. This provides a little bit of evidence of designs being similar within families.
Yarn
I have been very kindly gifted yarn support from Wooly Knit, a British Yarn Company specialising in British yarns on cones as well as balls. Their yarns are lovely, and best of all, just as I was deciding which pattern to recreate, an email popped into my inbox telling me that they had just launched their Gansey Yarn range. There are 11 shades available currently, and it is a great price point at £19.50 per 250g cone.
Well, I think that is enough from me for one missive, I will be back next week with an update as I walk you through the process of recreating a Gansey from a photograph.
Take care, everyone, until next time, keep knitting.
Tracy x
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Until next time, bye for now.
Order Your Own Gansey
The order book for commissions will be closed until later in the year, if you would like me to design and knit a Gansey for you, please either watch out for the announcement or drop me a line for details.
Links:
The Lifeboat Heritage of the Isle of Wight by Noel Stimson
Anything in bold and underlined is a link to the relevant article or web page. None are affiliate links, just things I hope to benefit you, or people whom I admire and have worked with in the past.
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Ooh. This is exciting.
This looks so exciting and very interesting at the same time and I look forward to following your progress. Also the yarn looks lovely and I will investigate.