The Domestic Soundscape

I really enjoyed reading Kate’s recent post on walking and how we build up imaginative representations of places as we patrol them. It made me think about my familiar routes, the places which I habitually visit, the things I note along the way, and how I remember places.

Pigeons in the snow in Palmer Park, February 2009

Pigeons in Palmer Park, March 2009

I make recordings on a regular basis – of everything from buying a pint of milk in my local shop to walking down the road – and what amazes me is how, in listening back to my many sound-recordings, (all with the equally unrecognisable filename of ‘R09_000##’) I am often able to identify where the recording was made, and when. Sound can describe the architecture and surface qualities of places in ways that are 3-dimensional and in ways that contain time, so that when I listen back to a 10-minute recording made of frying onions, the 10 minutes in which that happened are somehow preserved.

To me, sound is very physical, inscribing itself against the paper-thin membrane of my eardrums in a very tangible way, and conveying a constant stream of information about the material world in all its scratchy, flawed, repetitive glory. I am not aware of the physical sensation of seeing in the same way that I am aware of the physical sensation of hearing, and I find that in listening to banal reality I become intensely aware of the material world around me. Sound activates the surfaces around me, (how do soundwaves bounce between the surfaces?) and describes the size of any space, (how does sound resonate in that space?) and the more I work with sound, the more I appreciate and am inspired by the physical and detailed way that it describes textures as well as places… for instance, anyone who has ever fried an egg knows the specific tone of oil that is too hot for the task, or the disappointing non-sizzle that lukewarm oil produces on contact with your raw egg. With knitting, I find I am also interested in the extremely small differences in the sound of one yarn or another when I knit, and in the role that sound plays – as well as touch – in conveying its texture to me. In non-domestic situations, I find this obsession with material qualities extends to the built and natural environment outdoors, and I am interested in why sounds seem brittle when there is a lot of ice on the ground, or how the noise of traffic changes between wide, open roads and roads flanked by tall buildings.

The he(a)r(e) / deliberately listening to this tags I made, for exploring the relationship between place and listening

Followers of this blog may recall that I combined some of these ideas – listening and a sense of place – in the Swaledale Sea Socks that were inspired by a combination of the crispy sound of the Swaledale yarn, and my memory of the crunching sand near Romney Marshes. Since knitting these socks and getting hours and hours of pleasurable wear out of them, I have had a number of thoughts on the design.

1. I would prefer these socks if they were knit in such a way that both heel and toe could be picked up and knit down at the end, so that heel and toe are easy to replace
2. The double-thickness of the fabric (created by using 2 colours and having short floats on the back of the fabric) acts very much like the double layer of the 1000 mile socks that have given my feet such comfort on long distance walks
3. I very much like the mix of place/sound/materials that inspired the design

With these thoughts in mind, I dyed the remainder of my 100% Swaledale DK yarn from Prick Your Finger using the walnut hulls I found at St Mary’s Butts in Reading, with the intention of doing something related to that site itself, in knitting.

Here is the wool that I dyed, at the foot of the Walnut tree from which the dye came.

However, once I had wound the balls of yarn, I realised they look far less like the lovely tree and much more like the church that stands directly behind it!

I also noticed that the simple patterns I had employed in the original Swaledale Socks could be perfectly adapted to celebrate the iconic brickwork of the church – which is a landmark and a regular visual feature of my walks around Reading.

I am enjoying making my socks immensely and the visual/material/colourwork aspects of the project are highly satisfying in linking site, tree, materiality, place, colour and creative process in a useful pair of socks. However, the main sound associated with St Mary’s Butts is the sonorous, slightly chaotic bell-ringing that radiates from its handsome tower every Sunday morning at around 11am. In my habitual wanderings around Reading I have noticed this sound and been uplifted by its joyous insistence and by the many different tones of stone and metal and rope and human effort that combine in its fullsome ringing.

The church and the walnut tree, January 2010

The church, November 2009

I went to the church last Sunday to make recordings of the bell ringing and to think about how I could translate some elements of this sound into the design. I am not sure yet that I can, nor of what this might add to the usefulness of the socks. However I did make a radio feature for The Hub this week which brought the knitting ideas and the sound of the bells together, and I am enjoying the process of thinking about all the ideas in this territory… place, materiality, listening, sound, texture, site and movement. It’s a good journey, this one, into a broad and rich set of ideas.

And for those kinds of adventures, I like a good pair of socks.

The pattern will be available to buy from Prick Your Finger when I finish writing it up!

 

 radio feature on site-specific-socks: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Currently on my knitting needles I have:

Mansweater: 90% finished (after 3 ripping-out sessions, one unsuccessful placket steek and several Bad Knitting Math errors)
Massive own-design UK Sheep celebratory garment: 45% finished, currently languishing on sofa awaiting for me to complete mansweater and pick it back up again
Colourwork Beret: 100% finished, however adjustments and corrections are required for 100% own-design pattern satisfaction
Ulmus: 20% done, needs one afternoon of nurturing love to get back on track

I like that I have three of my own designs on the needles plus one lace project, and I am enjoying knitting them all immensely. However, I decided about a week ago – after darning my most beloved Lorna’s Laces Jaywalkers for the 5th time – that new socks were necessary, and new FAST socks, at that.

I’ve had some purple yarn in the stash for some time now and at the Bluestockings Wool Windoff earlier this year, I spotted a lovely ball of miscellaneous purple/green laceweight mohair type stuff which I thought would perfectly compliment the shades in the sock yarn. Ever since I read about this yarn and its reinforcing thread on The Knit Nurse Chronicles, I wanted to knit a pair of socks in sockweight wool with a very thin strand of something else as an experiment in strengthening up the sock overall. I love my Jaywalkers so much, and I like the way they are accumulating darned patches. However I am also becoming aware of the extremely tough life that they get and I am keen to learn ways of lengthening the life of *all* my future socks. So I have just finished a pair of socks knit mostly with Opal sock wool purchased long ago (in the time before I became obsessed with UK sheep and UK yarns) and a miscellaneous skein of purplish laceweight that I believe was originally Ellen’s. Here are the socks.

Discerning viewers will spot that one sock appears to turn pale green halfway down the foot. This is because the miscellaneous purple laceweight ran out and – not wanting to change gauge or lose the strengthening qualities of that extra thread – I substituted with a third-of-a-ball of kidsilk haze that I had lying around which I believe I acquired in the same swap, from Ellen.

I have noticed two things about this substitution. Firstly, the sock with the kidsilk haze in it is definitely softer and fuzzier than the one without, and secondly, the purple shade in the Opal sock yarn behaves very differently when placed beside a pale, sea green. Whereas the deep purple hues in the first laceweight drew out and emphasised the purple nature of the Opal sock yarn, the pale sea greens in the kidsilk haze cause the purple tones in the Opal yarn to appear more like a periwinkle blue and less like a lavender.

I have to confess that my fascination for these colour effects has totally overshadowed any disappointment I might have felt about the non-matching quality of the socks, and the whole palette of the yarns involved reminded me somewhat of sloes and the way that they are at once purple, blue and whiteish or green. I also think that the halo-like effect of the kidsilk haze is similar to the effect of the bloom that covers the surface of sloes. This experiment in substitution and colour mixing has made me curious about the effects of pairing perhaps an even finer pale yarn with a deeper base colour for a more precise representation of sloes in knitting.

I like thinking about colour, and it was interesting to read this post today from The Yarn Yard, for insights as to how one might dye with colours in mind. I am currently obsessed with how one might knit with colours in mind, but they all relate.

I am not normally a purple person, but I have been enjoying wearing my tweed top immensely, and it has inspired me again with shades that remind me of berries, plums, and all things purplish and pink. This is a great surprise to me, but I am embracing it for now. It might be the influence of the sloe gin in the cupboards, or an addictive need for bright colours in the wake of all this Autumn grey, but I’m very happy indeed with my mismatched socks, and eager to see how strong they are!

I also very much enjoyed knitting from Nancy Bush’s Knitting on the Road book. It is a wonderful book, with clear instructions, fantastic charts and brilliant background information on all the socks inside it. I think that she does a good job of pairing specific places, yarns and design-ideas together in the populist format of a book of sock patterns. I very much enjoy her sock books and the ideas of place and knitting that run throughout Knitting on the Road. I also liked that this pattern was extremely easy to memorise and that I could knit it without referring to the chart at all after 2 repeats.

Project Specs:

Ravelled: here
The pattern is Whitby, and it comes from Nancy Bush’s book, Knitting on the Road
Needles: 2.75mm
Yarn: Opal sock yarn + a small quantity of kidsilk haze and an unknown, hazy, purplish yarn from Ellen (thanks!)