Episode 110 – Danish Nightshirts – Vivian Høxbro

We hope you are having a wonderful Christmas or Holiday time with your family and we are very happy to be releasing Episode 110 so you can sit back and enjoy watching it during this special holiday season.

We are still running with the Danish theme in this episode and we are presenting our second feature interview with Vivian Høxbro. In Episode 109 we explored Vivian’s extensive contribution to Domino or Modular Knitting and this time we’ll be learning all about the traditional Danish nightshirts. We also include a short feature where we learn all about the traditional Fanø costumes and how they were worn. Andrew hasn’t been able to do any knitting but Andrea has finished her Paisley Jacket and has prepared a little tutorial for you and Madeleine joins us to give an update on her knitting.

Danish Nightshirts – Vivian Høxbro

Learning about the traditional Danish Nightshirts is a topic I find particularly fascinating. Whereas Shetland and other Scandinavian countries have been able to preserve their knitting traditions and Fairisle patterns, the Danish Night Shirt patterns became lost when people stopped wearing the garments. They were beautiful sweaters with very intricate patterns worn only by women in the 18th and 19th Century. Nowadays most of them are hidden in museum archives because they are so old and fragile, and they were almost completely forgotten about.

Vivian wanted to change this and bring them back out to the world, so she spent three years examining around 80 historical Danish Night Shirts.  Her aim was to write a very comprehensive book that would not only document their history but also include over 200 pattern charts that modern knitters could design with and bring this great knitting tradition back to life.

This is a really interesting and inspiring interview especially because Vivian also shows us how we can design our own traditional Danish sweater using the pattern charts and techniques from the book.

Finding Vivian Høxbro

• viv.dk
• Ravelry
• Instagram

Fanø Costumes

You might remember back in episode 108 that the locals on Fanø dressed Andrea up in the traditional Fanø costume and sewed the elaborate bridal headdress into her hair. Fannikertage is a very important traditional celebration on Fanø that everyone gets involved in and the costumes play a central role in the celebrations.

Klaus is the Fannikertage tailor and here he shows us some of his fine needle work on a traditional jacket. The jackets are made from new silk but the ribbons are over 200 years old.

Kis describes the various costumes a Fanø women would wear during her lifetime back in the 17th and 18th century.

The Bride and Bridesmaid headdresses are over 200 years old.

Paisley Kofta by Sidsel Høivik

It is very exciting to be able to include a Bring and Brag segment in this episode. This is the Paisley Kofte by Sidsel Høvick. I really enjoyed adding a little collar to my version.

A typical feature of many of Sidsel’s designs is how she adds extra vertical stripes of colour. This is done at the end with a crochet hook and it is super easy. I have prepared the shortest tutorial to show you just how easy it is so you will be able to happily add lots of vertical stripes to your knitting.

Patron Discount – Marie Wallin

Marie wanted to help us during this very uncertain time regarding Andrew’s health and our inability to produce regular new content. Since our Patrons provide us with a stable income which is so appreciated right now, Marie is offering all Fruity Knitting Patrons a very generous 50% discount off all her Ravelry patterns for the month of December. The full details of the Patron discount can be found here. We are very grateful for this. Thank you, Marie!

Patron Discount – Carol Sunday

We featured Carol Sunday in our New Releases segment back in Episode 65. Carol is a very experienced designer with a prolific output of beautiful and elegant designs and she also has her own yarn range which is humanely sourced and expertly spun in Italy. Carol also wanted to support us during this difficult time and for the complete month of January Carol is offering a 30% discount off all her patterns in her Ravelry store and a 10% discount off all her yarn and kits from her webshop. Patrons will find the full details of the discounts on our Patreon page. Thank you so much to Carol as well.

We were wearing

Andrew was wearing a modified version of Tràigh by Jade Starmore

Andrea was wearing her new Paisley Kofte by Sidsel Høvick

Madeleine was wearing Lovage by Marie Wallin

During the interview Andrea was wearing Mother Åse’s Jacket by Sidsel Høvick

Music Credits

• J. S. Bach, The Well Tempered Klavier, Prelude No. 3 in C-sharp major, BWV 848, performed by Kimiko Ishizaka, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
• W.A. Mozart, Piano Trio in G Major, K. 496, performed by “Musicians from Marlboro”, music of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• W. A. Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, K. 330, performed by Vadim Chaimovich, Creative Commons Public Domain.
• Jæ’ Sweevers, Æ Lam, from the album, On-line. Copyright Fanømusik 2001, used with permission.