The Bluestocking Women’s Pub: definitely full of ludicrous halfwits who refuse to get a grip (with unionised gerbils)

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to The Bluestocking: convivial by design, opinionated in the best way, generously stocked with excellent food and drink that complies with whatever it’s meant to comply with, and any calories, gluten or alcohol are entirely virtual.

Staffed by impeccably trained, unfailingly polite gerbils who run a tight bar with plenty of enthusiasm and good intentions. Quick with the drinks, but terrible spillers spellers and liable to turn an idle thought on existential existence into a full blown musical with Busby Berkeley routines. You have been warned.

All women welcome, just in case that isn't obvious. Men can go to The Staunch Ally round the corner.

Previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5477133-the-bluestocking-your-local-womens-pub-warm-friendly-and-not-at-all-unusual-in-any-way

Yes, £99 is the pattern-only option, which is the one I’ve gone for.

Here’s where someone who doesn’t know about knitting wonders why a set of emailed patterns costs £99. I believe the Marie Wallin Fair Isle clubs are more expensive. But the finished things are so beautiful.

When USAF pilots found the B-26 Marauder too difficult to fly - they nick-named it 'The Widowmaker', Jackie Cochran showed them how it was done, and if 'a mere woman' could fly it safely, so could they
Cochran was an interesting woman, she had a tough start in life and was a businesswoman as well as an aviator.

She was married and had a child at 14, a little boy who died in an accident when he was only four.
She divorced and started a whole new life in NY and in aviation - fascinating life story.

I am loving the posts about wonderful women in WW2.

I wonder how many women who worked at Bletchley Park died without their friends and family knowing what they had done, because they weren’t allowed to talk about it.

She was married and had a child at 14, a little boy who died in an accident when he was only four.

I love the sentence construction there, @MarieDeGournay . Being married at 14 is something that’s done to young women.

£295!!! 😲

Just spent £72 in Hobbycraft for 9x 400g balls of wool + needles. There was a 3for 2 offer ANNNNNDD I got 10%student discount! Will need another Burgundy ball but wanted to check with DS that he liked the colour first!

Yes and much overlooked that it is still legal to be ‘married’ at 14 (and younger) in many US states today…

Oooh I could pretend i am!

I know I once heard about a website that told you what yarns were the same even though branded differently. Can anyone help me out?

The mother of a girl I was at school with was a Bletchley codebreaker.

Also a very good knitter. She said those huts were perishing cold and they used to make the most of their rations by knitting wrist, ankle, and waist warmers, and scarfs. Not enough wool for gloves, sweaters, and warm socks.

This one?
yarnsub.com/

Ohhh might be!! Thank you!!

🙏

Strangely enough I can knit complicated cables in Aran and chat, although I do have to look at my knitting from time to time. I think it’s because it’s obvious what to do with the next stitches and you don’t have to count anything.

If I am anything like your granny I have years more knitting left in me, so clearly do need a large stash.

Here’s to many more decades of happy crafting for us all, in and out of The Bluestocking. Long may we continue here!

Now that is clever! No more fast Christmas fashion, come Twelfth Night you remove the tinsel and can wear the jumper etc again for the rest of the year.

I know I’m not actually THAT old, but I remember my mum unravelling jumpers to reuse the wool. I still have a huge tub of buttons from harvesting from clothes before I bin them…. Even though I haven’t frigging used any in 15 years. Mum used to cut up old sweat tops/bottoms to make dusters too. No idea why that has just come to me. Am sure the sweatpant rags were as good as microfibre cloths…

He has even suggested borrowing or hiring a knitting machine - am shocked I tell ya!!

He clearly underestimates the time you’d have to spend learning to drive the thing.

@CautiousLurker2 I would also recommend the Story of Vera Atkins. She really cared about the women the SOE were sending off to France to the point where, after the war, she persuaded the authorities to let her go and discover the fates of those who did not return. The book also shows up the sheer incompetence of her superior (male)officers.

Another one well worth reading is " A Woman of No Importance " by Sonia Purnell. It's the story of Virginia Hall, an American member of SOE, who, despite having a false leg(!) and speaking very poor French, ran various resistance units and escape routes through southern France, before escaping herself to Spain over the Pyrenees when she was betrayed to the Germans.

That’s the sort of site I was thinking of, although that’s not the exact one.

The one I had in mind suggests yarn you can use if the one you wanted has been discontinued. It won’t be the same yarn with a different label.

I thought that too!! My mum had one intending to make our school jumpers on it and save money (plus jumper dresses were in at the time)… it was eventually flogged on at the pub as more hassle than it was worth!!

Oh yes! Did you have to hold your hands pointing upwards, about 12" apart ( for hours) while she used you as a wool- winder?

My parents,who were young adults in
the war, never got over the mindset of living very simply and frugally, and never wasting anything.

@MyrtleLion wrote: And I need some neutral colours to stitch my blanket squares together (they look at me in their bag and glare because they're not yet a blanket).

May I introduce you to mattress stitch? It really is easy and has lots of advantages.

In stocking stitch, and many others, it results in an invisible seam. It doesn’t matter what colour yarn you use as the stitching disappears into the inside of your garment.

I rarely use any other technique now.

I bought a specific tin off eBay, because it is the duplicate of the one that my mum kept all her buttons in. And I do have quite a collection of buttons - I have occasionally used some of them, but at the rate I am using them, I will have enough for several lifetimes. But collecting craft supplies and actually doing the crafts are two entirely separate hobbies.

That’s what I was thinking of too.

it’s one that tells you that x brand is made in the same factory and the same colours as y brand. I used to use it when buying the weird brands from the knitting network.

But collecting craft supplies and actually doing the crafts are two entirely separate hobbies.

Well, yes, but there’s nowt wrong with that. As long as you have space enough to organise and sort it all, and can find what you want when you need it.

I sometimes sigh when I see women, often in the US, who post pictures of their beautifully organised craft rooms which are bigger than the footprint of my entire house.

That would be a very useful site to know about.

The closest I come to that is C….., from where I buy most of my cashmere. It buys remainder cones of yarn from factories which make for Chanel, Hugo Boss and so on, and tells you where the yarn is from.

I am deliberately not naming or linking to the site, even though we’d both get a discount if anyone then bought from there, because the site is VERY DANGEROUS and addictive.

However, I am tempted to buy a scarf length of fabric from an EBay site which says it sources fabric from factories which make for designers, and says it has some from Missoni. It does have their signature look.