Aran Jumpers - A Different View

In Ireland, everyday Aran jumpers were made from blue wool or dyed blue (with woad or indigo paper from sugar cones) inasmuch as everyday Ganseys and smocks. As with Ganseys and smocks white was only worn for Sundays. When the Clancy Brothers became popular, with their signature white Arans, a tourist industry was spawned (piecework Arans before this were blue or brown) and now it is rare and difficult to find them in colours for sale, in tourist or other venues.

Wessex Memorial Update 14 April 12

Room has been left for when Sandy is discovered (as I am confident he will be). I was VERY tempted to say 'they likely summited about 5:00 PM' but there really wasn't room for that and Sandy's discovery, and the latter is more important; enough name-brand researchers on the 1999 expedition agree with my thesis about their summit time that I don't need to prove anything to anyone.

The lettering isn't really as complicated as it looks. One bottom blue line of stitching in the starry sky and the lettering took six hours.

Progress on the Wessex Sampler

The images, which I thought were sticky-backed, are not thus had to be pinned, but are attached by the buttonhole applique method, which is also used with Morris designs for quilting. Embroidering each of the squares in the Lindisfarne takes an hour. The Dunstan pattern at the top is meant to resemble a starry sky; the Winchester motif in the middle of it, the full moon on the night of 8 June, 1924. Clearly someone has done entirely too much research on the expedition! Nerdy as it is, yes, I can tell you what they ate, what they wore, what they read, all on that last day - and for the rest of the expeditions....