knititch

teaser

2009-04-13T19:14:00.001+02:00

i just wanted to give you a little sneak peek of the zimmermann sweater i finished a while ago. i will take pictures of the recipient wearing it asap. we never got down to it as i mentioned but i am sure we will.

a sweater and a cool cat.

2009-04-12T22:42:00.002+02:00

this is my newest fo. actually i have two other to show off but it seems life is at such a fast pace now and i am so preoccupied with work and somehow many old friends have emerged all of a sudden and new friends too. work is a bliss. i haven't felt so happy going to work for years and i feel i fit in where i am.

the new fo is a cardi in brioche stitch for my niece designed by danish designer helga isager and slightly altered by me. the pattern is poorly written and i knitted one for myself too in the original yarn isager 2 and it looks so poor as well since the yarn is pilling like crazy. i don't like that in a yarn. for my niece's i chose a better and cheaper yarn in my favourite colour- a khaki green.

i am still a zimmermaniac too. i finished meg's shaded aspen leaf sweater and cardiganized it. the result is stunning but when i gifted it to my friend we had a lot of wine and forgot to document it. this will happen later.

the little boy in the picture is my grand nephew a, who is probably the happiest person i ever met. everything that happens to him is seconded by a yipee or yahoo. that is so nice. and i think he looks so cute in his manly jacket. yipee for a. he is adorable.

delightful, delicious, de lovely

2009-03-16T21:26:00.002+01:00

here is my wee little niece, just a few days old. born on one of the first days of march, and i don't think she has a name yet. but that really doesn't matter, because she i enormously cute and i cannot wait to get to know her and knit for her.

sorry for the long hiatus. actually i have knitted three sweaters since january but i haven't photo documented any of them yet.

one is the shaded aspen leaf yoke sweater in lopi lite by meg swansen.

the other two are helga isagers pine.

one for me and one for my niece. my older niece. the mother of my two little great nephews.

there will be much more about this a little later.

and i am planning to knit amanda by lisa lloyd in some shetland wool.

the reason for my hiatus is that i have been so busy at the school. it is a lovely job i have got there. i love teaching and how motivated my students are, although their lives are quite miserable in many ways. being an asylum seeker at the tender age of 17 isn't any fun. especially when you miss your mother your country like hell. and on top of that you have a history of human smuggling and a crazy travel from say iraq to europe to keep quiet with. when i look at my students i cannot stop thinking that those parents must have sent their brightest children with the best genes for survival out on that journey in a fragile hope that they will face a bright future here. i sometimes doubt this will happen. but i cherish their energy and trust when we are together in the classroom and feel so sorry for their parents who probably doesn't even know where their children are....

but i am so impressed with the humanistic way the people who work in my new school are. not in theory which is pretty easy but in practice. and i dare say this now as i have passed the invisible border of being there longer than the last two places i worked in. that was a great day. i so much feel that hard times are over, over for a while as john lennon used to sing, and that i am finally doing something i love and that i am good at. more than knitting.

and the winner is.....

2009-01-21T20:00:00.002+01:00

and the winner is ...... mary lou. mary lou send me your adress and i will send you some greenish yarn in return. i suppose greens and browns are my favourite colours too...

i am happy to sending yarn to minnesota after i saw a bbc series today with pics from minnesota in the winter. i suppose one needs one's woolies.

and speaking about colour. i thought michelle obama's colour choice yesterday was quite daring. ochre with lime gloves. she looked quite pretty although i think the dress was a bit much with the bow. i don't think she is a bow woman. and i loved the colours.
it was very touching to be in the thick of festivities via satelite. i wonder how he can carry the burden on his not so broad shoulders. but i am amazed how captivating he is when he speaks.

there will be knitting soon again. i do knit. but i don't have it in me to download pictures.

congratulations mary lou.

blogoversary

2009-01-13T21:12:00.003+01:00

it is my 2nd blogoversary today. i am very happy having hosted this space for two years now. and for several reasons. it motivates me to knit. i love to knit, but i also love to knit and exchange ideas with others. and your nice comments inspire me to knit more, i am sure. i have met many nice people in cyberspace. i am continually intrigued by all the friendliness a mutual interest generates. look at the top picture. it is the loveliest little japanese tea box fra kent , a very skilled knitter, living in kent, washington. he had the courtesy to send me this tea plus a large chocolate santa for christmas. i gulped the chocolate. but i am a little tight with using the tea. and when i have finished it, i think i will keep my sewing thread and needles in the box remembering a wonderful knitter friend on the other side of the globe.

the hat (lousy quality) is fern glade by megan marshall from knitty in the left overs from st. brigid. a nice toasty hat and a fun knit. i use it all the time along with my three poroms. i love wearing a hat in the winter. there is a certain cosyness about it.

oh well, i think i should host a little competition. the rules are easy. leave a comment stating your favourite colour and i will send you some yarn of danish origin in that colour, if you win. enough for a nice little project like a cowl or mittens or something. i think colours are half the knitting. for many years i loved blue and i thought i'd never fall out of love. but the last many years i have been falling for greens, browns and even ochre. i also have a dream of knitting a primary yellow slouchy hat at some point.

oh and for those of you who have been following my blog. i cannot begin to say how much i love teaching adults again. one of my classes are illiterate people and i get happy seeing their joy of learning the alphabet and writing the wobbly letters. it is so worthwhile.

i will leave this little competition open until the 20th. good luck.

a warm jacket

2009-01-10T19:28:00.002+01:00

a while ago i went with my niece to my lys to buy yarn for another ponchito. she looked in the drops pattern magazine and fell in love with this drops jacket which i incidentally already had thought of knitting for her to make use of my rowan yorkshire tweed in the colourway wild plum which i bought from jannettes rare yarns a few years ago. the colour is a deep wine red with emerald, fuchsia and rust flecks. the colour is a bit difficult but my niece's colours are so good that it suits her. this is what happens when you buy yarn online. you end up with a whole different colour than you had expected. the pattern is a bit difficult to follow. if i didn't have a lot of experience i wouldn't know what to make of it, and i think the translation into english is computer generated. it says, for example, sew the collar tight..... and i thought why, until i realised this is the expression we use in nordic languages to sew something tight.

it wasn't exactly a joy to knit, but mostly because the colour is a bit difficult when you have to work in electric light all the time. there is very little contrast.

i am pleased with the result as i think it fits her perfectly. much better than i expected and i think it will be a winner in her wardrobe. i love the a line and i wouldn't hesitate to knit one for myself after i have finished what i have planned to knit the coming months. i plan to knit fern by alice starmore in the colourway tormentil. the kit was a present for myself and a shetland shawl for the new baby in the family who i think will be a girl, and then there will be no end to the knitting.

this week i started my new job. it is great. i love being a teacher again, and i am in awe of my student's ability to tackle their situation as asylum seekers. it is a very uncertain future they face.

happy 2009

2009-01-03T20:54:00.002+01:00

i just want to say happy new year to all my lovely readers. i am happy for each and every one. and i am always happy for comments as it makes the whole blogging thing seem so real. it has been an eventful year, the one that just passed, and i tell it good riddance. it was not a bright one, but i move on with hope and confidence. i am sure this one cannot be worse. as a matter of fact i expect it to be lovely. waking up on the 1st. was lovely, i was hung over, to say the least, but i felt refreshed at the same time. i spent new year's with people i love and the first day in the new year with people i love. and i spent the last day in the year with some one i care a lot for. and it felt like good omens for the year to come. i am an optimist.

and it has not been bad all the time of course. nothing ever is. there was good knitting, good music, caring friends. and i never ran out of yarn. i grew to know myself in a way i hadn't expected. which will be good from now on and forever. there were lovely and generous blogging friends. there were irl meetings with blogging friends. there were snow storms, thunderstorms, the mediterranean and the north sea. there was little friends to knit for and big friends to knit for. there were introverts and extroverts.

i suppose there was life.

pig harvest

2008-12-28T18:09:00.002+01:00

here is alba with the pigs. she won them. in denmark it is tradition to make a yummy kind of ricepudding for christmas with loads of chopped almonds in and then one whole. the one who gets the whole will get a prize.

in my family it is always a homemade pressie. and it has always been my father's chore to make it. but this year we had to rethink and i got the task this year. next year i may or may not do it again.

i have decided that i would love to knit a lamb and chicken collection for easter though. i never thought this was my thing at all, but i have really taken a liking in little knitted animals.

and i think alba is going to love playing pig farmer. isn't that every little girl's biggest dream ;-))

flared lace smokering

2008-12-23T20:10:00.002+01:00

there were two projects that went a bit wrong i.e. the gift knitting went wrong so i thought snap out of it, let me knit a little thingy for myself. i wanted to knit a smokering in qiviut and went on a manical search for qiviut in a very bad mood a while ago. no qiviut but i slipped on the floor in a yarnstore and went home. it was in the thick of job search and rejections, so i felt really really bad lying there on the middle of a floor in a yarn store.

since then things have changed for the better. i am so glad. and all of a sudden i don't have the urge for qiviut any longer. but i thought it would be fun to knit a smoke ring anyway and i fell in love with heartstrings pattern: flared lace smokering and it turned out to be great fun to knit. the qiviut was substituted by drops alpaca from stash. stashbusting is nice and i am starting to believe in the philosophy that says: get rid of things you haven't used for two years.

and how does one model a smokering? i suppose my nephew feels pretty happy about sporting it yarnballboogie style . and when i met him today i thought what a family we are. always flashing my handknits. i have been out with 4 family members this december, and some at random, and they have all been wearing my handknits. in my nephew's case the fishtrap cardigan. it is unbelievable how well the briggs and little regal holds up. not a pill, not a difference in shape in sight. if i didn't have to pay that damned tax for getting it into the country i'd never use any other yarn.

merry christmas.

have you seen the little piggies.....

2008-12-18T19:51:00.002+01:00

the three little pigs ended up being a whole family with still more members to come. as i said in my last post, it is danish blogger, who wrote up the pattern for these. but the concept of little knitted animals is also a well known concept in waldorf pedagogy. freya jaffke has a lot of other animals and dolls in a little book called toymaking with children. i think i want that book in order to knit a basket full of chicken and lambs for easter. it is great fun to make these little creatures and to see how differently the turn out when stuffed and in all the different kinds of yarn. when i have decided how to present them for christmas i will take another photo.

my next project, though, is going to be meg swansen's shaded aspen leaf as a zip cardigan in 4 different green shades for my friend who will be 50 in march. i hope to start and finish during christmas so he can wear it when winter sets in. it has been great fun to decide on the colours and looking at the few pictures on ravelry. especially since my friend likes to be a part of the process and the colour choice is completely after his choice and taste. i do like it though.

i have not decided what will be the theme of the coming year's knitting, but i am sure that my niece or nephew who is due in march will play an important role.

danish bacon

2008-12-11T22:28:00.002+01:00

it is not that i haven't been knitting. i just haven't been blogging. the thought of getting back to work has been occupying my thoughts and i have had luck. a job a bit similar to the nice job i left one and a half year ago, but in a different setting. i will be teaching asylum seekers danish and eventually english. it has a time limit this job but it doesn't matter. i start in january but i have actually already started. my first lesson was yesterday when i was teaching a group of men english. the difference between fifty and fifteen for instance. i enjoyed it a lot. and tomorrow i am going again.

i am knitting two christmas projects. but in the meantime i am knitting these little piggies and i hope to knit a whole basket full before christmas. they are going to be our prize for a little christmas competition that is tradition in denmark.

they are a varying size and the brainchild of danish blogger liselotte. even though you don't understand a word danish, liselotte's blogging skills are amazing. she whips off one project after the other. and the photography is soo great. go have a look.

owls

2008-11-23T12:39:00.004+01:00

as soon as i had knitted the last stitch on the mega sweater for my brother i cast on for another project. i had been inspired by mandy's owl cardigan she made for maggie last christmas and i had wanted to use the owl motif for something for alba. i think whatever suits maggie suits alba too. i am right in the slipstream of mandy. not a bad place to be.

the owl is such a wonderful motif and in catalania where half of alba's family lives it has a deep cultural meaning of being a symbol of wisdom as it of course does here where it is the symbol of bookstores as the snake is a symbol of apothecarians. i remember my middle eastern students being were scared of owls since it was a harbinger of evil.

i grew up with swedish author, elsa beskow's, children's book from last century where the owl teaches the animals and the tomter in the forest what they know. the pictures from her books were so evocative that they have stayed in my mind for all these years. and they are surely the books that i will get my great niece's and nephew's when they get a little older.

so i knit the owl dress from designclub.dk in the original yarn duo, in the most magnificent olive green. i cannot begin to say how much i love this yarn which in fact wasn't the original yarn, but the duo merino, which is a fingerring lambswool, and just the kind of 'honest' yarn that i love. i didn't care for the silk blend since i think silk has a tendency to get out of shape.

i used needles 3mm, and added golden beads as eyes and a greenish velvet ribbon. the pattern says you need 150 grammes of yarn but i only used 100. that is annoying since the yarn is anything but cheap. i am pleased with the end result and it suits her very well. it is a totally feminine dress. alba likes it too, but i forgot to bring the camera along. silly me.

i am happy to say that there is a baby on it's way in my family again. that means all knitting all kinds of baby stuff. i think i will begin with a baby shawl or maybe the spanish christening shawl from folk shawls by cheryl oberle. not that this child has any spanish roots.

blur

2008-11-22T13:24:00.002+01:00

it just wanted to prove that i actually finished this baby. i think it has turned out well but i don't quite understand why it flares at the back. maybe it is due to the bigness of the sweater. my brother likes it and was going to wear it at a conference where he is a key speaker.

it is still impossible to take nice pictures and especially in the evening. and the colour of this sweater is quite unphotographable too.

i hope you can get the idea.

stats:

9 skeins of cushendale in the colourway moss.

knitpicks options no. 3½ and 4 mm

pattern little rivers from alice starmore: stillwater.

the pattern is inspired by rivers in delaware.

as all other starmore patterns this leaves you with absolutely no bad surprises. so well written. her sweaters are on the big side and this is no exception . i didn't have gauge so it is actually much smaller than the original and still roomy.

i cannot recommend the yarn enough. get some and knit a nice heirloom.

procrastination over and done with.

2008-11-18T15:08:00.002+01:00

well i finally stopped procrastinating and gave the monster a eucalan bath and a spin and pinned it out on my rose and thistle duvet. my god this is a big sweater but hopefully i will be able to finish it tomorrow and move on. well i am already. the girly girly dress i am knitting is almost finished and i think i will knit a few aran weight sweaters afterwards for christmas presents. as i am not working i think i will have to make christmas shopping cheap this year.
i am looking and looking for the perfect job. i am getting quite impatient and hope for change soon. last night i dreamed i was obama's girlfriend (sorry michelle et al.). i am as keen on change as everyone.

and darkness, darkness

2008-11-16T21:25:00.003+01:00

it is not getting much better- the light, that is. but as far as i remember, there can be glorious sunny january days. and right now joni mitchell sings: and darkness, darkness, no colour, no contrast. so lovely pictures in near future is more than i can promise.

i finished my brother's sweater. but i don't have it in me to sew the sideseams since it needs a wet block first, and that is about the most boring thing in this world. i hate all the pinning of all the pieces. usually i do it, but in this case i have to bring out a big duvet to pin on, since the sweater is huge.

so i forgot all about my last post and went out to get some new yarn with my niece. another ponchito for her. and a poncho for alba. the green for my niece, the cotton candy for alba. i came to think that she is a girl and maybe she has other colour preferences than me though i seriously doubt it. she wants a green bicycle for christmas!!! little miss strange.

the green amorphous knitting is a dress for alba. it is a dress with a border of owls. really cute. and soon finished...

oh yes and then my knitpicks. i think these needles are my new love. nothing is better. no addi, nothing is better.

a knitter insane

2008-11-07T11:53:00.002+01:00

it is as you might be able to see, not because i don't have wool. i actually have to shelves in my book cabinet stuffed with wool and several bags sitting around in my apartment. there should be plenty to go on board in without adding to the stash. i mostly have a few skeins left from each project i knit since i always order a little more than i expect to use. i am afraid of running out of yarn for a given project.

and it is not because i don't have nice wool. i have lots of nice yarn. for instance i have a whole cone of perfectly good jaggerspun zephyr that would go well with the smoke ring i would like to knit. anyway i found myself stressing around all over copenhagen to buy qiviuk that i cannot really afford and because last friday was a bad day i wanted to cry or stamp my feet because no one seemed to carry it. and it almost went that way since i slipped on the slippery floor of one of the lys's and then i really wanted to cry. especially since they only had worsted weight qiviuk. it is obsessive and in sane and the fate of many knitters. why do we so desperately want to beaver more wool than with could ever knit in to projects??? well maybe i will be happy it this financial crisis gets any worse. but i am an optimist and it is nothing i really think about on a regular basis.

and after the qiviuk story i told myself that it was crazy so why did i go to a yarn store yesterday and buy the olive green yarn for a dress for alba???? there is a plenitude of things i could knit her out of the yarn i have in my cabinet??? useful warm hats and cowls for winter it is not like she is in terrible need of a knitted olive green dress??

i wonder why it becomes so obsessive and actually i think this is very much influenced by the internet. in the old knitting days i didn't buy more yarn than i needed and only bought anything if it was needed for a project. now i obsess though i think some people would consider my obsessing that of a novice. but i cannot bear to live without a qiviuk smokering or whatever until the next day or week when i want something else. maybe i should get a more meaningful hobby like helping out the homeless where i would surely be more able to draw a line.

PS: sorry about the lousy quality of the pics recently. when i looked out the window an hour ago i was thinking about the bob dylan song that starts with the line: darkness at the break of noon. so please forgive me.

change

2008-11-05T16:15:00.002+01:00

congratulations to those of you who think it is the right man who was elected yesterday. it is an incredible story. i think it is the right man but now he has to prove himself. have seen a lot of insight docus lately about him and i think his story must leave a lot of hope for a lot of people round the world. and then it doesn't hurt a bit that he and his wife have 'it'. both of them. i am not sure i like here black and red dress but she was certainly dressed to fight in a dress of bullfighter value. and it will of course be a fight. i suppose it was no coincidence either that the girls were dressed to match their mom.

and a vote for him was a vote for change. too bad i couldn't vote. i think i have never needed change any more than now. both on the knitting front and personally. i am seeking for a job again. second time this year and one time too many. i some times feel a bit jinxed. i was working for 14 years the same place without any major problems and then this. i know that there has been a lot of different things helping me through this time, mainly myself. but knitting has certainly been part of it. both the meditativeness but certainly the creativity. i have been knitting from patterns lately but that is not all that bad. you learn a lot of the tricks of the trade.

and i have changed from knitting the body of my brother's sweater to knitting sleeves. i like knitting sleeves. i like increasing for some odd reason.

and i will hopefully finish in a week at the most. and then it is onwards to knitting something from the green yarn or starting another hat production or just something for plain me.

the long and winding road

2008-11-03T15:10:00.003+01:00

it is not easy to keep one's strictly knitting blog up to date when one is a very monogamous knitter and when all the pictures one take end up slightly blurred due to the nordic light which is missing so much at the time being. it is november and the hardest month to get through in all the year. i am afraid i never used to worry much about november but it definitely comes with age.

and the knitting is almost as dreary as the month.. not that i don't get anything done. but little rivers aka the long and winding road is a major task. there is cabling on every row and a 180 stitches on every row. i calculated that the back and the front alone is more than 70000 stitches. i wonder how i have time for such calculations when there is knitting to do. thankfully i have now started the sleeves which means the sweater will be finished pretty soon. it is the smallest part of the sweater and i really don't mind knitting sleeves.

it will be nice to knit something else. maybe a sweater for me who has taken a liking in handknit sweaters because of st. brigid that i seem to be wearing all the time. so lovely warm and comfortable.

i think maybe i will have to start knitting some colourwork soon and hence i bought alice starmore's: charts for colourknitting from a fellow raveller. it is a great book. i love the little elk motif which i would like to use for an alba cardi. just a very classic norwegian lice kind of thingy.

i wish all americans a good election day tomorrow. it is nerve wrecking and oh so interesting what will happen since it concerns all of use in the global village. my friend has named his bird obama. i know what he would vote if he could.

frog

2008-10-26T12:25:00.002+01:00

i was rather tired of the little rivers . they are not so little when they have to fit a two meters tall man who is well build. so the library texted me and told me that norah gaughan's knitting nature had arrived. i had wanted to knit the sunflower tam for a while. off i went to collect the book and buy some lopi which is the yarn the pattern calls for. and off to knitting on 2 sizes smaller needles than the pattern calls for since i thought the needle size compared with the number of stitches sounded wrong. but even at another gauge this hat turned out enormous even for my big head. even for the elephant man.

i had also ordered some organic yarn from garthenor in wales for a ponchito for me, since it is said to be enormously nice to wear on one's cold shoulders. i whipped it of yesterday and it has turned out beautifully. i will post pictures at some point. and the yarn is fab and smells of wool and is three ply which i love. i will get some at another point to knit a cardigan with a zipper for myself. the one i knitted for my nephew proves to be really useful and it is nice to be able to open it when the temperature changes during the day...

alba asked: tell me, what are you knitting??? how cute is that?? she has taken a fancy in her dad's green koolhaas and wants one her size now. she is fun. a 2-year old with a craving for koolhaas. when will she be able to learn to knit????

little rivers

2008-10-20T11:56:00.002+02:00

i am a sucker for alice starmore. in fact i am a sucker for anyone who can write a lovely pattern that is easy to understand. i am also a sucker for doing all the calculations myself sometimes, but right now i am so interested in alice starmore's cablework and i wish it was possible to get to see all her books. at the biggest library in copenhagen they have none. too bad since they are out of print.

i have started knitting little rivers from stillwater. somebody, whose identity has to remain secret :-)), borrowed me the pattern. it is for my brother who is your typical middle aged man but also a middle aged man who is about two meters tall. so there is a lot of knitting to do. originally i wanted to knit irish moss but knitting purl stitches through the back loop just doesn't agree with me and my hands. so this one is easier on the hands. it is a pretty easy pattern to memorize but involves cabling on both rs and ws. so at the same time it isn't mindless knitting.
the yarn is cushendale for the yarnroom and it is actually the exact same yarn as blackwater abbey. a two ply yarn with some scratchiness to it. and it comes in some very lovely colours. if scratchy is your thing, i highly recommend it. and the price is good too.

i love the look of the pattern and it is not hard to imagine how she came up with the name little rivers. and another thing is her ribbings. you would never get a 'normal' ribbing on a starmore pattern. that inspires me a lot. i also used a decorative ribbing on alba's st. alba, that of course was so inspired by her.

right now i am reading cynthia gravelle le count's andean knitting. it is a lovely book. i have been fascinated by chullos since childhood when the big hit was el condor pasa. on the cover of the record there was this man wearing a chullo. and reading about it makes it even more fascinating. it is the most intricate beautiful knitting and one of these days i will knit one on tiny tiny needles.. being a dreamer and an optimist i always hope to go to bolivia or peru at one time to learn..

poromaniac, or we are family....

2008-10-17T10:47:00.004+02:00

i have been knitting lovely poroms in 6 colours in all. 4 of them in the yarn jared suggests. and i agree with him. this yarn is fab and could be my desert island yarn. take me to a desert island with all those hues and i would never bother anyone again. or let me spend a little time in the shetland islands among the sheep and the lovely sheepish products. and you will not hear from me while i am there.

i made a yellow one is the colourway yellow ochre

a green one in the colourway seaweed

a purple one in the colourway dusk

and a brownish one in the colourway

i knit one each night and the knitting is great fun and the pattern is so well orchestrated by jared who isn't only a great connaiseur of colours and yarn and knits lovely things but also is a great tech knitter. every thing is so well explained. well except one thing. what is a porom?? i learn a lot about different cultures from knitting but this one i have no idea about.

i am looking forward to wearing my poroms. i think it becomes most people with a hat. and this makes one look like rastaman goes tweedy or a character in a dickens novel. i am not sure if i am going to keep all of them but in a way i think it would be great to let them stay together as a family that can spice up my wardrobe any day.

a really bad photographer

2008-10-15T23:11:00.004+02:00

i have been knitting accessories like a mad woman lately. and unfortunately my knitting is very often better than the pics of my knitting.

last week it was my sister's 54th and i gave her a present together with a lot of other family members. so i thought i'd make her a little knitted surprise. i had two lovely skeins of tweedy lambswool from my lys, that i originally bought for a porom. so i doubled it and whipped of a feather and fan scarf. it is a lovely green. the kind of colour that makes us scandinavians with reddish skin look just so much better. i am obsessed with green because i think it balances your natural colours and because it is good with any eye colour.

i am always in doubt whether to buy yarn from my lys that carries some nice yarns and is expensive or ordering it online which is cheaper. the owner of this lys is such a delightful and generous person who is really interested in her trade. when i was there the last time she had beautiful wooden crochet hooks on sale and when i wanted to buy a few she didn't want to charge me. how nice is that. i insisted on paying though. i would like her shop to stay where it is. but i love the secret bond among us crafters. we have this love of sharing it with other people with the same love of fiber and tools. and it is good to have a good irl chat about fiber and knitting techniques every once in a while.

now i have to get my brothers sweater going. or the wallabies for my great nephews. a knitter is always busy......

a quick knit

2008-10-13T15:20:00.002+02:00

i love knitting intricate patterns and things that are not finished too soon but sometimes the opposite is quite nice too. and my niece requested a ponchito in thick wool. so this is how i spent friday night. the style is sold in all the hippest shops here right now at the outrageous price of usd 200 or 900 danish kroner. so it really pays. my niece likes berry colours so her's is in raspberry. if i were to make it for myself i think i would choose some kind of earthy hue.

i simply cast on 35 stitches and knitted moss stitch through 4 balls of drops eskimo ( 200 meters), cast off and sewed the short side to the long side. easy peasy.

and then a picture of alba in the tomten i knitted for her more than a year ago in true zimmermann style with looong sleeves and such. i just wanted to show that it still fits her and is her all time choice for a jacket. she calls it her salad leaf jacket. how cute is that.

hat binge!!!

2008-10-03T17:25:00.002+02:00

i am always knitting on a big project which i have promised somebody and some times i becomes too much of a big project and then i love to knit some hats. i am like everyone else a big admirer of brooklyntweed and hence i decided to have a go on his new hat patterns habitat and porom (what does porom mean???).

i have lots of worsted in my stash so the habitats were going to be stashbusters where as i wanted to knit porom in the yarn jared suggests. so i ordered and i have now been waiting for nearly two weeks for two parcels from scotland. one from glasgow and one from the shetland islands and have an almost finished hat that i would really like to finish and wear. it is super annoying.

so i decided to whip off a few poroms in yarn from my stash. one in rowanspun dk. i have a lot of this and already knitted a few things in it. a great skinny dk wool with lots of nubs. the other is in silky wool type yarn from my local lys. i think i will wear them a lot. especially the first.

the curry coloured habitat is in classic elite skye tweed. i had just enough left from meg swansen's aran cardi and the other is in beaverslide worsted. also left from the first aran cardi and the st. alba sweater. i think i will give them away. the beanie type of hat is not the best for my big head.

i love knitting hats and i love hats as an accesory. there are many lovely hats to knit out there so maybe i should get knitting...

argh or øv as we say in danish.

2008-09-26T23:30:00.002+02:00

i have a new love. and when love isn't over or hasn't started it is normal to be eagerly anticipating for one's love to come along. my new love is porom in jamieson's dk by the one and only jared ( i do not have to link). alas there wasn't enough yarn as i had read it as to skeins were needed but they are twice as big in the us as in europe. so now i hope mr. gary jamieson of shetland islands will be quick to send me the missing skein plus a few other.

jared says that a light dk is needed for this project and i agree. this is the right yarn that both shows off the lace and gives the right drape. and it is very different from any other old yarn. and i know yarn.

it always takes a long time to ship from the hebrides or the shetland islands. i wonder how it is done. by boat, by a weekly ship, by helicopter.

one day i will go there and find out for myself. wearing the porom and saint brigid.

comments

2008-09-21T22:36:00.006+02:00

i knit a lot in public and right now i enjoy early autumn by sitting in 'my' park knitting in the afternoons. it is fun how people react. men will always say: how diligent you are. do men like diligence in women???

and today a spanish lady came and exclaimed: san mirar. relaxacion.

but the best comment this week was when somebody stopped me in the street and asked where i bought st. brigid. not because i particularly wants my knitting not to be home made but it is nice to get a compliment from a stranger in the street.

i have finished secret garden. another starmore knit. i cannot begin to say how clear and lovely her patterns are. and i learn a lot i can use for my own designs when i am back at creating my own things. it is a little thing but with a lot of techniques to be learned. and i am a sucker for technique right now.

the yarn is a kit from virtual yarns in red rattle. yes i also learn about scottish flora and fauna by shopping with alice. the button was given to me from my mother 30 years ago. and the lovely little tag is made by peggy of noodleknit fame. there was no way to make alba model it today. and never mind that. she is cute anyway.

i have embarked on knitting a few arans for my grandnephews. and then i have a sweater for my brother on the needles. there is a lot of twisted purl stitches so i shouldn't knit too diligently on that one.

st brigid no. 2

2008-09-13T02:18:00.002+02:00

here is my latest st. brigid. it wasn't less fun to knit the second. i love the pattern and learn a lot about cables when i knit it. my st. brigid's has a lot less ease than the original pattern due to my gauge that is obviously different than alice's. and i am happy about the more snug fit that in my opinion makes it much more wearable. especially for skirt girls like me and my sister. she is alba's grandmother.

i used to think it was not so hip to knit other people's patterns but i have changed opinion. there is a lot to learn when using a skilled knitter's patterns. as for example alice's or jared's . and from that learning experience it is possible to refine my own designs eventually.

the whole knitting process was very fast with this one. it made me think of when the mice helped cinderella hem the dress for the big ball. i almost felt like some one was doing the work for me. from start to finish the whole thing was done in a fortnight.

the yarn is hebridean 3 ply. i absolutely lurve this yarn. it has all the qualities a good yarn should have. and there are some amazing colours all inspired by different aspects of nature and especially the nature of lewis in the hebrides. i love reading alice's colourstories on her website. the colourway is fulmar which is inspired by the colours of this bird's wing. it is a kind of latte colour with whispers of rust, green and dusky pink. a very unusual colour that changes a lot depending on the light. i guess all colours do but this does it very much. and yes we like to wear hats indoors.

i have a lot of projects that i want to knit. i want to knit jared's new hats and ordered some jamieson's for one of them. and the red hebridean 3 ply is for a matinée coat for alba in a design by alice starmore from her book 'the children's collection that is available at her website at a reasonable price ( 12 gbp) and at an unreasonable price at ebay. maybe it will be a collector's item in time to come.

i have also started knitting irish moss from aran knitting for my brother in cushendale from ireland . it consists of a lot of purl stitches knitted from the back so i think it is important to have more than one project going on since it does make your hands and arms ache a bit.

oh dear what a lot of boring details.... i always wonder if my blog posts would be a bit more fun in danish.

my knitting refuge

2008-09-05T21:39:00.002+02:00

so i am going on and on about knitting in the park. be warned my park is nothing like central park but it has lovely benches, lovely flowers, plants and trees and i have spent all spring and summer and now autumn sitting there knitting for a few hours almost every day. it is a 40 minutes walk from where i live and a nice place to spend a few hours. i love the benches, i love the castle (rosenborg) and the whole ambience of the place. when i am there with friends i tend to sit in the grass sharing some wine. all summer the gardener took take of the flower beds that were colours ranging from a warm rusty orange to baby pink (poppies mostly). little alba used to say: isn't it beautiful... right now there are yellows, lavender, purple and browns. i wonder what mr. noro would get out of that..

and when i look at the medallion on the bench i think it would be easily adapted into a cable or a pattern for some colourful fair isle knitting.

design ideas are all over the place if you want them to. and not only in pretty places like this.

and i am knitting away on my 2nd st. brigid for my sister. the colourway is fulmar and it is a strange pinkish russet beige colour. i like it . it has, like many of her heathers a strange kind of pale opal look. strange to compare opal and wool, maybe, but that is what i think.

i think i can actually finish this within 2 weeks. that is my goal. and then i am going to knit irish moss by alice for my brother. this time i am going to use cushendale dk from stephanie, a fellow raveller. her shop is in ireland, in a town called moneytown, and she is very good to do business with. good prices and excellent customer service. if you are after some nice irish yarn. try her out.

what are your autumn knits.

a cardi for my niece

2008-08-27T12:32:00.002+02:00

as readers of this blog may know alba has a father. and he has na craga. and an uncle who has the fishtrap cardi and a mother who didn't get a sweater for some time. last winter i started knitting an adult tomten without any refinements and it stayed as a wip through the spring and summer. i didn't really agree with me. so i saw the moss stitch jacket on ravelry and ordered the book scottish inspirations by sarah dallas et al. and decided to use the yorkshire tweed chunky that i had purchased from jannette to knit a moss stitch jacket for my niece ulle. i got it an incredibly good price and it is great to wear with all colours especially jeans.

my favourite clothes shop in copenhagen (that is closing down unfortunately) had a great sale on safety pins in supersize. so i got a few of those. i have yarn left for another moss stitch jacket, you see.

i think my niece loves when her family get gifts but i also think it is important to remember that even though you are an adult with your own family, your inner child still has to be nurtured with gifts and nice words too. well it is just a thought.

my yarn from the outer hebrides finally arrived and i have cast on for another st. brigid. a saint brigid that will be popular with anyone who is a burberry fanatic. not that my sister is that.

it is great and it is proceeding swimmingly. i am even able to knit after a few g and t's.

i am in awe of st. alice and st. brigid. there is a lot discussion going on at ravelry about the malice of alice. especially that she is so fussy about her copyright. i find it rather peculiar, as i think it is so great that she lifts up knitting to being an art form. and i don't understand that women who knows how long time it takes to get ideas let alone knit, doesn't cherish this upheaval of knitting. i wouldn't like people to say that knitting is something everyone can do effortlessly. i have worked and worked to get to this stage and no matter how much i work i know i will ever get alice's genius. so it is art. and hence be paid respect to. this also goes for other designers and i really appreciate those who actually give out some of their patterns.

when that is said, i really do hope that starmore will be reprinted eventually. because why not share the beauty.

st. alba

2008-08-24T18:42:00.004+02:00

as you all know there are a few things in life that inspire me. among those alba and knitting so i have knitted a lot for her since she was born. and when her mum asks her, who do we know who knit, she promptly answers: merete knits. she is even starting to request things. i gave her mum the bookmark scarf and alba said: i want one too.

this year i have been very interested in cables which have resulted in different cabled knits. among those i enjoyed to knit both st. brigid and na craga enourmously. hence i will knit another st. brigid for my sister soon. but while waiting for the yarn to arrive from outer hebrides i decided to knit an alice starmore inspired sweater for little alba. when i order yarn abroad i normally order generous amounts and therefore i had enough left of beaverslide worsted for a sweater for a child. and even for a hat.

i used all my starmore literature to find the cables i wanted to knit and put it all together, my way. i thought the heart cable is so cute for a little girl, i am in love with the aran braid and the sand stitch is a great pattern. the rib is called knotted rib and is really lovely and fun to do. the neck line is inspired by na craga with 5 rounds of knitting after the ribbing.

i hope she will wear it a lot. she is as sweet as pie in it. in my opinion.

knitting stats:

3 skeins of beaverslide worsted in the colourway lichen

needles no 4½mm

the thing is knitted in 4 pieces and then seamed.

the measurements are based on ez eps however.

crochet

2008-08-21T21:40:00.002+02:00

i was miserable at learning to knit when i was a child. my needlework teacher was highly dissatisfied with me. but somehow i managed to teach myself to crochet (with a little help from my mother) and when i got the grasp of that i soon learned to knit.

i have crocheted a lot in my life. doilies, garments, dolls clothes, grandma square afghans. but it is a long, long time ago.

since adrian posted her anne scarves i have been quite interested in crocheting again and hence i took the hook in hand last night a crocheted a scarf. it is not the anne scarf but something very much similar made from noro i had in my stash. it is actually two colourways but that just adds to the charm (seriously you will not notice).

it was great fun and i ordered some kureyon for some more scarves, but i think i will use it for mitered mittens instead. i am so much more fascinated with knitting when it comes down to brass tacks although crochet in variegated yarn has some jimi hendrix qualities to it. but i think that is all about the variegated yarn.

stay tuned for my alice starmore knock off for alba and a cardi for her mum.

there is a lot of knitting going on here and i am sick from waiting for my hebridean three ply order.

in the meantime

2008-08-18T22:30:00.003+02:00

what can a girl do when waiting for a new kit in a different colour for st. brigid. yes my sister is in line for one and is having her birthday pretty soon. so i will give her the knitting, and maybe the yarn.

i have knitted first one koolhaas in malabrigo (rain forest).

then another (in debbie bliss donegal luxury tweed)

and then i embarked on a alice inspired knitting project for alba.

and then i knitted a cardigan type of thing for my niece.

and then i was left with a lot of seaming and a lot of darning to do. never mind. it will be done.

the nice thing is that i have finally tried jared's wonderful pattern. such a nice detailed pattern that is, and i still have to make the perfect koolhaas for me. but there are a few hats for the gift drawer now.

i used ten skeins of yorkshire tweed chunky and the rest of the beaverslide left from my first saddle shoulder aran.

which means there is plenty of space for new yarn for new winter projects. without me having to feel guilty to get yarn all the time.

and did i mention that i crocheted something today. crochet used to interest me a lot and i even wrote a paper about the crocheted kippah back in 89. and today i crocheted again from noro left overs.

here are pictures of the hats and a sneak peak of the alice sweater for alba. the rest i will present in my next post.

it has been great fun and a change to do one skein projects. i could easily get addicted, though.

and more than anything. thanks for all your lovely and kind comments on st. brigid. i can hardly wait for autumn to arrive.

st.brigid

2008-08-07T20:48:00.002+02:00

here is st. brigid in all her glory. i think it is the most beautiful pattern i have ever used and the loveliest yarn. the yarn is so easy to work with and i am amazed at how many colours alice uses to create one colour.

stats:

knitting time: circa one month

yarn: 15 skeins of virtual yarns hebridean 3-ply

needles: addi turbo no. 4 ½

pattern: alice starmore: aran knitting

i knitted the whole thing in pieces and seamed them after blocking. i think i used 8 or 10 hours seaming which is very unusual for me, but certainly worthwhile.

i didn't have the correct tension so the whole thing is smaller than the measurements in the pattern, and i am quite pleased with that, since i don't like huge sweaters. but it took some adjustments. the sleevetop has more stitches and the sleeves an extra pattern repeat.

i think i will use this sweater a lot this coming winter. it goes with most thing and in my opinion most of all with a pencil-skirt.

i highly recommend any adventurous knitter to knit this.

mememe et moi

2008-08-06T00:16:00.002+02:00

it is not that no knitting has been going on here lately but i have also been preoccupied with holidaying, visiting people and even teaching my dear two year old alba to knit. she is seriously interested and holds the knitting needle in her little hand while i work. how i love that. i think it has paid off to knit all those things for her. tomorrow she is two and having her birthday party on saturday with 42 visitors. i adore that girl.... alice starmore and meg swansen started early.

i have finished my st. brigid and i love it and will post pics soon. another starmore strike of genius. i am going to knit one more for my sister.

a while ago vivienne tagged me and here it is:

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

i left my husband and went into a new relationship. and i had lots of success at work.

.2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today?

well the day has almost ended. so i went to see my friend, i reknit the collar on st. brigid, i textmessaged a few friends, i assured myself that i could be happy about something that happened yesterday and i thought of knitting.

3. What snacks do I enjoy? 6 years ago i lost about 60 kilos of weight by walking big time and forget snacking. i only snack when i have got the courage by drinking. hoho.

4. Where are some places I've lived?

denmark. copenhagen and suburban copenhagen. i am a homegirl and have lived where i live now for 25 years.

5. What things would I do if I were a billionaire?

doctors without borders. a music and knitting trip through the us. shower friends and family with presents. do more contests on my blog. develop and educate myself. support a shooting star for a while. INVEST.

congrats becky c.

2008-07-07T20:21:00.002+02:00

i was becky of knitasha von stashenskeins who won the kauni yarn. i can't find your email, so please send me an email so i can send the prize to you. isn't it just a great name for a blog?? i didn't know what to call mine and then it became knititch, which would be a perfectly valid word in danish but that may sound very odd in english.

my camera is really strange for the time being and i am very much in need of a new smashing one, so i simply didn't have it in me to go through all the hazzle of documenting the raffle.
sorry folks. but it was a drawing and becky's name was up.

i have been having a lot of festivities this weekend. and no knitting. went to see leonard cohen of whom i have been a devoted fan since i was 16. omg it was so great. he, who is 73 years old, played 24 songs in hours. quite impressive and beautiful.

my 100th post

2008-07-02T23:23:00.003+02:00

this post is my 100th post since i began blogging in january 2006. i had expected to have a beautiful blog with lovely pictures and ever since i have been quite disappointed with the quality of the pictures and sometimes with the contents of the text as well. but anyway i keep blogging because it is a fun way to get in touch with knitters from all over the world. i do appreciate that immensely and i appreciate both my loyal readers and those who leave a comment less frequently and also those i know read my blog but never leave a comment. thanks a lot.

and there has to be a little celebration and a little contest on this occasion. so i have to pop some kind of question. what would i like to know about my readers??? do you always rip back if you notice a minor mistake?? who is your favourite knitting designer?? or do you dream about becoming one yourself??? or how big is your yarn budget a year??? i just think any comment goes and you will be in my drawing of a little prize.

i decided it should be something that is not easy to get everywhere in the world, so i decided on a big skein (150 grs or about 600 meters) of Kauni in blues, greens, lavenders, and maybe even more colours. there was a felted bag knitted in this colourway at my lys and i rather liked it. and i rather liked to support my lys a bit, since i order so much yarn from all kinds of places around the world. i suppose if you don't support those irl knitting stores they will eventually close and there will not be any opportunity to go fondle wool.

oh and st. brigid is proceeding well. everyday i take my knitting to the beautiful kongens have (king's garden) in the center of copenhagen and sit on a bench watching the beautiful plethora of flowers and the renaissance castle and knit like crazy. i am on a knitting binge.

the contest will be open through sunday and i will pick a random winner.

knitting bliss

2008-06-23T18:28:00.002+02:00

here is my na craga all finished.

stats:

10 skeins of cascade 220 heathers, olive green

needles 4 and 4½ mm

size: largest

alterations: i knit it in the round up to armholes where i divided it and knit back and forth. it is slightly tighter since i was off gauge.

it is the most lovely and logical pattern and i loved knitting it. i would not hesitate to knit another or two (my brother and sister both want this for their autumnal birthdays). i love all the cables and the way they are distributed. and i love the sailor rib at the sides and on the sleeves. it would make a very nice sweater as an over all pattern.

the recipient is andrés who is alba's dad. he looks soooo good in it, i think. he is the right type for this kind of sweater. and i added a picture of alba and dad in my knits. actually we were all wearing my knits yesterday when i came to deliver the sweater. alba her red aran, my niece the fair isle yoke, andrés his new sweater and i was wearing my saddle shouldered aran. close knit family.

and now i am knitting st. brigid. it is more complicated than na craga and the yarn is very elastic which i have to get used to. i have decided to knit it back and forth. i don't really mind seaming. it can be great fun when one takes the time it needs.

wwkip and a lovely gift.

2008-06-15T18:54:00.003+02:00

well first things first. kent sent me a lovely pack with great green tea with a coconut scent and a lovely wild blackberry honey. the photo is awful but the tea is so good i couldn't wait for my camera to behave in order to take a more arty picture. everything was nicely wrapped up in red paper and i am not surprised since kent seems so meticulous with everything he does. i am looking sooo much forward to seeing his finished ssac since i am sure it will look like a dream.

secondly i pulled myself together and went to wwkip day yesterday. i always find it hard to go to such things on my own. but i had promised myself to go and see what it is like. it was a lot of knitting ladies have a great day together knitting (and talking) in public. there was a lot of sock knitting and bag knitting. i had hoped to see more people wearing finished objects but i guess it was a little too warm for that. i wore my meg swansen cardi and it got a really nice reception as did the na craga i am knitting. talking about na craga. i actually think i will finish it this week but i wonder if it will be too warm for any climate in these times of global warming. other wise it is a beautiful sculpture to hang on the wall.......

some get a kick from champagne....

2008-06-11T12:33:00.004+02:00

and i have to confess so do i. but the arrival of these babies certainly gives me a kick too. as a knitter i am always going for a yarn bargain. the cascade 220 sweater i am knitting now is not pricey at all, and the sweater before that, and the sweater before that.....

but i decided that the next thing i knit for myself should have no boundaries when speaking of beauty and cost and hence i decided to go for knitting alice starmore's: st. brigid in the original 3-ply hebridean. clara parkes praises it in her book and on knitter's review and i have to agree with her. it is not really like anything else i have ever fondled in the yarn department and i have to knit as fast as i can on na craga so i can get this thing going. i remember seeing the roving that tweed is made of on harris, scotland, once. it was a multitude of colours that eventually was spun into a yarn or fabric that looked a little like nothing from afar but that on a closer looked revealed the multitude of shades it actually consisted of. and this is the same. when you look at it so many shades meets the eyes.

the colourway is dulse. dulse is obviously some kind of weed found in scotland and though the overall impression is green there are red, purple, orange, grey, lavender flecks in it and it is the kind of colour that will go with anything. i requested some colour'cards but alice starmore doesn,t do colourcards. but i got 10 generous samples of other colours in her collection. one is prettier than the other. i wish i could go to lewis and do volunteer work for alice for a summer or two. i am sure i would be a better person on return due to the happiness all the colours would shower over me. or maybe it would be even better in the winter.

the january cardigan aka the fishtrap cardigan

2008-06-08T19:04:00.002+02:00

here is my version of the fishtrap from knitter's almanac. it is for my dear tall tall nephew with the very long arms. never have i knitted sleeves that looong.

it took 8 skeins of canadian regal from meg on needles 4½mm. it is not a very expensive yarn but very lovely for a rough wool afficinado like me. i am much more after texture than softness. the colour is forest brown a very unusual greyish orangey brown. very hard to define. and i think this yarn has heirloom quality.

i wanted to add a feature of my 'own' and made a ribbed welt that is from the rest of the body by purling one row one the right side. the rib pattern is from ms. starmore's: fishermen's sweaters to be more exact the rib used for the sweater 'inisheer'. it is a usual way to design an original aran. gladys thompson also has a lot of examples of such welts in her book about aran patterns. this year is the year of cables for me. i have at least 3 more cable projects in my head. when i have finished na craga i am going to knit st. brigid form aran knitting for myself in hebridean 3 play from alice starmore. i can hardly wait to receive the parcel from the outer hebrides.

after posting last time i realised i had the same picture twice and claiming that everything went swimmingly. it does actually so i post another picture to prove it.

swimmingly

2008-06-03T22:04:00.003+02:00

i cannot begin to say what a big joy it is to knit na craga. the pattern is so well and logically orchestrated. and the result is quite beautiful. i only hope the sweater will stay in shape and not pill awfully..

i am knitting a lot in public these days. i get all kinds of comments from strangers passing by like:

how diligent you are (elderly ladies)

is this for someone for christmas (middleaged men)

and all such things.

the lady remark is very process oriented.

the man remark is very product oriented.

i wonder if that applies for most things in life.

but the funniest thing was yesterday when i saw a youngish woman sitting knitting by one of the lakes here i cph. i went to the bench and took out my knitting too. and after a very short time we were talking and talking about knitting and designers and colours and good and bad ways to write patterns. she was actually writing a pattern for a company. i was shocked to hear how little those companies pay for such a big effort. i sometimes think it could be fun to publish knitting patterns but i want money, that's what i want, as the song goes. it is sad that it gets paid so badly and it is even more sad that it is because knitting is so biased. but maybe that will change in the future. i think we need handwork in the world today where so many people don't do much else but eating and playing on the computer whenever they have some time off!!!

oh and i have decided to go on a small trip to vilnius lithuania. i have heard there is a whole lot of knitting going on there. i will indulge.

na craga

2008-06-01T11:29:00.002+02:00

i have started na craga and the fish trap cardi is spending some time with my friend who is sewing the zipper in. i cannot wait to give it to my nephew with the long arms and i hope that this one will fit.

and last week i couldn't help myself buying aran knitting by alice starmore on ebay. i had it sent from lithuania. and the book is wonderful filled with history and technique. it is too bad that there is copyright issues so it cannot be republished since i think it is a must in any knitter's library. she analyses knitting in a way that only literature is usually analysed. and she also tells you to be a thinking knitter in the same way as elizabeth and meg. she calls it: LOOK-THINK-KNIT and the more i knit, the more i subscribe to this view upon knitting and i see that so many people succeed in getting their inner designer out these days through knitting and maybe because there are so many brilliant books on designing knitwear on the market.

so i am knitting na craga. it is great fun with something going on all the time and the cables are beautiful and prominent. i hope cascade 220 will not pill awfully.

retro

2008-05-22T22:47:00.002+02:00

here is a picture of the first garment i ever knitted. a retro tunic it is called on the online yarn store that sells it. it is made out of unspun icelandic and mine was red and navy blue. the yarn was brushed up after knitting and i was proud as a pope after knitting it at the tender age of twelve. i also remember knitting another sweater in garter stitch from cuff to cuff for my sister in two brown shades. i even remember the model wearing it. her name was pia tryde and she was the model at that time. now she must be about 63 and hopefully she has kept her lovely ingrid bergman looks.

i have been thinking so much about my childhood and my parents these past few weeks and what they gave me. it was quite a lot. good mostly. but my mother (whose initials were ez) certainly gave me the joy of knitting. we spent hours watching table and she had a drawer in her coffee table where she kept her knitting. it was quite big and made for the purpose. i don't think my mother stopped knitting until 2 weeks before she died. i kept the yarn and her knitting for years but must have thrown it away somewhere along the line. it doesn't really matter.

and i realise that i am related to so many avid knitters. my maternal grandmother knitted, my fraternal grandmother knitted norwegian mittens and socks and had such an ez take on knitting. my aunt on my mothers side knitted a little but was a very talented brodeuse. and my father's two sisters knit. i hope to get the chance once to go to knitting camp with my father's youngest sister in colorado. or just join her in her knitting group for a wee moment.

a few days ago i got an email from her granddaughter in illinois. and she has a flickr page.... mystery shawl, hedera, socks that rock.... a small world isn't it?????

finally

2008-05-15T12:32:00.003+02:00

i have threated with showing my saddle shoulder aran for a long time now. and here it finally is. i am very pleased with the sweater and love the place the photo shoot took place. it is denmark at it's best.
stats:

13 balls of classic elite skye tweed, upland green
needles 3½, 4 and 4½ mm.
pattern: meg swansen's saddle shoulder aran

i did as meg said in the pattern and like so often before with the zimmermann family patterns i figured out what to do as i went. i knit on with confidence. well this maybe applies more for the first saddle shoulder i knit for my nephew and which was so terribly wrong-sized.

the yarn is beautiful beyond belief, and like many other bloggers i pester myself for not having bought a little bit more before it went out of the market. some find this yarn very scratchy and it is definitely not malabrigo but i love the texture and feel.

the cables are ribbed cable, fishbone, sheepfold, and staghorn. the arrangement of staghorn and ribbed cable is stolen from alice starmore's inishmore.

all i can say is, if you haven't knitted it yet, do sometime in the future. it is genius.

thank you

2008-05-12T10:54:00.003+02:00

first of all. thank you for all your nice words regarding my father's death. it warmed me very much. now we have the funeral over and done with and a home that needs to be closed down. it is now the family home but a place where he went to live around 10 years ago.
it was a beautiful funeral. we had chosen roses in all colours for the coffin and it looked lovely. the priest made a lovely speak and he was such a good choice since he knew my mom and dad when they were young and hence it became very personal.

and there has been knitting. the fishtrap is proceeding wonderfully. i have always been in lovely with this pattern that reminds me of woodcarvings or something like that. it is not very difficult and the canadian regal makes the cables stand out very well. it is quite scratchy though. but i like this kind of scratchy yarn much more than soft processed yarn. i think it will last a lifetime.

after this project i plan to knit na craga in cascade heathers. i bought the yarn for a sweater for my dad but now i am going to knit it for andrés, the hubby of my niece, and alba's dad. he is such an aran man to look at.

and look at my turkish socks. they were bought in turkey some 50 years ago. my grandparents lived there and my parents and siblings were invited there on holiday. it was so unusual to go somewhere like that in that time. they made an article about it in the local newspaper.

i think they are beautiful stockings knitted on ultra small needles on an ultra tight gauge. the colours really stand out and they can serve as inspiration for something.

a sad time

2008-05-02T19:45:00.002+02:00

i have been having a lot of heartache and problems lately. my 83 year old father fell in his home and was taken to hospital where everything went rapidly downhill. he passed away tuesday morning and i have been busy informing friends and family and getting a priest (his cousin) and things like that. tomorrow my siblings and i are going to his house to see what needs to be done. the funeral is scheduled to wednesday.

in a time like this i cannot begin to say how much i enjoy knitting. there is something that doesn't ask anything or demand anything. i have started a fishtrap cardi for my nephew. the yarn is briggs little: canadian regal. i enjoy the roughness of this yarn enormously and it actually blooms and softens up when washed. as elizabeth says: knit on with confidence and hope through all crises.

a red aran for a little girl

2008-04-21T22:13:00.002+02:00

here is the cute little alba in her aran. it is of course based on the eps system and the yoke is a raglan. i think she is adorable in girlish red. and she really enjoys her handknitted sweaters and jackets. i wonder if she will grow up to be a knitter herself having spent all her life in zimmermann knits. she is still wearing the green tomten every time i see her and i love elizabeth's idea about making long cuffs for children's sweaters since it makes it possible for them to wear the sweaters much longer.
the yarn is debbie bliss: luxury donegal tweed. it is one ply with green and blue flecks and the cable is a barbara walker thing. one side is moss stich, the other stockinette.
one ply is not optimal for cables but i do think they stand out pretty well due to the weight of the yarn.
i have just embarked on another aran for my nephew since the last one was wrong sized. this time i ordered canadian regal from meg swansen and unfortunately had to pay usd 60 in taxes. argh.

make my day award

2008-03-31T19:47:00.002+02:00

i am certainly not a very diligent blogger these days. i suppose other things come beforehand and i am not proud of that.
but i have been awarded by two fellow bloggers and i am happy and honoured to pass on the torch to other bloggers whose blogs make my day.
the bloggers who have nominated me are jen and peggy of chasing bunny. they are both wonderful knitters and love being nominated by them.

i will also nominate a few bloggers. i think one is supposed to nominate 10 bloggers but i am not sure i can.

i will nominate filambulle. she is a great knitter living in switzerland who always sends nice comments my way. she is a fellow zimmermaniac and that was really my way into knitting again.

i will also nominate jean miles. a very skilled knitter, american, living in edinburgh. she is into knitting, politics, cultural history and latin, i believe. her blog is a wonderful read. go there.

and kent of kent. we share our love for knitting and music. kent is a meticulous knitter with great sense of colour. we have been discussing the saddle shouldered aran for ages in our email correspondance. it is so much fun to acquaint with people you never have met. thanks.

and john. i mean who else emabarks on knitting a sweater, a russian coat, for a perfect stranger. i think that among other things is hilarious. we also share a love for music.

and lastly (for today) i still have a few nominations to give out is shan. her knitting blog is super philosophical and you really get to know her through it in my opinion. she is a alice starmore fan and so am i. and i love the way she earns money for her yarn.

Knitting news: my second saddle shoulder aran is finished and i am wearing it as i write. i love it but it is rather unphotographable and i need to go out in the daylight for a photo shoot. i will review the yarn and cables in near future.

saddle shoulder aran encore

2008-03-16T22:44:00.001+01:00

i am a serial knitter. i confess. and that is allright because things get more perfect with each try. and here are some awfully amateurish pics of the one in progress for me. yarn is the ubiquitous classic elite skye tweed. like all nice yarn it is now discontinued which really should be reconsidered as it is the most manageable yarn i ever knitted with. no splicing and very few knots. the patterns are sheepfold, fishbone, and a panel stolen from alice starmore's inishmore from fishermen's sweaters. it is a great book but quite 80ish somehow. but loads and loads ideas to copy in to one's own cable or colourwork. many of the patterns are in stitch dictionaries as well but alice has managed to put them together beautifully.
there is not much knitting though. it seems that work is taking all my time. it takes a long time to get there and even longer to get home so i am still looking for the ideal job close to home (for god's sakes i live in a capital) so i can walk and knit and see other people. as a single you have to be outgoing all the time. and i don't mind as long as i have the time and with this job it is hard to get the time for anything. and i really do love to play.

i have ordered yarn today for the first time in a very long time. i plan to knit a sweater for my father after this one is finished. i suppose it will be a seamless hybrid of some kind. he has proclaimed he wants a brown sweater with cables. and that is inspiring. the yarn i ordered is cascade 220 which i think is a practical yarn for kiddoes and old people.

other people's crafts

2008-03-08T20:31:00.001+01:00

i haven't quite diaappeared and here is finnish anatolian basketry and anatolian knitting, both birthday presents for me, for you.

st.murphy's saddle shoulder aran cardi

2008-02-18T14:00:00.002+01:00

omg this is probably the most annoying piece of knitting i have ever knitted. everything that could go wrong went wrong hence i call it st. murphy's saddle shoulder aran.
total knitting time: 2 months
yarn: 7 skeins of beaverslide worsted lichen
needles: 3½ and 4½ mm.

i started out optimistically but i made so many mistakes along the way. i didn' t mirror the sheepfold. the neck was reknitted 3 times, i made the steek in the same weight of yarn which caused ruffles and it is a bit on the wee side for my nephew. argh.
hence i have started a new one for me which i hope will go swimmingly now that i have made all the mistakes possible. the worst thing is that it is a bit short and due to the steeks there is no way i can make it a bit longer. i just hope it will grow a bit like all my woolen hats do with time.
the pattern is genius though. there are lots of features that are both beautiful and clever and i am happy i made it and happy to have finished it finally. and btw i love the buttons.

back in the chain gang

2008-02-04T19:10:00.000+01:00

i am back. and being back pretty much means working. i started the new job which is coaching a group of middle eastern women and men out on the job market (again) on friday and i am sure i am going to love it. it is allowed to do all kind of things even teaching them to knit. and i am already loving it. there is a turkish woman who i have decided is going to provide me with a few chart. right now they all feel poorly and think of themselves as sick. i guess we will have to change the discourse.

and the aran is very close to be an fo. i really didn't understand the pattern at first but i am learning by doing. this is the magic about meg and elizabeth's patterns.

i joined a valentine swap at ravelry i will post pictures later. i got some really lovely malabrigo. i have heard so much of this yarn and it is lovely finally being able to fondle it. that is what it is all about.

expect knitting here in the near future.

and the winner is...

2008-01-21T15:23:00.000+01:00

well i never had it done on saturday but the winner is vivienne of viviennes pastimes. congratulations vivienne, email me your details and i will have the stitchionary sent to you. vivienne is english and has a very nice blog about knitting but also about her life and about books. go visit!!!

and i have knitted my 8th clapotis. a pleasure to knit as always, and definitely something to keep the owner warm. i love my own and all those who have gotten one hot off my needles has been wearing their's a lot too. that is so nice. and the green, pink, red colourway (noro no 84 is great and classic for a clapotis since this was the colourway mrs dogs steal yarn knitted her's in and she also wrote a love ode to the clapotis.

the clapotis is both nice to wear and fun to knit. there is something delightful about ripping all the stitches you have just knit and see the scarf growing.

and then i got stitchionaries myself from austria, only i bought them at daw-verlag in germany for 23 euros including postage and i cannot begin to say how great they are. they are very useful even if you don't understand a word german. so go ahead. you order them, he sends you a bill and then you make an international bank transfer. if you are interested in design and knitting history the will be classics.

good news and a blogiversary

2008-01-14T09:21:00.000+01:00

firstly, i got a new job. i have been to a lot of jobinterviews but didn't really want to blog about them before it actually lead to a new job. and now it is here. i am a counsellor again and will be working with getting refugees out on the jobmarket.. it is in elsinore, beautiful city, and i will start in two weeks. i cannot begin to say how relieved i am.

and then this blog has it's first birthday which means i will have a give away. the prize is interweave's book of cables and arans by erika knight of rowan fame. i love my stitchionaries and from what i know about the readers of this blog, they are not blind followers, as elizabeth says and hence i think you love stitchionaries too. it can however be another book if you already got this one in your knitting library.

write a comment about your favourite finished object and i will draw the winner on saturday and have the book sent to you.

i am still here

2008-01-12T01:14:00.000+01:00

well i am still knitting. the saddle shoulder. does the sleeve look narrow to you?? but i will make a clapotis for my sister's friend in between. she had a nasty operation and i am sure a warm scarf will enhance the recovery process. and silk garden is warm. it will be a red/pink/green colourway which will be splendid for that girl as she is quite flamboyant herself.

and i am shopping. i joined a swap on ravelry. it is very interesting to buy something for someone you don't know at all. i will not write too much about it though since there is a chance that the person is eavesdropping.

did any of you see the preview of piecework ? there is an interesting article online on annichen sibbern bøhn whose book norwegian knitting designs was one of the sources for inspiration to knit lusekofter this summer. and i adore the poetry mittens on the front page inspired by old knittings. in montse stanley's book there is a colourplate of old spanish knittings with lovely texts knitted into the garments or little bags. things like 'long live my owner'.

this book was such a great source of inspiration last year and will be in years to come.

another book which inspires me a lot is priscilla gibson roberts: knitting in the old way and it has lead me to buy three austrian books by maria erlbacher: überlieferte strickmuster on traveling stitches. knitting the sheepfold pattern has made me enormously interested in traveling stitches. i adore the texture and i hope i can knit a sweater with the remains of the saddleshoulder for alba later this year. a johanna spyri: heidi kind of thing. wouldn't it be cute with an uncle and a nice in similar sweaters? that one is new i think. i am getting increasingly interested in knitting history and technique.

today i went out of town to a city west of copenhagen. to my amazement there were three yarn shops and one was filled with customers even at 10 o'clock in the morning. they were all carrying different brands of yarn and i found it very nice. i am sure there were none 5 years ago. as the lady in on of the shops said: we are not odd any longer. but i wasn't odd 5 years ago either since i didn't knit very much then.

and there were colourcards in the mail. now i know what the colour moorit is. i ordered sample cards from garthenor . it is organic traditional multi-plied wool from different breeds of sheep. i have become interested in sheep. i think it is very much from reading clara parkes' book of yarn. and maybe from seeing all my virtual friends' spinning.

and in the music department i listen to alison krauss and robert plant: rasing sand. omg is it a lovely cd. she is another country influenced singer with a lovely voice and i have fallen madly in love with his way of singing (used to sing in led zeppelin). oh music and yarn.

happy new year!

2008-01-02T20:18:00.000+01:00

happy new year to all readers. i hope you will all have a lovely year with a lot of nice things coming your way and lovely knitting experiences. happily knitting experiences are something that is in our control, so i am sure about that one. i am still knitting the saddle-shoulder cardigan and it is going a little slow because my mind is so pre-occupied with job-seeking and worries. i hope everything will be solved within the next month and that the coming year will be better than the last 6 months has been. it is a bit up-hill right now and i cannot wait to find something nice to do again.

and did i get anything knitterly for christmas. yes a vogue stitchionary. i really want my knitting mojo and focus to return. partly because i have promised my nephew this cardi for so long, and partly because i have lots of ideas for new things. and then i want to take up walking again. i usually walk for at least one hour a day but due to cold weather, darkness and to just not being in the mood the walks are getting shorter and shorter. that is not allowed.

sorry for such a boring post. i promise to write something more entertaining and including more pictures very soon.

living among fishbone, staghorns and sheepfolds.

2007-12-13T23:52:00.000+01:00

i have finally started the saddle shoulder aran for my nephew stig. it is beaverslide worsted again. according to clara parkes three ply yarn makes better cables but that is just too bad. it worked quite well with peter's sweater where the cables are much more pronounced than you can see in my pictures. and the next project is going to be cables in two ply as well. i want to make an aran of the skye tweed i purchased back in may for me. so i am clicking away on this project and want to finish it as fast as possible.
today i touched qiviut. i even touched unspun qiviut. i want a skein of qiviut for christmas to make a koolhaas out of. it would be sooo nice. i think i will have to buy qiviut myself though. and this is probably what upsets me about christmas. you get busy and lose track of what people really want. and then you just buy something that is a fad or obviously useful like stockings or a perfume. the personal touch of gift giving disappears.
today i was in a bookstore where some girls wanted to buy a craft book for an aunt. one said to the other: i don't remember if it is crochet, needlepoint or knitting that she likes. hm hm. find out before buying would be my advice. it is not that i don't like christmas i just find it a bit over done.
the christmas ornament with the knitting girl is from rome. peter bought it to me when he was in rome last week. i suppose it reminded him of somebody.....

2007-12-11T15:56:00.000+01:00

here is peter in his new sweater of which he says: i forgot i had a new sweater. to me it is like an old much loved sweater. and this is the quality one's clothes should always have. he loved it and i am so pleased. and it looks great with the grey hair and blue eyes in a 'danielle steele psychotherapist recently having moved from new york to a mansion in yorkshire' kind of way.

the wool is great and i love how it bloomed when blocked.

total knitting time was 18 days and i used about 6 ½ skeins of beaverslide worsted (90% wool 10 % mohair) in the glacier heather colourway on needles 3mm, 4mm and 4½ mm. the reason for the smaller of the needles is the tubular cast on/off that requires much smaller needles than a normal cast on/off. the cable is from barbara walker and is called aran braid. it is knit over twelve stitches but is very tight. the pattern is elizabeth zimmermann's raglan from the opinionated knitter.

it is special knitting for peter. he is my bestest, oldest and most lovely friend and i cannot fathom why i haven't done it much earlier.

weekend and a finished object.

2007-12-10T23:17:00.000+01:00

the little jultomte at the top of the post is knit by my grandmother. now she decorates the houses of her great great grandchildren. i think that is nice to think about. i am also using the knitting books she gave me back in the eighties. that is nice too. she actually created things like that all her life. both her daughters are also quite gifted. one makes pottery and wall hangings here in copenhagen, the other in denver, colorado and all of the three has managed to sell things. i sold a little baby sweater too. but that was many years ago.

the birthday cake is made by a talented friend of mine and was a present for my father on his 83rd birthday today. doesn't it look yummy. you bet it was. my father has a penchant for these green frogs made out of cake. in some aspects we never grow up.

and carl, the pirate, looks very scary in his shiver me timbers sweater and all the other pirate gear. but the truth is, that i gave him some temporary tattoos a while ago. his mother told me that he only dared to have a dolphin and a seagull tattooed because he found the rest too dangerous. that is so cute. it is good to have a mother to protect you against scary tattoos.

and peter's sweater is finished and blocked. it is hard too see what it really looks like but i am very satisfied with the result and with all the techniques i have learned in the process. i have finally realized what the difference between a k2tog through back loop and the ssk is. and i love the result. i wonder why it took so long. i have learned the tubular cast on and cast off too. and that gives a professional look to one's handknit sweaters. the cast off is a little time consuming and i think it will be better the next time i do it, but it does something for your knitting and is worth trying. hopefully i can take some dazzling photos of it's dazzling recipient when i hand it over to him.

sheep thrills

2007-12-05T12:53:00.000+01:00

the blue peter sweater is coming to an end pretty soon. and i am happy. tomorrow is his birthday but this was never intended as a birthday present but as a token of my thankfulness for having this wonderful and humourous person in my life. that is so invaluable.
and the next to come is meg swansen's saddle shoulder cardi. i hope i can figure out how to make the saddles but as machado says: camino se hace al andar.... and that was supposed to be my new motto, as i have mentioned earlier.
the grey yarn is eco gotland sheep wool. there are many christmas markets around these days and it seems that yarn has become very popular all of a sudden. this wool is very beautiful with a lovely sheen and i suppose i will make a moebius or something one fine day. after the saddle shoulder and my own aran from the skye tweed i bought back in may is finished. i am clicking away as fast as i can.
and talking about yarn. has anyone read the knittingcurmudgeon's article on kristin nicholas in the latest issue of IK? it is a great portray of kristin who has a new book out. she is having a yarn give away on her blog and i would love to win the yarn. wouldn't you??? i even think it may happen with my usual luck in yarn giveaways. i think kristin's designs are exceptionally happy and pretty. i also find it so sweet that kristin has named the yarn after her daughter julia. how many girls have a yarn named after them??? i also think the knittingcurmudgeon is a hell of a writer. her blog always makes me reflect.

knitting on television

2007-12-03T00:19:00.000+01:00

look knitters this is what a tough police superintendant looks like on national danish television these days. for a whole year this woman in this sweater has filled our sunday nights. well she has one more quite similar. it is designed by top-notch icelandic designers gudrun and gudrun and has caused a lot of discussion in danish newspapers and knitting blogs. the owner of a small lys published a pattern for the sweater and the designers wanted to sue her for violating their copyright to the sweater pattern. the discussion of course was: how can a raglan with nordic star patterns be copyrighted by anyone alive today.
one can buy the 'original' sweater (which i believe is out of unspun icelandic) for the nice price of usd 550. and i do think it is paying respect to knitting that is goes for that price. it might take a little week to knit so the hourly pay is second to none. the discussion about copyright is difficult since i think it is important how you space the stars and the choice of colours.
the sweater i am knitting right now is a design by me, by elizabeth zimmermann, by barbara walker, by beaverslide dry goods or maybe by none of us.
but isn't it lovely that today's heroine wears handknits.

on friday i went out with a few other ladies. one was wearing a faroese sweater knit by her mother. i admired it very much and she gave it to me and said smell!!! no one else but knitters could get a kick out of smelling sheep. oh well maybe those who cut the sheep in the australian outback. the rest of the ladies looked a little puzzled....

i am now at the point where i have to join the body and the sleeves and then, elizabeth promises, it will go really fast due to the decreasing. so now i have to figure out which kind of paired decreases would be prettier. and then there will be the part that i am looking more forward to than everything else. the tubular cast off. does any one know if it can be done on circs or to be more precise when knitting in the round?????

no brooklyn tweed

2007-11-28T01:11:00.000+01:00

oooh i wish i could take better pictures. a lot of you take lovely pictures and i think it was jared's
photography skills that was part the reason why i started loving knitting again. but the peter sweater is progressing. i am a one at a time knitter, so of course it will as i spend many hours knitting every day for the time being. and i am quite happy with it. got some knitting problems fixed with the help of montse stanley ( i wrap the purl stitches next to the cables differently know) and used the tubular cast on. so in many ways it is more perfect than any other sweater with cables and ribbing. and it is so satisfactory to learn new things. montse has some good advice on everything....

talking about male knitters. go check the following out on ravelry:

asplund: swedish, blogless knitter, who makes the most lovely cable and stranded knitting. i am awestruck. he also does the most amazing needlepoint. that is something i find very interesting too. did a little as a child, but has never taken it up as an adult. but the results can be stunning and the process isn't necessarily too bad either.

i understand why men knit. i think the boxiness of knitting and cable patterns are very masculine features. i love to knit for children and for men. i haven't knitted anything for myself for two decades. i will make a cabled sweater but i think it is very difficult to find something that i think suits me.

my life is very much a mess workwise right now. energy is dropping. knitting is keeping me up plus the happy smile on peter's face when he saw the progress on the sweater in a café today. i hope that there will be some good news soon and that this crisis which i get through by 'knitting on with confidence and hope' will lead to something i will think about as a happy time in my life in 10 years time.

sheep may safely graze

2007-11-24T22:48:00.000+01:00

went to the sheep breeder's christmas market today. it was of very little interest. and i wanted to take some photos of the different stall holders but they were not all that interested. i was like a time warp into the seventies. big boxy knits. i am not sure i like it very much. i think handknits should be handknits and there is no reason to knit something that could be done better in another technique but there is no reason for no shape either. but everything was wooly which is nice and i liked different sheep paraphernalia i saw. i bought to skeins of a lovely coffee brown wool and a little felted mouse for alba who i was going to meet later. she found the mouse extremely funny. and it is very much fun to be with her as one is starting to see the contours of the person she will be. she is very interested in the well being of her dolls and other cuddly things.
i also went to the christmas bazaar in the swedish church. omg what a lot of people all dressed in folk costumes. i think the swedes are much more prone to this than the danes. a lot of christmas goodies, woodwork and such. i did not buy anything though.
and then i were out with alba and her mom and ended up eating soup with them.

knitting:
i have refound and ordered a book from my childhood in which there is a heartbreaking story about knitting. it is called the endless steppe and i ordered it at amazon. i shall look very much forward to reading it again.
and the sweater for peter is going swimmingly. he texts me everyday to ask how the thing is proceeding. the beaverslide worsted is a dream to work with. i cannot begin to say how much i love working with it. it is hard not to order boatloads of this yarn. my next project- the nephew saddle shoulder- is luckily going to be knit with beaverslide as well. and i cannot wait to knit with the green colour which is so soothing to look at. and i think i am a cable girl after all. it is an amazingly pretty feature.

november

2007-11-22T20:28:00.000+01:00

danish poet, henrik nordbrandt, writes:

the year has sixteen months
december, january, february
march, april, may,
june, july, august
september, october, november,
november
november
november
november

and it seems like november lasts forever. and i feel much more exposed to the tristesse of this month this year than ever before. maybe it comes with age. it is like looking at the world through a greasy lens. at 1 o'clock it starts getting dark. and photography is impossible.

but the knitting blooms. it is for all the senses.

it is nice to fondle, it is nice to look at all the lovely yarns, it is nice to hear people praise your yarns and fo's, it is nice to taste the feeling of success when you finish something, it is nice to smell wool, and it is nice to use your sixth sense when finding out who needs the next project you plan the most.....

a proper knitting project

2007-11-18T23:13:00.000+01:00

i have a proper knitting project on the needles now. and i am hoping it will be smooth sailing as i would very much like to finish it in the beginning of december and cast on for the seamless saddle-shoulder aran. finally.

this is for peter. peter is my friend numero uno. the best, the funniest, the most empathetic, the craziest. and omg we have been in each other's life for a long time. strangely i haven't knitted anything for him for the last 23 years or something but better late than never. and it is certainly not because he isn't inspiring to knit to.

it is beaverslide worsted in the colourway glacier heather. a lovely blue.

another lovely thing that has happened is that i have sorted out m stash. i have a boatload of yarn and i actually know what i want to use most of it for. the army green beaverslide is for my nephew's saddle shouldered aran, the brown and grey rowanspun would work perfectly for the tangled yoke by eunny jang (one for me and one for my sis). the plum yorkshire tweed could be a lovely sweater for another friend of mine.

oh and maybe it will end up as something completely different. knitter's choice.

i love all the possibilities in there are with a little wool and some needles and keep telling my nephew's girlfriend that there really isn't much more to it than knit and purl. i would very much like to teach somebody to knit. somebody who would get addicted like i did. maybe i should get some needles and wool for alba soon??? or albert...

hello again.

2007-11-15T00:25:00.000+01:00

i was the lucky winner of tiennie's 4000th commenter contest. no wonder, tiennie, that you have so many commenters. not only do you dilegently send a response to every commenter and comment on people's blogs but you are also tooooo generous. it is lovely blue moon socks that rock in the colourway ms. rock. i think it is lovely and although i rarely knit socks this will be converted into lovely socks. soon.
the bowtie scarf is the second of it's kind so far. it is made out of beaverslide: fisherman's weight and scraps of noro silk garden. and it is warm.
other knitting news are that i received a swift and a ball winder in the post today. omg is that lovely. i am producing yarn cakes like crazy. i also got the yarn for my friend peter's sweater for which i have swatched and blocked tonight. if i were not going to knit a sweater for my lovely and lovable friend i think i'd knit:

an adult tomten 'brooklyn tweed' style for mr. leonard cohen. saw him in concert twice and i cannot begin to say how much he has meant for me, musicwise. i would choose tomten for this two-piece armani suit guy because he is getting older ( he sings: because of a few songs wherein i spoke of their mystery, women have been awfully kind to my old age) , which means he needs nice woolies and because he lived in a zen-buddhist convent and i think tomten is a bit monk like with the big hood.

the other celebrity i would like to knit for is rufus wainwright. i admire rufus' lovely voice and charming appearances in concert. he is also a gay activist in a way. that is maybe not all that important here in denmark, but from what i read at various blogs, very imperative in the u.s.
i think i would choose to knit him some bavarian twisted stitch stockings. as you can see he'd probably cherish that. he always ends his performance going on stage in a terry-cloth bathrobe and tubesocks and then all of a sudden jumping out of the outfit into another outfit which could be a fairy princess outfit or something like that.

the third person i would like to knit something for is nick cave, australian musician and director. saw him in ireland and in the operahouse here in copenhagen a few years ago. and i adore him. he would get an argyle slipover and some mittens for these girls of whom, he sings:

Where is Mona?She's long goneWhere is Mary? She's taken her along. But they haven't put their mittens onAnd there's fifteen feet of pure white snow.

i suppose they would come in handy.

i am afraid friends and family are first priority though. i got an email this morning from carl and albert's mum who wrote: i want to take back everything i ever said about knitted things for my sons. they wear their sweaters to pieces.....
that was nice. and it means i have to speed up the knitting, as there are more to knit for.

and i you guys would like to get yourselves something knitterly order montse stanley: a knitter's handbook.
i think it will soon be the most important knitting reference book i ever owned. it covers everything and has some lovely examples of beautiful spanish knitting from the last century and some adorable chullos. get it. it is cheap and you need it!!!!!

hats on!!!!

2007-11-07T18:45:00.000+01:00

the three-spiral hat in two versions. the grey one is adriafil: diamond. a yarn that looks like homespun and is quite soft. it doesn't really show the construction of the hat off. so i made one more- soft ice- whipped cream- thing in bulky lopi. this yarn is not soft, to say the least but it shows off the construction of the hat really well.

and then i have knit a bowtie scarf out of one skein of beaverslide. all i can say is soft and yet sculptural. beaverslide is really something else. i think i will wear this scarf quite a lot. practical and soft.

and i am doing another in one of the beaverslide sample yarns i bought a few months ago. i blend it with some noro silk garden from last years clapotis galore. it looks nice and somewhat early 70'es.

oh and i have been confronted with my knitting the last few days. when i came to visit my sister unexpectedly she was wearing the aubergine fair isle i made for her back in may. and when the venezuelan came to visit me unexpectedly yesterday he was wearing the whole gear (well only one hat a time). i suppose this is what happens when you knit something exclusively directed at the recipient. hopefully my friend peter is going to like his beaverslide sweater. he rejected to get cobblestone, that i had planned to knit, so i will make a pattern myself, the little red hen said (as elizabeth said and started the whole schoolhouse press business). i am thinking very much of that these days. she was about my age when she started it. what should i start. if i wanted to make business out of my hobby, i don't think i am in the right place. and i think if the lys' in a city like copenhagen all carry more or less the same stuff, it must be what's in demand. and maybe it is much too much work and hardship for a single woman....

bluebert

2007-11-04T23:50:00.000+01:00

here is yet another tomten. i think i have had enough of tomten now, but alas i have promised to knit one for my niece's friend who is expecting her second baby pretty soon and who has been admiring the first one i made for alba last year. but i love the colour of this one and the beaverslide yarn is such a pleasure to knit with. i am seriously in love with the i-cord finishing that gives it such a clean and finished look without much effort. yes is right, knit on with confidence through all crises....

i received clara parkes: knitter's book of yarn in the mail on friday. adrian has some very lovely humourous and romantic mitten patterns in it, that i am sure will spread like flu all over the knitting blogs in the time to come. it must be a lovely achievement. and especially since the pattern is so original in my opinion. get the book for adrian's mittens and for the in-depth knowledge of yarn. the rest of the patterns are not very interesting. i cannot see any reason to publish a pattern for a wash-cloth. i remember my grandmother knitting washcloths and socks out of cotton and it was nothing less but horrible. the other grandmother knitted socks and mittens i understood that better. my mother only knitted sweaters or bigger garments except for one christmas when she knitted chullos for all 25 nieces and nephews, as far as i remember. and even though i keep knitting the same patterns over and over again, i regard myself as an experimental knitter. i always try to incorporate some new technique or experiment with yarn. i love playing around with colours. i think i am a fair isle knitter at heart. but i lurve the look of cables.

and maybe there will be more red, blue, yellow on this blog after all. my former colleague is going to colombia to adopt two young boys ( i say 5-6 years old). and i thought they might like hats in the colours of their flag..... or maybe not.

you look good in blue.....

2007-11-01T17:59:00.000+01:00

you look good in blue by blondie is a song from the late 70es that makes me nostalgic. but when it comes to my friend peter it is true he looks good, very good in blue, with his blue eyes and grey hair. sooo distinguished. and we were friends for ever and a day, or to be more precise 25 years. so what did this knitter do, who has been so talkative about the amounts of yarn in her stash do. oh i ordered glacier heather (light greyish blue) wool at beaverslide. i thought why don't i knit him a sweater ever. i knit for loads of people but this particular person, who is probably more loved by me than most, i never knit anything for. i had planned to knit cobblestone but peter would rather have a plain old raglan. i love the raglan style as well. and before the yarn arrives from the foothills of rocky mountains, i may have come up with some ideas for spicing it up a bit.
and it was albert's blue tomten (the bluebert) that made me hungry for blue again. it used to be my colour for many many years until i got into this ochre, siena, earthen brown colour preference. blue is relaxing in a very special way. a little bit like baby pink which is the colour that is the most relaxing to look at of them all. you actually produce practically no brain waves when looking at it.

and when i was at it i went to my lys to buy some more yarn. garnstudio: eskimo. it is a very cheap yarn and i will have a go at the snail hat that didn't work out well in the grey yarn i got for it. i taught the owner the crochet cast on. i have fiddled around to teach myself this so it was nice to pass on the knowledge. she has a great shop in the historic center of copenhagen and we had a long chat about VK, IK and the starmores. i wish there were more money in that business then i would try to find a job as a shop clerk.. but i am single and high maintenance so i better find something that pays better in the teaching industry. only i am done with children. at the moment i find it unbearable to even think about teaching children ever again. i am on sick leave and hope to find a teacher/counsellor job with adults very soon. wish me luck.

the green knitting is a bowtie scarf in mctaggart tweed: sweetgrass. i think it will be great when finished. only i don't think it is a one skein wonder so i ordered another.

baah, pure new wool

2007-10-31T12:48:00.000+01:00

i have started the scarf and i am going to put it away for a while. i will need to do stranded knitting all over the scarf instead of stripes. the two colour patterns i have chosen have a very tight tension and hence all the scarf needs to be like that. but i really like knitting all the letters. great graphic fun.
and look what was in the mail. big sky blue mctaggart tweed for a tomten for my cute great nephew albert. i purchased all the colourcards from leanne at beaverslide (and a hell of a lot of wool not yet knitted) and this blue is simply stunning. i adore it. and hope my niece, maja, will as well. this will be my 4th tomten. i love the simplicity of this pattern which makes your choice of wool all the more important. i feel the greatest urge to knit a sweater for my friend peter in the same colour. he and i have been close-knit (no pun intended) friends for 25 years now, and i did knit him a sweater in brioche stitch many years ago, but maybe it is about time again. i hope to get out of the job i have now (i am on sick leave) and into another that is more me very soon, so my only worry about purchasing wool will be the fear of moths. in ravelry and on various knitting blogs it seems to be a bit embarrasing to buy a lot of wool. i don't mind as long as it doesn't break the bank. i am not planning to enroll in some kind of AA for knitters. i actually have a principle of knitting up a ball of yarn a day and i succeed pretty much in this. i have to dash because i want to clean my house and attack all the beautiful blue skeins for some mindless knitting while listening to herbie hancock: river, the joni letters. happy knitting.

what's next

2007-10-29T01:33:00.000+01:00

oh knitting is indeed divine as my dpn box says in german. there is knitting. whipped off 3 hats and started a scarf this week. it was great fun to do the black tweedy hat and i wear it all the time. the project on the needles now is a scarf in alpaca for me. i am going to knit a poem into it in spanish. i have written about it in an earlier blogpost. it is difficult for me to see where i am going for the moment but all shall be well eventually and in the meantime i will knit like crazy. i would like to be a knitting magazine editor. we really miss some high quality knitting magazines here. or i would like to go to peru and learn to knit andean style. i am a great daydreamer and that is very good in times of confusion.

soon i will start the beaverslide worsted saddle shouldered aran for my nephew. he is going to look so fab in it. just cool and hip enough to wear this kind of thing. and then another tomten for albert of course. but tomtens only takes a couple of days to knit. especially in attractive yarn.

there are lots of things to do. just look at my stash.

tonight i went to see lucinda williams with my sister, my nephew and his girlfriend. if you ever get the chance go see her. she rocks. it is always so great to go and see music live. i enjoy every penny spent on that. and i can get so envious on guitarplayers. isn't that just something. she had a really amazing band with her as well. i would also like to be the girl who sits in the lobby and sells merchandise. one time one of the merchandise sellers sold her handknit hats too. nothing special but of course i bought one. i thought it was so cute that she did it.

a match box from buenos aires, venezuelan laurel and hardy and a dries van noten knock off.

2007-10-25T23:54:00.000+02:00

oh i have knitting time. lovely knitting time. besides knitting time things are not very bright at the moment except for the two venezuelan hats european and dreadlock hairstyle. the more i knit in these colours the more fascinating the brightness. some people have it in them to wear bright colours, alas i do not. but i like playing around with bright colours and i have made impulse purchases in very bright colours expensive and never to be worn. since i heard that the venezuelan scarf and matching hat had been put away for a special occasion i thought i'd better knit an extra hat for my friend and one for him to give away for his friend. i was offered money for the latter but i don't like to mix knits and money and friends for some reason. what can you charge for a little hat. nothing compared to knitting time and since i don't know the recipient i would not want him to come to my house and clean for six hours.

the black tweedy hat is a dries van noten (belgian designer) knock off that i saw in a shop here for USD 200. i thought i'd use some yorkshire tweed dk in the colour top hat, that i had in my stash. one way not to buy more yarn is to make a competion with yourself about how long it will take to knit your stash. well lets see, i have:
21 skeins of rowanspun dk
10 skeins of yorkshire tweed aran
5 skeins of 123silk wool
20 skeins of yorkshire tweed chunky
10 skeins of beaverslide worsted
6 skeins of beaverslide mctaggart tweed
15 skeins of classic elite skye tweed
1 cone of jaggerspun zephyr

i partly blame it on jared and a little bit on myself.

and since it is worsted or heavier most of the stuff it cannot take more than 3 months. i am not giving it a try. buying wool is such a lovely thing. and having a nice stash when inspiration hits is even nicer. and hats are a lovely way to use all the odd skeins that you have left from different projects. i always buy a little to much. i beaver yarn. like i always cook too much food.

p.s. the black hat looks like nothing. it is a garter stitch band that is broader on the 'back-head* third. i have picked up stitched all around and purled one round before knitting the hat in stockinette. it looks quite smart irl though.

shiver me timbers!!!!!!!

2007-10-23T17:43:00.000+02:00

AHOY MATEY, here is one finished pirate sweater. the pattern is the seamless hybrid with shirt yoke and the charts are adrians and mine. the yarn is jaeger extra fine merino.
i hope carl will be happy with this creation and i also hope the seamless hybrid will work as well on a little man as on a big one. oh how i love knitting for other people and making them happy.

yesterday i said to the venezuelan friend i have got. pleaassssssssssssse don't wash alpaca in the washing machine and he said: i'd always handwash. but it seems that the hat and the scarf has been put away until he is traveling home on a family visit. how cute is that. and he has customers for me. it seems that the hat has become a fad in the venezuelan community here and he asked if i take orders. no i don't take orders on dreadlock covers in lego colours but will happy make one for him and one selected friend every now and then. so i am going to whip a few off before it is tomten time and cable time featuring beaverslide.

i ordered big sky blue mctaggart tweed for a tomten for albert. alba's was a big hit so now albert wants one too. or his mum. and the tweed from beaverslide is so lovely. maybe i will cable it up a bit. that could look nice. the mother finds bobbles a bit too much on the feminine side. lucky her that i never knit a february sweater for her little boy.

it is autumn here now. lovely crisp air. it makes me feel whole and happy with the autumn sun on the big blue sky.

caminante hay no camino

2007-10-19T20:22:00.000+02:00

no this is not a spanish blog. for the reason that i know no spanish. but i have listened to the song based on the poem by antonio machado, which priscilla gibson roberts also quotes in knitting in the old way and it sort of reminds me of my life right now: walker there is no road, you make the road by walking. i love that sentence. i reminds me, even though i feel so desperate about my jobsituation, that i can walk away and create another road in life as i walk. it is not a no way out situation. but the changes has to emerge pretty soon, i know that.

and when i sit thinking of all this, i knit. and as i knit i create new ideas for knitting. one idea is to knit literature scarves with poems on. a green one quoting emily dickinson or simply a scarf saying: caminante hay no camino, se hace camino al andar..... then the truth would warm my neck :-))

the pirate sweater is proceeding swimmingly. i suppose i will finish it tonight. and then i have purchased some wool. it looks like an old man's dreadlocks a bit. i want to knit a snail hat from the opinionated knitter. then i can wear it in class to keep out the noise....

and all the lovely cablework goes nowhere at all. i sometimes get so stressed out by my stash. and that is ridiculous. luckily i read jean's lovely blog the other day and she adresses this subject so wisely, as so many other. if you don't know her blog you should go there.

happy knitting.

arghh

2007-10-17T00:27:00.000+02:00

as all my blogfriends little sons get pirate sweaters why shouldn't carl, age 3. he got all the pirate gear for his birthday and soon he will get this coffee and cream pirate sweater. it is of course adrian's chart i have been rearraging and adding some teeth to in jaeger extra fine merino from cucumberpatch. great yarn, lovely elasticity and stitch definition but not my kind of yarn, really. but it does make you yearn for a nice piece of chocolate.....
i am having one weeks holiday and i cannot really believe ever going back. but i shall straighten my back. arrgh.
i got quite inspired by my latin american scarf. i would like to make all kinds of scarves with different colour combos. even cheery ones like the last. but maybe not with the flag stripes. it is amazing where knitting can take you. all of a sudden i know sooooooooooo much about flags and the number of stars and the proportions between the colours. i also know where almost all american states are situated. i want to know the whereabouts of my blogfriends.
and when i am dreaming my life away i dream about a trip to the us studying lys', music and ending up in knitting camp or studying el chullo in peru. i think i am seriously in need of quality time.
it is sad that being a volunteer at ravelry is possible from one's own computer. otherwise i'd volunteer anyday.
in the meantime. knitting and listening to the lovely salvador duran from mexico singing and playing guitar on the album solo pasión.

a scarf for rafael

2007-10-13T13:23:00.000+02:00

here is a scarf for rafael, my venezuelan i. i saw him wearing it with pride from the bus and that made my little knitter heart jump with joy. and even though it is much more colourful than what i usually make i ended up liking it. especially since it suits the recipient very well since he is not a pale dane.

it is a tube that i kitchenered at both ends. it is made of six skeins of drops alpaca. thes charts are from hats on and scarf style.

rafael loves indians and has a tattoo saying: geronimo. hence the little knitted indians. he is also a great bird lover and has a multitude of tattoed birds on his arms. hence the birds. and the colours are the colours of the venezuelan flag. the blue colour symbolizes the water that separates venezuela from spain. the yellow the corn and the red symbolizes the bloodshed of the venezuelan people.

and then i have to say it again. americans have all the fun. spent last night with my aunt who lives in colorado. she is in a knitting group with cheryl oberle and i am envious. i knitted cheryl's kimono shawl and instantly recognized my aunt's scarf as one of cheryl's designs and then they are friends as well. a small small world isn't it.

little green

2007-10-08T17:16:00.000+02:00

seeing alba on the green lawn made me think about joni mitchell's old song little green expect that this is a song about the child she had to leave and who she met 20 years or so later with the help of the world wide web. it also made me think of one of favourite emily dickinson poems # 1333:

A little madness in the Spring
Is whole even for the King
But God be with the Clown-
Who ponders this tremendous scene-
This whole Experiment of Green-
As if it were his Own!

only that it isn't spring.

But these pictures of this little green girl also speak for themselves. she is adored and she is getting independent. not totally, far from, but definitely daring.

and my niece told me that the little norwegian sweater got lost. they looked for it high and low with no result. it was alba who had decided that it would be nice to sleep with when she is in creche faraway from mom and dad. i am very honoured to be the provider of the two things she sleeps with. knut, the polar bear and the sweater.

my other niece has decided that woolies are not such a bad thing for little boys. so i have a seamless hybrid pirate sweater and a tomten on the list now. it is good to be able to change opinions.

more venezuela and lovely gifts.

2007-10-06T16:14:00.000+02:00

i have received lovely elsebeth lavold: silky wool from peggy . my name was drawn in her blogiversary contest. and peggy has made lovely little tags with mine and alba's names on for future knittings. they are incredibly cute and the perfect colour choice for me.

and speaking about colours. a few days i simply had to knit something absolutely mindless and came thinking about some scarves i knit in alpaca and lifetime ago. it is a tube, knit in the round, and kitchenered together at each end. so now i am doing one to match (well not quite) the venezuelan cap. i am planning to do some fair isle with bird/eagle/llama motifs at each end to make it a bit more latin american than it already is. i cannot believe i am doing this. i am not really a sucker for colours of that brightness. but at least they keep me awake....

february

2007-09-29T20:25:00.000+02:00

i have made yet another february sweater. i love the watermelon buttons. it is for alba if it is not too small. but there hasn't been much knitting and i miss it. days just go by faster than i like them to and my tiredness is chronic. the children are wearing me out but i start to get a little success. art lessons last week went well. they like to sit a cut pictures out of magazines in their favourite scale of colours. as a matter of fact they didn't want to go home that day.

and yesterday i went to a party at my old workplace. omg it was nice to be surrounded by old friends.

today it was my great nephew's birthday. he is the sweetes 3 year old one can imagine. very smart. knows the alphabet and was very happy with the caleidoscope i gave him. i am happy with my new joni mitchell cd that i listen to obsessively. it is a great cd. buy it whether you know her or not. a lovely mature singer.

norwegian models

2007-09-26T00:06:00.000+02:00

here are the two brothers modeling the sweaters i knitted for them during my summerholiday. the three year old finally gave in and tried it on. i think he looks supercute and i like the little one's dress sense. he looks like he is giving his brother the final touch before going on the catwalk. and they are lovely boys. one is three on saturday and i wanted to knit the pirate hat for him as well. but other children takes all my attention... i really miss knitting. my fingers are itching when i see all the lovely choices of yarn all around the house not to mention all the wonderful books i bought recently. i am waiting to receive the only one i don't have in my zimmermann library: knitting workshop and then i got the walker treasuries. 4 large books with a lot of lovely patterns and of course a lot of not so lovely patterns. i think jared
should knit up all the swatches and take photographs. that would be a beautiful knitting book. i

know the webpage and that calls for inspiration as well. the book in itself is very poorly photographed and slightly oldfashioned and unfortunately a lot of the patterns are written and not charted. i am visual when it comes to patterns, i am afraid. another book i got is anna zilboorg's 45 funny and fanciful hats. it is a really cute book. and colourwork hats are my thing, i suppose. like other people have something for socks.

another pirate cap

2007-09-16T17:20:00.000+02:00

i made the tough pirates cap for my sailor friend. it suits him well but i also wanted to make one for alba who is just a little girl. so i mixed adrian's chart with elizabeth's fast cap and some ideas from charlene schurch's book hat's on. i am quite pleased with the result. i think it is a cute version of the pirates theme. in my school all the children are very focused on pirates. i am not sure what to think about it, still. i have mixed feelings. when is it possible to be an innocent child these days, i sometimes wonder???

my barbara walker books arrived. i am not sure what to think about them either. there is a lot of suggestions for 2 colour mosaic knitting and that fascinates me a lot. i haven't tried that technique yet and i think it is pretty.

right now it seems that hats are all i can muster but i will get back to sweater knitting again. i do like creating hats though. it is a nice little personal gift for people you like. and when you are tired it is a great thing to knit and an opportunity to try out new techniques which i find very important.

i still knit (a little)

2007-09-09T22:42:00.000+02:00

it has been an eventful week. i was nominated a rockin' girl blogger on a day where i certainly didn't feel i rocked. or maybe i felt that my relationship with my new students was a bit rocky. it takes time to gain trust. and i was nominated by sheila, who teaches in michigan and i am very happy and thankful for the honour.
and i guess this means i should nominate someone as well. and then i think i will nominate peggy, who is one of my most frequent readers. peggy . her knitting rocks, and i cannot believe the amount she gets done. i also won a prize at her knittiversary. her son (s) rock too.

i have been knitting hats for the venezuelan pirate lately. the we call them pirates was made longer. so it has 7 pattern repeats. and the flag hat was very well recepted. i think it is all about homesickness, which i understand very well. and on the wearer of whom i unfortunately have no pictures the hat looks very nice and optimistic. i suppose you have to be venezuelan to wear it.

this is different from tomten. a tomten wearer can be of any age and nationality and tomten will always add to the cuteness of the wearer. i love alba in her tomten that my friend sewed a zipper into. and the fast cap looks extremely cute on her as well. actually the outfit makes her look a bit like a guide in the himalayans, and she was more than pleased with the bobbles.

work last week was an ordeal. those children have problems. and hence i get problems with them. but the new colleagues are so friendly and i adore the headmaster whose listening skills and caring, i shall never forget, whether i stay in this job or not. i think it is a rare thing to find a boss with such traits.

and there has been more knitting

2007-09-04T23:38:00.000+02:00

yes work is very tiring. i have to deal with children that are not very easy and some of them can't even sit on a chair yet. i have four classes. one is 7th grade and my favourites. there are those who are actually interested in learning english. but i have a 6th grade and it is all about noise and nothing seems to wear them out. not even my highpitched voice that annoys me quite a lot.

and then there is knitting. it is a refuge to do something that one is good at and experimenting to broaden one's skills.

i have made charlene schurch's: tassled fez in yorkshire tweed dk but without the tassles. it was great fun. i made one moderation i.e. to kitchener it together instead of backstitching or something. it is a great way to sew it together as i leaves flat seams in this rather compact product.

and the pirate hat was recepted with gratitude and an order for another hat. a venezuelan flag hat. i am not crazy about it, to say the least. but i am not going to wear it and it was a really fast knit. the wool is dale baby ull. not the most attractive wool either. i prefer rougher more rugged tweedy wools.

and there is some of this. ordered 20 skeins of beaverslide worsted. 10 for me and 10 for my friend. mine is a lovely mossy green and i am going to knit a cabled thing for my nephew, eventually.

and there has been ordering books on amazon. my friend is going to come here from the us and he will bring me barbara walker's treasuries. i cannot begin to say how much i am looking forward to browse them and get inspired.

a little knitting

2007-08-28T19:09:00.000+02:00

i am not completely away from knitting. i have knit a zimmermann very fast cap for the opinionated plus adrians we call them pirates cap. the latter is for my venezuelan friend who claims to be of pirate descent and who ended up down the road from here when he was a young sailor. he likes this motif i have noticed and always wears some kind of headgear on top of the dreadlocks. he may like this. hopefully there won't be a cap curse (like the sweater curse).
and i have bought priscilla gibson's knitting in the old way. lovely book. i enjoy reading in it.
and work is hard. omg i never knew children could make so much noise. it is against their nature to sit down on their behind. i wonder if i was like that. well i still find it a bit difficult to sit for a long time..

and the winner is....

2007-08-26T22:50:00.000+02:00

changing job is much more of an ordeal than i had expected. but it is good. and my new colleagues are lovely to say the least. but it means that i have not been a very active blogger. and i did not find a winner of the contest on friday as promised. i am sorry.
i wrote down a list with numbers and names of you all and called my nephew and asked him to say a number between 1 and 34. he picked number one which means that peggy is the lucky winner of the book. i hope she will enjoy and know that she will use the book in an innovative way. peggy is an impressive knitter and a newbie to knitting. a very impressive newbie.
i have really enjoyed to read all your answers to the questions. very inspiring. so thank you.

the last norwegian sweater.

2007-08-13T19:12:00.000+02:00

here is the last norwegian sweater based on ez's raglan with my modifications inspired by the norwegian 'fanatrøje' but in a not very norwegian colour combo. the sleevetops are 40 % of K and neck opening would have been way too small if i'd 'eaten up' all the sleeve stitches. i made a 1-1 rib neck a i have sewn it down (live stitches right off the needles). i have used meg's technique to minimize the jogs. you knit one row with the new stripe colour on the next row you lift up the stitch (in the other colour) and knit the two stitches together. i have never heard of this technique before enterering blogging world and i thing it is a great thing to know since it really makes the stripe work look so much better. and maybe that is the motor in knitting. you always find something new to experiment with in order to make the finished product look nicer than the last thing you knit.
i tried hard to get a group portrait of the three little recipients. but either one of them slept or the three year old didn't want to try his sweater on. that is typical 3 year olds. i remember a discussion about the topic at zimmermania.
but the mother of the little boys was very pleased with the sweater and some of her family members (in laws) want me to knit for them now.

i am afraid that there may not be much time for knitting. i started on the new job today and i feel completely knackered after meeting all my new colleagues. the room where they teach crafts looked very attractive. hopefully the kids get inspired to make crafts even when they are grown up. not that i was ever inspired by any teacher of mine.....

a knitter's abc

2007-08-10T16:10:00.000+02:00

this is buster a prizewinning sheep that i know nothing more about than it is the breed gotlandsfår and lives in sweden and won the prize because of the ewe.

this is hønsestrik. knitting tradition invented by the danish feminist movement in the 70es and still a curse word when speaking about knitting here. well kirsten hofstätter actually had her books published by penguin. not so bad.

on monday i am in the game of teaching children again. i am going to teach english, art, history and religious studies. it is a weird and scary feeling after years of teaching adults danish as a second language. i hope all shall be well..... argh. but in a way it can be nice since children are curious learners where adults only want to learn what is useful for them.. i guess this is the reason for i have taught mig self jogless stripes and provisional cast on and so on. i really needed it.

and this this is my fiftieth post i will post a knitter's alphabet.

A: a is for ALBA and ALBERT who turned my head to knitting again.

B: B is for BEAVERSLIDE from whom i just received lovely yarn and colourcards (and B is definitely for Brooklyntweed as well. a lovely source for inspiration and for bloggers)

C: is for cast on and hopefully for cast off.

D: is for durable yarn.

E: is for Elizabeth

F: friendship among knitters worldwide. i love it.

G: is for garter that is much more interesting than i thought.

H: is for knit up HEM. beautiful feature.

I: is for interweave knit.

J: is for jogless stripes. truely amazing.

K: is for kitchener. such a beautiful finishing technique.

L: is for lice patterns.

M: is for Meg and for me and for MORE knitting.

N: needles of which i only accept ADDI,

O:order yarn online and order in your stash.

P: is for purl. not as bad as it's reputation.

Q: questions (answer the question in the former post, please)

R: rowan. lovely yarn. esp. rowanspun. how could they discontinue it???

S: sheep. merino, bluefaced leicester, rambouillet. just imagine a year ago i didn't know one breed of sheep. now i am going for jeopardy.

T: tweed. i love tweed yarns.

U: uld. danish word for wool.

V: verse. like the kitchener verse. purl, knit. knit. purl......

X: is for x-large stash.

Y: is for yarn. what else?

and Z is for??????? oh yeah zimmermann of course.

celebration and contest

2007-08-09T01:15:00.000+02:00

i actually have so much to celebrate this year. my three very best friends who appeared in my life 25 years ago have stayed. and i am soon on blog post # 50 and sweet albert and sweet alba, the knitting muse, came into the lives of my family one year ago. and i have been the happy blogger for 50 posts very soon. and my glass is definetely half full more than half empty.
so i will have a competition here. and the prize is a very old book that i love: annechen sibbern bohn: norwegian knitting patterns. even the divine ms. z quotes from it in knitting w /0 tears odds are mighty good right now. it is a staple in anyone's collection of knitting books. and i would love responses to the question when does somebody else's design become your own?????? on this post when you enroll for the contest????
i will find the winner on the 24th of august.
good luck.
cheers
merete aka knititch

motley and grey

2007-08-07T23:16:00.000+02:00

i have a little motley collection of pictures today (i have fallen in love with the word). well the birthday cake from yesterday certainly is motley don't you think??? it even made a couple of 3-4 years old crash alba's party. not only did they want candy for themselves but also for a few friends who i suppose must have been imaginary since i never saw the shadow of them. and the cake was yummy and the birthday girl enjoyed the party and the green tomten and a thousand other gifts enormously.
the next picture is of my purple readers. i am afraid they are my destiny. or i'll need to get very very long arms. i was knitting on the green/brown sweater today. and i made mistakes. without noticing before long after they were made. and i was even focused on not doing so. i am happy i don't feel as old inside and that my best friends also wear cheap brightly coloured readers and nests of grey frizzy hair on top of their heads, that helps the readers not to slip of one's head, as well.
and even my mentor, elizabeth, has a chapter on the subject in the opinionated knitter. charming.
and i will really need them for the next few days. the sweater i am knitting is nearing the end. and that is lovely. i am bored with the yarn now. i love it but need to move on.
the fair isle needs mending. a strand was cut in some mysterious way. and now i need to mend it. my heart sank when i heard. but as i say: kitchener on with hope and confidence through all crises.
and the last is of course the swatch for the saddle-shouldered aran in which jared looks so wonderful. i am knitting it for myself and now i am getting a little bit concerned whether it will just make me look retro in a not so becoming way. i will knit it and if it is disaster i will pass it on to somebody who doesn't have the curse of a nest of grey hair (roving?) on top of her head. my niece, the fair isle molester, for instance.

alba's birthday or one year of knitting, again!!!!

2007-08-06T09:48:00.001+02:00

today is alba the little polar bear's first birthday. and for me it has been one year of seriously getting back to my old hobby, knitting. it all started when the happy mother to be asked me why
i never was creative any longer. i couldn't live with that ;-) and hence i started knitting again. and ever since it has been more than three projects as an average per month. and this hobby of mine has certainly lead me many places. i am very happy about all my new virtual knitting buddies here and at zimmermania and newly at ravelry

i am impressed with all the creativity that is out there and skills. it is great that some many good women and men continue to knit as it is something special, in my opinion. and due to the many requests i get for knitting a little something, say, a fair isle sweater, many people agree.

it has been the year i discovered elizabeth zimmermann and that has certainly broadened my view upon knitting. i love her ideas and her wit.

to celebrate my year of knitting i got myself a few 'little somethings'. one is this book , that i hope i will cherish very much. the other is 3 skeins of yarn plus colourcards from leanne. i cannot begin to say how nice it was doing business with leanne. i almost felt i was in montana because of a few evocative emails she sent me. i contemplate buying some of her yarn for a sweater eventually. hopefully i will start my saddle shoulder aran this week. and the plan is to knit one for my nephew as well.

as well as i am not buying local and i am really sorry but there is hardly any new things to buy in my opinion. in other knitters opinion there is though. stephanie is knitting a kauni cardi by danish designer ruth sørensen and that has caused a lot of discussion at various blogs of where to get the yarn for this. i'd suggest to link here. this is maybe my favourite danish virtual lys. it is not very pricey and they have a good variety of yarn. the websites translates to english and we all know english here, anyway. so don't hesitate to shop. (no i don't get any profit).

i hope this is the start of a new year of happy knitting. i wonder where it will take me.

ravelry

2007-08-05T15:56:00.000+02:00

today i was reading jean's blog and she had a link so you can find out where you are on your waiting list to ravelry. well it turns out that i had already been admitted but had not received the invitation. that is lovely.... and time-consuming i am afraid.

a leprechaurn tomten

2007-08-04T19:12:00.000+02:00

this baby has certainly been a work in progress for very long but now it is finished. it is knit of rowanspun aran on needles #5 mm. there are a lot of new techniques included: garterstitch grafting, applied idiot cord, slipped stitch down the sleeve and i have knit up the stitches from the underarm rather than binding them of a sewing. and on monday i will have to teach myself how to sew in a zipper as i think there is a lot going on already without buttons.

it has been great doing all these new techniques but it is a strange fo. i have a love/hate relationship with the colour, i must admit. but tomten is one of my favourite patterns and i have yarn for an adult one too. that will be great fun and i love the colour for that one.

oh and the gig i went to was fab. if you like folk/country/bluegrass at all, you must go and see gillian welch who is genius as is her hubby dave rawlings. the concert stayed with me, making me happy, for days.

summer has not hit copenhagen (yet)

2007-07-30T19:37:00.000+02:00

it is so cold and windy here in copenhagen. i am having a holiday and at this time of year i usually love to go on sales to get lovely summer clothes 70% off reg. price. and i did this year too. i bought lovely oliver goldsmith 60es sunglasses and my hopes were high for summer. the next week i went to buy a coat because all my hopes were gone. the worst thing about it is that next summer is so far away. and since i am a teacher there is no way i can plan when to take some time off.
so i went to my have a look in my closet for something wooly to wear and found these three fo's that i have not shown on my blog before because they were knit last autumn before i started blogging.

the first one is cheryl oberle's 'kimono shawl'. and large stole in a muted lime green. one of my favorite colours for reddish skin..... i used it a lot last year. it is made out of 300 grammes indiecita alpaca.

the second is ivy bigelow's midwest moonlight from scarf style. it is made out of 125 grammes elsebeth lavold: silky wool. it has a lovely drape and a gorgeous muted heather colour. i used it all the time last year. i should make some for christmas presents this year, i think.

and the last one is my much loved clapotis by kate gilbert. i love this pattern inside out, literally speaking. i made 7 in all. 1 for me. one for my colleague who was going through radiation therapy, to keep her warm, when going to the hospital on her bike. one for another colleague (she paid the yarn) and 4 for female family members. my colleagues' wore their clapotis' all the time and i was so happy. i think one of them actually moved into her's. they take between 6-7 skeins of noro silk garden or kureyon. if you haven't made one yet, do yourself the favour. one of the advantages of noro silk garden is you learn so much about putting unusual colours together. all of a sudden i could see what a lovely match coffee brown, denim blue, and purple is.

i love all kate's patterns. made the adorable samantha sweater and the pea pod set for alba when she was a few months old. you can purchase the pattern at kate's website http://kategilbert.com and the pea pod set is a free pattern from interweave.

the last sweater for carl, is proceeding, but boy how i dislike knitting small circumferences in the round. knit one sleeve on dpns and ripped the whole thing. remade it on 2 circs. and the result isn't very much better but as good as it gets. washing and blocking will help (i hope).

and tomorrow i am going to a gig with gillian welch. my nephew and his girlfriend and i will go out for dinner at a lovely vietnamese restaurant and then to the gig. i love gillian welch who i got to know three years ago in new york. and although she isn't 'so new york' it always reminds me of that lovely week spent with my best friend peter in a snow blizzard in new york... and i love asian food....

a continued story about norwegian sweaters

2007-07-28T22:12:00.000+02:00

i am certainly having fun with my norwegian creations. finished albert's sweater yesterday and wet blocked it. i am quite pleased with this little no nonsense sweater and love the classic boy colours. i don't think i have ever seen a more beautiful navy blue colour. unfortunately the yarn is discontinued and there is no more navy blue rowanspun to get. the whole thing has been knit while listening to gillian welch and dreaming of future holidays checking out the music scene in the united states by bus, knitting. ending up in meg's camp!!! it is nice to dream. and who knows????

unfortunately i will not see albert before next week so in lack of a live model i came along the two young men outside my train station.

the green knitting is for carl, the eldest of my great nephews and is a really fun knit. it will not be long.

lusekoftemania

2007-07-26T23:52:00.000+02:00

there is progress on the little trio of 'lusekofter'. tomorrow i will cast on for carl's lusekofte which is not really going to be a lusekofte but a sweater based on a norwegian children's sweater with star borders and 'lice' in stripes. very much like the striped norwegian rasta cap i did this spring.

the colours are rowanspun thor and catkin, brown and green tweed for a little green-eyed boy. and this is the least norwegian colour choice of the three.

it has been great fun to make a very 'personal' sweater for each child. but i am happy that i have only one left.

one advantage of knitting series of things is that one can improve the techniques with every garment. when i knitted alba's lusekofte i followed the instructions of the boatneck in knitting around and had no idea about what i was doing. i made a purl row, i increased like a madwoman and voila i had the nicest little inch of knitting to hem down. i really like the technique and realized that it is not neccesarily bad to be a blind follower. this time, since i knew what i was doing, i could plan a knit the collar in blue to match the lower hem. maybe i knit series instead of ripping.

lusekofte # 2

2007-07-22T01:45:00.000+02:00

i like to knit several similar sweaters, one after the other. and with everyone you get more grip on the techniques. and i like trying new techniques. and then i think i like colourwork a great deal. i like the logic of the patterns. and that you have to think to space them correctly and the beauty of them. i am not quite sure if i like the norwegian patterns graphic qualities or the fair isle patterns watercolour qualities better. both are so lovely.
these are pictures of my current wip. again rowanspun dk. this is for the aforementioned albert. in the lower picture you can see where i plan to steek. it is a great technique.
the older brother, carl, is going to have a slightly different striped version of a lusekofte. his is going to be the same colours as alba's which will suit his moss green eyes very well.
what a joy to be a great aunt. and how sweet the title sounds in english.

eye candy friday

2007-07-20T16:34:00.000+02:00

here is wee alba wearing her new sweater. she will starte creche next week and i think this is a lovely hardwearing sweater to play in with her new pals. she seemed to be quite pleased to pose in her new sweater. and she took immediate interest in the opinionated knitter. i hope for her that she'll grow up to be a knitter one day. it is very difficult to take pictures of a one year old since they are all over the place all the time. but she is so happy with life and one cannot but agree with her.
the light grey and blue sweater is for her second cousin albert. i am going to make three of these all with small differences.

happy friday knitting.

retro knitting

2007-07-19T13:12:00.000+02:00

i finished the sweater and i am pretty satisfied with the result. i think steeks are a lovely invention. i love the norwegian patterns, i love the simplicity of the sweater where K is 100 and sleeves are 50 % of K on the top. i love the knitted up hem with a contrast colour for 'insiders'. and i think the norwegian sweaters give such a lovely fresh look to the wearers, small or big. and more than anything i love the rowanspun dk. it is the most lovely, but discountinued, yarn. when you put it into water it softens up and becomes almost felted. i love my ez knitting books and my books of nordic knitting.
and of course i love the little girl who is going to wear it to pieces.

and i love it so much that i have already embarked on a new one. i am going to make sweaters, not similar, for my two cute great nephews.

the first one is going to be grey and navy. the second is going to be brown and green, i think.

the original norwegian sweaters are black and white but i am not sure about how much i like black for children. which colour should one wear as a grown up if one starts with black before year one????

tomorrow i will deliver the sweater to alba and take some pics of here in it.

it is my holiday and i'll knit what i want to.....

2007-07-18T21:46:00.000+02:00

here is albert. he is my great nephew, and the youngest of my other niece's two sons, carl and yes, albert . albert is alba's junior by one week. his mother hasn't really wanted me to knit anything for either of the boys, but i have decided that they need a norwegian sweater too. they are too cute. and it is kind of a boyish sweater.

this little one looks so scandinavian with his big blue eyes and i found a skein of navy blue rowanspun in my yarn cupboard and that will be ideal together with the light grey. the red is the yarn for the provisional cast-on. once again i will use the knitted up hem, that i think gives such a beautiful finish to sweaters. i will make one for the three year old carl (in the lower picture wth their mum) once this is finished.....

the tomten goes back into the knitting cupboard for a while. i have an issue with the colour.

progress

2007-07-18T10:50:00.000+02:00

i finished the norwegian sweater. it has turned of very nicely and i will post more about it when i have taken some pics of the recipient in it. the recipient has been in spain on her first holiday ever and it was so great to see her again after the hiatus. she has got a new habit: at first she looks very reserved when seeing you and then she lights up in the loveliest smile. it is amazing how close one can feel to a baby even if it isn't your own.

and i am knitting on the green tomten now. i dont really know if i like it. i am not at all sure about the colour but i like the bubbles. it looks a bit like something you could buy in the grocery store and since it is my third tomten the knitting is smooth yet boring sailing.

right now i feel a bit obliged to knit certain things for certain people (including myself) and it is amazing how i always manage to turn hobbies into duties. but i like it anyway. i would like to clear my stash and wait to buy new yarn until i have used what i have i.e. a lot of tweedy yarn.

i do have a penchant for tweedy yarn.