The Beauty of Green Things

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Hello!

‘On some day of late January, when the honey-coloured west is full of soft grey cloud, when one lone minstrel thrush is chanting to the dying light, what is the thrill that shakes us?’ This is how Mary Webb starts The Spring of Joy (first published in 1917), a lovely collection of essays about the healing power of nature. This ‘thrill that shakes us’, she writes, is a sense of ‘oneness with all beauty, seen and unseen’.

It is early February now, and unlike the south of the country we haven’t had any snow so far. Over the past month the sky has often been ‘full of soft grey cloud’. Or a uniform dull grey. Or pouring with rain. How can we experience a sense of oneness with all beauty on days like that?

Well, there are subtler things than stunning sunsets and spectacular snowscapes. Webb writes about the beauty to be found in the movements, sounds and scents of nature. Or in shadow or shape. In the presence of an old oak tree…

… surrounded by sheep and buffeted by an invigorating breeze I know what she means.

In this little gem of a book, there is also an essay about The Beauty of Colour. According to Webb, ‘Of all colours, brown is the most satisfying.’ I don’t know about that, but I do agree with her when she writes: ‘In blue the spirit can wander, but in green it can rest’.

On the whole blue is my favourite colour – my spirit loves to wander. But at the moment I am also strongly drawn to green.

I’ve finished the Norwegian-patterned mittens for our daughter, woven in the ends and washed them. The last thing to do now is knitting in the linings. While the mittens were drying, I made a start on a green cardigan for our grandson knit from the top down:

The lovely fir-tree-like pattern along the raglan increases posed quite a puzzle. It’s taken me several attempts to get the hang of it, but I’m on the right track now.

And looking for something else, I came across a skein of a beautiful green tweed yarn. It’s been in my stash for a long, long time. Now I’d love to knit it up into something special, but what? A pair of mittens? A cowl? A hat?

Speaking of the beauty of green things and the healing power of nature, I’ve just finished reading Landlines by Raynor Winn. A dear friend gave it to me as a birthday gift last year. I didn’t read it straightaway but kept it to have something to look forward to for January. This is the hardcover edition – it is worth having for the beautiful dust jacket alone.

It is also very much worth reading. Landlines is actually the third book in a series. I haven’t read the first two (The Salt Path and The Wild Silence), but that wasn’t a problem – it can be read on its own.

The author’s husband, Moth, has a neurodegenerative disorder (similar to Parkinson and Alzheimer) for which there is no cure. He is told that his condition will only deteriorate. After this devastating diagnosis and subsequently losing their home, they make the unusual decision to walk the 630-mile-long South West Coast Path (described in the first book). This turns out to lead to a miraculous improvement in Moth’s health.

In Landlines, Moth’s health has gone downhill again and the couple set out for another long-distance walk, this time starting in the north of Scotland. It’s a moving personal story with unexpected twists and turns, interesting encounters and insights, and beautiful descriptions of the landscape and wildlife along the way.

Well, I’m going to make a start on the mitten linings now and hope to have them finished by next week. To close off here is a picture of some twists and turns in our most recent non-so-long-distance walk. Take care! xxx

NB: De boeken van Raynor Winn zijn ook in het Nederlands vertaald: Het zoutpad, De wilde stilte en Landlijnen.

Norwegian Mitten Inspiration

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Hello!

Knitting 24 tiny Norwegian Advent mittens and a pair of normal sized ones, has made me put ‘more Norwegian knitting’ on my list for 2023. That doesn’t necessarily mean more mittens, but looking for inspiration, I first of all pulled several Norwegian mitten books from my bookshelves. I thought you might like to look along with me.

The first one is Mittens from around Norway, by Nina Granlund Sæther:

This English translation of an originally Norwegian book contains 43 mitten patterns from many different parts of the country. There is obviously a lot of colourwork, but also some cables, knit-and-purl patterns, and a little lace.

There are large and clear photographs of the finished mittens and also photos of the museum pieces they were inspired by. With one or two exceptions, the mittens have been knit in widely available Norwegian yarns.

The next book is Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition by Terri Shea, also in English:

This is solely about black-and-white mittens (and gloves) in the Selbu tradition. The author has researched and reproduced part of the mitten collection of The Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle as well as mittens from a private collection.

This book provides quite a bit of historical information and also goes into special techniques. It contains patterns for 31 pairs of mittens and gloves. Shea used Norwegian yarns for many of them, but also Shetland as well as some other yarns.

I brought the next publication home from a visit to Selbu (about 70 km south-east of Trondheim) – Selbustrikk:

This is only a thin booklet, but it contains a wealth of inspiration for mittens and gloves, as well as socks, hats and a few scarves. Again, everything in traditional black-and-white. It is in Norwegian, but the diagrams speak a universal language. By far the most of the patterns use Rauma Gammelserie yarn, and some of them Rauma Finull garn.

A must-see if you ever get the opportunity to visit this part of Norway is the Selbu Folk Museum, or Bygdemuseum. The museum has a lovely collection of mittens and other knitwear. My husband took the photo at the top of this post during our visit there. Here is a closer look:

Awe-inspiring, all those finely knit, beautifully patterned mittens and other knits, don’t you think?

Zooming out again to the entire country, here is one of the most beautiful knitting books on my shelves: Håndplagg til Bunader og Folkedrakter:

This 300-page tome (in Norwegian) is crammed with mittens, gloves and wrist warmers in all kinds of different knitting techniques. Many of them are embellished with embroidery or beads. The photography is stunning, and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of leafing through this book. So inspiring!

All of the above is inspiration FOR Norwegian mittens But why not take inspiration FROM Norwegian mittens as well?

Our next-door neighbours are expecting their first grandchild any day, and I thought I’d knit her a wee hat. I took the striped hat from Debbie Bliss’ Baby Cashmerino 2 booklet as a starting-point. But instead of knitting stripes, I looked at my Advent mittens for inspiration and came up with this:

A simple Norwegian-mitten-inspired baby hat – a satisfying little knit.

After looking through all these amazing mitten books, I still have no idea what my next Norwegian or Norwegian-inspired project is going to be. More mittens? Gloves or wrist warmers? Socks? A hat? Or even an entire sweater? Whatever it’s going to be, I’ll keep you posted!

Links:

If you’d like to read more about Norwegian mittens and can’t get hold of any of the books I’ve described, there is always the internet, of course.

Mitten Progress and a Walk

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It’s Sunday morning, 4˚C. Rain and hail storms are accompanied by strong gusts of wind. Fancy a walk? If you do, make sure to wear warm wind-and-waterproof clothes. And wellies, too, because the path will be flooded in places.

It can get quite busy here with walkers and cyclists, but today we seem to be the only ones. Why would that be?

No wait, there is someone there in the distance. It’s one of the shepherds with her two dogs and part of the flock. They are out in all weathers.

Walking here, I often think of the people who built these burial monuments.

How did the landscape look in their time? What was it like living here then? And what would they think, seeing us in our colourful synthetic outdoor clothing?

I am wearing a hand-knit woolly hat and cowl. But underneath my bright red polyamide rain jacket I’m wearing a polyester and elastane fleece sweater, and my hands are kept warm by fleece-lined machine-knit gloves. Fie! As a dedicated knitter, I really need to do something about that.

First the Northman mittens for our daughter and a few other things, though. I’ve started them again and have made quite a bit of progress. The first attempt was on the small side.

Going up a needle size, from 3.5 mm (US 4) to 3.75 mm (US 5), makes them slightly wider and longer. They’ll be the right size now, I think.

Writing this, I’m thinking of the book of Winterverhalen / Winter Tales, written by Dawn Casey and illustrated by Zanna Goldhawk. One of the stories is about a grandmother whose needles go clickety-click, clickety click…

… and a very special mitten, welcoming all animals seeking refuge from a storm.

A wonderful image, and a great book for both children and adults.

Well, time to close off. There is just one last thing. Towards the end of our walk the sun peeks through, and LOOK!

Making a List and Choosing Buttons

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Hello!

The New Year is well underway, and I’ve been thinking about where I’m going with my knitting. I didn’t make any resolutions or a list of goals. I feel a huge inner resistance to setting goals when it comes to knitting – as if the very word ‘goals’ will suck all the joy out of it. But drifting along and being pulled in all kinds of directions by whatever yarns or patterns cross my path, as I’ve often done, doesn’t feel quite right either anymore.

So, I am taking the middle road by making a wish list – a short list of the kind of things I’d like to do more of in the coming year:

  • Norwegian knitting
  • Making things for our grandson
  • Knitting challenging socks (at least more challenging than my ordinary stocking stitch ones)
  • Designing

It is rather vague, I know. Not very S.M.A.R.T. according to some. Will I get anything done without Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound goals? We’ll see. For now, I’m still finishing a few last things from 2022.

In 2021, at the time of year when the hydrangeas were in bloom, I bought two skeins of yarn from two dyers new to the craft (they can be found here and here):

The pale blue tweedy skein doesn’t know what it’s going to be yet. The other one has grown into a pair of simple stocking stitch socks.

I’ve also finished a simple stocking stitch Quintessential Cardigan from a soft navy blue wool-and-alpaca blend.

I wanted a medium-warm cardigan for everyday wear that would go with just about everything. It turned out exactly the way I wanted it, only maybe a little too… serious? Perhaps that could be remedied with buttons. I hadn’t bought any yet and got out my big button box. There might be some in there that I could use. Sifting through the buttons, I put all those in the right size on a tray.

The cardigan needed seven buttons, and I made several combinations. Six matching navy blue ones and a pop of red?

Nah, still too serious. Colourful retro?

Fun, but not really me. Seven silvery and shiny ones then?

Oooh, I really like those! But not with this navy blue cardigan. Okay, one last try:

Yes!

Not terribly adventurous perhaps, but hey, that’s me. I do hope to become a little more adventurous in my knitting in 2023, though. Oh, and I would also like to do more with the buttons in my button box – I’ll add that to my wish list. Now, where can I put the list so that I won’t forget about it?

How about you? Do you have specific knitting/crochet/other plans, goals or resolutions for 2023? I’d love to hear about them!

Happy 2023!

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Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! May 2023 be filled with happiness for you and your loved ones. I hope you’ve had a great time over the Holidays and a good start to the New Year.

As for me, I spent part of the last day of the old year baking a big batch of knieperties (recipe here).

Keeping a few back for ourselves, I filled several bags with knieperties, closed them with cheerful ribbons, put them in a basket and distributed them among our neighbours. We don’t see much of each other at this time of the year, and it was nice to catch up on their news.

In exchange for the knieperties, some of them gave us home-made oliebollen and appelflappen. Yum!

When the clock struck 12 and the fireworks started, it was 15 ˚C (32 ˚F) – a nice temperature for a sunny day in May, not the middle of a night in December! Reading about the terrible snow storms and torrential rain some of you have had, I wish things could have been distributed a bit more evenly across the globe. I hope all is more or less back to normal now where you live.

Our Holiday break was uneventful, and I’ve been knitting quite a bit, finishing the Advent calendar mittens.

They were getting neater and neater as I went along – practice makes perfect (or at least improves skills). Taken together the backs make a lovely sampler of Norwegian colourwork that could be used for all kinds of other projects (description of how to download the pattern at the end of this post).

I’ve put them away now, moth-free in plastic, and made notes in my planner here and there to remind me of finding small gifts, poems and quotes to put inside. And especially to remind me of gifting them before December 1, 2023.

The life-size mittens I’ve also been knitting were less of a success, turning out a wee bit too small, and will have to be re-knit. More about those if/when I’ve found the courage to start anew.

Beside a few walks and a great family get-together, we also enjoyed a concert of a group of midwinter horn blowers. They called it An Ode to Peace through Connection.

It was great fun, seeing and hearing these strange traditional wooden horns, made by the players themselves.

The concert lasted all of 15 minutes, with each of the players doing a solo first, and finally all of them ‘making a lot of noise together’, as they themselves put it. The group has members aged from 7 to 70+ and each player has their own technique, resting the end of the horn on the ground or holding it high up in the air.

They’re an elusive bunch, these people, playing their horns from late November through the first week of January in a dozen or so villages around the area. Excepting this afternoon concert, you never know where they will pop up. Their announcements say: You’re most likely to hear us somewhere around 6 pm.

Did you notice the 2023 from buttons at the top? Well, I’ve also been rummaging through my button box. If I can get my act together, I’ll tell you more about that next week. Hope to see you then!

PS. If you’d like to hear the weird and wonderful sound of midwinter horns, there is a video on YouTube here. This isn’t ‘our’ group, but the sound is similar.

Nearly Finished

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Hello, and welcome to my last blog post for 2022. While I am typing this, the Christmas stollen my husband has baked is cooling on a wire rack in the kitchen, filling the house with its delicious warm smell.

We do not celebrate Christmas in a big way, but there are certain traditions we hold dear. Like the above stollen, a Christmas tree with the same baubles every year, and a Christmas dinner prepared and shared with love and attention.

We also enjoy visiting a Christmas market in Germany when we can. So on a frosty morning, just before the sun came up, we set off for Münster.

On the way there, I knit a few rows on a simple sock in a lovely hand-painted yarn, the only suitable knitting project to take along – everything else was either too complicated or nearly finished.

Actually there isn’t a Christmas market in Münster but six, on various squares around the beautiful old city centre.

They are all slightly different. Some are more food-oriented, some more about gifts and handmade things. And one small new one was focused on organic, sustainable and fair-trade products. Even the mulled wine was certified organic.

As our gift-giving moment is already behind us, we didn’t need to shop for gifts and were free to stroll around, enjoy the sights and each other’s company, and have a bite to eat here and there. I love the traditional hot and golden Reibekuchen mit Apfelmus (potato fritters with apple sauce).

I also quickly popped into the yarn shop in the city centre, thinking it might be nice to write about, but popped out just as quickly – nothing to write home about there. Well, never mind, there was enough to enjoy without yarn.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this time of the year. I really love Christmas. And no matter what, how, or where we’re celebrating, I think we can all do with a message of peace and light.

But I can also relate to newspaper columnist Doortje Smithuijsen, who recently wrote, ‘… it’s the time of year again when we feel that at the end of the month the world is coming to an end – the time when everything needs to be finished NOW […] The time of year when you’re feeling vulnerable, looking for something to hold on to.’ (De Volkskrant, V2, 15 December 2022, my translation).

Unlike Doortje, I’m not joining MyInnerHealthClub. I don’t need to look far for something to hold on to – I have my knitting needles. Like her, I feel the urge to finish things, and I try to have all my knitting projects finished before the end of the year/world. My navy blue cardigan is nearly finished.

I also hope to finish my Advent calendar mittens soon. I am really, really enjoying knitting these, and if the world doesn’t stop turning at 12 pm on December 31, I’d love to do more Norwegian knitting in the new year.

I’d also love to knit more for our grandson, more socks (not just simple ones) and more things designed by myself, and to write about what I’m learning along the way. I won’t be able to finish my new shawl pattern before the year is out, but I’ve already wound the yarn for the final version. I hope to be able to tell you more about it in January or February.

I’m taking a break from blogging now to spend time with my loved ones, knit, read and go for walks. Thank you so much for reading my blog over the past year. It’s been lovely hearing from some of you now and then. I hope to ‘see’ you again in 2023, and wish you and yours a happy and relaxing festive season!

7 Small Things

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Hello! No big projects or FOs today, but 7 small things that have made me happy over the past week.

1. A walk
The nights have been frosty this week, with temperatures just above zero during the daytime. On Sunday morning it was dark, cold and foggy, and I didn’t feel much like going for a walk. We went anyway. The heather and grasses were still white and frozen.

But the trees were already dripping.

It was cold, it was wet, it was gloomy. And it was lovely.

2. Small hands, big hands
Our grandson and his parents came to celebrate Sinterklaas last Saturday. At 8 months, he was more interested in the wrapping paper than in the gifts inside them. His small hands next to my husband’s big ones made me sigh a sigh of happiness.

3. Jingle bells
Sinterklaas brought me a few gifts, too. One of them was a small tin filled with jingle bell stitch markers.

4. Small bird feeder
A dear friend came on a very belated birthday visit bearing gifts. One of them was a new bird feeder, hand-made from willow. Too small for woodpeckers and too difficult to hold on to for house sparrows and finches, it is specifically for great and blue tits. I asked them if I could post a picture of them eating pieces of peanut from it on my blog, but they said: uh-uh, we value our privacy! So here is just the feeder.

5. Small cable
The same friend also gave me this:

Only a fellow-knitter would know how happy that would make me. It’s a new type of cable for my Chiaogoo circular knitting needles. I am trying it out on the small Advent mittens I’m knitting with the magic loop technique.

What can I tell you about it? Well, the Swiv 360 cable is quite a bit thinner than the original red cables, and it is also a lot more flexible – very nice! These cables are attached to the ends that screw onto the needle tips in such a way that they can rotate freely – a tremendous improvement.

The only downside of these new cords is that there is a slight hitch where the cable is attached to the ends, which makes sliding the stitches from left to right over them towards the tip (when moving from one needle to the next with the magic loop method) a little more difficult. But, all in all, I’m very happy with it!

6. Mini-mittens
I’m not quite but almost on schedule with the Norwegian mini-mittens I’m knitting for an Advent calendar to gift next year. Number 13 has just slid off my needles.

It’s great fun, knitting these. My idea was to spend some quiet, contemplative time burning a candle and listening to music while knitting one of these every day. In real life it’s more like 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, sometimes with, sometimes without music, often forgetting to light a candle or to be quiet and contemplative.

Still, I’m getting there and enjoying these knitting moments. The only thing I’m not quite happy with is the bumpiness of the sides of some of the mittens and the irregularity of some of the stitches. But let’s look at it from a positive side: I still have things to learn – yay!

7. Mini-sock
The first Christmas card arrived accompanied by a small gift – a mini-sock. No, actually it wasn’t a Christmas card but a New Year’s card. The friend who sent it explains why on her wonderful blog about her life, knitting, walks with her dog and music. It is in Dutch, but Google does a fairly decent job of translating it. You can read about and see all of the mini-socks she knit here.

I’m happy and honoured to be the recipient of one of these sweet little socks. I’ve attached it to the zipper of my babysitting bag, so that it will travel with me every time I’m looking after our grandson.

May your weeks be filled with small things that make you happy, too.

Library Vest

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Hello!

Last week, instead of writing a blog post, I gave myself some extra knitting time. I knit a number of mini-mittens, a sock, and half a sleeve for a cardigan. I also finished my Library Vest, a project I chose partly because of its name.

To me, libraries are wonderful places. I still remember the first time my mum took me to the local library (I must have been about four) – so many books! And you can even take some home! Working in a library seemed a great job, being among books all day and stamping return-by dates in them. At home, I played being a librarian as a child, but apart from working as a library assistant in the evenings for a while to earn some much-needed income as a student, I never became a librarian.

I still love spending time in libraries. This is ‘our’ library in the nearest town, in a building that used to be a bank:

Not terribly attractive on the outside, but very welcoming inside.

Dotted around the place there are always themed displays of books. Last week, there was a large table with books about Sinterklaas in the children’s section.

Officially Sinterklaas is on the 5th of December, but for practical reasons we are celebrating it tomorrow. Shopping for Sinterklaas gifts, I spent an afternoon in Bolsward, a town with a great independent bookshop and other non-chain stores. Its library is housed in a far more impressive building than ours:

The library shares these beautiful premises with a museum and a café. Part of the café staff have Down’s syndrome, which gives the place a relaxed and light-hearted atmosphere. The young woman serving me proudly announced that the carrot cake they had baked that morning was one of the best ever, so how could I not have a slice?

Well, let’s not forget the Library Vest this whole story started with. It’s a sleeveless garment knit in simple stocking stitch, with a slight A-line, a few short rows above the hem to make it hang more evenly and shoulder seams placed a little forward.

It also has knit-in pockets. It is always hard to sew pocket bands in place neatly, but the pattern has a clever technique for that. Selvedge stitches are added on either side using bits of waste yarn (photo tutorial in the pattern). Perfect!

Beside the name, another reason for knitting the Library Vest was that I had exactly the right yarn for it left over from another project – a soft, navy blue tweed yarn called Lamana ‘Como Tweed’. It looks and feels like a fingering-weight yarn, but knits up at 22 sts on 10 cm/4”. With 120 meters/131 yards to a 25 gram(!) skein it goes a long way.

Instead of the rolled reverse stocking stitch edges that the original design has along fronts, armholes and pockets, I used the same ribbing as along the bottom (k3, p1). The faux leather buttons nicely bring out the tweed neps and somehow I think they are just what a librarian would choose.

If I’d become a librarian, I would probably have lost my job years ago, when almost all of the paid staff were replaced by computers and volunteers. Sometimes I think it might be nice to work in the library as a volunteer, but, hmmm, should I? It isn’t that the volunteers aren’t doing a good job, but it doesn’t feel quite right that this valuable work isn’t valued monetarily. Is this just a Dutch thing, paid staff being replaced by volunteers in certain sectors, or does it happen in other countries too?

I’ll consider volunteering seriously when I retire. Until then I’ll just play being a librarian at home, wearing my Library Vest (pattern here on Ravelry) and my geeky computer glasses.

Wishing you a relaxing yarn and book-filled weekend! Xxx

Julevotter

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Hello!

For two nights and a day-and-a-half it was wintry here, with starry nights, bright sunshine during the day and frost in the air. We’re back to higher temperatures and overcast skies now, but it was lovely as long as it lasted, with the thinnest layer of ice on ponds and lakes…

… and hoarfrost on the brittle yellowed grasses.

It was on one of these days that I decided to start a new, wintry knitting project: an Advent calendar with 24 small Norwegian Christmas mittens or Julevotter. A few days earlier a newsletter in my in-box mentioned it. As soon as I saw it, I loved it.

I didn’t plan on making one, though, until the wintry weather made me change my mind. It made me crave warm, woolly yarn and things. And, thinking about it, didn’t I have exactly the yarn called for in my stash?

The next minute I was running up the stairs, rummaging through boxes, and Yes! Found it! Some Dale Garn ‘Heilo’ and some Drops ‘Karisma’ in just the right colours.

This advent calendar is going to be a double gift. This year it’s a gift to myself – the gift of some peaceful knitting time every day during the Advent period. And next year it’ll be a gift for someone else – filled with small gifts.

I’ve already knit mitten number 1 to try the pattern out, at first using the indicated 3.0 mm/US 2½ needles. This made a very stiff mitten, so small that it would be almost impossible to wriggle a tiny gift into it. I tried another one on 3.25 mm/US 3 needles and that was better. Still small, but less tight.

Using knitting needles just a quarter of a millimetre thicker made a visible difference.

The pattern is in Norwegian, but that’s not really a problem even if you don’t speak a word of the language. Legg opp 26 m means: cast on 26 sts. The ribbing is k1, p1. And there are charts for the colourwork patterns and the decreases at the top.

The 24 tiny thumbless mittens are all going to be different, with a number on one side and lovely Norwegian patterns on the other.

I’m not sure it’s doable, knitting a mini-mitten every day during the run-up to Christmas, but we’ll see. I’m really looking forward to spending quality time with them and am not going to hurry. If they’re not finished ‘in time’ I’ll just keep knitting on in the New Year.

I read about this Advent Calendar in an e-mail from Rosy Green Wool, a German producer of organic yarns. I’ve subscribed to their newsletters because they are not too frequent and there is usually something interesting in them. Their post about this project can be read here on their website.

Sabine, the author of this ‘Knitting Letter’ as they call it, has knit one for each of her two children, and it’s fun to see them in the un-Christmassy colours she’s chosen, very different from my traditional ones.

The free pattern for the mini-mittens was published by Dale Garn and can be found here on Ravelry. Rosy Green Wool’s knitting letter says that it is no longer available for downloading, but it is. It is no longer available from Dale Garn, but can now be found on the Wayback Machine. Here is how to find it:

  • If on Ravelry you click on ‘This pattern is available for free’ or on the link under ‘For more information, see:’ you’re sent on to the Wayback machine (on my computer it takes a while). It looks a bit iffy, but the Wayback Machine is a bona fide internet archive.
  • When there, click on ‘Last ned katalog’. Then you’ll get a pdf of a lovely booklet with lots of patterns for knitted and crocheted Christmas projects.
  • For the mitten Advent calendar pattern scroll down past all the cosy pictures and you’ll find it on pages 1-3 of the instructions.

Well, I won’t keep you any longer. I know this is a busy time of year for many, but I hope you can find some quiet time in between all the jobs on your list to just sit and knit, or read, or listen to music, or do whatever else feels peaceful to you. xxx

A Forest Green Jacket

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Hello!

Choosing yarn online is a tricky business, as many of you will know. Colours can look very different on a computer screen than in real life. I had forest green in mind for a jacket for our grandson. You know, that deep, fairly dark, leafy green. The yarn did look lighter and, well, different on my screen, but it was called ‘forest green’, so I thought it would be all right and ordered it.

When it arrived, it was not what I had in mind, and very much what it had looked like on the computer screen. Oh, well, it was a nice colour for a little boy anyway.

The last time I wrote about the jacket, I said that I ‘only’ needed to knit the hood. Well, the hood was almost as big as the rest of the cardigan.

I finished the knitting on Saturday afternoon and started weaving in the ends and seaming. It is getting dark early at this time of year and for work like this I need to switch the lights on at around three.

While I was seaming and sipping tea, I meditated on the term ‘forest green’. How could the yarn producer have such a different idea about it from what I had in mind? My Oxford Dictionary defines forest green as ‘any of various shades of green associated with forests’. Not very helpful. Googling it, I found out that on various websites about colour, ‘forest green’ is indeed the shade of the yarn, and that what I have always thought of as forest green is generally called ‘dark olive’.

In a colour story about forest green on the Artists’ Network, I found this painting from the Amsterdam Van Gogh Museum:

The accompanying text said: ‘In a sense, the name “forest green” is a misnomer, because as artists well know, leaves and mosses are never a single color, much less a single value. Nevertheless, forest green does evoke the overall impression of foliage […] When the color finds its way into domestic spaces, it can lend a degree of earthiness and calm. This connection with nature is apparent in Still Life With Teapot, Cup and Fruit by Émile Bernard (1868–1941), in which the colors of the man-made objects seem to take their cue from the color of the fruit.’

Earthiness and calm – that sounds like a good thing for a baby jacket.

On Sunday, my husband was out on an excursion and I was home alone. A good moment to finish the seaming and sew on the buttons. It was a lovely, sunshiny day. Too lovely to spend indoors entirely, so I went for a bicycle ride as well.

Still shocked by the realisation that I’ve had a different mental image of this shade of green from the rest of the world all my life, I saw what I now know is ‘forest green’ everywhere. On a church door…

… on the lid of a wheelie bin…

… and on every bicycle route sign I passed.

For me, it’s still more like garden-and-kitchen-waste-wheelie-bin-lid-green or bicycle-route-sign-green than the colour of a forest, grumble, grumble. (I’m very much attached to my own mental image of forest green.)

It won’t make any difference to our grandson, though. His favourite colours are still those of his Mum and Dad’s eyes. As long as the jacket is soft and warm, he’ll be happy with it. And it certainly is that.

For any of you with babies and toddlers to knit for, here are a few useful details:

  • Pattern: Little Pixie Jacket (here on Ravelry)
  • Size made: 74-80/12-18 months (our grandson is only 7 months old, but he’s a big boy)
  • Yarn: Garnstudio Drops ‘Merino Extra Fine’, 7 skeins, colour 31 Forest Green
  • Needles: 4.0 mm/US 6

Knitter’s notes:

  • The sleeves are knit on to the body by casting on stitches at the sides. They have both underarm seams and seams on the top.
  • I put the sleeve and hood stitches on holders (old circular knitting needles) and used the 3-needle bind-off instead of seaming them.
  • Having knit this jacket before, I knew that the sleeves were waaay to long and made them a size smaller this time.
  • The hood is very warm and cosy for babies still lying down in their prams or strollers. For toddlers sitting up or walking, I think the hood will be too heavy and cumbersome hanging down the back.
  • The hood has a garter edging that is folded to the outside. The pattern says to only attach it at the bottom on both sides, but that won’t keep it in place. I attached it with invisible stitches all around.

Thank you for your patience with my forest green grumblings. Have a lovely weekend and see you next week!