Month: May 2024

Blue Comfort

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The rain was bucketing down when I arrived at the graveyard on Saturday morning. We’d only just come back from Germany the evening before (more about that soon), my suitcase was still unpacked and I was feeling slightly stiff and groggy after a day in what seemed like one long traffic jam. Did I really need to be here?

As soon as I stepped inside, I forgot my grumblings and knew that the answer was YES! It was the day of the official opening of Aula in Blauw, the project about improving the atmosphere and acoustics of a sleek modern funeral building using woad-dyed local wool. Oh yes, definitely an improvement.

What caught my eye first were the felted wall panels in many shades of blue. From pale and medium blue on an undyed background…

… to the deepest blue woad can produce.

And then there were the cushions, I counted about 70 of them. Crocheted…

… woven…

… and, last but not least, knit. I recognized the one I’d knit by the mistake I had purposely left in.

By the window, two vases with branches of the plant that had made it all possible – woad. Now finished flowering, but with green seeds that will later turn purple.

At the base of the sculpture the room looks out on, some woad had been sown. In the photo below it is all bent down because of the rain.

Just a symbolic amount, because what was needed for all this wool dyeing was much, much more. It was grown in gardens and plots of land all over this part of the country. By the way, it’s the leaves that are used for dyeing, not the flowers or seeds.

There were talks, too, of course. I was listening, honestly, but I couldn’t help being distracted by the speakers’ shoes. If shoes could talk… Well, actually they tell us loud and clear who are the creatives behind this fab project and who is the local councillor.

In front of the lectern, a small corner of the carpet many hands worked on is visible. People touched the felt wall panels and picked up the cushions, but the carpet was the most tactile of all and actually invited people to lie down on it. I’d love to have something like it at home.

The Aula in Blauw project has been a great success, in my humble opinion. It has made the funeral building into a much more comforting space, and into one that is easier on the ears, too. It has brought attention to the value and possibilities of local wool. And it has added to our knowledge about dyeing with woad. Everyone taking part was given (or will receive) a copy of the new and updated edition of the Woad Handbook.

The organization’s website says that the Woad Handbook is sold out, but that refers to the first edition. I expect copies of the new edition will become available, but I’m not sure. If you’d like to purchase a copy, the best thing to do is contact Pleed here. (Please remember that they are all volunteers who may not have time to answer straightaway.)

Over the course of the week I have unpacked and picked up the thread of life at home. I’m now sifting through the photos I took in Germany and hope to show you some of them next week. See you then!

Lillebaelt in Sage

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Our daughter has a green soul. She is an ecologist with a special interest in herbs. Small wonder that she has chosen a pullover made of all natural materials in a shade called sage, after the herb about which an old proverb says, ‘Eat sage in May and you’ll live for aye’. Well, there is enough in our garden to eat sage every day of the year.

The yarn combo for her pullover consists of one thread of animal fibres for softness and warmth (Isager Alpaca 2, 50% merino wool/50% alpaca), and one thread of plant fibres for strength (Isager Trio 1, 50% linen/30% cotton/20% lyocell). Together they make a lovely marled, open and drapey fabric.

The pattern by Danish designer Annette Danielsen is called Lillebaelt. The knit-and-purl motifs at the tops of front, back and sleeves were inspired by Lillebaeltsbroen, the bridge over the Little Belt strait in Denmark, between Jutland and Funen.

(The part of our daughter’s garden where we’ve taken the photographs is being transformed into a herb-and-fruit patch. In a couple of years the now bare fence will hopefully be hidden behind an apple tree, grapes, climbers and berry shrubs.)

I struggled with the sets of double decreases next to each other on the shoulders, getting a gaping ladder between them.

After trying out all kinds of other decreases first, I’ve finally decided to seam the shoulders on the inside with mattress stitch. A simple but adequate solution.

The shape of the shoulders looks strange but fits really well.

The pullover has nice side vents, and the back is a little longer than the front.

Apart from the shoulder issue, I think this is a great, well thought-out pattern. And a fairly quick knit, too. I knit it in a little over a month, only working on it in the evenings for an hour or two max, and a little more during weekends.

The Lillebaelt pattern is from Annette Danielsen’s book Fynsk Forår (Spring in Funen). It has beautiful photos of the places, art and architecture in the island of Funen that inspired the designs. I think it’s absolutely wonderful how Danielsen translates for instance a seascape by Johannes Larsen…

…into a pullover with a wave pattern she calls Fynsmalerne.

Annette Danielsen has written some 50 knitting books (in Danish) and quite a few of them have been translated into German. As far as I know they are not available in English, but that isn’t necessarily an insurmountable problem. As a knitter, you’ll probably recognize the knitting terms and otherwise they can always be looked up. Danielsen can be found here on Ravelry, but not nearly all of her designs. Her website can be found here. Lillebaelt wasn’t on Ravelry yet, but I’ve added it to the database and you can find it here.

That’s all for today. Thank you for reading, don’t forget to eat plenty of sage in May, and ‘til next time!

A Woolly Outing

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Hello! Today, I’m inviting you to join me on a little outing to do with Drenthe Heath sheep and their wool. Our destination is the Dwingelderveld National Park, a little over an hour’s cycling from our home. Below, you can see a felted(!) aerial view of the park, with purple heathland, green forest and paler felt for the surrounding open fields. The red arrow points to our destination – the visitor centre.

This is the little wooden yurt-shaped model of the building in its felt landscape:

And here it is in real life:

On this special day, the green-roofed visitor centre is surrounded by a small market. As the first visitor to arrive, I’m given the honour of starting the Wild Weaving project, using wool from the flock as well as twigs, grasses and other plant materials.

It’s a start, and I’m sure many hands big and small will add to the tapestry during the day.

Now, let’s take look round the market. There are several stalls with hand-knit items…

… and hand-spun yarn.

One stall with refurbished spinning wheels, and several with items made from felt, like these beautiful felt wall panels by Viltpracht.

And a stall showcasing all the natural colours of the Drenthe Heath sheep fleeces.

This stall holder (sorry, I don’t know her name or website) has an antique carding machine. It probably dates from around 1850. It is basically a wooden trough studded with big tines. Some of the tines can be seen at the front (red arrow).

The wool is fed in from where the person operating it sits. Holding the wooden handle, she rocks the wooden ‘swing’ back and forth over the trough, and the wool is untangled by the tines. It comes out of the carder as fluffy flakes.

The fibres can then be more finely carded and aligned in an ordinary drum carder. Very interesting.

Listen, can you hear them? The sheep are calling us with their baa-ing. Let’s go and pay them a visit – it’s just a short walk from here. Ah, there they are in the distance.

Instead of being out on the heath, doing their jobs as conservation grazers, they’re staying closer to home at this time of year because they have lambs. The longer we stand here quietly, not moving or talking, the closer they come. The ewes of this breed also have horns, only smaller ones than the rams.

Mmmm, sunshine, total quiet apart from the bleating, that special sheepy woolly smell, a soft breeze – bliss.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little outing. To close off, here are a few links:

  • The wool market was a one-day event only, but the visitor centre is open all year round.
  • Throughout 2024 there is an exhibition about the flock of Drenthe Heath sheep, and the felt aerial view of the Dwingelderveld National Park is always there, too.
  • Information about the 4 sheep folds in the area can be found here.
  • For those of you unable to visit in person, some of my older posts about this sheep breed can be read here, here and here.
  • And a short video by a cyclist unexpectedly finding herself surrounded by the flock can be watched here on YouTube.

Playing in the Garden

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Hello! While I was puzzling over the shoulder problem I wrote about last week, I knit a simple pair of socks for my sister-in-law. The stretchy k2/p2 ribbing will fit snug around her narrow feet. Here they are on my wider feet:

Not the most exciting pair of socks ever, but I thought you might be interested in the yarn – Austermann Step 4 (Irish Rainbow, shade 228). It looks and knits up like a fairly run-of-the-mill 4-ply superwash sock yarn. Only, for its superwash treatment the more sustainable EXP-process was used. Avoiding the use of chlorine and other harmful chemicals, and using far less water, the EXP-process has the GOTS-certificate and several other certificates for sustainable textiles. Though I do have my slip-ups, I try to be a responsible consumer.

Starting the second sock at exactly the right spot in the stripe sequence to get a matching pair is a game I like to play with self-striping yarns. Yay, I won!

After taking pictures of the socks, I spent some time playing in the garden. Being a responsible adult is all well and good, but the inner child also needs time to play and explore. My hands may be getting spotty and wrinkly, I still get excited about the empty shell of a blackbird’s egg.

And I still collect bugs, only not in a jam jar but with my camera.

In our white lilac bush, my gossamer swatch for a pink Polka Dot Scarf looks like a fairy’s laundry.

As a young teenager just starting to learn English, I collected the flower fairy booklets by Cicely Mary Barker. I still have them and early on Sunday morning I spent a delightful quiet hour looking at their lovely pictures and reading some of the poems.

In Flower Fairies of the Trees there is a poem about the lilac that ends like this:

“I love her so much
That I never can tell
If she’s sweeter to look at,
Or sweeter to smell.”

And under the C in A Flower Fairy Alphabet, I came across the columbine (known to me as aquilegia).

These flowers like fairy skirts are dancing in our front garden in many shades of pink and purple.

The sweater-with-the-now-solved-shoulder-problem is almost finished, and thinking about new projects I knit a couple of swatches with a yarn I’m considering for a Norwegian sweater – CaMaRose’s Økologisk Hverdagsuld (Organic Everyday Wool). While I was photographing them, my inner child played with pebbles.

I hope that you, too, can find some time in your days for your inner child to play (and/or take a nap). xxx