Playing Pollyanna’s Game

by

Hello, I hope you won’t mind listening to some of my knitting struggles today and perhaps giving me some advice. I also have the answer to a question one of you posed.

Knitting struggles and a game

When I’d finished the yoke and tried my Sundborn cardigan on, my husband said, ‘Isn’t it rather on the short side?’ Although I really didn’t want to admit it, he was right. And the sleeves were too long.

Looking at it and realizing I needed to rip out the entire yoke, I thought of Pollyanna, one of my Mum’s heroines. Faced with difficulties, 11-year-old orphan Pollyanna often plays the ‘just being glad game’ her father taught her. It’s about finding something to be glad about in every situation, no matter how bleak.

It started when Pollyanna was longing for a doll and hoping it would be in the missionary barrel for the poor. But when the barrel arrived she got a pair of crutches instead. The thing she and her father found to be glad about at the time was that she didn’t need them.

I think ignoring disappointment, pain, fear or anger and ‘just being glad’ is a terrible strategy. So, after a brief denial phase (‘The length is just fine and extra long sleeves are nice and warm’) I first vented my frustration (‘Nooooo, all those hours of knitting!’). And then I played Pollyanna’s game.

I’m so glad that:

  • I tried the cardi on before cutting the steek
  • the yarn unravels easily
  • there is enough yarn to make it longer
  • I quite like knitting
  • now that it’s unravelled I can start knitting again!

Advice welcome

After finishing the yoke for the second time, I’ll get to the stage where some advice would be welcome – the steeking.

In the pattern the stitches on either side of the centre stitch (which will be cut through) are reinforced by handsewn seams – a technique I haven’t used before. I have found several useful videos about hand sewing such seams and that’s clear to me. The problem is what yarn or thread to use.

The Dutch translation tells us to use ‘een gewone naainaald en draad’ (an ordinary sewing needle and thread/yarn). I think it means a thin sewing needle and machine sewing thread, but I’m not sure. Would that be the best choice? Or would using the yarn I’m knitting the cardi with be better? Or a thinner wool yarn? I’d be very grateful for any thoughts on this.

Answer to a question

Last week, after reading about my sock knitting basket, one of you asked, ‘What is that wooden thing that has the ribbing of your sock sticking through?’ Well, actually I don’t know what it’s officially called, either in Dutch or in English, but it’s a sock-knitting-needles-with-a-sock-in-progress-on-them-protector.

The wooden one was a free gift with a magazine some 45 years ago and I treasure it. My knitting student is now learning to knit socks and found two similar ones on Marktplaats (a sort of Dutch eBay). ‘Wooden sock knitting case’ or ‘Wooden sock knitting needle holder’ seem to give the best results in an online search.

I also have a cardboard one – from KnitPro if I remember correctly (in front of the wooden one in the photo above). It is okay, but not nearly as nice as the wooden one. For one thing, it is much narrower and really only suitable for very short double pointed needles. For another, it is easily damaged.

I don’t know if such wooden cases are still made, but if you can find one (new or second-hand), I’d say go for it. If you’re a sock knitter it’s something you’ll use and treasure for ever.

I’m so glad you stopped by today and hope to see you again next week!

Sock Knitting Basket

by

Hello! Do you know Flemish singer-songwriter Raymond van het Groenewoud? He has a song called In mijn hoofd (Inside My Head). In it, he sings: ‘Inside my head everything is simple; Inside my head everything falls into place.’ And also: ‘Welcome, welcome inside my head (…) It’s great to dwell inside my head.’ It sounds incredibly zen.

Inside my head it is often like the current state of my sock knitting basket – overcrowded and tangled. From time to time, I dump everything out.

The contents of my sock knitting basket onto the dining table. The contents of my head onto paper (I now know that this process is actually called brain dumping). When everything is out in the open, a soothing inner voice says things like: ‘There, there. Have a cup of tea and you’ll see that it’s not as bad as it looks.’ After that it’s time to take a deep breath and sort things out.

Knitting tools go in a dedicated knitting tool basket, crochet things go in a crochet lace box, leftover sock yarn goes in with other sock yarn remnants.

Things I can do something about go in my Moleskine planner, ideas and question marks in various notebooks, and worries about things I can do nothing whatsoever about are sent back into the universe (the latter have a tendency to barge right back in at the moment, though).

My sock knitting basket yielded three hankies with crocheted lace around them and four pairs of socks. After darning in the ends and washing them, these are now ready to be used, given away or sent off. Among them these socks:

The yarn for these is Gründl Hot Socks Semila 4-ply. It’s one of those yarns that guarantee a matching pair of socks. It has a fluorescent green starter thread that tells you where to start for the first and for the second sock. In my experience, these yarns only work for shoe sizes 37-40 (UK 4-7, US 6-9). For smaller sizes the leg gets far too long and the toes are finished before you get to the special toe colours. And for larger sizes there just isn’t enough yarn. Another disadvantage is that with those starter threads a lot of yarn gets thrown away. Having said that, I think the effect can be very nice indeed.

Ah, that feels good. A tidy sock knitting basket with just one sock project and only the bare necessities in it.

And also a clearer head. For now.

If you like, you can watch and listen to Raymond van het Groenewoud singing In mijn hoofd while he is trying out a new guitar here. And find a description of brain dumping more or less the way I do it here. Thank you for visiting with me – it’s always lovely to have your company. xxx

Sundborn Colours

by

Hello! I’ve been immersing myself in colour and it’s been such a joy that I thought I’d share this small journey here. It takes us to Sweden, but let’s start at the beginning. I was going to knit a cardigan from Maja Karlsson’s cardigan book. This one:

It’s a gorgeous design, but the colours – although exciting and very well balanced – are not ‘me’ at all. The cardigan is knit from Léttlopi, an Icelandic yarn that comes in many colours. Which ones to choose to make the cardi really mine?

The cardigan design is called Sundborn, after the Swedish village where painter Carl Larsson and his wife Karin lived in their home called Lilla Hyttnäs. In the introduction to the pattern, designer Maja tells us that the surprising colour combination was inspired by Karin’s textile art and would never have occurred to herself. She ends with: ‘Challenge yourself to try something different…’

I’ve visited Sundborn (twice!) and thought the photos might inspire me. This is the entrance to Lilla Hyttnäs:

The house is that typical Swedish red, with yellow, green and white accents.

It’s an utterly lovely house, but the colours are not something I’d wear. An outbuilding has a blue-grey door decorated by Carl himself with a wreath, the name of one of their children and the year it was finished (if I understand it correctly). I quite like that shade of blue.

Hmmm. Let’s look at the garden for some more inspiration.

More red, yellow, and green, and a bit of purple and orange as well. It’s such a nice and tranquil spot and the colours are wonderfully uplifting…

…but not exactly cardigan colours for me. Another approach then – leafing through a book with Carl Larsson’s paintings. Oh, his colour palette is so attractive. In the end I chose a painting of Karin – scissors in hand, her weaving looms to the left, lush green house plants everywhere and a pink flowering azalea in the foreground.

I thought of combining the pink of the azalea and the deep blue of Karin’s dress with the green of the plants, but it was too different for me. In the end I chose the mixed colour of the ruffle at Karin’s neck to go with the blue and pink.

I’m sorry Maja, I tried to take on your challenge, but I’m staying within my comfort zone. The colours I’ve chosen will go with just about all my other clothes and I’ll love knitting with and wearing them. It’s been fun looking around for different and exciting colours, though.

Now I can’t wait to get back to my knitting. Wishing you all you a lovely weekend and hope to see you again next week!

Colour Dominance in Stranded Knitting

by

Hello! I was only going to write a short post today, about colour dominance in stranded knitting, but I seem to be incapable of writing short posts somehow. Looking through my photos I realize that there is much more to share. We’ve had some beautiful, clear, frosty mornings this past week, and I just have to show you a few pictures.

The railings of a bridge we crossed on one of our walks were covered in a furry white coat of ice needles.

There is a wafer-thin layer of ice on the smaller waterways. Daytime temperatures are far too high for a safe ice floor for skating on to grow.

But temperatures are low enough throughout the day for wearing mittens, and the Selbu mittens I’ve just finished come in handy.

Colour dominance in stranded knitting

The first time I knit a similar pair of mittens was long before the internet, and I didn’t have anyone to tell me how to go about it. While I was knitting them I discovered that it makes a difference how you hold your two yarn colours. I always hold one thread in my left hand and one in my right hand. I found out that the colour I hold in my left hand pops out/is dominant, while the one in my right hand forms the background.

I’ve knit a small swatch to show you what I mean. In the bottom half of the swatch below I held black in my left hand and white in my right hand. And in the top half it was the other way around, with white in my left hand and black in my right hand.

Makes quite a difference, doesn’t it?

So how does this work? Looking at the back of two-colour knitting, you can see that there is always one colour that takes the shortest route, while the strands or floats of the other colour sort of come up from under that and take a longer route. It’s the colour that takes the longest route that is dominant. Recapping:

  • If you’re holding one colour in your left and the other in your right hand, the left-hand colour will be dominant.
  • If you’re holding both of your yarns in one hand, the thing to do is look at the floats at the back of your knitting and find out which one takes the longest route – that’s the dominant one.
  • Keep the same colour in the same hand/position throughout your stranded knitting project for a consistent result.

For my Selbu Mittens, I wanted the black to really pop out, and held that in my left hand.

Different cuffs for men and women

Traditionally, Selbu mittens for men had cuffs with colourwork similar to that on the hands, whereas women’s mittens had either the zigzag cuffs I used or striped ribbed cuffs. Below, two pairs of women’s mittens in Selbu Bygdemuseum:

Which float to pick up for increases

While knitting these mittens I made another discovery – it makes a difference which float you pick up when increasing (M1L or M1R). For the thumb gusset below right, I picked up white floats for making a stitch, and for the thumb gusset below left, I picked up black floats. I don’t know if it’s very clear in the photo, but picking up white floats results in a kind of steps along the sides of the gusset (blue arrows), while picking up black floats gives a smoother line (red arrows).

What I’d do differently next time

This time, I used the same needles throughout. Next time I’d go down one or two needle sizes for the cuffs.

What I’m inordinately proud of

How the all-over pattern on the palm of the hand continues on the thumb, so that you can hardly see where I picked up the thumb stitches.

Pattern/yarn/needles:

Mittens are great little projects and I can see myself making more in the future. Do you ever knit mittens? What is your favourite pattern?

Large Copper

by

Hello, hello, it’s good to see you! You’ve arrived right on time to join me for a walk. I’d also like to thank you, but we’re coming to that later. We’re in de Wieden again, part of the wetland nature reserve I’ve taken you to before. The path is a bit muddy but still walkable.

The landscape here has a limited colour palette at this time of year. There is the green of the grass and the blue of the sky (at least today).

But mainly it is, uhm, well, what would you call the colour of reed in winter? Tan, buff, sand, wheaten?

Yellow, golden, camel or brown? It depends very much on the light.

Here and there a spot of white is floating by…

… or standing still. It’s very quiet and peaceful, with just the honking of geese in the distance.

The only bright pops of colour come from the mosses and lichens.

And from the large copper.

Not a real one, obviously. It’s a felt large copper butterfly that travelled here in my inside jacket pocket. There are no real butterflies here in winter. Unfortunately, the large copper can’t be seen here in summer anymore either. It is still fluttering around in two nearby nature reserves, though, and my husband was able to take a few photos of it there last summer. It’s a vivid red-orange on top,

with white on the underside of its wings.

Beautiful, isn’t it? This particular species (Lycaena dispar batavus) doesn’t live anywhere else in the world anymore but in these two nature reserves. A precarious existence. It would be great if its habitat could be extended to the Wieden. Nature conservation organisation Natuurmonumenten is working hard to create the right circumstances for that to happen, protecting host plants and creating corridors for the large copper to fly along towards de Wieden.

By purchasing my Seventh Heaven scarf pattern, many of you have become supporters of their good work. I have now donated all of the proceeds from the pattern so far to Natuurmonumenten. On behalf of the large copper and Natuurmonumenten thank you so, so much for your contribution!

Links:

Same Pattern, Different Pullover

by

Hello! Do you know that feeling? You’d like to be a little more creative in your knitting but don’t quite know how to go about it. Creativity is all good and fine, but you also want to end up with something that fits and looks good. I sometimes have spurts of creativity, designing my own patterns from scratch, but I also love to just follow an existing pattern. This time I’ve found a middle way between the two. Let me tell you about it.

Last year I knit a pullover for our grandson – the Vinterkonglegenser from the Klømpelømpe Four Seasons book.

It was a great success. The yarn is soft, the pullover fits well and our grandson loves wearing it. Now he’s almost grown out of it. So, I thought I’d knit another one exactly like it, from the same yarn, only a size up and in different colours. But then I thought, no, I want something a little more different – I’ll use different motifs in the yoke.

While I was adding a few rows to my Selbu mittens, I had the idea of using motifs from the same booklet the mittens are in:

The booklet is in Norwegian, but even if you can’t read Norwegian it’s a great source of inspiration. It contains a large number of charts that can be read by anyone, no matter what language they speak. If you’d like to get an idea of what’s inside, it can be found here on Ravelry, and you can leaf through part of it here. Not nearly everything in it is shown there, though.

Many (or perhaps all?) of the items in this booklet are replicas from the collection of the museum in Selbu.

Similar motifs can be found here. For our grandson, I chose the traditional snøkrystall (snow crystal) motif, and combined it with some smaller diamonds and triangles. I also used the tiny triangles along the sleeve and body ribbings:

Inserting your own yoke design into an existing pullover pattern is a fun thing to do. It’s a bit like doing a sudoku, puzzling with stitch numbers. You can use software, but ordinary graph paper and coloured pencils will do fine, too. You could follow these 3 steps:

  1. Copy the outline of the yoke chart from the pattern you’re using (same number of stitches and rows, but empty squares).
  2. Indicate where the increases (top-down pullover) or decreases (bottom-up pullover) are placed in the pattern.
  3. Now it’s time to play with motifs! What main motif would you like to use? Will it fit? Where? How could you fill up the rest of the space? (Keep in mind that the increases/decreases will distort the stitches to some extent. It’s best to have the increases/decreases in solid coloured rows or areas.)

I first designed my yoke on the computer (using Stitch Mastery), and then made quite a few changes while I was knitting it. Here is my messy design:

And here is the original yoke (left) next to my design (right). Apart from the yoke, I just followed the pattern – same pattern, different pullover:

The yarn shop where I got the yarn for both of the pullovers (Sandnes Tynn Merinoull) had an advent calendar in its window following the same principle – same pattern, 24 different pullovers. It’s a terrible photo with the opposite side of the street reflected in the glass, but I thought it fun enough to add here:

Why not give the same-pattern-different-pullover-approach a try, too? The possibilities are endless.

Gulbranssen and Pieck

by

Hello! While I am knitting a pair of Norwegian (Selbu) mittens, I am also reading a Norwegian novel, or actually it’s three novels in one – the Bjørndal trilogy by Trygve Gulbranssen. It’s about the life and times of Dag Bjørndal, who lives in an unspecified place in the Norwegian mountains and trades in everything his lands and forests yield – wood, furs, meat, grain. We follow Dag from a young age until his death. Although the story is set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, its theme is still just as current today: money, the power that comes with it, and how it can be abused or used for good.

The lovely monogrammed felt book mark was a gift from my friend Froukje. She writes about making them in this blog post (scroll down a little).

Some people find the books slow going, but I think they are magnificent. It’s not just the development of Dag’s character that’s fascinating, but also the people around him, the glimpses we get of Norwegian society at the time, and the descriptions of everyday life and the landscape.

The copy I inherited is a Dutch translation, with photographs from a 1960 Austrian film based on the books as well as illustrations by Dutch artist Anton Pieck. The film pictures are so horrible that I’m thinking of tearing them out. But Pieck’s illustrations are fabulous – just look at how the smoke curls up from the chimney of this log cabin among the pine trees:

And see how he depicts the forest creatures that cause rumbling noises and landslides in the mountains dancing with the naked young beauties who lure people into steep and dangerous ravines with their song:

Seeing these pictures gave me the idea of visiting the Anton Pieck museum. It isn’t far away from us at all, but we’d never been there. So on the Monday before New Year’s eve we set off for Hattem. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to show you any of the photographs I’ve taken inside. Bummer!

What I can do, is take you on a walk through this lovely town. Anton Pieck is best known for his nostalgic town scenes, and walking through Hattem’s old centre is like being inside some of his paintings (bar the cars and bicycles).

Behind the deep green yew hedge, there’s a communal herb garden where the inhabitants of Hattem can come and pick herbs for their meals and tisanes.

The square beside the Church is one of my favourite spots in the town. Even nicer in spring and summer with the potted plants flowering, but still lovely on a gloomy winter’s day.

After a short walk we arrive at the Anton Pieck museum, with its cheerful blue door and shutters.

As I said, I can’t take you inside, but you can get an impression of Anton Pieck’s work from the Museum website and even better from this website dedicated to his work.

While Anton Pieck’s cobbled streets are always crowded with pedlars, women wearing shawls and carrying shopping baskets, children with hoops, cats, dogs, chimney sweeps etcetera, the streets in Hattem are deserted on the day of our visit.

At the end of this alley, a house with a bell gable is called De Halve Maen:

The wealthy merchant to whom this house once belonged may well have bought wood for his roof beams or furniture from a Norwegian trader like Dag Bjørndal, helping to fill up the trader’s intricately decorated coffers with silver.

In his middle years Dag becomes more and more obsessed with filling his coffers and investing in real estate, but later on he mends his ways and says, ‘It is the money grabbing that has got the upper hand in our lives, and that makes that many people are struggling unnecessarily. A man must spread heart warmth around him if he wants to have peace, and that will benefit others as well.’ [Trygve Gulbranssen, Het geslacht Bjørndal, uitg. M.C. Stok, The Hague, date unknown, p. 529, my translation] If only more people came to that insight in their old age (or preferably earlier).

With Dag’s piece of wisdom, I’m leaving you for now. I hope to be back with some knitting next week. Take care!

Selbu Mittens

by

Hello! After a false start – with a mitten turning out too small – my Selbu mittens are now well under way. They have a star on the top and an all-over diamond grid pattern on the palm of the hand.

I’ll tell you more about them when they’re finished. First, I’d like to take you along to the Norwegian region where these black-and-white mittens originated. We visited Selbu during one of our many travels in Scandinavia, camping on the local campsite for a couple of nights, eating outside no matter what the weather.

Selbu is a community with about 4.000 inhabitants, some 70 kilometres south-east of Trondheim, the city with these colourful warehouses along the Nidelva river:

I love the rugged Norwegian landscape, with its wild rivers…

… and wide open spaces.

We pass many interesting dwellings…

…before arriving at the old rectory that houses Selbu Bygdemuseum.

The museum shares its premises with Selby Husflidscentral, that runs the shop, and organises tours of the museum as well as workshops and talks on Selbu knitting. The museum has a fabulous collection of knitted accessories,

including a large number of gloves and mittens.

Almost all of them are in black and white, and many (but not all) of them have star and/or diamond patterns.

I am talking of star patterns, but the Norwegians call them eight-petal roses, or also Selbu roses. No pair is the same, and some pairs have dates and/or initials knit into them.

Some of the mittens have very intricate patterns knit on very fine needles, while others are simpler and knit at a larger gauge. The ones I am knitting are something in between. There is much more to write about these wonderful mittens, but I’ll leave it at this for now.

If you ever have the opportunity, Selbu Bygdemuseum is definitely worth a visit. Until then, here are some links for further reading:

Happy 2025!

by

like buds on a tree
twelve new months ahead of us
ready to unfurl

Happy 2025! May it be a year filled with love, joy, inspiration and fulfilment.

Just popping in here briefly today. As of next week, I hope to be back with my usual longer posts (so much to write about!). See you then! xxx

Season’s Greetings

by

Hello! How I would have loved to write a really wintry post today, with photographs of a snowy landscape with a bright sky, or of frozen lakes and canals with people ice skating. But alas! It’s grey here. Very grey.

And wet and dark. Ah well, it is often like this in the weeks before Christmas. I’m fine with it really, and go out for a walk every day no matter what the weather. At home it’s cosy, with candles everywhere and the Christmas tree in the living room. On Saturday I found this new (second-hand) addition to it.

Every morning, I start the day by adding a few pieces to a wooden puzzle. Our daughter put them in the Advent calendar mittens I gave her last year (described in this post). I can see this becoming a tradition, with the mittens going back and forth between our homes every year.

It’s an amazing puzzle. At first I thought it was going to be a star, but now I can see that it is becoming an animal head (a fox?). There are all kinds of animals, birds, flowers and leaves hidden in it. One of the pieces in mitten number 17 was a wolf.

This autumn, there hasn’t been anything interesting like the Advent mittens on my needles. I just didn’t have the energy or the spirit. Instead, I’ve been knitting lots of simple things: A garter stitch scarf and 1×1 ribbed hat for a niece who is leaving for Stockholm in January, and a stocking stitch pullover for our son-in-law. The pullover pieces are now drying on blocking mats.

I didn’t use a pattern, but simply improvised. (Yarn: Rowan Softyak DK – shade 240 Pasture.) If I get a move on, I should be able to finish it before their Christmas visit.

I’ve also been knitting some simple 4-ply socks. (Pink-brown pair: Lang SuperSoxx Berry – shade Raspberry; Blue-grey ones: Rellana Flotte Socke Patagonia Männersache – shade 1730.) I simply love knitting simple socks.

Tomorrow it’s the winter solstice, in five days’ time it’s Christmas, and in only eleven days it’s New Year’s Eve. In previous years, it was often on the very last day of the year or a couple of days earlier at most that I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, another year has rushed by and what have I actually done with it? And what about the coming year?’

This year, inspired by Leo Babauka’s Month of Reflection, I’ve been pondering these questions during the entire Advent period. That doesn’t mean that I spent a whole month sitting cross-legged on the floor, but I did take some time here and there to reflect on 2024 and set intentions for 2025. Leo’s four-step approached really helped me structure my thoughts, because they can get seriously tangled.

It has helped me see the path ahead of me more clearly.

(In springtime this particular path is bordered by a carpet of wood anemones – see this blog post).

I’m really looking forward to the festive season and 2025 now, and have already started on a pair of Selbu mittens…

… and found a Norwegian book to read alongside.

Another small felt kit lies waiting to be made into a butterfly…

… and I am brimming with many more ideas for things to make and write about in the coming year.

I’m taking some time off now to knit, read, sew, rest and be with my loved ones. I wish you a lovely and peaceful festive season, with plenty of time to be with the people you love best and to do some of the things you love doing most. Thank you for visiting me here and I hope to see you again early next year!

To close off, here is a picture of the most beautiful Christmas wreath I’ve seen this year, glowing golden amongst all the damp and greyness.