Places to Sit and Knit 2

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Hello, and welcome to another Place to Sit and Knit. It’s there, under the giant white-and-yellow striped parasol behind the artichokes. I hadn’t planned on writing the second instalment in this series so soon, but couldn’t resist.

It was our niece who brought us here. She has been a student at Nijmegen university for a year now – a lonely year filled with zoom lectures. She rents a room in a house with several other students in a village outside the city. We arrive bearing a basket filled with goodies and a pair of old-fashioned crochet pot holders.

We’ve kept in touch by e-mail, Whatsapp, snailmail and phone, but it is wonderful to see her face IRL again and to finally see where she has been studying so diligently on her own all year. I really, really hope our young people will be able to have a slightly more normal life after the summer.

After several mugs of tea/coffee and a guided tour of the village we paid a visit to the local windmill.

It is no longer functioning, but now houses a shop selling everything a home baker will ever need, from dozens of different kinds of flour to seeds and nuts, dried fruit, yeast, baking tins, proofing baskets and much more.

To my husband this is what a yarn shop is to me. This time I was the one waiting patiently outside. (I didn’t mind – I brought my knitting.) This time it was my turn to ask, ‘Did you get everything you wanted? Are you sure you don’t need anything else?’

As we rarely get to this part of the country, we thought we’d better cram as much into our day as possible. So, on to our next stop: Nijmegen Botanical Garden. There are actually two gardens separated by a beech avenue: the botanical garden proper and a flower garden.

On the afternoon of our visit, the bog area of the botanical garden looked like something from a fairy tale.

At least from a distance. I hope they’ve been able to keep the wedding dress and the bridegroom’s shoes from getting too muddy and their tempers from getting too frayed. Whose idea was it to take wedding pictures in a bog anyway?

The Friesian horses drawing their fairy tale carriage were pacing back and forth outside the garden, only stopping for me to take a picture.

It’s beautiful to look at, but I’m so glad I’ve never had to go through the ordeal of a fairy tale wedding like that.

Today’s Place to Sit and Knit is in the flower garden. There are lots of lovely places to sit and knit here. Ordinary benches surrounded by flowers.

And extraordinary seats covered in foliage.

We’re heading for the tables and chairs under the big parasol.

Time for some tea, fruit juice and carrot cake. Did you bring your knitting? What are you making?

I’m ‘working’ on my new shawl design, using a combination of silk/mohair lace yarn and a fingering-weight merino yarn. It doesn’t look like much yet, does it? It’s a work in progress and I’m not ready to show you more at this stage. Sorry! These things always take a long time, at least for me. I plan to have the pattern finished sometime in September. Saying that here out loud feels like giving myself a deadline, and I think that’s a good thing or I’ll stay dithering over the details forever.

At the first of our Places to Sit and Knit, my blogging friend Helga from Sweden told me about a linen top she is knitting, using a pattern called Siw (Ravelry link). It is an oversized top with a lovely lace panel on the shoulders. It might be just the thing for some linen yarn that has been marinating in my stash for a while.

My yarn is thinner than the yarn used in the pattern, but it may work. I’ll swatch and see.

With the 1,071,226 patterns currently available on Ravelry, it can be hard to decide what to knit. There are all kinds of filters available to help us choose, but for me nothing beats tips and inspiration from friends – real-life knitting friends, Ravelry friends and friends met in the blogosphere. Thanks, Helga! How is your Siw coming along?

It’s nice here, isn’t it, just sitting and knitting, sipping a drink, and enjoying the flowers (click on images to enlarge). And the best thing is: admission is free and you can come back anytime you like!

12 thoughts on “Places to Sit and Knit 2”

  1. Wat leuk dat je mijn geboortestad hebt bezocht! En Groesbeek en omgeving is prachtig. Na jaren in het platte Hogeland doet de omgeving van Drenthe waar ik nu woon me een stuk meer denken aan de glooiende, groene en bosrijke omgeving van Nijmegen.
    En mocht je van Deens roggebrood houden, dat zware waarmee je een ruit kunt ingooien, De Zuidmolen verkoopt er een heerlijke meelmix voor: Meel voor Deens Rogge-Kerne brood

    • Hé, dat wist ik niet, dat je daar geboren was. Ja, zulk zwaar brood daar hou ik enorm van. Bedankt voor de tip, we gaan het proberen.

  2. Heerlijke foto’s! Prachtig daar! Ben benieuwd naar je shawl, die lijkt me heel fijn en zacht dragen.
    Groet, Froukje

  3. Tack detsamma Marijke! Siw is proceeding nicely, I will finish the first sleeve today I think. Then onto the next sleeve and finally a lot of boring stocking stitch to finish the body. I don’t like knitting stocking stitch but I always end up doing it since I like the look of it.

    I hope you will like your Siw too. I am very happy with the pattern and am considering it for a third project. My other linen projects have been a bit of a disappointment but not Siw!

    • Your remarks about sleeves make me think: sleeves? Knit separately? I haven’t looked at the construction properly. I somehow thought everything was knit in the round together. Well, I’ll see it when I come to it. I love stocking stitch, both the look and knitting it. A little boredom is good for me, now and then. Good luck with yours (perhaps you could listen to an audio book or podcast during the stocking stitch section?).

  5. I can almost smell the wonderful scent of yeast and the loaves of bread it makes.
    Thank you for another beautiful day trip.

    • You’re right – the smell of bread making is wonderful, from yeasty dough to bread fresh from the oven.

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