inspiration

Back to Knitting

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Hello, it’s good to ‘see’ you again and I hope all is well with you. Although it’s still warm and summery here, there are signs aplenty that autumn is around the corner. In our garden, the apples are almost ripe.

The grapes, too, and some of their leaves are already turning colour.

I feel like I’ve been rather lazy over the past month-and-a-half or so, but someone else called it being ‘creatively dormant’ – a far kinder and more helpful way of putting it.

So, apart from knitting several pairs of socks and making a felt butterfly, what did this ‘creative dormancy’ look like? I have not been sleeping the time away (I wish!), but have been walking or cycling almost every day. Usually close to home, but sometimes a little further afield, and one day outside the Wadden Sea dyke. It looks very tranquil in the photo below, but actually there was quite a strong wind.

I also visited a couple of lovely markets, one of them in a botanical garden.

There were some delicious farmhouse cheeses and other tasty foods.

And yarns, too, like these bright hand dyed ones…

… and this fine tweed, with inspiration for some stranded colourwork.

Lazing about/being creatively dormant for a while didn’t always feel comfortable, but I think it was just what I needed, because now I feel inspired and energized again, full of new plans for things to knit, make and write about.

At the top of this post you can see the start of a gift project that I can’t tell you about until it has been gifted because the giftee may be reading this. What I can tell you about is my plan for a Norwegian cardigan. During our May holiday in Germany, I came across a book by Norwegian knitting designer Kristin Wiola Ødegård.

The German title is Traumhafte Strickjacken aus Norwegen, and the original is Ett år med kofter. I took a look at the designer’s website, and saw that there is an E-book version available in English: One Year with Wiola Cardigans. Wiola’s website is really worth checking out – very inspiring. It’s not just the knitting itself that is beautiful, but also the added embroidery and other embellishments.

I bought two copies of the book – one for myself and one for a friend, and we’re both going to knit something from it. My friend is going to make Rakel in a cardigan version (Ravelry link).

And I’ve chosen Helma (Ravelry link).

Together, my friend and I drove up to Seldensa last Friday, the yarn shop I wrote about here and here. Choosing wasn’t easy, because how do you choose from all these colours????

Or from these???

It took a while (fortunately shopkeeper Nynke is very patient and even plied us with tea), but we both succeeded in choosing yarns and colours for our projects we’re happy with. I’ve given choosing colours for stranded knitting a lot of thought lately, and hope to tell you a bit about that next week. Hope to see you again then!

Rest for the Restless

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Together, my daughter and I have taken out a subscription to The Simple Things for a year. She gets the magazine in her letterbox first, and I get it when she’s read it. That means I’m always behind, but I don’t mind. I’m now reading the April issue, which contains an interview with James and Helen Rebanks. They have a farm in the English Lake District, are both authors and have four children aged 7 to 19.

One of the things that come up in the article is how they find balance in their busy lives, and Helen says something that really strikes a chord with me: “Rest is a huge part of regenerative agriculture. Plants need time to grow, time to flower,

time to set seed

and time to recuperate. […] People are the same. We can’t push our bodies and minds to the max all the time. We need periods where things are slower and quieter, particularly as creative people. Sometimes we just need to stare out of the window

or take a walk and let things mull.” (Quote The Simple Things, April 2025, p. 49; photos mine.)

Yes, absolutely, hmm (can you see me nodding in agreement?). But what if you are too restless to rest? Hot summer weather does that to me. I really struggle with that, but have found some ways of dealing with it:

  • Take a walk every day no matter what.
  • Wear sunglasses. On the one hand, I hate having a barrier between myself and others and not being able to see the world in its true colours. On the other hand, aside from protecting my eyes, sunglasses also seem to give my brain some rest.
  • Snatch brief moments of rest and have a list at hand of small things to do during those moments. That may sound like a contradiction (resting – doing), but doing certain things (see below) can be more restful to me than just sitting around doing nothing.
  • Read one article in a magazine. Or, if even too restless for that, just look at the pictures and/or cut some out and stick them in a scrapbook.
  • Listen to one song. Three of my favourites (in random order):
  1. Dùn – Ailie Robertson
  2. Chord Left – Agnes Obel
  3. On the Nature of Daylight – Max Richter
  • KNIT!!! (even if it is just a couple of rows).
  • Spin (even if it is just for five minutes).
  • Play with colour – with pencils, water colours or yarn.

These beautiful little hanks were hand-dyed by Marianne of Lindelicht (who is taking the entire month of June off to rest). It is a blend of blue-faced Leicester wool and silk, and each hank is 3 g/24 m/26 yds.

Some yarns are so beautiful that I don’t use them because I’m afraid of ‘wasting’ them, but what’s the use of that when they are then languishing away in a dark corner? So I’m determined to do something with this yarn this summer, but what? It is sold as embroidery yarn, so that’s an option. Or could I use it for knitting or crochet? Or a combination of several techniques?

Something outside my comfort zone?
Or something inside my comfort zone?

Well, I hope this summer will bring you some time to rest, whether at home or away. We’re not going anywhere this summer, but I may take a short rest from blogging now and then. Or I may not – I just don’t know yet and don’t have a plan at all (eek! – that’s very unusual for me). Anyway, I hope to see you here from time to time. xxx

Soaking up Colours at Stiel

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Hello! One of my best friends and I have been on a fun day out. We drove to Bornerbroek in the east of the country, about 30 miles from the German border, to visit a yarn shop called Stiel Wolwerkplaats. (Stiel Wool Studio – the word stiel meaning craft or metier). I thought you might like soaking up the colours at Stiel, too. Just gazing at a wall of yarn in all the colours of the rainbow makes me so happy. Does it do that for you, too?

One of the things that distinguish Stiel from other yarn shops is that they also stock spinning fibres. It is the only shop I know of that does so. Their wall of spinning fibres is a joy to gaze at, too. And what I really appreciate is that next to the fibres, they have a bunch of mini-skeins to show what they look like when spun up. For instance in the photo below, the orange-pink mini-skein in the centre is the fibre top left. It’s very nice to be able to see how the colours blend together.

To the left of the big wall of yarn is a corner with BC Garn’s Bio Balance, a GOTS certified wool-and-cotton blend that I’d love to make something from. And next to that, beautiful embroidery wool-silk from Fyberspates.

In the windowsill several recently published knitting books.

I can’t possibly describe all of the yarns at Stiel – I’ll just pick out two more. First up: Balayage from German firm Pascuali, a blend of 80% baby alpaca and 20% extra fine organic merino wool.

It’s like meeting a friend I haven’t seen for a while. In 2020, at a time when we were all forced to stay at home a lot, I used 4 skeins of Balayage for my Thús 2 scarf with its rows of lacy houses.

I have given the original scarf away, and the shop where I originally bought the yarn has closed its doors, so I was tempted to buy some Balayage for another scarf like it. But I didn’t, as there were other things on my shopping list.

The second yarn that caught my eye was Kashmir Lux (95% geelong lambswool; 5% cashmere). Its colours are so very beautiful and subtle.

With 1000 metres on a 50 gram cone, it is an extremely fine yarn. I think it’s stunning, but what would I knit with such a fine yarn? For now, I left that on the shelves too.

Ah, so many impressions. Time for a cup of tea with a little something – apple pie for my friend, carrot cake for me.

We had tea at 100-year-old Theehuis Dennenoord. They have dozens of teas to choose from and serve huge slices of cake. It is a 30-minute drive from Stiel, but we had all day and wanted to make the most of it.

I’ve mentioned several things that didn’t come home with me, but what did? First of all, some spinning fibre in blues and greens. It is John Arbon’s Harvest Hues top in shade Juniper (zwartbles, bluefaced Leicester and merino). I’ve stored it away for autumn, because I have other spinning projects I want to finish first.

Next, Rowan Magazine 71. It is an older issue, from spring 2022, and just like the Balayage yarn it is a reminder of the difficult pandemic years. Most of the photographs were taken indoors, instead of in the usual beautiful scenery, probably because of restrictions. There is also more variation in the photo models in this magazine, compared to the usual skinny ones. This is one of my favourite designs in the Magazine – the Free cardigan designed by Vibe Ulrik Sondergaard (the cardigan is called Free, the pattern isn’t free).

It seems to me that the pandemic had a positive effect on the Rowan team, not just in their choice of models, but also in their more creative approach to presenting the designs. The theme of the magazine is Joy, and the designers were asked where they found joy. Here is how two of my favourite designers depicted that on a kind of scrapbook page. Kaffe Fasset finds joy in colour (where else?).

And Erika Knight shows how making gives her joy.

Finally, several skeins of a soft cotton-and-cashmere yarn came home with me. They are meant for a wee garment for our second grandchild, expected later this summer. So exciting! Our daughter is doing well, the baby is growing healthily, and my knitting needles are working overtime. I can’t tell you about those projects yet, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find something else to write about next time. See you then!

Sundborn Colours

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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!

Same Pattern, Different Pullover

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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.

Small Tortoiseshell

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Hello! With Christmas less than a fortnight away, there is something utterly un-Christmassy I’d like to share with you today – a butterfly story.

It all started with the scarf version of my Seventh Heaven pattern. For this version, I used two different colourways of Schoppel Zauberball Crazy. One of them was inspired by and named after a butterfly called Kleiner Fuchs in German (EN small tortoiseshell; NL kleine vos).

While I was photographing the rolled-up scarf, look who was coming for a visit:

A small tortoiseshell landed on our picnic table for a spot of sunbathing!

I love these beautiful creatures, and I know someone else who does, too. Her studio isn’t far from here. Would you like to join me for a visit? Following cycle tracks through the wood, country lanes through farmland, crossing a busy road, more country lanes… there we are.

Marianne dyes yarn in gorgeous glowing colours.

Her studio, called Lindelicht, is a Scandinavian-style wooden building with a welcoming atmosphere. Hello kitty-cat!

Tea, biscuits, bowls filled with mini-skeins – so very cosy.

Besides the yarn shelves, there is also a shelf filled with felt. I don’t know the English word for this type of felt. It is a mottled wool felt that is called sprookjesvilt (fairytale felt) in Dutch.

Marianne uses it to make figures for the seasonal table and her flower-inspired lamps.

She also uses it for her butterfly kits. To date, she has designed 16 different ones. I started with the fairly simple cabbage white before making the fiddlier small tortoiseshell. Instead of pins, I used Scotch tape for the smallest elements.

I made it over the course of a week – an hour here, 30 minutes there. It’s a lovely little project to sew, embroider and embellish with beads. With a wingspan of 11.5 cm/4.5” the felt small tortoiseshell is about twice the size of a real-life one, but otherwise I think it’s an excellent likeness.

What I love about this project is how it made me look at the small tortoiseshell more closely than I’ve ever done before. For the first time, I noticed the long hairs along the sides of its body, the stripes on it’s antennae and the blue spots all along the edges of the wings. I feel I’ve got to know this butterfly that I’ve known all my life even better.

Thinking that some of you outside the Netherlands might like to make a felt butterfly, too, I asked Marianne if she also sends her kits abroad. Her answer was, ‘Yes, no problem. But do tell them that the instructions are in Dutch!’

Links:

Handwerkbeurs 2024 Inspiration

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Hello! Together with a friend, I visited the Handwerkbeurs last weekend – the textile crafts show of the year here. I came home feeling incredibly inspired and thought I’d share some of that inspiration with you. There was lots of lovely weaving, felting, crochet and quilting, too, but I’ll focus on yarn and knitting. Plus a few other things that made me stop, stare and think, ‘maybe, someday…’ Let’s start with some yarn.

The yarn at the top of this post and in the photo below was dyed by Marianne of Lindelicht. She dyes yarns in beautiful jewel tones:

I absolutely love her yarns. Marianne’s studio is close to my home, and I sometimes visit her on a Saturday, when her studio is open. I’ll tell you about that some other time. She sells most of her yarns only at markets and fairs, but her sock yarns are available online (as well as other lovely things).

The mannequin in her stall is wearing the Briornate Shawl designed by Stephen West – so many interesting stitch patterns:

The yarns below were dyed by someone else – totally different, but equally beautiful:

It’s fun to see how every dyer has their own signature. These sweet pastel shades were dyed by The Mindful Creators. This young dyer, Fem, told me that she doesn’t have standard shades she dyes, but collections she develops around a theme. If I’m not mistaken the soft shades above are from her ‘Dearest Gentle Yarn Lover’ collection.

It struck me how several young stall holders with new businesses have a slightly different approach from the older generations. They seem to operate not so much by intuition, but from a carefully thought-through idea. It leads to very tasteful results, I have to say. Take this designer of embroidery kits:

She is called Karin Fast, and her designs are centred around themes like ‘rooms’, ‘seasons’ and ‘textures’. Very clever and so pretty.

Every now and then, I do a small embroidery project, mainly because I love working with lots of colours.

The embroidery floss above is silk. The mother-and-daughter team behind Batts and Threads have provided me with some lovely knitting yarn and spinning fibres in the past, and are now branching out into embroidery.

And here is a different style again – Swedish wool embroidery:

The Handwerkbeurs hosts workshops in many techniques – weaving, felting, embroidery, quilting, knitting, dyeing, spinning…

This year, I just browsed around, but another time I attended a short workshop in Swedish embroidery led by Ditta Blom of Blomsterstuga. That’s one of those things that make me think, maybe, someday… That, and these darling dolls in their summer dress and Swedish costume.

Many people want to go travelling when they retire. I want to stay at home and make things. And now and then leave home to take a workshop or course. Something else on my list of techniques to try is sashiko. Quiltwinkel Marij specialises in sashiko and Japanese fabrics:

Well, time to steer back to yarns and knitting. There were also a couple of stalls with naturally dyed yarns. One of them is Wolstudio Haren, where you can go for e.g. dye stuffs, fibres, spinning wheels and courses. They have published Kleurenpracht met Kruidenkracht, an interesting-looking book about the use of herbs for dyeing (yarn, fabrics, ecoprinting) and wellbeing (in Dutch).

There were also people all the way from Finland with their naturally dyed yarns. Aurinkokehrä dye wool from Finnsheep in a fabulous range of colours:

Besides yarns, there were also many sweaters and shawls to inspire us. Here are a few. The Aase sweater from Isager, with just visible on the left in cream the Gerda Sweater and Skirt:

The Kinderdijk Shawl, with Dutch icons like windmills, wooden shoes, cows and polarded willows:

And the amazing Cherishing Every Aspect of Life sweater:

Wow! That’s another one for my maybe-someday-list.

Strangely enough, I didn’t buy any yarn. What I came home with, were two gifts that I can’t show you, several lengths of Swedish ribbon…

… and this book:

A Very Beautiful collection of 20 cardigan patterns by Maja Karlsson. Original Swedish title: Koftor. Just appeared in Dutch: Vesten breien. English edition: Cardigans. German title: Schwedische Strickjacken für jede Jahreszeit. It can be found here on Ravelry, unfortunately with photographs of just 6 of the designs. I hope to tell you more about it later.

I realize that I may be sending you down a huge rabbit hole by adding all these links, but it’s a very nice kind of rabbit hole. It is also my way of saying ‘thank you’ to the lovely people behind all these small (often one-woman) businesses that provide me with the inspiration and materials I need for making things. Thank you, too, for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon!

Teaching Someone to Knit

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What I haven’t written about so far is that I’m teaching someone to knit. It all started on New Year’s Eve when I was taking batches of traditional knieperties round to our neighbours. Invited in for a cup of tea by a neighbour across the street, I commented on her cross stitch embroidery. She asked me if I was still knitting and then her 6-year-old blurted out, ‘Mummy wants to learn to knit!’ She did, but hadn’t dared ask me. I said I’d love to teach her and we started lessons in February.

I thought I’d share what we’ve done so far, in case you’d also like to teach someone to knit and could use some ideas.

1 A Swatch and a Knitting Notions Case
(Techniques learnt: Garter stitch, casting on and binding off)
We started with a garter stitch swatch. I cast on for her and knit one row, and then it was her turn. When she’d got the hang of it, I bound off. Then she cast on stitches for a knitting notions case herself – a simple rectangle in garter stitch. This was good practice for making her stitches more regular. She also learnt how to bind off. I seamed the notions case for her and gave it a lining and a zipper.

2 A Scarf
(New techniques: Edge stitches and slipped stitches)
When I asked her why she wanted to learn to knit, my neighbour said, ‘I’d love to be able to make beautiful things with my own hands, like my grandmother used to do. Perhaps a cosy scarf for myself or things for my children.’ An excellent motivation, and a scarf for herself was the next project.

To make it a little more interesting than just garter stitch, we chose a nice stitch pattern that is basically garter stitch, but with columns of slipped stitches on the wrong side. I wrote it out for her and added edge stitches to make it extra neat.

My student chose an aran-weight pink yarn knit on 5 mm needles. The scarf will take her months to knit. A huge project for a new knitter, but that’s perfect for her to relax with in the evenings, when the children are in bed. Meanwhile, she can learn other techniques through smaller projects.

3 Another couple of swatches
(New techniques: Purling, stocking stitch, ribbing and seed stitch
Next up: learning to purl. First a swatch in stocking stitch that I didn’t photograph. And then a swatch with various combinations of knit and purl stitches – ribbing and seed stitch.

4 A Doll
(New techniques: Decreasing, seaming and duplicate stitch)
The next project was for her youngest child – a doll the image of this 4-year-old daughter, down to the ponytails.

This little doll is knit flat in one piece.  Apart from being good practice for stocking stitch, it teaches decreasing (for the top of the head) and seaming. I found the pattern on Ravelry – Fairisle Friends by Esther Braithwaite.

Only instead of a Fairisle sweater my student knit a plain sweater and added a heart in duplicate stitch afterwards – another new technique learnt.

5 A Teddy Bear
(New technique: Cabling)
My neighbour’s middle child (the boy who told me his mum wanted to learn to knit) wanted a softie as well – a teddy bear instead of a doll. We used another of Esther Braithwaite’s patterns, the Izzy Teddy Bear Dolls. The pattern gives instructions for knitting in the round, but I thought it too early for that and had my student knit it flat like the doll. The pattern has 4 sweater variations and we chose a cable.

My neighbour’s eldest child, aged 9, hesitated for a while but in the end decided that he was too big for a softie and preferred a ‘cloth’. He got a 25×25 cm/10×10 inch square, knit on the diagonal from very soft wool that he could carry with him and cuddle secretly (sorry, no picture).

In less than 5 months my (very driven and enthusiastic) neighbour learnt A LOT. I’m very proud of her, love teaching her and hope to pass on more of my skills to her over the coming months.

If you don’t have anyone to teach, the small projects above would also make great little gifts. And they are excellent for using up some of those leftover bits of yarn that I’m fairly sure you have in a box (or multiple boxes like me) somewhere.

That was rather a lot of information. I keep trying to keep my posts shorter, but there is always so much to share. Well, I’ll have another chance next week. See you then!

Laundry Day

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Except for a few warmer days in early May, we’ve had a cool and very wet spring. But now, mid-June, it really is time to wash those warm scarves, shawls and wraps and store them away. These are the ones I’ve worn alternately through the colder months.

From left to right: Story Lines, Color Play Mohair Scarf, Thús 2, a modified version of Sursa, and Striped Linen Stitch Wrap. I’ve only hung them on the washing line to take a picture, because after giving them a lovely lavender-scented bubble bath I dry them flat on our drying rack.

(An earlier post about the spa treatment I give my knits can be found here.)

Pottering about on a quiet day at home, washing my scarves and spending some time at the spinning wheel that had been idle for quite a while, my thoughts went back to my visit to an antiques shop just before our German holiday.

They were holding an exhibition of old textiles called ‘Monday, Laundry Day’. It was like visiting a museum, with the difference that the exhibits were for sale and visitors could rummage among them.

There were knit and crocheted bedspreads, lots of white underwear with crocheted and embroidered details, table cloths, bed linen and all kinds of samplers.

I found the old everyday items strangely moving. In my mind’s eye, I saw some of those nimble (or not so nimble) fingers spending hours and hours on practice pieces, so that they would later be able to make useful and beautiful things for their homes and families. I’ve seen cross stitch and darning samplers before, but new to me were the practice parts of socks – separate toes and heels. In the middle of the picture below two practice heels:

Did the girls who had to knit these enjoy or curse the hours spent on them?

The objects showed so many techniques and such great skill.

Two practice pieces for sewing techniques and this darning sampler came home with me:

Just imagine: a young girl at school, perhaps in the early or middle 20th century, perhaps aged seven or eight. First she is told to knit a square divided into nine squares by bands of seed stitch. Then she has to cut holes in some of the squares and try out different mending techniques. One technique she practiced over and over again – why that one in particular? Intriguing!

I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but I just fell in love with it. Do you love old textiles, too? Do you have any heirlooms or acquired items? What do you do with them? Display them, use them, store them in a box and take them out from time to time?

If you’re in the Netherlands and would like to give some old textiles a good home, the exhibition runs through July 7 at De Oranjerie in Zeijen, Drenthe. More information can be found here.

Mitten 17

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Hello and thank you so much for all your kind responses to last week’s scarf! It’s good to be among people who like and value the same sort of things. I’m only popping in briefly today, with a short post about a small hat inspired by a wee mitten.

Around this time last year, I was knitting 24 Norwegian Advent calendar mittens. This year, I filled them with tiny gifts, pinned them onto a wreath and gave them away. I was a bit sad to part with them, but know they’ve gone to a good home.

Besides, I’ve still got the pattern and am just as happy with that, because it provides a lot of inspiration. Both the fronts and the backs of the mittens have 2-colour patterns that can be used in all kinds of other projects. Take mitten 17:

Multiplying the pattern horizontally and working one repeat vertically, I used it to knit a new hat for our grandson.

I’d asked his mother about the colour, and she said, ‘fox brown would be nice’. So fox brown it is. Or oak leaf brown.

Oak leaves look so beautiful on misty, frosty days, outlined in white.

A few weeks ago, someone contacted me on Ravelry about the Advent calender mittens. She couldn’t get the pattern downloaded. I tried it out too and, nope, the link wasn’t working. Trying it out again today, I didn’t have any problems downloading it at all! The internet works in mysterious ways.

The Norwegian Julevotter Adventscalendar can be found here on Ravelry. And here is a direct link to the pattern pdf. If you’d like to download it and it isn’t working, trying again another day may be worthwhile. Good luck!