life

Lazy Kate

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Hello!

Before I embark on the story of Lazy Kate, I’d like to share some news with you. As some of you have already guessed from a few subtle clues in my previous post, I’m going to be a grandmother! It takes some getting used to the idea (how did I suddenly get so old?), but I’m thrilled to bits! And very, very happy for the mum-and-dad-to-be.

I’ve hesitated about talking about it here, as I don’t believe in sharing everything online. But I’d have to lead a strange kind of double life to not talk about it here. (Don’t worry, I won’t talk about it all the time.) It just feels good to know that you know, and not to have to be secretive about it anymore.

I also don’t feel very comfortable sharing pictures of loved ones online, but I think it’s okay to show our daughter’s feet here, together with those of the other great love of her life beside her husband.

And I think the girl with the big, hairy white feet doesn’t mind if I share a picture here. She loves going for a walk in the woods, rustling through the autumn leaves just as much as we do.

Neither this sweet-tempered pony nor our daugher is called Kate, and neither of them is lazy. So, who is Lazy Kate?

Well, actually this isn’t about who but about what – it is about a lazy kate (with indefinite article and without capitals). For the non-spinners among you: A lazy kate is a thing that holds yarn bobbins and comes in useful when plying several threads together after having spun them. It comes in different shapes and can be a separate box or rack that is placed beside the spinning wheel or it can be integrated.

This is my spinning wheel – a 21-year-old Louët S10.

I looked up the receipt and saw that I bought it in March 2000 for 515,00 guilders. Guilders, not euros! Goodness, a different era. It is still functioning just as smoothly as when it was new.

It has an integrated lazy kate – the rack with the two filled bobbins beside the treadle in the picture above. This is what it looks like without the bobbins.

With two bobbins I can make a 2-ply yarn, but the problem is that I now want to make a 3-ply yarn. I could hold the third bobbin on my lap, or place it in a basket or box beside the spinning wheel, but it would be much better to have an additional lazy kate.

So I decided to order one, and as the Louët spinning wheel factory is just around the corner from the stables where our daughter’s pony lives, I thought I might as well collect it instead of having it delivered. Do come along!

At the entrance there is a spinning wheel very much like mine, only more colourful.

Louët doesn’t have a factory shop, and it isn’t possible to visit the factory itself right now, but we are allowed to take a look around in their upstairs showroom. My spinning wheel is their very first model.

Since then it has evolved and several other models have been added. From what I understand, it is now even possible to have a spinning wheel put together to your own specifications, with single or double treadle, Scotch or Irish tension, etcetera.

The factory also produces all kinds of tools for fibre preparation, like combs, small and large hand carders, and drum carders.

On a shelf there is a niddy noddy, used for making skeins, and some fun hand spun yarns.

What I didn’t know, is that they also make weaving looms. Here is the very smallest and simplest one.

And here is one of the larger and more elaborate looms.

I don’t know anything about weaving, but just looking at the fabrics in progress on the looms is enjoyable, too.

Well, it’s time to collect my lazy kate and the block needed to attach it to my spinning wheel. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little virtual outing. I’ll tell you more about the yarn I’m spinning when there is more to show.

If you’d like more in-depth information about these spinning wheels or looms, please visit the Louët website. And if you’d like some chat about I-don’t-know-what-exactly-yet, please visit me again next week 😉. Bye!

A Week in November

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Hello again!

Publishing a knitting pattern is a small/totally insignificant step for mankind, but a big step for me. It makes me feel vulnerable to be so visible, and I’m very grateful for all of your kind words here and elsewhere. Thanks!

This week, no matter how hard I try, I feel unable to put together a coherent story. So here are a few unrelated items from this past November week.

Market

On Saturday I visited a small market in a neighbouring village. It was all about sustainable and hand made products, and there were some six or seven stalls in all.

It was organized by a local shop selling organic clothes for adults, children and babies.

It was a joy to look at the lovely colours, fabrics and yarns used. The prices were staggering, but I think that they reflect what we should really be paying if clothes are to be produced with respect for the environment and the people making them.

There was also a rack of second-hand clothes, or pre-loved as some would call them.

I don’t think it was the purpose of the market, but I felt really inspired to make even more myself than I already do. I’ll always be knitting, of course, but I’m also thinking of taking up sewing again.

Even more than the wares on display, I enjoyed the lovely arrangements with hydrangea flowers everywhere around. Like this cheerful combination with red enamelware…

… and this beautiful wreath in faded shades.

I also stood gazing out towards the neighbours’ beautifully restored farm buildings.

Ah, lovely! Still, in spite of all that gazing around, I didn’t go home empty-handed. As well as some paper for folding stars, these two wooden roe deer came home with me.

On my needles

I’m knitting another Story Lines shawl. This time in a combination of two Rowan yarns: their all-time favourite Kidsilk Haze and their new Felted Tweed Colour. I’m not entirely sure about it – the yarns work well together, I think, but did I choose the right colours?

Sunday morning walk

As we usually do, we went for a walk on Sunday morning.

The sky was overcast, but now and then the sun came out, bathing everything in very bright light.

We saw a group of roe deer in a field. The horses in the meadow next to it were watching them too.

Towards the end of our walk there was a faint rainbow in the sky.

Struggling to stay positive from time to time, I drink in any symbol, sign or ray of hope, no matter how faint.

Visitors

The sparrowhawk visiting our garden last year is back (or at least I think it is the same one). We haven’t seen him for a long time, but there he suddenly was – now in his full adult colours. Just look at those fierce eyes!

And we’ve had another visitor, too, new to our garden – a red squirrel. Here it is, snacking on a hazel nut:

Over the past couple of weeks it’s become a frequent visitor, busily running to and fro burying nuts everywhere.

Up early

I often wake up very early and have given up trying to go back to sleep. Instead I tiptoe down the stairs and spend a quiet hour (or two, or sometimes three) before breakfast drinking many cups of tea, knitting and reading by lamplight.

My big linen stitch wrap is almost finished. All I need to do is knit on I-cord along both long edges and finish the fringe. I want to finish a few other items before the end of the year, but my hands are also itching to start all kinds of new things, big and small.

Well, that’s all for today. Enjoy your weekend and see you again next week! xxx

No Plan but a List

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Hello, I’m back (although I haven’t really been away). I hope you’ve had a good summer and feel ready to get back to normal life, in as far as it can be called normal at the moment.

Beforehand, I imagined myself during my Summer Break like the sculpture above, only slightly more curvy and with a pair of knitting needles in my hands. No plan, just lazing about.

Except… I’m not the lazing-about-type (I must have been an ant in a previous life or something). I soon realized that staying at home with a husband working through the summer, there was the danger of my two precious weeks becoming two very ordinary weeks. I still didn’t feel like making a plan, but I needed something to give me some sort of direction. So, I got out a notebook and made a list.

A list of things that make a summer holiday into a summer holiday for me. It included:

  • Travel
  • No alarm clock
  • Simple, orderly environment (tent or cottage)
  • Read a foreign magazine
  • No newspaper, no tv
  • Grocery shopping in an unfamiliar shop (I love those huge French Hypermarchés, and the aisles with dozens of different types of muesli and honey in German supermarkets)
  • Spend as much time outdoors as possible
  • Lots of exercise (cycling, walking)
  • Lots and lots and lots of time for crafting and reading
  • Simple food, try a few new things
  • Sightseeing, visit a town, city, museum
  • Some pocket money to spend on frivolous things
  • Send postcards
  • Eat or drink something somewhere
  • Several new books to read
  • Take photographs
  • Keep a diary

Most of the items seemed doable, although some would require a little imagination. I didn’t want it to be a to-do-list with items to check off, just something I could use as a kind of compass. I didn’t do everything on it. One of the things I did do, was take photographs. Loads of them.

Photographs of landscapes…

… lovely houses…

… flowering heather…

… and many, many more.

I didn’t go grocery shopping in one of those big French or German supermarkets, but I did visit a health food shop close by that I’d never been to. They had a display of deliciously fresh looking vegetable plants outside…

… and some lovely honey and other nice things inside.

I did send a few postcards, but I didn’t keep to the ‘no newspaper, no tv’ item on my list. I felt the need to stay informed, and especially the publication of the IPCC climate report felt too important to not read about.

So scary! But the hopeful thing about it is that it seems to have conveyed a sense of urgency. I often struggle with the bad news from around the world. How can I enjoy a Summer Break and blog about small pleasures when so much is going wrong?

This is one of the books I have been reading during my Summer Break:

It is set in an imaginary place in Ireland (travel!), far removed from the real world. In it I found a nugget of wisdom that applies to our everyday world as well: ‘… even in times of death, destruction and ignorance, there are still good people who can make a difference.’ (p. 90)

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Trying to be a good person making a difference. And to be able to do that, we need a break from time to time. Knitting isn’t going to save the world, but at least it isn’t making things worse either. So, I’ve sat knitting and reading on our veranda, behind the flowering dill, quite a bit.

And although the weather was unreliable, I’ve also been walking for hours and cycling for miles and miles.

I didn’t keep a diary, but I’d like to write about a few of the things I’ve seen along the way and thought I’d do that here over the next couple of weeks. It’s far too much for one or two blog posts, so there’ll be a few more than my usual Friday ones. Hope you don’t mind.

What I would have liked to do as well, was visit a few yarn shops in the area, but most of them were having a Summer Break just like me. The only one I visited did have some nice yarns…

… but otherwise was such a mess…

… that I beat a quick retreat and won’t even tell you where it was. But not to worry – there will be a few other crafts-related things to share.

Bye for now, and see you again soon!

(This isn’t my bicycle, but a purely ornamental one in a neighbour’s garden.)

Behind the Pelargoniums

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Hello!

In Dutch, we have the expression achter de geraniums zitten (sitting behind the pelargoniums). It’s hard to explain exactly what it means, but on the whole it’s considered a Bad Thing. Not quite as bad as pushing up the daisies…

… but it comes very close. Sitting behind the pelargoniums, you’re a dull old stick-in-the-mud.

I never particularly liked pelargoniums. But since we came to live here, almost 20 years ago, we’ve bought them from our local brass band every year to sponsor their uniforms and instruments.

Ironically, last year – when we spent more time behind the pelargoniums than ever before, figuratively speaking – we had to go without them. Fortunately this year, the brass band players were able to go round the doors selling them again.

I don’t know if I’ll ever love pelargoniums, but I’ve come to like them over the years. They provide some nice splashes of colour around the house.

And how about sitting behind those pelargoniums?

According to our government, it is no longer necessary to do so. I don’t know what it’s like in your part of the world, but here almost all of the covid-measures have suddenly been dropped. As of last Saturday, we don’t have to wear face masks anymore, and almost everything is allowed (with 1.5 metres distance). It’s a BIG step, and I wonder where it is going to take us.

It is not going to take us (my husband and me) anywhere much in the foreseeable future. We don’t have big plans. I mean, it would be a shame if we weren’t here to enjoy our wonderfully fragrant miniature strawberries, wouldn’t it?

And who among our neighbours would be crazy enough to pamper my little woad seedlings the way I do? Yes, the seeds have germinated! Well, most of them anyway.

We will just continue living our lives, and doing the things we normally do this summer. But we are planning to take a day off now and then to venture away from behind our pelargoniums. I hope you’ll virtually join us on some of our outings.

One thing we have planned, is a visit to our niece. She left home last September to go to uni and I am really looking forward to finally see where she has been studying so diligently on her own this past year. Before that trip, I am crocheting her a pair of old-fashioned pot holders from blue and cream cotton.

On the knitting front, I don’t have any big plans either. I’ll focus on small projects from those yarn remnants I talked about last week. There is one big project I want to finish, though – the soft, light and relaxed cardi I started earlier this year. Only, I found out that I’ve made a mistake in one of the front bands. Oops.

I think I know how to fix it, but I need to pluck up the courage for that.

Some crochet is also on my list of things to do this summer. Not a big blanket or anything – I’ll keep it small, too.

For the rest, I’ll keep enjoying the small miracles surrounding us and sharing them with you.

The other day, when I was starting to lower our awning, I heard a dry, crackling sound. Like something dropping down from it. And this is what I found:

An emperor dragonfly. I couldn’t see it breathing, and after observing it for a while concluded that it was dead. A rare opportunity to study it more closely. Such a beautiful creature.

Another thing I found just outside our backdoor this past week is this:

I’ve zoomed in on it; in reality it is only about 3 cm long. At first I thought it was a bit of moss fallen from off the roof, but when I looked more closely, I saw ‘things’ in it and realized it was a pellet. Probably regurgitated by this sparrowhawk.

I may seem like a dull old stick-in-the-mud to others, spending so much time behind the pelargoniums. But life never feels dull to me. To close off, here is one of the young woodpeckers who visit our garden every day.

Wherever you are in the world, and whether you are staying behind the pelargoniums or not, I wish you a safe and enjoyable summer and hope you’ll pay me a visit here from time to time.

PS If you’d like to see a dragonfly breathing (they breathe through the lower part of their body), here is a lovely video I found on YouTube.

A Very Special Day

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Hello!

I’m faced with a dilemma. Last week I ended with the mention of a very special occasion coming up, and I promised to write about it. An occasion that has kept me occupied day and night for a while. You see, our daughter got married! But… how interesting is that for other people? And wasn’t this a blog about knitting? And how about the young couple’s privacy?

It would have been okay to blog about the wedding if I’d knit her fabulous lace wedding dress, perhaps, but I didn’t. In that case they would have had to plan their wedding years in advance, and they didn’t. The dress she wore was chiffon covered in pale pink roses.

There were roses in the bridal bouquet and the bridegroom’s buttonhole, too. And pink was a bit of a theme as well, with a pink ribbon around one of the gifts…

… the bridegroom wearing a pink tie, and pink shoes on the bride’s feet. Aww, look at those.

Sometimes it seems like only yesterday that she wore these.

Can you hear a mother’s melancholy sigh? Don’t get me wrong – I’m very happy that my daughter’s so happy. And I also feel enriched by the presence of the man of her choice in our lives. But still…

Recently I was re-reading Towers in the Mist by one of my favourite authors…

… and read this: ‘Every fresh beginning was a new birth and must have its pain as well as its joy, and without these fresh beginnings there could be no life, without them we should turn sour like stagnant water in a pond.’

Exactly. Fortunately, my overriding feeling about this very special day is joy. It was special in a romantic sense.

And special as well because of the current circumstances. A really big, old-fashioned wedding was out of the question. Apart from the bride and groom, there were only six people present. Everyone wore face masks and even the floor of the city hall where the ceremony was held, reminded us of the necessary 1.5 metres distance.

Yes, a very special day. But, hey, I wasn’t going to bore you with endless family pictures and talk of the wedding. Let’s go for a walk around Zutphen, the city where the wedding was held. No towers in the mist here, but towers under a lowering sky.

Church towers…

… and gate towers.

Zutphen is such a romantic and picturesque city, with beautiful old city walls…

… surrounded by orchards and gardens.

Photogenic spots everywhere…

…you…

…look.

The only negative thing I can think of about it at the moment, is that it lacks a yarn shop. There is a lovely quilt shop though.

It specializes in flowery fabrics. Some very special ones are their collection of Dutch Heritage Fabrics. I’m much more of a knitter than a quilter, although I’ve made a few quilts in the past, but I do enjoy making small things with beautiful fabrics.

I must come back when the shop is open and I have more time someday.

Well, it seems like my dilemma has somehow solved itself. Hope you have enjoyed my pictures, and I will really make an effort to get back to knitting over the coming weeks.

Moving Back In

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Hello!

As you can see, my knitting baskets are back where they belong – next to my knitting chair in the living room. This means that all the repair work to the house is finished, the paint is dry, the heating is back on and we’ve moved everything back to its rightful place.

I’m so glad that it’s all behind us now. And I’m particularly glad that I’m surrounded by books again. Moving back in, I came across one that I thought might be interesting to discuss here:

Kari Cornell (ed.), For the Love of Knitting, Stillwater (MN): Voyageur Press, 2004.

For the Love of Knitting is different from most other knitting books in that it doesn’t contain any patterns. It is filled with stories and essays about all kinds of aspects of knitting, and illustrated with many interesting pictures.

The book’s subtitle is: A Celebration of the Knitter’s Art. That’s interesting, because knitting is usually considered a craft. In an essay with the title: ‘The Search for a Proper Place among the Arts’ Teva Durham tries to answer the question ‘Why is knitting considered less of an art than painting, sculpting, or weaving?’ That’s an interesting question, and the essay contains interesting thoughts. A quote (p. 109): ‘For the proponents of the Arts and Crafts Movement it was enough for a work of art to be “a well-made thing” where “design interpenetrates the workmanship,” showing it was “made by a human being for a human being.” […] What could be more applicable to this than knitting?’

What indeed? Still, I wouldn’t call the things I knit art. But does it really matter whether something is considered art or craft? Hmm, it’s mainly a matter of status, I think. And the price people are willing to pay for one or the other will differ a lot. So, yes, perhaps it does matter.

The things I knit are usually of the useful and wearable kind. This book shows many other applications of the art/craft of knitting, including knitted chairs, a knitted boat (yes, really, it even floats), and these two ladies.

This work of knitting art made by Karen Searle is called Prime of Life. According to the caption, the artist ‘wanted to illustrate the beauty of the aging female body.’ If you’re as intrigued by this as I am, there is an article with more pictures of Searle’s work here.

I just have to show you this gem, with the caption: ‘A young Dutch maiden knits contently by the sea in this vintage, hand-colored postcard.’ It could be me! (Just kiddin’.)

One thing in the book that makes me laugh out loud, is ‘Lily Chin’s Top 10 Ways to Hide the Stash’. One of her fun yarn storage tips is ‘Put a slipcover over a bag of yarn, stick it on the couch, call it a pillow.’ And why not? Another one is, ‘Never cook, only order take-out or go to restaurants. You’ve now got the whole oven!’

Haha, nooo, storing yarn in the oven would never work for me. We just LOVE,

LOVE,

LOVE

our oven and use it almost every day.

Something else I came across while moving back in was my collection of straight knitting needles. My needle cases for these are getting rather ratty, splintering or falling completely apart.

I knit almost everything on circulars nowadays. Apart from the double-pointed ones, I hardly use straights anymore. But I’m still attached to them, so what shall I do? Give them away? Invest in new needle cases? And where am I going to find those?

Here are several special pairs/sets – from top to bottom:

  • My thickest knitting needles (15 mm)
  • My thinnest knitting needles (1.5 mm)
  • Some of my Mum’s old, slightly rusty steel knitting needles

After moving back in, I’m trying to rest and relax as much as possible this week. I’ve had my first dose of vaccine. Apart from a sore arm and a slight headache that may have had different causes, I haven’t felt sick from it at all, but I thought it might be a good idea to take it easy anyway.

I’m really surprised at how happy I feel that is now my turn to be vaccinated. Apparently, I’ve felt more oppressed by the whole situation than I realized. It also feels as a relief that we’re able to do something to protect ourselves and others apart from keeping ourselves to ourselves. I feel very privileged and hope that everybody around the world will get the opportunity to get vaccinated soon.

Besides unpacking, I’ve been knitting, pottering in the garden…

… airing my husband’s best suit (can’t remember the last time I saw him wearing a suit)…

… and washing and ironing my new dress for a very special occasion in the near future.

More about that soon, I hope. Bye for now and enjoy your weekend!

Fragmented

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Hello!

My days and weeks are very fragmented at the moment, and the only thing I can think of to do here this week, is post a few of those fragments.

Sunday
No workmen today. Ah, sigh of relief. I’m very grateful to them for all the work they are doing, and they are really nice guys, but I’m also grateful for a day without them. It isn’t just the upheaval. It’s also having to dance the distancing dance that we have been performing in shops and in the street this past year at home now, too, that is stressful.

After breakfast we’re escaping the house for a walk in the wood. Many trees are still bare, and in some places it still looks very wintry, but the amelanchiers are in bloom. Although torrential rain on Friday has made them look slightly dishevelled, they’re still worth photographing.

The fresh young leaves of the beeches make other parts of the wood look really springlike.

A couple of hours in the wood erase a week’s worth of stress.

Monday
Today the walls are painted. It feels like a luxury that somebody else is doing this for us – we have always done jobs like these ourselves in the past. Choosing paint colours was fun. There were so many colours to choose from…

… but in the end we chose more or less the same ones as before. We didn’t want to redecorate, after all.

For the living room we chose white with a hint of pink in it, like the blossom on our apple tree. Not like the buds, but like the petals of the fully opened flowers.

And we chose a pale yellow for one wall in the kitchen. Similar to these daffodils that are now flowering, only slightly less lemony.

The rest of the walls and the ceilings are simply painted white.

We’re suddenly without electricity and internet for part of the day, so no computer work for a while. When I head outside to do some jobs in the garden, it starts to rain. The only thing I can do now is retreat to our bedroom and knit.

Tuesday
This was the day the central heating radiators were going be re-installed, but alas… change of plan, it is now going to be Thursday (we hope). Changes of plans are not my forte. The weather is dismal (stormy view from our bedroom window).

Everything is covered in white dust again. I resist the urge to get back into bed and start cleaning again.

Flags are at half-mast around the village (and everywhere else in the country). On the 4th of May we commemorate those fallen during wars and peacekeeping missions since the beginning of WWII. At 8 pm we observe two minutes of silence and watch the ceremony on an almost empty Dam Square. The stories told by survivors and their children and grandchildren are deeply moving.

Wednesday
On May 5th we celebrate the end of WWII as well as freedom, democracy and human rights in general. Normally, there are all kinds of festivities. This year again only the flags show that it’s a special day.

I’m becoming more and more aware of how fragile these values are. We have a mini celebration at home with some sweet treats hot from the baker’s oven.

The June issue of Country Living magazine lands in our letterbox. I don’t think I’ll be visiting the UK any time soon, and it is a real treat to look at some lovely pictures of British wildlife. With phone calls with our daughter and a dear friend added in, this was, all in all a festive day in a small way.

Thursday
Hurray! I have an appointment for my first vaccine jab. And very soon, too. Can’t wait!

Hurray 2! The radiators have been re-installed! We have the house to ourselves again, and can start moving back in. This whole episode, with the semi-earthquake and the cracks in our walls, has taken up so much time and energy. I’m glad the end is in sight. I sympathize with all those people in the north of the country with far more serious cracks in their houses caused by real earth quakes due to gas extractions and fervently hope they will finally be compensated soon.

Hurray 3! The blue tits’ eggs in one of our nesting boxes have hatched. The parents are flying on and off with food. They refuse to be photographed, so here is just the nesting box and you’ll have to take my word for it.

Hope all is well with you and yours, hope to be less fragmented next week, and hope to see you again then. Bye!

Upheaval

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Hello again!

Last time I was here on my blog, I told you that I have a lot on my plate at the moment. The picture of our hallway above gives an indication of one of the things on it. No, we’re not moving house. Let’s take a look at our living room for further clues.

Redecorating? Nope, not redecorating either. Or sort of, but not voluntarily. Actually, it’s more restoring than redecorating.

Last autumn, a concrete sheet pile wall was hammered into the soil a little ways away from our house with so much force that it felt like a minor earthquake and cracks appeared in our walls.

This is just a small, elegant crack that only needs some filler. In other places the plaster needs to be hacked away and restored entirely. Fortunately the #@*&%#! company that caused the damage is insured, but for us it’s still a lot of upheaval, noise, dust etc.

Just like the house, I’m thoroughly shaken, but trying to be philosophical about it. Compared to the bombed houses in Syria or Iraq we sometimes see on the news, this is absolutely nothing. Besides, we’re lucky that our bedroom was left unscathed. I’m acting as if it’s a room in a boutique hotel. Room service is lacking, but unlike the rest of the house, it is warm. It also has a good bed and exactly the books I love beside it, as well as a perfect knitting chair where I can spend the evenings knitting.

During the daytime, I can also sit outside if I have a few moments to spare. It’s still rather chilly, but the back of the cardigan I’m knitting has grown so fast that it’s like a small, cosy lap blanket.

The pattern I’m using is Modern Wrapper Fine. I’ve made one before and knew that it would be perfect comfort knitting during this period of upheaval.

The garden is also giving me some solace. The pear tree and the Amelanchier are opening their first blossoms, and the wood anemones and wild garlic are lighting up a slightly shady area.

Another project that is growing, albeit more slowly than the cardi, is my linen stitch wrap in Felted Tweed. I love the way linen stitch always blends colours together. (The white row at the bottom is a provisional cast-on I’ll write more about when I can find the time.)

Knit, yarn forward, slip, yarn backward. Knit, yarn forward, slip, yarn backward… A great way to meditate.

One of the books beside my bed in the ‘boutique hotel room’ is brand new – Mine Strikkede Favoritter by Norwegian designer Sidsel Høivik.

From the foreword I gather that, as well as new designs, it contains several re-knits from her other books. I don’t have any of her other books, so that’s fine. If you do, check if you still need this one. The difference with her other books is that they are entirely in Norwegian and this one is bilingual (Norwegian and English).

Sidsel’s signature style is traditional Norwegian with a twist. She uses lots of embellishments on her designs, like embroidery, beads, sequins and ribbons. The book contains patterns for sweaters, cardigans and several accessories. My favourite design is a long cardigan with traditional Setesdal patterns on the upper part of the body and the sleeves, with embroidery on the star motifs, a nice length, pockets and a cosy collar.

All of the yarns used in the book are from Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk, the small Norwegian family-run spinning mill I visited years ago and wrote about in this blog post. I bought my copy from a small yarn shop 20 minutes cycling from here. It is also available from Sidsel Høiviks own website, which offers kits for her lovely designs as well.

Well, that’s all from me for now. The builders will still be here next week and the week after, but I hope that I’ll become used to all the upheaval (and also that the other things on my plate will shrink) soon, so that I’ll be able to go back to blogging as usual. Maybe I’ll even be able to finish and publish my new pattern! Or am I now being too optimistic?

Anyhow, I hope you’re safe and well. Take care! xxx

Knit on, with Confidence and Hope

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Hello! And how are you all doing? It’s always slightly frustrating to me that a blog is mainly one-way traffic. I hear a little about some of you from your own blogs, through comments, or via other channels, but on the whole it’s well-nigh impossible to have a real two-way conversation here. I just want to let you know that it isn’t because I’m not interested.

Over here, in the Netherlands, there are more and more signs of spring. The scillas in our garden are flowering profusely, and we only ever planted 1 single scilla bulb about two decades ago. The trees are still bare, but a few branches blown from our pear tree in a storm and brought indoors are delighting us with their delicate flowers.

And the daffodils on a roundabout I often pass are a cheering sight.

On a different note, we’ve just had another press conference from our (outgoing) Prime Minister and our Minister of Health about the Covid situation, and the national elections are behind us. Both have left me worried. But I refuse to despair and, as always, am living by Elizabeth Zimmermann’s motto:

“Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises.”
(Wool Gathering #10, 1974)

I am making good progress on the fingerless mittens I’m designing myself…

… and am hoping they’ll turn out the way they look in my mind’s eye. Designing something is exciting and fun, but for me also surrounded with doubt and uncertainty.

It’s different with sock knitting. After knitting innumerable pairs, I’m entirely confident that they’ll turn out right. I’ve just finished a pair in a stripe sequence designed by Arne and Carlos, and am now knitting a pair in a subtly striped yarn with cashmere in shades of red, pink and orange.

I’m keeping the Arne & Carlos socks. The luxurious red ones are for a friend.

Speaking of socks and friends, I’ve been to see our daughter’s dear friend Silver. She has just moved to a new stables and was having a manicure while I visited.

Silver has magnificent (if slightly dirty) socks.

You may have met her in a blog post long ago, but if you haven’t, here she is:

Silver is whitish, has one blue and one brown eye, and hails from Ireland. She shares her new stables with black, brown and beige horses, with Norwegian, Arab, and I-don’t-know-what-kind-of roots. After a few initial bickerings, they have settled down peacefully together. Watching them makes me hum,

“Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
Yoo, hoo, ooh-ooh
You may say I’m a dreamer…”

Well, back to knitting. It’s also time to start a few new projects. First of all, I dug out the yarn I bought at a crafts fair in February 2020.

This is going to be a new in-between-projects project – a huge wrap in linen stitch. I expect it’ll take me about two years to knit, and that’s exactly the idea. A project I can always pick up when I’ve finished something and am about to start something else, or just feel like knitting long rows of soothing simple stitches.

I’ve also ordered yarn for an oversized cardigan. Two different lace-weights in a tealy colour that will be held together, one a blend of alpaca and merino, the other mohair and silk.

I’m soooo looking forward to collecting the yarn from the shop and starting this.

That’s all about my knitting for now. I hope you have something on your needles to lift your spirits too, and I’d love to hear about it.

Thinking about Flow

by

Hello!

(Because I think it would interrupt the flow of this blog post too much to insert links into the actual text, I’ve added a list at the bottom.)

It was yarn that first made me think about flow. Two skeins of a beautiful blue-green yarn hand dyed by Catharina at Wolverhalen. I chose this colour first of all because it caught my eye. The name – Flow – was of secondary importance, but it did catch my attention.

I asked Catharina about it, and she told me that she dyes a whole series of colours named for states of mind. Flow is one of them. Others are Positivity, Wisdom, Joy, Passion, Faith, and Stillness.

Flow… What exactly is it? It makes me think of water.

It also makes me think of  somebody with the unpronounceable name Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In my previous life as a translator, I’ve translated many psychology books and articles. During my background reading, I repeatedly came across his research.

In his famous book Flow: The psychology of optimal experience (that I haven’t read), he defines flow as: ‘…the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter…’ It is a particular kind of focus that seems to lead to intense feelings of happiness.

Am I ever in a state of flow? I don’t really know.

I used the flow yarn to knit another Thús 2 – a design I published in November last year.

Am I in flow when I’m knitting? Or when I’m designing a pattern?

Or when I’m faffing about with photography?

Or when I’m writing? Or when I’m doing other things entirely? Yes, no, well, maybe, sometimes…

Flow as a yarn colour is something that makes me happy. Flow as a state of mind is something I’d like to know more about. Are people generally aware of being in this flow state? What does it take to get there?

Flow is also a Dutch magazine that I sometimes buy. In the editors’ words, it is about ‘Celebrating creativity, imperfection and life’s little pleasures’. This is the first issue of 2021.

There used to be and English edition as well, but they’ve recently stopped publishing that. They do still have an interesting English-language website, and back issues and specials are still available.

My favourite articles in the latest issue are about navigating life in uncertain times and about tools for people working from home. And the item about Aheneah, a Portuguese artist who does cross stitch on a large scale, made me smile.

The message Aheneah gives off with her installations is to think outside the box and look at one’s roots and traditional techniques as things that can be transformed in unexpected ways and so given a new lease of life.

I’m ending today’s post with a poem by Wilder Poetry that really spoke to me. It comes from the Flow ‘Calm Down’ special.

Thank you for reading!

If you’d like to read more (or knit your own Thús 2), here is a list of links: