Hello!
First of all, thank you for last week’s comments on creativity. They have really given me food for thought. One thing they’ve brought me is that maybe my idea of creativity is too exalted, as if only highly original conceptual art is creative. It would be a good thing for me to value small acts of creativity more, like choosing colours and materials, or changing a few details when following a knitting or sewing pattern. The yin-and-yang view of creativity is new to me and I need some time to digest that. I have a feeling that it could be very valuable.
I’ve just finished a pair of fingerless mitts from a pattern that I’ve knit several times before. This time I’ve made the welts on the cuff multi-coloured (a tiny act of creativity) using yarn left over from the colourwork hats I knit earlier.
I didn’t have enough red yarn left from the hats, but happened to have some of that left over from a cardigan I knit a couple of years back. There is something to be said for using the same yarn again and again – it’s easy to combine and use up the remnants.
Sadly there’s been a mishap with this cardigan knit from Rowan’s Felted Tweed and it’s now a felted Felted Tweed cardigan. I’ve always washed knits from this yarn on wool wash in the washing machine and have never had problems before, but this time I saw there was a problem as soon as I opened the door. Uh-oh! I’d like to blame the washing machine, but perhaps I pushed the wrong button? It hasn’t exactly become child-sized, but too small and stiff for me to wear anymore.
I love Felted Tweed and on the whole am happy with other Rowan yarns, too. But last year I knit a cardigan from their Alpaca Soft DK that looked like this after I’d only worn it a few days.
Really awful pilling that can’t be removed no matter what I try. I’ve even bought a special pill remover, but no luck. I was so disappointed that I put it away for a while, but I’ve pulled it out of the naughty corner and it can be my gardening cardigan from now on.
Back to the fingerless mitts. Their thumb gussets are nicely defined by purl stitches and the fit is great. The pattern can be found here on Ravelry, and there is also a matching welted cowl.
The snowdrops I’ve photographed them with are small ones in our own garden. I saw some very big ones on the corner of someone else’s garden path. They almost looked like plastic, but no, they were real.
Spring bulbs, trees and shrubs are flowering a month earlier here now than they did 50 years ago, according to Nature Today. That’s very unsettling and I almost feel as if I oughtn’t to enjoy them anymore. I still do, though. The crocuses in our garden are doing very well and seeding themselves out in many places.
Maybe someday we’ll have a display like this next to the church in the village of Norg.
These harbingers of spring are telling me that I need to get a move on with the woolly Norwegian sweater for our grandson. I hope to have it finished next week. Hope to see you again then! Xxx
