inspiration

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!

How to get your knitting mojo back

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Hello! Does it happen to you, too, that you lose your knitting mojo from time to time? Over the past month or so, I seem to have lost mine. It isn’t as if there is nothing on my needles, it’s just that I’m not feeling terribly enthusiastic about any of it.

Mojo, what does the word really mean? I’ve always thought of it as a combo of motivation and joy, but is it? As a professional translator, I stopped using paper dictionaries a long time ago, but I still enjoy leafing through them.

The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary says:
Mojo – 1. Magic, voodoo; a charm or amulet; 2. Any narcotic drug, esp. morphine.

Hmm, I think I’ll stick to my own definition:
Mojo – Acronym of MOtivation and JOy.

So, how to get your knitting mojo back? Googling for help, I found lots of tips. Well, actually mostly the same ones mentioned over and over again. Selecting those that spoke to me most and adding a couple of my own I’ve made a list of 9 tips (9 is my lucky number).

1 Get enough sleep

For me, feeling blah about knitting often means that I’m just plain tired and need more sleep. Getting enough sleep is easier said than done, but I’ll do my best, i.e.: drink calming herbal teas, relax more during the daytime, try to take naps, try not to worry about things I can’t do anything about, do something about those I can, and heed tip 9. I could also knit a new Soothing Sachet and tuck it under my pillow. This is one I knit earlier:

2 Knit together

A real-life knitting group would be best. But lacking that, you could join a KAL or hang out with your favourite Ravelry group. My knitting group only meets every other month, but is always fun and inspiring. Here are a few Ravelry links to the beautiful things some of my knitting friends were making when we met last week: FF Backward, a fun sweater with an interesting construction; Kuno’s Cushion, with linen stitch stripes; Riddari, an Icelandic design with a beautiful yoke; and The Twigs, a refined sweater by a Japanese designer.

3 Visit a yarn shop

Actually, I visited two last week – one of them a small local haberdashery shop and the other one a shop I blogged about a couple of years ago. Looking at yarns and samples, and leafing through the latest books and magazines is always inspiring. If you’re unable to visit a brick-and-mortar shop, there are always online ones.

4 Browse patterns

Browsing patterns on Ravelry or Instagram, or looking at pictures in knitting mags may bring back that spark you’re missing. I came home from the above yarn shop with the latest Rowan Magazine, nr 74. It’s quite expensive, and I hesitated, but decided to get it because it’s a special about two beautiful tweed yarns and has several patterns in it that I’d love to knit. My two favourites are Himalayas, included both as a pullover and a cardigan.

And Scree, a colourwork scarf knit in the round.

5 Organize your stash

This seems like a great idea. Maybe you’ll find yarns you’d forgotten about that would make your fingers itch to knit. I’ll keep this in mind for later…

6 Knit a gift

Perhaps thinking about someone you love and how something you knit for them will keep them warm will bring your knitting mojo back. This tip made me cycle to the small haberdashery shop in our nearest town to get two skeins of yarn for a hat for a friend.

7 Sort your WIPs

With six works in progress (WIPs) on my needles that are not making a lot of progress, this may be the magical tip for me. Gathering them all together, I realized that there is something about each WIP that’s keeping me from knitting happily on. Take these socks, for instance. The first sock has taken up 30 g of the main colour, so there is only 20 g left for the second sock – uh-oh! What to do now? Buy another skein? Rip back a bit and add stripes? Something else?

8 Start something new

Starting something new is always nice, of course. Maybe you need something challenging to get your needles clicking again. Or maybe something simple. I’m choosing the latter option – a very simple poncho. This will kill two birds with one stone, because I’m also going to knit this together with my favourite group of Ravelry friends.

9 Get some exercise and fresh air

This helps to feel more motivated and joyful in general.

These tips have already made me feel more MOtivated about finishing my WIPs. And I actually feel a tiny spark of JOy about starting the hat and the poncho. I also have the feeling that I may need something more colourful and/or challenging to bring my mojo back completely.

I hope that your knitting mojo hasn’t left you, or if it has, that these tips will help you as they’re helping me. xxx

Summer Knitting Plans

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Hello! I hope this finds you all well. It’s been chaos and bedlam here. We were having some work done to our house, and everyone who’d promised to be here ‘in spring’, ‘sometime during the summer’, and ‘in September at the earliest’ descended on us in the same week. I’m glad the work is done, the dust has been dusted away, the paint is dry, everything is back in its place and we have uninterrupted electricity again.

So, back to life as usual, back to blogging and fortunately also back to more normal temperatures and some rain. It’s only June and we already have a very hot and dry month behind us. On one hot day, I saw a blackbird panting with outspread wings.

It seemed to be in distress, but hopped away cheerfully when I approached. I found out that they ‘sweat’ through their open beaks, and sunbathe to get rid of parasites.

I’m extremely worried about our increasingly hot summers and the worldwide problem they’re a symptom of. I’m trying to do what I can on an individual level, but it’s depressingly little. Getting depressed about it all isn’t getting us anywhere, though, so I’m doing my utmost to stay positive.

Some of the best ways for me to do that are outdoor exercise and knitting. And as for the latter, I’ve made A Plan! As it’s often too hot to have a large woolly project on my lap, I’m going to focus on small things during the summer months. There’s always a pair of simple socks on my needles.

Very nice, but I’d also like something more challenging. But what? Looking at my Knitting Wish List for 2023 for guidance, these are some of the things I wanted to do more of:

  • Norwegian knitting
  • Make things for our grandson
  • Knit more challenging socks

Socks are small anyway, and I’m certainly making one or two pairs of those.

When I think of Norwegian knitting, I first of all think of sweaters. But mittens are great small alternative. I found a few skeins of yarn brought back from Norway in one of my yarn boxes.

Things for our grandson are never huge, but can be even smaller than sweaters and cardigans.

So these are my plans for summer knitting. It feels good to have the decisions made and to have the materials and patterns at hand – things to look forward to.

My spinning wheel is also back in use.

And I’ve put my name down as a volunteer for and interesting woolly project. I’ll tell you more about that when there is something to tell. I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, but it’s something I’m really, really looking forward to being a part of.

We won’t be going anywhere until later in the year. If you’re staying at home, too, or if you’re holidaying somewhere and have some time on your hands, I hope you have some plans for things to make lined up, too. I’d love it if you’d drop in from time to time to keep me company. I’ll be blogging about my progress with the above and also hope to take you along on a few outings.

Whether your plans are big or small, enjoy your summer!

Flower Colours

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Hello! Here’s an update on my Seventh Heaven Scarf from left-over bits of sock yarn. The first two-thirds are finished – the green-and-blue part.

The part of the scarf with the greens of grass, leaves and reed, and the blues of sky and water.

Now it’s time for the flower colours. Time for thistle purple.

Time for ragged robin pink.

Time for calendula orange.

And time for flag iris yellow.

I’m adding just a small touch of yellow, in a yarn with oranges and pinks, but it’ll be a cheerful touch at the end of the scarf.

I took all of the flower and landscape pictures during a walk in the Wieden part of the Weerribben-Wieden National Park. All but one – the orange one. The orange tip butterfly didn’t show itself, and I had to look to our herb patch for a splash of orange.

June is a lovely time to be in the Wieden, with not just many beautiful and rare flowers and birds, but also lots of damselflies flitting and dragonflies whirring about and sunning themselves.

It’s been far too hot to have a warm scarf like this on my lap over the past week, and the heat doesn’t look like letting up soon. I think I’ll put my Seventh Heaven Scarf on hold for a bit, although I know that’s risky – no deadline, out of sight is out of mind etcetera. I do want to finish it, though, so will keep it in sight.

Keep cool, calm and hydrated!

Links:
The preliminary pattern of the Seventh Heaven Scarf can be found in this post.
For some more armchair travelling to the Weerribben-Wieden National Park visit this website.

Joure Wool Festival 2023

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Hello!

Last Saturday the annual wool festival Joure onder de Wol was held again. For me it is close to home, but it is so varied and inspiring that people from all over the country come flocking to it. Arriving before the actual festival started, I first paid a quick visit to the local yarn shop for some yarn for a soft toy for our grandson (more about that in another post). Draped over the back of the bench next to the entrance was a dazzling crochet blanket.

So not my taste, and yet I was fascinated by it. The techniques used are interesting and the choice of colours is also well-balanced. I wonder why crocheters often seem to have such different tastes from knitters?

Leaving the shop, my phone made that owly who-oh sound telling me that there was a message. It was the friend I was meeting up with, ‘Where are you? I’m with the sheep’. Typing ‘I’m coming!’ I hurried towards her. The sheep shearing was already in full spate.

Some sheep had already lost their coats, while others were still wearing theirs. Looking closely at the photo below, perhaps you can see the woman on the left, wearing a straw hat, pointing her finger. She is pointing out which fleeces she wants, and then the hectic catch-me-if-you-can between sheep and shepherd starts.

It’s fun to watch, although I feel a little sorry for the sheep, too. Being undressed in front of a large audience doesn’t seem like much fun to me. The next sheep waiting its turn doesn’t look unduly stressed, though.

Next, it was time to look at all the other woolly things. There was so much to see that I hardly know where to start. I’ll just pick out a few highlights. First of all there was wool – raw fleeces from many different sheep breeds…

… washed, carded and dyed rovings…

… and yarn, yarn, beautiful yarn – much of it hand-dyed, sometimes using natural dyes (click on images to enlarge).

And then there were the things people had made with wool and yarn. Again, I’m just showing a few of the highlights.

There was needle binding. Although, as with the crochet blanket, the maker had a very different taste from mine I could see the beauty and possibilities in the technique he was using.

There were felted items, both needle and wet felting. Simple yet beautiful objects, like this wild and woolly nest with eggs:

And stunning felted ‘paintings’ of the northern Frisian coastal landscape. The photographs don’t really do them justice, but I hope you can see why they blew me away (again, click to enlarge).

A beautiful woven blanket also drew my eye. Weaving isn’t really my thing, but I’d like to give making small squares using one of these hand looms a try someday.

And then there were many people who’d brought their spinning wheels. I could write an entire post about those alone, but I’ll end with just one picture – a young teenager (I promised not to show her face) spinning the most beautiful coloured thread from local wool on an e-spinner – a lovely sight to see. Young people like her make me feel hopeful about the future.

I feel immensely inspired by this day at the Joure Wool Festival and hope you’ve enjoyed it, too.

The festival website can be found here, and a list of participants here.

Simple Sock Scrap Slip Stitch Scarf

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Hello!

Remember that I was looking for something simple to knit alongside more challenging projects? Simple stocking stitch socks are my usual mindless knitting projects, but variety being the spice of life, I want something different from time to time. Looking for inspiration and materials for a simple scarf, shawl or wrap in a yarn shop, I couldn’t find anything that spoke to me. And then it occurred to me that I already had most of the ingredients at home!

Through the years I’ve knit many, many pairs of simple socks for family members, friends and myself. From every pair of socks there is always a small quantity of yarn left over. I’ve used some of these to make Soothing Sachets, Gift Leaves and an earrings-and-pendant set. These small projects didn’t even make a dent in my sock yarn remnant stash, though, and I’ve still got more than enough for several larger projects.

I’d already been knitting some slip-stitch swatches and knit some more using sock yarns, using the simplest of slip stitch patterns combined with garter and stocking stitch. I experimented with many different edge stitches, too.

Something colourful would be fun, but it should also be wearable, so I decided to use a dark neutral as a backdrop for the remnants. Here is my final swatch, using a solid navy yarn combined with some yarn left over from the socks beside it – garter stitch stripes alternated with slip stitch rows:

My guess is that many of you also have a considerable quantity of leftover sock or other fingering weight yarn. Or perhaps you’ve taken out a mini-skein subscription or treated yourself to a mini-skein Advent Calendar and still have some of those lovely little skeins left? In case you’d like to use them for a scarf like mine I’ll describe how I’m going about it.

I’m going to knit a rectangular scarf measuring approximately 45 cm/18” wide by 1.80 m/71” long. Based on my swatches, this should take about 440 grams of sock yarn in total: 220 grams of the solid background colour and 220 grams of sock yarn remnants. I’m using five 50-gram skeins of Isager Sock Yarn in navy blue for my background colour.

Other dark neutrals that would make good background colours are black, charcoal, deep purple or dark brown. A light neutral, like cream, pale grey or light beige, would work well, too.

For the contrast colours, I chose 22 different sock yarn remnants of at least 10 g each (+ a few extra). I left the dark colours out (not enough contrast), and the very light ones as well (too much contrast). So they’re all in a medium shade range.

The remnants could be grabbed at random, eyes closed, but being an orderly sort of person I decided to arrange them into a sort of colour wash, from greens through blues, purples, pinks and finally oranges (read from right to left).

You could use a colour wheel, but I just followed my intuition, personal sense of colour, taste or whatever it’s called.

The colour I’m starting with, next to the navy blue, is a shocking acid green. It came with a mini-skein subscription years ago, and was dyed by Amanda Perkins of The Natural Dye Studio who stopped dyeing years ago. It isn’t a colour that I’d think I’d ever use. Confession: I did knit a scarf in neon green acrylic when I was ten. Since then my taste in colours has changed quite a bit, but I think/hope it will look fun in this scarf.

It’s the same colour as the Euphorbias flowering in our front garden now, that look so great with the blue of the grape hyacinths.

Some of the Euphorbias are entirely in this strange yellowish green colour,

while others have very dark aubergine, almost black centres.

I will give you the recipe for how to knit this scarf in my next blogpost. For the time being I’m calling it my Simple Sock Scrap Stripe and Slip Stitch Scarf, but it really needs a simpler name. Any suggestions are welcome!