knitting

Story Lines

by

Hello!

It won’t come as a surprise that I love knitting. To me (and I know to some of you, too), seeing a knitting project grow stitch by stitch and row by row is immensely satisfying. Although I haven’t written much about books until last week, I love reading a good story just as much.

Now I’ve combined the two and knit a story in the shape of a shawl! Or rather two shawls, knit along the same lines but telling different stories.

The watery blue version of Story Lines, as I’ve named the design, tells the saga of a drowned village.

It is a slightly asymmetrical triangle that starts off on a light and airy note – transparent stocking stitch stripes with widely spaced out garter stitch lines. Later on, the plot thickens and the lines are knit closer together.

A village really did drown in the lake where these pictures were taken.

It was the village of Beulake. Extensive peat extraction had already made the area vulnerable. And when the dykes broke during a storm in 1776, Beulake disappeared beneath the waves. Only the church, where the villagers had fled to, was spared.

Fortunately no lives were lost, but the people who lost their homes must have shed a few tears. A row of Dainty Droplets seemed a fitting ending for this shawl.

Although the basic pattern is the same, the other shawl I knit has a different tale to tell. In fiery reds, it tells a love story from a time long gone by.

This story is set against the backdrop of a castle ruin, not far from the lake of the drowned village.

It is Toutenburg, the remains of a medieval castle in the town of Vollenhove. An utterly romantic spot. There is a moat around it, with a lovely fountain.

This version of Story Lines needed a different ending – a Romantic Ruffle. I’m not really a ruffle-y type, so I’ve kept it modest.

Story Lines is a very easy knit. The only reason I wouldn’t recommend it to an absolute beginner is that the thinner of the yarns used takes a little experience to handle.

The design combines two types of yarn: a lace-weight mohair/silk blend and a fingering-weight single-ply merino yarn – 1 skein (50 g) of the former and 1 skein (100 g) of the latter.

The yarns I used for both shawls come from an indie dyer in my little corner of the world. She creates many gorgeous colours. Below you can see the mohair/silk blend I used on the left, the 1-ply merino on the right:

‘My’ indie dyer is happy to ship world-wide,  but those of you not living in the Netherlands could also look for yarn closer to home. Here is a list of very similar yarns from indie dyers all over the world:

  • Canada: Lichen and Lace (Marsh Mohair/1-Ply Superwash Merino Fingering-Weight)
  • France: La Bien Aimée (Mohair Silk/Merino Singles)
  • Germany: Walk Collection (Kid Mohair Lace/Cottage Merino)
  • Ireland: Hedgehog Fibres (Kidsilk Lace/Skinny Singles)
  • Norway: Norne (Kid Silk/Singles)
  • Sweden: Fru Valborg (Fuzzy Mohair/Merino Singles)
  • UK: Qing (Kid Mohair Silk/Merino Singles)
  • US, New York: The Wandering Flock (Laceweight Mohair Silk/Fingering Weight Singles)
  • US, Oregon: Ritual Dyes (Fae/Crone)

Some people find a triangle a difficult shape to wear and I understand. Worn in a traditional way it can look old-fashioned. But it can be worn in so many ways, as already shown in some of the pictures above. Here are some more ideas.

Worn nonchalantly with the two long ends on one side:

Rolled up with the point at the back of the neck inside, worn much like a rectangular scarf:

With the ends knotted loosely:

Or scrunched up cosily:

The shawl has a versatile shape and can tell many different stories, depending on the colours chosen. Choose icy shades for an arctic adventure, greys for a ghost story, greens for a jungle book, or………………… The possibilities are endless.

If you’d like to knit your own Story Lines,

you can find the pattern HERE ON RAVELRY. 

In addition to the Dainty Droplets and Romantic Ruffle shown here, the pattern also includes instructions for a Basic Bind-off that ties everything up neatly. And there is a Dutch as well as an English-language version.

Well, that brings us to the end of today’s story. Thank you so much, dear photographer, for your patience and for capturing everything so well. And thank you, dear friends near and far, for reading and for your always kind support!

Burgundy Cardi

by

Hello!

Thank you for your kind comments about last week’s autumn walk. Today it’s all about knitting again. Looking through my photos I have a feeling it may become a longish post, so why not make yourself a nice cup of tea or coffee before diving in?

I’ve just finished a cardigan for our daughter and thought I’d talk about that for a bit. It’s the cardi I had to unravel the front of because I hadn’t read the pattern properly. Well, that was quickly remedied and it was soon time to check the sleeve length.

I didn’t have our daughter or any of her clothes at hand to measure the length, but I found an old sweater of mine she often borrows that I thought had exactly the right sleeve length.

It’s a different shape and size, but that didn’t matter. As long as the measurements across the chest and along the underarm were the same it would be all right (I hoped). Measured by the old sweater, the sleeve had reached the arm hole and the starting point of the sleeve cap. The sleeves were soon finished and it was time to go looking for buttons.

I popped into a large fabric store while we were on our way to visit our daughter and was greeted by a colourful wall of buttons. (For those of you in the Netherlands, it is just outside Deventer. There is nothing on their website but the address and opening hours, but as there are so few fabric stores left, I thought I’d include a link here anyway.)

I tried to be quick because my husband was waiting outside. He is always patient, but I didn’t want to keep him waiting too long or arrive too late. I got briefly distracted, though, by the displays of satin ribbons…

… denim fabrics…

… and bling-bling.

‘Come on, just focus on the buttons, you can do it,’ I told myself. I looked at the wooden buttons…

… as well as the red ones.

So much choice! These 4 seemed most suitable.

In the end I chose the colour that matched the yarn best, the bottom one.

Time to see if the cardi fit and the sleeves were the right length. I pinned it together on the outside to make it easier to try on.

Yes, perfect! And the sleeves were the right length too.

Now all that was left to do was seam everything together.

My waistbands are getting a little tight and I don’t think it is because my clothes have shrunk. I’ll really need to watch what I eat for a while.

For a low-calory, high-protein spread, I emptied a tub of no-fat fromage frais into a sieve lined with a piece of moist cheesecloth, placed the sieve on a mixing bowl and left it in the fridge overnight. The next morning it had a nice spreadable consistency and I mixed in a couple of tea spoons of dried herbs and some sea salt.

I used a tasty German mixture with wild garlic and chili flakes that we got as a gift, but almost any fresh or dried herbs will do.

Well, back to the cardigan. To sew everything together I used the ordinary back stitch. At least I thought it was ordinary. But a while ago I talked with someone who always used mattress stitch and didn’t know how to do the back stitch. For her, and others who have never back stitched their knitting together, I’ve sewn a part of the side seam with a contrasting thread and taken pictures.

Mattress stitch is worked from the outside. It is very precise and best for very delicate knitting and for matching up stripes. Back stitch is much faster and works well for anything else. It is worked on the wrong side of the knitted fabric. First everything is pinned together with the right sides together.

(My pins come from the chemist’s and are meant for fastening old-fashioned hair rollers.)

It’s very simple, really, but not so easy to put into words. I hope the picture below is clear enough.

Back stitch is worked from right to left, holding the edges of the fabrics up. What you do is, basically:

  • Insert your needle from nearside to far side about 0.5 cm/¼ inch to the right from where the thread came up,
  • *Insert the needle from far side to near side about twice the distance to the left.
  • Pull the yarn through and insert the needle from near side to far side again through the same hole where the yarn originally came up* (where the vertical white thread is in the picture)
  • Repeat from * to *.

It gives a neat seam on the outside and looks like this on the inside:

I hope this is clear. If not, there is a good video here on YouTube.

After sewing on the buttons the cardigan is all finished. The pattern I used is the Quintessential Cardigan by the Churchmouse design team – a simple, classic cardi with great attention to detail. An elegant neckline, neat button bands, a few short rows at the hem, nicely sloping shoulders and well-fitting armholes.

The yarn I used is Lana Grossa ‘EcoPuno’. It looks warm and woolly, but actually is 72% cotton. The other 28 percent is a mixture of merino and alpaca. It does not stand up very well to unravelling, but other than that it was a nice enough yarn to knit with. The ‘Eco’ suggests that it is (partly) organic, but the ball band or the manufacturer’s website do not say anything about that.

It is an airy, lightweight yarn and the entire cardi in the size I made (finished bust size 99 cm/39”) weighs only 270 grams. Here it is in its entirety:

It was a lovely cardi to knit and I can see myself making more of these in different colours and yarns.

I had great difficulty capturing the colour in my photos. In some it looked purple, in others almost fuchsia. In real life it is the colour of the darkest leaves on this farm building that we often pass on our walks.

A beautiful deep burgundy.

Talking about this burgundy colour reminds me of something else – an unmatched pair of Gazelle Mitts. I knit many of these mitts before I was completely satisfied with the design.

The one on the left is the final version, before I knit the ones that ended up in the pattern. The one on the right is a discarded version that is ever so slightly different. Can you spot the differences?

I think I’ll unravel that and reknit it to make a matching pair. They’ll make a nice December gift.

With that we’ve come to the end of today’s looooong blog post. As always, thank you for reading and have a lovely weekend!

Easing into Autumn

by

Hello,

Here, in the Netherlands, we’re easing into autumn. This past week some days have been VERY wet and a little windy, but other days were so mild and sunny that it was easy to forget that it is October. The trees still have their leaves and the globe thistle in our garden is forming new flowers. 

The acorns, walnuts, hazelnuts and chestnuts are telling us that it really is autumn, though. We’ve reaped most of the walnuts and hazelnuts now, and I’ve even collected some of the green outer husks of the walnuts for a friend.

They’re waiting in the freezer until the next time we’re seeing each other. She is going to use them to make ink.

I like bringing a little of the seasons inside, too. This is the windowsill in our hallway.

Seashells and beach glass have made room for chestnuts, candles and two autumn ladies having a chat.

I made them from felt years ago. They are stuffed with wool and wear acorn caps on their thick woolly auburn hair. One of them is also carrying a basket made from an acorn cap, the other lady has mislaid hers.

There used to be a shop near here selling kits for felt figures like these as well as materials for Waldorf dolls. It was called Niels Holgersson, after the boy from the Swedish story, and was a wonderful fairy tale kind of place. Unfortunately for people in the region the shop has closed. Fortunately for the rest of the world, they now have an Etsy shop.

There is also a small felt fox on the windowsill. It is only around 7 cm/2¾” tall and sewn together with tiny stitches.

I have lost my patience for these fiddly felt projects somewhere along the way. I really, really hope to find it again someday.

The windowsill in our living room is less autumnal, but does have a few candles as well as a glass bowl holding two autumn-flowering colchicum bulbs – a gift from my ink-making friend. They do not need to be planted in soil indoors. I just placed them on some sand with a few attractive pebbles for decoration. After they have finished flowering, I’ll plant them out in the garden.

Something else that tells us that it’s autumn is the last of the farmers’ markets. There was a new stall there, selling bulbs. No colchicums, but tulips and daffodils.

It was lovely strolling around and chatting with the stall holders. We won’t be seeing them over the next six months. The tea lady is one of my favourites. She sells loose teas and herbs as well as blends she creates herself – all organic.

I love the cast-iron teapots on her stall, in a mix of shapes, sizes and decorations and a rainbow of colours.

The tea lady is a very colourful person in a stylish way and kindly allowed me to photograph her beautiful armful of bracelets to show you here.

We arrived back home with a good supply of teas for ourselves and for gifts, some other groceries and two new sets of tea and hand towels – simple, useful, cheerful.

On the knitting front, my Striped Linen Stitch wrap, with 400+ stitches per row, is growing very slowly.

(The bunches of yarn along the side are going to be a fringe.)

The cardi for our daughter, on the other hand, is growing quickly. I’ve taken it outside, because there isn’t always enough light indoors for taking pictures at this time of year.

Back and fronts are finished, the first sleeve is almost finished, and the cuff of the second sleeve is also finished and waiting on a holder.

Our daughter is a tall girl, and I’ve added 7.5 cm/3” to the body of the cardi. That means that the right front needed more buttonholes. The stitch markers in the left front are there to mark the places for the buttons and the corresponding holes. I’m also making the sleeves longer but not wider, and that means spacing out the increases (preferably evenly) over the sleeve, and that means a lot of maths.

I now notice that I wrote these notes in Dutch. Sometimes I think in English and sometimes in Dutch, and am not always aware of which I use when.

Well, that’s all for today. Whether you are also easing into autumn or are moving into spring, I hope you’re well and hope to see you again soon. Tot gauw!

Soothing Sachets

by

Hello! Well, everything went more or less according to plan this week, so here are the lavender sachets I promised you last week. I call them Soothing Sachets, because lavender is not just known for its moth repellent qualities, but also for its soothing scent.

The ones in the basket above are still scenting our home. But they won’t be doing so for much longer, because they are meant for gifts. Let me show them one by one.

This is the first one I made, after several discarded attempts. It is very simple, from self-striping sock yarn.

It closes with a button. Because of the way the sachet is constructed, the stripes are twice as wide compared to a sock.

It was fun rummaging through my button box for just the right button.

All of the sachets use the same basic pattern. The next one is also very simple – colour blocks with a thin asymmetrically placed contrasting stripe.

The stripe is repeated in the button band.

Together with a box of calming herb tea, it’ll make a nice gift for a friend going through a stressful time. It is made from a combination of beautiful plant-dyed mini skeins.

The one below was made from some ordinary mottled sock yarn. A few stripes and garter ridges make it perfect for tucking under a sporty person’s pillow.

In this way even the smallest yarn scraps can be used.

For the next one, I again used colour blocks – this time embellished with a few tiny buttons…

… to match the mother-of-pearl button on the back.

Just the thing for someone’s lingerie drawer, I think. I made it from some of the tiny balls of yarn left over from my first ever published pattern – Tellina.

The Tellina cowl itself would also be a great project for using up some yarn remnants or mini skeins. It can be found here on Ravelry.

The Soothing Sachets have a fabric lining, sewn from small pieces of cotton fabric. No need to buy anything specially – any thin cotton will do, as long as it’s a colour that doesn’t show through the knitting. I used bits of an old pillowcase.

Making a lining sachet may be a bit of a pain for some, I thought, so I tried leaving it out and stuffing a knitted sachet with unspun wool with some lavender in the middle.

It is an option, but I don’t like the result as much as the lined version – its shape is less crisp and its scent is too faint to my liking.

So, why not knit a few first and then spend a cosy afternoon with the sewing machine on the dining table, and all other tools and notions needed at hand, to finish them all in one go?

Finally, here is my Pièce de Résistance 😉. Again made from self-striping sock yarn, but this time with a duplicate stitch heart on the front…

… and corrugated ribbing for the buttonhole band.

Won’t that make a nice gift for a beloved child? (Caution: Sew the button on very securely, or for small children leave it off and close the entire opening.)

Some of you reading this will be receiving one of these small scented gifts in the near future. My gift to the rest of you is the pattern (in English and Dutch). It contains instructions for knitting (including the corrugated ribbing) and finishing the sachet as well as a heart chart.

Click here for the free Ravelry download.

These Soothing Sachets are simple things, but with a bit of creativity they can become great little gifts. Have fun!

PS. Remember to make a few for yourself, too – to tuck under your pillow and keep the moths away from your knitting and spinning baskets.

End of Summer 2021

by

Hello!

With only a few days to go to the autumn equinox, the end of summer is in sight. It is still around 20˚C (68˚F) during the daytime here, but in the mornings the smell of autumn is in the air and some days have a misty start.

It’s that transition time, with the heather still in bloom…

… but also loads of mushrooms and toadstools already, some with elegant skirts…

… some in bright yellows, oranges and reds.

The garden is past its best, but there are still some late roses and a few flowers on the buddleia. On our garden table the friendly faces of the pansies brought along by a friend remind me of the lovely afternoon spent knitting in the garden with a small delegation of my knitting group.

I know that for many people the end of summer is a melancholy time, with rainy days and dark nights approaching. For me, it is the other way around. I feel much more in my element in the other three seasons, with their cooler weather and more muted light. I actually enjoy rainy days, with the water drip-dripping from the berries in the hedgerows.

And I am looking forward to the long dark evenings, with lots of time for knitting. My great big striped linen stitch wrap has come out of its summer storage. The back of the fabric is almost as nice as the front and looks a bit like seed stitch.

My linen yarn, on the other hand, is now going into storage. I knit a few swatches to see if it would be suitable for a Siw top (Ravelry link) and decided that it isn’t. Knit at the gauge required for that pattern, the fabric became far too open to my liking.

Never mind. I now know how the yarn knits up and what my preferred gauge for it is. I’ll look for a more suitable pattern for it next year, and I’ll look out for a more suitable yarn for Siw as well.

In case you’re interested in the details: the yarn is ‘Antigone’ from French company De Rerum Natura, and is a 100% organic linen. This colorway is called Voie Lactee (Milky Way) and is a deep blueish grey. It feels rather like twine on the ball, but becomes more supple after washing.

I am storing it away with the gauge swatch with a label attached to it to remind me of the needles I used. That’s something for next spring. Now is the time to knit with more woolly yarns.

I’ve started a cardigan for our daughter in a deep Burgundy blend of merino wool, alpaca and cotton.

The Quintessential Cardigan is a very simple cardi in stocking stitch, but with great details, like a few short rows just above the ribbing at the hem so that it hangs better, a choice of sleeve lengths and a neat button band with slipped stitches. And that is where I slipped up.

My brain isn’t always functioning at its best in the evenings, you see. The pattern said that I should slip the stitches WYIB (with yarn in back) on wrong-side rows. And that is what I did. At least I slipped them with the yarn held toward what will be the back of the fabric when it is worn. But… that is the front of the fabric on the rows where you’re slipping the stitches. It’s very simple really. It is only confusing when written out here and to my foggy brain in the evenings.

The button band in my technique looked really nice.

But it rolled inwards and was not the stable band it should have been. There was a niggling voice at the back of my mind telling me this all along, but I ignored it. It was only when I had finished the entire front that it really dawned on me that something wasn’t right. I should have known! I have knit button bands like this before!

Oh well, there was nothing for it but to frog the front. So I made myself a cup of tea, put on some music and took a deep breath.

Unravelling four evenings of knitting took less than six songs on the CD my husband gave me for my birthday.

It is the latest album by Bertolf, a singer-songwriter from the nearby city of Zwolle. If you’re feeling melancholy at the end of summer, the cheerful song Don’t look up, Don’t look down might be just the pick-me-up you need. Listen to it once, and you’ll be humming it all day. You can see Bertolf playing it live on YouTube (notice the absence of an audience and everybody keeping a covid-safe distance.)

Apart from the cardigan with the frogged front and the linen stitch wrap, there is a pair of socks on my needles, I have a crochet project on the go, two shawls designed by myself need blocking and I’m fiddling with some remnants of fingering-weight yarn.

Then there is another cardigan I want to finish, a bag with a gradient of pink mini-skeins clamouring for attention, my big spinning project etc. etc. etc. In my love life, I am 100% monogamous. In my knitting… not so much.

To some, I may look obsessed, but I know that many of you will understand and share my tendency to surround myself with wool. There are even birds who do the same thing. Just look at what we found in one of our nest-boxes – the cosiest little nest lined with wool.

Thank you for visiting my wool-lined nest. Hope you’re all safe and cosy in your own. xxx

Colourful Socks

by

Hello!

Cycling for the sake of cycling is often good enough for me. But sometimes it is nice to have a destination. One of my favourite cycling destinations is the village of Vledder. It is the home of the museums of Forged Art and Contemporary Glass Art. The museums’ entrance is at the back of the house with the clock.

But that’s not why we are here. Today I’m taking you along to the local bookshop. It is a small bookshop with a great selection of books, as well as postcards, magazines, gift items and artists’ supplies. The sight of their wall of coloured pencils never fails to lift my spirits.

But I’m not an artist and didn’t come to buy pencils or paints. My aim was to spend some pocket money and buy a foreign magazine.

There is a whole host of German magazines with titles like Landliebe, Liebes Land, LandIdee, LandLeben, LandZauber and so on. They all contain luscious photographs of lovely homes and gardens, recipes and articles about all kinds of things to do with the countryside. They are hard to distinguish from each other.

This time I chose Landlust. There was an article in it about a Felt Studio, with colourful photographs that had the same effect on me as the wall of coloured pencils.

There were also several knitting designs in this issue – three sweaters, a dress and a shrug.

I’m not terribly excited by them, but I discovered that the magazine has an extensive archive of knitting patterns and really enjoyed browsing through it. All patterns are free digital downloads in German. (If you don’t want to subscribe to their newsletter, just click the window away when it pops up).

There are also other crafts ideas sprinkled through the knitting patterns in their archives, including some cute cardboard sheep wrapped in wool that would be great to make with children.

The magazine also has its own line of knitting yarns. I have never tried any of them, but I did squirrel…

… away several balls of their sock yarn a while ago. Reading the magazine reminded me of those and I started a pair of socks straightaway, in cream, a rosy pink and watery blues and greens.

The yarn is called Landlust Die Sockenwolle, has 420 m/459 yds to 100 g and is composed of 75% wool/25% polyamide. It looks and feels like most other, similar sock yarns: smooth (not hairy) and hard-wearing enough to be worn in walking boots. (As you know I’m not sponsored, so this is my own honest impression of this yarn).

Some balls have subtle colours and patterns, others come in bold colourful stripes.

I’ll show you what they look like knit up when I come to them.

Well, that brings us to the end of another post. The way back home leads through a village that was awarded Unesco World Heritage status several weeks ago. It is now overrun with visitors. That would be another nice cycling destination and I’ll keep it in mind for some other time.

Bye for now and have a nice weekend!

Places to Sit and Knit 2

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And extraordinary seats covered in foliage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sock Knitting Basket

by

Hello!

Several weeks ago, some of you commented on how tidy my knitting baskets looked. Well, they don’t look like that all of the time.

Do you know that feeling, that things seem to pile up of their own accord? This time it’s my sock knitting basket. It doesn’t look too bad in the picture above, but it really is crammed to the brim. This week’s cooler days are perfect for tackling it. So, let’s turn it upside down.

It’s amazing how much stuff a relatively small basket can hold.

First of all there are five pairs of socks with the ends still to weave in. And for every pair of socks there is some leftover yarn.

There is pair of socks in progress in the basket, too. I always have a simple sock on my needles. It takes me anywhere from several days to months to knit a pair, depending on what else I’m knitting and what is going on in my life.

The thing next to it is a wooden sock-knitting-needles-with-a-sock-on-them-protector. Is there a name for these things? Can you even buy them? Mine was a free gift with a magazine four decades ago and is one of my most beloved possessions.

This is what it looks like closed.

Also in my basket are some leftover bits of yarn and labels of socks that I don’t even remember knitting, yarn for the next pair of socks, and a project bag.

There are all kinds of cute hand-sewn project bags around, but I prefer these plain ones. I have several of them and bought them at an outdoor sports store. I prefer them because of the smooth material. It’s easy to slip my sock knitting into them, and they are also easy to slip into a bag or backpack. Besides, they are water-resistant.

The next thing in my sock knitting basket is something that doesn’t really belong there – my crochet lace hankies. They do live in a cute hand-sewn project bag (I’m not entirely consistent), that was made by my late mum.

I know it’s a very old-fashioned thing to do, but I love doing this fine crochet. And I love the delicate hankies themselves too, for polishing my glasses when they get steamed up or wet from cycling in the rain.

There are also several boxes and pouches in my knitting basket.

They are filled with all kinds of knitting tools and notions that I like to keep handy.

There is a problem with one of the pairs of socks in the basket (the ones below left). I’ve made them for a friend. I made another pair from the same yarn for someone else, and have since discovered that this yarn isn’t suitable for socks at all. Those socks were worn to shreds after just a couple of weeks.

It’s like that with some sock yarn. It would be lovely for, say, a shawl, but shouldn’t be sold as sock yarn, in my opinion.

But I only found that out after I had knit these pink-and-purple ones. I thought of ripping them out and using the yarn for something else. But I’ve decided to give them to my friend after all and tell her to give them to her cats to play with when they get too ratty. (I can already hear her cats meowing, ‘Did someone say ratty? We love all things ratty!’)

I also knit her another pair in a really good sock yarn (the ones on the right).

In less than an hour, my sock knitting basket is tidy. (How long will it stay that way?) And I have five pairs of finished socks that only need to be washed and dried before they can be worn or given away.

The leftover yarn has joined the rest of my sock yarn scraps. I used to give them all away, but now I have a few ideas for things to make with them myself. If they materialize, I’ll share them here with you.

Are you a sock knitter too? What do you do with your sock yarn scraps?

Incubation

by

On weekdays, when I come downstairs my husband is already at the table having breakfast and reading the morning paper. But one morning a few days ago, he wasn’t there. I found him on the veranda with his camera and binoculars. ‘Shhh,’ he said, ‘the blue tits are fledging.’

I grabbed my small camera, too, and together we sat watching the blue tits leave the nest box just outside our living room window (some of the pictures in this post are his). First one stuck its head out. And when it got a little bolder, its feet came out as well, grabbing the edge of the opening.

Then it decided ‘no, I’m not ready yet’ and popped back inside. They took their time fledging. While the young were plucking up courage, the parents kept plucking caterpillars from trees and bushes.

They kept feeding their young all the time.

And then, one by one, the young birds decided that the time was right. With a wriggle and a wrench they flew out.

When we had counted 7, we thought that the nest box was empty. But after a while, another little blue tit came out. The others all immediately flew up into a tree or onto the fence, but this one seemed weaker. It flew down to the rubber mat in front of the French windows.

And while it was sitting there, looking around at the big wide world, a great tit flew onto the threshold. It took one look around and then disappeared into our living room. I wonder what it thought when it came flying out a few minutes later. ‘Goodness, so much space! And what do they want with all that stuff inside their nests? Aren’t humans weird creatures?!’

After a while, the last little blue tit scurried away to find cover.

That evening we cleaned out the nest box. Unlike us, the blue tits didn’t have much stuff inside their nest – just a thick layer of moss and some feathers.

We heard that it’s a difficult year for blue tits. Because of the cold and wet spring there were not enough caterpillars when they needed them. With 8 healthy chicks, ours were lucky. Maybe the peanuts from our feeder also helped a little.

The parents will keep feeding their young until they can fend for themselves.

Now we’re waiting for the great tits. They have nests in two other nest boxes in our garden. And also for the second nest of the blackbirds in the beech hedge.

Meanwhile I am incubating a clutch of knitting ideas. It’s not a straightforward as with the blue tits’ eggs. I don’t know how long the incubation will take and exactly what I need to feed them when they hatch. What kind of TLC do they need if I want them to fledge? I can only go by what my intuition tells me.

One thing my intuition told me was, ‘Buy yarn’. I wondered at the wisdom of this advice at this early stage, but I let myself be led by it anyway and bought some yarn in blue tit blue.

And some more yarn, also in beautiful hues of blue.

Time will tell whether this was a wise thing to do. At least browsing around Wolverhalen was a very enjoyable thing to do. (You may have read about it in a previous post.)  Leafing through some pattern books and magazines…

… immersing myself in colour…

… and swooning over skeins lovingly hand dyed by Catharina.

I don’t know yet what shape my ideas will take. I’ll do what I can to make them fledge successfully and hope to show you more if and when they’re ready to fly out into the big wide world.

Until then, I’ll try to keep feeding you/myself/us all kinds of other tasty morsels. Bye for now and take care!

Hook and Needle Chained Cast-On

by

Hello again!

It’s good to be back here after a busy and bumpy couple of weeks. What with several ups and downs, keeping up with everyday life, and helping our daughter and her boyfriend husband paint their new home…

…there hasn’t been much progress on the knitting front. All I’ve done is knit row after comforting row on my Striped Linen Stitch Wrap.

So, I thought I’d write about that a bit. I’m knitting it in 8 colours of Rowan Felted Tweed. Different colours from the ones used in the pattern, but I’ve tried to find the same balance between darker and lighter shades. I chose 5 blues/greens, 2 pinks and 1 grey.

Because some of the blues and greens are hard to distinguish in the evenings, I decided to make a colour card, similar to embroidery floss organizer cards. With the colours from A-H with their names on the front…

… and the description of the stripe sequence cut out from the pattern glued to the back. I’m using a sticky note to keep track of where I am in the pattern.

Making the card was a fun little project, and it turned out to be a handy tool. A great idea for multi-colour knitting, if I say so myself. I used a standard blank 10.5 x 5 cm (5¾ x 4¼”) correspondence card, measured out the places for the holes with a ruler and pencil, and punched the holes with an ordinary 2-hole punch held at an angle to make one hole at a time.

This linen stitch wrap starts with a provisional cast-on, which will be unravelled later to knit an I-cord along the entire length. I think the best-know type of provisional cast-on is picking up stitches from a crocheted chain – the method I used for my Thús loop.

The method used for this wrap, just called ‘provisional cast-on’ in the pattern, is a little more sophisticated. In June Hemmons Hiatt’s 2 kg/712 page tome The Principles of Knitting it is called ‘Hook and Needle Chained Cast-On’.

If you’re like me and are interested in all kinds of cast-ons and bind-offs, edge stitches, increases and decreases, etc. etc. this is definitely a book for your Birthday or Christmas wish list.

I’ve taken pictures of the Hook and Needle Chained Cast-On as I went along, hoping it might be helpful and interesting to other knitters. The method uses a knitting needle, a crochet hook and a piece of smooth waste yarn. This is how it’s done step by step.

First of all, make a slip knot in the waste yarn and place it on the crochet hook. (I took my pictures after I already had a few stitches on my needle.)

  1. Hold the knitting needle in your left hand, crochet hook in your right hand, and waste yarn over your left index finger. Knitting needle and hook form an X. The crochet hook is in front and the yarn runs behind the knitting needle.
  1. Wrap the yarn around the crochet hook…
  1. … and pull the yarn through the loop.
  1. With your finger, or with the help of your hook, return the yarn under the needle and to the back. Now it is in the same position as in step 1.

Repeat steps 1-4 until the required number of stitches is on the needle. The stitches end up on the needle like any knitting stitches, with a neat row of chains running along the length of the knitting needle. This is very easy to unravel later on.

For my wrap, I needed to cast on 400+ stitches. I didn’t time myself, but I think it took me about two hours. Phew! But I know it’s worth the time and effort.

The stitch markers (picture below) are there to make counting this large number of stitches easier. I removed them as soon as I started knitting.

This was meant to be a project I would only work on in between projects requiring more attention. But the long rows of linen stitch are so addictive that I’m over halfway already. The white stitches along the bottom are the provisional cast-on.

I’m going to put it aside for a while now, though, because after a rainy and cold spring, it suddenly feels like summer! Thanks to all of the rain, our front garden is a sea of lush greenery, with white, pink and purple aquilegias…

… and here and there a lupin.

It’s far too hot to have a large woolly wrap on my lap now. My mind is already bubbling with ideas for projects for summery temperatures, but I also think I should finish a few things before I start anything new. Last week, I thought I had run out of ideas and things to write about, and now I don’t know what to do first or last. I’m so glad it was only a temporary slump.

I hope your life is moving along without too many bumps in the road. See you again next week (if I don’t get held up or sidetracked again)!