sightseeing

A Yarn Shop on a Terp

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On hot summer days, it’s always a few degrees cooler on the coast and there is often a refreshing sea breeze as well. To escape the heat, we sometimes drive northwards to the coast nearest to us, in Friesland. I thought you might like to join us on one of these trips, especially because it involves yarn.

It is not a coast with sandy beaches and breakers, but a coastline surrounded by dykes with the sea or mud flats right behind them, depending on the tides.

Before the dykes, people built terpen (dwelling mounds) to stay safe when the land was flooded during storms and high tides. We used to live in a village on a terp until we moved to our present home, but it is not that village I am taking you to today. Our destination is the tiny village of Eastrum, with about 190 inhabitants – and a yarn shop. The shop, called Seldensa, is housed in the former village café.

My husband drops me off and drives a few miles on to a good bird-watching spot, so that I can browse around Seldensa at leisure. Owner Nynke is a very friendly person, who gives advice if you need it and doesn’t bother you if you just want to look around, which is just how I like it. Apart from many yarn-filled shelves, she also has plenty of samples to provide inspiration.

Let’s zoom in on the sideways-knit top in the centre:

It is Floatside, designed by Wool & Pine, knit in Kremke’s ‘Morning Salutation’ (a lyocell/cotton blend). So lovely and summery.

In the back of the shop, there is a totally un-summery but equally lovely sample:

This is the Agnes Kofta, designed by Kristin Wiola Odegard. It is knit in the nice and woolly Norwegian ‘Finull’ yarn from Rauma that comes in such a huge range of colours:

Another of my favourite yarn brands here is Filcolana. I love their ‘Merci’ and ‘Anina’ yarns for baby’s and children’s knits. I didn’t take any pictures of those, but will tell you more about something I knit with Merci soon. I did take a photo of some of the gorgeous Holst Garn colours, though:

I can’t tell you what pattern or yarn was used for the Norwegian children’s cardigan next to the Holst yarn, I’m afraid. I do try to remember everything, but every now and then something slips my mind.
ETA: The children’s cardigan above is The Original Cardigan designed by Sophie Ochera knit in Holst Garn supersoft. A great pattern for using up yarn remnants.

After a couple of hours of soaking up colours and inspiration, and choosing some yarn, my husband joins me again and we eat our sandwiches strolling around the village.

The Saint Nicholas church on the top of the terp is a patchwork of bricks from different eras. The oldest part, the tower, dates from the 13th century. Cyclists or hikers following long-distance route Het Ziltepad are welcome to stay the night in the church. I’d love to do that sometime.

But for now, we’re just strolling through the quiet village, where hydrangeas are flowering behind the privet hedges.

Where it is as if time has stood still.

And where everyone seems to be snoozing during this warm lunchtime hour.

So peaceful.

During the summer months, Seldensa is one of the stops along the Vlasroute. This 30-kilometre long route tells the story of flax and the products made from it, like linen and linseed oil. Info about the Vlasroute can be found here. And my earlier blogpost about the route here.  I hope you enjoyed this little outing and hope to see you again soon. Until then, stay cool!

A Green Yarn

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Hello! There is a green knitting project on my needles that I don’t think I’ve mentioned before. It’s a cardigan for our daughter – Be Mine, from Swedish designer Matilda Kruse. It’s a fairly long cardigan knit on smallish needles (3.5 mm/US 4), with an intricate stitch pattern on the back. The pattern is well-written but complicated, and I’m using all kinds of aids so as not to lose the way.

  • A row counter to remind me when to knit in button holes.
  • A sticky note for keeping track of where I am in the stitch-pattern diagram.
  • Another sticky note with the number of pattern repeats I need to knit written out, so that I can cross them off once I’ve knit them.

The yarn I’m using is ‘Cheeky Merino Joy’ from Rosy Green Wool in a greyish green shade called Reed.

It’s a sport-weight 100% merino yarn – a finer version of the yarn I’ve used for my OXOX XL shawl. Cheeky Merino Joy is very soft and gives great stitch definition. Plus it’s organic. And that brings me to my second subject for today.

The organic farm that delivers groceries to our door every other week held an Open Day, together with 3 other organic farms within walking distance.

We buy organic because we think it’s better for our own health and that of the planet, but I’m not rigid in that. Often organic options just aren’t available or affordable. Not everything we eat is organic, I don’t wear organic lingerie and most of the yarns I knit with are not organic. Speaking with Kermit, ‘It’s not easy being green’.

I do think it’s a good direction to go in, though, and aside from the saving-the-earth aspects, it can also be very enjoyable. The green yarn I’m using is utterly lovely to knit with. It’s very nice to know the people who grow our vegetables…

…and make our cheese.

And it’s great to see the cows producing the milk for the cheese grazing on pasture land with all kinds of herbs among the grass.

Many of them are the well-known black-and-white Friesian Holsteins, but not all of them.

Two of the farms along our route are dairy farms. “Our” farm is mixed, with cattle, chickens, a few pigs, vegetables, herbs and a shop. And the fourth is a vegetable grower. At this one, I got to try my hand at harvesting white asparagus, cutting it below the soil with a special pronged cutting tool – not as easy as it looks!

At the end of our walk along all four of the farms, we stopped at the farm shop to buy some tea, biscuits and chocolates for friends we were going to visit.

It’s more convenient to have groceries delivered and I don’t visit the shop often, but it’s nice to see everything they have in person from time to time. And sometimes you find something unexpected – like organic cotton yarn.

I didn’t buy any because I rarely knit with cotton, but it felt very nice. I’m keeping it in mind for a summery knit sometime.

Today’s organic-farm-walk was in the polder, land reclaimed from a former sea. A landscape as flat as a pancake with big open skies.

I always feel it’s rather special to be walking on the seabed, 3 metres below sea level. I hope you’ve enjoyed this short walk, too, and hope to see you again next week. Till then, keep well.

A Colourful Little City

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Last week was so busy that I didn’t get round to posting. This week life is back to normal, so here I am again. Hello!

Just before things got busy, several people simultaneously alerted me to an article about the gradual disappearance of colour from our world. The author states that compared to two centuries ago, when only 15% of all items were monochrome, our present world is far more black, white and grey (60% of all objects, items and materials). Fascinating!

I had been thinking about this when I was designing a new knitting project, long before reading the article. Intuitively, I’d chosen a vibrant red, but all the stylish neutrals I saw in shops and online made me doubt my choice. Was it terribly untrendy? Should I choose grey instead? In the end, I decided to go with my initial colour choice. While my mind can appreciate the sophistication of a monochrome palette, my heart craves colour.

Closing my eyes and visualising a location for the photoshoot that would match the red in colour intensity, what popped up was this:

It’s the little city of Stavoren in the southwest of Friesland, with its red lighthouse and colourful harbour. Somebody involved in the construction of the lighthouse in 1884 had the lovely idea of decorating it with rosettes.

Little city may sound like a contradiction in terms, but with around 1,000 inhabitants and city rights granted almost 1,000 years ago that’s exactly what Stavoren is. There are lots of interesting stories to tell about Stavoren, but let’s keep those for some other time. Today, let’s just soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the colours. This is its harbour,

with a mixture of old and new pleasure boats and a small fishing fleet.

Because the light wasn’t right for a good photograph of the fronts of the colourful new houses along the harbour, I walked around to their backs for a better picture:

Stavoren is not a complete riot of colour, though. The rest of the little city is more muted, and even in the harbour area there are some monochrome elements. Hello heron!

Where there’s a harbour, there’s usually a sea, but not so here. At least not anymore. Stavoren lies on the IJsselmeer, a former inland sea that is now a lake. Near the lighthouse with the rosettes there’s a flight of stairs that we can climb to the top of the dyke.

The dyke isn’t very high, but high and robust enough, with grass on top…

… and basalt blocks and other rocks lower down.

The blocks and rocks are covered with lichens. From a distance they look sort of browny-greeny, but from close up they are a bright golden yellow.

And that brings us back to vibrant colours and the reason we are here. According to the article mentioned above, ‘yellow is connected to happiness in our brains.’ And ‘Red can elevate heart rate and blood pressure.’ Ooh la la, a knitting project that makes your heart beat faster – isn’t that exciting? If all goes according to plan, I’ll tell you more about it next week. For now, here’s a peek…

A Stroll through Deventer

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Hello! Thank you so much for your thoughts on steeking my Sundborn cardigan – very helpful! It isn’t finished yet, but I’m getting there and will tell you about it next time.

Today, I’m taking you on a little outing. In between an errand and a visit, we had a couple of hours to spare in Deventer. I brought my camera because I thought you might like to stroll along through its lovely old city centre (it has two yarn shops!). It is market day…

… and the barrel organ treats us to some cheerful music. A similar one used to drive through our street every Saturday when I was a child, and I still always put a coin or two in the organ man’s  money box.

I like the hustle and bustle of the market, and I love the quiet back streets. There are so many fun and interesting things to discover. Take Thomas à Kempis’ words on a wall in a narrow alley, ‘You’re sure to feel happy at night after a day well spent’.

The combination of picture and words makes me smile. It reminds me of our grandson who loves cleaning with his own little broom and his dustpan and brush. Who did he get that from?

And take this gable stone, with Barbie looking at it through the window.

Dat regenvercken – the rain pig. Huh? Oh, I get it! A piggy bank for saving water instead of money. A hogshead! The spelling and general look suggest that it is centuries old, but the date on it says 1984. Such fun that someone would add a decoration like this to a wall just because.

The building on the left at the top of this post used to be the municipal savings bank. There are three words above its three upstairs windows: Arbeidzaamheid, Spaarzaamheid, Voorzichtigheid – Diligence, Frugality, Prudence.

The building was renovated at the end of the 19th century. I wonder what the words above the windows would have read had it been renovated recently. Spend, Spend, Spend?

Via a circuitous route we’re arriving at the Kleine Overstraat. With its small non-chain stores it is one of the nicest shopping streets I know. It is extremely hard not to spend, spend, spend here. Yarn is my weak spot (or one of them anyway).

Astrids Wol is specialized in Noro. She has other yarns as well, but many of her shelves are filled with these colourful Japanese yarns. So beautiful! I have knit quite a few things with Noro yarns over the years, and now there are some very attractive summer yarns, but I’m being frugal and prudent.

Astrid also has socks for sale – machine knit socks. They look deceptively like hand knit ones. It’s unsettling – why would I keep knitting socks if similar ones are for sale for little more than the cost of the yarn? Fortunately they are not the same thing at all – not nearly as nice and soft as hand knit socks. And look at the toes:

No, we hand knitters can do much better than that. I’m so glad we have not been completely made redundant by machines yet.

The second-hand shop where someone has spent so much love and attention on the window display…

… has vintage wooden knitting needle cases in a basket outside.

Walking past the stationery shop where I love spending time (and money)…

… we arrive at the second yarn shop – Dol op Wol.

Oooh, look at that! All those gorgeous blues and greens in an oh-so-soft blend of cotton, wool and cashmere. Yum!

But I already have so many other knitting plans. Still in frugal-and-prudent mode I file the yarn away in my memory, perhaps to take another look at later.

Well, time is up. I hope you’ve enjoyed our stroll. xxx

Gulbranssen and Pieck

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Hello! While I am knitting a pair of Norwegian (Selbu) mittens, I am also reading a Norwegian novel, or actually it’s three novels in one – the Bjørndal trilogy by Trygve Gulbranssen. It’s about the life and times of Dag Bjørndal, who lives in an unspecified place in the Norwegian mountains and trades in everything his lands and forests yield – wood, furs, meat, grain. We follow Dag from a young age until his death. Although the story is set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, its theme is still just as current today: money, the power that comes with it, and how it can be abused or used for good.

The lovely monogrammed felt book mark was a gift from my friend Froukje. She writes about making them in this blog post (scroll down a little).

Some people find the books slow going, but I think they are magnificent. It’s not just the development of Dag’s character that’s fascinating, but also the people around him, the glimpses we get of Norwegian society at the time, and the descriptions of everyday life and the landscape.

The copy I inherited is a Dutch translation, with photographs from a 1960 Austrian film based on the books as well as illustrations by Dutch artist Anton Pieck. The film pictures are so horrible that I’m thinking of tearing them out. But Pieck’s illustrations are fabulous – just look at how the smoke curls up from the chimney of this log cabin among the pine trees:

And see how he depicts the forest creatures that cause rumbling noises and landslides in the mountains dancing with the naked young beauties who lure people into steep and dangerous ravines with their song:

Seeing these pictures gave me the idea of visiting the Anton Pieck museum. It isn’t far away from us at all, but we’d never been there. So on the Monday before New Year’s eve we set off for Hattem. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to show you any of the photographs I’ve taken inside. Bummer!

What I can do, is take you on a walk through this lovely town. Anton Pieck is best known for his nostalgic town scenes, and walking through Hattem’s old centre is like being inside some of his paintings (bar the cars and bicycles).

Behind the deep green yew hedge, there’s a communal herb garden where the inhabitants of Hattem can come and pick herbs for their meals and tisanes.

The square beside the Church is one of my favourite spots in the town. Even nicer in spring and summer with the potted plants flowering, but still lovely on a gloomy winter’s day.

After a short walk we arrive at the Anton Pieck museum, with its cheerful blue door and shutters.

As I said, I can’t take you inside, but you can get an impression of Anton Pieck’s work from the Museum website and even better from this website dedicated to his work.

While Anton Pieck’s cobbled streets are always crowded with pedlars, women wearing shawls and carrying shopping baskets, children with hoops, cats, dogs, chimney sweeps etcetera, the streets in Hattem are deserted on the day of our visit.

At the end of this alley, a house with a bell gable is called De Halve Maen:

The wealthy merchant to whom this house once belonged may well have bought wood for his roof beams or furniture from a Norwegian trader like Dag Bjørndal, helping to fill up the trader’s intricately decorated coffers with silver.

In his middle years Dag becomes more and more obsessed with filling his coffers and investing in real estate, but later on he mends his ways and says, ‘It is the money grabbing that has got the upper hand in our lives, and that makes that many people are struggling unnecessarily. A man must spread heart warmth around him if he wants to have peace, and that will benefit others as well.’ [Trygve Gulbranssen, Het geslacht Bjørndal, uitg. M.C. Stok, The Hague, date unknown, p. 529, my translation] If only more people came to that insight in their old age (or preferably earlier).

With Dag’s piece of wisdom, I’m leaving you for now. I hope to be back with some knitting next week. Take care!

A Trip to Limburg

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Hello and thank you so much for your condolences. I really appreciate your warm words of comfort. I’ve been away from here for longer than expected, because apart from dealing with a loss, we also had to deal with Covid for the first time. In medical terms we had a mild case, but still it was no joke. Not the happiest of times, but I’m well on the mend now, back to knitting and ready to pick up the thread of my blog. More about knitting over the coming weeks. Today, I first have something else for you.

Before my life ground to a halt we spent a weekend in Limburg, the southernmost region of the Netherlands, visiting friends and doing some sightseeing along the way. For me it’s like being in a different country and I thought you might enjoy some pictures.

For the last lap of our journey, we left the motorway and stopped off in Elsloo, a village with a very picturesque old centre.

As you can see in the two photos above, it’s quite hilly here (at least by Dutch standards). It’s not just the landscape that is different from where we live, but the architecture, too. Some of the lovely old houses along the cobbled streets are built around a square courtyard – something you don’t see in our part of the country at all.

Steps lead up to the catholic Augustinus church.

And to the left of the steps stands the most spectacular house of the village – the Schippershuis. Skipper and stone trader Jan Conincx had it built in the early 17th century. He must have been an extremely wealthy person. Creative and imaginative, too, judging by the patchwork of stones and bricks on the tall front of his house.

Just imagine living in a house with such a long history. Interesting and lovely, but also rather dark inside, I expect. It has a basement with two tiny red doors. What would you do with a windowless basement like that?

With good lighting and perhaps a trompe-l’oeil window painted on a wall it might make a great crafts room with lots of space for storing yarn (one can but dream). It is close to the river Meuse but will never be flooded, because it is situated far above it. The sign on the wall tells us the street is called Op de berg (On the mountain).

From the top of the ‘mountain’, at the end of the road, we can look out over the river Meuse. It is narrower than I expected. On the other side a village with lots of white houses, wind turbines, a motorway.

We ate our sandwich lunch in the castle grounds (the castle is now a hotel.)…

… and then drove on to the village of Simpelveld, to visit De Schat van Simpelveld (the Simpelveld Treasure), a convent museum with an amazing embroidery collection. Even for someone who isn’t particularly interested in ecclesiastical embroidery (me) or any embroidery (my husband) it was fascinating. The embroidery was extremely fine and beautiful. I didn’t take any pictures but will give a couple of links at the end of this post so that you can see for yourself.

Upon arrival at our friends’ place we talked, talked and talked enjoying each other’s company and a delicious home-cooked dinner, but before that we went for a walk, enjoying the late afternoon sun on trees in their early autumn finery,

passing an old watermill…

… and finding a plant we didn’t know yet – the yellow-flowered teasel (NL: Slanke kaardebol).

The larger wild teasel is also called fuller’s teasel and was used in the wool industry in the past. Maybe this smaller one was, too, who knows?

It’s so good to be back here on my blog, choosing photographs and words to share with you. I’m easing in with some light-hearted travel talk today and hope to be back with some ‘serious’ knitting and other woolly posts next week, the week after next, the week after that, and… Thank you for reading!

Oh, and here are the promised links:

  • Do take a look at this wonderful blog post about the embroidery at the convent in Simpelveld with lots of great photographs. Looking at the close-up photos you’ll understand why the nuns’ embroidery is called needle painting.
  • The museum website De Schat van Simpelveld can be found here.

August Days

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Hello! It’s good to see you! August is almost at an end and I hope it’s been a good month for you. I wanted it to be a slow, quiet month, but how to slow down in your everyday environment when life just sort of goes on? What I basically did differently from the rest of the year was that I didn’t go anywhere in the evenings (easy when everyone is away), stayed at or close to home most of the time, lowered the bar (quite a bit) and spent as little time as possible online (not so easy). This gave me the breathing space I craved.

There is very little to show you of my uneventful days. One of the simple things I enjoyed was picking a bunch of sweet peas every other day.

There were several days that stood out between all the quiet ones, like the days we looked after our grandson, and the day a friend’s 12-year-old daughter came to learn how to bake sourdough bread and pizza.

And then there was the day we visited our niece who is a student in Nijmegen, a big city on the river Waal.

Well, Nijmegen fits about five times into Amsterdam, but it’s a big city to me. Large parts of the inner city were bombed in 1944, so most of the buildings are relatively new.

But there are some lovely old parts left, too.

We had lunch at a Swedish lunchroom, visited a fabulous bookshop, did some more shopping…

… and almost bumped into this fascinating dress (or is it a separate crocheted top and knit skirt?):

Oh, a yarn shop! I didn’t know there was one here. I took a quick look round and can tell you that it’s worth a visit if you’re ever in Nijmegen. The right kind of tools and notions, plus the most exquisite wool, cotton, hand-dyed, silk, paper, yak and alpaca yarns.

I have been knitting, but not nearly as much as I thought I would. On the whole, August weather is not really knitting weather. I did finish my Land Yndlingskofte, though. That is, I finished the knitting. Now I need to pluck up the courage to cut the steek.

I also knit a pair of men’s socks size huge. The brief was: as simple as possible in a dark colour. Boring? Not at all – to me it’s been meditative and very enjoyable.

For a sweater for our grandson I knit some swatches. When I chose the yarn, I thought I’d simply improvise something, but it’s not all that simple. There are so many decisions to make. Top-down or bottom-up? Knit flat or in the round? What stitch pattern(s)? How to distribute the two colours? Neckline? Set-in sleeves, raglan, yoke? Etc. etc. etc.

Summer is my least favourite season and I’m longing for cooler days with softer light. It’s still warm while I’m writing this, but the first signs of autumn are here.

After this slow month of August, I feel energized and am full of plans for things to do, make, read and write about. This is what I hope to share with you next week:

How has August been for you? Did you go anywhere? Or did you stay at home? Has it been very hot where you live? Or perhaps you live in the southern hemisphere and it’s been wet and chilly? Have you been knitting, sewing or otherwise making things? I’d love to hear from you and hope to see you again next week!

A Stroll round my Village

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Hello!  No knitting today, I’m afraid. I ran into a problem with the sweater I’m knitting for our daughter and ripped back quite a bit. I’m working on a solution and hope to tell you about it next week.

Instead, I’m taking you for a stroll round my village. It isn’t the village I now live in, but the Frisian village of Grou, where I grew up and that still feels very much like my village. It is also the village of the famous Frisian doctor, poet and storyteller Eeltsje Halbertsma.

He wrote in 1856, “ik beëagje neat mei myn skriuwen, as om myn Fryske lânsljuwe in noflike pear oeren te besoargjen.” (I have no other aim with my writings than to give my Frisian compatriots a few pleasant hours.) That’s my aim for today, too, only in my case it is people anywhere and minutes rather than hours.

We’re approaching the village centre through a narrow alley. In the second house on the left the friend who taught me finger crochet used to live, and on the right was the baker’s where we spent our pocket money on sweets.

This is the main street, where I have some shopping to do.

And this is the front door of the shop I’m taking you to. It used to be the police station, but now it’s a yarn shop (where else would I take you?).

With its new glass roof it is now a beautifully light space. No yarn shop is the same and every yarn shop reflects the taste of the person running it. In this case a very cheerful and colourful taste.

In the workshop space a beginner crochet workshop has just ended. Crochet seems to be more popular now than ever before.

Unfortunately, I can’t show you what I bought. It’s something very nice, but it’s a birthday present for a friend who’ll be reading this and I want to keep it a surprise.

Now, let’s walk on to the end of the shopping street. A tiny garden shed, an antiques shop and a gate.

And behind the gate the 13th century church. In the 1970s a new minister arrived. A hippie from Amsterdam, with a long beard and long hair. He introduced a circle of meditation benches into the church, where we kneeled and sang Dona nobis pacem, pacem, dona nobis pacem. Give us peace, peace, give us peace……………………………………….

Today’s stroll ends by the lake that seemed enormous to me as a child.

My village has changed in many ways, but many things have stayed the same, too. In the same spot where they have always been, there are still einekuorren (traditional nesting places for ducks).

It’s a lovely time of year for a stroll, with tulips flowering around the Eeltsje Halbertsma bust and kingcups along the waterside. I hope you’ve enjoyed it and I hope to see you again next week. Bye!

A Trip to Kampen

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Well, I was a tad too optimistic last week about finishing a wee Norwegian sweater. There is no news on the knitting front, and I hope you’ll enjoy a trip to Kampen instead. It’ll be cold and wet, so wrap up warmly and bring an umbrella! We’re walking to the old town centre through the park and one of the three city gates.

It can get quite busy here with tourists in summer, but today it’s just the locals and us. We could go on a guided tour, visit a museum or the cigar factory, but we’re not doing any of that. We’re just here for some shopping and a stroll.

The medieval town hall is very impressive, and there are many other interesting monuments. But what I like even more are the narrow alleys leading off the main shopping street.

One of the nice things about Kampen is that it has many small independent shops. Some of our favourites are the cheese shop, the Italian delicatessen and De Swaen with its handmade chocolates.

I know that some of you are quilters as well as knitters, and thought you might like to visit the quilt shop. The owner writes an inspiring blog, too. I don’t know how she does it – running the shop on her own, being a mum of four, blogging and making beautiful quilts. I’ll just let you browse on your own before we walk on to the river IJssel.

Ah, there you are again. Did you enjoy that? Now, let’s get some fresh air and take a walk along the river. The boats that will be sailing with groups of passengers later in the year are all at home.

Oh, we’re lucky! The Kogge (the replica of a medieval cargo ship) is here, too. Compared to today’s freight ships it’s tiny.

I don’t know about you, but I feel chilled to the bone. Time for some tea or coffee in the restaurant with the swan over the door.

And some sweet treats to go with it. I hope you’ve enjoyed our trip to Kampen. Next week I really hope to have some knitting to talk about. See you then!

Better Button Bands

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Hello! Today’s post starts with a few nifty knitting tips that some of you will love. If that’s not quite your thing, perhaps you’d like to scroll on for some sightseeing.

The green cable cardigan I knit for our grandson in early summer had warned me about the quality of the patterns in the pattern booklet – there were serious errors in the instructions for the sleeves. I loved the vintage look of the baby items in it, though, and was prepared to give it another try.

Forewarned, I looked through the pattern first. What did it say about the sleeves? ‘Work as the sleeves of sweater 11, p. 57.’ But, but… this IS sweater 11 on p. 57! Ugh, I gave up, just looked at the photos and worked out a pattern myself.

On the green cable cardi, I wasn’t happy with the ends of the button and buttonhole bands – they didn’t form a straight line with the ribbing.

At the time, my friend A. sent me a link with tips for ‘Button Band Gladness’. There was a lot there about how many stitches to pick up, but I didn’t think that was my problem. For me the magic tip came at the very end. Or actually there were two:

1) Find that hard-to-find place VERY close to the edge of the cast-on (or bind-off) to pick up your first (or last) stitch.

2) The first and last stitch of ribbing always roll. So for a k1, p1 rib, instead of starting and ending with one knit stitch, start and end with two.

Especially the last tip helped me get much better button bands, both at the bottom…

… and at the top. Thank you for the link, A.!

However much I would have liked to sew a pair of trousers to go with the little cardi, I can’t do everything. So, after an appointment in a business district of Zwolle, I drove to the city centre for some shopping. The shortest route from the parking place to the shops crosses two canals. My maternal ancestors lived and worked on boats like these.

Behind the old gables some high new ones are now towering.

A long time ago, I worked in a psychologists’ practice here and often strolled through the busy shopping streets during my lunch break. I still love coming here from time to time. One of my favourite shops belongs to a Danish retail chain selling things for the home as well as great crafts materials. Wouldn’t you love to have shelves like these at home, with glass jars filled with ribbons, just to look at?

Into my shopping basket went a tin of Danish butter cookies for the hostess of the next get-together of my knitting group and a few other small gifts.

I treated myself to a lunch of pumpkin soup with bread rolls and a glass of fresh ginger-and-orange tea at the café in a big book shop.

It’s a marvellous shop in a former church building. The original vaulted ceiling and the organ are still there.

But the old familiar feeling of overwhelm came over me and I left the shop without books. I did succeed in finding a pair of soft size 98 sweat pants in forest green (not in the book shop, obviously). Don’t they look nice with the sand-coloured cardi?

Next week, we’re having friends to stay and I don’t know if I’ll be able to write a post. If not next week, I’ll be back the week after that. See you then!