no brooklyn tweed

oooh i wish i could take better pictures. a lot of you take lovely pictures and i think it was jared's
photography skills that was part the reason why i started loving knitting again. but the peter sweater is progressing. i am a one at a time knitter, so of course it will as i spend many hours knitting every day for the time being. and i am quite happy with it. got some knitting problems fixed with the help of montse stanley ( i wrap the purl stitches next to the cables differently know) and used the tubular cast on. so in many ways it is more perfect than any other sweater with cables and ribbing. and it is so satisfactory to learn new things. montse has some good advice on everything....

talking about male knitters. go check the following out on ravelry:

asplund: swedish, blogless knitter, who makes the most lovely cable and stranded knitting. i am awestruck. he also does the most amazing needlepoint. that is something i find very interesting too. did a little as a child, but has never taken it up as an adult. but the results can be stunning and the process isn't necessarily too bad either.

i understand why men knit. i think the boxiness of knitting and cable patterns are very masculine features. i love to knit for children and for men. i haven't knitted anything for myself for two decades. i will make a cabled sweater but i think it is very difficult to find something that i think suits me.

my life is very much a mess workwise right now. energy is dropping. knitting is keeping me up plus the happy smile on peter's face when he saw the progress on the sweater in a café today. i hope that there will be some good news soon and that this crisis which i get through by 'knitting on with confidence and hope' will lead to something i will think about as a happy time in my life in 10 years time.

sheep may safely graze

went to the sheep breeder's christmas market today. it was of very little interest. and i wanted to take some photos of the different stall holders but they were not all that interested. i was like a time warp into the seventies. big boxy knits. i am not sure i like it very much. i think handknits should be handknits and there is no reason to knit something that could be done better in another technique but there is no reason for no shape either. but everything was wooly which is nice and i liked different sheep paraphernalia i saw. i bought to skeins of a lovely coffee brown wool and a little felted mouse for alba who i was going to meet later. she found the mouse extremely funny. and it is very much fun to be with her as one is starting to see the contours of the person she will be. she is very interested in the well being of her dolls and other cuddly things.
i also went to the christmas bazaar in the swedish church. omg what a lot of people all dressed in folk costumes. i think the swedes are much more prone to this than the danes. a lot of christmas goodies, woodwork and such. i did not buy anything though.
and then i were out with alba and her mom and ended up eating soup with them.

knitting:
i have refound and ordered a book from my childhood in which there is a heartbreaking story about knitting. it is called the endless steppe and i ordered it at amazon. i shall look very much forward to reading it again.
and the sweater for peter is going swimmingly. he texts me everyday to ask how the thing is proceeding. the beaverslide worsted is a dream to work with. i cannot begin to say how much i love working with it. it is hard not to order boatloads of this yarn. my next project- the nephew saddle shoulder- is luckily going to be knit with beaverslide as well. and i cannot wait to knit with the green colour which is so soothing to look at. and i think i am a cable girl after all. it is an amazingly pretty feature.

november

danish poet, henrik nordbrandt, writes:

the year has sixteen months
december, january, february
march, april, may,
june, july, august
september, october, november,
november
november
november
november

and it seems like november lasts forever. and i feel much more exposed to the tristesse of this month this year than ever before. maybe it comes with age. it is like looking at the world through a greasy lens. at 1 o'clock it starts getting dark. and photography is impossible.

but the knitting blooms. it is for all the senses.

it is nice to fondle, it is nice to look at all the lovely yarns, it is nice to hear people praise your yarns and fo's, it is nice to taste the feeling of success when you finish something, it is nice to smell wool, and it is nice to use your sixth sense when finding out who needs the next project you plan the most.....

a proper knitting project

i have a proper knitting project on the needles now. and i am hoping it will be smooth sailing as i would very much like to finish it in the beginning of december and cast on for the seamless saddle-shoulder aran. finally.

this is for peter. peter is my friend numero uno. the best, the funniest, the most empathetic, the craziest. and omg we have been in each other's life for a long time. strangely i haven't knitted anything for him for the last 23 years or something but better late than never. and it is certainly not because he isn't inspiring to knit to.

it is beaverslide worsted in the colourway glacier heather. a lovely blue.

another lovely thing that has happened is that i have sorted out m stash. i have a boatload of yarn and i actually know what i want to use most of it for. the army green beaverslide is for my nephew's saddle shouldered aran, the brown and grey rowanspun would work perfectly for the tangled yoke by eunny jang (one for me and one for my sis). the plum yorkshire tweed could be a lovely sweater for another friend of mine.

oh and maybe it will end up as something completely different. knitter's choice.

i love all the possibilities in there are with a little wool and some needles and keep telling my nephew's girlfriend that there really isn't much more to it than knit and purl. i would very much like to teach somebody to knit. somebody who would get addicted like i did. maybe i should get some needles and wool for alba soon??? or albert...

hello again.

i was the lucky winner of tiennie's 4000th commenter contest. no wonder, tiennie, that you have so many commenters. not only do you dilegently send a response to every commenter and comment on people's blogs but you are also tooooo generous. it is lovely blue moon socks that rock in the colourway ms. rock. i think it is lovely and although i rarely knit socks this will be converted into lovely socks. soon.
the bowtie scarf is the second of it's kind so far. it is made out of beaverslide: fisherman's weight and scraps of noro silk garden. and it is warm.
other knitting news are that i received a swift and a ball winder in the post today. omg is that lovely. i am producing yarn cakes like crazy. i also got the yarn for my friend peter's sweater for which i have swatched and blocked tonight. if i were not going to knit a sweater for my lovely and lovable friend i think i'd knit:

an adult tomten 'brooklyn tweed' style for mr. leonard cohen. saw him in concert twice and i cannot begin to say how much he has meant for me, musicwise. i would choose tomten for this two-piece armani suit guy because he is getting older ( he sings: because of a few songs wherein i spoke of their mystery, women have been awfully kind to my old age) , which means he needs nice woolies and because he lived in a zen-buddhist convent and i think tomten is a bit monk like with the big hood.

the other celebrity i would like to knit for is rufus wainwright. i admire rufus' lovely voice and charming appearances in concert. he is also a gay activist in a way. that is maybe not all that important here in denmark, but from what i read at various blogs, very imperative in the u.s.
i think i would choose to knit him some bavarian twisted stitch stockings. as you can see he'd probably cherish that. he always ends his performance going on stage in a terry-cloth bathrobe and tubesocks and then all of a sudden jumping out of the outfit into another outfit which could be a fairy princess outfit or something like that.

the third person i would like to knit something for is nick cave, australian musician and director. saw him in ireland and in the operahouse here in copenhagen a few years ago. and i adore him. he would get an argyle slipover and some mittens for these girls of whom, he sings:

Where is Mona?She's long goneWhere is Mary? She's taken her along. But they haven't put their mittens onAnd there's fifteen feet of pure white snow.

i suppose they would come in handy.

i am afraid friends and family are first priority though. i got an email this morning from carl and albert's mum who wrote: i want to take back everything i ever said about knitted things for my sons. they wear their sweaters to pieces.....
that was nice. and it means i have to speed up the knitting, as there are more to knit for.

and i you guys would like to get yourselves something knitterly order montse stanley: a knitter's handbook.
i think it will soon be the most important knitting reference book i ever owned. it covers everything and has some lovely examples of beautiful spanish knitting from the last century and some adorable chullos. get it. it is cheap and you need it!!!!!

hats on!!!!

the three-spiral hat in two versions. the grey one is adriafil: diamond. a yarn that looks like homespun and is quite soft. it doesn't really show the construction of the hat off. so i made one more- soft ice- whipped cream- thing in bulky lopi. this yarn is not soft, to say the least but it shows off the construction of the hat really well.

and then i have knit a bowtie scarf out of one skein of beaverslide. all i can say is soft and yet sculptural. beaverslide is really something else. i think i will wear this scarf quite a lot. practical and soft.

and i am doing another in one of the beaverslide sample yarns i bought a few months ago. i blend it with some noro silk garden from last years clapotis galore. it looks nice and somewhat early 70'es.

oh and i have been confronted with my knitting the last few days. when i came to visit my sister unexpectedly she was wearing the aubergine fair isle i made for her back in may. and when the venezuelan came to visit me unexpectedly yesterday he was wearing the whole gear (well only one hat a time). i suppose this is what happens when you knit something exclusively directed at the recipient. hopefully my friend peter is going to like his beaverslide sweater. he rejected to get cobblestone, that i had planned to knit, so i will make a pattern myself, the little red hen said (as elizabeth said and started the whole schoolhouse press business). i am thinking very much of that these days. she was about my age when she started it. what should i start. if i wanted to make business out of my hobby, i don't think i am in the right place. and i think if the lys' in a city like copenhagen all carry more or less the same stuff, it must be what's in demand. and maybe it is much too much work and hardship for a single woman....

bluebert

here is yet another tomten. i think i have had enough of tomten now, but alas i have promised to knit one for my niece's friend who is expecting her second baby pretty soon and who has been admiring the first one i made for alba last year. but i love the colour of this one and the beaverslide yarn is such a pleasure to knit with. i am seriously in love with the i-cord finishing that gives it such a clean and finished look without much effort. yes is right, knit on with confidence through all crises....

i received clara parkes: knitter's book of yarn in the mail on friday. adrian has some very lovely humourous and romantic mitten patterns in it, that i am sure will spread like flu all over the knitting blogs in the time to come. it must be a lovely achievement. and especially since the pattern is so original in my opinion. get the book for adrian's mittens and for the in-depth knowledge of yarn. the rest of the patterns are not very interesting. i cannot see any reason to publish a pattern for a wash-cloth. i remember my grandmother knitting washcloths and socks out of cotton and it was nothing less but horrible. the other grandmother knitted socks and mittens i understood that better. my mother only knitted sweaters or bigger garments except for one christmas when she knitted chullos for all 25 nieces and nephews, as far as i remember. and even though i keep knitting the same patterns over and over again, i regard myself as an experimental knitter. i always try to incorporate some new technique or experiment with yarn. i love playing around with colours. i think i am a fair isle knitter at heart. but i lurve the look of cables.

and maybe there will be more red, blue, yellow on this blog after all. my former colleague is going to colombia to adopt two young boys ( i say 5-6 years old). and i thought they might like hats in the colours of their flag..... or maybe not.

you look good in blue.....

you look good in blue by blondie is a song from the late 70es that makes me nostalgic. but when it comes to my friend peter it is true he looks good, very good in blue, with his blue eyes and grey hair. sooo distinguished. and we were friends for ever and a day, or to be more precise 25 years. so what did this knitter do, who has been so talkative about the amounts of yarn in her stash do. oh i ordered glacier heather (light greyish blue) wool at beaverslide. i thought why don't i knit him a sweater ever. i knit for loads of people but this particular person, who is probably more loved by me than most, i never knit anything for. i had planned to knit cobblestone but peter would rather have a plain old raglan. i love the raglan style as well. and before the yarn arrives from the foothills of rocky mountains, i may have come up with some ideas for spicing it up a bit.
and it was albert's blue tomten (the bluebert) that made me hungry for blue again. it used to be my colour for many many years until i got into this ochre, siena, earthen brown colour preference. blue is relaxing in a very special way. a little bit like baby pink which is the colour that is the most relaxing to look at of them all. you actually produce practically no brain waves when looking at it.

and when i was at it i went to my lys to buy some more yarn. garnstudio: eskimo. it is a very cheap yarn and i will have a go at the snail hat that didn't work out well in the grey yarn i got for it. i taught the owner the crochet cast on. i have fiddled around to teach myself this so it was nice to pass on the knowledge. she has a great shop in the historic center of copenhagen and we had a long chat about VK, IK and the starmores. i wish there were more money in that business then i would try to find a job as a shop clerk.. but i am single and high maintenance so i better find something that pays better in the teaching industry. only i am done with children. at the moment i find it unbearable to even think about teaching children ever again. i am on sick leave and hope to find a teacher/counsellor job with adults very soon. wish me luck.

the green knitting is a bowtie scarf in mctaggart tweed: sweetgrass. i think it will be great when finished. only i don't think it is a one skein wonder so i ordered another.