and darkness, darkness

it is not getting much better- the light, that is. but as far as i remember, there can be glorious sunny january days. and right now joni mitchell sings: and darkness, darkness, no colour, no contrast. so lovely pictures in near future is more than i can promise.

i finished my brother's sweater. but i don't have it in me to sew the sideseams since it needs a wet block first, and that is about the most boring thing in this world. i hate all the pinning of all the pieces. usually i do it, but in this case i have to bring out a big duvet to pin on, since the sweater is huge.

so i forgot all about my last post and went out to get some new yarn with my niece. another ponchito for her. and a poncho for alba. the green for my niece, the cotton candy for alba. i came to think that she is a girl and maybe she has other colour preferences than me though i seriously doubt it. she wants a green bicycle for christmas!!! little miss strange.

the green amorphous knitting is a dress for alba. it is a dress with a border of owls. really cute. and soon finished...

oh yes and then my knitpicks. i think these needles are my new love. nothing is better. no addi, nothing is better.

a knitter insane

it is as you might be able to see, not because i don't have wool. i actually have to shelves in my book cabinet stuffed with wool and several bags sitting around in my apartment. there should be plenty to go on board in without adding to the stash. i mostly have a few skeins left from each project i knit since i always order a little more than i expect to use. i am afraid of running out of yarn for a given project.

and it is not because i don't have nice wool. i have lots of nice yarn. for instance i have a whole cone of perfectly good jaggerspun zephyr that would go well with the smoke ring i would like to knit. anyway i found myself stressing around all over copenhagen to buy qiviuk that i cannot really afford and because last friday was a bad day i wanted to cry or stamp my feet because no one seemed to carry it. and it almost went that way since i slipped on the slippery floor of one of the lys's and then i really wanted to cry. especially since they only had worsted weight qiviuk. it is obsessive and in sane and the fate of many knitters. why do we so desperately want to beaver more wool than with could ever knit in to projects??? well maybe i will be happy it this financial crisis gets any worse. but i am an optimist and it is nothing i really think about on a regular basis.

and after the qiviuk story i told myself that it was crazy so why did i go to a yarn store yesterday and buy the olive green yarn for a dress for alba???? there is a plenitude of things i could knit her out of the yarn i have in my cabinet??? useful warm hats and cowls for winter it is not like she is in terrible need of a knitted olive green dress??

i wonder why it becomes so obsessive and actually i think this is very much influenced by the internet. in the old knitting days i didn't buy more yarn than i needed and only bought anything if it was needed for a project. now i obsess though i think some people would consider my obsessing that of a novice. but i cannot bear to live without a qiviuk smokering or whatever until the next day or week when i want something else. maybe i should get a more meaningful hobby like helping out the homeless where i would surely be more able to draw a line.

PS: sorry about the lousy quality of the pics recently. when i looked out the window an hour ago i was thinking about the bob dylan song that starts with the line: darkness at the break of noon. so please forgive me.

change

congratulations to those of you who think it is the right man who was elected yesterday. it is an incredible story. i think it is the right man but now he has to prove himself. have seen a lot of insight docus lately about him and i think his story must leave a lot of hope for a lot of people round the world. and then it doesn't hurt a bit that he and his wife have 'it'. both of them. i am not sure i like here black and red dress but she was certainly dressed to fight in a dress of bullfighter value. and it will of course be a fight. i suppose it was no coincidence either that the girls were dressed to match their mom.

and a vote for him was a vote for change. too bad i couldn't vote. i think i have never needed change any more than now. both on the knitting front and personally. i am seeking for a job again. second time this year and one time too many. i some times feel a bit jinxed. i was working for 14 years the same place without any major problems and then this. i know that there has been a lot of different things helping me through this time, mainly myself. but knitting has certainly been part of it. both the meditativeness but certainly the creativity. i have been knitting from patterns lately but that is not all that bad. you learn a lot of the tricks of the trade.

and i have changed from knitting the body of my brother's sweater to knitting sleeves. i like knitting sleeves. i like increasing for some odd reason.

and i will hopefully finish in a week at the most. and then it is onwards to knitting something from the green yarn or starting another hat production or just something for plain me.

the long and winding road

it is not easy to keep one's strictly knitting blog up to date when one is a very monogamous knitter and when all the pictures one take end up slightly blurred due to the nordic light which is missing so much at the time being. it is november and the hardest month to get through in all the year. i am afraid i never used to worry much about november but it definitely comes with age.

and the knitting is almost as dreary as the month.. not that i don't get anything done. but little rivers aka the long and winding road is a major task. there is cabling on every row and a 180 stitches on every row. i calculated that the back and the front alone is more than 70000 stitches. i wonder how i have time for such calculations when there is knitting to do. thankfully i have now started the sleeves which means the sweater will be finished pretty soon. it is the smallest part of the sweater and i really don't mind knitting sleeves.

it will be nice to knit something else. maybe a sweater for me who has taken a liking in handknit sweaters because of st. brigid that i seem to be wearing all the time. so lovely warm and comfortable.

i think maybe i will have to start knitting some colourwork soon and hence i bought alice starmore's: charts for colourknitting from a fellow raveller. it is a great book. i love the little elk motif which i would like to use for an alba cardi. just a very classic norwegian lice kind of thingy.

i wish all americans a good election day tomorrow. it is nerve wrecking and oh so interesting what will happen since it concerns all of use in the global village. my friend has named his bird obama. i know what he would vote if he could.

frog

i was rather tired of the little rivers . they are not so little when they have to fit a two meters tall man who is well build. so the library texted me and told me that norah gaughan's knitting nature had arrived. i had wanted to knit the sunflower tam for a while. off i went to collect the book and buy some lopi which is the yarn the pattern calls for. and off to knitting on 2 sizes smaller needles than the pattern calls for since i thought the needle size compared with the number of stitches sounded wrong. but even at another gauge this hat turned out enormous even for my big head. even for the elephant man.

i had also ordered some organic yarn from garthenor in wales for a ponchito for me, since it is said to be enormously nice to wear on one's cold shoulders. i whipped it of yesterday and it has turned out beautifully. i will post pictures at some point. and the yarn is fab and smells of wool and is three ply which i love. i will get some at another point to knit a cardigan with a zipper for myself. the one i knitted for my nephew proves to be really useful and it is nice to be able to open it when the temperature changes during the day...

alba asked: tell me, what are you knitting??? how cute is that?? she has taken a fancy in her dad's green koolhaas and wants one her size now. she is fun. a 2-year old with a craving for koolhaas. when will she be able to learn to knit????

little rivers

i am a sucker for alice starmore. in fact i am a sucker for anyone who can write a lovely pattern that is easy to understand. i am also a sucker for doing all the calculations myself sometimes, but right now i am so interested in alice starmore's cablework and i wish it was possible to get to see all her books. at the biggest library in copenhagen they have none. too bad since they are out of print.

i have started knitting little rivers from stillwater. somebody, whose identity has to remain secret :-)), borrowed me the pattern. it is for my brother who is your typical middle aged man but also a middle aged man who is about two meters tall. so there is a lot of knitting to do. originally i wanted to knit irish moss but knitting purl stitches through the back loop just doesn't agree with me and my hands. so this one is easier on the hands. it is a pretty easy pattern to memorize but involves cabling on both rs and ws. so at the same time it isn't mindless knitting.
the yarn is cushendale for the yarnroom and it is actually the exact same yarn as blackwater abbey. a two ply yarn with some scratchiness to it. and it comes in some very lovely colours. if scratchy is your thing, i highly recommend it. and the price is good too.

i love the look of the pattern and it is not hard to imagine how she came up with the name little rivers. and another thing is her ribbings. you would never get a 'normal' ribbing on a starmore pattern. that inspires me a lot. i also used a decorative ribbing on alba's st. alba, that of course was so inspired by her.

right now i am reading cynthia gravelle le count's andean knitting. it is a lovely book. i have been fascinated by chullos since childhood when the big hit was el condor pasa. on the cover of the record there was this man wearing a chullo. and reading about it makes it even more fascinating. it is the most intricate beautiful knitting and one of these days i will knit one on tiny tiny needles.. being a dreamer and an optimist i always hope to go to bolivia or peru at one time to learn..

poromaniac, or we are family....

i have been knitting lovely poroms in 6 colours in all. 4 of them in the yarn jared suggests. and i agree with him. this yarn is fab and could be my desert island yarn. take me to a desert island with all those hues and i would never bother anyone again. or let me spend a little time in the shetland islands among the sheep and the lovely sheepish products. and you will not hear from me while i am there.

i made a yellow one is the colourway yellow ochre

a green one in the colourway seaweed

a purple one in the colourway dusk

and a brownish one in the colourway

i knit one each night and the knitting is great fun and the pattern is so well orchestrated by jared who isn't only a great connaiseur of colours and yarn and knits lovely things but also is a great tech knitter. every thing is so well explained. well except one thing. what is a porom?? i learn a lot about different cultures from knitting but this one i have no idea about.

i am looking forward to wearing my poroms. i think it becomes most people with a hat. and this makes one look like rastaman goes tweedy or a character in a dickens novel. i am not sure if i am going to keep all of them but in a way i think it would be great to let them stay together as a family that can spice up my wardrobe any day.