teaser

i just wanted to give you a little sneak peek of the zimmermann sweater i finished a while ago. i will take pictures of the recipient wearing it asap. we never got down to it as i mentioned but i am sure we will.

a sweater and a cool cat.

this is my newest fo. actually i have two other to show off but it seems life is at such a fast pace now and i am so preoccupied with work and somehow many old friends have emerged all of a sudden and new friends too. work is a bliss. i haven't felt so happy going to work for years and i feel i fit in where i am.

the new fo is a cardi in brioche stitch for my niece designed by danish designer helga isager and slightly altered by me. the pattern is poorly written and i knitted one for myself too in the original yarn isager 2 and it looks so poor as well since the yarn is pilling like crazy. i don't like that in a yarn. for my niece's i chose a better and cheaper yarn in my favourite colour- a khaki green.

i am still a zimmermaniac too. i finished meg's shaded aspen leaf sweater and cardiganized it. the result is stunning but when i gifted it to my friend we had a lot of wine and forgot to document it. this will happen later.

the little boy in the picture is my grand nephew a, who is probably the happiest person i ever met. everything that happens to him is seconded by a yipee or yahoo. that is so nice. and i think he looks so cute in his manly jacket. yipee for a. he is adorable.

delightful, delicious, de lovely

here is my wee little niece, just a few days old. born on one of the first days of march, and i don't think she has a name yet. but that really doesn't matter, because she i enormously cute and i cannot wait to get to know her and knit for her.

sorry for the long hiatus. actually i have knitted three sweaters since january but i haven't photo documented any of them yet.

one is the shaded aspen leaf yoke sweater in lopi lite by meg swansen.

the other two are helga isagers pine.

one for me and one for my niece. my older niece. the mother of my two little great nephews.

there will be much more about this a little later.

and i am planning to knit amanda by lisa lloyd in some shetland wool.

the reason for my hiatus is that i have been so busy at the school. it is a lovely job i have got there. i love teaching and how motivated my students are, although their lives are quite miserable in many ways. being an asylum seeker at the tender age of 17 isn't any fun. especially when you miss your mother your country like hell. and on top of that you have a history of human smuggling and a crazy travel from say iraq to europe to keep quiet with. when i look at my students i cannot stop thinking that those parents must have sent their brightest children with the best genes for survival out on that journey in a fragile hope that they will face a bright future here. i sometimes doubt this will happen. but i cherish their energy and trust when we are together in the classroom and feel so sorry for their parents who probably doesn't even know where their children are....

but i am so impressed with the humanistic way the people who work in my new school are. not in theory which is pretty easy but in practice. and i dare say this now as i have passed the invisible border of being there longer than the last two places i worked in. that was a great day. i so much feel that hard times are over, over for a while as john lennon used to sing, and that i am finally doing something i love and that i am good at. more than knitting.

and the winner is.....

and the winner is ...... mary lou. mary lou send me your adress and i will send you some greenish yarn in return. i suppose greens and browns are my favourite colours too...

i am happy to sending yarn to minnesota after i saw a bbc series today with pics from minnesota in the winter. i suppose one needs one's woolies.

and speaking about colour. i thought michelle obama's colour choice yesterday was quite daring. ochre with lime gloves. she looked quite pretty although i think the dress was a bit much with the bow. i don't think she is a bow woman. and i loved the colours.
it was very touching to be in the thick of festivities via satelite. i wonder how he can carry the burden on his not so broad shoulders. but i am amazed how captivating he is when he speaks.

there will be knitting soon again. i do knit. but i don't have it in me to download pictures.

congratulations mary lou.

blogoversary

it is my 2nd blogoversary today. i am very happy having hosted this space for two years now. and for several reasons. it motivates me to knit. i love to knit, but i also love to knit and exchange ideas with others. and your nice comments inspire me to knit more, i am sure. i have met many nice people in cyberspace. i am continually intrigued by all the friendliness a mutual interest generates. look at the top picture. it is the loveliest little japanese tea box fra kent , a very skilled knitter, living in kent, washington. he had the courtesy to send me this tea plus a large chocolate santa for christmas. i gulped the chocolate. but i am a little tight with using the tea. and when i have finished it, i think i will keep my sewing thread and needles in the box remembering a wonderful knitter friend on the other side of the globe.

the hat (lousy quality) is fern glade by megan marshall from knitty in the left overs from st. brigid. a nice toasty hat and a fun knit. i use it all the time along with my three poroms. i love wearing a hat in the winter. there is a certain cosyness about it.

oh well, i think i should host a little competition. the rules are easy. leave a comment stating your favourite colour and i will send you some yarn of danish origin in that colour, if you win. enough for a nice little project like a cowl or mittens or something. i think colours are half the knitting. for many years i loved blue and i thought i'd never fall out of love. but the last many years i have been falling for greens, browns and even ochre. i also have a dream of knitting a primary yellow slouchy hat at some point.

oh and for those of you who have been following my blog. i cannot begin to say how much i love teaching adults again. one of my classes are illiterate people and i get happy seeing their joy of learning the alphabet and writing the wobbly letters. it is so worthwhile.

i will leave this little competition open until the 20th. good luck.

a warm jacket

a while ago i went with my niece to my lys to buy yarn for another ponchito. she looked in the drops pattern magazine and fell in love with this drops jacket which i incidentally already had thought of knitting for her to make use of my rowan yorkshire tweed in the colourway wild plum which i bought from jannettes rare yarns a few years ago. the colour is a deep wine red with emerald, fuchsia and rust flecks. the colour is a bit difficult but my niece's colours are so good that it suits her. this is what happens when you buy yarn online. you end up with a whole different colour than you had expected. the pattern is a bit difficult to follow. if i didn't have a lot of experience i wouldn't know what to make of it, and i think the translation into english is computer generated. it says, for example, sew the collar tight..... and i thought why, until i realised this is the expression we use in nordic languages to sew something tight.

it wasn't exactly a joy to knit, but mostly because the colour is a bit difficult when you have to work in electric light all the time. there is very little contrast.

i am pleased with the result as i think it fits her perfectly. much better than i expected and i think it will be a winner in her wardrobe. i love the a line and i wouldn't hesitate to knit one for myself after i have finished what i have planned to knit the coming months. i plan to knit fern by alice starmore in the colourway tormentil. the kit was a present for myself and a shetland shawl for the new baby in the family who i think will be a girl, and then there will be no end to the knitting.

this week i started my new job. it is great. i love being a teacher again, and i am in awe of my student's ability to tackle their situation as asylum seekers. it is a very uncertain future they face.

happy 2009

i just want to say happy new year to all my lovely readers. i am happy for each and every one. and i am always happy for comments as it makes the whole blogging thing seem so real. it has been an eventful year, the one that just passed, and i tell it good riddance. it was not a bright one, but i move on with hope and confidence. i am sure this one cannot be worse. as a matter of fact i expect it to be lovely. waking up on the 1st. was lovely, i was hung over, to say the least, but i felt refreshed at the same time. i spent new year's with people i love and the first day in the new year with people i love. and i spent the last day in the year with some one i care a lot for. and it felt like good omens for the year to come. i am an optimist.

and it has not been bad all the time of course. nothing ever is. there was good knitting, good music, caring friends. and i never ran out of yarn. i grew to know myself in a way i hadn't expected. which will be good from now on and forever. there were lovely and generous blogging friends. there were irl meetings with blogging friends. there were snow storms, thunderstorms, the mediterranean and the north sea. there was little friends to knit for and big friends to knit for. there were introverts and extroverts.

i suppose there was life.

pig harvest

here is alba with the pigs. she won them. in denmark it is tradition to make a yummy kind of ricepudding for christmas with loads of chopped almonds in and then one whole. the one who gets the whole will get a prize.

in my family it is always a homemade pressie. and it has always been my father's chore to make it. but this year we had to rethink and i got the task this year. next year i may or may not do it again.

i have decided that i would love to knit a lamb and chicken collection for easter though. i never thought this was my thing at all, but i have really taken a liking in little knitted animals.

and i think alba is going to love playing pig farmer. isn't that every little girl's biggest dream ;-))

flared lace smokering

there were two projects that went a bit wrong i.e. the gift knitting went wrong so i thought snap out of it, let me knit a little thingy for myself. i wanted to knit a smokering in qiviut and went on a manical search for qiviut in a very bad mood a while ago. no qiviut but i slipped on the floor in a yarnstore and went home. it was in the thick of job search and rejections, so i felt really really bad lying there on the middle of a floor in a yarn store.

since then things have changed for the better. i am so glad. and all of a sudden i don't have the urge for qiviut any longer. but i thought it would be fun to knit a smoke ring anyway and i fell in love with heartstrings pattern: flared lace smokering and it turned out to be great fun to knit. the qiviut was substituted by drops alpaca from stash. stashbusting is nice and i am starting to believe in the philosophy that says: get rid of things you haven't used for two years.

and how does one model a smokering? i suppose my nephew feels pretty happy about sporting it yarnballboogie style . and when i met him today i thought what a family we are. always flashing my handknits. i have been out with 4 family members this december, and some at random, and they have all been wearing my handknits. in my nephew's case the fishtrap cardigan. it is unbelievable how well the briggs and little regal holds up. not a pill, not a difference in shape in sight. if i didn't have to pay that damned tax for getting it into the country i'd never use any other yarn.

merry christmas.

have you seen the little piggies.....

the three little pigs ended up being a whole family with still more members to come. as i said in my last post, it is danish blogger, who wrote up the pattern for these. but the concept of little knitted animals is also a well known concept in waldorf pedagogy. freya jaffke has a lot of other animals and dolls in a little book called toymaking with children. i think i want that book in order to knit a basket full of chicken and lambs for easter. it is great fun to make these little creatures and to see how differently the turn out when stuffed and in all the different kinds of yarn. when i have decided how to present them for christmas i will take another photo.

my next project, though, is going to be meg swansen's shaded aspen leaf as a zip cardigan in 4 different green shades for my friend who will be 50 in march. i hope to start and finish during christmas so he can wear it when winter sets in. it has been great fun to decide on the colours and looking at the few pictures on ravelry. especially since my friend likes to be a part of the process and the colour choice is completely after his choice and taste. i do like it though.

i have not decided what will be the theme of the coming year's knitting, but i am sure that my niece or nephew who is due in march will play an important role.

danish bacon

it is not that i haven't been knitting. i just haven't been blogging. the thought of getting back to work has been occupying my thoughts and i have had luck. a job a bit similar to the nice job i left one and a half year ago, but in a different setting. i will be teaching asylum seekers danish and eventually english. it has a time limit this job but it doesn't matter. i start in january but i have actually already started. my first lesson was yesterday when i was teaching a group of men english. the difference between fifty and fifteen for instance. i enjoyed it a lot. and tomorrow i am going again.

i am knitting two christmas projects. but in the meantime i am knitting these little piggies and i hope to knit a whole basket full before christmas. they are going to be our prize for a little christmas competition that is tradition in denmark.

they are a varying size and the brainchild of danish blogger liselotte. even though you don't understand a word danish, liselotte's blogging skills are amazing. she whips off one project after the other. and the photography is soo great. go have a look.

owls

as soon as i had knitted the last stitch on the mega sweater for my brother i cast on for another project. i had been inspired by mandy's owl cardigan she made for maggie last christmas and i had wanted to use the owl motif for something for alba. i think whatever suits maggie suits alba too. i am right in the slipstream of mandy. not a bad place to be.

the owl is such a wonderful motif and in catalania where half of alba's family lives it has a deep cultural meaning of being a symbol of wisdom as it of course does here where it is the symbol of bookstores as the snake is a symbol of apothecarians. i remember my middle eastern students being were scared of owls since it was a harbinger of evil.

i grew up with swedish author, elsa beskow's, children's book from last century where the owl teaches the animals and the tomter in the forest what they know. the pictures from her books were so evocative that they have stayed in my mind for all these years. and they are surely the books that i will get my great niece's and nephew's when they get a little older.

so i knit the owl dress from designclub.dk in the original yarn duo, in the most magnificent olive green. i cannot begin to say how much i love this yarn which in fact wasn't the original yarn, but the duo merino, which is a fingerring lambswool, and just the kind of 'honest' yarn that i love. i didn't care for the silk blend since i think silk has a tendency to get out of shape.

i used needles 3mm, and added golden beads as eyes and a greenish velvet ribbon. the pattern says you need 150 grammes of yarn but i only used 100. that is annoying since the yarn is anything but cheap. i am pleased with the end result and it suits her very well. it is a totally feminine dress. alba likes it too, but i forgot to bring the camera along. silly me.

i am happy to say that there is a baby on it's way in my family again. that means all knitting all kinds of baby stuff. i think i will begin with a baby shawl or maybe the spanish christening shawl from folk shawls by cheryl oberle. not that this child has any spanish roots.

blur

it just wanted to prove that i actually finished this baby. i think it has turned out well but i don't quite understand why it flares at the back. maybe it is due to the bigness of the sweater. my brother likes it and was going to wear it at a conference where he is a key speaker.

it is still impossible to take nice pictures and especially in the evening. and the colour of this sweater is quite unphotographable too.

i hope you can get the idea.

stats:

9 skeins of cushendale in the colourway moss.

knitpicks options no. 3½ and 4 mm

pattern little rivers from alice starmore: stillwater.

the pattern is inspired by rivers in delaware.

as all other starmore patterns this leaves you with absolutely no bad surprises. so well written. her sweaters are on the big side and this is no exception . i didn't have gauge so it is actually much smaller than the original and still roomy.

i cannot recommend the yarn enough. get some and knit a nice heirloom.

procrastination over and done with.

well i finally stopped procrastinating and gave the monster a eucalan bath and a spin and pinned it out on my rose and thistle duvet. my god this is a big sweater but hopefully i will be able to finish it tomorrow and move on. well i am already. the girly girly dress i am knitting is almost finished and i think i will knit a few aran weight sweaters afterwards for christmas presents. as i am not working i think i will have to make christmas shopping cheap this year.
i am looking and looking for the perfect job. i am getting quite impatient and hope for change soon. last night i dreamed i was obama's girlfriend (sorry michelle et al.). i am as keen on change as everyone.

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..