Born to knit

Summer knitting

When the children were babies Johanne made them dolls to play with.
The dolls were supposed to be look-alikes. In Swedish they are called Waldorf-dockor.

This is Love, to the left, and Lisa, to the right

But since neither Elise nor Ludvig ever played with dolls, they were pretty much neglected.

So Johanne decided that the poor, forlorn dolls needed a good foster home.
And she actually came up with a rather clever idea – why not give the dolls to the Waldorf nursery
where both her kids have been looked after?

But of course the dolls needed some new clothes, so Johanne had to start knitting.
As usual she had left things a bit late, so she had to knit until late at night
in order to finish in time.

She did though.

This is Elise handing over the dolls to their new "mothers" and "fathers"
at the annual summer picnic for all the children at the nursery and their families.
And in the autumn Ludvig will start school.

When looking for something to wear for this special occasion,
the last ever nursery picnic, Johanne suddenly remembered what she did last summer:
A silk corset by Annie Modesitt.

The actual knitting took no more than a week at most, because she was on holiday.
But then came the Sewing of the Buttons...
And that´s why the silk corset never got finished, but was stowed away
in a warderobe for ten months.

Because Johanne is fairly short her corset only has 19 buttons.
She doesn´t even want to think about how many buttons someone taller would need.

Socking News!

Johanne´s mother Barbro became a bit upset at the sorry sight of the shredded socks in the last post.
She doesn´t want her daughter to bring shame and dishonour on the family name.
Barbro wants it to be known that Johanne has indeed made a few socks in her days.
And not all of them are in such a sad state.

This is how Barbro and Simon show that they´re going steady!

The reason that these socks look much healthier is that
Barbro and Simon only wear them when watching TV.
While Johanne, having cold feet, walks around in her socks all the time.

But Johanne did realize it was time to shape up and make herself a new pair.
And no, she didn´t use the magic loop because she can´t figure out how it works properly.
There are, however, some dpns that are fairly okay to use because they are a bit shorter
(only 15 centimeter/six inches).

Look mum, new socks!

Johanne has to confess that she still fails to understand the excitement of knitting socks.
Even though some of her best friends (Hi Wendy and L-B!) are avid sock knitters.
And there comes a time in your life when you have to face that fact
that you don´t have what it takes to become a real Sock Knitter.

Johanne is totally bored with the sock pattern that she´s been using for years
(too lazy to learn a new one) and the sock yarn
(sturdy and hardwearing, but not much joy to knit with).
She recognizes that this last pair of socks might very well be her Very Last Pair...

But while she´s trying to brave and grown up about this sad truth,
she receives a mysterious parcel in the post.
It a sock kit from the Loopy Ewe with a pattern by Cookie A:

And it´s a gift from the Sock Fairy!

It´s probably the only sock pattern ever that Johanne has found tempting.
Why? Because these socks would be perfect to go Scottish dancing in, of course.
But who is the Sock Fairy and how did she know that Johanne needed rescuing?

While we all ponder over this Johanne can be seen going over to the waste bin.
She rummages about for something on the bottom – her dpns.
She then walks over to the zink to rinse them off carefully.