Born to knit

Mönster på svenska

I´m working on translating my new patterns into Swedish. It feels a bit funny to have to do that. Maybe I should have written them in Swedish first. I am after all Swedish – even if I´d rather be Norwegian...

Anyway. The patterns will be available at Nysta webshop and at Marias garn, as soon as I have finished the translations.

I´m also trying to understand the instructions (in English) for how to create a Paypal shop on this very blog. But don´t get your hopes up too much. It´s not so much a language problem as my inability to learn anything about computers. 

I once had to try to learn a really simple type of computer programming (this was back in the mid-eighties) and I´ve never slept so much in my whole life. Every time I opened the book I fell asleep. I think I must have slept an average of 16 hours a day the week leading up to the exam – that I barely passed.

That I actually manage to post to this blog is something of a miracle, believe me. I have this theory that maybe God had to erase something on my hard drive in order to accomodate my knittning skills. Apparently this "something"  were my computer skills. Oh, well. 

I don´t really mind – but some knitters have asked me to make my patterns available as downloads and pdf files. I do understand how convenient this would be, but I honestly don´t think I´d manage to learn how to do any of this. Ever.

And even if I did – when something went wrong I wouldn´t know how to fix it and knitters would be upset with me and write angry emails. And I think that would affect my karma in a bad way.

Because I´ve been working on translating patterns I haven´t got much knitting done. Instead I thought I´d show you some photos of how different mittens look depending on the yarn I´ve used.

When I first made the mitten Tyra I went with the traditional colours, green and red.

This is what it should really look like:

But then I thought that it would be really pretty in pink and white and I threw all caution to the wind! Who dares wins, right?

Getting used to the adrenaline high of living dangerously I then took another mitten, Hjördis, that I´d previously made in red and black.

Nothing wrong with that, but...

This time I really went out on a limb and picked a variegated yarn.

Ok, that´s enough excitement for one blog post.

It´s getting late  and I´m very tempted to let google translate my remaining patterns into Swedish. It would be rather amusing.

(Strumpstickor översätts till "dubbel-pekande nålar", masktäthet blir "spårvidd" och aviga maskor går översättningsprogrammet helt bet på.)

Neverending Summer

The weather this September has been simply splendid here in Sweden. Even if the temperatures are cooler it feels as if the summer just goes on and on.

It also feels as if some of my knitting just goes on and on. And on. The sleeve for the Spede sweater is coming along very slowly.

It´s hard to photograph the meagre result, since it´s dark green. It might not look very exciting now, but the finished sweater is meant to be decorated with velvet and silk ribbons, some beads and maybe even embroidery. 

It will eventually look a bit like these Spede wristlets, that I knitted about two years ago. Though I didn´t get round to decorating them until now.

They are not completely finished yet. I need to add something more at the bottom, but I´m having a hard time finding a thin enough ribbon. Maybe I´ll end up doing some kind of embroidery instead.

The wristlets were knit with 1.5mm needles, the same as the Spede sweater. I predict that the sweater will be years in the making, even if it´s just knit in plain stocking stiches. 

The wristlets have a star pattern made with purl stitches and I can´t recall exactly how long I spent working on them. Just that it took ages.

Though when I bought the kit at Marias garn shop I do remember telling her that I meant to finish them over the weekend. Ha bl**dy ha. I have to admit that I can be a bit too optimistic sometimes.

Maria kept a straight face and said nothing much, but I bet that the minute I left the shop she probably broke down and cried with laughter. If she keeps a list of stupid things that her customers have said I reckon that I must be fairly high up on that list...

I´ve also been working a bit on my second Icarus shawl. I took it along to a knit café last week, but had such a good time talking to everyone that I made a silly mistake and had to frog the four rows I´d actually managed to knit. So the progress has not been amazing exactly.

Still, a little setback like that means nothing when the sun keeps shining day after day.

The only hard thing is having to leave the island and go back into town after another glorious weekend.

I´m Going Loopy!

Last night there was a grand opening party here at the Born to knit-blog when the new patterns went up for sale at the web shop "The Loopy Ewe".

There are three new hat patterns and four new mitten patterns. 

They are all in English and I still need to translate them into Swedish.

A bit weird perhaps, since Swedish is my mother-tounge. 

But I never claimed I was a 100 percent normal.

I thought I might take the liberty to show you what I have been working on all summer:

The pattern for the dragon hat:

The pattern for the mitten that I named Märta:

There is Tyra:

And Hjördis:

Not all of them are pink. The exception is Inga:

 

The Hjördis mittens have a matching hat that isn´t pink either:

And finally there is Edith, also a hat that matches a pair of mittens:

Of course it took me most of last winter and spring to knit all this.

And it took me all summer to write up the patterns. 

I know, a tortoise would be quicker. But they don´t knit, do they?

Now if you excuse me I have to get back to knitting on that sleeve with a really tiny gauge.

The result of one week´s hard labour is about 7 inches (almost 18 centimeters). 

I knew you´d be impressed.

On the Right Course

It has never felt so good to go back to school before. But the HV school is no ordinary school

It´s the "School for Friends of Craft". 

The course I´m taking is called "The Knit Tour" (Stickresan) and our tour guide is Karin Kahnlund, a very accomplished Swedish knitter. She´s going to guide us through Sweden one region at a time and we started in Skåne with Spede sweaters.

Since I had already made a pair of Spede wristlets I actually started knitting a Spede sweater. After a whole day´s work I´d done about five centimeters (two inches) on needles 1,5 (smaller than US0).

I´ll take a picture when I don´t have to use a macro lense. 

In the outdoor museum Skansen, next door, they had dedicated the weekend to linen and wool.

In Delsobogården,  the farmstead from Hälsingland, there were a few old sweaters on display.

So we temporarily left Skåne for Hälsingland and Karin told us a few interesting things about these old Hälsingetröjor.

I think that Karin said that this was made for a man in 1875.

It seems as if all the knitters in Sweden used to be equipped with equally tiny needles and boundless patience. 

Notice the special way of knitting the cuff using mainly purl stitches.

These old sweaters belong to Skansen Klädkammare and those who work at Skansen wear genuine, old pieces of clothing when they put on the traditional costumes.

This is Vanja in a fairly new sweater made in 2004 – that is probably a copy of the one from 1872 that Lena wears in the picture below.

It´s amazing how well it has kept its colours.

And it is a lovely fit on Lena´s slender figure.

The Hälsinge sweaters might look fairly similar, but they are all individual and unique.

I believe that this sweater was made for a woman in 1862.

After the course finished on Sunday I took the train up to Hälsingland to spend the night at my mum´s.

Quite a coincidence that I happened to have a job to do in Järvsö early the next morning, wasn´t it!

Monday also happened to be my birthday and a very nice birthday it was, too.

I got to see a lovely view:

Vålsjön.

I made a new friend:

Sickan.

I found a local yarn shop painted in a rather unusual way:

The lady who runs the shop was very nice.

And on the way home I got some knitting done on the train. But since a shaking train is not the best place to knit a Spede sweater on such silly little needles I started on a new lace shawl.

This will be another Icarus made in handpainted yarn from Färgkraft.

This colourway is called Chocolate Rose – and very yummy it is, too.

Next time I´ll show you photos of the birthday presents that my mum gave me.

That will be something worth waiting for, I promise!