Born to knit

Oh, rats!

We now have two new family members called Molly and Maggie. 

They are gerbils (ökenråttor). They will gnaw everything they can get their teeth on. I shudder when I think about what would happen if they were let loose in my yarn stash. They could totally trash the whole flat.

But they are very cute and they live in a cage, from where there is no escape. I hope. And they are both females, so there won´t be lots and lots of little gerbils soon. I hope.

Molly in the cage.

Maggie is very tame already and will purr in your hand.

Don´t worry there will be knitting content. 

Because my daughter expressed a wish to have a new pair of mittens with - wait for it – gerbils!

Of course there is no pattern for a pair of gerbil mittens. Or at least I couldn´t find one. Okay, so maybe I didn´t look that hard because I didn´t think there would be much point. Instead I got pen and paper out and started drawing. 

My daughter helped and it was nice to do something together. Soon she will be a teenager and I will be the last person on this earth that she wants to sit next to and do stuff with. And she won´t be caught dead in something her mother knit for her (sob).

When the pattern was finished I got out my precious Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn and started knitting. 

Ta-da!

Six grey rats and one pink.

I haven´t asked the gerbils how they felt about being portrayed in this fashion, but at least my daughter was pleased.

Thumb gusset close up!

By the way, I´m now member no 2 in a club called Friends of the Thumb Gusset.I believe that my friend Eva-Lotta just signed up to be member no 3 and blogless Karin Kahnlund (who is member no 1 and also the founder of this club) and I welcome her to our little gang. We want everyone to join! 

And if I could only figure out how to, I´d start a Thumb gusset group on Ravelry.

In a more natural environment.

Binge Knitting

Yes, it was time for me to once again go back to HV Craft School and learn about the traditional knitting of Halland, in the south west part of Sweden. It´s called Binge and the patterns from this region are very distinct and usually made in blue, red and white. Like this:

Our teacher Karin has made this beautiful big sample.

They used to make not only sweaters, but long coats to be worn on the beach in the summer.

Summers can be pretty miserable in Sweden, so it´s not such a bad idea actually. Also it would do a good job of hiding the wobbly parts. Of course wearing a coat on the beach might make one appear a bit odd – but hey, what´s new?

There were also smaller garments to be worn in the winter, such as hats:

This Binge hat is really warm, because it´s doubled up. It has a kind of lining inside.

This is a hat for a small child that Karin brought along to show us.

Sorry about the shaky quality of the photos, but Binge knitting can apparently have that effect... 

Some of the students in the class started making swatches in the shape of wristlets.

Same, same, but different.

This is the same pattern and the same colours, but combined in a different way. Interesting, isn´t it? (To non-knitters who might be reading this: I´m being serious. I do find it interesting.)

But in a book about Binge knitting I spotted a pattern that differed from the rest. It was a carnation and it wasn´t made in red, blue or white. It was made in red and green, resembling the knitting of Hälsingland, in the north east of Sweden.

Did the carnation pattern travel from the south west to the north east or was it the other way round? Or did two knitters in different parts of Sweden come up with the same idea?

I just love flower patterns – maybe because I´m useless at growing plants and have been known to kill plants in less than 24 hours – so I simply couldn´t resist the beautiful little carnation. 

Since I don´t like knitting swatches I decided to make a whole new mitten using the carnation in combination with another pattern from Halland – also a bit flowery.

Pretty in pink.

I really felt that the carnation would look good in pink, so I decided to break away from tradition and use some pink and mauve Cherry Tree Hill from my rather well stocked up Cherry Tree Hill stash.

Now, should I call this mitten Nelly Nejlika, because nejlika means carnation in Swedish. Or would that be just too naff?

Anyway, what you see in that photo is the result of a whole weekend of knitting. One single mitten. Without a thumb. 

I knitted on it a little bit longer after taking the picture, but still – it´s not very impressing, is it? 

Drat. I´d better not chuck in my day job just yet.