Born to knit

God Jul!

Swedish Santa wants to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! 
 
Made by my 11-year-old daughter Elise,  with a felting needle and some wool. It took her two hours and she stabbed herself three times. But it was so worth it. I know that I´m her mother – but isn´t she talented!

Snow Angel made by my 8-year old son when we visited Skansen last weekend.

We saw some relatives, too. While Elise was at home with a sore throat and a temperature.

Of course we were wrapped up warm against the cold. I´ve made a Karin hat to match the mittens. The mittens still have no thumbs – but I haven´t given up hope to have them finished before the New Year. A bit of last minuted knitted Christmas gifts got in the way (at least that is my excuse).

This year we won´t have to dream about a white Christmas. We´ve got it.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas! 

 
 

Knitted Kurbits

I´m having a great time with my new pattern that I´ve named Karin the Kurbitsmitten, inspired by traditional folk art – kurbitsmålning – from Dalarna. 

 

This is what the colours look like in daylight.

The second mitten is done, but none of them has thumbs. But I´m going to use the time until New Year to finish everything – or as much as possible – that needs finishing. That´s my Old Year Resoulution anyway.

It would be lovely to start 2010 with an empty knitting basket ready for new projects.  But that could also be solved by Santa bringing me a new basket, of course.

I intend to knit a pair of Karin mittens with a white background too, just to see which looks best. And I am also working on making this pattern into a matching hat – or two. One black and one white.

This is what the colours look like when using a flash.

It´s lovely to hear that there are already requests for the patterns – both for Karin and the other mitten Ulrika Nejlika, in my last blog post. Maybe there will be time over Christmas to work on the patterns. 

But all work and no play makes Johanne a dull girl.

So the other week I went to the opening of an exhibition at Marias garn. It´s an exhibiton of Ivar Asplund´s knitting.

 

Ivar is a wonderful knitter and it was lovely to meet him for the first time IRL. He has a his own blog.

He does stranded, cabled and twined knitting and makes his own designs. The sweater that he is wearing in this picture is a piece of art. One cable runs along the entire sleeve and continues on the saddle shoulder. It took a lot a calculations to work this sweater out, Ivar told me.

Ivar´s exhibition runs until December, 19. Do hurry on over there if you haven´t already been. 

 

Flower Power

How many mittens are too many?

I hope I never find out.

Those mittens with the traditional carnation pattern from Halland were finished fairly fast a few weeks ago, thumbs and all. I have a bad habit of postponing thumb knitting. Of course it makes it rather awkward if you want to actually mean to wear the mittens - but these days I mainly make mitterns because I can´t stop. And the mittens I wear have thumbs.

But maybe I should stop babbling and just show what they look like:

New name and all...

The cuffs are nice and long – very good if you happen to be wearing a sweater with 3/4 sleeves when it is really too cold outside to be wearing a sweater with 3/4 sleeves. As often is the case in Sweden in the winter...

I decided on a new name for them as well, and Maria, I´m sorry to say that your suggestion "Corny Carnation" didn´t quite make it to the top of the list. 

They will henceforth be known as "Ulrika Nejlika".

 Close up of the carnations

But as Juliet exclaims from the balcony:

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

And while we´re on the subject of roses and carnations I would like to mention that I´ve started on yet another pair of mittens – also with a flowery pattern.

For some time I´ve been wondering if it would be possible to transform the decorative folkloristic paintings called kurbitsmålning from county of Dalarna into a knitting pattern. I love everything that´s swirly and sweet, with flowers and in bright colours. So kurbits is right up my not-so-minilistic street.

Sensitive blog readers who prefer subdued shades of white and possibly beige, please avert your eyes now.

The yarn that I´ve used is Zauberball (number 1564) bought at the Nysta webshop (that also carries my patterns in Swedish)

These mittens were born with a name: Kurbitsvanten Karin. 

And maybe after these mittens I´ll actually be done with knitting mittens. Because I honestly don´t think I can come up with a pattern that I will like more. Ever.