Born to knit

Gone Yarnhunting!

This blog will be on holiday for a couple of weeks while I am away. In Scotland.

Yes, I´ll be leaving the sun and heat for rain and wind. But there will be beautiful scenery, Scottish dancing and lots of knitting by the fireside. 

We´re renting a cottage on the Isle of Skye and we´ll be staying here.

I don´t know how many people have asked me to bring back a little lamb. And I´m sure that my daughter would love one, too. 

But personally I think I´m going to buy myself a new kilt. Oh, and some more yarn.

Today I´ve packed and packed. It´s taken me all day to decide what knitting to take. I think that I´m taking a lace shawl and a wooly hat.

But I might get up later and change my mind and wind some more yarn. 

Time to Celebrate!

There are several reasons to celebrate this weekend. 

Reason no 1. We´ve had a celebrity visitor from Norway here in Stockholm. 

I´m not referring to Crown Prince Haakon, Crown Princess Mette-Marit or any other member of the Norwegian royal family – who incidentally happened to be here too, in order to attend Crown Princess Victoria´s wedding – but Ann, who is more known as Pinneguri in the hemisphere of knitters.

I have followed Ann´s blog and admired her knitting for quite some time and we´ve also sent a few emails back and forth to each other. Plus some yarn and a few patterns. 

On Saturday I finally got to meet her in person and she lived up to all my expectations. She was every bit as nice as I thought she would be. 

I was apparently shorter than she had imagined. I´m only 159,5 centimeters (or 5' 2"). 

First we went to a café and met up with more of Ann´s Swedish knitting friends, like Asplund, Maria and Karin (who doesn´t have a blog). My camera had gone on a sailing camp with my daughter, so I had to wait for a photo opportunity until we got home (I sneakily asked if she wanted to have a look at my old knitting books).

Ann told me lots of interesting things about Norwegian knitting and I wished she could have stayed at least a week. But I guess she had to return home to all that Wollmeise that is still waiting to be knit...

Reason no 2 to celebrate: I´ve finished knitting a secret project and it turned out so, so pretty. It was not one of my own designs so I feel free to brag about it. But I have to wait before I can show any pictures.

Reason no 3: In a thrift shop – for the mere price of 25 kronor – I found six perfect skeins of the most beautiful angora yarn I´ve ever seen. It´s probably  from the 50´s or the 60´s. I´ve never seen angora yarn of this quality before. It so fluffy it´s unbelievable.

And it´s burgundy, too. One of my favourite colours!

I might not ever have the heart to knit anything with this yarn. Unless I find the PERFECT design. All suggestions are welcome.

Reason no 4: This summer we are going to holiday in Scotland. We´ll be renting a cottage on the Isle of Skye on the west coast. 

I´m so lucky to have a husband who loves going to Scotland as much as I do. And we both think that this will probably be our last opportunity to holiday on a remote island where it rains a lot – at least if we want our daughter to come along. Next summer she will be 13. What do you think our chances are then?

a) slim

b) very slim

c) very, very, very slim

Let Me Count the Ways...

" How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

If I wanted to come across as pretentious I could just say that the quote is from a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). 

But I have to confess only know that line because John Lennon used it in one of his songs on the album "Double Fantasy". But it does describe my feelings for this yarn pretty accurately.

Can anyone guess what yarn it is?

Why, yes. It IS a skein of Wollmeise in the Rhabarber colourway. 

I will not reveal how I got this skein. But I wish to convey my most heartfelt thanks to a very dear friend!

Now, I could have bought a skein of this yarn when I visited the Wollmeise shop in Pfaffenhofen back in October last year.

But something must have happened to my brain while I was in there – I couldn´t think straight. There was a whole shelf of this stuff, but  I just walked away. I think this is the closest I´ve been to experience true madness. 

Certifiable. The men in the white coats will be coming for me any minute now.

I hope that this humbling experience will have turned me into a nicer person. But I´m not sure it had any effect at all. Except for making me stalk the Wollmeise online shop update every week ever since.

Rhabarberrhabarberrhabarberrhabarber...

Believe me – it´s been a really stressful period of my life. I´ve missed so many updates – some by hours, some by mere minutes.

One time there was actually some Rhabarber Wollmeise available – but I failed when trying to buy a skein. How frustrating is that? Teeth-gnashing!

I´ve seen some pretty impressive Wollmeise stashes over on Ravelry and I have no idea how they managed. I´ve only got one thing to say to these ladies: 

RESPECT.