My Time of the Year

The temperature has dropped; we haven´t had any frost yet, but it´s not far away. It´s time for warmer clothes, to pack away the thin summer-things and get out the more autumn-adopted items. The cold mornings requires mittens. Wool-season is here! Every year when I look through my wardrobe to find the winter stuff, it´s like meeting old friends again.

The weather has been fantastic during the last days: high clear air and sunshine from a blue sky. What a pity I have to waste such wonderful days in the office! The outside is a explosion of colour: the leaves are turning yellow and red and it´s like natures own colour-therapy. Like time wants to give us a colour-boost before the winter begins. I´m an autumn- and winter person, now is my time of the year!

Not so long ago there were roses here...

Can there be a more tempting thing than a Christmas-calender made of 24 knitted socks, with a little gift in each one? That is, if the whole project gets done in time. It has to be finished in the middle of November, so I have to knit a sock every other day to get through this. Because there will be some days where it won´t be possible to squeeze in any knitting. I started the first sock yesterday on my way to work and it´s actually finished now. Only 23 more to go... A sort of my own solitary Socktober-fest!

The yarn is some left-over cheap wool - not very nice to knit with actually! But this calender is supposed to be a stash-reducer, a way to get rid of some of these odd balls and left-over pieces.

I have been asked to make a pattern for my Pippi-sweater in cotton, and one evening I produced two swatches, to decide whether to knit it in a k2 p1-pattern (2 räta, 1 avig) or in
stockinette stitch (rätstickning). I have decided in favour of the first alternative...I think...

The swatches are knitted in Rowan Handknit Cotton, in off-white and pink. The colours doesn´t show very well and I have been thinking that mabye I need a better camera. Or mabye, my camera needs a better photographer.

The lilac mittens are finished:

...and I´m very pleased with them.

The last of this years tomato-harvest is picked and is "after-ripening" (eftermognar) on a plate indoors. The tomatoes were a disappoinment this year, even though the summer was warm and sunny, it seems not to have been a "tomato-year". All my tomato-growing friend have noticed the same, so it seems it wasn´t my farming-skills that went wrong. Since I started growing my own tomatoes I hardly ever buy tomatoes any more: the home-grown taste SO much better and so much MORE.

This year I tried peppers (paprika) for the first time, and it went far better than I had dared hope for. And these also tasted much better that the bought ones. One day I´m going to have my own green-house! One day.

Results During the Valvaka

It´s really amazing that the English language, that have plenty of words for everything, doesn´t seem to have a simple, smart word for the "sitting and waiting for the election results to come in" = valvaka! When you spend hours in front of the television, zapping between the channels to find the newest information and the best interviews, with phone in hand to make and recieve calls from near and dear to exchange comments. Armed with something nice to eat and good wine, and a computer, of course, to be connected to Valmyndighetens (the authority in charge for organizing the election) site, to check the developments in all the districts. I stayed up until 1 am, which is VERY late for me! If there is a nice english word for this, please let me know!


Was I pleased with the outcome of the election? Well...I´m very unhappy about SD getting into Riksdagen! But I´m very pleased with my own personal achievement during the evening, almost a whole mitten:

The yarn is the lovely Rowan Pure Wool 4 ply, in the likewise lovely colour "Framboise". My camera and computer don´t make this stimulating colour any justice. The patterns is Mr Jareds excellent "Druid Mitts" (Ravely link), they are also called "Green Autumn". I have knitted four pairs of this pattern before and it´s really a joy to knit. So when I had some yarn left over from "Sissinghurst", I felt that it was time for a pair of mittens!

And when I went for a walk this morning, I felt that mitten-season has arrived: it was rather cold! I have to dig out my winter-garments from the depth of the wardrobe.

The mitten got finished...

...and while I was listening to various interviews and press-releases (the parliamentary outcome of the election can turn out a tricky one!), I cast on for the second mitten.

I wonder if Fredrik Reinfeldt can knit? He made no mention of it during the campaign.

Election Day

Today it´s Election Day in Sweden - time to elect a new government and members to Riksdagen. It´s a big day, a big thing to be able to take part in the democratic process. This time the election is very exciting and I will have to stay up tonight until there is a result. The waiting-time will of course be spent knitting!



These are wonderful chrysants standing just outside my door. Slowly the leaves on the trees are turning radiant red, orange and yellow and it´s like natures own fireworks to take farewell of the summer that has passed and to welcome the coming winter.



Election Day is celebrated with a new pair of socks, made out of some old cotton-yarn that has been laying for a long time in the stash. The yarn is "Tilda" and Tilda Multi" from Svarta Fåret. I´m quite pleased with the result and maybe I´m starting to change my views about knitting with cotton. I have been avoiding cotton for a long time because the projects seldom turned out well. But suddenly I feel a strong urge to use more cotton and new ideas keep popping up.

These socks were knitted mostly in transit: on the bus and on the underground to and from work. I like to have someting small in my bag to knit on and socks are rather ideal. I always carry a book as well, and sometimes it´s hard to make up my mind about wether to knit or read. The last few days litterature won and I have read the excellent "Igelkottens elegans" by Muriel Barbery. It was really hard to put it down and once I was so absorbed by the book that I missed my stop and had to take the underground back three stations...

Now I need to cast on for something new and decide on a new book to read. Luckily, I have plenty of yarn in the stash and a book-parcel arrived in the mail from Adlibris yesterday.

Two Favourite Harlots

I believe most internet-connected knitters are familiar with The Yarn Harlot and her highly entertaining blogging about knitting - and other things that can occur in a knitters daily life. She is also a "real" author, and two of her book are among my favourite knitting books. The first:



... is a small book, full of short observations, tips and wise words, about knitting. I pick up this book every now and then, and read a few pages, and it really works as a sort of knitting-meditation without needles. It´s highly entertaining and it´s so comforting to know that I´m not the only one in the world who spends a lot of time (too much??) knitting or thinking about knitting.


The next one contains the basic guides to knit things like hats, socks, mittens and scarves. It could be regarded as a book for the beginner, but it´s really more than that; no matter how much you knit, you often have to return to the basic of the basics. This book reminds you of how simple it all is, but also that there are some knitting rules best kept in mind. The Harlot is an experienced knitter and an humorous writer that gives you good knitting knowledge in a very entertaining way.




I haven´t seen any of these book translaited into Swedish, but don´t let that stop you: they are a great way to build up an English knitting vocabulary!

Autumn Sunday

A day has been spent thinking, drawing on checkered paper and knitting a swatch. But the process has been so much longer than that, the mental process has been going on for over a year. I once knitted a v-necked little something, with 3/4 length arms in Rowan Summer Tweed. I think the colour is called "Butterball". The result wasn´t a complete disaster, but it wasn´t a success either. I wore it a few times and then it went into hiding in the cupboard.



Last summer I finally decided that I was never going to wear that thing again and so I embarked on the project to dismantle it, rip it, soak the yarn, dry it and then rewind it. The yarn was far to good - and far to expensive!! - not to re-use! It´s during these recycling-projects that I gravely wonder if it´s so very wize to spend a lot of time to carefully sew knitted pieces together and then likevise carefully weave in all the ends. It´s really a boring and most trying work to perform, and then even more boring and trying to undo again! But done it was!

And an idea had formed in my head: I wanted to make a loose cardigan, knitted from the top, with quite a wide neck, a few buttons at the top and the whole thing knitted in a feather-and-fan-pattern. That was the theory! For a whole year I played with my idea and pondered about how to make it real. And suddenly I grabbed some paper, made my idea into a chart and knitted a swatch. It seemed like the idea was good even in reality and after some calculations I cast on.

I´m well aware that I don´t have enough yarn for the project: my cardigan-idea is bigger than the original sweater. But Summer Tweed exists in a lot of nice colours and I plan to end both arms and the body in another colur. Mabye pink.

Autumn regins and the apples are ripening all around. These are my neighbours apples, and they are so tempting! My own apple-tree is only three years old and gave a harvest this year enough for two apple-pies.

Röd rudbeckia - Echinacea Purpurea - is my new favourite in the garden. I have a white variation as well.

Syrénbuddleja (fjärilsbuske) - Buddleja Davidii - the sort is called "Nanho Purple". I thought it had died, the last winter was a tough one! But very late in the season it started to spring green shots from the root and finally the flowers came.

Just Two More...

Two new hats, in Drops Eskimo Print. As the experienced knitter will notice, the pinkish one has not yet been blocked. It takes some time for these hats to dry! I´m not too pleased with how the colouring turned out, I really must start to remember that I´m not so fond of variegated yarns. But it´s so easy to get seduced in the yarn-shop.

Not According to Plan

I had other plans, that had nothing to do with cotton or with hats. But a lone skein of cotton, Blue Sky Alpacas Hand Spun Organic Cotton, was lying on a shelf and demanded attention, like a small child. I have had this yarn for a while, but had no ideas what to do with it. It was just one skein and it was cotton (usually not my favourite!) so it didn´t trigger my imagination. But now this yarn wanted to se some action! I fingered it a while, choose a 3,5 mm circular needle and thus armed I started...

... a hat! A very simple hat, ribbed and with a small cable as the only embellishment.

For a while I was pondering on whether adding some colour with another cotton yarn would be a good idea, but my severest critic, Mr Darling Husband, was neagtive. "Make it simple" he said. "You tend to go a bit berserk with colour when you´re knitting! You would never go out and buy a hat patterned like that, so don´t knit one!"

Well, he´s not right all the time, but quite often, so I took his advice and voilá: a new hat is born!

The yarn was a very positive surprize: a real pleasure to knit with! I would really like to use it again and I have visions of a cardigan...

This was all for now, folks, and next time I will give you something completely different, like... hats!

Sissinghurst

Finally, the last end is woven in, all the stitches for the neck- and armband are picked up and knitted and the blocking is done! Sissinghurst (Ravelry-link) is finished and tomorrow she (he?) will make her (his?) debut in the big world.



Actually, I don´t think this vest looks very good on my trusted companion Miss Lizzy, it looks much better on me! But I think Miss Lizzy can live with that. This project really turned out exactly as I had hoped and I´m so pleased with it.

The colours suggested in the pattern was just to my liking so I saw no reason to experiment with other colours. The yarn, Rowan Pure Wool 4 ply, isn´t only a pure wool, it´s a also pure pleasure to knit with. The colour-pattern looks more difficult than it is, it looks stranded, but actually only one colour is used at the time. The effect is attained with lifted stitches - very simple, really!

However, I made some changes to the pattern, like starting the whole thing of with a tubular cast-on. And why weave in more ends than absolutely necessary and having to sew up two long long side seams - when it´s so much simpler to knit in the round? It would have been even handier to use steeks and so be able to knit the whole thing in the round, but I wanted to be able to try it on in progress. So some back-and-forth knitting was required and a lot of ends to weave in. Since I don´t very much care for sewing, it may sound stupid to use a sewn tubular bind-off for the neck-and armbands. But I have become really fond of the look of the tubular look and find it well worth the trouble.

And now it´s time to start a new project.