Keep knitting...

Still knitting for the exhibition, there´s 1½ "project" left to do. I knit and I knit. My brain amuses itself with new ideas, with the future, what to knit afterwards, while my hands are busy with the present.

While Knitting

In March my knitting will appear at an exhibition at Hantverksstallet -where I´m a member. I have spent some time planning what to make for this occasion, then I
made up my mind, bought a lot of tempting Rowan Pure Wool DK in all the colours that caught my fancy and now I´m knitting. But I´m not going to show it here yet.

Yesterday I went into a bookstore and found this:

"Norrtullsligan" has been on my reading-list for some time and of course I bought it. And started it on the way home from work. Often when I read books considered to be "classics", I get disappointed. After all that has been said about them, after all the films and tv-series, the poor books have a hard work to live up to their reputation. This book is a Swedish classic. It´s written in 1908 by Elin Wägner (Wikipedia-link), feminist, writer and a fighter for woman´s suffrage.

"Nortullsligan" is, in short, about the life of some office-girls in Stockholm in the beginning of the twentieth century, about their hopes and fears, their lack of money and possibilities. They are paid 1/4 of the male wages, are not allowed to vote, but have to pay tax- of course! They are fighting to make the ends meet, are dreaming of meeting Mr Right, but feel loneliness and ill health waiting round the corner. And their attempt to fight for their rights are crushed with easiness.

The book is very good, it´s hard to put it down - this is a classic that actually hasn´t got the attention it deserves! While reading I realize that if I had been born at that time, I possibly could have been one of these girls. I also realize, that while my situation is so enormusly better than the average office-girl of 1908, the maxime "Equal pay for equal work" certainly isn´t in force yet! Not in my office, anyway!

Untangle Me!

The winter is showing us its evil side: it´s plus-degrees outside, it´s raining, blowing hard and the world is gray, gray, gray. So it´s really excellent that my two big hobbys in life - knitting and litterature - are both best executed indoors, in a comfy sofa!

I spent some frustrating hours some days ago trying to wind some yarn I bough to comfort myself with. The yarn is eco-cotton from Regnbågen and as soon as I saw it I got a picture in my head of adorable little kids-sweaters with some sort of lacy edge. The first hank was wound in a jiffy, but the next two must have been sent to me as a punishment for some very horrible act of mine (I wonder what that could have been...), they took hours and hours!


They where totally tangled up...

and even had knots in them! Not knots as in two ends of yarn joined together, but totally unexplainable knots!

It´s the first time I buy this yarn and I must say, that I´m not in a hurry to buy it again! I have two more hanks to wind, but I`m not in a hurry to do that either. Hopefully these two monster-hanks where a yarnely example of måndagsexemplar (a bad specimin - possibly manifactured on a Monday, when the producer hasn´t quite recovered from the weekend yet- of a product that is usually quite well made).

One of my orchids is challenging the grayness of the season and has bursted out in a joyful explosion of colour. The orchids are utterly boring when they´re "in between", but they certainly make up for that when the buds open up.

Starting New Project-Time!

Somehow the switching from one year to the next starts a lot of processes in my mind. No, I´m not going to start a completely new life, I´m perfectly happy with the life I have! No impossible New Year-promises are made and I have no grand plans for 2011. BUT I have quite a lot of small ones! And a lot of old ones still waiting to be worked out. Like the eleven or twelve balls of Rowan Cotton Glace that has been with me for a long time, originally bought for a project long abandoned. Suddenly I got the itch to make a cotton cardigan, mabye a bit along the lines of Jinny (Ravelry link) from Rowan 39. Not actually Jinny, but a v-necked cardigan with someting interesting for the edges - and someting interesting happening inbetween...

I´m very fond of the Cotton Glace, although this colour isn´t really my colour. Since I was the one who bought this yarn in this colour, once it must have attracted me...

It has turned and every day the daylight gains a few minutes. Today the sun went up at 9:39 and went down at 15:13, tomorrow the day will be three minutes longer. So it´s still very dark... All this dark time is excellent to spend knitting and watching something interesting. At the moment I´m watching

"Colditz" - terribly exciting with very good actors, among them Jeremy Kemp!

I actually made one little New Year-promise: to knit more swatches. At least one a week, knitted without relation to any project, just to try new things. Mabye I will display them on the blog as "Swatch of the Week".

Not Much Left of 2010

There is not much left of 2010 and in the media it´s - as always! - very popular to run long summarizes of the (almost) past year and to advance a lot of guessing about the year to come. Well, 2010 has been a good knitting year and I have great hope that 2011 also will turn out very good - yarnwise!!

If I try to summarize my knitting year, I find that I have learnt some new things, like tubular cast-on and bind offs, and knitting braids.

This is the 2010 aquisition for the Christmas-tree: a hanging stack of parcels. Isn´t it charming?


My "Every Way Wrap" is finished, it was a very quick knit, and a real success in this very cold and snow-rich winter. I found some buttons in my button-box and I use a Knit-Pro cable-needle as a shawl-pin.

I made almost no alterations to the pattern, except casting on and binding off in a tubular way. Mabye the yarn wasn´t ideal for this project, it could have been a bit softer and with better drape. When worn as a vest, it restricts the arm-movements quite a lot. But it warms the shoulders and the lower part of the back wonderfully. It´s three months left of the winter and I will get a lot of use out of this item before spring is here.

Now I´m going to finish the last project for this year. Of course I already have plans for what to cast on next.

Christmas Day Calm

Christmas-time is both joy and stress at the same time. The joy - well that is pretty obvious: some free-time together with the family and a lot of nice food, chocolate and lit candles. The stress - well, as usual the clever planning fell apart, due to sick children, unexpected catastrophies at work and other events that appeared like flashes from a clear sky (a Swedish saying for when unexpected things happens without any warning).


But after taking some deep breaths things usually can be worked out and Christmas could follow the traditional tracks. The ham took its seven hours in the oven and came out like a masterpiece. The Christmas-tree was decorated and immediately started to spread that magical Christmas-feeling. The family flooded in and everything turned out very well. It was even possible to squeeze in som knitting...

I only got one knitting-related Christmas-present: The very tempting "Knitted Cakes" by Susan Penny. This book offers great ideas to use up all those small balls of left-overs that builds up over the year.

Christmas Day is a "between day" in this house, when we go for long walks, look into the new books and tries the new games. The family is playing golf on the Wii-game and I´m going to start a new knitting project - the last of this year?

It´s Not Hard to Remember Roses in December

The world outside is incredible white! The snow lies thick and every branch and twig is covered with thick layers of frost. By the way: "rimfrost" is one of the most beautiful words in the Swedish language! At this moment its -22 outside.

In this white world one need contrasts and indoors I enjoy lit candels and flowers. Amaryllis kindly lets themselves be manipulatet to bloom in december and roses, of course, can be bought all year round. They are such a luxury.

My college at work wanted a pair of leg-warmers, a very much needed item this winter! She wanted them black and I used Rowan Pure Wool Dk in a a shade of black that I would describe as "off-black".

They are knitted in the round, started with a tubular cast on and a lacy sort of "cable" runs up the outside of each leg. The "cable is surrounded by reversed stockinette stitch and a single knit stich forms a "seam" at the back of the leg. I made increases and later decreased to make room for the calf and ended with k2 p2 rib and a sewn bind-off. And Alex was pleased with the result.

At the moment its hard to believe that roses will bloom in the garden in just seven months time (fn the rose-bushes survives the winter, that is!).