Kära Hemslöjden!

This post will only be in Swedish.

Grattis på 100-årsdagen.

Så roligt att det blir jubileumsfirande hela året med massor av utställningar: vävning på Nordiska museet, knypplade spetsar i Vadstena, Lilli Zickerman på Waldemarsudde, trasmattepicknick på Stortorget i Östersund och diverse hårdslöjd.

Men... stickningen då?

Jo, lite "Stickmagi från Färöarna" kommer att visas i Sollefteå. Och några av löven på Liljevalchs kommer att vara stickade. Men varför blir det ingen stor utställning om stickning som är så älskat just nu? Vi har ju så många fina gamla traditionella mönster som syns alldeles för sällan.

Kanske finns det en fin tanke med att Hemslöjden vill stödja den slöjd som inte är lika livskraftig som stickning? Hoppas det. Knyppling och vävning kan behöva få visa upp sig för att få nya fans.

Stickningen är kanske rentav lite för populär? Inte fin nog. Det är mer som en folkrörelse – det stickas ju mer än någonsin i hela Sverige, hemma och på stick-caféer, det öppnar nya garnaffärer, kommer nya handarbetstidningar och bilagor med massor av stickmönster och på nätet dominerar stickningen.

Stickningen klarar sig bevisligen bra utan Hemslöjden.
Frågan är snarare klarar sig Hemslöjden utan stickningen?

Stickad ärm från Dala-Floda. Fin nog att visas upp.

Why You Should Listen to those Voices in Your Head

As I was knitting this hat I could hear a voice that kept nagging me about the size.
– It´s going to be rather big, it said.
But did I listen? Of course not.

Turns out the voice was wrong anyway. The hat wasn´t big.
It was massive.

Even if my head is on the small side – and my ability to think seems to be in correlation to the size of my brain, there is no doubt about it. This hat would be too big for most people

But maybe one could wear this instead of a burka if one was of the burka-wearing kind?
And it works much better than an anti-age cream. No wrinkles to be seen anywhere.
But enough of the bad jokes.

This hat has now been ripped and I have started again. Luckily I love the combination of the colours – brown and green/blue – so I am not feeling too miserable.

And the pattern of happy little hounds really cheer me up!

On Show in the Snow

It´s well below freezing and pretty windy, too. Siberian winter has reached Stockholm and it´s the perfect weather to curl up on the sofa and knit. The Maja hat now has a pair of matching mittens.
Of course it meant that we had to go outside to take a photograph...
Brrr.

Luckily I also had a new hat to model or my ears would have frozen off.

Later on teenage daughter took the mittens and the camera out to play in the snow.

The yarn is my favourite Zauberball and Loopy Ewe Solids in bright green. They work well together.

And for all the members in "Friends of the Thumb Gusset" here is a close up of the thumb gusset. Enjoy!

Last weekend something happened that I never thought would actually happen. I finished my first mitten made in the twined knitting technique!

After washing and blocking the mitten softened and even stretched enough to fit my rather wide hand.That was lucky because  I had been worrying a lot about it being too narrow.

By the time I started knitting the thumb I had grown confident enough to risk making a simple pattern. And that is when I actually started enjoying the two end-knitting technique. Which feels like something of a miracle given how much I disliked it at first – but only because it made me feel like all thumbs.

Now I have started the second mitten. The first one took two years, but by now I think I have the speed up so I probably knit twice as fast.