Happy Holidays!

I´ve just returned from Småland and my bright and beautiful god daughter´s graduation. 

This is Linn in the Summer Mystery Shawlette that I finished last week. It´s the perfect size to bring if you are going travelling like Linn is planning to do in the autumn.

Linn partied until 4 this morning and still manages to look this fresh faced today. That´s 18 for you.
Linn´s mum and I stayed up talking until midnight and I am not going to show you what I look like today. Even though I slept two hours on the train home I feel like the 45-year-old wreck that I am.

Since the first part of my summer holidays have already started I have spent all evening packing stuff to take to the cottage in the archepelago where my son and I will spend the week, just the two of us (while husband is still working).

So far I´ve packed one fair isle sweater that need sleeves.
One hat that I started knitting on the train going home from Småland.
One lace cowl with only five rows done.
Yarn for one mohair shawl, just in case I get bored and need something new to knit.

I hope this will last me all week. And that I have something to show when I return.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

The Sun Makes Shawls Grow Faster

The few plants that grow in my only flower bed are wilting already. But it seems as if the sun has a good effect on knitted shawls. I finished two over the weekend.

The first one was Grace:

Grace is designed by my friend Heléne Wallin, and you can download this pattern on ravelry.

It has beads all over and I decided to make a beaded picot edging too – that took forever to knit. But it was definitely worth it. This is such a lovely shawl and I can see myself wearing it a lot with my pink and green tartan coat.

If you look closely at the sea in the background you can see my father-in-law and my two kids taking the dingy for a trial run.

The next shawl that I finished was my friend Wendy´s Summer Mystery shawlette.

I made it in thinner yarn so it is quite small, but it is very pretty.

It will look a lot better once it´s blocked. Just look at the edging – it´s so cute!

I have a lovely godchild who graduates on Friday and now I´m contemplating giving this shawl to her.

It would be hard to part from it because I like it so much, but I think the colours would suit her and it is a design made for a beautiful, young girl – don´t you think?

Besides, I´ve already started on another pink project, but this time it is a cowl. And my own "design".

I don´t know how many times I have written "join in a circle, being careful not to twist the stitches" in one of my patterns..

This bundle of joy is almost 500 stitches and you´d think that I would make really sure I hadn´t twisted the first row before I started knitting. But, no. I didn´t. Sometimes I think that I knit to stay humble. And that "staying-humble" part of knitting is going really well!

Thank you once again for all the kind comments about the baby blanket and my niece Hilma. She is such a sweetheart and I look forward to knitting many things for her in the future.

And next time I will show more photos from my weekend in Dala-Floda.

Hilma´s Blanket

Thank you for all the kind comments about my beautiful niece Hilma and her new blanket!

It probably took me about a month to knit.
I made up some of the animals myself and some come from old embroidery pattern booklets.

The yarn that I´ve used is my favourite – Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Solids – that sadly has been discontinued.

The blanket gave me an excuse to hoard buy some more of this nearly extinct yarn – from knitters on Ravelry. Now I really must have the biggest CTH stash in all of Scandinavia!

The first two rows were easy to pick: dogs and cats.

And I love owls and squirrels.

The penguins are from an old  embroidery booklet. And those litte mice are of course – gerbils.

Everyone in Sweden old enough to remember the 1970´s will recongnize the koala.
Yes, it is the same koala that Ingemar Stenmark had on his hat. Though I´ve changed the koala slightly and added tufts of hair on the ears, for instance. The koala is my own personal favourite.

The cute goat is also from an old embroidery booklet.

But cutest of all is of course Hilma with her blanket.

Photo taken by Hilma´s father Per, who is a professional photograhper.

When I Fall in Love...

We interrupt this Dala-Floda-feast to welcome a new member of the family.
My niece Hilma.

Isn´t she adorable with her black hair and cute profile?

We have waited a long time for her arrival – she was ten days late. Which was a bit lucky for me, because this baby blanket took quite a while to make.

Like so many times before the inspiration came from Norway and my friend Pinneguri who has made several beautiful baby blankets, or vogntepper as they call them in Norwegian. What a lovely tradition!

And what a coincidence that Hilma´s mother happened to have a favourite blanket when she was a little girl – a blanket that she took everywhere and that she couldn´t sleep without. In the end it was just a rag.
Now I hope that Hilma will love this blanket until it ends up as a rag.

Dala Floda, part 1 – Heaven is a Place on Earth

If I should end up in heaven when I die – I´m sure that I´ll recognize the place.

I never thought that I would live to see such a huge collection of beautiful Dala Floda costumes!

Anna-Karin Jobs Arnberg, who organized the weekend in Dala Floda, had borrowed some from the local village museum and some of them come from her own family. Her mother and grandmother were both embroiderers – or påsömmerskor as they say in Floda.

Anna-Karin is a very talented påsömmerska herself, and had made a beautiful jacket with embroidered flowers, that I failed to take a photo of. But this is Anna-Karin arranging all the dräktdelar (costume parts).

From the beginning everything looked the same to me, but we quickly learnt to distinguish between older and slightly newer embroidery and knitted sleeves. There is also quite a difference between costumes from Floda and the neighbour parish of Gagnef. But these two jackets are pretty typical for Floda.

The knitted sleeves were sewn onto a bodice made of green woollen material. Anna-Karin has written a very interesting essay about the knitted sleeves and gave us a talk in the evening. Then the teacher Karin Kahnlund, taught us how to knit the mittens that belong to the costume in a special twined technique.

On the inside of the sleeve you can see that the knitter bound every second stitch and on the following row made sure that they did not line up.

The patterns are smaller closer to the cuff and grow bigger as the sleeves get wider.

Sometimes the knitter would use embroidery patterns for the knitted sleeves. These rather complicated flowers are probably an example of that.

On Saturday there was the annual local market for selling and/or trading costumes. Eva Eriksson – who gave us a very interesting talk about the costumes in the nearby parish of Boda – bought this cute hat for one of her daughters.

I bought two old embroidered hats, too – even if my teenage daughter wouldn´t be caught dead in one. I just needed a little hat like this, you know...

And as soon as I have save up enough I think that I need a jacket like this, too.

To be continued...

Home Alone

This weekend I saw husband and son off to Hamburg for a long weekend while daughter went on a 24-hour school trip. I was all alone in a big, empty flat (that usually feels small and crowded).

So after wiping my tears there was only one thing to do. Party!



I belong to a group of knitters that are really serious about knitting (nördfaktor 10 typ). We call ourselves The Knit Salon, Sticksalongen, and the subjects we discuss would bore non-knitters to tears if they hade to endure one of our meetings.

Seven of us met on Saturday afternoon and we knitted, talked about knitting and had wine that is supposed to taste like wet wool (don´t ask). In this photo you can see Tove B, Asplund knits, En till and Wynja. Knitting with Katarina was probably in the kitchen when this photo was taken, dishing out the cake she had brought. Ah, cake!

I took the opportunity to work on the neverending ruffle edge with beads on my Grace shawl. It´s easier to do boring things in nice company. Nevertheless it took me five hours to reach the half way point.

I found a good description in Knitty about how to do a beaded picot edging. You can find it here.









The main part of the shawl is made of two strands of yarn held together.  Madeline Tosh silk and Rowan Kidsilk Haze work together beautifully. The ruffle edge is knitted using only the silk yarn and the change of texture adds a little extra something.

I wish I could say that this is all my own brilliant thinking – but I have to confess that I had a helper. Blogless Anna, who is a member of Sticksalongen, is a master of combining yarns and she gave me the idea last summer.

(Anna is the one dressed in black, reading a new book with Norwegian patterns that Ivar had brought.)

To make that picot edging isn´t my own idea either. It was Maria, who suggested it. She couldn´t join us yesterday because she is away on the west coast – of America.

What a party that was!
I don´t think my husband will recognize our home on his return tomorrow (it´s not usually this tidy when I´ve been on my own).

Half the edging done – and half to go. Thanks for coming over and keeping me company!

Today, my very tired daughter and I have taken it real easy. I´ve been working on Wendy´s Mystery Shawl while thinking about ideas for new patterns. I´m still digesting the fantastic weekend in Dala Floda and I promise to post more about it soon.

And I predict that next winter will be all pink.

Pretty in Pink

An old bag mature woman nearing 50 should surely not be knitting pink things for herself. She ought to grow up and realize that her pink phase is over.

And if she insists on pretending that she´s still in her 30´s she ought to get a face lift to make it easier for other people to believe that she is still a girl in her prime. Or she will be a walking embarrassment.

Okay, then. A face lift it is. Because I clearly can´t stop myself from buying new pink yarn.

Last week my friend Wendy started a Summer Mystery Shawl knit-along. And for the first time I decided to join in the fun. Wendy makes such lovely lace designs that I am willing to take the plunge, even if I have no idea what the finished shawl will look like.

Come to think of it, this must be pretty good therapy for an old control freak...

I don´t know if there is anything called a stash malfunction – but when I looked through my stash I could not for the life of me find any suitable yarn at all. Weird.

Luckily I live very close to the yarn shop Litet Nystan and I seemed to recall, albeit vaugely, that I´d seen some pretty nice hand dyed lace wool in there last time I visited.

It was this little beauty.

The next part of the pattern won´t be published until Thursday so I had to find something to occupie myself with while waiting.

And lo and behold – look what I found in my heap of UFO:s.

Why yes, it is another pink shawl. I started it last year, but never quite finished it. Because I decided to to do a beaded picot edging and it takes forever. This is how far I had got after a whole weekend´s work.

And I´ve got about a gazillion stitches left to cast off.

The pattern is called Grace (ravelry link) and it´s designed by my friend Heléne, who is also a very talented designer. Grace is a simple, but stylish shawl with beads and a cute ruffle edge.

I thought that I was very clever and traded one of my own patterns for this pattern and I´m very happy with the swap.

Now there is only one more knitted thing that is just ever so slightly pink. It´s a new Britta hat made in wool from Östergötlands ullspinneri.

And if you can´t afford a face lift it works nearly as well if you just grow your fringe until it covers all the wrinkles around the eyes...