FFK hat

"What about FFK? You should make a Fredrikstad hat, too!" said a friend when I was trying to sell some hats and patterns during av football game.

"You would buy it then?"

"Of course."

I had no idea what the FFK logo looked like, but I found it was a nice and "knitable" one.

There are some criteria to be fulfilled to make me go ahead designing another hat.

• I want a buyer for the model hat
• I want it to be a club that is supported by more than this one buyer, so the pattern will sell
• And it has to be a logo that I am able to turn into a knitting pattern

FFK is Fredrikstad's football club, and it's one of Norway's oldest football clubs, with a rich tradition. The town is called "Plankebyen" (plank town) because it used to be an important timber harbour. When searching for the logo, I found that it was inspired by the Polish flag, after a match between FFK and Poland. Hopefully, my friend, who is from Fredrikstad, will help me sell the FFK-pattern - coming soon!!

Update: Now available, 50 Nkr

Retro football hats

This is Lillehammer Football Club's hat (LFK). I don't think I have many readers in Lillehammer, and I doubt anybody else would be interested in this hat, but I post anyway. This is the best hat so far, says my husband. He likes the club's simple, retro logo. Pattern is coming (in Norwegian), with one big adult size, and one smaller child size, and ideas for down- or upsizing. As for the rest of my football hats, the pattern is sold to raise money for local football grounds. These to hats will probably become lottery prizes.

Small, bright, plastic thingies

I had never heard of stitch markers before I entered the knitting world on Internet. If I needed to mark stitches, I used contrast coloured scrap yarn. And was happy with that. But then I saw one beautiful stitch marker after the other, and became a little envious. It looked so simple and elegant - "place marker", in stead of looking for scrap yarn (that's not hard to find in my house, though..) Anyway, I finally have my own stitch markers! I first saw them on Tikru's blog. And then made my first Etsy purchase, from Succaplokki. I have considered it before, but most sellers are in the US, which means unreasonably high shipping cost for some small stitch markers. Buying from a neighbouring country like Finland is cheaper. And the markers are lovely.

When I was a kid, we also had these plastic beads. But I never saw those small spiky tables to make patterns on. I know I would have loved that! None of my boys have accepted my offers to teach them to knit or crochet, but they've done a lot of beading, so they must have inherited something..

Norwegian football hats

There are too many football hat patterns now to put them all in the sidebar. Starts looking more like a football blog than a knitting blog - and I'm not that interested in football...

So I'll put the pattern links and information here, first the Norwegian hats. The post will be updated when new patterns are made.

The patterns and the hats are all sold to raise money for two new football fields for the kids in our town. The price is 50 Nkr per pattern.

ETA - all football hats patterns are free and can be downloaded here.

Rosenborg, Rosenborg!









LYN!









Viking-lue!








LFK-hats











Heia Fredrikstad!










Vål'enga!











Heia Brann!









Skeidlue!

Good prognosis!

Knitting 'can delay' memory loss!

English stars

The Astronomist's hat pattern is now translated into English. As the football hats, it's sold to raise money for two new football fields for the children in our town. You can download it directly here if you have a pay pal account. Price 7 $. If you prefer the Norwegian version, send me an e-mail. The price is 50 nok. Read more here.

Colour knitting books

Thank god for amazon.com!

I fell in love with the sweater on the front page of Color Style. So I decided to buy the book. Amazon told me it wouldn't arrive till end of May, but here it is, full of nice, colourful patterns. But the front page sweater is still my favourite.

The other book, The Essential Guide to Color Knitting Techniques
by Margaret Radcliffe was recommended to me on Ravelry by fibercrone (ravelink). I've loved colour knitting for many years, and when it comes to stranded colourwork I consider myself quite experienced. But there are so many other techniques... I really recommend the book!

And on top of that, I found a book that had been missing for a long time, Maskeball. That's another favourite!

Sad news

I had my first patterns published in The Inside Loop, and I found many other interesting patterns in the magazine, so I was sad to hear that there will not be any more issues, at least for some time. Yesterday, Diane wrote this in The Inside Loop Ravelry Group:

We regret to have to announce today that we will not be running any more issues of The Inside Loop until further notice. The economic climate is affecting us, and at this stage we are unable to offer the quality of publication that we believe in.

The archived issues will stay exactly where they are for now, and will never become unavailable. If we descide to restructure the hosting set-up we will let you know, but they’ll always be somewhere!

We hope to return when circumstances allow. We have really enjoyed running the magazine and the opportunities it has given us to work with many very talanted designers. Thank you all for your continued support!