Bad shawl karma

During Edinburgh Yarn Festival I knitted this brown shawl. It soon became one of my favourites, pretty and wearable as it was. The pattern is Spring Festival, by Jo Kelly. 

So I brought it with me to Shetland Wool Week, where I also casted on a different shawl, in a Wensleydale wool from John Arbon. If I'm not mistaken, the yarn was a special batch that's not part of their usual yarns. Anyway, the yarn is soft and lovely to work with, a bit fluffy and shiny, like mohair. 

I enjoyed the knitting - the pattern is Velvet Rose Shawl by Helen Stewart, aka Curioushandmade.

I loved my new shawl, even more as I mislaid the brwn shawl somewhere in Lerwick. At the moment, the new shawl also has an unknown location, but I'm hoping it will show up again. Luckily I have another skein of the yarn, but I'm not feeling like casting on another shawl just yet. 

S for summer and shawls *2*

I bought this lovely red yarn at Edinburgh Yarn Festival.  It's a Swedish yarn that I hadn't seen before. Extraordinarily red, soft and woolly. The link is for the Swedish site. I bought the yarn from an English based shop run by a couple, I believe she is Swedish and he is British. I bought two skeins, planning for a shawl - every woman needs a red shawl, doesn't she?

The skein in the photo is the darker - dyed on grey yarn. There was only one skein left of that, so I got one brighter skein dyed on white too. Then I had to figure out how to combine the two.

I didn't use a pattern for this shawl. I started with one stitch and worked a triangle, as I learnt from Gudrun Johnstons Aestlight pattern.

I knitted until I almost ran out of the bright red colour, then cast off the triangle. I picked up the yarn over loops on the sides and worked a feather and fan pattern, based on Kate Davies' Northmavine Hap pattern from her book, Colours of Shetland. When I was happy with the border lenght, I cast off. 

A perfect shawl for a chilly summer evening in Norway. 

Photo album from Edinburgh - page 4 - shopping

Grellow, with a hint of red :-)

From left to right:

Easyknits, Smoke, colour Dabloon (yellow). Plan: Filijokus  or Strrripes by Åsa Tricosa

Blacker yarns,  Tamar Lustre Blend, shade Ottery Plan: Same as above

Anna Maltz' book Penguin: a knit collection.

Eden Cottage Yarns, Malham DK, colourway Natural. Plan: Mayhem shawl by ... Åsa Tricosa too!

John Arbon Textiles, Devon Grey Wensleydale. Plan: Probably a shawl.

Wool Tribe, the EYF2016 magazine.

Ullcentrum, 2 ply, red. Plan: A hap shawl.

So that's it for Edinburgh Yarn Festival: The festival is over, but I have many hours of happy knitting and memories.

Buachaille vest and knotted steek!

When Kate Davies launched her new yarn Buachaille, I was too curious not to join the Sevenskeinsclub to get hold of the loveliness. The club also gives you several patterns for small accessories, but I wanted to fit all the colours into one garment, so I opted for a vest. An am quite happy with the result.

The yarn is soft and the colours play well together, I think. I still have some left, there might be a hat or mitts, or a cowl - we'll see. 

I tried a new steeking technique for the vest, the knotted steek, as explained by Tomofholland. The weaving in of ends took forever, but I still think it was a good choice for the yarn. I also did a latvian braid instead of a ribbing at the neck opening and the armholes. 

The Sevenskeinsclub is sold out, but the yarn will be available for sale in January. I have also seen somewhere that there will be three more colours! Wonder what they might be... I would love some golden yellow, some purple, and mayby brown. 

Shetland Wool Week was brilliant because of....

...the people we met

Photo copyright Ann Myhre

Photo copyright Ann Myhre

You can read Ysolda's insightful blog post about Knitsonik's Stranded Colourwork  Sourcebook here.

Photo copyright Ann Myhre

Insert Jeni here, I didn't get your photo, Jeni....

...Jamieson's of Shetland

1. ...Jamieson and Smith Shetland Wool Brokers

Oliver telling us all about wool...
I must admit his dialect was not the easiest to understand....

1. ... the colours!

I'm dreaming of a white....

.....blanket.

Or rather, I was dreaming of it, and decided to make one. 

Different white wool yarn, 

different sized squares,

different patterns. 

Mostly worked during lectures at university many years ago. 

For some years now, it's been in desperate need of repair, 

which I recently got around to do: 

Ta dah! A new bedspread.

"Bind deg ein blomekrans"

I'm working on a pattern collection called "Bind deg ein blomekrans". The name is from a Norwegian folk song. Here's the first project, a hat, pattern coming soon.

Here are the lyrics of the song in Norwegian. 

Bind deg ein blomekrans,
kom så til leik og dans,
fela ho læt no så vakkert i lund.
/: Sit ikkje stur og tung, syn at du og er ung,
veks fri som fagre lyng, dans no og syng. :/

I checked for an English translation of the song, but couldn't find it. So I asked Google translate for help:

Tie up a flower wreath
came to play and dance,
fela ho Laet anything so beautiful in the grove.
/: Sit not sad and heavy, and vision that you are young,
alternating free as fair heath, dancing and no singing. :/

It doesn't maks much sence, does it?

Here's my own try: 
Tie up a flower wreath
then come to play and dance
the fiddle sounds so beautiful in the grove
/: do not sit sad and melancholic, show that you too are young,
grow freely as the fair heather, dance now, and sing :/

Maybe you have a better suggestion? Feel free to comment!

Here's my flower wreath, anyway, in 19 degress blow zero...

And here's the song if you wish to hear.

Meet Dasha

I fell in love with this photo at North Rock Gallery in Lerwick during the wool week. The sheep's name was Dasha, and I couldn't leave Shetland without it. When I bought the photograph, both me and my friend were sure it would fit in my large suitcase, but alas, it didn't. The gallery helped me wrapping it more solidly to get it home. On the small plane from Shetland to Edinburgh, it was no problem, on the way back to Norway, I had to pay extra. Anyway, I got it home. My husband doesn't love sheep as much as I do, so I have put it in my office. 

About wool, in Norsk Husflid there were some interesting articles about Norwegian wool in the last issue. One of the articles is available online, about wool classification. I read about a project )called "Valuing Norwegian Wool", and when googling this, I found that there also was a Norwegian wool week. On Campaign for wool's page, there was also a note about this. One of the events was an exhibition about "The white gold". 

I have some FOs to show you soon, but January is busy this year. Have a nice weekend, everyone!

FOs for hands and feet

I'm trying to finish off some UFOs and do some stash busting before I go to Shetland for the Wool Week in October. The sheepy hats were stash busting projects, these to are old UFOs finally finished (not that I don't have older UFOs, but anyway...) The mittens were started in March 2011, it says on my Ravelry project page (that never lies....).

It's the first version of my 

"All I want for Christmas"  mittens.

With colours from the original inspiration. Here's what I wrote atbout the pattern: "In my town there is a Christmas jazz concert every year. Their definition of jazz is wide, and it’s usually a varied, beautiful and joyful concert. The last song is always a cool and cheerful version of Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you”. The scene where the concert is played is an old scene that was redecorated for the Winter Olympics in 1994. The mittens are inspired by these decorations. The original colors are beautiful golden shades, but with too little contrast to show the mitten pattern, so I chose blue for a wintery pair of mittens, perfect for a Christmas gift."

Yarn: Rauma Finullgarn

Needles: 2,5 mm

Modifications: In stead of picot edging at the bottom, I did two garter stitch ridges (later decorated with chain stitches, which sort of made it look like a Latvian braid). The Latvian braids on cuff were also substituted with garter stitch. And I decorated the flower a little differently than in the pattern.

And, surprise, surprise! A pair of socks!

Knitnetty's Lovely & Thick Rose Socks,

a free pattern.

I used several colours, from my stash,

otherwise followed the pattern as best I could.

One sheep, two sheep ....

Pinneguri  inspired me to knit some sheep!



I had several hours on the train in front of me, and needed something small to knit. So I grabbed some suitable left overs from my Shetland wool type yarn, mostly Finullgarn, some Kauni, and some unknown.



It was a fun knit (I want to make more sheep!) and I'm happy with the colours I found in my stash. But summer is finally here, and I can wait some months to wear it. It will certainly go with me to Shetland in October!

ETA: The pattern is of course Kate Davies' brilliant Sheep Heid! Highly recommended.

There's a fly on your sweater!

When I first saw this fly, I knew I had to use it at some point. I asked the designer, and she made it available as a chart on Ravelry.



Then I fell in love with the cowl "Stripes to keep me warm". And I saw lots of stripy sweaters on Ravelry (like this and this), and felt I needed a stripy sweater too.

Two skeins of Kauni Effektgarn bought for a long forgotten project to be, were fetched from stash, and striping started. I discovered the jogless stripes technique - you might notice the colour changes here, but it's not very obvious, is it?

 Not a perfect shot, but at least a modelled one!


The sweater is worked top down, starting out as in the "Stripes to keep me warm" cowl pattern. Obviuously a lot shorter neck than the cowl. I did the first increase as in the cowl pattern. The second increase was incorporated into the first rows of housefly chart. I divided for sleeves and body using the EZ percentage system. 


I did some shaping on the body  as I went, should have started it a bit earlier, but wool is forgiving and it looks nice enough, I think. I love wearing it!

Well done, Tori, first finished big project in a long time!

Two flowers for the Christmas gift along

Another pair of mittens is finished. This time a Christmas gift, not saying for whom...

Pattern is my own Blomst.

The left thumb crisis is overcome, and the (literally) afterthought thumb worked just fine! 

The yarn is a new aquaintance for me, Sterk, from Du Store Alpakka, a delicious sock yarn, a blend of 40% alpaca, 40% merino, 20% nylon. Super soft, and probably strong, too. (The name Sterk meaning strong in Norwegian.) I used just under 20 g of each og the CC, just under 30 g of MC.

Modifications: I omitted one pair of leaves, to make the mittens a bit shorter.

Want a pair of your own?

Get the pattern here:

If you buy the hat pattern to, you get 1$ off each pattern

(you see the discount when you come to your cart)

Crafty tourism

Earlier this summer, we visited Sjølingstad Uldvarefabrik. A beautiful place on a sunny summer day, where they make yarn and beautiful woollen blankets.


I came home with some yarn, of course. Wool and mohair (but not the fluffy type). I do have some plans, even a small, secret wip.




I could not resist buying a book either, "Invisible threads" by Annemor Sundbø. It's not a pattern book, although it does contain some patterns, it's more a book about knitting history, culture and symbolism in knitting. I like it. There are also charts with old motifs, which is always nice to have.

You can see some more photos on Flickr.

Icelandic goodies

My parents went to Iceland, and look what they brought back to me:









Létt-Lopi...

Kristin, my mother's friend in Reykjavik, meant I should also try Loðband Einband (Icelandic Laceweight).

I want to go to Iceland too! Maybe next year...