Get crafty

I simply cannot resist japanese craft books or japanese fabrics. And yesterday was a good day fabric-wise, because the mailman brought my latest acquisition from nuno-plus. (This was the second time I ordered from them, and this time I had even faster delivery than the first - great place!). Sorry about the colours being a bit dull when compared to real life, but daylight saving time and the approach of winter makes for poor photography:



Are they not cute? I can see a lot of christmas presents made from these - hope to get seriously crafty in a month or so...

Inspired by all the images on Ravelry, I digged out my progressing Earth Stripe Wrap - design from Rowan Mag 42 - which I hope I will be able to get a bit further with really soon. The fabric and colours are great (again, apologize the dull photo),



but I must confess that I subbed some of the shades with what was handy in the Kid Silk Haze stash herearound. Love Kaffe Fassett's way with colours, though.

Kiddo has finally given in to the knitting bug. Yippie!!! Maybe mohair is not the best choise for a first-timer, but it had to be pink, and pink yarns in a light worsted weight are not really in abundance in this knitters stash.




At least it is a good quality mohair ;-) I can see some pink yarn shopping in the near future...

Jack is back

Trying to keep up with the demands for Halloween action around here ;-)

A few mini-punpkins are spread around the house, and Jack is sitting (standing?) on the veranda.



I have started knitting with some of the Habu from AllyPally. One strand of Tsumugi (A-1) and one strand of the Wool Stainless Steel (A-148), on 4.5 mm needles. Supposedly it will end up as a jacket/cardi. The drape is just great!



It looks like it will be a quick knit, but one never knows around here. Really love the feel of the yarn. Maybe I should also try to get some action going on the Habu Linen Paper/Rowan Kid Silk Haze jacket I started a really long time ago? Hmmm...

Where did that summer go?

No I'm not complaining. I love the autumn season. But the last tree months just seems to have gone by so quickly. Oh, looking at my saved photos I can see that they were at least put to use here around.

Summer vacation this year was a trip to Trinidad & Tobago. Rather exotic for this dane, but as my youngest niece was getting married on Tobago, I thought I'd rather go.



Kiddo absolutely loved being a brides maid!

Danish beaches are usually really good. But they do not have palm threes like this



And we rarely have these views



And certainly the flora and fauna on Trinidad are not really like the danish. We have no humming-birds



and our flowers does not look like this



I think that I could have stayed for a month just looking at this



though it made me think of "Gorillas in the Mist" more than of leaving the Asa Wright Nature Center on Trinidad.

I thought that vampires and such were mostly at home in Transylvania. But maybe they also live on Trinidad?



After going home again to dull, old Denmark where it was rainy or cloudy for most of the summer's end, we did manage to harvest some of the best fruits around, the summer berries



Actually we don't have any berry bushes ourselves, but I always get to loot the bushes by my sisters summer cottage, and we just love to make berry compot/stewed fruit, marmelade and berry muffins. Yummy!

In the last part of summer we managed to also get a trip to Lego-land in Billund, the home of Lego. And a bit of sword fighting just fit the bill after surviving one of the new attractions, a waterfall roller-coaster



I was really a baaad Rowanette this year. Managed to be awfull late in getting my gift for the annual exchange finished,



but it went in the mail just before I left for London. Went there to visit with knitting-friends that I know through knitting lists, and to go to Ally-Pally for the first time. I had a truly wonderful time in London; being with such nice knitters is always a treat!

Regarding the Ally-Pally visit I tried to be a very moderate shopper, and only (mostly?) buy things that are not readily available here in Denmark (ahem - rather easy, as I can usually only get "foreign" brand yarns through internet-shopping, unless it is those large british brand-names like Rowan or Debbie Bliss). So my Ally-Pally loot



mainly consisted of Habu yarns. I love Habu yarns!

The rest of the London trip was spent on both cultural and yarny doings. I had a visit to the V&A, but also managed to do a bit of damage at Stash in Putney, Cath Kidston, Orla Kiely and Liberty. My poor feet!

Came home again at the start of the school's autumn break. So we have spent the last week kite-flying



and a lot of other autumn-doings. Halloween in the US form is not traditionally celebrated here in Denmark, but it has started creeping in. Tivoli in Copenhagen has happily adopted Halloween now, as a means to prolong the season in the amusement park, and so we had to go there together with all the other Copenhageners with kids. Apparently, spinning is a pastime for Halloween witches, at least those in Tivoli



but thankfully, there are also more peaceful pumpkin scare-crows.



As a service to the tourists, Tivoli has translated the info-signs to english



but maybe a little proof-reading would be appropriate? Well, at least the danish opening hours are before the closing ones ;-) Nope, it was not just on this one sign - it was all of them.

Never mind, we had a really good time, and enjoyed the pumpkins all over the place, and the illuminations that came on with the dusk.



Ack, this post was a little long, and a little picture-heavy. But that is probably what happens when trying to cover more than 3 months in one blog post... I'll try to do better next time ;-)

Solstice

Yesterday was the day we danes celebrates solstice - that is, if we celebrate it at all. We do not have as extensive traditions as our swedish brothers and sisters, who revels in herring and schnapps when celebrating; our celebration is usually a modest bonfire and an excuse to sing some of the danish old-timers. And according to lore, the witch on the bonfire will fly to Bloksbjerg, and take all evil with her. Our solstice is also called Saint Hans, our rendition of John the Baptiser. So there is a merry mix of heathen and christian lore here, but it all sums up to a wish of eradicating evil. And as with most of those traditional things, it apparently doesn't matter if it is done in a promotion of violence. Aehm?

But the rain was pouring down, and it really looked that this would be one of those solstice celebrations that drowned in the rain. Alas, at 6 pm it suddently stopped raining, and there was a promise of a dry evening.

The bonfire closest to our place is one in Frederiksberg Have. It is a rather large thing with entertainment for kids and adults, but as we didn't get there before 8pm, we unfortunately (no, not really) missed most of the opera highlights and brassband tunes, both usually sent out through amplifiers of a questionable quality.

Federiksberg Have (Garden of Frederiksberg) is a lovely oasis in the city. And on our way to the bonfire we passed some of my favorites. The tree, where kids hang up their pacifiers when they need them no more



and the Heron-man



who has tamed some of the wild herons to come eat from his hand, though all zoologists says that this cannot be done. (The Zoo is just beside Frederiksberg Have, and the many herons that were supposed to be in the Zoo have long time ago chosen to live in the garden instead - thankfully, the same has not been possible for the lions or the tigers).

The bonfire itself is always situated in the lake, at the foot of Frederiksberg Slot (castle), with the entertainers placed in between



As it had been a very wet day, not many people were attending before the final moments. But the witch was sitting there awaiting, at the top of the bonfire in the middle of the lake



A boat was roving out, to get her going, but as everything was soaking wet, they took some time



Finally they got the fire going, and flames were licking up her behind. After a while the fire took over, and soon she was nowhere to be seen. She had flown on to Bloksbjerg on her broom.



As Bloksbjerg is in fact Brocken, the highest mountain in Harzen, Germany, I suppose she celebrates the rest of the night at a safe distance.

(Well, nice little country we have here: If we think we see evil, we just burn it! In modern days, mostly figuratively speaking, though. But nevertheless not really an open approach to diversity...I'll get off the soap-box now ;-))

After we had seen the witch off, it was time to go home. A day of playing handball, horse riding and watching bonfire can be a handfull when you're 7, but at 10pm this girlie still looked ready for trouble, with the umbrella-sword an all:



Oh, you wanted to see some knitting? Got a teeny progress pic for you



I know, too little knitting has been going on lately! But I still love this yarn from Garnharvan, so I am sure this WIP will in fact get finished!

It's raining again...

The danish summer is back to normal again - lots of rain, a few warm spells, and then some more rain. Yesterday afternoon was spent at a garden party; the host barbecueing under a large umbrella, while the guests were seated indoors. Well, living in this country, one gets used to such a set-up. But we did make some delicious blueberry muffins, including doll-sized ones.



Today was mostly spent indoors for my part. Arranging a seminar held on a usually beautiful spont on the waterfront, with great wievs over parts of the harbour canals. Today the wiev was a gloomy one, though, and it looked like an almost deserted city.



So, what's a girl to do? Well, my fall-back plan is always something involving colour, and as I had just a few days ago gotten an Amy Butler skirt pattern from GetKnitted, I was daydreaming a bit on the way home about which fabric to use for it. And it struck me, that some new shoes were in order to fit the bill. Shoe-shopping is almost as good as yarn-shopping or fabric-shopping, I believe ;-)



And I didn't have any shoes in that particular turqoise shade...

Yes, I know, my choise of fabric for the skirt was not too creative. Hope to finish it this week. Along with a lot of other stuff.

Summer creativity buzz

Summer continues here in the small country of milk and honey ;-)

Realising that kiddo has in fact grown since last summer, I have started producing some summer clothes for her. Usually I buy 99 % of her clothing, and produce very little of it myself. I decided that it should be different this summer.

This fun Westfalen-fabric



has been cut out, and is all ready to be sewn together for a dress. And as if I didn't have enough cotton material in stash already, I have bought some of the wonderful Echino/Etsuko Ladybug fabric for another dress for Marie. I have searched the internets for a really long time to find it available in the red colourway, and I was suddently lucky that Kris had some available. Maybe I overbought a bit, but it is a lovely fabric - in fact I am totally smitten with all those georgeous Echino fabrics! If I was to make something for myself, it should have been in the aqua colourway, but Marie loves reds and pinks. And the danish word for ladybug translates to "marie-hen", so she has as special relationship with ladybugs ;-)

The fabric arrived this week, and sweet Kris had included some extras



much to Marie's pleasure, as she loves when I sew something for her with accents of Amy Butler fabrics.

Hopefully I will find moments to sew those two dresses this week, as it looks like some of the fine weather is here to stay for a while. If I can decide, we are fine with temperatures around 25C. The suffocating 30C and high humidity we have had for the last week is a bit too much to be enjoyable, and it is also a bit out of character for a danish summer. Can you say "global warming"?

Summer is here

...finally. In fact, it is already a bit too hot for too much activity. When horseriding this morning





Marie had to slow down. The poor pony was too warm and sweaty to do a trot.


The lovely weather made me want to finish some summery knitting. And I really need a new top in a teal/petrol colour. Digging out an old WIP in Blue Heron Cotton/Rayon Seed it dawned on me, why iy has lingered so long in the WIP pile: I really find it difficult to knit that yarn in a fast pace, because it is rather nupply. And the lacy pattern I had envisioned didn't really show well. So off the needles it came



and instead I cast on something easy-peasy in the lovely Linea from Garnharvan, that I mentioned a while back.




Sitting in the shade, knitting - life is great! And soon our house renovation will be so much over, that it will be possible to put the smallish garden in order again.



But maybe we should just let it be wild. It is in fact rather cosy here.

Sustenance

A sustainability approach to project based management...with a lot of freshly ground black pepper ;-)

Some things never changes

Longing to get started on a summer top in the lovely petrol linen/cotton yarn from Garnhärvan that I picked up at the post office yesterday:



It is in fact no way near as blue as in this photo. It is a beautiful petrol.

I am planning to use it for the Louet Euroflax Lily pattern (by the talented designer JoLene Treace) which I have here around somewhere - right now it has gone missing, so it will probably take a while to get started. Bummer!

Trying not to be too selfish, I also got some more of the lovely yarn for a summer top for Marie:



(No knitting needles were harmed in this setting).

Probably me not being able to find the Lily pattern right now is in fact a good thing. I am still studying like crazy for an exam this coming week. I will have to get my colour fix today from this



Looking at the corner with my knitting basket I realized, that some things never changes here around:



In this ever changing world, at least my favorite colours stays the same;-)

Don't be pulling my ... finger

You Are a Pinky

You are fiercely independent, and possibly downright weird. A great communicator, you can get along with almost anyone. You are kind and sympathetic. You support all your friends - and love them for who they are. You get along well with: The Ring Finger Stay away from: The Thumb

What Finger Are You?

Came across the above somewhere in blog-land. Just couldn't help myself - had to try it;-)

Amy, Denyse, and Kaffe - I just adore y'alls

The last couple of days have been cloudy and rainy here in my nick of the woods. Makes me want to fiddle with some colourful yarn and fabric. Luckily some stash aquisition has taken place lately, and after some good mail days this week, I am ready to get some more summery knitting going, and to start cutting fabric for a new quilt:



Unfortunately the sun didn't really come out while I was taking this picture, and the boards of the terrace were still a bit damp - but these colours cannot fail to make me happy, especially when they are part of designs by my favorite fabric designers!

Sadly I cannot really spend much time right now on knitting or sewing. Got an exam coming up on june 6th that I need to prepare for...

A few days ago Polly commented that some references says that cold colours usually are prefered by logical thinkers. Well, in my case I believe this could be right, Polly, 'cause every time I have tried one of those not-really-scientific tests of thinking patterns, the result has been that I am a logical/analythical thinker. But I see this as being in contradiction with me having a yarn/fabric stash, that has had an exponential growth for the last couple of decades!!! Maybe that relates to another test result around my brain usage - that I have a total balance between my left and right brain ;-) (Don't know if this means that they are both turned off sometimes?).

Mieke shared a great link to the knittinginjapan yahoo group when commenting - thanks a lot, Mieke!

Yvonne asked for a japanese craft book source: I usually get my fix at YesAsia! Not always the fastest way to get a book, but very reliable and a lot of great knitting/sewing/crochet books.

Meme

I just noticed that I got tagged by Steph while I wasn't looking ;-)

Each person tagged gives 7 random facts about themselves. Those tagged need to write in their blogs 7 facts, as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. You have to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and need to read your blog.

A lot of bloggers have been tagged by this meme already, so instead of pinpointing someone, I'll let you decide for yourself: If you'd like to participate, consider yourself tagged!

7 random facts about me:

1. Colours means a lot to me, and I feel them almost physically. Greens and aqua/teals are my favorites - reds make me feel bad and yellows almost makes me feel sick. I know, I'm weird.

2. I always hated history lessons in school. In my adult life I have nevertheless spent many hours enjoying reading heavy books on social issues in Europe in the middle ages; and especially on womens role in society. In many ways the middle ages were less dominated by male authority than is the case of european culture of today.

3. I am a knowledge-junkie. Right now I am heading for my second masters degree.

4. I am terribly afraid of heights. But I love flying on an airplane.

5. I am probably a rather cynical person. Even my close friends and family says so. Still I love a romantic Jane Austen novel. Though Elizabeth Gaskell also gets a chance.

6. I learned to read english by myself when I was around 11. The simple reason was that I adored reading Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise novels, and only a few of them were translated into danish at that time. I tell myself that my tastes in litterature have been somewhat refined since then ;-)

7. I bore easily. I have bored myself now.

Being a japanese craft junkie

Long time ago I got bitten by the japanese craft book-bug. These japanese books take up a lot of space here, but nevertheless I have eagerly been awaiting another fix. And it was a good mail day today!



The large book in the middle is filled with georgeous lace crochet patterns. The two small ones holds wonderfull, simple sewing patterns for girls garments. My japanese vocabulary is non-existing, but the patterns are really not hard to follow. Don't know if it is the case with all japanese craft books, but the majority of those I have seen have been very visual and giving pretty understandable instructions. Off cause it can help a bit to have a japanese stitch-ionary handy when dealing with some japanese knitting patterns ;-)

But I am not supposed to make use of the above books right now. In stead I should allocate my craft time to this:



The Rainbow design in Rowan Summer Tweed from The Kashbah Collection. Ehem - no, I am not knitting a rainbow. Stripes tend to somehow "broaden the horizon", so I'll make do with a monochrome version. Hope this is one of those knits that I will actually finish!

By the way - try to pop over to Lolly and take a look at her great Bohus sweater!

A good day was had by all

Yesterday was a holiday here in Denmark. So the cosyness crept in, heavily supported by pouring rain for the I-don't-know-how-many days in a row. What to do, then? Make cupcakes!


Unfortunately, they tasted just as booring as they looked. Even 7 year old Marie lost her cake-hunger after just two.

We simply had to do something more colourfull. So out on the floor came a bunch of Amy Butler Lotus fabric squares, and she and I started to fit them together in a suitable way, so that they could eventually be sewn together into something resembling a small quilt.

This morning I woke in the wee hours, and just because I really needed to do a lot of different stuff, I ended up sewing the quilt together. It was finished by the time the rest of the family woke up, and it almost instantly became part of a lair together with some cushions and small tables, built by Marie.



This being the first sunny day in a long time, and a day off for all of us, called for some outside activity. A quick tour to the bicycle dealer on the corner got us the bike that Marie was promised to get this spring, and then off we went to Tivoli, the enchanted garden/amusement park in central Copenhagen.

Marie and her dad high up, blue skies, warm weather.


Tivoli is a very special place. On a day like this there are thousands of visitors, but even then some parts of the park seams quiet and peacefull, like this.


Around nine-ish the weather was still fine, and the air full of spring. But as tomorrow will also hold a lot of activity, it was time to go home. And for the tired girl hiding in her jacket, it was time to get a good nights sleep.



A good day was had by all.