The third and final shawl in the Norn series is now available to the members of the KAL. This is Urðr, the Norn representing the past. It is from her well that the Norns draw the water needed to tend to the great world tree Yggdrasil, so I made the shawl circular like the well. It starts out deep blue in the centre and spreads in water rings towards the edge. The edging shows the water lapping agains the edges of the well and have white crests like waves.
It is a very large shawl – 180 cm (almost 6 feet) in diameter. But it makes it a great shawl to wrap yourself in.
What I usually do with circular shawls is to fold the top part a little bit and then drape it over my shoulders.
A great big thank you to all the amazing knitters who participated in the Seasons of Lace – Summer KAL with the Norns shawls. I am thoroughly enjoying your company, and the finished shawls on Ravelry are truly amazing. I hope to see you all during the Autumn KAL with World Heritage sites, where we will be continuing on the Norse/Viking theme. The three shawls in the fall line-up are from the World Heritage Sites L’Anse Aux Meadows (Newfoundland, Canada), Tanumshede (Bohuslän, Sweden) and Jelling (Denmark). More on those in later posts. They will be released in that order, so first up is L’Anse Aux Meadows in September.
I got this wonderful little surprise in the mail the other day. It’s a package from Meg at Twisted Fiber Arts. The two wound cakes in the middle are Arial fingering weight yarn in Firefly on the top and Shadow on the bottom. Those two I already had a plan for – they will become a double-knit scarf. I’ve already started and knit almost half of it. The yarn is amazingly soft, and the colour transition on the Firefly is very subtle, which is lovely. It’s knitting up really well, and I can’t wait to show it off, although I’m afraid it will have to remain a secret for a few months. By Christmas I should be able to share though.
The two skeins on the left are Kabam (merino/bamboo/nylon) and on the right is Playful (superwash).
She also sent me two mini-samples of Muse and Catnip, and I have to say that I immediately fell for the Catnip (on the right). It’s an aran weight silk/merino blend that is just stunning. I don’t really knit a lot of things in aran weight, but I’m simply going to have to come up with something as an excuse to use this yarn.
On a completely non-knitting related front, today is an anniversary of sorts for me. It’s now been twenty years since I emigrated from Sweden. Twenty years today. I can’t believe it. When I moved from Sweden to the US, I had planned to stay one year. But then it became one more, and then perhaps a few more, and then I met my (Canadian) husband, got married and moved to Canada. Twenty years ago, staying in North America for so long seemed inconceivable, but it’s been amazing. I’m curious to see where the next 20 years will take me.
The Spelunking Cardigan is a waist length, lacy cardigan, perfect for cool summer evenings, spring and fall. The lace motifs remind me of the stalactites and stalagmites found in caves, hence the name. The cardigan is knit using only one skein of Wollmeise Lace-Garn in the colour Pfefferminz Prinz.
The front of the cardigan just hangs open. There is a garter stitch edging along the opening which wraps around the collar in the back, for a more finished look. The body is knit flat, bottom up, and separated at the armholes. The sleeves are tapered and knit in the round until the sleeve caps, and are then sewn onto the body.
This has quickly become one of my favourite cardigans – and I’m quick to pull it out in the evenings. It works well both with jeans and the ubiquitous little black dress. Since it’s been published, I have found out that a “Spelunke” in German is a grungy little pub – not quite the imagery I had in mind. 
But I guess the cardigan could be worn while visiting pubs.
Or a giant squid monster known as Kraken.
Or even while just strolling around downtown.
It’s really very versatile. And it was fun to knit too.
I finally gave in and decided to get myself a twitter account for quicky little updates that usually don’t get their own blogposts. I can be found here and I will endavour to tweet reasonably often and yet never about my laundry or housecleaning efforts.
So pop in, and introduce youself. I’d love some company in the tweeting-world.
I spent the last few days in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and it was absolutely fabulous. In many ways it reminds me of Gothenburg, Sweden where I grew up. Both are large and active harbours. And it was really nice to get a chance to spend time by the Atlantic Ocean, and of course eat tons and tons of delicious seafood.
While I was there, I had the opportunity to visit the Handmaiden Studio and got to see their dyeing operations, as well as some fabulous yarns of course. I arrived early in the morning (well…. around 9, which is early when you are on vacation), because I had been forewarned that the studio gets very hot as the day goes on. And that seemed to be a very accurate assessment – it was toasty already.
There was all sorts of (Handmaiden) yarn in all sorts of colours, and one of my favourite parts to see was a wall with sample skeins in a number of the official colourways. Handmaiden doesn’t typically label their skeins with colours, since no two skeins are ever going to be identical. After all, all of them are unique and handmade. At the same time there are a number of colours that are more official than others, and that serve as the target for the dyers, and it was really nice to see such a wide variety.
Another part that I found very interesting was the shelves of “one offs” or more unusual colourways that don’t look like any of the official ones. There were lots of really nice looking colours here as well, that do get distributed as well, but it seems that the chances of finding those exact colours again are small indeed.
While I was there, they dyed me a special batch of Sea Sock to take home and transform into a lace shawl, and I’ve been plotting and scheming for the pattern since then. Of course the yarn wasn’t quite dry when I left the studio, but a few hours hanging in the hotel room draped over the shower curtain rod took care of that.
After visiting the Handmaiden Studio, I continued on to the historical Hydrostones area. The area was build up after the Halifax explosion destroyed all the wooden houses that used to house the workmens’ families. After the explosion they were rebuild using concrete blocks covered in crushed granite. The stone construction made for a more fire proof building material than wood….. The very first shop I saw was:
LK Yarns – so of course I had to stop in for a visit and look at all their fabulous yarns. Being Nova Scotia, there was of course a wonderful selection of both Fleece Artist and Handmaiden yarn, but also a lot of other goodies. I had a delightful chat with the owner, and she was showing me a number of beautiful shawls she’d knit up. At the moment she is knitting Citron (from Knitty) in a dark pink yarn from malabrigo, and it’s looking great. I was sorely tempted by a number of yarns in store, but managed to restrain myself to a skein of Fleece Artist – Saldanha in a dark blue colour.
And as if this wasn’t enough yarny goodness for a post – when I got back home last night there was a package from Knitting Iceland awaiting me. It contained a sample of their lace yarn – “Love Story” which will be available this fall. Right now it’s a natural white, but I’m told that it will be available in a number of colours, all naturally dyed with plants. It’s a very soft version of Icelandic wool, and I’m very excited to get to try it.
Two skeins of Yarn Chef Buttercream in Chateau just arrived at my doorstep, and has already been wound and is ready to be knit up into the third shawl for the World Heritage KAL – the autumn instalment of Seasons of Lace. This particular shawl is one that I have been pondering for several years, but never really found the right yarn for. It is, in fact, the shawl that dictated the theme for the World Heritage KAL. I really love the colour of this yarn – it’s a darker, granite gray which will go perfectly with the theme.
I have noticed that I’m in a bit of a gray mode though, as I have several gray shawls in the pipeline. And gray is very lovely, but I will be sure to brighten it up with a few other colours during the next few months as well.
Verðandi is the second shawl in a series of three shawls on the theme of the three Norns (Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld) in Norse mythology. They determine the fate of all living creatures by spinning the threads of life. And they water Yggdrasil – the tree of life – so the branches do not dry out or rot.
In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil holds the nine worlds in its branches. The Norns tend to the world tree daily because without Yggdrasil the worlds would collapse. And since Verðandi is the Norn representing the present, and Yggdrasil needs to be tended to in the present, you can see the leaves of Yggdrasil spreading out over the Verðandi shawl.
The shawl is knit using one skein (421 m / 100g) of fingering weight wool.
Sign-up for this KAL which started on June 15 includes all three patterns in the Norn Series.
I decided that it would be fun to learn a new knitting technique, so a little while ago I purchased “Knitting Brioche” by Nancy Marchant. This week I finally had the chance to sit down and play a little. It turned out to be quite fun, and I’m definitely going to have to experiment a little more with this technique. Basically when you work a row you only work every other stitch. The other stitch is slipped, but instead of putting the working yarn in front of the slipped stitch (like with linen stitch) or behind the stitch (like in Mosaic knitting) you put the yarn over the stitch and the needle, so you are creating a yarn over on top of the stitch. On the next row you knit (or purl) the yarn over and the stitch together as one stitch, and slip the stitches worked in the previous row while creating another yarn over on top of it.
Nancy’s book is filled with illustrations to make this process eminently clear.
Because you’re essentially working each row twice, with the yarn running along the row twice, the fabric becomes thicker than regular knitting.
The brioche book was filled with a number of new abbreviations, for the brioche stitches. My favorites by far was brk1 (brioche knit one stitch) and brp1 (brioche purl one stitch) – because in my mind they came out as “bark one” and “burp one”. :-). So I may not be a master briocher just yet, but I have barked and burped aplenty in the past few days, and I have a few swatches and a piece of a scarf to prove it.
“I know an Ash standing
called Yggdrasill,
A high tree sprinkled
with snow-white clay;
Thence come the dews
in the dale that fall–
It stands ever green
above Urðr’s Well.”
from Gylfaginning
The third shawl is Urðr and will be published in August. Urðr is the Norn representing the past, and it is from her well that the Norns draw the water with which they water the great world tree Yggdrasil.
The shawl is a circular shawl representing Urðr’s well. I used 6 oz/1875 yds Ling from the Unique Sheep in one of their gradiance colourways.
The Unique Sheep has three different laceweight yarns that all knit up to the same gauge, and any of the three would be suitable for this shawl. Ling is 70% merino/30% silk, Eos is 50% merino/50% tussah silk, and Marici 100% silk. The shawl has been testknit in both Ling and Eos.
I used the Illulisat colourway (blues), and my test-knitter used Wild Parrot (blues and greens). As always the colour-choice is entirely up to you (since it is your shawl after all), but if you want to stay with the theme I would suggest colours that remind you of water. You can see all of the Gradiance colourways here.
I have spent the past several days reading Shannon Okey’s new book – The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design and it has been nothing if not enjoyable.
The first half of the book gives a comprehensive overview of what you need to know in order to write, test, publish and market patterns. And as most designers know; there are a whole host of issues that come with being self employed, and the book does not gloss over that aspect at all. As a professional designer, you cannot spend all your time knitting and designing, but there is a fair amount of marketing, accounting, book keeping and “other” miscellaneous items that demand your attention. Shannon’s book is full of practical advice, including tips on accounting software, copyright issues, publishing, distribution, marketing and how to make sales.
The second half of the book contains a number of interviews with established designers. I really like the fact that not all the interviewees are asked the same questions, but they have an opportunity to muse on what is important to them. Everyone has their own take on what is important, and everyone has different goals they are trying to achieve, and I think the interviews reflect that. There is something there for everyone.
I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in becoming a knitwear designer, or anyone who is interested in what goes on “behind the scenes”.
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