My interests shifted

The sack is me, and the horse is "Basse", Holsteiner mare from ca. 1990. I've ridden since 2004 but always been interested in horses, but never had the chance to ride. I have rented Basse three days a week for half a year, and when the owner said he wanted to sell her to get a younger and fitter horse I placed a bid. Needless to say, per today I own my first own horse.
I still knit a bit, but not much at all. I have knitted knee-high socks, half a brown cabled cardigan, crocheted some hot pads and half a blankie.

But mostly I read, ride and play with my horse and, of course, do my duty as an organ-player.

Have a really nice day

/Lene

A Very Merry Christmas!

In midst of taking midwinter rides, getting chills down my back at playing better and bigger organs and wishing everyone I know a very merry christmas, I heartily wish all of you, and everyone you know, a Very Merry Christmas.

It is not about the Christmas Tree, the Presents, the Coca Cola Santa - it is about being merry because Christ was born to take away all our sins, and because all our doings are nothing in the face of God - we can rest happily, knowing that whatever nonsense we do, it is all forgiven and forgotten by God.
That is the reason we have Christmas (Christ - Mass), and I hope all people will remember it for even a short while.

/Lene

Socks, and make things fit!

Whoa!

I did get something finished, thats a new one for me. Because it is kind of hard to finish something when you spend most of your time on horseback or studying music. Not listening to music - that is the time when I knit the most - but most of the time I am making music. I play the piano, the organ, a bit accordion, I write music and practice choir leading.

So there's enough to do, with two horses on top of it (I've even swallowed my fear and have started to gallop - its like getting wings!)

Some time ago my SIL - wait, I have two now, and I cant even use their first letter because its the same: Re... Re.. or their first name of their last name: Sch.. Sch... Plus the fact that my younger brothers girlfriend is older than my older brothers... *laugh* It is confusing.

But, it was my nephews mother who gave me a ball of Opal sock yarn, slightly blushing, and asked if I thought they could magically transform them into socks? Well, I did, and so they sat around for some time until I took the ball with me in the bus and then to the summer cottage - they were done by the end of the weekend (Last weekend). They are nice, but uh - I tried them on my other SIL and they fit perfectly. Damn. First, she tried to tell me they were for her, but I couldnt give them to her no matter how much I would have liked to, because the yarn was not mine. So, rip toe and reknit. They are nice, and good socks. Plain stockinette socks that will wear for years, not grow, and keep my SIL's feet warm. Eventually they will get holes, and depending on where they are they will get darned, or ripped and reknit, or thrown out. That's all I am asking for for the stuff I make: That it will fulfill its purpose until it is worn out after a long and well-done service.




I like them, they are pretty socks. They will do well in time to come.


OOoooh, and here is "Make things fit".
I want to sew a jacket for my mom like the turquoise I made for myself. She bought the fabric herself, and today, with the sun and wind and pretty weather, I started laying out the pieces. I need to lenghten the arm, that is why there is such a large vacant spot in the middle of the fabric. Turns out I could have done with 1½ m. instead of 2, but who knew? (The yellow measuring tape is at 1½ m. I love it - it has inches on one side, centimetres on the other, and is 120" long!)


Pretty deep red fabric with a colour-changing embroidery on it - mostly random curves, but also leaves, and flowers. Machine-made.

That's it, folks. December is knocking on my door, and I just want it to snow, prettily, and with a tall blue sky, frost and a beautifull december sun. Then I'll get out the old horse (19 :-) and ride, ride and ride.

/Lene

Spinning and Knitting Weekend

Last weekend I was off at a - gasp - retreat! It dawned on me that, even though we had called it a "Festival", it was in fact a retreat. So now I can stop being jealous at all the Americans who go to big retreats and pay a months worth of household money for it, come home with glorious yarns and know a lot of big and famous people.

We were far out in the woods in a little scout cabin - and not some fancy lake lodge.
We were 12 - and not 120.
I met Kathe Lewis (And my mom) - and not MissWroteABook
We ate bread, drank milk (And coffee) and had an italian buffet one night - and didnt drink beer nor eat fancy food.
We had a fire in the furnace that made us and the whole cabin smell like smoke - and didnt wear our best clothes, appearing at out best at all times.
We went to bed at 12-3 and got out at 7-10 - and everybody just laughed.
We slept in 12-bed-rooms (but not all in one) and kicked each other in our sleep - and didnt sleep in fancy single beds with sheets that were changed every evening.

But! It was WONDERFULL, really.

We spun, knitted, talked, and learned a lot about how to mix colours with different tools, and just had a nice time socializing. We had two contests, as well as a drawing, and plenty of prizes. Oue group, Spindefarvegruppen, is disbanding sadly, and since it was/is a group you have to pay for to be in, we had a lot of surplus money, having cancelled some activites in fall.
They had bought a wonderfull Kromski travelling wheel (!!). We also got some prizes from Europawools in the UK, and two boxes of wool dyeing starter sets, a big one and a small one.

The big one was first prize for our "Longest Thread" contest.
We had 7 entrants, and the winner was not at all confident she would win!! I think she was very surprised at winning, eben though her yarn ran 4300 m / 100 g, and number two's was around 1900 m / 100 g. That's some of a difference!

We also had a fiber-guessing-contest, where I fared quite well too - not that it mattered, because we had a prize for everybody in that contest! I won 500 g dark brown merino, 24 micron count. A shared 2.nd place - I was proud.

Then came the big thing we had all waited for, anxiously, because the wheel stood by the kitchen door ever since we came, in its green bag. I had written around 40 tickets with the name of each of the people in the group, also those that were absent. Our groups leader took out one ticket and I unfolded it... and a huuuuge smile grew across my face! (No, I didnt win it.) The winner was "Marianne V", a young woman who can not work, has three little children and whose husband recently left her. She could not even afford a wheel, and had spent all her savings for a wheel (120 USD) on the retreat. I thought she would faint when I read her name aloud! Of course, everybody had hoped to win the wheel, but it was so good that this woman won it, because she, if not needed it, then would but it to the best use.
There was another prize left, the "Little starter set for dyeing", and it was commonly agreed upon that it should go to someone present at the retreat. So one name was drawn, but the person was not present. Another name was drawn, but I never got to say it out loud. I only managed to squeak: "But it's me!!". I must have looked like a tomato, but I was so happy because I dont own any dyeing utensils, and now I do, and can dye my own yarn and stuff!

Other than that, one of the women who owns a online yarn shop had a tiny sale - some shetland jumperweight that was too expensive for me, some silk/wool tweed in strong colours and some "Gotland" yarn - and to skeins of BFL yarn for just 4$ /100 g. I held onto those as if my life depended on it, and also 7 skeins of a brown/black colour Gotland yarn. Gooorgeous. That stood me, all in all, in 35$ for two pounds yarn. That was really ok, for Denmark.

Now I am home, tired, and glad.
Sorry I cannot show pictures, but my camera... same old story, you know?

Have a really nice day

/Lene

PS: My guinea pig had piglings (Planned) friday, three living and one dead. They're goooorgeous!

Mission: Impossible

This is crazy. It seems I cannot be trusted around tools of any trade! I prick myself with knitting needles, have crazy incidents with little sewing needles that lodge themselves in my foot so that the doctor must cut them out, but today I did something I dont believe anybody has done before me.

I got a cut on the top of my biggest toe (Thumb toe). With... my quilting ruler.


Beat that!

(Maybe I shouldnt work on the floor, naked, late, and then hurry to get up, throwing my legs all around me...)

But still. A cut on my toe, made with a ruler. (It has pretty sharp sides.. yeah.. uhm). That has got to be on the top of "Dumb, but darned funny crafting acidents where nobody got badly hurt"

Have a nice day- I am knitting a teeny bit, but my progress - my FO - is not to be shown publicly before dec. 6th where it will be given away as a present.

/Lene

On the Fana Kofte

I have knitted most of it now - yay! After breaking #2 ebony needle, I bit the bullet and knit the rest on a regular grey coated needle. It worked reasonably well, probably because I did not have to knit a complicated pattern and had some weight hanging off the needles already.

The bad thing is, that it seems to be too small for me.

The god thing is that every single female in the household has claimed it for herself (That's 5 claims, including mine, on this one *laughs*)

The good thing is that I have cut all the seams and seamed the shoulders (with the open st.).

The bad thing is that I cannot figure out to pick up stitches evenly spaced around the front and the neck.

Another good thing is that I still can try to block the living daylights out of it to make it fit me. It is not that is doesent fit, but I didnt imagine a skin-tight fit!! (My gauge was off, so I am alone to blame).

Other News

I have ½ a horse as I've mentioned before, I think.... She is lame right now :-(, but I was offered to ride another horse whose "Daddy" can only come once or twice a week. I tried her yesterday (I thought it was a one-off, but YAY... He didnt!), and even though she was funny to ride, she is a good horse and could teach me a lot, I even had the guts to gallop on her and didnt even get scared when she didnt stop when I asked her. (Ok - I panicked a few seconds and just wanted to flop forward and hold onto her mane, screaming "I AM FALLING OFFFFF", but in the end I sat back, started breathing again and gave her a proper stopping signal.) (Riding her into a wall is a proper stopping signal, right?).
I will go riding her again today when I deliver the daily apple to my Big Red one (Now I've got a Big Red and a Big Black :), oh man, how lucky can one girl be?

Have a really nice day

/Lene

More non-knit

I am actaully knitting a bit, but it is ugly and the colours are hideous. It was a lovely skein of pink/brown/white variegated, and many of you will know where this is headed - Yes, I wanted to knit a raglan for my Niece that is not yet born, and Yes, it came out pink/brown/white camouflage.


So. My non-knit is (again) quilting - it is hard to resist a craft that is so pretty, can be easy, and that makes really usefull things. I wanted a cover for my bed at my parents house (Yes, I am 24 and still have my own bed at my parents house.), because it so often is dirty and icky when I go there and want to sleep in it - the dog jumps on it, my SIL uses the room (She is living with my Brother on 8 m2 - I have 12 m2 I'm never using). So, she and I bought 4 metres of blue cotton and 2 "Quilt Packs" with 7 colour sorted fabrics in blue and yellow, ½ Fat Quarters. I used 4½ pieces from each of the bundles and the same amount from the blue cotton, made 45 squares from each group, and grouped them as you can see - the easiest way. It is bordered with the blue cotton. There are 6 different prints - Two swirls, roses, random lines, marbles and a spotty fabric. The swirls, Roses, Random lines and Marble is in both colours, since they were from the same line.

I rather like it, but I didnt finish quilting it when I was at my parents last weekend, because

• I had cut it and sewn it within 20 hours.
• I had a church mass in the morning and it was late.
• The back was totally crinckled, and I found myself not caring (!), a warning sign that I was tired and ready to do anything just to be finished.
• I really like it, and dont want to mess it up, seeing as how the piecing it, not flawless, but very very good.
  

The colours washed out. It is a strong, medium blue in reality, and the prints are also darker. I need more natural light, but it is overcastr and rainy.

You can sort of see how I started quiliting it in "blocks" of 3*3 (It is 15*9 blocks, not quite 5" large - 12 cm). I did not photograph the back, it is horrendous and proof that the pins I stuck in (You can see their reflections) did not do their work well enough. Plus the fact that it is horribly hard to quilt a big quilt on a small machine without puckering.

Have a really nice day

/Lene

Nephew Socks

My nephew is growing, so it was time to warm up the knitting needles in anticipation of the coming winter. They turned out quite narrow, sadly, and a little long. I hope he will get a little wear out of them anyways. Maybe his little sister can wear them one day :)



Size 23-24, on top of Daddys socks that he will get for his 26th birthday.



Nephew socks.

Regia Ringel Colour, "Atlantik".

Have a nice day

/Lene

I have a confession....

I have no idea how to reply to people who comment in my blog, here! That annoys me, because I really want to reply to you, tell a bit more about the project etc.

Until I find some way to do that, I just want you to know - I appreciate all comments, even if you do not get a reply back, I have read them and added them to the website (I have set the comments on moderation because there is a person out there who seems to care a lot about me and constantly post(ed)s comments on here that were not fit for your wieving.

Oohh, and another confession: I have bought yarn, from KnitPicks! All excited, wee wee happy dance... I am doing a joint order with my mother, a friend and whoever has also joined in since I last asked.
I will get 5 balls Palette in Blue Note Heather to make the Rose Leaf Tunic from A Gathering of Lace, and 10 balls in assorted colours to make the Rainbow Shawl from the same book. Both are things I have wanted to do, and since my knitting has effectively stopped because of lack of needles, yarn, pattern... I will do something new.

/Lene

Sorry abou the delay

Sorry about the delay. Somehow, weather turned bad, and then study kicked in and everything rotated around my studies, and not handicraft. I have not knitted for weeks.


This is the whole shawl. It was hard to photograph. It is also huge, 260 cm across the wings and 140 down the back. I have seen shawls half that size!


Semi-close-up. You can sort of see the variegation in the handspun in this picture. It is gorgous, in my opinon, and looks really good in the clover leaf pattern (I believe it is also called Rose leaf?)


Clover Pattern. The transition between my mothers yarn and mine happens in this picture - I can see it because my mothers yarn is a tad thinner, but I am pretty sure noone but me, who has had it in my hands and stared at it for hours and hours can see it.


Leaf pattern. Again, the variegation. I am amazed at this shawl because it turned out so well, even though I almost despised it at several points in its creation.


Bonus picture!

Ditlev, my first and oldest piggie, and probably the cutest I have ever met.

Have a really nice day

/Lene