24 januari 2013

Caller Herrin'

Koud. Heel koud. Moet ook, want het is winter. Ik loop 4x in de week met de post en heb héél snel een muts op. Man nam er een mee uit Zweden en een jaar later liep iedereen er mee. Op zich niet erg, maar leuk is anders.

Cold. Very cold. It should be, it's winter. I'm delivering mail 4 times a week and am wearing a hat very quickly into the season. Husband had brought me one from Sweden and a year later everybody had one. No problem, but I like something original.


En ik had wat vrije tijd. De Sixareen Kep had ik in 3 dagen gebreid, maar daar was de hele bovenkant effen. Dat gaat veel sneller. Het patroon wat al een tijdje in mijn queue stond op Ravelry was ook van Kate Davies en had over de hele muts patroon. Ik heb amper voorraad voor dit soort projecten, dus dat werd kiezen.

I had some free time and remembered I had knitted the Sixareen Kep in 3 days. Having said that, that has a top with no pattern and the one I chose to knit has a pattern all over. This was designed by Kate Davies too. The thing is; I hardly have any stash to use for such projects. What to use??


 Op het laatste moment nog geswitched van kleuren. Ik wilde de lichtblauw met de donkerwit. Dat heb ik toen gecombineerd met de echte wit. De rode en gele kleuren en de indigo (lichtblauw) zijn van het zelfde garen (Heritage) als de Kep, de wit komt van de Rams en Yowes deken en de donkerblauw komt uit een goodiebag van Jamieson & Smith; die kregen we bij de Ravelry Meet Up tijdens de Shetland Wool Week...

At the last minute I switched colours. I wanted the lightblue with the darkwhite, but instead I took the real white. The red, yellow and creamwhite are from the Heritage Collection, the white is left over from the Rams and Yowes Blanket and the dark blue is from the goodiebag we recieved at the Ravelry Meet Up evening during Shetland Wool Week.



Zoals je ziet heb ik de muts maar op TWEE naalden staan. Ik brei hem namelijk op de breiriem. Dat is zó handig en ik brei veel sneller. Het werk wordt ook veel gelijkmatiger.

As you can see I have the hat on only TWO needles. I'm using my knittingbelt. Very handy and I'm knitting much faster. And the project is knitted more even.


Dus... was deze muts in 4 dagen af. Zaterdag begonnen en maandag al de punt er op. Die had ik niet zo mooi gemaakt; die heb ik uitgehaald. Dinsdagmorgen heb ik een nieuwe top er aangebreid (niet volgens patroon...).

So.. this hat was knitted in 4 days. Casted on Saturday and Monday the tip was knit. I messed it up; frogged it and reknitted it my way Tuesdaymorning. (not the given pattern).



Dinsdagmiddag moest ik met de post lopen en had ik lekker warm mijn muts op. Hij is nog niet gewassen, het garen is nog niet open gaan staan; ik vermoed dat hij dan nóg beter zit.

Tuesday afternoon I had to deliver the mail and I was wearing my hat. It's not washed yet, the yarn hasn't opened up yet. I suspect it will be even warmer after that and will fit perfectly.

Een héle goede reden om dus meteen nóg maar een muts te breien: Snawheid.

A very good reason to cast on immediately for another: Snawheid.


Pattern: Caller Herrin' or Snawheid
Design: Kate Davies
Yarn: all available at Jamieson & Smith
Needle: 3.0mm or US 2,5

15 januari 2013

Taking shape

Het is nog maar een paar weken geleden dat ik blogde over mijn pogingen om te leren spinnen. Ik heb meegedaan met een #spinchat op twitter, erg leerzaam. Ik heb de kunst afgekeken op de spinavond in Leeuwarden en thuis flink geoefend. Ik moest en zou een dun regelmatig draadje spinnen. En ja hoor, het is echt zo. Oefenen helpt.

It's only a few weeks ago I blogged about my attempts wanting to learn how to spin yarn. I've joined the #spinchat on Twitter, very educational. I've watched the ladies on the SpinEvening in Leeuwarden and learned a few tricks. Then went home and practiced a lot. I really wanted to make a thin thread. And yes it's true; practice makes perfect!
Het lukt me zelfs een beetje om langere stukken zo dun te houden. Want in het begin was het chunky en cobweb binnen een paar meter. Het is wel spannend, wanneer hij ophoud met draaien en ik let niet op draait hij zo terug en knapt het draadje.

I even manage now to do this for a bit longer. In the beginning it was chunky and cobweb within a few yards. It's pretty exciting; when the spindle stops turning I have to pay attention before it starts to unwind again and snaps the yarn.


Ondertussen had ik besloten dat ik dit jaar niet meer nieuw garen mocht kopen. Ik heb genoeg, lijkt me (ong. 140km...)
Maar over spinnen is niets afgesproken (met mezelf). Van de week was er een Handwerk Winter markt in ons eigen dorp en daar was het niet alleen ongelooflijk druk, (positief!) maar ook erg interessant. Ik heb IJslandse lontwol gekocht en een kluitje geverfde zijde
Ik heb er nog niets mee gedaan, maar mooi is het wel!

In the meantime I had decided to go Cold Sheep (no more yarn this year). I've got plenty already (about 87 miles).
But for spinning nothing was agreed to (by myself). And just this week in my own village was a little Craft Winter Market. It was very busy with people (a good thing) and very interesting. I've bought Icelandic Roving and a bit of dyed Silk.
I haven't used it yet, but it sure is pretty!

Tijdens de #spinchat (op zondagavond rond 19:00) heb ik gevraagd hoe ik nou een 1ply kan maken. Blijkt dat je het garen een schokbad moet geven zodat het een beetje vilt. Ze noemen dat 'Vollen' (ik herhaal wat ik heb gehoord). Op ravelry werd dat bevestigd, dus dat heb ik gedaan met het plukje wat ik had. Van 8gr heb ik 53m gesponnen. En een schokbad gegeven. Twee keer leek me voldoende.

During the #spinchat (sundaynight 19:00 Local time A'dam) I asked if it was possible to make a 1ply thread. The answer was a shock treatment; hot bath, cold bath. They called it 'Fulling' which is a stage before felting. (i'm only repeating what I'm told..) Conformation on Ravelry made me do it twice. I had spun 57yards with 8gr of roving.

En toen werd het leuk!

Then the fun began!

Mijn eerste handgesponnen swatch! Dat is een heerlijk gevoel. Het is een groot proeflapje, dat wel; 15x19cm op nld 3,5mm
My first knit HANDSPUN! That felt really good. It's Shetland roving, only fitting to knit up a (new pattern) Shetland design. This is only 2gr. Pretty big though; 6"x7" on US4.

Ik ga nog niet een héle shawl zelf spinnen, maar dit is een mooie belofte.

I'm not going to spin my own shawl, but this is a very pretty start.

8 januari 2013

Trip of a lifetime...

Ik aarzel om deze woorden te schrijven maar ik doe het toch.
I'm hesitant to write these words, but I'll do it anyway.

January 2012. No. June 2011. The first time I hear about the Shetland Wool Week. It sounds great, ít's pretty close and there is NO way I can go. Our son was ill, I had to work and there was no budget at all. My husband was unemployed. What was I thinking.
October 2011. Wool Week in full force. The sécond it was over, I mailed if there would be the another one. Reply was they had to evaluate and I'll hear from them.
Our son was doing better, commissions kept coming in and I started saving. You just never know. Right.

In the meantime I had announced my plans wanting to go to Shetland and she replied she had already been there. We planned a meeting on Jan 6, 2012. She would tell me all about Shetland.
Little did we know, the announcement for the next woolweek was thát day! I came home from my friends house, discussed it with my husband and I bought the ticket the same evening.
You can read from this I'm stupid. I had no means of transportation on the island or to the airport for that matter. I hadn't even booked a house to stay in during that week. I had no idea it would be out of season too, which is from May to September. I just had to go.

In the many weeks that followed my husband, children, parents and friends must have gone seriously insane from my ranting about Shetland. In the meantime some friends volunteerd to come along and in the end Ammerins actually did go with me. Which was a good thing. She's a very experienced traveller. The language wouldn't be much of a problem for me, but she planned a lot of stuff on the itinerary that I probably didn't plan to go to in the first place.

I have travelled before. My parents have shown me and my 2 younger brothers a lot of Europe in their little car. Culture and sightseeing was preffered above sunshine and beaches. I didn't mind at all. Later, at highschool I was in London for a week and at artschool in Italy for 2 weeks. When the main group went left to the academia of Venice, I went right to the backstreets and see if there were any nice things over there to look at. I already went to school every day, I wanted to see the actual city. The same in Milan, Como and Ravenna. With my husband and children we've been to Germany and Italy too. But that was years ago.
Shetland would be different. It was the ONLY place in Europe NONE of my relatives have been too. That is a plus.

Finally it's October. Time to go. I'm happy and in retrospect I looked relaxed, but believe me, I wasn't.
I've never been on a airplane. This was the first trip I had planned on my own, for myself. It worked out because Ammerins went with me, I'd probably be lost between checking in and reporting to the border security...

In the previous posts you can read what we all did. I've taken more than 500 pictures, some video's. I'm still chatting with fellow knitters we've met during wool week. We've been on the covers of websites, I talked on the radio, blogged about and we ended up in the Magazine of 60North. Wonderful.

Back home something started to happen.
I felt like I changed a bit. The islands kept popping up every day. All the time. The sights, the lack of sound. The things we've seen. The landscape was so unusual to me, I still couldn't believe it, eventhough I've been there, and looking back at pictures.
I lóve it. Normally I really am fond of something different. Why can't I stop thinking about it.

Luckily I also work as a mail-delivery-person (to put it correctly...). That gives me time to think about it even more.
I'm a chatty person. I talk a lot. When I can. I don't have many friends that visit me. The internet helps in that way now. In my head it's quite busy too. Always a lot going on. Anticipating things with the children, work and knitting. A lot of knitting.
But since I got back from Shetland I felt different about the knitting. I felt really small. I didn't meet many people that knit lace like I do. Most of the knitters and spinners knit other stuff.
I wanted to go to Shetland to see the lace I know from pictures, for real. The pictures on the website of the Shetland Museum are excellent. They lack only one thing. SIZE!

I was totally overwhelmed by the lace I saw in the Museum (Lerwick) and Heritage Centre (Unst). It was SO thin and delicate. And knit áges ago in bad lighting and dark houses. Handspun yarn. Am I a lace knitter?? Nah. Are you kidding? No. Not me.
I can knit every pattern I saw. I can write it down and reproduce it without 'thinking' about it. Honest. But then and there I realized one thing: with yarn this fine spun, there is NO room for errors. No tinking back. No doing over. If you breath to hard, the yarn will break! And it was TWO PLY!
So. Where does that leave me??? Skilled? Sure. Qualified? No. (not yet??).

And this afternoon I realized something else. The only two times it was quiet in my head was the day we heard our son had cancer and the day we were on our way to Sandness. Our son is doing fine, and the way to Sandness is an experience I will never forget. It's a good thing. Silence. You just have to experience it.
In my mind I associated the silence in my head with the one experience I had with it before. And that was when I heard the bad news.
Shetland was one big positive experience. Every day. Every minute. Except in my memory. It was so overwhelming I couldn't handle it.

There is only one way to cope. I have to go again.

I've decided that this year will not be a good time to go; 2014 is better. I've started saving again. My husband has a job until September this year. We'll have to wait and see how it works out after that.
I hope that the next time I'll set foot on Shetland soil, I'll be more relaxed and not so eager to see and do it all. I've asked my friends again to come along. It will be a trip we'll never forget.....