Storm

 

 

Last night, a small but violent storm visited the south of Sweden. During the day the wind picked up in speed and in the late afternoon it started to be "full-on". D was supposed to play a concert in Denmark, but just 3 minutes before he wanted to cross the bridge from Sweden to Denmark, the authorities decided to close the bridge for all road-traffic. He came home safe and I was actually glad that he didn't make it to the other side of the Sound.

Anyways around 10 to 11 in the evening things started to get really spooky….. and somewhere around that time the first one of our elms came down. We actually didn't noticed at first, there was too much noise to do so. Little background, our elms are a group of 5 to 6 elm trees that are in our garden. When we moved in they were grand trees with a really impressive canopy during the summer. About 3 to 4 years after we moved in we were told that they had gotten "Dutch Elm Disease" and they would die. Indeed they did, within 3 years they were all dead.  They are not very close to the house and birds (especially woodpeckers) were around the trees a lot, so we left them for the time being. Elm wood is a bit strange since it actually gets harder and we were told that they wouldn't really cause big risks. Last summer our neighbour  (a farmer) proposed to help to finally remove them and that was more or less planned to happen next year.

But now it happened a bit faster than that…. We were lucky since the wind was pure west and the tree fell onto the road and not on the garage.  We were also lucky that it was the farmer-neighbour who spotted the tree around 11 since he just went got a saw & tractor and rowed the debris from the road. When he & D were dealing with the first tree, a second one came down too… Scary stuff.

As said we were lucky with the direction of the wind, OK the fence is pretty much destroyed but it could have been much worse, and yes the remaining trees will go now a bit faster too..

But for cats & girls it has a positive side as well:

And to finsih, I have started a test-knit for In Transit, see this post on Ravelry for the details.

 

Sad Case

 

A couple of weeks ago, it happened….. D managed to felt this cardigan that I had made only a couple of months earlier this year. I know accidents do happen, and as one says in Dutch "waar gewerkt wordt vallen splinters"  but still…. It wasn't the first time it happened and yes I got a bit upset. Yes it takes a bit of time to sort the wash, but there is a reason to do it nevertheless…. I guess I was also upset since I had finished it so recently, I hadn't really  worn it a lot either.. And it just hurts…..

 

Anyways D realized that I had reasons to be upset and he bought me replacement yarn. It came earlier this week, so now I have started to make Cecily's Cardigan again. It feels sad to do so, but I did like this little cardie, so…. Anyways it is a quick easy knit, so second time around it will be even better?

I'm also in a "hat" state of mind. I had a bit of Pashmina left from a Audrey in Unst that I made earlier. Quite a bit actually, so I thought another hat would be perfect for it. It is almost black yarn, but a lace pattern goes well:

This is a Soft Linen Lace Beret from the Classic Elite newsletter. Quite an easy fast pattern and I really have to say, I love this yarn. It is soft, lovely to work with and the colors are so nice. Just great stuff!

Grrrrrrrrr

 

Last week i came home quite late a couple of nights, traveling by bus.  We had a small conference at the start of the week and a dinner attached to that, the next day we ran into technical problems at work and they had to be solved. Late nights….. But anyways that isn't the cause of the grrrrrr itself…

I do most of my knitting during the week when I'm commuting so I knitted those two nights on the bus home as well, but it was dark and I was tired. And then I discovered yesterday that I had lost the ball of one of the contrast colors on one of those nights. So now I am stuck on the yoke, and the finish is in sight and I can't make it. And that makes me go grrrrrr. Of course I searched the whole house, our car, my office at work and whatnot, but it is gone and the bus is just so likely. Especially since I did one of the stranded motifs  for a sleeve in the bus and I did cut the thread…..

I ordered a new ball from Scotland (no supplier around here), so it will be at least a week before it will arrive. Ah well that just shows me to be more careful, even when being tired after a long day….. But on the bright side, I did order a colourcard for Spindrift….. so maybe it was just meant to be so….

 

 

Thistle

Even though D is from Scotland, I have never knitted with true yarn from the Shetlands. I have admired the colour work produced with it, but for one reason or another never done anything with it myself. I didn't see it in the shops, and on the net it is difficult to make a proper choice from all the colours available. Until this summer in Edinburgh….

There they had a small selection of Spindrift and I just had to try it. They didn't have a lot of colors so I just picked 2 greys and  2 pinks and thought this should do for a light-weight cardigan for M.

So now I'm knitting with it, and it has to be said, never has colour work knitting been so easy. The yarn grabs and is extremely easy to tension and even before a slight block it looks beautiful. Yes it is a bit scratchy, but this is to be worn over a long armed T-shirt anyways. And I do guess it gets a bit softer when it is washed. But what a dream to knit colour with, maybe I should try to order some colour-cards…..

Grading

 

I had the last two days off from work. It is autumn holiday and I thought it would be good to have some days off as well. On Thursday we went to Copenhagen, yesterday we stayed at home and baked cake & cookies. Copenhagen was nice, we went by bus & train and the connections we excellent. It was a nice busy day so it was nice to relax and do not so much on friday.

I also started to work on the last bits of  pattern writing: grading. It requires a bit of concentration & attention so it is good to do it on a quiet day. I have still some parts to go but it is not much so I guess it will be done by tomorrow. Pattern writing can take up more time than I normally plan. One thing is that while I can do knitting on a bus or a train (yes lots of knitting time on thursday), I can only work on a pattern when children are not interrupting me and on my desk. That makes it a bit more difficult to plan. But I'm not complaining!

 

Since I had all that knitting time while travelling, I also finished  a real speedy knit: Idlewood by Cecily Glowik MacDonald. S spotted this sweater almost on the same day that the pattern came out. She just loved the very big cowl. I got some yarn for it in the beginning of the year, but for one reason or another I only casted it on last weekend.

The yarn is Rowan Pure Wool Aran in "forest". I have used this yarn before and the item I knitted with it held up really well. I think it is a nice yarn, but there is one problem with it and that is knots. I remember from the last time that I have many many knots. So that made me a bit hesitant to use it again. This time however, I had only 1 skein with 1 knot…. so I'm pleased. I knitted it with exactly 4 skeins, I had 10 cm leftover. I have a fifth skein, I guess that will get made into another hat, one never can have enough hats even if cowls can do sometimes too.