I cast on for Sparkling last weekend and I have been having great fun all week knitting this cardigan.
I took this photo yesterday and have knitted another 4″/10cm since. It seems to be flying off the needles. It makes a lovely, light, airy fabric which has to be felt to be fully appreciated. I’m finding it hard to stop knitting. Here is a photo of the reverse side of the fabric:
This weekend is full of sparkly, happy things. My knitting makes me happy! Giant fields of poppies make me happy! Ravelry makes me happy!
The only thing making me unhappy is the internet here which has been seriously disrupted all day. So, instead of writing more, I will leave you with one last happy thing. My new project matches the giant field of poppies I blogged about yesterday!
I received a text from my friend Inge yesterday. It said: “When you drive into town this weekend, take the low road and see the poppies.” So, this morning, we drove into town (Henley-on-Thames) and saw this:
This beautiful field is planted as far as the eye can see with opium poppies. They are absolutely gorgeous, a sea of the most subtle, lovely lavenders and palest pinks.
These fields are planted as part of a research project by a local university in collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry. For obvious reasons, they don’t advertise, and they plant somewhere different every year. Normally, these fields are planted with rapeseed and provide a burst of vibrant yellow late in the sumer. This field of pink was a fantastic surprise.
See the building and umbrellas in the distance of the top photo? That is Orwells, one of the best retaurants in England. It was impossible to resist having lunch there and soaking up the view. Here is the view from the garden at Orwells:
Pure heaven. The only thing as good as the view is the food!
Notice how Doug and I are both colour-coordinated with the flowers?
I hope that your day is as filled with colour and surprise. Tune in tomorrow for a knitting post.
I have been travelling to Copenhagen on business every few months. I tend to fly in, teach, and fly out, so I usually don’t have much time to do tourist-y things. Funny, though, that my place of business is located less than 200 metres from Uldstedet, a lovely yarn shop next to Nørreport Station. I can teach all day, and then go yarn shopping, and still have plenty of time to catch my plane.
(If you are travelling to Copenhagen you should also check out Sommerfuglen, a yarn shop which I have blogged about before. Both shops are lovely, with knowledgeable English-speaking sales staff, and both have lots of sample sweaters available to try on.)
In January, when it was dark and grey, I went shopping at Uldstedet and had my eye on some yarn in a bright spring green to make a cheerful sweater. Just as I was headed to the checkout counter, my eye was caught by stacks of hand-knit sweaters. I had to try them on (but of course!). I must have tried on a dozen of them, but I kept coming back to one which was a very far cry from the bright green spring sweater I was contemplating. It is also not my usual style, I think:
The photo doesn’t do it justice, I think. It is a fairly shapeless sweater; the interest is in the fantastic textured stitch pattern. When I put it on, however, it was the warmest, lightest, feather of a sweater. It felt like being wrapped in a cloud. The sweater is called Bobbly, and is designed by Sus Gepard, who also owns the shop.
I bought the yarn, and swatched for it immediately, but then my head started talking me out of the project. It is knit in laceweight yarn, with a wool and silk blend (the grey) combined with a silk and mohair yarn (the pink). I’ve been having troubles with mohair, and troubles with being too hot. I am constantly pulling sweaters on and off and on and off again. I started to think “Would I really wear this?” And, as the answer was not an emphatic “yes!”, I put the yarn away.
In March, I was back in Copenhagen, and I again stopped into Uldstedet (as one does). This time, the Bobbly sweater was on a mannequin in the shop and drew my eye immediately. I really liked it. But still, I wasn’t convinced I would actually wear it. It is a lot of work for something that will sit in a drawer.
A few weeks ago, however, this sweater popped up on my Ravelry feed:
Lovely, isn’t it? So, I am hoping to cast this one on this weekend. (I am currently working on only one project and that won’t do.)
Here is my swatch:
And here is a shot where you can appreciate how light and airy this fabric is:
I was back in Copenhagen just this week. And once again, I had time to stop by Uldstedet before heading to the airport. (Copenhagen is such a great travel city. The airport is 15 minutes from downtown. More time to shop for yarn!)
This time, as soon as I walked in the door, my eye landed on a large basket of Madelinetosh Prairie yarn. I always think that I should buy Danish yarn when in Denmark, and Prairie is a yarn I could buy elsewhere. Then again, I haven’t been able to get to a yarn shop here in England in at least 6 months, maybe longer. I have had this top on my mind lately:
It is Navelli, by Caitlin Hunter. I was thinking about this while rummaging through the basket of Prairie, and ended up picking out these three lovely shades (Fog, Whiskey Barrel, and Fallen Cloud ):
I only had about 15 minutes before the shop closed, and spent all of it trying to come up with combinations of three yarns that I liked, and then rushed to buy them as the shop was closing. It was only later, on the plane, that I realised that Navelli is made with fingering weight yarn and that Prairie is laceweight. I might be able to do it anyway, knitting a larger size to fudge with a tighter gauge, but that might lead me into yardage problems as I only bought one of each skein.
Some time soon I will need to do some serious swatching (and math-fu!) to see if this will work out. If not, then I will find something else to do with the yarn. In the back of my head is the delicate Bonny (see photo below) by Tin Can Knits, which would only take one skein, leaving me two skeins to knit something else with: a striped tee? a summer shawl?
Yesterday was World Wide Knit in Public Day! Not only did I not knit in public yesterday, but I did not knit at all. Shame on me! So today I made up for it, just a bit, by knitting at Clivedon, a remarkable National Trust property, and former home of Lady Astor.
Clivedon is famous for, among other things, its fabulous parterre, a type of formal garden which you can see in the background here. I am knitting a cashmere wrap, which I have thrown over one shoulder while knitting, thus allowing me to both wear and knit it at the same time. Way back in 2011, I posed in this exact spot for my very first Wearability Wednesday post on this blog:
And below, another photo from the same 2011 post; taken from the same spot but facing the other direction with the manor in the background:
It was a lovely place to walk this weekend with our friends, Geoff and Joanna, who are visiting from Vancouver. I hope that you enjoyed some time knitting this weekend, in public or otherwise.
