Monthly Archives: May 2025

A smash hit

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I finished knitting my Hør no 19 tee and it is a smash hit.

I really like this one. It fits great, it drapes beautifully, and it looks smart. It is a really lovely design from Lone Kjeldsen.

I used Karin Oberg Kalinka yarn, a 100% linen, purchased from Ginger Twist Studio in Edinburgh. The yarn has an amazing sheen and is truly lovely. This blue was a bit outside my normal colour palette, but I think it paid off fantastically. It has great stitch definition.

I bought 4 skeins of yearn, but only used three. I knit the size Large, with a US3/3.25mm needle, and followed the instructions exactly.

It is a very straightforward project to knit, the textured pattern is easy to memorise, and it is pretty quick. I say that somewhat facetiously since I cast on the project on June 15, 2024, and just finished it two weeks ago. But the fact is that I put it aside last September when I was trying to finish a shawl for Emma on a deadline, and then I didn’t pick it up again until recently.

There are very nice details to this top, including the shaping at the shoulders, which are then joined off with a 3-needle bind-off which shows on the right side, and gives a great finishing touch.

I am wearing it here at Grey’s Court, a lovely National Trust property a few miles from my home which has frequently provided a backdrop to my projects on this blog. We were lucky to catch the wisteria just in time.

We were there with Leah’s housemate, and honorary 3rd daughter, Amy, who stayed with us at the beginning of a rail tour through Europe. Amy wanted to see a traditional English garden, and Grey’s Court was at it’s best for us on a beautiful spring day.

It’s nice to finish something and doubly nice when it turns out so well. I have a feeling I will be wearing this often.

The opposite of cast-on-itis

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We knitters know all about cast-on-itis, whose main symptom is casting on something new and then putting it aside to cast on something new, and then putting it aside it cast on something new…you get the drift. The change of seasons often brings this on, causing us to yearn for warm wooly things in the fall and winter and for all things silk, linen, and cotton in the spring and summer. Designers are busy releasing lovely new designs and we all lose our heads a bit and multiple cast-ons ensue.

Surprisingly, despite spending plenty of time perusing new designs, I seem to have the opposite of cast-on-itis. I desperately want to start a new project but can’t decide which. I have decision paralysis. I thought that I had finally picked out a pattern, and then I spent hours agonising over what colour to knit it in, and finally gave up.

So, in the meantime, until I can make a decision, I am working on finishing up some WIPs and trying not to resent all of the new projects being cast-on all over the knitting world. I recently picked back up my Hør no 19 linen tee. I started it last June, and then put it away in September when I was trying to finish a shawl for Emma before she flew back to Canada. It turns out I didn’t have too much left to knit, and I finished it yesterday. Below is a sneak preview. I can’t show you the finished project because it has just had its beauty bath and is currently quite wet.

I have been very slowly knitting my Osaka Scarf, which I also started last summer (in fact, I was working on both of these projects when I was in Tucson last July to see my mom and Stuart). I am now on the fourth of the five colour blocks.

We had a week of glorious weather, right up until the long weekend started, at which point it became cold and cloudy. We still managed a nice weekend, with lots of gardening (Doug) and knitting (me). We spent some time wandering around the various venues of the Henley Arts Trail, which is always fun, and purchased a lovely ceramic vase. When I was at university, my dad bought matching tee shirts for me and some of my friends that said “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” I thought about that when I saw this whimsical sculpture on the Arts Trail:

If I don’t cast on something new soon, I might find myself out of WIPs to work on. I would then be a knitter without a project, which would be far more sad than a fish without a bicycle.