Tag Archives: Knitting

In which Doug and Kelly have a relaxing holiday, while Emma circumnavigates the globe

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A few weeks ago, Doug and I had a holiday.  We spent a week avoiding the news, visiting with old friends, taking long walks, eating good food, enjoying art, knitting, and watching lots and lots of tennis.  Meanwhile, Emma was off on a crazy, fabulous adventure. I intended to write a post when I got home about our trips.  However, when we got back to the real world, we read the news, and I must say that things were pretty shitty. I thought “maybe now is not the time to write about good things; I will wait until next weekend.”  The next weekend came and the world seemed to be in an even worse place and the post didn’t get written. Now a new weekend has arrived and I’m thinking that maybe avoiding writing about holidays with old friends, long walks, good food, art, tennis and world travelling is not the solution.  Maybe we need to write about such things. And maybe we need to read about such things.  So here goes…

We took our holiday in Potsdam.  We both needed a break and were feeling fairly exhausted at the end of the term, and wanted to relax.  We moved to Potsdam 30 years ago and lived there for more than a decade.  It was among the nicest times in our lives and we have very good memories associated with the place.  Our apartment was next to the Park Sansouci, with its beautiful palaces, gardens, statues and walkways.  Doug and I spent a very hot day walking all over the park, revisiting favourite spots.

We stayed at our dear friend Inge’s apartment.  She and her partner, Michael, made us feel at home.  We have known Inge for 30 years so we can be completely relaxed together. She had the week off work and was equally stressed and needing a break. Inge and I both love watching tennis.  We were there for the final week of the French Open.  We watched lots and lots of tennis. Doug and Michael will say that we watched far too much tennis.  They might even say that we spent an inordinate amount of time being couch potatoes.  This is Inge and me watching tennis:

I knitted while watching:

(Full disclosure for knitters: I was knitting a Sabai tank in Knitting for Olive Pure Silk.  Yes, it is brown. Yes, this is way outside of my normal palette. I have now finished the tank and it is currently blocking, so I will report soon.)

Here are Doug and Inge and I enjoying a glass of wine by the lake at Schloss Golm. 

Ten minutes after those photos were taken, there was a very sudden, ferocious thunderstorm and we had to pick up our glasses and wine bottle and run across the lawn for the Schloss. We ate a dinner of white asparagus and schnitzel while watching the lightning from the covered veranda until the wind blew the rain right on top of us. We then retreated inside and finished the meal surrounded by photos of glamorous movie stars who had stayed there long ago. It was great fun.

We spent time re-visiting old haunts.  We went to the University at Golm where Doug was a Professor for over a decade.  We drove around the countryside and walked all over Potsdam and spent a few days walking around Berlin.  A highlight was a day at the Beelitz Sanatorium, a tuberculosis hospital and sanatorium built in the late 1800s in Beelitz.  It later became a Soviet military hospital and then was abandoned in 1994 and left to rot.  We took a tour of the hospital there, which was interesting and haunting. The forest has overtaken the ruins, with trees growing out of the crumbling buildings. There is now an amazing walkway above the tree canopy. From it, you can see miles of forest and look down on the ruins.  This post provides a nice description of the place in English.

We had a fantastic visit with our very dear friends Sandra, Erik, Timo and Mika.  We have known Sandra for 30 years, and remember when she and Erik first met.  Sandra once babysat for toddler Emma and baby Leah and managed to eventually overcome the traumatic experience and have two kids of her own. Doug and Erik had so many adventures together and were co-conspirators in renovation madness. Timo is Doug’s godchild. Here we are with Sandra, Timo, and Erik:

And here is Doug with Timo. I totally love this photo:

We unfortunately didn’t see Mika in person on this trip, but we got filled in on all his news. When our families get together, we laugh so much!  It makes me happy to see these kids have grown up to be just as wildly smart, and kind, and talented, and funny, as they were as children.

We took the above photos at the Atelier Olafur Eliasson.  Erik has worked with Eliasson for 20 years, and gave us a lovely tour of the workshops. We also saw Eliasson’s new exhibit, which is very small but just fantastic.  I love this photo of Timo, Erik, and Sandra interacting with one of the pieces:

Sandra, by the way, is also a crafter and she has started her own amazing crafting business.  Here is a link.  She is a super entrepreneur!

Doug and I explored two new art spaces in Potsdam (new since we moved away).  We spent a rainy afternoon in the Museum Barberini, which has a lovely collection of Impressionist art, the Hasso Plattner Collection, including 40 paintings by Monet.  The art is beautifully arranged and lighted and the museum was spacious and not crowded. I compare it to a recent Impressionist exhibit we visited in London in which we felt like sardines in the stifling crowd. On our last afternoon, we visited Das Minsk, also in Potsdam, which has an interesting exhibit of art from the GDR.  It is very well signposted and we learned a lot about art in the former East.

While we were in Potsdam, Emma was on an adventure of her own.  She and her friend, Brooke, flew to Goa, India, for the wedding of their friend, Himani.  The three of them were best friends at university.  Himani’s wedding was absolutely beautiful; a traditional Indian wedding which lasted four days with multiple ceremonies and joyous celebration.   Emma had an amazing time.   Here are a few photos:

Here is the beautiful bride, Himani:

The crazy part of this adventure is that they literally circumnavigated the globe (Brooke actually flew even further). First, Brooke flew from Toronto to Vancouver to meet up with Emma. Then, Emma and Brooke flew to London where they had a 9-hour layover. They took a train from Heathrow into London and then walked all over the place. Brooke had never been to London, so Emma gave her a guided tour. They walked 20,000 steps, and saw Buckingham Palace, St. James Park, Big Ben, Westminster, walked along the embankment, had a meal at Covent Garden, and coffee at Seven Dials.

They then returned to Heathrow and caught a plane to Mumbai. At this point, Emma had spent two nights on a plane and Brooke had spent three. There was yet another layover before a further flight to Goa. This was followed by one day to recover and play on the beach, followed by the wedding with four glorious, jam-packed days and nights of fun. They had to perform a dance for the ceremony and so they also squeezed in rehearsals to learn the Bollywood-inspired dance.

When the wedding was over, they took a flight back to Mumbai, and then caught a flight to Japan! There they had a 7-hour layover and again left the airport to go sightseeing.

From there, they took another night flight back to Vancouver, thus completing their mad dash around the world (after which Brooke got back on a plane for her flight home to Toronto). You can only do this when you are young.

And that is the story of a relaxing holiday filled with old friends, long walks, art, knitting and tennis, and a crazy mad-dash holiday around the globe filled with friendship, dancing, ceremony, colour, and very little sleep.

I’ll finish this post by noting that after watching nearly the entire French Open, Doug and I flew home on the Sunday evening, thereby missing the men’s final.  When our plane landed I found a message from my mom saying “that was the best tennis I have ever seen”.  Oh well. Wimbledon is coming up and I’ve just ordered more yarn.

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.

A Walk in the Park

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I finished my version of the A Walk in the Park shawl:

The shawl is part of The Signature Collection designed by Erika Knight in collaboration with A Yarn Story, the Bath yarn store run by Carmen Schmidt. I knit it as part of the KAL with A Yarn Story. The design is actually for a triangular shaped shawl, as below:

I have never been a huge fan of triangular shaped shawls, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to style them properly. However, I really liked the contrasts in this shawl between the deep brown and white graphic stitchwork and the bright pops of colour. I decided to knit the shawl as a rectangle instead. It was a bit of a gamble, but I think it paid off.

I bought the kit in the original colours of Walcot yarns Origin, a lovely, bouncy worsted weight wool. Emma and I had a chance to see the shawl in person at the Unravel Festival and decided to substitute the soft purple-y pink yarn for a brighter pink (which I blogged about here).

I then had to decide whether to knit it back and forth width-wise or lengthwise. In the former case, I could fit in all of the different pieces of the original pattern (and then some) but the stripes of colours and textures would run across the shawl from side to side; in the latter case, the stripes of colour and texture would be very long, running from end to end, but I would have to select which bits of the pattern repeats to include and which not to include (because the width of my rectangle would be less than the long edge of the triangle shape). I chose the lengthwise option, in part because I like knitting shawls that way, and in part because it gave me the look I was after. You can see below how nicely those long stripes of pattern look.

I did some calculations and decided to cast on 360 stitches, using a US8/5mm needle. I then basically knitted the beginning sections of the pattern, but without any shapings (no decreases), and with some variations in how many repeats of each pattern to knit, so that the combinations of stripes of various widths and textures and colours would look pleasing to me. I started and ended it with 1×1 ribbing in the bright pink.

One of the difficulties I found while knitting it is that the gauges for the different textured patterns was not the same. For me, the unblocked gauge of the slipped stitch stripes was 26st/10cm, while the gauge of the slipped stich squares was 24st/10cm, and the gauge of the moss stitch was 22st/10cm. I became convinced that this would end up in a disaster as the fabric was incredibly wonky given the wildly different gauges of the varying stripes. I was also worried about the ribbing, especially on the cast-off edge, which tended to roll backwards. You can see both of these problems in the below photo of the edge of the unblocked shawl:

I kept knitting, however, even in the growing evidence of disaster because (1) I couldn’t bring myself to stop, and (2) I have tremendous faith in the power of blocking. And, if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty good.

Today is the final day of a long holiday weekend. Life has been pretty crazy lately, so I hope that you have been able to find some peaceful moments to enjoy the start of spring; perhaps with a walk in the park?

Communing with knitters

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I had hoped to write to you earlier about my knitting adventures in Scotland a few weeks ago. I really had a blast up there. Two days after I returned from Edinburgh, however, I flew to Copenhagen where I managed to get really sick. Being really sick while on a business trip is not a jolly experience. Teaching all day and staying in a hotel when you are sick is bad enough, but it is more so when your husband is in Egypt visiting the pyramids. This did not put me in a blogging mood.

So, let’s go back to the Edinburgh portion of this story, which was excellent fun. I was there to attend the Wooly Good Festival. A bunch of knitting friends from Ravelry were planning on being there, and I thought it would be fun to go and meet up with them in person. I had booked tickets to the event back before I flew to Johannesburg in February, but I somehow neglected to book myself into a hotel or to buy train tickets. A few days beforehand, I realised that I needed to get organised. I put up a note on Ravelry, asking for a recommendation for a hotel near the event.

I then received a note from Sara, inviting me to stay with her and her husband, Richard. I had never met Sara before, so I was a bit concerned about taking her up on the offer. She wrote to me with a (very long) list of all of the knitters who had stayed with them in the past; it seems that her home is a halfway house for wayward knitters. As it turned out, Sara and Richard were lovely and I had a great time. On the Friday evening, they hosted a party for a group of knitters:

I knew all of these women through Ravely, but had only previously met two or three of them, so it was a delight to spend time with them. They were also great enablers at the festival, and it was fun to shop and gab and commune with knitters. I feel very privileged to be part of such a nice community. I think I was relatively modest with my purchases, buying four skeins of yarn, a knitting journal, a felted necklace and a few odds and ends:

I am chagrined to say that I went to Edinburgh and didn’t do anything but hang out with knitters and buy yarn. It really is a gorgeous city, and it has been over a decade since I was last there. I did manage to get in a few photos of the city as I was leaving to catch my train home:

Doug, in the meantime, spent a week in Cairo. He was busy giving talks and attending meetings, but he did manage to get to both the old and new museums, and to visit the pyramids and wander through some of the old sections of the city. He was last in Cairo in 1975, and it has changed a bit (as has Doug).

The long Easter weekend is here, and we are relaxing after our travels. I have finished one knitting project, and almost finished a second one. Stay tuned to this space for a full report.

Clearly not switched at birth

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When Emma was visiting a few months ago, we went to the Unravel Festival of Yarn and  purchased the yarn for her to knit the Field Shawl, by Maxim Cyr. Here is a photo of her wearing the sample at the festival:

A few days ago, I get a call from Emma.  She has started the shawl and she is upset.  “Mom, there is a little bump of colour showing up where it shouldn’t be. I can’t figure out why it’s there. I have already ripped the whole thing out and re-knitted multiple times. It is still there. It is annoying me. Here, I will send a photo.”

She sends us the above photo and Doug and I look at it.  “I am not seeing anything, Emma. What do you mean?”

Emma says: “Enlarge the photo, Mom. See? It’s like a pixel.”  Aha. Here is what Emma is referring to:

We talk about the nature of knitting, that a knit stitch on the one side causes a bump on the reverse side.  Emma is not having it; this pixel doesn’t correspond to a grey knit stitch on the other side. I spend some time trying to convince Emma that this is nothing, that she shouldn’t worry about it.  Her knitting is so beautiful and neat. The shawl will be gorgeous, etc. 

Emma says: “Mom, I have been looking at all of the photos of finished projects on Ravelry and none of them show these pixels.  I must be doing something wrong.  Why is this happening? I want to understand the process.”

We hang up. I immediately start systematically checking Ravelry project photos and find one that also has identical pixels, clear as day (but only if you are squinting and searching for them). I send her the photo. Hahaha!

The next day, Emma calls. She is annoyed with her increases.  They don’t look neat.  She has already ripped out and re-knitted the beginning of the shawl multiple times, but she wants it to be perfect. I said “Have you tried kfb?” Emma decides to rip it out (again!) and try kfb.  I counsel her not to rip, but to start a new piece using kfb, and then compare.

Last night, Emma calls up and she has now knitted a new beginning of the shawl, like a swatch, in which she has tried multiple increase options for each section – kfb, m1l, m1r, place the increase 1 stitch in from the i-cord, etc.  You can see the photos of both pieces, front and back, below. 

We then spent an hour debating each section.  Which has the neatest looking increase?  Which is easier to do?  Which produces a better i-cord?  What increase produces the most pleasing shaping? And yes, are there any pixels popping up?

I tell Emma that she doesn’t need to be worried at this level about her work, because all of the options are good. (Also, she has figured out how to run the mohair thread up the side through the i-cord, so no threads to end off. Big win!)  Doug then helpfully points out that I have spent the evening systematically tinking back my current knitting project (360 stitches to the row) because I had made a completely unnoticeable mistake some rows back.

Emma says “See, Mom, this is evidence that I was clearly not switched at birth by the hospital.”  As if we needed evidence, when she is a living, breathing  “Doug mini me”. (Seriously, though, isn’t her knitting lovely?)

Tomorrow I’m heading to Edinburgh to attend the Wooly Good Gathering. Maybe I will see some of you there?

Published!

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I interrupt our expected knitting content to announce the publication of my book! I am beyond thrilled to be a published author!

The book was co-written with my fabulous colleague, Tatiana S. Rowson, and published by DeGruyter. It is available in paperback or ebook. You can find it on Amazon, or ask for it from your local library or bookstore! ISBN: 9783111314440.

The book is grounded in the demographic reality that populations are ageing, and that we are not only living longer, but often healthier lives. As a result, our attitudes towards work and retirement are changing. We believe that we can all prepare ourselves for this new reality by making smart personal leadership decisions. We can develop the mindset, self-awareness, and adaptability to navigate change with resilience and confidence. The book is intended to be personable, informative, and also actionable, giving you the tools to have agency over your own story.

To write this book we drew on academic research as well as on our combined decades of experience in teaching personal leadership development to executive MBA students around the globe, and in coaching and facilitating workshops. Both Tatiana and myself have lived and worked in multiple countries, in different language and cultural contexts, and we have each undergone non-standard career paths; this has also contributed to our interest in this topic.

To quote the praise on the back of the book from executive coach and writer, Jonathan Passmore: “Sometimes you come across a book that speaks directly to you, and to the age. This is such a book. With an ageing global population and an ageing workforce, individuals and organisations need to press the reset button on what life and work look like past 65. Rowson and Sloan have produced a superb contribution to the field, which asks the right questions and offers answers: Important, intelligent and insightful, an essential read.”

Writing a book was a crazy adventure. Who knew that after writing and submitting the manuscript, it takes another 10 months to see it in print? Who could have guessed that my first published book would only mention the word ‘knitting’ once?

Stay tuned for my next post, when we shall return to our regularly scheduled knitting content.

Unravelling

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To a knitter the term ‘unravelling’ usually means the act of ripping out your knitting. However, if you are lucky enough to be in the London vicinity in February, it can have an alternate definition: the act of attending the Unravel Festival of Yarn at Farnham Maltings. This year, Unravel was especially nice because I went with Emma.

We took the train there which turned out to be easy peasy, much better than trying to park the car once you are there. We went on the opening day, in the morning, so although it was fairly crowded, it was still perfectly manageable to see everything and move around without being crushed.

We had a lot of fun exploring, squishing lots of yarn, having fun conversations with like-minded people, and admiring all of the beautiful hand-knitted garments being worn. We came home with some very nice treats:

If you remember from my last post, I have joined a KAL to knit one of Erika Knight’s Signature Collection garments produced with Walcot Yarns. I chose to knit the shawl called A Walk in the Park, and ordered the yarn in the original colours. I did want to see the shawl in person, and so our first stop at Unravel was to head to Walcot Yarns, where Carmen had brought along samples of all the pieces. Here is Emma wearing the shawl:

I like this shawl, but I was having two niggles about it. The first is that I just don’t like the triangle shape for shawls, particularly for worsted weight shawls. I have a secret plan, however, to change the shape. (You will need to watch this space to see how that transpires.) My second niggle was with the set of colours. I like the dark brown and white, and I love the greens. But, once I had the yarns in my hands, I really wasn’t crazy about the pink. Emma and I spent some time trying out different options and decided to keep the original sets minus the pink, and to replace it with – a stronger pink! Here you can see the originals (on top) and my new set (with the lilac-y pink Fireweed replaced with the fuschia-pink Petunia).

I really think this one change is amazing; it makes the whole thing pop for me. The KAL starts soon, and I am now all prepared to cast-on.

I purchased a skein of very fluffy boucle yarn from Kettle Yarn Co along with a skein of grey Northiam DK in order to make the Beanie Number 6 pattern by My Favorite Things:

© My Favourite Things

Emma tried on a very fluffy, cosy scarf designed by Maxim Cyr called Field:

She then proceeded to get advice from many, many assorted people on which shades of yarn to buy so that she could knit one. The two yarns on the top of our goodie photo are for this shawl, which will combine a silvery grey Fluff yarn with a beautiful DK from Les Garcons in a deep green blue (although it looks mostly blue in the photo). Max kindly posed for a photo with Emma:

We also bought a bunch of odds and ends and haberdashery, including some new Chia Goo Forte circular needle tips, a bottle of Soak, and two little tartan notions pouches.

It was altogether a fun expedition, and to make it more fun, we had a nice lunch afterwards. It was Valentine’s Day and we were surrounded by couples having romantic lunches.

We spent some time winding all of that yarn into cakes:

I especially like the below photo of the two yarns for the hat pattern, perched on top of each other as in the hat:

Isn’t it cute?

I was going to bore you with more photos of the event, but I am worn out, so you will have to imagine it for yourself. Now, despite all of this yarny fun, I have yet to knit a stitch in days, so I am off to remedy that.

Like ships that pass in the night

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I’ve just returned from a business trip to Johannesburg. I was away for 10 days, which felt like a long time. Interestingly, on the very day I left for Johannesburg, Emma arrived home for a visit. Yes, bad planning indeed! She landed at Heathrow only hours before my departure, and by the time she and Doug made it to the house, Emma and I had less then an hour of overlap. Alas, we were like two ships that pass in the night. The good news is that I am home now, and she is still here, so once I recover from the long flight and busy week, I can spend some time enjoying her presence.

I always take a knitting project with me when I travel. (As we knitters know, it takes much longer to pack one’s knitting than to pack everything else.) I took a very lightweight, mohair shawl, the Osaka Scarf, which I had originally cast on in July to take with me to Arizona. It seems to have become my travel project, mostly because it weighs next to nothing, is just miles of stockinette with nothing tricky going on, and fits into a tiny project bag. The shawl is knitted in blocks of colour, with five different shades of Ito Sensai silk mohair yarn.

I didn’t get to knit too much while I was there; a heavy teaching schedule and being super tired aren’t really conducive to knitting. However, I did manage to get in a few hours while sitting in the warm 30 degree sunshine out by the pool:

I am hankering for something a bit more meaty to knit now, something to keep my brain engaged and hopefully block out some of the horrible news of the world. (I am not going to discuss the horrible news here, which just keeps getting worse every day, because knitting is my safe space, so I am endeavouring to keep this a safe space too.) To that end, I have just signed up for a KAL (a knit-along) with Carmen Schmidt of A Yarn Story. The KAL is for any one of the 5 projects designed by Erika Knight for the Signature Collection using A Yarn Story’s yarn, Walcot Opus.

I have to admit that I am unsure about the project I chose from this collection. It is a shawl called A Walk in the Park:

© Erika Knight

This is not my usual type of shawl. For one thing, it is triangular-shaped, and I much prefer rectangular shawls. It is also outside of my usual colour choices. I ordered the yarn in the same colours as the pattern photo and was surprised when it arrived to discover that the colour I thought was black is actually a deep brown. Emma says she likes it much better with the brown, and that it gives it a beautiful depth. It still feels slightly out of my comfort zone.

Both Emma and Doug were surprised that I didn’t pick one of the pullover patterns from the collection, and maybe I should have. On the other hand, the whole family has been confiscating my hand-knitted shawls lately, and I am in danger of running out of shawls! I do have my mind on some glorious pullover patterns, however, which may very well make it to my needles. The top two contenders at the moment are The Checkerplate sweater by Lily Kate (for me):

© Lily Kate France

and the Liv Sweater by Moreka Knit (for Emma):

© Moreca knit

Emma and I are planning to attend the Unravel Yarn Festival at Farnham next week, and I expect that some yarn will find its way home with us! So keep an eye on this space for some new projects in the weeks to come!

I’ll end with a photo of a visitor to our garden today:

Perhaps he is interested in my next project too?

Time goes on

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Happy New Year, everyone! I had a vivid flashback on New Year’s Eve to 25 years before, Doug and I walking through Potsdam with two young children, watching the crazy excess of fireworks that the occasion provoked, surrounded by speculation of whether Y2K might crash the computer networks, and thinking how utterly weird it was to have a year that didn’t begin with ’19’. And now, here it is, 2025, the children are grown, I can barely stay awake to welcome in the new year, and I fear that my weird-o-meter has been blown to smithereens. Things change so quickly, and yet, here we are.

I missed most of the end of the year stuff that I usually post here, like my annual mitten post and the round-up of knitting projects. The last year ended on a sad note for us. My step-father, Stuart, died on the 24th of December, 2 days before his 91st birthday. Stuart was a lovely man, a hugely supporting presence in my life, and a great grandfather. We will miss him.

In the interest of completeness, and because they are terribly cute, I do want to show you my final finished project of 2024, a pair of mittens for Leah.

These are the Robinia Mittens by Anne Ventzel. She published the pattern just as I was finishing up my Anne Ventzel knit-a-long project, showcased in my last post. I liked the pattern instantly, and this was confirmed on my trip to Aarhus in mid-December when I was able to try on a sample pair at the yarn shop, Yarnfreak.

I purchased the yarn, Filcolana Peruvian, a worsted-weight wool, in a lovely blue and yellow combo, and cast on as soon as I returned. They are not only super cute, but they are fun and very easy to knit.

I realised after I took these photos that Leah is posed in a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” tryptich. And have you noticed how well they match her coat?

Tomorrow I go back to work after a strange and stressful Christmas break. I was very tired and feeling burned out before the break, and then we had a lot of sadness to deal with. Not surprisingly, I ended up getting sick. Doug has been suffering from knee and hip problems. Emma was not home, which was also sad. On the other hand, Leah has been home for a month which has been lovely. Here we are in Henley-on-Thames:

And here we are (with dinosuar!) in London at the Natural History Museum:

I am busy planning out my next knitting projects. I have a few things still on the needles which I hope to either finish or frog, and I intend to cast on some new things soon. Kate Davies announced a new knitting club yesterday, which I imagine will spark some ideas. I am planning another pair of mittens or two. Leah has managed to co-opt one of my shawls (see above photo), and since Doug also adopted one, and Emma managed to go home with two, I think I may need to cast on a new shawl for me. So, life goes on, with a New Year in front of us. There are certainly some weird things coming our way, and many challenges, but also there is family, and craft, and intellectual pursuits to keep our hearts and hands and heads engaged.