Winter is Coming

It’s the last day of September and the mornings and evenings are beginning to be chill here in Denmark. Most days I’m out on my bicycle going to and from work and I can feel it in my hands but unfortunately my mittens from last year need to be repaired as you can see.

Knowing myself, that won’t happen anytime soon so I had the choice between buying something or make a new pair myself. Like many other knitters I don’t like to buy what I can make myself, so I took out some of the swatches I’ve made the last couple of months to see if any them could be adapted for a pair of gloves.

I ended up choosing this swatch, knitted in Rowan Fine Tweed. Originally, it was meant for a cardigan but I could see it work for a pair of gloves as well.

The only thing I’ve changed is the colors. My winter coat is grey and I wanted something more cheerful. If everything goes well, I’ll try to write a pattern for them when I’m done.

A Summer of Discontent

This year, the summer was long and warm here in Denmark but unfortunately I didn’t get to enjoy it much. At midsummer I had a blood clot in my left leg which meant most of my summer took place in front of the tv at my parents’ home. For two weeks I was unable to walk more than a few steps at a time and it took another two to be able to walk a few kilometers. Even now, 3 months later, the leg is still weak and I’m not able to do as much exercise as I would like to.

On the other hand, I had plenty of time to knit during this time and I ended up doing a lot of swatches as I was unable to focus on any big projects. It was fun trying out a lot of different stitch patterns and new yarns and I began to feel more confident about designing something like a sweater for myself; I just couldn’t find the right match of yarn and stitch pattern.

That changed about three weeks ago when I happened to hear that Charlotte was taking care of Rasmilla Strik og Design for the day. I hadn’t seen Charlotte for a long time so I decided to stop by for a quick chat and a chance to see some yarn I didn’t know. I ended up with quite a catch, including 5 balls of Lopi Einband in 5 different colors.

At first I was attracted by the brilliant colors but I was a bit stumped as what to make with it. I knew I wanted to make a sweater or a cardigan and I knew I wanted it to be colorful but I didn’t know what stitch pattern or needles to choose. The yarn is very thin but it can be knit with a wide range of needle sizes which gives you a lot of interesting possibilities.

I began mulling over this and the fact that the yarn comes from Iceland and suddenly remembered about the Icelandic designer Hélène Magnússon. She has among other things designed some very fascinating sweaters using an old Icelandic intarsia tradition with only knit stitches. I had a look and it turns out that she actually uses Lopi Einband for these designs.

Now I knew what to do and here’s a picture of how far I’ve gotten. I still haven’t decided on the exact distribution of the colors but it’s going to be a boat necked sweater with stripes of color blocks. I call it ‘Prøvebillede’ because it reminds me of the old test picture used by DR, the Danish Public Broadcast Radio.