Jeg lukkede masker af her til morgen – endelig! Selvom perlegrus er en meget smuk og enkel strikketeknik er den også lidt langsommelig at strikke, og jeg nåede at blive en smule træt af det her til sidst. Men nu er blusen omsider klar til sammensyning, og så skal der kanter på. Hvilken slags har jeg ikke besluttet endnu, men jeg hælder til en enkel hæklet kant rundt i halsen og på ærmerne. Måske også rundt forneden.
Jeg elsker farverne i det håndmalede Opus-garn!Så skal der sys sammen og laves kanter.
Jeg glæder mig til at flashe blusen til Saltum Uldfestival her i weekenden! 🙂
English summary: I have just cast off the last stitches of my linen-stitch sweater this morning. Now all that remains is sewing up the seams and making some kind of edge at the neckline and the sleeves. Looking forward to wear this garment at Saltum Uldfestival this weekend!
I am a relatively new member of the knitting society “Seriøs Strik For Sjov”, which means “Serious Knitting For Fun”. Every year the members are encouraged to knit/crochet/craft something for a travelling exibition. This years theme is “Just Blue”, and that simply means that only blue items are allowed.
The deadline is on March 1st, but I handed in my blue item the other night when we met at Silkeborg Museum, as usual on the third thursday of the month.
Before I let go of my blue thing, I took a few photos. Our chairman Hanne has given permission to publish photos, so here it is:
Equalizer
The top is knitted in two long panels that goes over the shoulders, each one dyed in two blue colors. The idea was to knit with exactly the number of stitches required for the color change to find place in the middle of the panel. It meant that I had to pay great attention to gauge – I litteraly had to count on every row, allowing for some drifting – but not much.
The two panels were joined front and back with mattress stitching, and the sides are mesh panels.
Side panel of the Equalizer Top
I like how the two panels that make up the front and back are so different. The dark blue/turquoise panel gave name to the top: The color shifting looks kind of like the equalizer-panel on the stereo..
Apart from finishing my Equalizer Top I have been weaving. Soon I will be ready to cut down the two rugs in Swedish Rosepath-pattern. They will be approximately 2 meters (80 inches) long, the first one a little longer than the second. The weaving width is 80 cms (32 inches), but I expect the width to crawl in to about 70 cms.
Here is a look at the pattern of the second rug:
Cutting down will be very exiting! It will happen in a few days.. I’m curious to weigh the rugs to find out the amount of yarn that has gone into them – I have used nothing but stash yarns.
Yes. I have a serious stash..
This is the November ’13 Fiber Club color way. Named “Uncle Kurt” because of its manly colors. I can clearly envision a subtle, yet quite lively, scarf (or even a sweater) created out of this fiber, the perfect handmade gift for a dear uncle, grandfather, son or husband.
The GarnGalleriet Fiber Club is well established by now and has loyal members/subscribers. They receive a new color way each month and I find great pleasure in creating (hopefully) pleasing club-packages.
This month I have a special offer for new Clubbies. A 20% discount!!
This is how you get your 20% off:
If you want to order Fiber Club Classic: use the code CLASSICNOVEMBER.
If you want to order Fiber Club Light: use the code LIGHTNOVEMBER.
If you want to order Fiber Club Silk Hankies: use the code SILKNOVEMBER.
This discount is only available when ordering through the webshop, using PayPal, only in November and only until Clubs are full!
If you have any problems with PayPal, please get in touch with me om email: birthe@garngalleriet.dk
I love them all.. All of my semisolids, or monochromatic, colorways. I have added more new colorways over the summer and now there’s more than twenty of them.
I even updated the page here to show all the monochromatics. Take a look, you’ll find the tab in the top menu.
I’m happy to take orders, you know.. 🙂 The colors can be dyed on my yarns or my fibers – your choise! Please also take a look at my webshop to see what’s on the shelves right now.
I the small, quiet village Thorning you can find and visit Blicheregnen’s Museum. Together with my friend Mariann I went there today to see an embroidery exibition.
I don’t sew embroidery. Mariann does a little. I haven’t done any cross stitch since I was in my teens, and that lies many years back.. Never the less, the patterns and colors traditionally used by craftswomen of the Middel East (Syria, Palestine, Gaza) are fabulous, to say the least, and can easily provide inspiration to knitting patterns and weaving.
The exibition was partly dresses, coats, pillows and shawls from the Middle Eastern countries, but there was also embrodery (purses, mainly) from the Danish artist, Elisabeth Amdisen, who has created the exibition. She has also written a book about it – I bought that, and got it signed by the author, who just happend to be there today.. 🙂
Beautiful book, with lots of wonderful ideas!
The dresses with their richly patterned surfaces were fantastic. Here you see two of them:
All the patterns have their special meaning – it’s not just decoration. Many of the patterns were to protect from evil or accidents, a thing that we also know in Northern European (knitting)tradition.
Here is detail from af pillowcase:
The colors and geometric balance of this work is really captivating!
Now I’ll find the sofa and have a closer look at my new embroidery book.
Today my good friend Elisabeth had asked me to meet her at a local art center, Silkeborg Bad Kunstcenter.
Elisabeth wanted to show me an exibition of wonderful woven tapestries by a group of European art tapestry weavers. The artists call themselves European Tapestry Forum (ETF) and the juried exibition is called ARTAPESTRY3.
And it was interesting stuff! As a wannebe-tapestry weaver I was mostly drawn to the technical aspects of the artworks, and not so much the artistic impression..
Elisabeth and I have both signed up for a two day workshop in tapestry weaving later this month, so todays expedition was kind of a study filed trip..
The colors, the size, the impact of all those very different weavings was overwhelming! I snapped some photos, of which very few were a decent quality.
I’ll just show a few, like this hanging, woven of fabric strips like our well-known, good old scrappy floormatts.
It was sooo hard not to touch the hangings, and so tempting to lift them out to inspect the backside.. We were of course thrilled when we came to a tapestry that stood out from the wall just enough for us to get a good look behind the surface:
As you can see, the back side of this very colorfull piece looks almost like rya. No weaving in ends here! Notice how Elisabeth holds tight to her hands.. We didn’t touch anything. And, because touching was not allowed (and this maybe is a bit nerdy) we simply used another one of our senses: we actually sniffed in the fabric with our noses in an attempt to find out if a certain part of a weaving was made out of silal of silk. Elisabeth even claimed that the colors had their own different smells, like in this piece woven with naturally dyed nettle yarns:
But mostly it was the use of many strands of yarn to create subtle color variations and a lively surface that was interesting to me. Like this:
Beautiful, isn’t it? I would love to be able to weave just remotely like this some day..
We also visited another exibition today in the same place. “Netmaskerne“, a group of Danish machine knitters opened their show fabolous, interesting and gorgeous dresses and robes, and of course we went to have a look.. 🙂
Beautiful stuff!!
Back home I immediately sat down to weave a bit on my pratice-tapestry:
I have to admit that I’m quite intimidated by all the colors I have to control to get the right look of the mushrooms. It’s not easy at all! But I guess I just need to remind myself that it is a practice piece, and that I’ll learn by doing (and hopefully learn a lot at the tapestry-class later this month..).
That’s fun! I love sampling. I really enjoy knitting swatches, too. Sampling and swatching are activities so full of anticipation, curiosity, and the results are full of promises of beautiful things to come. Or maybe they are not.. Anyway, is’t an exiting process!
Today I spun a sample of one of my new monochromatic colorways, “Savoy”. A rich, strong, warm green hue. The fiber has both light and dark places, at times almost black.
I spun the fiber (Blue Faced Leicester, not shetland which is actually the fiber shown in the photo above.) using one of my supported spindles, a russian style spindle from Aaes. Then plied the two strands together using another beautiful Aaes-spindle:
– Now it needs a hot bath (the yarn, not the spindle..) and afterwards I think it will become wristwarmers.
By the way, another new colorway is on its way: a deep dark blue.
You are looking at the colorway “Turmeric” (“Gurkemeje” in Danish). This color is one in a series of monochromatics or semi-solids that I’m working on right now. I have 6 coloursways ready by now which can be seen on the page of that very same name – see menu on top.
Another new one is “Dark Fuchsia”.
I hand-paint these colorways on first quality wool top from various breeds or on luxury blends like wool/kidmohair, wool/silk, wool/bamboo and several other combinations.
The hand painted “wheels” are great for spinning and felting. If you would like to try one out please go to my website (no real web-shop yet, I’m afraid, but I’m working on that..) and check the in-stock list. You can also email me with your request. I accept PayPal or bank transfers.
Drying outside right now in the (rather chill) spring weather hangs one of my older colorways, a multi-colored named “Gypsy”. There’s a little bit of this one reserved for my own spinning pleasure – can’t wait untill it’s dry!
