Balancing my hobbies

The topic for today is: Do you both knit and crochet and if so how do you balance the two? 3KCBWDAY7

Currently I do not crochet, except occasionally to finish a knitted garment, though I did a lot of it in the 70's and 80's before I picked up knitting again. I also used to sew a lot. By the 80's and 90's I was making most of my own clothes and sewed a lot of gifts too, then I suddenly lost interest in sewing.  I sewed doll clothes for a while and then stopped doing that.  Hobbies do go in phases for many people.

Knitting is such a versatile skill.  You can knit things that are useful and comfortable to wear, especially if you live in a cold climate, such as Duluth, Minnesota. You can knit things for babies and children or dolls, you can knit toys and accessories and you can carry knitting and knit almost anywhere.  I especially enjoy knitting with my knitting group. We meet every Tuesday. I hardly ever miss a Tuesday unless I am out of town, which has been a lot this year. (see my travel blog) 

The hobby I have to balance my knitting with is Rosemaling.  I have been rosemaling for 11 years. I started in 2001, by taking a class at my local Michael's store.  It was a 3 or 4 week class--one evening a week.  Not really much and the teacher wasn't that great, but I decided I wanted to keep at it and learn more.  This teacher convinced me to join the local Rosemaling Society, so I did that in 2002, I think. Through them I have been exposed to more rosemaling and some very good teachers and painters. I have taken a lot of classes and am developing a style of my own. I have done some commissions and special projects, which has forced me to hone my skills more. 

Here's a link to our society's web site.  The Twin Ports Rosemaling Society.

How do I balance the two?  The rosemaling isn't portable and takes up a lot of room.  When I am painting, I spread out all my equipment on a large craft table in my family room and it's kind of a mess.  I pack it all away when I am expecting company and then don't like to get it out again, because it's so much trouble to get it out and put it away.  I need a studio.  So I do the rosemaling in spurts.  I sign up for a class and get into it and may continue at home for a while after that until I put it all away again.  When I have a specific project I get it out and do that.  My most recent project was a panel I did for our home in Normandy. I do all my own designs and paint freehand.  I use either acrylics, gouache or oils. This one is done in gouache, which, I think are oil paints that you dilute with water.  I have no idea how that works.  I need to learn more about paints.

 

 

And this is the last post for the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week.  It has been an interesting experience. 

 

  

 

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Improving my skillset

So this is the topic for today's post.  3KCBWDAY6

I love doing colorwork.  I have recently been working on two projects with cables and it has reminded me that I really prefer colorwork.  I did learn to do cables without a cable needle (from Jared Flood) and that made cables more enjoyable, but still they are not my favorite. I feel I can still improve my colorwork knitting, though and my next big project will be a colorwork one. I haven't done any for a while now. I would like to do a big Fair Isle sweater.

Other skills I would like to learn are shadow knitting and double knitting.  Shadow knitting just looks so fascinating.  I want to know how it is done. And I'm not sure what double knitting is, but would like to try that some day. I've tried "twined knitting" but that is really putzy. You have to twist the yarns after every stitch, which really slows the process, so I wasn't crazy about it.

In case you aren't familiar with shadow knitting, here is a pattern on Ravelry using this technique. It looks like magic to me.

I knit socks and sleeves and other small circumference items on 2 circular needles.  I used double points when I first learned to knit some 40 years ago, but switched to 2 circs and prefer that method now. I have done magic loop too, which is very similar. I like the 2 circs.

I also used to crochet years ago and can do that, but mostly I like to knit sweaters, which is why I switched to knitting from crochet.

Maybe one area I could expand into would be writing patterns. I sometimes design my own sweaters, but those patterns tend to be very basic.  I have written and published patterns for doll sweaters, but never for a garment for a person.

I would like to know a lot more about sheep and other fiber animals, fiber, and the various characteristics of fibers and yarns available. 

I have run out of things to say on this topic.  If this were the knitting and rosemaling blog week challenge, I could add that I have a lot to learn in rosemaling and hope to improve my skills there.

Since this is a post about things I don't know or haven't done, I don't have any pictures.  Since I don't have any pictures, I think I'll just stop now and work on tomorrow's topic.  I'm not sure anyone has read this far down in the post anyway.  I could just add nonsense here to make it look longer.

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Knitting throughout the year

Today's topic for 3KCBWDAY4 is "seasons" and how my knitting changes with the season.

That's easy.  I knit with wool mostly in the fall and winter and with cotton or cotton blends in the summer. Here are some projects I have finished in the past few years, listed according to the month in which they were finished.  Thanks to Ravelry this is information that is easy to look up.

 

January, 2008  --  Gjestal Nagano 100% wool sport

This is a good one to start this post with, because this is what I was working on when I heard about Ravelry and requested an invitation. I did this sweater as a Tour de France 2007 knitalong, which was fun. I didn't finish it before we left for Paris. I didn't have a lot of knitting time while we were there, so it got finished in January, 2008. I blogged about it on this blog.  And here's the link to my

Ravelry project page.

 

 

February, 2011  --  Kauni wool

When this Kauni wool came into our yarn shop, all the ladies in my knitting group got excited and bought some.  Until I saw this colorway, I wasn't planning on buying any, but I just fell in love with these colors. Ravelry project page.

March, 2010  --  Dale baby wool

I have loved these Norwegian sweaters for years, but didn't feel my skillset was up to knitting one.  Finally in 2010, I was ready to try this. This is my own pattern.  I wanted to keep it simple and the Dale patterns  as well as other commercial patterns tend to be more complicated. Blog post.  Ravelry project page.

April, 2009  --  some wool I bought in Japan and some Nature Spun fingering wool.

Okay, this one looks more complicated than the one above.  No explanation for that. Another pattern that I created to use this yarn. I like the back better than the front.  For more information see my Ravelry project page.  or  This blog.

 

May, 2011  --  Rowan cotton glace sport

One of two shrugs I made to attend 2 weddings in June.

June, 2011  --   Cascade Yarns Ultra Pima 100% cotton DK

I made this one for my niece's wedding. I wanted something to wear with that necklace, which had been my Grandmother's.  The handsome young man is my son.

July, 2010  --  Filatura di Crosa  cotton/rayon/nylon  Aran

This one is nice to wear over a tank top in the summer.

August, 2010  --  Taki Yarns cotton classic DK

I needed a white shell.  Both this pattern and the one below are from Ann McCauley's Twinset knitting book.

September, 2009  ---  Nature Spun Sport 100% wool

It's getting cold here by September, so I'm back to knitting with wool.

Ravelry project page.

October, 2010  Bergere de France Ideal Nylon/Acrylic/wool sport

I bought this yarn in Falaise, Normandy in May.  This is another pattern I made up to use the yarn I had. sometimes that works out better than other times. Ravelry project page.

November, 2007  --  Noro Silk Garden mohair/silk/wool Aran

I bought this yarn in Japan, then took it to France.  I needed an easy project there to take to the Knit-cafe I attended a few times. It's kind of a boring pattern, but I couldn't find anything else that I had finished in November.

December, 2008  --  Jamieson's Double Knitting 100% wool DK

This was made with yarn left-over from another project.

So that's one project for each month.  Looking back, I want to remove some of the photos.  I don't usually post so many pictures of myself. But I think knitwear garments look better modeled on a person, than laid out flat and I don't have a dress dummy, so I try to take pictures of myself in my finished garments.  My deck is just off the computer room, so that's the easiest place to take photos.

 

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A peek into the past

Day 2 of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2012.  3KCBWDAY2  The theme for today is photography.  Since I'm not such a creative photographer, I decided to look in an old photo album for some knitting-related photos.

Here's a lovely photo I found of Miss Lily Pearl and Miss Ophelia Rose having tea and knitting.  It's a bit hard to see in the photo, but Miss Lily Pearl is just weaving in the ends of a pair of mittens.  The finished one is on the table.  I remember those mittens. They were light blue with white and dark blue designs.  My mom was very strict with me any time she let me wear them and made sure I knew I was NOT to lose them. I don't think I ever did.  I wonder what happened to them.

I used to love it when these two ladies came to visit Grandma.  Miss Ophelia had the fanciest hats and jewelry.  I was a little in awe of her, but Miss Lily was so kind. I was too young to learn to knit from them.  My grandmother taught me years later, but Miss Lily would let me play with some of the things she had in her basket--balls of yarn or buttons.  I so wanted to be big enough to knit with them.

 

And here's one my dad took in the 60's of an old woman we saw in Provence.  She's working on a sock on dpns. She didn't speak any English and our French was pretty weak then, so we didn't learn anything about her. I was just learning to knit on dpns myself, so I was fascinated to see her doing it.  She barely looked down at her needles. I was impressed.

 

[note:  The dolls in the top photo are by doll artist Joan Rydberg of St. Cloud, Minnesota. As far as I know she doesn't have a website, but I have an address and phone number for her. I added the knitting and took the photo for this post. The doll in the lower photo was a gift to my mother from friends in France. She has been added to my collection and I treasure her. I did nothing to alter her.]

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COLORS!

3KCBWDAY1

         
          I've always loved colors.  I can remember as a young child loving all the colors in my box of Crayola crayons.  I still remember the square cross-section shape of the box of 64.  But when I was old enough to have a double-wide box of 128, wow that was really fabulous.  My mother liked the fall colors and I did too, though I have also always been drawn to blues.
          I was more in tuned to fashion trends than my mother and in the 80's and 90's when the olive greens and rusts were replaced in popularity by the jewel tones, I thought I would never go back to the colors of the 60's and 70's. My mother bought herself a chartreuse pantsuit in the 90's.  She said she'd always liked that color, but I wasn't ready to go back to those colors yet.  About 10 years later, I finally realized I really did love the rusts and oranges, deep reds, olives, and natural colors. Now I have an orange bathroom!
          I have seen these color inspiration pictures on Pinterest.  They are usually for paint color inspiration, but why shouldn't the same thing work for knit-wear?  I love color-work and like to chose my own colors.  I often see a landscape or just whatever is outside the car window and think those colors would be great in a color-work sweater.  I am especially drawn to the softer tones-taupes, tans, greys, blues, such as are found in this beach scene in Hawaii.

          So for this post I browsed my computer for photos with different color combinations and made up some of my own color samplers.

A park in Paris in late autumn shows the golds and greens that I love.

The big round lake in the Jardins Luxembourg on a somewhat grey day in late fall.

Grasses and Verbena near a lake-side path in a village in Normandy.

Two trees hugging in a forest in Maryland, USA. I love the soft colors in just two color families.

Ancient carved stone of the Qtub Minar in Delhi, India. These are my colors.  I could see using this combination.

These are colors I would not have picked to go together, but look how great they look side by side in this garden bed. The grey at the top is from the dirt and the taupe at the bottom from the stone of the buildings in the background.

This is my first post for the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2012.  3KCBWDAY1

To tie this into knitting, I should go out and buy yarn in these colors, photograph it, make up color charts using those colors for some fair-Isle sweaters, and then post the finished sweaters here.  Yeah, come back in a couple years to see if that has happened.

Rosemaling fit for a King?

Specifically the King of Norway.  I've been asked to paint a panel to by hung at  Norway Hall in downtown Duluth. They are sprucing up for the King's visit. So I have been painting this for the King Of Norway. He is expected to visit Duluth on October 17th.

 

So here is my panel.  It is one of 4 being done in different styles by 4 rosemalers in our local rosemaling society, The Twin Ports Rosemaling Society. 

 

I think the colors are truer in this one, but the glare is worse. I wish I knew how to get rid of the glare when photographing rosemaling.

And here are a couple early photos that I took before it was finished.

My rosemaling teacher was originally chosen to do this panel in the Telemark style, but she is facing cataract surgery and called me a few weeks ago and asked me to do it.  I was honored.  Mine is certainly not as nice as what she would have done, but I hope it will brighten up the Norway hall.

Kauni effektgarn Thistle design and The Knit-a-Journey retreat

January/February update:

I started on this sweater using Kauni effektgarn, which I  bought in December at my local yarn shop.  This yarn changes color from tan to beige to cream to off-white to grey and back to tan, with very long color repeats.  I started with two balls of the same colorway, but started at different points in the gradual color change.  This is the effect it gives.  I have now bound off the shoulders and am cutting the steeks for a v-neck and armholes. This yarn is very "sticky" so I'm probably not going to sew the armhole steeks.  I am picking up around the neck opening to do a corrugated border around the rib v-neck.  I'll try to post some more pictures as I make more progress. 

The bits of maroon yarn are the scrap yarn that I put the bound-off stitches onto at the base of the armhole (13) and v-neck.  The pattern said to bind off 4 for the v-neck and when picking them up do a K2tog and ssk with those 4 stitches.  But the design has a center stitch, so I thought it would be one stitch off if I did that.  I think maybe I should have done 5 or 1, but I did 3.  So in picking those up, I tried to fix it so the center stitch is on top and I did a dec 2 putting the other two behind it.  If it looks odd, I'll take it out and try something else.  I often have to redo the necklines of my sweaters (see many previous posts).  So that's where I am with my knitting now.

Adding one more picture after finishing the neck opening and cutting open the armholes.  It looks so much better this way.

In January I helped host a retreat for listeners of Susan Dolph's Knit a journey podcast.  Three knitters from the Twin Cities area and one from Tennessee came for the weekend.  Most of them stayed at a lovely Victorian B&B about 1 mile from here.  I had them over here for supper Saturday and Sunday evenings.  We went for a hike in Hartley Park on a very cold, but sunny day.  We visited two local yarn shops, we played games and sat and knitted and chatted.  It was a lovely weekend. 

Here are a few photos from that weekend:

Breakfast at the inn, listening to the owner recount the history of the Mathew Burrows Inn.

 

Atop Rock Knob in Hartley Park on a day when it was 5°F. Betsy, Allison, Laurie, Susan.

 

 

A dessert that looks like it has raw wool on top, but it was spun sugar.

 

Sitting around the fire knitting at the inn.

 

Sitting up in the third floor sitting area of the inn. Me, Betsy, Lisa, Susan, Allison.

 

Lisa, Susan and Betsy on the shore of Lake Superior.

Summer update

 

While I didn't resolve to blog more often this year, I had planned to try to write a new entry every month, but that hasn't happened.  It's been an unusual year with my mother passing away in February and lots of travel.

I have been knitting, though and did finish the Knit Picks kit that is pictured above.  It is one of Knit Picks "historical" sweaters. The inspiration for the design comes from traditional Norwegian sweaters, but my Setesdal below is actually much more like the traditional sweater.  Still I think it's a nice-looking sweater.  I made a few changes, but nothing major. I've worn it once or twice, but it is a pretty heavy wool, so I don't expect to wear it again until next fall.

There's more information about this one on my Ravelry project page if you want to know more.

I have been to Taiwan and Normandy, France in the past two months. There are pictures from Taiwan on my travel blog, (link above on right) and the Normandy pictures can be found here.

I'm currently working on a lace shawl, but did buy some yarn in Falaise, Normandy, France for another Norwegian-style sweater.

That's my June update.

Setesdal pullover and some doodling with paint

I'm going to try to update this blog once a month.  So here goes for February.

KNITTING

I started a Norwegian style pullover early in January.   My knitting group at my local yarn store decided to all do Norwegian sweaters starting in January.  Since this fits right in with my resolution for 2010, I thought this was a good time to start a Setesdal style sweater.  I've wanted to do one of these for a long time, but was waiting until I felt my 2-color knitting was up to the task.

Here is what I have of it so far. It's going pretty quickly.  I'm sticking to the very simple, basic Norwegian shaping, which is very little.  More modern Norwegian and Dale designed sweaters are much more complicated than this, but I decided to see how this would go with very little structure. I'm not adding steek stitches, but will cut at the sides for the armholes and at the neck for the neck opening. It will have a placket.

This is the body and lower part of the sleeve.  I'm ready to start the patterning at the top of the sleeve.  I pulled designs from Setesdal Sweaters, by Annemor Sundbo, and made up my own pattern from there.  The traditional Setesdal sweaters, which are named after the valley of Setes in Norway, were worn by men and had embroidered wool fabric cuffs and plackets.  I'm not going to do the wool fabric.  I want this to be a comfortable everyday sweater to wear in the Duluth winters.  There is some more information on my Ravelry page.

 

ROSEMALING

I signed up for another class in Rosemaling. It meets one day a week for 8 weeks. It started yesterday.  I didn't have a project to work on, so spent the time doodling on paper.  Here is what I did.

And here:

I was just trying to get back into the feel of handling the brushes and thinking about my designs.  I practiced with a round brush, a filbert and a liner.

Two nearly FO's -- One Rosemaling!

I attended a two-day class in rosemaling taught by VGM Irene Lamont of Eau Claire, WI. last Thursday and Friday. I practiced for several days before the class, because I hadn't done any rosemaling since last summer or fall.

 

I have a couple photos of my unfinished floorcloth. I painted it in oils, which is the first time I've ever painted in oils. I have done all my rosemaling in acrylics before this. It was a little hard getting the paint to work on the canvas and it was an adjustment for me getting used to working in oils. I can't say now that I like them better than acrylics, but I can see that for some applications and styles they would work better.  With more practice I could get used to them.

Here is what the floor cloth looks like now. After it is thoroughly dry I'll "antique" it and paint a border.

 

And the other nearly Finished Object is my merging colors Strickwear vest. I have completed the 4 pieces. They just need to be seamed together and then a border knit on the neck and bottom edges. I'm amazed at how the two backs came out the same size even though one is knit on the diagonal. This pattern is well written.

Okay, I have to pack now. We leave Wednesday for our trip to Indiana , Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. These two projects will sit until I get back mid-July.

I finished the sweater

And here's the back:

New button band is much better

See how much better the second one is? Now I just have to buy buttons, decide where to put them and how to do the button holes and work the second band.

 

Unfortunately my plans to do that today may be affected by the blizzard we are having. March is living up to its reputation of going out like a lion. We could hardly have asked for more difficult, wintry weather today. It would be a good day to stay in and knit, if only I had the buttons I need.

The second sleeve, cont'd

It's boring, working on the second sleeve, but at least they will both be done when I finish the body. That will be nice. The second one is coming along better than the first. The gauge is more even, though it is looser. In the picture you can see that the bottom part of the first one is smaller. I wish that one was larger and the second one was smaller, but the second one will be okay, since this is sort of a jacket-like sweater. I used a larger needle and added one pattern repeat to get it larger, but my knitting was looser besides that and so the second one turned out a whole lot bigger than the first. I hope when I redo the first one at the bottom, it looks okay. I wish after all the practice I've had with faire-isle type knitting, that my stitches were more consistent. I keep trying and hoping it will improve.