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 Renaissance dancing

What the friday?

 As I said, in these posts I will show you some of the forgotten UFO-s I found, while cleaning out and reorganizing a bunch of boxes full of yarn, and other stuff.

Now, what would you do, if you'd find something like this? 

I totally forgot this, but how can someone forget something that is almost done?  Only missing the two sleeve edge? 

Yes, there is a story for this one...

Back, when the book publishing company (with a great selection if craft books) took over the yarn store named Barka, they contacted me, that they would like to work with me... And would I be up to design and knit a smal booklet thematic booklet. 

Let me think I said, and in a few days, came up with the Knitted Stripes theme, with pieces from a simple hat/scarf/mitt set through a bolero, to a tunic and a few more pieces.

I even started working on the knits, I knitted the hat, the scarf (never photographed, and now I do not have it, I might knit something similar to them, because they were simple but nice).

And the tunic.

It was to be kind of simple, a raglan, a wide neck, with a deep, folded collar.

However, in the meantime, I felt disppointed, in how they dealt with some things, especially money.

I do not want to get into details, let's just say, my enthusiasm was severly dampened. 

And then they closed the store, and cut back severly on their craft books, and that was it. 

Most probably something more interesting came up, and It was... Not a good feeling to deal with this piece.

Now, when I took a good look at it, I think, it actually WAS a good idea, I still like how the yarns and the stripes work together. 

Now, I should like to finish it, the only question is the size, as I am bigger now, then when I started it.

I still think I will finish, if it will not fit me, I will give it away.

I even found the yarn that I need for it.

Lace neckwarmer

 Yes, that lace, you've seen me struggle with. Well, not really struggle, but I needed time to get back to it. 

When I posted the yarn I dyed for the day of wool, a friend of mine really liked it, but she is not a knitter.

So I tought, why not freshen up my lace.knitting skills, and make something for her? I winded it to  a ball, and looked up the pattern I have knitted once. It was quite a few years ago, but still...

Yes, I had to frog a few rows, I had to frog half rows, more than a few times, I had to do surgery on it...

But, at the end, I finished it.

Yarn: DROPS Flora, handdyed.

Pattern: DROPS 155-29 (only the last two pattern diagram)

Needles: 3,25 Knit Pro

Photos (modelled) Norbert Varga @Bodeszphoto

Weekly SO

 Strong opinion, that is. I would not go as far as a "hot take", but my thoughts.

Knits and zippers do not go together (for me, at least). I do not like zippers to beginn with. It is not because they are a pain to sew. No, I can sew them just fine, but I don't like them. I avoid them if I can and one can learn about ways of closing clothes without using zippers from historical clothes. I know there are a bunch of cardigans, especially hoodies that are designed with a zipper in mind, but for me.. eeeek. I much rather knit a buttonband, and use buttons. 

The perfect birthday wekend

 Yes, my birthday this year is on Tuesday, but noone say, you cannot celebrate the weekend before that. Too.

Two concerts, 600 kilometers, 2 reenactment/living history event, in two different period, and about 6 hours of sleep. 

Just the way I like it.

What does that Facebook meme say about Saggittariuses? "I will sleep when I am dead!"

My mom's knitting

My mom died 22 years ago, today. I have written about that day, which was a Monday, just like today, the snow, the walk through the bridge to see her for a last time, but getting there late...

I thought, this year I will tell you about her a little bit more. 

I already told you about how my mother was a great knitter, though while I prefer colorwork, she was a cable-wizard. She knitted gorgeous cabled sweaters. Because someone asked, I looked up old photos, if I find an example, and there it was, a few of them. 

Look:

When I say, that I simply do not know life without handkits, I mean, this

or this (look at my west, and my father's sweater, both knitted by my mom):

And when I say, she was a cable-wizard, I mean this:

And this:

or this:

Or this, which is one of my favorite picture of her and me.

And as a final note, I do have to say, that my paternal grandmother was just good of a knitter, and, my mom being left-handed, I actually learned from my grandma. 

Anyhow, I think I just got a particular mix of geenes.

Dilemma

 NYGLS (as in New Year's Good Luck Sweater)

It is every year, and though in the FB group I say the rules are pretty loose, in fact the only rule, that we should knit something for OURSELVES, I am usually more stricter with myself. 

Usually, but there were a couple of years, when I was not holding mysself to my own rules, and though I know that things I carefully built and worked like hell for, falling apart does not have much to do with my good luck sweater, still... This is why, last year I did keep my own rules, and I have not knit anything else, but the New Year's sweater and my travel-kit socks, and the current scrappy neck warmer, until I finished the sweater. 

However, things did not get better, but, in fact, kept sliding downward... 

And now I am thinking... Just how much red sweater one uses? Oh, yes, I like red, it suited me with dark brown hair (when I was a child) with red hair, and suits my silver hair too. What is more, there is a perid of each year, when I wear red with red (hmm, aside from the fact that I like to dress colorfully and like variation, there are periods of eaxh year, when I tend to use one color or another more ... I might write about that one day). But since I work from home, I do not need to dress-for-office each day, I only need to dress up, when I go to some event (where we change as soon as we get there), a concert, a rehersal, dance class, shopping. 

Anyhow, I stop blabbing and tell you the options.

1) I did select a slip-stitch colorwork cardigan, in which I can use - once again- a bunch of red and gray leftovers. In fact I already bought the pattern, because it interested me, ever since it came out. But I just knitted a red and gray cardigan las year. 

2) I found some brick red wool/viscose yarn, which is somewhere between lace and light fingering (50 gramms 300 meters.) I have 400 gramms, I can find something really thin, lacy piece, I can double it up, or I can use it stranded with the white color of the same yarn, either striped or stranded, but then, which pattern?

3) I can take out the mauve-ish sock yarn, with which the white/light purplish one I bought at the second hand shop a few weeks ago would go well, so I set them aside, call it "almost red" or part of the red color-family, or something, and make the Renaissance sweater from Elena Mortensen. 

4) Totally ignore the idea of the good luck sweater has to be RED, and make the white thing I just fell in love, head-over-heels, so much I already bought the pattern AND ordered yarn for (DROPS yarn, not even on sale).

5) Or I can knit that Kate Davies sweater (ÁSTA SÓLLILJA), for which I bought the yarn about ten years ago (or so), and just found it.

What do you think? 

What would you do? 

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A bit of leftover sockyarn. I have this little, no more. 

What's it gonna be? 

What the f...riday was I thinking?

This one started out as a "procrastinate -no-more", but soon turned out to a continious what the hell??? 

Now, as I am trying to reorganize stuff around here, I dismantled a tower of boxes with yarns and other stuff, and I found... Things. Things that made my eyebrows go up and me thinking... WHAT? 

There are a bunch of forgotten UFO-s there... so I thought, I will show some of them to you, on fridays, while I try to figure out what are they, why I started, why I stopped working on them, and most of all, what to do with them. 

Here is one:

I don't have the yarn-label anymore, but it was an Alize yarn, probably some bamboo-cotton thing, and the pattern went kind of viral back in the early 2010's. It was a shawl with modular pattern, but i don't remember the name of it.

This was not a difficult decision, I am not ging to finish it. I probably stopped knitting, because I found it fussy. I mean, different people find different stuff fussy, some say fair isle or cables are fussy, for me, this modular thing. Which is too bad, because DROPS do have one or two so-called "domino" pattern I like, but I am afraid, I would hate to knit.. 

I've put into the give-it away or throw it away pile. 

New Year's red 2024

 What? it is not already New Year, or it passed long time ago?... Oh, but there WAS new year, and of course I have knitted a New Year's Good Luck Sweater, and in this case, I even concentrated on it, meaning, I have not knitted on other stuff (except for socks in the car) until it was done... But, as with other stuff, we did not get around to shot photos of it, until late in the fall. 

But now, the new New year is getting crazy close, and I need to start thinking of what it should be for 2025, however, I think, the best time to post it is just here now.

I dug through my old phone-pictures (I do download them and delete  them from my phone every few months), trying to  find in progress pictures:

Which proove two things... I did knit them as a travel-knit, on trains...

And that it was finished on april first.  The sweater I've finally knitted ... I kind of designed it, and did so on the go, as I was knitting it.

Once again, stashbusting, using up odd bits of sockyarns was decidedly going to be a design feature, using up less than full balls of sockyarns in shades of red and gray. I selected a few of both from my boxes, put both color in the order of getting darker and darger, the red staring from a light, almost pinkish-orangey red, and going to a dark bordeay, the gray is starting from a light gray going to a dark one. the pattern I selected was decidedly very simple.

Now the shape... I like cardigans, I like top-down structures, and the idea of doing a round yoke with a V neck interested me for years now. I love V necks, I prefer that shape, but you just don't see them with round yokes, and probably there is a fairly good reason for it. 

Mine is not perfect either. My hair covers it up, but the line from the shoulder to the V neck is not smooth, there is a break or turn in it, like I have a kind of standing collar. Maybe I will have to change the point from where I start to increase. For now, I have other (knitting) plans, but I might re-visit this construction in the future. 

Otherwise, I like the colorchanges, I had people who would not believe me when I said it is NOT one yarn painted for one long color-repeat, which I think, I can account for as a compliment. 

Now, onto figuring out, what to knit this next new year and boy, I am having THOUGHTS, but they will be the topic for another post.

Yarns: various sock-yarns, including at least four different shades of DROPS Fabel.

Needles: Knit Pro, 3.00 and 3,5 mm.

Photos: Norbert Varga @Bodeszphoto.

Weekly SO

 Strong Opinion that is. 

For this week is still knitting. I have been knitting long enough (just about 50 years now) to have quite  a few of those. 

Anyhow, for this week it is...

No patterned socks. I mean I do not knit socks with pattern. Yes, loving stranded knitting as much as I do, there ARE quite a few that I like, and might even knit one day for an extra special knitted pice. I might go as far as stripes, bit no structural or lace or cabled etc. patterns. 

However, for everyday socks, I knit plain socks. I used to knit them like ribbed leg, and ribbed upper and stockinett sole, but lately I rather knit stockinett feet, and  some of the leg, and then a fairly long ribbing. (I think I already said, that for everyday, modern socks - not historical stockings) I prefer the toe-up method. 

Since I use my handknitted socks from october to april, and in those times I mostly wear boots, only a small part of them shows, so I don't see the use of patterning. Also, again, as much as I love handknitted socks, they are not as smooth as let's say, machine knitted ones. Adding any pattern to that...

Yes, I do love sockyarns, and I do love colored one, and I do enjoy seeing how they knit up. That is why I often buy even bits and pieces, because I love the color-combination I see, and wonder, how they would look knitted up. 

So, I let the sockyarns do the work, I let them speak so to speak (pun intended).  As I use a lot of leftovers and bits, I often combine them, my go to variation is to use a plain colored one (preferably of one of the colorful yarn's color) and use that for the toes, heels and cuffs. Depending how much I have, I might use the uni-colored one for the whole cuff, sometimes I stripe them up, sometimes just the last one/couple/few rows on the edge is unicolored.

Those sockyarns I love so much -in my opinion- look their best in plain stockinett. Of course, if you are here for  awhile, or read back, you know, that I use them for a lot more than socks, but this was my opinion about handknitted socks. 

Accessories and ribbon embroidery

 Last year I made a set of late Victorian/ Early Edwardian clothes I was finally satisfied with but the set sorely lacked accessories. 

So I set out to acquire some.

First I perused the local used stuff bidding site, and loo and behold there was the perfect umbrella.  Dark red / bordeaux, just like the fabric of my skirt and waistcoat, long enough and it handle is made from some kind of bakelit, that looks like carved bone. It was priced higher, than my range, but I loved it, and I had a birthday coming up (yes, it was a year ago), so I bought it for myself.

And there was the question of a bag. 

Ribbon embroidery fascinated me for so long, and when one of the museums we reguraly do events at offered a workshop, titled kind of "lets make a ribbon embroidered handbag" I was there like a lightning to sign up. It was a special day, as a few of us from my reenactment group came, and me made a day out of it. 

At the workshop we learned the basics of ribbon embroidery and two motifs, a rose and a leaf.

I never even finished that bag, because I knew, if I sit down, I can make a much better one, but the workshop was so important to see that I CAN do this, and show me a way,where I can research it further, and go into more depths.

When I made my blue bustle dress in January, I have tried to make embroidered bag, but failed, because I could not drag anything thicker than a thread through the velvet, so I ended up decorating it with soutache.

However, I also had bits of fabrics left over from the dress which I could embroider with silk, and I decided what would be better for a trial piece to embroider, than a small bag? 

I wanted to do the embroidery a bit organically, not on a fixed, totally simmetric pattern, but more natural. Adding leafs and buds here and there. 

If you are a reader for a while, you know that for me, how the inside of a piece I made looks is just as important for me, as the outside. I have two antique handbags, I don't use them anymore, because they are falling apart, for both I love, how the line they are sewed to the frame is covered, so I did the same with this bag.

I loved (and still love) that little bag, and I then I had big embroidery plans...

Stay tuned, because I am going to show you soon. 

I have to say thank you to Gyöngyvér Nyiklai for teaching me the basics. 

Procrastinate no more

 As I said earlier, there were several reasons to decide trying this everyday blogging, and one of those is that I miss that FB group, that... was about small (or big) things we keep procrastinating for some reason, and during Advent and/or Lent we were trying to do them, maybe om one-a-day or some other base. 

It created a kind of accountability, and I miss that... too, among other things from that group.

Anyhow, what I was not procrastinating anymore...

Yes, I have a lot of stuff, a lot of base-materials for my hobbies (also a lot of clothes, but that is a topic for a different post), for my flat in an Eastern-European type prefabricated building that was not planned to store things in (just the opposite, but that is yet again another post), and I constantly need to rearrange stuff, finding (creative) ways to put away. One of this attempts were a few years ago to rearrange my flat, changing rooms with Chris, etc, you can read about that in my early 2020 posts. 

Stuff did not stop to come in, though some did go out, some gotten made into projects, and Chris moved out. So yes, I am at it again. 

This spring I kind of haphazardly threw into the small ikea gardrobe in Chris's room the fabrics that were strewn around, some of those still in the bags I brought them in (ahh, this is a recurring theme too, I know at least two other posts about similar situations), to have them out of the way. However, sometimes in the summer, I needed something that was at the bottom of the stack, and trying to drag it out, the stick holding the shelf broke, and the whole pile fell out, on my head. I tried to put it back, however the little stick broke in such a way, it was impossible to put back there. I was in a rush, and really not happy about it, so I kind of closed the door on that room and ignored the problem. Whenever I needed something from there, I carefully stepped over the heaps, and then closed again. I really did not have the time or the inclination to deal with it. 

Until last week, when I took everything out, decided to hang odd bits of historical clothes in the half where there is no shelf anymore. You know the pieces that I already made a newer, better fitting, more accurate, etc version, but too good to cull, because they could be loaned to someone, who is starting out in reenacting, or decides to try a period, but does not know if interested enough to invest in clothes just yet, etc. 

Also asked Norbert to fix the shelve, and put up the one, I took out from the other half and put in, so I would have smaller heaps of fabrics to deal with. 

Now, I can put stuff back and continue to go through stuff Chris left here.

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 Us. Just because I managed to catch him for a picture.

Finished knitting object -pink wrap

 I finished this cardigan a good while ago, sometimes early this year. I have not posted about it, because we never photographed it. Even now, we went out to get some other pictures and I happened to have this with me. It would look a lot better with my jeans dress (I tend to use it with), but I had this dusty pink one on for the other photo, which does not go that well with the bluish tone of the yarn. But I wa slike, let's get some photos of this one too, who knows, if we would ever get to it again.

The yarn... Last year I picked up a Regia sock yarn, and even knitted a pair of socks (on the right side of this picture):

I liked it well enough to want a cardigan of it, but there was no more in the store, and I could not find this color elsewhere either. 

But then a package of pink-ish sockyarn popped up in the second hand store, I buy much of my yarn, and it reminded me of the Regia. No, it was not the same, it was more pink and less red, but and there was about 300-350 gramms of it, which is kind of rare for a second hand store to have that much of the same yarn.

I am not a big mohair fan, but I thought, adding some mohair-y yarn would soften... how should I put it... the sock-yarn-ness. 

I know, adding mohair is the craze these days, and I think it IS overrated, but if I am making a PINK sweater, I might go all out on the romance. So I got some pink Kid Silk from DROPS. 

The pattern is something I made up, a top-down, V necked raglan, and foldover front. The foldover /wrap style is my absolute favorite, it suited me, when I was a size 10, and suited me, when I wore size 16-18, so it suits me, when I am just in between the two extremes.

Photos: Norbert Varga @Bodeszphoto 

Mandala

 I got this tiny plate at the Christmas Market in the center of the city. 

I have no idea, what I am going to use it for, but I loved it at first sight. 

Maybe as a base for supported spinning, maybe... I do not know.

I passed the booth and it made me stop. I asked if I may touch it, and it would not let me go. 

(The pen is for size).

No cats

Maybe this should go under the no comment section. 

One "outfit-of-the-day blogger I like to read, "sends her cats in" when she is indisposed, or has no time or inclination to take a photo. 

And that was a fear of mine when I decided to try this daily post, that what if I have nothing to say one day. And, no, of course I am a woman, I can talk for hours about anything, but, but... I was thinking almost all day, yesterday, what to post about today, and I kind of hoped, I will see something to take a photo of, when I went to my dance class, but I left late, and was rushing to get there in time. 

Since I have no cats to send in, here are some photos from a cafe somewhere in the Czech Republik.

I love this style of tiles, and I love, how they used them on the tables and chairs. I am sorry, I do not have a terrace or balcony to sit, because I would love to have something like this.