Category: books and magazines

FO: vellum

Dianna2 Comments

Today I wanted to share my Vellum cardigan. As I mentioned in my previous post, this one was an unplanned knit. I cast on May 1st and was finished by the 9th, so it went rather quickly. It was also a fun project for a lot of reasons.

This pattern is from Karie Westermann’s book This Thing of Paper. I wrote about the book several years ago, back when it was in the crowdfunding stages, and the end result is gorgeous. The inspiration for the patterns comes from the evolution of the printed page, from medieval manuscript to the printing press, which makes it a treat for a book lover. Still, even though I’ve had my copy since it was released in 2017, I had yet to knit anything from it. Vellum wasn’t even one of the patterns originally topping my list of favorites. Karie’s original color combo was nice, but it wasn’t very me, and some of the other pieces in the book spoke to me more.

Vellum by Karie Westermann

But it floated to the front of my mind when I realized the skeins of Mendip DK I’d purchased from Marina Skua would make a lovely colorwork yoke. Katie from Inside Number 23 knit a version of Vellum at the beginning of this year (seen finished in this episode), and it was that project that first helped me see this pattern in a new light. So when I decided I wanted to use my Mendip DK in a yoke, I figured playing with the charts from Vellum might work out well.

I made several modifications to this pattern to make it the sweater I wanted. I cropped the body slightly (although both the body and the sleeves came out slightly longer than I’d anticipated), and consequently changed the waist shaping. I also made several changes to the colorwork charts in order to really put Marina’s Mendip DK colorways on display. I was particularly interested in combining the Teal and Fox colorways in a section, so I added colorwork to one of the sections that was originally a single color. I also added a third color to one of the rows (the second motif from the bottom of the yoke, in brown Beech, orange Fox, and grey Sheep – the grey stitches were my addition). Getting the motifs to line up the way I wanted them to meant shifting around a couple of the decreases as well, but in the end it was absolutely worth it.

I mentioned the yarn of the main color for the body and sleeves in my last post: ancient stash yarn from Kahurangi Natural Wools in New Zealand, handed down to me from my aunt and originally purchased who-knows-how-long ago. This yarn is their Double Knitting and the colorway is Oatmeal. I’ve tried to use this yarn for one or two projects in the past and never ended up finishing them, so it felt really wonderful to finally put it to use, and in a garment I ended up loving. It was a pretty decent match for the Mendip DK, if perhaps ever-so-slightly thicker.

Vellum is steeked at the front, and I worked a crochet reinforcement before cutting it open. I believe this is the second cardigan front I’ve steeked (although I’ve steeked arm and neck openings on other garments) but this is the first time I’ve covered the steek edge with any kind of trim. It makes for such a neat finish, though, and I found the perfect trim to use over at Textile Garden (the buttons also came from Textile Garden). The teal and orange of the trim are a perfect match for Marina’s colorways.

I am very satisfied with this project – it feels good when things come together the way you hoped they would. I do feel like I want to address one issue, though – I recently spoke up about size inclusivity over on Instagram, and about my reasons for choosing not to knit a pattern from a recent collection Rauma launched in collaboration with an independent Norwegian designer. I want to acknowledge that the size range for Vellum isn’t that much bigger than the collection I was talking about. But I also want to state why knitting one of Karie’s patterns is different for me (and I understand if anyone disagrees with this): Karie is an independent designer who has also spoken up about pattern sizing and inclusivity in recent years. I know she cares about it. I know she’s been actively working on a size range for her patterns that includes much larger sizes than her patterns previously have done. I want to support her in that work, and I hope that some of her previously published work will see expanded sizing in the future (something I’m working on with my own previously published patterns). Companies like Rauma, while I love them for their yarns, do not have a great track record on size inclusivity and have not shown much of an inclination to change on that front. So it’s harder to choose to knit a Rauma pattern for a very basic summer top when that’s the case (I adapted a Jessie Maed pattern instead).

darkness

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I saw an anecdote on Twitter this week about the words for December in Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic – in Irish Gaelic it’s Mí na Nollag (Month of Christmas) and in Scottish Gaelic it’s An Dubhlachd (The Blackness). There are historical and cultural reasons for this somewhat amusing difference, but nonetheless it’s quite striking. I’ve been having talks with friends in the past several days about this darkest time of year, as Norway is now gearing up for Christmas. Advent has begun, and the city streets are positively full of twinkling lights. There are multiple traditions that involve bringing light into the darkest month – one that comes to mind in the Germanic countries is the tradition of having four advent candles (often arranged in an adventskrans, or an advent wreath) which are lit on the four Sundays of advent. On the first Sunday, the first candle is lit. On the second Sunday, two candles. And so on. The tradition is strong here and for many, it’s largely secular, despite advent’s Christian ties. Viewers of Skeindeer’s Vlogmas videos will be familiar with the poem that many recite while lighting the candles. These days, Norway also celebrates Saint Lucia on the 13th. Other religious traditions and cultures have their own versions of bringing light into the darkness, and a common thread is that bringling light into the dark creates hope. I meditated on this theme a little bit on this blog back in 2016 (see the post “on darkness and light“).

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I continue to be drawn to these themes. When we lived in Montreal, one of the things I really missed in summer and winter were the extremes of light that came with the solstices in the north. We knew Montreal’s winter would be brutally cold, but we expected to cope better because the sun would rise every day. On the contrary, we found ourselves missing the darkness of the northern winter. For me, I felt so in tune with the cycle of the seasons and the movement of the earth when we lived in the north. So in many ways it’s a relief to come back, even if in Trondheim we’re not quite as far north as we were in Tromsø.

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The weather has been in flux here as the days get shorter – the snow has started, but then it’s followed by rain, which is followed by more snow, and then more rain. The rainy days are darker, because the snow forms a giant bright reflector on the ground. At the moment, though, I’m not minding the rainy days. I’m just happy to be back in the north.

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And while we’re on the subject of the days growing shorter, a few weeks ago a book I’d been looking forward to was released: The Shortest Day, by Susan Cooper, illustrated by Carson Ellis. I’ve been a big fan of Carson’s work for years and years, and I found out about this book because she was working on it. “The Shortest Day” is a poem by Susan Cooper, and here it’s been turned into a picture book for kids, accompanied by Carson’s beautiful illustrations. The poem is an ode to the winter solstice, a celebration of the fact that the shortest day is a turning point – once you finally reach it, the light starts to return again. It touches on the cyclical nature of it over time that I enjoy so much. “Welcome, Yule!”

a few summer knits

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I thought after my last post sharing some summertime snaps, I’d share what I’ve been knitting on for the past month or so as well. There’s actually been very little knitting for the past few days, as much of Norway has seen temps up and over 30°C (or 85°F), which is unusually warm here. My apartment gets full sun throughout the afternoon (the hottest part of the day) until the sun sets (currently around 10:30 PM), so I definitely haven’t been feeling too inspired to knit. But I can still get in a few stitches in the mornings, like I have this morning, when there’s a cool breeze blowing through the open windows.

While I always have a lot of projects on the go, many of my WIPs are still packed up in boxes along with my stash. We’re actually in a short-term rental for the time being, and will be finding long-term housing early this fall, so all our things will remain in storage until then. I think I have enough knitting to tide me over until then, though, since I thought ahead about what to pack in my suitcase.

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First up is actually a design that will hopefully be launching soon. This one has been in the works for awhile, and this is the second sample I’m knitting for the pattern, which will be for a tee or summer sweater (depending ons leeve length). The first version was lambswool hand-dyed by Ninapetrina, but this one is a slightly more summery blend of yarns. The grey yarn is Amirisu Parade (generously given to me by Amirisu earlier this year), a blend of 60% wool, 20% cotton, 10% linen, and 10% silk. It’s soft, has a lovely drape, and the blend gives this color a lovely heathered appearance. I’ve paired it with Quince & Co. Tern (75% wool/25% silk) for the contrast, in the Backbay colorway. You can find my Ravelry project page for this one here, although it’ll be lacking some information until the pattern comes out.

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I’ve also cast on for a pair of socks since arriving here, with yarn I brought with me. I’m knitting the Pebbles and Pathways socks by Marceline Smith (aka heybrownberry), who I had the chance to meet earlier this year in Edinburgh. Marce is so absolutely lovely, and I love that working on these socks makes me think of that trip and meeting Marce and so many other wonderful knitters. Some projects are like a warm hug, you know? I love the simplicity of this design and I’m really enjoying how it works up in this yarn, Blacker Yarns Mohair Blends 4-ply, a blend of Hebridean and Manx wools with mohair. It’s a woolen spun 2-ply yarn, and when I purchased it from The Woolly Thistle they let me know that Blacker is no longer recommending this yarn for socks (although their website doesn’t appear to have been updated to reflect that). Given the woolen spun structure I imagine it hasn’t worn as well as some people would like. But I’m not afraid of a little bit of mending, so I thought I’d use it for socks anyway and see for myself how it wears. In my experience with sock knitting, the gauge of the fabric matters nearly as much as whether or not a sock yarn has nylon in it. If I wear these socks often I expect I will get holes eventually, but that’s been true for all of my socks. So we shall see! You can find my project page here.

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Another pattern that went straight into my queue when it was released earlier this year was the Granskog tee by Renate Yerkes, designed for this years Oslo Knitting Festival magazine (although it is available as an individual pattern as well). This pattern features tree motifs worked in lace at the hem, and I just think it’s so clever and I love the effect. When I realized that this would be a pretty perfect pattern for two skeins of apple green yarn given to me by my friend Kristin, I made sure to stash those skeins in my suitcase so I could cast on for it this summer. I thought the lace might be a slog to get through, but on the contrary, I was so excited to see the trees emerge that I just wanted to keep knitting. I’m using Norwegian wool yarn from Sjølingstad Uldvarefabrik, an old wool mill in southern Norway that is both museum and functioning mill today. My project page is here.

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And finally, one afternoon a week or two ago I took the ferry over to Munkholmen, a small island in the Trondheimfjord, just a ten minute boat ride from the city center. The island has lived many lives, including being a monastery, a prison, and a fortress at different points in history, but these days it’s mostly a nice place for an outing, with plenty of green grass for a picnic, a little beach for swimming/bathing, and a few facilities on site like a cafe and a shop. I had a wander through the shop (called Munkholmen Galleri) which featured all kinds of things from local artists and makers, and got very excited when I stumbled into a corner with sheepskins and a basket of yarns in three natural colors – all from the grey Trøndersau. There was a light grey, a medium grey, and a natural black (which like most natural black yarns is a warm, deep chocolately brown in some lights). I thought picking up a skein of the lightest grey and the natural black would be a good idea, and hopefully enough to make a pair of mittens. Trøndelag, the county where Trondheim is situated, is also the home of Selbu, which is of course home to the tradition of Selbu mittens. The thought of making myself a pair of Selbu-style mittens with local wool from a rare local breed? I couldn’t resist. So when I got home, I had a browse through some existing patterns, but nothing quite captured what I was after. So I drew up my own chart. This is pretty heavy wool – I’d say aran weight, at least – so these are the thickest Selbu mittens I’ve ever made. But I’m knitting them at a dense gauge so they should be very warm in the winter! I’ll probably share more about these later, but for now you can find the project page here.

So there’s a glimpse at some of the projects I’ve been working on this summer. I know we’re hardly the only ones who have been experiencing a heat wave – how are you keeping cool, if the summer’s been hot where you are?

lately

Dianna1 Comment

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The first week in Trondheim brought unexpectedly beautiful weather. Most of the past week has been nothing but rain, just at the moment most people here are leaving for their summer holidays. While the rain can grow tiring, it’s also somehow comforting. It definitely invites a spot of quiet solitude, and there’s a lot that I enjoy about quiet solitude – I think I have always had a soft spot for melancholy.

I feel like that makes me sound sad, and I guess I am a little bit. There is some sadness in a big change. There is loss involved, even when you’re excited about whating you’re moving towards. But there is a deep comfort in being back in Norway, back by the water, with nature so close. And we come back to Norway more confident this time. More sure of ourselves, of who we are, of what we want in life. There is still the anxiety of a new city, of not knowing many people. But I definitely feel more comfortable just being myself. When we first moved to Norway in 2015 I had a (mostly) subconscious desire to fit in, to not stand out. I wanted to “pass.” After two years away, I care much less about that this time around. That makes a great difference.

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The wet weather this past few days has meant I haven’t done nearly as much exploring outside as I’d like to. I walked all over the city in the first few days but I’ve been itching to go hiking in Bymarka, the forest that butts up against the west edge of the city. But I think I’ll wait for a dry spell. In the meantime, there has been knitting.

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I had the urge last week to buy a skein of Hillesvåg Tinde and whip up a hat, even though I brought several projects with me (the remainder of my yarn and projects are in our main pack, which we won’t have access to for a little while). I popped into Husfliden last week and grabbed a skein in Cognac (not my typical color choice, but I fell for it for some reason), and knit a Mellomlua over an evening and a morning. Super simple, very soothing. And now I have a new hat. It was only after I knit it that I realized that Tinde was the first yarn I bought after my move to Norway in 2015, and I knit a hat with it that fall. Accidental symmetry.

I’ve been feeling a little bit like I’m in the space between: the space between one stage of my life and the next. Eras of our lives aren’t sharply defined, for the most part, and they can blur together at the edges. But the longer I’m back in Norway the more I’m adjusting to it again, and one day I will wake up and realize I don’t feel like I’m in the space between anymore, and I won’t know when that happened. It’s only been two weeks. So for now, I knit, I walk, I read, and I get to work, of course, since a job is what brought us back here. And I’ll enjoy that.

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ruter og lus: retrostrikk frå salhus trikotagefabrikk

DiannaLeave a comment

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This fall is shaping up to be my busiest ever for new releases, and I’d like to periodically share some of them here on the blog. Today I’m very excited to tell you about a book project I had theopportunity to be a part of, called Ruter og Lus: retrostrikk frå Salhus Tricotagefabrik. I want to let you know up front that it’s a Norwegian book, which means the patterns are pretty inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t live in Scandinavia or understand Norwegian (and it’s written in nynorsk – the less common written standard of Norwegian – which adds another barrier for non-native speakers). Nonetheless, it’s a very cool project, so I hope you enjoy hearing about it all the same.

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Back in July I wrote a blog post about the Norwegian knitting industry museum in Salhus, outside of Bergen. If you haven’t read that post, I recommend checking it out, because it will provide some background for this book project. The museum is located at the old Salhus Trikotasjefabrikk, or knitting factory, and I mentioned in that post that “the museum maintains an archive of different patterned fabrics, with some of the patterns perhaps never actually being put into production.”

The museum decided a couple of years ago that it would be nice to revive that archive of patterned fabrics, and the way they decided to do that would be to take a selection of motifs/fabrics from the archive and hand them over to hand knitting designers, who would then create original designs for modern knitters using these fabrics from the archive. Since Salhus typically produced the kind of sweater known as an islender (or “Icelander” – I wrote a little bit about the origin of that term in my post about the museum), the motifs are all relatively small and repetitive, and would typically be used in an allover pattern on the sweater. This is represented in the name of the finished book: Ruter og lus.

If you’re familiar with Norwegian knitting, you may recognize lus as the first word in the compound lusekofte, and it refers to what we often call a “lice pattern” in English (lus meaning “louse”). Within the context of knitting, lus refers to small repetitive motifs, often a single stitch or pair of stitchs worked in a diagonal. Ruter is slightly more difficult to translate in this context – it essentially refers to squares and patterns with strong perpendicular lines, but it is not in itself the normal word for “square,” either. Plaids, ginghams, and other grids could all be described as “rutete” (an adjectival form). Nonetheless, the most typical islender is made up of repeating motifs of what are essentially squares and lice, and I assume that this is where the book’s title comes from.

But on to the patterns! I feel incredibly grateful to have been asked to take part in this project, and I’m quite proud of my two contributions: a sweater called Opal and a hat and mitt set called Dorthea. I found working on these designs an interesting creative challenge; I was one of the last designers to sign on for the project, and most of the motif options had already been claimed by then. So the two motifs I ended up with weren’t my first choice, but I’m very pleased with what I was able to do with them in the end (which is very satisfying).

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Opal was a challenge to work on at first because I found the original swatch photos pretty uninspiring, to say the least. Salhus thinks this particular motif in the archive is from the 80s, and as far as they know they don’t have any record of it being used for any of the knitwear they created. The motif uses four colors in total, and I decided to try charting up the motif with three colors from the same color family, and one from a different color family altogether. I love the blue version we ended up going with, which makes use of complementary colors, as three blue shades are accompanies by a golden yellow. I also swatched for a version with red/orange tones, making use of the same golden yellow contrast.

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I love the finished sweater (huge thanks to sample knitter Torgun, who actually knit the sample) and I’m so glad the museum chose to go with the blue version, which feels very, very me. We chose to knit this one up in one of my favorite yarns, Tinde from Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk. Because of the bold, graphic nature of the motif, it’s possible to use a variety of shades that are relatively low contrast compared with other stranded colorwork, which makes the palette of Tinde (which is dyed on a natural grey base) really lovely for this.

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The other pattern is a hat and mitt set called Dorthea, and once again I was not wholly enthused by the original swatches in the archive. I decided going fully monochrome might be a way to make this 5-color motif look a little bit less like sprinkles on a birthday cake, so I swatched up a greyscale version first. I didn’t even realize until I’d finished the swatch how much this motif suddenly recalled traditional Setesdal-style patterns. With a black base and five shades of grey, it was also a perfect opportunity to work a corrugated rib as a gradient – I feel like it makes a wonderful finishing touch. We also worked up the hat in an alternate colorway, using five shades of blue and blue-green.

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We used Rauma Finull for this pattern, which feels like the perfect yarn for this with its massive palette of colors.

One of the things I love about this book is that the editors made it a priority to use Norwegian wool yarns for the patterns. While they didn’t exclusively include yarns made from Norwegian wool, they’ve still featured Norwegian wool pretty heavily, and it makes me so happy to see a Norwegian pattern book prioritizing that. The beginning of the book also features some information about the history of the mill/factory, so all in all the book feels like a really natural part of the recent revival of traditional Norwegian patterns and Norwegian wool in the Norwegian knitting community.

If you’re curious about what the rest of the book looks like, you can check out the other patterns on Ravelry here. The photos were shot at the museum, which I love, and while the collection of patterns as a whole does have a retro vibe (as the subtitle implies), I also think the designs feel very fresh and modern.

the vintage shetland project

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I can’t remember when I first encountered the work of Susan Crawford. I defnitely remember running into The Perfect Christmas Jumper while browsing Ravelry in the early days of my membership, and the Trimmed with Roses jumper has been floating around in my memory for a very long time too, but it’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment. Nonetheless, Susan’s name is one of those that sits in my brain along with several other influential designers like Kate Davies, Ysolda Teague, and Norah Gaughan as some of the first designers I became aware of and interested in following as I became more and more interested in knitting all the time in my late teens.

This is part of why, when I decided to go to Edinburgh Yarn Festival two years ago, the only thing I booked a ticket to beyond the marketplace wasn’t a class, but a talk – one Susan was giving on an ongoing project called The Vintage Shetland Project. (It turned out to be a very good thing indeed that I didn’t book any classes, since I broke my shoulder a week before the festival!) The project involved a book-in-progress, but it was so much more than just a book project. Now that the (absolutely incredible) book has finally come to fruition, I couldn’t not share it with you.

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When I attended her talk in Edinburgh, I got to hear firsthand about the 27 unique pieces in the Shetland Museum archive that Susan had selected to recreate – and then for each one, after the original piece had been painstakingly reconstructed and a new sample made, the design was graded and patterns written. This book is the culmination of eight years of intense work and it’s difficult for me to even wrap my head around how much has gone into it. I don’t want to go into too much detail here because Susan has talked about the scope of the project elsewhere – I highly recommend checking out this interview with her on Fruity Knitting (part 1 of the interview starts around 12:47; part 2 starts at 54:35), as well as this gorgeous behind-the-scenes video made by Susan’s daughter, Charlie Moon (who is also one of the models in the book). I can only say that when my book finally arrived the other week, I actually started crying with joy.

I did want to share a few glimpses of the pages inside, since the diversity of the 27 pieces is rather remarkable. There are garments and accessories: cardigans, pullovers, sleeveless tops/vests, hats, gloves, mittens, and stockings. I thought I would start with this lovely cardigan below.

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This piece is called Vaila, and it’s named for the island in the Shetland Islands where the photoshoots for the book took place. I love the striking color combination, and I love how it’s been styled on lovely Ella Gordon.

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Unsurprisingly, there’s lots of Fair Isle to be found within the pages of The Vintage Shetland Project, all beautifully photographed by Susan. The tam pictured here is called Twageos. The gallery section of the book also features photos of the surroundings on Vaila, including that rather magnificent Shetland pony on the right.

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There are also some lovely lace pieces, and I’m pretty enamored with this cardigan, which is called Marianne.

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The piece that has completely stolen my heart, however, is this Fair Isle turtleneck called Yule. I love that they’ve shown it on both a man and a woman, and I absolutely love both the colors and the fit of this piece. I have most of the right colors in my stash in Brooklyn Tweed Loft, which isn’t the best match for the pattern (which calls for either Jamieson & Smith Shetland Heritage or Susan’s own Fenella 2-ply), but I know I can get gauge. The gauge is quite small (32 stitches per 4″), which in Loft I can achive on a 2.25mm needle, so I may want to wait a few months before I embark on such a small-gauge allover colorwork project. Nonetheless, I have a feeling I’ll be casting this one on sooner than later once I pick up the three additional skeins I need. I just love it so much.

The patterns are slowly being added to the Ravelry database (as someone who knows what goes into adding a good pattern page to Ravelry, that is no small feat for 27 patterns) but for now you can see all 27 samples in the lookbook here, if you’re interested in seeing more.

The first section of the book is made up of nearly 100 pages of historical background – both about the specific pieces recreated in the book and Shetland knitting in the time period that is Susan’s focus here (the 1920s through the 1950s) as well as knitting farther afield. I’ve spent several mornings in the past few weeks reading a chapter or two with my morning coffee, and it makes for excellent reading for anyone interested in knitwear history or the history of the knitting industry. Susan has done an incredible amount of research and she’s really presented it in a top-quality full color hardback that is a pleasure to read or simply to flip through for inspiration.

The book is available from Susan herself over on her website, and there are a few shops out there stocking it as well.

Even though I linked it above, I’ll end this post with the video made by Susan’s daughter, Charlie Moon. I first saw this film at Susan’s talk two years ago and it’s absolutely gorgeous. If you have a few minutes, I hope you’ll take the time to watch it too, and be transported to Vaila.

The Vintage Shetland Project from charliemoon on Vimeo.

more lofoten goodness

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There were several other Lofoten-related things that came to mind as I was putting together the Lofoten Wool post, but I didn’t want the post to get too long and I really wanted the yarn and its relationship with the landscape to be the focus. So I decided to save these little bits for a new post – and I hope you enjoy these too.

First up, there are a few Lofoten-related segments from a TV show called Norge Rundt that I thought some of you might enjoy seeing. I’m pretty sure you should be able to stream these outside Norway, because I have memories of watching Norge Rundt from time to time when I still lived in Seattle. The show’s name means “Around Norway” and the format is made up of relatively short segments from some place or another, meeting a diverse array of people who do all kinds of things – and you usually jump around the country a bunch within a single episode. The show is still on today, but I’m particularly fond of the older episodes found in the show’s archives, and the clips I have to share today are both of that variety. The audio is in Norwegian only, but the visual experience alone is worth it, so don’t let that dissuade you if you don’t speak Norwegian:

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Clip 1: In my last post I mentioned the fishing huts where fishermen would lodge, called rorbuer, and how they mainly cater to tourists now. This clip from 1978, entitled “rorbuferie” (fishing hut holiday) covers that very topic, along with some stunning footage of Lofoten in the summertime. You’ll have to click through to the NRK website to watch it.

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Clip 2: This is a pretty endearing segment from 1979, which starts off with a voiceover about how the number of fishermen and of fishing boats in Kabelvåg is steadily decreasing, just like many other towns in Lofoten – “mange begynner etterhvert å glemme hvordan Lofotlivet i gamle dager var,” he tells us, or “many are beginning to gradually forget what Lofoten life was like in ‘the olden days’.” So the kids and teachers of the local school decided to host a big event about what life used to be like in Lofoten. Their stage performance features a handmade backdrop, adorably goofy singing, and lots of fantastic knitwear – all of which prompted my husband to ask “Wait, are we watching a Belle & Sebastian video?” when the girl in the yellow sou’wester showed up on the screen. (Fun side note: Belle & Sebastian have totally been to northern Norway, actually). But I love a community coming together to take a look back and remember what life was like in the not-so-distant past – with young people stepping up to take care of their traditions. Again, click through to watch the clip on the NRK website.

Given the dates of both of these clips, it’s worth pointing out that just like in Shetland, the 1970s was a decade that transformed sea-based industry in Norway after the discovery of oil on the continental shelf. I feel like both of these clips point to that changing landscape. (It also brought to mind the exhibition Ella Gordon put together for the Shetland Museum back in 2014 about Shetland knitting during the oil boom.)

Artwork was another theme that came up when I was thinking about Lofoten. Some of my favorite Norwegian artwork features scenes of northern Norway, and I thought I’d share a few pieces that to me, really manage to capture the place.

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Winter Morning in Svolvær by Gunnar Berg, 1887. Berg grew up in Svolvær, which is also where the landscape photos in the last post were from. Berg really captures the light, and the brilliance of the white snow against a blue winter sky. The misty clouds and the masterful reflection in the water are so atmospheric.

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From Reine in Lofoten by Otto Sinding in 1883 (courtesy Digitalt Museum). Sinding’s paintings of Lofoten manage to capture the feeling of the size and scale of the mountains in a way that photos can’t seem to do. I love the low winter light in this one, and the way the reflected sky is a steel grey. These are all the things I love to notice in my changing surroundings as the light changes at different times of year.

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And for something completely different, I love this piece by Reidar Aulie. This is Lofoten, tall rock formations, from some time after 1922 (courtesy Digitalt Museum). The first thing this piece brings to mind for me is some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s artwork, and given that they were very nearly contemporaries (Aulie was 12 years younger than Tolkien) that’s not entirely surprising. It’s just pen on paper, but it’s beautiful. The Tolkien pieces this one brings to mind are Caerthilian Cove & Lion Rock and Cove near the Lizard, both scenes from Cornwall which can be seen on this page, as well as in the book J.R.R Tolkien, Artist & Illustrator, which is where I was introduced to them.

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And last but not least, I wanted to mention a book I’ve just finished reading, which was a Christmas gift from my friend Anna: The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen. She gave me a copy in the original Norwegian (De usynlige), and she described it along the lines of being a sort of quintessential northern Norwegian novel. It follows the story of a girl who grows up on a small island, home to her family and her family only. They have a small farm, and her father goes to Lofoten to fish every winter. The content from page to page is very everyday sorts of stuff for much of the book, which makes it an excellent novel for someone interested in what life might have been like on a small Norwegian island in the gamle dager, the old days. It’s available in English as The Unseen (linked above), and I’m incredibly excited that the English translation just made the longlist for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.

Thanks for indulging a little bit of Lofoten exploration on the blog today.

noteworthy: nordic knitting & wool

DiannaLeave a comment

I’ve been collecting some interesting links and resources in the past couple of months related to Norwegian wool and knitting and the Nordic wool scene more broadly – and I thought it’d be nice to share a few of them with you here.

First up: I wrote recently about the fantastic Bladet Garn, a new Norwegian (and Norwegian language) knitting mag that I’m super excited about. Another new Nordic magazine has joined the scene as of December, and those of you who aren’t Norwegian speakers may have already heard about it, because this one’s published in English: Laine Magazine, which is based in Finland (incidentally, “laine” is the French word for wool but apparently means “wave” in Finnish – I would be curious to hear more about the choice of name from the creators). Laine is dark but rich; luxurious and beautiful, like the last rays of sun coming through the trees of a forest in winter. I finally got a copy this week and while both the magazine and the patterns are gorgeous, the “& lifestyle” part of the “knit & lifestyle magazine” might get me the most excited: articles covering topics like a farm in western Finland dedicated to two domestic sheep breeds (pictured above), a feature on Helga Isager, a travel guide to Lisbon with its color and pattern inspiration, an interview with Stephen West, and some seriously delicious-looking recipes (chocolate cake with dried flowers and flaked sea salt, anyone?) – and that’s not even covering everything. In a way it’s much more like a book than a magazine, justifying the cost, which makes it somewhat of a luxury. But it is the perfect luxury for a long, slow weekend morning and I can’t wait to spend some more time with the articles. My favorite patterns from issue one include Piece of Silver by Veera Välimäki and Siv by Heid Alander, but you can check out all of the patterns on Ravelry here. Laine is set to be published twice a year, I believe, and you can keep up with them on Instagram, or find a stockist near you on their website.

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Simone of Temple of Knit has started a new interview series on her blog called Nordic Makers, with the intent to share conversations with the people and the businesses shaping her “immediate fiber world” – or more specifically, the fiber community that spans the Nordic region (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and to an extent, Greenland). Simone herself is a Dane living in southern Sweden, and her first interview of the series is with Louisa Bond, a Norwegian based in Oslo, whose blog Worn Values is a welcome addition to my daily blog reader. I highly recommend checking out Louisa’s blog as well as Simone’s, and Simone’s introduction post to her Nordic Makers series is a good one to read, too. Louisa’s recent posts on three ways to mend your knits and this guide to ethical shoes were both particularly interesting and useful.

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Husfliden, the Norwegian Folk Art and Craft Association, is putting on a conference about Norwegian wool this April: Ullialt – Konferanse om norsk ull. This one is definitely for Norwegian speakers, and with my thesis work I doubt I’ll be able to go (sadly!), but it’s taking place April 20-23 in Stjørdal, just outside Trondheim (effectively right next to the Trondheim airport). The description roughly reads: “We invite the whole wool supply chain to come and join in as we build enthusiasm and knowledge about Norwegian wool – in industry, in design, in agriculture and handicrafts. How can Norwegians make better use of our own domestic wool?” It’s exactly the sort of thing I get excited about, so I hope this won’t be a one-off thing. Hat-tip to Norwegian wool hero Tone Tobiasson for the heads up.

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These natural grey wool fabrics from Norway Cloth / Varp og Veft are making my heart flutter. The wool comes from Grey Trønder sheep (Grå Trøndersau) and both the yarn and the fabric are produced here in Norway. It’s almost enough to make me want to give sewing another proper try… But on a related note, if you want to get a feel for the wool from the Trønder sheep, Selbu Spinneri sells trøndersau yarns (although I don’t know what their international shipping policy is). In any case, this particular pattern is my favorite of the fabrics from Norway Cloth. They also sell finished objects made from the fabrics, like cushions.

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There’s more to share, but I’ll save that for another day!

best of 2016

DiannaLeave a comment

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Already we are the better part of a week into the new year, but I’ve been traveling and I’ve only just gotten home, so I hope you’ll humor me with one or two looks back to 2016 in the coming days. Mostly I just wanted to pop by to say that I have a few blog posts in the pipeline, but in the meantime I decided to take a quick look at which of my blog posts from 2016 was most popular, and I thought you might find that interesting too:

  1. Norwegian wool: Rauma Garn
  2. Project Planning
  3. 42 norske kofter
  4. Norwegian wool: Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk
  5. Slow Fashion October: my first sweater

I’m pleased there’s been interest in the Norwegian wool series, as I’m planning to continue that into this year (and I already know which company I’ll be featuring next). Other than Norwegian wool, Norwegian knitting and sweaters are both themes that came out on top – so I expect you’ll be pleased once I get some proper photos taken for a post about my finished Sandneskofte, which I’m looking forward to writing. Looking beyond posts from just 2016, all of my support/tutorial posts got a lot of traffic as well, so I’m so pleased to see that those continue to be useful to knitters!

There’s a little bit of crossover with my most popular Instagram posts of 2016, which you can see here if you don’t follow me on Instagram.

I’ll be back very soon with more, but until then, I’m wishing you the happiest of new years for 2017!

bladet garn

DiannaLeave a comment

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I received a magazine in the mail a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been wanting to sit down and write about it ever since. It’s Bladet Garn, a brand new independent Norwegian knitting mag, and the first issue is absolutely gorgeous. The creators, Solveig Engevold Gaustad (aka Surrehue) and Unni Cathrine Eiken (aka Malsen og Mor), have obviously found a niche that had yet to be filled in the Norwegian market, as they launched the magazine after a very successful Kickstarter campaign. Notably, Unni is a fellow linguist, so we probably have her to thank for the fact that the magazine’s logo is rendered in IPA, the international phonetic alphabet. “Garn” is the Norwegian word for “yarn,” and due to Norway’s diverse collection of regional dialects, the pronuncation of this word can vary from place to place. The pronunciation represented in the logo ([gɔːn]) is how you might expect to hear “garn” said in the Hedmark region of Norway, but the editors note several other pronunciations you might hear in their intro to this issue, and they invite readers to share their own pronunciation on Instagram with the hashtag #jegsiergarn (meaning “I say yarn”). So… a Norwegian-language knitting mag that also happens to be embracing sociolinguistics? It’s probably no shocker that I’m a shoe-in for this one. I did record my own pronunciation, and if you didn’t already see it on Instagram, you can scroll down to the bottom of this post. But for now, back to the knitting!

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I’ve been looking forward to this project since I first heard about it, but the moment I really got excited was when they revealed the cover in the days before publication – not only is it gorgous, but it features a shawl designed by Nina of Ninapetrina, my nearest local yarn dyer! It’s called Glør and it’s knit up in her gorgeous yarn too, of course. The rest of the issue doesn’t disappoint, either. There are 14 patterns in total, a mix of garments and accessories for both adults and children. You can view all the patterns on Ravelry here. There’s also a nice mix of articles which I’m still working my way through (I’ve mentioned before that I’m a very slow reader in Norwegian) on a range of topcis, including an essay on knitting from Bjørg Myhre Ims, a designer profile on Elisabeth Steenks, and a segment called “one to follow” profiling a knitter on Instagram (in this issue, @pollywantsanothercracker). It’s great reading for someone like me who’s still learning my way around the Norwegian knitting community. There’s also a tutorial for making your own small weaving loom out of a frame, and an overview of some of the awesome knitting books recently published in Norway. In other words, they’ve packed a lot of good stuff in here. Here are just a few of my favorite patterns, aside from Nina’s on the cover above:

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Clockwise from top left, these are the løvlibolerojakke jente (the girls’ version) by Strikkelisa (Elisabeth Steenks), a beautiful cabled vest called Flettevest by Cecilie Oddenes, the adult version of the løvlibolerojakke by Strikkelisa, and some gorgeous mittens knit using two-color twined knitting, called Tvebandvotter, by Lene Tøsti. The twined mittens also have an accompanying article which I’m looking forward to reading.

Unfortunately for those of you who don’t speak Norwegian, this is only a Norwegian-language magazine. But maybe some of you out there who’ve spent time studying the language or who are interested in deciphering Norwegian knitting patterns might be interested? And for those of you who are in Scandinavia or speak a Scandinavian language, I hope you’re as excited as I am to see where this magazine is headed. You can pick up your own copy (or a three-issue subscription) on the Bladet Garn website right here.

Lastly, as promised, here’s my contribution to the #jegsiergarn tag on Instagram. This one’s for all of you who have ever wanted to see me awkwardly speak Norwegian on camera. Enjoy!


View this post on Instagram

 

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