Summer is coming

Trees and flowers, pictures taken at the Hampstead Heath natural park, North London, UK. I love those majestic trees, oaks in particular

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An end, a begin… and a mistake

The Old Shale Shawl is finished and awaiting to be blocked. I promise it will happen some day!

The pattern by Amanda Clark is free and really easy to follow. I’m very happy with the finished object and it took me only 4 years… yep.

Short after the Nurmilintu Shawl was cast on, because I just couldn’t wait to try that pretty yarn. It’s Natural Dye Studio’s Dazzle, a British wool, 100% Bluefaced Leicester, in delicate shades of blues, greens and purples – very soft.

The first section before the lace is done

but obviously not everything could go well…

Sigh

See what happened?

That’s about 3/5 from the start. Mep

Whatever. It’ll get a lifeline (because this yarn is very slippery and would unravel to the next rows before I could blink) and hopefully I can recover from there. Not tonight though.

By the way, yes, I love blue and green, if you were wondering.

The weekend was overall quite productive and some tidy up was done, which leaves one with such a good feeling!

Some vintage yarn purchase also happened, because really, I need to build back some of my “collection”. And some antique silver – my new interest since I read some blog posts on silver items! Contagious. But expensive, so only done in wee bits. The best buy was a spoon with my initial engraved (well not mine originally but we share that letter), so now I feel very decadent to enjoy yoghurt with an antique silver spoon (1853) – that is when it arrives!

How was your weekend?

It’s growing!

Just past row 132 out of 145, which is about 90% done.. I really look forward now to seeing it completed!

Not sure how I’ll manage blocking such a large piece as I have neither space nor specific tools. I’m sure I’ll get creative in the end – I think it won’t be a stylish solution but as long as it’s effective, I’m fine with it.

The colours are a bit hard to capture but the closest is the first picture.

I’m planning for the Super Birthday Sweater I mentioned in my last post, but won’t probably start until June for the Fringe Association’s Summer of Making – I’m thinking of joining in, but haven’t decided yet, I might take part even if I won’t be able to finish 4 projects in 3 months. So far I’ve short listed two jumpers, one summer top, a folk shirt I’ve been wanting to make for ages and a pair of simple cable socks (because never done cables, so that’ll be easy!). A bit too ambitious? I won’t stress wanting to finish it all.

Have you planned projects for your summer (or winter if you live on the other side of the globe)? Or will you just decide as time goes on?

“New” Curtains. The vintage way.

In the bedroom there were some really unappealing wooden blinds, which were inherited from the previous owner.

I really dislike blinds (understatement).

Recently I was lucky to find a set of vintage Jonelle curtains, in cotton fabric and made in England. They look like new, clean and crisp. The price tag was very friendly, which was a nice extra. *Happy*

The only things needed were a pole and some hooks to hang it.

And finally yesterday we scored a very nice wooden pole (it has acorn shaped finials!). Acorns and oaks are one of my favourite plants, so the acorn motif was just perfect. *Happy*

Today we took the old ones down and put the ‘new’ curtains up… I just love them!

What makes me even happier is that the whole thing is very environmentally friendly – only the pole is a new product. I even had vintage brass hooks to use, so didn’t need to buy the crappy plastic ones. *Very Happy*

Another day in vintage life style.

Do you like and buy vintage?

The curtains are made of Jonelle pure cotton, in green/cream with a leafy motif.

The curtains finally hung, only need shortening

The pretty wooden pole with acorn finial

Vintage brass curtain hooks

The old wooden blinds.. now gone on Freecycle

Silk forest?

While I’m pondering on how to proceed with the Old Shale Shawl, I was tidying up some of my stash. We shall not go into details of the stash, though.

I rediscovered some silk yarn I purchased while ago because of its colours – greens, with shades of blues or browns. Not a surprise, lol.

Looking up on Ravelry, there were quite a large number of patterns for the “forest” keyword. I didn’t get through even a fraction of them and already found many a beautiful one – some even free.

Though, I have never knitted with silk yarn before and don’t know what to expect. I understand that it has little to no elasticity, which is confirmed by the feeling while balling up one of the skeins.

These are the colours I intend to use:

and these are some of the patterns I perused thus far:

Hidden in The Forest by Veera Välimäki

Pine Forest Baby Blanket by Ingrid Aartun Bøe

Olympic Forest Baby Blanket by verybusymonkey

Gothic Forest Scarf by Janelle Martin

Queen of the Forest by Amadeit

Deep Green Forest by Espino Susunaga

I would love to hear about your experience with silk, how did you find knitting with it?

On a lazy Sunday stroll in town I found..

[of colours, nature and harmony]

a few more pieces that aroused my interest. More details in another post, here just a peek..

flower field by the deep river

 

green is for Hope

 

at the foot of the mountain

 

Observing the folds in the photo above, my mind associated the image with the 16th-century ‘Bathing Feet in a Mountain Landscape‘ silk painting by Hsieh Shih-ch’en (please have a look at the page, I’ll wait for you): if you follow the link, zoom-in the image to see the details and the serene person resting in the nature. From the Arts Connected’s webpage here is a peaceful inscription from the painting:

In deep seclusion the eastern wind blows fallen blossoms,

The whole river of spring water ripples with cloudy mist;

The wanderer’s song has ceased and he is entirely at leisure,

Resting by an old valley pine while the sun has not yet set.

(Hsieh Shih-ch’en)

[Disclosure: I’m not an art expert.. just came across this while searching for some definition!] I hope these last words brought some calmness and harmony into your first day of the week. Take good care x