2023 Knitting on Top of the World - the beginning

 

Here I go again!  Back to Norway, and on to a few other destinations.  

Monday, September 18, I fly to Oslo.  There I will relax a few days and catch up with the Dutch friend I made on last year's knitting adventure.  Johanna/Hanke and I will explore Oslo together, then meet our Arne & Carlos knitting group on Friday September 22.  On Saturday morning we fly to Longyearbyen which is the largest town in the Svalbard Archipelago (population 2,368).  After a night at the Funken Lodge, we board the Hurtigruten ship MS Spitzbergen and travel south.  14 day afloat, followed by a week in Bergen.

See you on the other side of the world!

Knit with Love

 In case any one forgot this is a knitting blog, here's my "Welcome to the World, Soup" gift.

This blanket is stitched with love by Grandma.

Even when I'm not with you, my love surrounds you, little one.

Swirl at Last

Meet my finished Swirl.  I started this June 3, 2014 and finished it May 17, 2015.  This was a long involved project, but I love the finished garment.  I hope to get a photo of me in the Swirl before too long.

November 17, 2015

Preparing for the Grand Tour

In less than two weeks, Taylor and I will embark on our Grand Tour of Europe.  We will visit Spain, Morocco and Great Britain.  We are both very excited and have made "To Do" lists, and checked off most of our items.

As a knitter I have my own list of what to do to prepare to leave home for a month.  The first, is to complete the projects that I have on my needles.  I'm making good progress on this front.

This set of baby hat, socks and onesy is in the mail to welcome William Michael Roeder to the world.  I did not make the onsey.  This set is hand dyed by the The Twisted Sisters.  I love the way the Oracle yarn and onsey are dyed to complement each other.

This is the Gnarled Oak Cardigan designed by Alana Dakos.  It's in the Coastal Knits book.  I've been working on it since last fall.  I made a tiny version for a baby, and fell in love with it.  The yarn is Madeline Tosh Sport.  The pattern was very well written, so there are no problems to report with this.  It is a Once Knit sweater.  The yarn was a pleasure to work with.   I'm pleased with the way it turned out.  It's a warm sweater so it is ready for next fall.

My final project on my "To Do" list is this pair of two at a time, toe up socks.  I started this project with a group of new knitting friends at my local yarn shop, Yarntastic.  A handful of regulars decided to learn how to make socks two at a time.  As an additional challenge, we added the toe up technique.  My socks are not finished, but they are close.  I'm actually on the second pair of them (remember, this blog is Twice Knit).  The first pair was too tight - I couldn't get them past my ankle.  So.................I unravelled them and started again using more stitches to start.  I'm past the heel and gusset now, so it's possible that I might be able to finish them before our trip.  It would be nice to know that I don't have to come home and continue working on them.  I'm definitely getting my money's worth out of this lovely yarn -Manos Del Uruguay Alegria.

There is one more knitting item on my "To Do" list:  I have to audition and select the project that I will take with me!

Eleanor Roosevelt was a Knitter

This past weekend Taylor and I visited the Hudson River Valley. We toured many of the big estates, among them the home of FDR, Frederick Church's Olana, and one of the Vanderbilt mansions. However, Eleanor Roosevelt's cottage, Val-Kill, in Hyde Park New York impressed me the most.

What I learned from visiting Val-Kill, that I didn't know before, is that Eleanor Roosevelt was a knitter!!!! Apparently this was no big secret back in the day, either. It's just one of those tasty facts that a person like me runs across and can't let go. Eleanor Roosevelt is not known for her home decorating, attention to fashion or involvement with high society. Rather, I think of her as an intelligent woman who was always involved in good deeds for the better of mankind. After all, she was a delegate to the United Nations and a member of the Commission on Human Rights. The fact that she was a knitter confirms for me the knowledge that knitters tend to be amazing people..

I first became aware of the knitting aspect during the movie in the visitor center. There she was, at least three times knitting away!!! The amazing part of this is that the commentator didn't even mention it! Once, she's knitting a sock, with FDR at her side, on the front lawn greeting visitors. Another time, Eleanor and FDR are debating something important (one can tell by the expressions on their faces), and there she is knitting something with a lace edge. Finally, in her cottage, on the footstool by her chair near the fire are a pair of knitting needles complete with red acrylic yarn and her knitting bag (I'm wondering if the knitting is hers, or if some volunteer whipped it up to add to the ambiance of the setting?)

I did a preliminary Internet search of this topic and I found that when she was first lady, every one knew about Eleanor's knitting. She was featured in magazines and she encouraged women to knit for the WWII war effort. People recognized her by the huge knitting bag that she hauled around with her, and she wasn't beyond knitting during United Nations meetings. I learned that in FDR's Presidential Library there is a cabinet of her knitting equipment (wouldn't you know I walked right by the library, exhausted from being a tourist?). Hyde Park knitting groups have had teas and knit ins celebrating the first lady's work, so this part of her is not forgotten, just not known by me, until now.

So my getaway to the Hudson River Valley was most productive. I ate amazing food, enjoyed the country life and learned a tiny bit about one of our first ladies. Having seen her modest cottage and learned about her love of gardening and knitting I find I want to know her. I've started reading her autobiography and hope to eventually know a lot more about her.

Thank You, Andrea Pomerantz

Thank you Andrea Pomerantz for designing and publishing such a great sweater pattern. I learned many different techniques while working on this and enjoyed every step of the way.

"Architectural ribbing flows smoothly from the waist into the deeply ribbed hems of the Diminishing Rib Cardigan creating a structured A-line shape," says Andrea. I couldn't have described it better myself.

Elizabeth Julia

Last night Taylor and I were lucky enough to snag two free tickets to a sneak preview of the new movie Julie Julia. It's about a young woman, Julie, who cooks her way through every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. As she slices and dices Julie blogs because what she really wants to be is a writer. She happens to like cooking so it becomes her subject. While Julie is cooking herself and her husband into a frenzy a second story is running - the life of Julia Child and how she happened to learn to cook and to write her first cookbook.

I absolutely loved the movie. It was so uplifting, funny, and touching. It also reminded me of me, and all my fellow bloggers who write about knitting. What's the connection, you ask? The connection is Julia Child and Elizabeth Zimmerman. Julia is to French cooking, as Elizabeth is to knitting. Just like Julie prepared every one of Julia's dishes, I have thought about knitting every one of Elizabeth's patterns. I don't think the movie has inspired me enough to do this but I have had the thought, and I do write a blog about what I do knit. I just bet there are some knitters out their who have knit their way through the Knitters Almanac, and possibly blogged about it. I know there are bloggers who have developed large followings of readers, as Julie eventually did when writing about Julia. Perhaps I found this so charming because I recognized the process of Julie and Julia from a knitter's perspective.

So how, exactly are Julia and Elizabeth alike? They each have a passion. Both married really nice men, who supported their endeavors even though cooking and knitting weren't exactly the kind of activities women's libbers approved of in the years of the 60s and beyond. They both wrote books, shared their knowledge through teaching, and had TV shows long before programs about food, crafts, etc became commonplace. I think they both had amazing senses of humor as is evident in their writing and TV performances. The two of them made mistakes and realized their viewers/readers also would make mistakes. They made us comfortable with being human.They made it "okay" to enjoy some of the "womanly" crafts.

And how are all us bloggers like Julia? That's pretty obvious I think. We have a passion for our knitting and we vent our frustrations, and pat ourselves on the back through our writing. We get ideas for new projects, new techniques, designers and products from reading each others blogs. Julie was hoping to become a published writer. I think most of us aren't that ambitious, but blogging helps sort out our thoughts about something we love.

Whether you're a cook, a knitter, or a blogger I hope you'll see this movie. Even my husband, who loves to eat, only cooks occasionally, and tolerates my knitting, enjoyed the movie. As Julia and Elizabeth always said,

"Bon Appetit" and "Good Knitting"

Crisis

I'm having a knitting crisis:

I'm almost finished with my lime green wool shrug/vest – only 1 inch to go!!!! And I'm out of yarn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I ran down to my LYS to get more and would you believe they don't have any more of either of the two yarns I'm using? They are going to do some kind of a search to see if they can locate more for me. In the meantime, I suppose I should think of a creative way to finish the project with maybe a stripe of a different color. Or perhaps I should not think about it, in hopes that I get more of the same yarn?

In the meantime I'll start swatching for the Diminishing Rib Cardigan. I've got this yummy Cotton Bam Boo yarn. Can't wait to try it.

I also appreciate the fact that my crisis is only in my knitting. It's not a terribly serious crisis in the big picture. Thank goodness.