Kilen is an easy-to-knit all garter stitch shawl. The long, narrow wedge shape is fun to knit and perfect to wrap a couple of times around your neck. I know. Several of my knitting patterns are a bit complicated. Instead of an ordinary cast on, I’ll oftentimes use a provisional cast on, because it gives […]
The summer of 2017 was cold and wet in Denmark, and gave way to a fall season with an abundance of dye mushrooms. 2018 is already getting old, but I haven’t finished dyeing with all my mushrooms from 2017 until now. 2017 was a really good year for dye mushrooms. And edible ones, too. In […]
The Folkvang pattern was inspired by Bohus knitting, but its clean lines represent a great simplification. Today, the time has finally come to release the mitten pattern. “But it’s March” you say? “It’s still cold!”, Unstable Polar Vortex replies. ~ I while back, I released the pattern for my Folkvang Tam: So now, the time […]
Last week, I brought my yarn and kits to a market, and took the chance to chat with lots of people. ~ Lots of people stopped by, some drifted by on their round of the entire market, others stopped to chat. There were two things that most people told me. The first one: they really […]
The easiest way to save Japanese indigo is to dry the leaves. This is also the only option, really, when you grow a small amount of plants. ~ In traditional Japanese dyeing with Japanese indigo, the harvested leaves were composted (fermented) in a very specific way, sprinkling the leaf mass with water and turning it […]
One of the great things about natural dyeing is that you can keep overdyeing until you get the color you want. ~ I recently dug out some green skeins of Norne that were not exactly what I had imagined, and had been sitting in the storage basket for a while. I decided to overdye them […]
I return from many of my walks with pockets full of lichen windfall. One of the common finds under trees is two slightly different species of Hypogymnia, a good dye lichen. ~ Lichen windfall is perfect for dyeing, since it does no damage to just pick up the fallen lichens. I’m therefore writing a small […]
In the summer, when all the plants stand tall, I usually collect good bundles of tansy, yarrow, and other wild dye plants. And they have to go before the next harvest. ~ My dyestuff stores from last year contained big bundles of mugwort and tansy, a smaller amount of yarrow, a box full of dry […]
What’s the collective noun for hats? “Herd”? “Flock”? “Mob”? “Head”? Or, in my case, “parliament”, or even “pandemonium” may even soon be appropriate. I can’t seem to stop knitting them. ~ I’ve been working on two new designs for hats, a lacy one that leapt out at me from a Japanese pattern dictionary, and one […]
The design theme from my Vindauga Blanket just stayed in my brain after I knit the first one, demanding to be knit in more variations! And when that design theme met with my experiments in 2-dimensional gradients (or matrices), the result was the Vindauga Baby Blanket, which I’ve finally managed to publish the pattern for. […]