FO: Baby Kimono

I have finally finished the baby kimono: i-cord ties attached, garment machine washed and dried to prove indestructability.
Mason-Dixon baby kimono in Patons 100% Cotton DK in kiwi and orachard. 4 mm circular needle for garment, 2.5 mm dpns for i-cord. Now let's hope it still fits the poor child for whom it is intended!

In the meantime

Before I went to India in September, I bought some yarn to make some of the new and immanent babies in my life things to wear. I swatched on planes and trains and in airports, and I knitted in Norway and after Norway.
The sum total of my efforts is a few swatches and most of a Baby Kimono from the Patons from Mason-Dixon knitting: I just have to make i-cord ties now.

Knitting this was an interesting experience, and is a milestone for me: the first thing I have ever knitted with seams, or which is, in fact, a garment (I don't think hats count). I don't think I like seaming much, and I may have figured out a way to knit this pattern without seams. I'll see if I want to give it a try, but I'm not entranced by the way the neck turned out. If it fits the recipient and the recipient likes wearing it, I'll give it another go.

The recipient is my very first "other" family niece: the mothers are two of my friends, the biological father is another friend's brother. The poor little girl has more aunts than she's going to know what to do with.

Randomly, I have aquired some very sweet buttons and beads: the ceramic beads on the left were bought from Perlehuset in Bergen, and the wooden buttons on the right were bought from the shop of the Textile and Costume Museum in Barcelona (unfortunately I didn't get to visit the museum itself). No, I don't know why I have this sudden affinity with owls.

Last weekend I had a friend staying, this week I am in Amsterdam for business. We're flying directly home to Australia, having abandoned plans to go through Canada as too expensive, and we're likely to be too exhausted to enjoy it. We're flying home on 3rd January, which is much too close. I have very mixed emotions about going home. I do want to see my family, I will enjoy living in our flat, and there are things about living in Australia that I miss. I was going to list all the things that bother me about moving back, but I thought for two seconds and realised that compared to most of the rest of the world, I live in luxury and have extraordinary choices and freedoms. I think the only thing I can legitimately complain about is that my partner and I can't get married there.

Twisted Threads

This post has also been written for a while, but was postponed for the same reason as the previous one.

I actually got to go to a fibre show!

Unfortunately I felt like shit, having come down with something deeply phlegmy which has made me lose my voice. I was determined to go, since I'd booked myself a day of annual leave, so I dragged myself out of the house and down to Ealing Common to sit on the Picadilly line for 45 minutes. When I reached Wood Green, there were friendly people in fluorescent green vests showing us where to catch either the W3 or the free shuttle bus. Now, there were enormous queues of elderly ladies at both bus stops, and I couldn't see myself determinedly taking my seat on a bus and preventing one of them from sitting down. I walked, which would have been fine if the phlegm hadn't been in residence. Fortunately the walk up the hill is rewarded by a view of London (hard to get. London is amazingly flat) and only one shuttle-bus passed me, so it was almost certainly quicker than waiting.

The show itself was mad and lovely and crawling with every type of fibre fanatic you can imagine. I bought some small leaflets and a little kit from some braiding people. I stared longingly at batik and shibori. I resisted Shilasdair yarn in both organic cotton and silk, and then went back and resisted them again at the end of the day when I still had money left. I did buy some insane knitted silk fabric (in the gum) from Texere, and I intend to play with it and dye it because I have Kool Aid and I can.

I also bought some yarn from Habu. I first heard of Habu in the context of stainless steel yarn, but I have never made it to New York. They have serious, proper, mad yarn and I love them. I bought some silk out of which to make a bag, I think, and a sample bag to play with. I love that they had sample bags, and I can imagine that I'm going to be sending them an envelope at some point with a letter which says: what is this? and can I please have some more? Although using their website I have figured out three of my 4 mystery yarns:

Clockwise from top left:
A-130 alpaca knitted yarn in 04 - Charcoal
A-110 tsumugi silk combination in 19 - pink/yellow/black
Unknown laceweight, smells as if it has wool in it
A-22 Silk Gima in 03 - Charcoal

The 4 balls of silk are
A-111 tsumigi silk combination in 7 - Navy, 10 - Camel

I was very systematic, and I'm pretty sure I went to each stall at least once. There were so many ideas, so many beatiful things to look at and so many lovely textures to touch. It's probably a good thing that I don't get to go to many of these, as I think the number of WIPs might grow exponentially if they were available more often.

Norwegian Fibre Adventures

I wrote this post a while ago, but I hadn't taken any relvant pictures, and work has been more than usually ridiculous. 60 hour weeks. That sort of thing.

So, fibre adventures in Norway.
I didn't get to do as much as I would have liked, but I did get to do more than I'd planned, so I can't complain.

The first fibre related thing I did was to buy some gloves. We took the ferry over from Tørvikbygd to Jondal in order to go and visit the glacier. Just outside the ferry car park there was a little charity shop (I think) full of hand-knitted and crocheted things. My hands were cold, and the fingerless gloves fit my silly little hands. Plus, they're sort of sweet, and like absolutely nothing I would ever knit.

Exhibit A

At the nearest town of reasonable size (Norheimsund) there was a lovely yarn shop which I spent some time in. I eventually bought this Ego Tweed yarn because it was just so lovely. I have no idea what to do with it, but that's what stash is for, isn't it? They had lots of other lovely yarns, but I have come to the realisation that moving back to Australia really means that I should be looking for cotton and silk yarns, or thinking about making bags. For all practical purposes, the number of scarves I need in Australia is zero. (Well, maybe one if I plan on taking a winter holiday in New Zealand.)

I did visit a couple of yarn shops in Bergen, but although they did have lovely yarn, there wasn't anything I needed. Plus, since we spent rather longer than intended at the place of interest mentioned below, we were rather strapped for time.

My partner pointed out to me that there was a advert for the Norwegian Knitting Industry Museum on our tourist map, and that it was just north of Bergen. I have no idea what possessed her to mention this, but I'm grateful that she did. We went there. They seemed rather surprised to see us, but gave us a tour anyway (I suspect they mainly cater to school groups). The flat knitting machines were cool. The circular knitting machines were cool. The drum carders were not only cool, but seriously pretty. The spinning, winding and plying machines also had a certain cool quality. There was a film about the factory's history, which indicated that they mainly manufactured men's underwear from a cotton/wool mix until they started being unable to compete with the Asia. They were saved briefly in the 70s by a fashion obsession with 'icelandic' sweaters, which they were able to make easily and fairly cheaply, but eventually had to close down. There was fine-gague knitting goodness and a lot of 19th century machinery. What more could a girl want? This girl, anyway.