Thursday, December 14, 2017

Beautiful stripes

Day 14, thank you again for coming. We have clear, cold morning, soft pastel colors in the sky, the sun is peeking quickly over the horizon to greet me. Few more days to go, before the sun nests for a few days and then begins her journey back here. Something has been bothering Piki for a while, he keeps barking, I suppose there are reindeer close by.


At first, not to forget, Lotta left this comment about Finnish recipes:

“Hi Ellen,
Beatrice Ojakangas is a Finnish American cook book author, who does a lot of research into the authentic ways of making Finnish recipes, and adjusts her recipes for the ingredients and cooking methods available in the U.S. I'm a Finn living in Minnesota, and I've used Beatrice's pulla recipe for years, because the recipe straight out of Finland would not work the same here.

I was more than happy to post the recipe, but you could make them better using this cook book. I don’t have it, but it might be worth a look. Thank you Lotta for sharing this information and thank you Ellen for asking for the recipe.

The snowmen of the last post, are needle felted, they are very small. They were standing in front of a small quilt in the doll house. (Both snowmen and quilt by me.)

This blog is more than 10 years old, over 600 posts and don’t have a search engine… Probably there is one in Blogger that I could put into the template. I need to have a look. Some day.

I finished the blue socks, just grafted the toes, wove in the ends. Tossed around my sock yarn bin, decided that it is time to knit Christmas socks with what I have got (reds and greys). My new yarn has not yet arrived, and I think I will save that for Christmas Eve.
I went to a big Handcraft Fair last November. It is truly a huge one, held in Tampere, in southern part of Finland. Took a train there, slept two nights in a hotel, because one day just is not enough. There were lots of inspiring wares to be seen and bought. I did not buy very much, but got this bag for myself. It was (is) so beautiful, just could not walk by. The fabric is woven following the Finnish National Costume from Sääksmäki.
All the bags (this link takes you to Ansku, scroll further down to see all the bags) with different fabrics were stunning, it was hard to make up one’d mind what to purchase.
Since then I have been thinking these National Costume skirt fabrics. Most of them are striped, and all the stripes are very pleasing to the eye. I cannot help dreaming of learning to weave them. Putting up a warp with the required thread count would be hard on the eyes, weaving with a light touch not to break the warp but firm enough to build an even, tight fabric would be a challenge.

What would be easier (I hope) is to knit skirt fabrics inspired socks. I am going to try. Try only, at this point, because usually I get stuck when I change colors and I don’t like the outcome. Have tried all kinds of jogless methods, but have not got good results. I think I will do it simply, let there be jogs, in the end will crochet a row of chain stitches on the back of the sock to cover the color change. I hope it works. Hopefully by tomorrow I can show you a new sock beginning.

I will be very busy tomorrow from the early morning on, most likely I will post later in the afternoon. Until then,

Wool with you,
Lene

PS. All the pictures from this book:

5 comments:

  1. I like the way you put red in the back of the stockings (or socks) to hide the jog, I have not tried it yet, but I want to. Where I live it is never cold enough for wool socks, except maybe just to wear around the house with no shoes. One day.... thanks for sharing. Can you see how many people visit each day, if they don't leave comments? I hope so, I am here always, but rarely comment.

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  2. What a beautiful bag! (I'm off to look at the link shortly). And those striped fabrics are gorgeous! I also want to go back a day and look at the quilt by the snowmen (who are just so cute - love them!).

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  3. Thank you...for your blog is to me my favorite advent calendar each holiday season!

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  4. The bag is beautiful. I too have tried several methods for jogless stripes and it seems as if they look messier than stripes with jogs. I do think the jogless stripe techniques work better with slightly wider stripes. Socks inspired by those stripes will be lovely.

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