Dairy...

W have very close access to organic farm milk.

Good organic dairy products can be rather expensive ( which is understandable... ) So I have decided to start making our own...

We normally buy 10-20 liters of milk

What we make so far:

• Yogurt Greek style
• Skimmed milk
• Cream
• Cream cheese
• Feta cheese
• Farmers cheese
• icecream

Feta cheese waiting for the saltwater

Yogurt  dripping...out of 5 liters of milk we get 2½ liter and 2½ liter whey for breadmaking...

Knitting for Dea...

I do like knitting in fine wool on small needles...but...it takes a looong time, so It was time to make some changes. This piece is knitted partly by hand and partly by my very old machine

The pattern is my own designed, using this method and the yarn is knoll supersoft from Holst Garn. For the garter stitch I used needle size 2, for stocking stitch I used size 3 and on the machine yarn tension 6 and loop size 6,3

The colours are aquamarine and almond. I like the combination of the bright colour of the aquamarine and the neutral colour of  almond. It was a very pleasant knit made in just one day...

Meet Molly...

This little lady had her 1st birthday September 28.  The weather was unusually  sunny for that time of the year. We had a garden party, which I don't think we will be able to have on many of her birthdays.

It was a very girlish party with lots of flowers and a pale pink cake.



The gift from her grandparents were a little wooden pram

From my sisters family she got a little silver bracelet with flowers. It is still a little to big but i think it will fit in a couple of months...

We gave her a doll that have a wonderful hairdo... from Sebra

... and an old dolls bed that I fixed with new paint and bedlinen. The blanket is a knitted towel from a secondhand shop. It was all new and have never been washed. Probably somebody thought it was way to fine to be used...

While I was making the bedlinen out of some vintage fabric i gave some thought to what this little doll should be named... And there at the border was the answer: Molly Aase Charlotte Lundquist. It was just the right name... And of course a quick decision was made to put her name on her duvet covers... IRL Veitex is an old textile design company and Aase Charlotte Lundqvist is a danish graphic designer

The last word is as always.. Deas! She certainly is very determined and stubborn ...

First came a boy and then a girl...

One of the best thing about making your own stuff is the ability to make that single piece missing.

Off course we have saved some  of Seth's clothes, and all I had to do was make 3 pair of baggy trousers to go with it.

The pattern is simple with elastic in the waist and at the ankle. I constructed it myself, and it has a good amount of ease in the back to make sure the pants stays nicely in place even under a great deal of moving around....The kind of pattern any sewing mum should always have in the repertoire

Once in a while the job is not to create something new and exciting, but just sit down by the sewing mashine and just make that something missing...

The 2 patterned ones is vintage fabrics and the mustard yellow ones are made of new fabrics...

Pattern construction and knitting a vest for Seth…

So here is what I have been up to:

I like knitting in the same yarn . Knoll super soft from Holst garn is my favorite thin yarn.

One of the advantages of this is off course that you really get to know it very well. I use to knit this yarn on a needle size 2½ mm but have gone up to size 3 mm for normal stocking stitch.

I have made a lot of measurements on different pieces of knitting and it seems my knitting tension is very much the same. Stitches versus rows proportions are 1 row equals 1,4 stitches.

I have made a big sheet of graph paper with the exact proportions. The orange line is there to help me always keep the middle of the design aligned. I keep it all rolled up in a cardboard roll.

When I want to make a design, I first construct the pattern on see through pattern paper, and then place it on top of the graph paper with a couple of paperclips to keep it in place. I then simply draw all the decreases and increases and whatever I need to know to start the actual knitting.

For this design I just used my normal children T-shirt slope in size 110 cl. and made the armskye a little deeper.

When constructing a pattern I use a percentage system, much in the way Elisabeth Zimmermann does. I have just extended it to be used in both sewing and knitting. Normally when constructing pattern you work with increments, but I find this way more intuitive and simple. I don’t know if anyone does it like this, but it seems to function for me… The beauty of it is that everything stands in some kind of relationship to one another, and can be used on all different kind of designs. There is off course some details you have to pay extra attention to like the size off children’s heads, and so. But all in all I find it a good approach…

Basics in the fridge...

I was rather tired of all these little glasses in the fridge. All different sizes and shapes which made it absolutely impossible to stack them in our small fridge and to get some kind of idea of what was really in there.

• Solution: Buy 30 beautifull glasses from here  and make a system that will last. Sylteglas.dk is a rather new site with a good service ( when I came to the bottom of the box they had included "free of charge" some labels...nice) So everything was put in the new glasses and now it looks better and makes it so much easier to find what I need.

•  Something about labelling:  I have tried different things and have found out that my best labelling would be something that is low key and involves no mashines ( thats often low on batteries or missing labels... ), Also it should be easy to remove without using any chemicals. The labels that came with the glasses, should be watersoluble so one trip in the dishwasher should do it, but it doesn´t. So I guess I have to try soaking it for a little while. If soaking it evernight will not do the trick, this is not the solution. I have also tested normal labels for the printer and they actually go of in the dishwasher, but that doest´n meen it will be same after a longer period of time ( I tested it after one day... ). I have a waterproof pen that I use for labelling, and ideally the best system would be a glas of labels and the pen...so I still have to be sure about what labels to use... 

  

• What we always have in the fridge: pickled gurkins, mangochutney hot, curry paste, limepickle, anchovies, maille dijon mustard fine, maille mustard with the seeds visible, sourdough for making ruebread ( I have a reserve in the freezer if it takes to long time between breadmaking...), strawberryjam, Chipotlechili in adobo, Ajvar ( turkish pepperpaste...), mayonnaise ( preferable homemade otherwise hellmanns...) piccadilly pickles.

 The glasses came with a glaslidd and little clips. This solution it pretty, but if it will be to difficult for the children to open and close I also bought some plastic lids the ones they use often ( If you are in doubt its the jams we are talking about... ) 

• Things we occasionally have: Pesto, sundried tomatoes, other jams, different kinds of currie paste, different kind of dressings and sauces. different kind of pickles. Hommus or other type of spreadings.

An announcement...

For a while I have been thinking a bit about blogging. I truly love it but I am no writer. What I like is seeing the processes I am going through with my projects or some other aspect of my life, put down on "paper" in some sort of visual account or some words that are describing my ideas...but is that not writing ?... No not really. Writing is off course all the above, but also simple good writing skills, and an urge to write... I don’t really have that. I have an urge to tell the story but that’s not the same.

All this writing is a bit difficult and a time consuming part for me and it is not really my biggest talent. There are so many little things that I have wanted to "write" about but just never did ...it is always the thought about the actual writing that gets me down...So I will make a test.

In the future my postings will be more picture oriented with a more schematic record of my thoughts and the processes in a particular project or even some thoughts about life. It will be like notes for myself that I will try to make as clear as possible so others hopefully will understand where I going. Luckily what I am dealing with isn’t really rocket science so the task shouldn’t be so difficult...

Some make granny squares...

I make baby booties... I have made a little agreement with myself to never have more than one knitting project on the needles. Maybe two if one of them are in chunky yarn and on bigger sized needles, since it can be a hard job for my fingers, and it therefor can be a good thing to let them rest while knitting something on smaller needles.

Then one day a couple of weeks ago it happened.... I was waiting for some yarn to be delivered with the mail, and there I was left with absolutely no knitting project. It lasted a day, and then I simply had to start something. I have quite a stash of supersoft in a lot of colors so why not make some babybooties. One took the other and its now official... Dea will not have cold feet this winter... Fall is showing a bit here and they have allready been used a lot.

The pattern is an old well tested one, that I with the help of some mathematics have put into a formular so I am not dependent on size or yarn thickness for making it just the way I want it. Math is really a beautifull thing and still many years after leaving school I get excited about how so many things can be destilled and understood.

Summer cardigan...

So you get up early in the morning... it's a little chilly outside, but the weather forecast tels you it is gonna be a fairly hot day. What to wear ? For me this is one of the solutions: Jeans, sandals, a top in a light color and the ( for me... ) essential cream colored cotton knit cardigan... Which I, of course had to knit myself...




The cardigan is knitted in Isager cotton, which is a very good and strong cotton. Lately I have been very interested in the quality of cotton. I know way to little about it, so if someone can tell me or guide me to some reading on the subject I would be happy... I tried to design the pattern so it would be logical in its shaping of the armhole and the shaping of the sleeve cap. I spend some time studying how different cardigans were shaped. I wanted to make it in a way that sewing the sleeve to the body, could be done using mostly weaving techniques.




I have just made 3 basic slips for my white cotton tops, Which was just in time for the hot weather. The jeans and cardigan can easily go more than one day before washing, but the white tops needs a washing after one day with me wearing it... This way I just get my jeans, my cardi, take a new pair of tops, and of I go... I don't really need to wear something different every day. I love the feeling of not having to worry about my clothes and I would probably feel at home wearing some sort of uniform every day. Don't get me wrong here... off course I would have to design it myself and always have the opportunity to change it whenever I wanted to... oh boy it ain't easy...




I am very happy with the design and I know it will be worn a lot. I like the look of the mother of pearl buttons with the cream color. But It's gonna be a while before I will knit in cotton again. I find it to be very hard for my fingers, since it is so slippery and with absolutely no stretch.

Princess Lea hat for Dea

When my grandmother died, I inherited all of her sewing and knitting magazines. In one of them I saw this design. The design was described this way: It can be very difficult to find stylish and modern knit patterns for warm hats for girls in the age 10 to fourteen. Here is one that is both practical and warm and at the same time will make these girls feel fashionable... hmmmm... I doubt any 12 year old girls will have the same feeling now a days. Somehow today's 12 year old girls want to be sexy and cool. Once in a while I see these young girls with a lot of style, not afraid of showing that they are still somewhere between a child and a grownup... that is true beauty. But somehow I also know that these girls will become women with such a strong self confidence that they will never have to show way too much skin to be sexy...
There is still a lot of time before I will have to take this discussion with our little girl. For the record I will have to say that I too think that any 12 year old girl today, would look absolutely ridiculous wearing this hat...And by the way... Anyone wondering about the title of this post ? Princess Lea has the most wonderful hairdo, and when this hat was done we both agreed that the resemblance was quite remarkable





I adapted the pattern to fit a little girl and made the ear parts bigger than they where in the original pattern. The red part is shaped by making short rows (Such a great way of shaping... ) In the back it has a couple of cm. of ribbing to make it fit nicely to the neck. The front part is also shaped with short row knitting, and I finished it up with binding of with two threads for a strong and flexible edge. This hat really keeps the back of the neck, forehead and ears warm. I might have her wear it with a thin cotton hat under.




Once again the yarn is Knoll Super soft from Holst garn