MaggieBKnits

I discovered this yesterday. Love it. Perfect for the (nearly) interminable soccer games I attend in the fall, and it can hold both my water and my coffee. I still await a chair designer forward-thinking enough to include an integrated knitting bag... Luckily my normal bag hangs off the arm (not the side with the coffee cup). Don't be horrified but there has been very little knitting. I was going great guns for a bit but teaching has swamped me this past week. Just trying to keep my head above the water. I did knit my daughter one and a half headbands today (the half is not yet finished) as she seems to have lost all the rest of them. I'll take a picture tomorrow, at least, that's the plan. Later.

This is Roskilde Cathedral, which is built where Harold Bluetooth originally built a church. His church was wood and is long since gone, of course-- and the cathedral was built in its place. The cathedral is quite impressive. It has served as the burial location for the Danish royal family, for centuries. Many separate crypts and sections have been added on through the years, for various family elements. In fact, this is Harold Bluetooth's pillar tomb. Obviously he was moved here when the cathedral was built, since it is Gothic in style and Harold died in 985AD, or thereabouts. In case I forgot to mention this, I found Roskilde to be utterly charming and delightful. Okay-- on to Copenhagen, a short train ride to the northeast of Roskilde. In keeping with the royal family theme, here is a photo of the palace in Copenhagen. Yes, that car that is approaching was gunning for me-- in fact there is a sign suggesting that photo takers not stand in the road as it is, indeed,...

Yesterday was a good day for knitting mail. First, my September issue of Woolgathering arrived. The design on the cover is an old, previously unpublished design concept (well, the yoke chart was the discovery) that Meg found in EZ's notes. She also has an old photo of her sister Lloie wearing a variant. What I find intriguing about this photo, and the design, is that when I look at the dark brown sweater I see downward pointing pairs of leaves, separated by narrow vertical lines. On the purple one I see upward pointing leaves on either side of that vertical line. Same chart to knit both. Is it my crazy eyes? And yes, I am tempted by the cardigan, though in my stashed dark browns (etc) of unspun Icelandic yarn. Resisting starting anything but keeping it in my mental queue. (Yes, OK, I'll get to listing it on Ravelry eventually. I have to say that my Ravelry interaction is pretty minimal. There are tons of WIPs I should enter, and queue items and so on... but I don't...

I did some work on the Hanne Flakenberg Plisse jacket on Sunday: This is the back, or part of it. The texture stitch and the intriguing method of construction keep this project interesting. All for now. But at least I got a bit of knitting done...

Truly, they do. I know it gets old to hear a bazillion excuses for why I don't write for a while. Well, it also gets annoying living thru all those things that keep me from writing! I rather left you hanging in Denmark, without intending to do so, in the least. I'm sorry. However, since this is supposedly a knitting blog, and I think I have posted almost Kno Knitting in several weeks, I ought to get cracking. This bag lives by the door or in my car. It goes everywhere with me. If only it were possible to knit lace while navigating thru traffic to various games, meets and practices, I would have that shawl done. And if it were possible to watch a truly thrilling game (the third in a given day, perhaps) and knit my lace, I would be farther along. It's not. However, please admire the bag-- it's from Meg Swansen's knitting camp (I go to one of the retreats) and it is nice for this particular project. (I carry my oversized chart on one of those magnetic boards and ...

I just posted about a shawl in the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum, and it suddenly occurred to me that I never posted about the museum in the first place. In fact, I left you all hanging somewhere in Arhus. I am so sorry. Let me say that I am a huge fan (in some ways) of the Vikings. For a goodly number of years they had an impact on a huge area of the world, and affected the history of many nations and people groups. They were in many ways fearless, energetic, incredibly clever-- and incredible warriors. Some of their beliefs and behaviors I look at with modern eyes and turn pale. But setting that aside, overall I admire them. England owes much to the Danes who eventually occupied and ruled over a huge amount of England (though one might want to read Kipling's poem, "Danegeld" )... they went through Russia (the Volga was a great trade connection to, eventually, Persia) to interact with the Russians and Arabs (how's that for PC speech, interact with? Yes, some trad...

No, I am really not off the wagon. I just had a few rough spots on the road; a wheel fell off; the hay started flying out of the wagon and I had to run around to get it all. That's all. (smirk) I do have a long list of ideas about which I want to blog. This post is photo-less, as I did not take a pic of this in Denmark. Let me preface this post with the fact that things in Denmark are rather expensive. They are even more expensive if you happen to have a currency that is down a bit relative to others... but even without that fact, it can cost quite a lot. OK. Just keep that in the back of your mind. (Here's a for-instance: $25 for an ordinary glass of wine. $15 for a Coke. The shoes I got-- let's not even go there. T-shirts, with some decoration (machine done) for DKK 250, which is about $50. I am sure you get the idea. It made Paris look inexpensive.) OK. At the Viking ship museum, in Roskilde, there was a gift shop (and yes I bought a thing or two). There ...

Yes, unprecedented. Shocking. Two posts in one day. This is the yarn I purchased from Isager, in Arhus. OK, so it's really a bag. The yarn is _in_ the bag. Here's the yarn, and the book opened to the page of the sweater I decided to knit. I need to say, here, that the young woman who was trying to help me at Isager was remarkably patient with a goofball who couldn't decide what she wanted to knit, she wanted to knit 48 different things at once, and who insisted she didn't need an English translation for one of the patterns that is in one of Marianne's other books (only in Danish). Because I am so clever, of course. Har de har har. I was informed, however, that they are translating and publishing, in English, several of her other books. (I saw the Danish versions, and yes, I am going to buy them. Pronto) Actually, the real problem is that I love many many of her designs, but I do not necessarily want to knit them all. And some of the yarn was hollering lace...

Somehow I don't think you want to hear about the utter fiasco involved in our train trip from Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport, for our flight to Denmark. You really don't. Luckily, the boulangerie where we'd intended to eat breakfast was not open on time, so we got off to an earlier start than we'd planned. Believe me, we needed the time. Suffice it to say, our plans were fine. It was what the RER did to its passengers that morning that was a bit challenging ;) We flew into Copenhagen, then into Arhus. I apologize, the A in Arhus should have a little circle over it but I can't seem to achieve that here. This is a fresco of St Clement, the patron saint of Arhus, as it is a seagoing city. I am not sure how old this fresco is, as I speak zero Danish, and my English translation of the cathedral info was not helping me. But the cathedral in Arhus was fascinating (and a wonderful escape from the deluge that came out of nowhere, and I mean nowhere, on a lovely s...

I have a million and one ideas for my blog. What I don't have is the time I'd like, to post. Today I am just showing you a few more pictures from Paris and tomorrow moving on to a new country... Me in front of Sacre Coeur. I post this only to show I really did wear my shawls around Paris! Avenue des Champs-Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe, taken from the Place de la Concorde. Jardin des Tuileries and my sweetie. Oh and the Louvre in the background. One of the things I love about Paris-- the architectural details on the buildings. View from one of the bridges over the Seine. More architectural thrills. All for now. Tomorrow, or maybe even later today, though I doubt it-- the next place we went. Where there was actually some knitting store activity, and shopping.

Here is a view of the Ile de la Cite, from the east, as the invading Norsemen would have seen it way back when. Sort of. I don't think the architecture was quite the same then... In all honesty, I found the Seine seductively alluring, a wonderful river. Obviously, when in Paris a trip to the Louvre is in order. Here, a shot of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, one of the things I really wanted to see on this visit. Apparently, so did all of Paris, that day-- at least, the ones that were not mobbing Mona Lisa seemed to all be jammed into this area of the Louvre. A young friend of ours, upon seeing this sculpture and its many missing parts, commented that it looked more like a winged defeat but I was glad to see it and get a halfway decent photo. It was virtually impossible to get a photo from in front of it, any closer (I was up a staircase and across the way for this photo.) Truly, there were incredible numbers of people in the Louvre. Admittedly, it was a rainy morning, not...

I have been travelling. This was our first trip alone together (me and dh) since our oldest child was born. (He will be 14 in a couple of months) Not sure why we waited so long, it was so wonderful! Here's a challenging clue to the first place we went. This is a place we went to on our first day in this city. OK, I know, that isn't the easiest clue, unless one has been to that particular place and definitely to that city. Here's a much easier one: Got it yet? Dead give away ahead: Yup. Paris. It was totally wonderful, the only bad being that we only had 4 days there and on the first we were madly jetlagged. That first picture was from the first place we went (after some pleasurable wandering on the Ile de la Cite and environs, and a delicious lunch at a cafe) (including some very necessary and stunningly yummy cafe noir, AKA espresso.). I got side tracked again, do you find me as confusing as I find me? As I was saying, that first photo is from Marmottan , a muse...

Janin made a comment on my last post, which got me remembering old discussions and I wanted to address it at some length. Stand by for few pictures and lots of words... If you hate that, feel free to exercise your right to navigate elsewhere! :) At Camp last year, I had a long conversation with various lace knitting gurus, including Meg Swansen and Bridget Rorem, about Shetland lace, and square shawls. At the time I was concerned (I forget just why at this point) that the shawl I was thinking about knitting be "authentic." What does that really mean, authentic Shetland lace? To me it means, knit by Shetlanders of Shetland wool in Shetland, truly. More to the point, then, is not "What is authentic?" but, "what do I want to produce in my own 'honor-those-brilliant-Shetland-knitters' rendition of a square shawl?" The Shetland knitters were (are) realists and brilliant make-it-happen knitters. They had a few basic tools and their wonderful minds and sk...

We've been out of town, in a rather Luddite-like scenario, so I have been unable to post. My poor husband has been in desperate need of a vacation, so the break was nice...even though he ended up working some percentage of 3 of the days. Looking mighty relaxed, eh? Great news for me was finishing the center square and moving on to the borders on my Shetland Shawl. I did get a bunch of knitting time! Here is my planning-the-borders mess: ... Which I worked on during our vacation. I have found more of the yarn, thru another knitter on Ravelry, so I should be able to finish this thing soon! Here's the idea. I knit the center square: This is unblocked so it's not as open as it will be once blocked, but it shows some of the center square. Here's a bit more detail: With the large center square done, I picked up stitches all the way around the square (stitches ready and waiting on two sides: the edge where I finished the last row, and the start with its provisional c...

Bridget Rorem's gorgeous shawl, modeled by Mary. I have always wondered about using an oval doily or tablecloth pattern to make a shawl and here is a lovely one: Poppy and her skirt: Shelley had a yarn shortage, she thought, and incorporated a bunch of other yarns into her sweater design, to stretch the shortage. Humorously, afterwards she still had two large skeins of the yarn she'd worried about running out of! Janine's Leo vest, using Armenian Knitting.