Summer is vacation time for so many of us, and for the past 2 weeks, I’ve been travelling around in Sweden visiting friends and relatives. Most of the time was spent in various small, small places, rather off the beaten path.
This little lake is located in Dalarna – one of the Swedish provinces. It was surrounded by a number of little red houses with white trims – the archetypical Swedish “stuga” (cabin/house). The fence in the foreground is quite common in Sweden.
I was sitting on this lovely bench, overlooking the lake and working on my travel-knitting project – the lace-shawl in gold-coloured Glacier Ice I mentioned a little while ago. It was the perfect travelling project, as the pattern is simple enough to be easily memorized, and yet varied enough to keep my interest.
The cottage in the background is several hundred years old (although I happen to be sitting in front of the newest addition, which is not nearly that old), and contained a lovely fireplace and a cast-iron wood stove, which must be lovely in the winter.
There were also gnarly apple trees, old barns and lots of woodpiles (half the barn is full of wood, which must be wonderful for the chilly winter-months).
We also went blueberry picking. Dalarna was very low on blueberries according to local sources, but when we were in Närke (another Swedish province) it seemed to be quite the blueberry year. There were lots and lots of blueberries growing right by the paths in the forests, so we didn’t even have to look very far away at all.
We went blueberry picking twice. The kids helped too, although most of the blueberries went straight into their mouths. 
But that’s the best part, right?
We had a wonderful time in Sweden, and now we’re back home, and it’s time to get back to work. I have lots of knitting and pattern work to do in the next few weeks. Once I get through the unpacking phase, I’m hoping to go out to our cottage here in the Ottawa Valley, so the kids can spend the remainder of the heatwave in the lake, and I can get a lot of knitting done.
A couple of months ago, I showed a picture of me hard at work on the front steps of our house. I don’t actually always do my work outside. Sometimes my setup looks more like this:
There’s the laptop, of course. The iPad, on which I load all my patterns and then take around with me everywhere I go. It’s got a permanent spot in my knitting bag. I knit just about everything straight from the digital version, and then (if it’s my patterns in progress) mark up the patterns as I go. I also use those old fashioned things known as graph-paper and pencils. Usually in the really early stages of the design, while I’m figuring out shaping, construction, and while creating some new stitch-patterns.
For any knitwear designer, yarn and needles are a must. You’re never really sure what it’s going to look like until you knit up a swatch or sample.
And last but not least – the tea cup. I think better when I have tea. Since I was about 10 years old, I have been drinking copious amounts of tea on a daily basis. I brew pot after pot, and enjoy my tea as I’m reading the newspaper in the morning, while I’m designing, while I’m knitting, in the afternoon, in the evenings…… in short, all day long. Of course, as any tea-connosoir, I’m picky about my tea. My current favourite tea is a black tea from Ceylon that I buy in an Arab grocery store nearby, and drink with milk. At the cottage, I also drink a fair amount of Yerba Maté, as I like maté both hot and cold (and lukewarm too) – so it saves me from running back and forth between the dock and the cottage to heat more tea or get another splash of milk. I can just make a big batch and bring it down to the lake.
The PDF version of Shaping Shawls is now available on Raverly. It can be purchased either as print + digital or digital only. The PDF version has been sent out to everyone who has preordered the book.
For those of you on Ravelry, the pattern pictures are up on the pattern pages. The shawl on the cover is Changing Directions – a side-to-side triangle shawl knit in gorgeous Glacier Ice Lace from Hasmi.
For the last few days, I’ve been swatching on a new project which will be knit in Glacier Ice Lace from Rocky Mountain Dyeworks.
The swatch is in the leftover Calendula, which was used for one of the shawls in Shaping Shawls. Naturally, it looks like a mess in the unblocked version, but I’ll just leave it at that for now. It does really look a lot nicer blocked – trust me.
The actual shawl will be knit in Egyptian Gold.
I’ve only worked the setup rows, but it’s all ready for me to take on my trip tomorrow.
The second piece of travel knitting will be another pair of fingerless mittens in Romp of Otter (Fingering) from Alisha Goes Around. This is one of the skeins I picked up at TNNA in June, and the colour is a lovely, deep purple called Egypt. I guess the stars are aligning, or something, because these two colourways could not be more different, and yet they are both (coincidentally) “Egyptian” colours.
I’ve also been working on my Stained Glass Window squares. To mix it up a bit from all the other pictures you’ve seen so far – here is a different type of view:
That’s what some 45+ squares look like. It’s coming along in the background, and I’m still really enjoying the variety in the squares and colours. The yarn supply is dwindling, but there is still a fair bit left, and I should be able to make many more squares when I come back home.
While I’m gone, I will be missing the annual sale at Janie H. Knits in Perth. It’s scheduled July 23-24, and I won’t be back until the 25th. It’s really a shame, because she’ll be selling stuff at a 30% discount or more, and she usually has some amazing things in stock. I’m sure it will be wonderful, so if you go – tell me how it was. I hope to go next year.
This week I welcomed quite the celebrity to my cottage: The Traveling Bugga!
The Traveling Bugga! (TB, for short) has been to all sorts of far flung places in the world, and in the past few days he saw fit to visit me at my small lake in the Ottawa Valley. Now, I’m not sure that it compares to all the other exotic destinations, like Antartica, Tasmania, New Zealand, China, France, Norway and Las Vegas….. but perhaps even a Bugga! craves some peace and quiet every now and then. And that, I could offer.
TB brought a couple of friends along….. namely Gryphon and her lovely daughter.
Had I prepared properly, naturally I would have rolled out the red carpet and greeted them with sufficient fanfare. But, alas…. a huge tree had fallen down and managed to block the path from the road to the cottage, so TB, Gryphon and the little princess may have had to hop over some of the branches on the way down. It’s terribly embarrassing, of course, and I would have photoshopped and added a red carpet and so on…. but there was so much to remove that there didn’t seem to be any photograph left in the end…… So please just imagine that it was fabulous.
Gryphon and the princess went swimming and canoeing along with me and the kids, while TB relaxed on the Muskoka chairs, and possibly even enjoyed some of the Yerba Maté that was brewing next to him. We also spent a couple of days just chatting and knitting and enjoying the quiet countryside.
But all good things must come to an end, and TB had to take his leave and bring his entourage to the next stop on the Canadian tour – the Calypso water park, located between Ottawa and Montreal. I heard they had a blast. In the meantime, we’re left to enjoy the lake at sunset.
Beware of the dragon!
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