happy new year!

Goodbye 2009. Welcome 2010. A new decennium, a new start.

This is a glimpse of what I've been doing lately, in the crafting department. Not so much knitting lately. My promise to write a pattern for the yellow cardigan remains to be fulfilled, I'm almost finished, but somehow I find it hard not to spend all my spare time drawing and clipping and playing in my basement studio. I've taken the silk-screen printing course (at Norske grafikeres verksted, Oslo) I mentioned earlier, and it was very inspiring and useful. But to my big disappointment, they don't rent out work-shop space for amateurs like my self. I looked forward to using the photo-emulsion technique, in brief; the whole array of printing gear, but no -. So now I'm hunting for somewhere else to practice silk-screen printing, if anyone reading this know of an open work-shop type of place, please let me know..

Meanwhile, I'm having more than enough to do experimenting with my new scanner/ printer and trying to get a grip of photoshop. I also got a new sewing machine for my birthday a while ago, which I have not yet put my hands on. But I would like to have access to a real silk-screen work-shop!

we make art

My five year old son and I cooperate in making art. We use a big sheet of paper. The medium varies: crayons, water color, potatoes. We put them on display in our very white kitchen and now they go public. I think they look good!

Migration

Playing with Lightroom (Photoshop "light"), black and white. I have a free-trial, and really like it. But it's expensive..

A few words on the reasons for this migration: There are several good things about wordpress; an advanced dashboard (!), easy to get your own domain, you can add pages (which you can't in blogger).. but I just cannot seem to get it to look the way I want. And looks are important, I admit to that. I wanted bigger photos, a customized header, nicer fonts, in short: a cleaner look. But going from wordpress to Blogger is much more difficult than the other way around. I ended up using somebody's homemade recipe. The result was not excellent, it took ages to upload the blog ( I think my clandestine import/ export business is to blame for  this) there must be too much information in the homemade stew.. So I had to delete most of my earlier posts. Well, well - I'm not so sentimental about that (only a bit annoyed because I have lost a few comments to my posts along the way).  I will keep my wordpress blog for a while anyway.

So, I hope you like my new look, and keep stopping by!

Testing

I have imported my blog from wp to blogger, just to test a little.. My active blog will still be www.thorvalda.com until I have sorted things out.

Finished product

The Side Tied Sweater (couldn't come up with a better name yet) is finished. I have worn it a lot already, at work too. I'm quite happy with it. I felted it very carefully, on 30 degrees (celsius) and with a tiny bit of pine-sol (grønnsåpe). As expected it shrunk, but not very much, and the texture changed of course - which was my intention. Pattern instructions are nearly finished.

Mountain-knitting

Not so long ago I went to my parents cabin in the mountains, in Rauland near Hardangervidda. I went on my own, man and kids left behind. Peace and quiet, I must admit I enjoyed every minute of it. And I had plenty of knitting and reading time, too, because the weather was not so perfect. Which made it legit to sit inside.



The yellow sweater on the photo is now finished, and the pattern is about to be written out. I knit it in garter stitch, and that is why I chose to knit back-and-forth and not in the round. The sweater has some similarities to the Honeypie-baby jacket, it's buttoned (or actually tied, as you will see in photos soon to come) on the side, and it has a rather prominent border of stitch pattern.


The sleeves are set-in sleeves (as opposed to raglan), but they are knitted together with the front- and back pieces, not sown up.


Well, it wasn't all knitting. I also had me some strolls up the mountain side. I so much love this view.







And the drive back home was beautiful too, I do love the countryside, and I especially love Telemark.. these are taken on the way from Rauland to Notodden.

Farmlife

Some glimpses from our summer at the farm.





This is where we stay. Our little red "bryggerhus", it's supposed to be the oldest building on the farm.



By the sea, such beauty.

And this summer the unthinkable happened.. The huge oil spill catastrophe caused by the tanker FullCity. We tried to do some cleaning up, but I don't know if it was of any help. Some say the oil will be gone by next summer, some say it will take decades. Seabirds are dead by the hundreds and life in the sea is contaminated as well. Even though our area wasn't among the worst, it was still pretty bad in some places. Lumps of oil, a thin film of oil on the surface of the sea, the smell of oil from seaweed..



The flowers are innocent and unaware of human hybris and sloppiness, a fatal combination indeed.



And so is our one-year-old little girl and her favorite animal, Pus.

Botanics and time

This seems to be my favorite motif at the moment. Hundekjeks in Norwegian. Cow-parsley in English. Anthriscus sylvestris in Latin. It's one of the most common field-flowers I can think of. I never used to pay attention to them, but this summer I see them and I'm intrigued by their beauty. Describing the beauty of flowers is a futile endeavor, no need to try. They are speaking for themselves by their own appearance.



I would like to use this for printing, but have not quite figured out how. I'm planning to take a course after summer, to learn screen printing. My attempts so far have not been successful, I must admit. Screen printing demands time, planning and it does take some practice. Time is not in abundance at the moment. I work two days a week, and when I'm at home I take care of my eleven months old daughter.



Which is a very good thing, indeed. Seeing her growing and learning new things every day. This period of her life is so important, and I want to be around her as much as possible. But it is not much time left for doing my own stuff . So I need to be patient. I will have to limit myself to stencil printing, which is much less demanding than screen printing. In autumn my man will take his paternal leave, six weeks, and I will have more time.

Some colors from a stay in our friends cabin by the sea.

Holiday

We are just back from a week on the Croatian island of Hvar. Stayed in a little town called Jelsa. As usual I took loads of pictures, most of them of flowers and stones. But some of the family too, of course. And the usual pictures of the port, the beach and the sea. Food was ok (fish and pizza), weather a little less than ok (hard rain half of the time), but from an esthetic point of view the trip was quite amazing. So many beautiful flowers and plants, colors and shapes! The little town of Jelsa was very pretty too.





I picked a lot of dried out plants that I photographed close-up. This is of a poppy. I really like the pattern on it. Inspiring indeed. I never knew the poppy had these stripes on them, it makes such a stark pattern. Again the colors (or lack of colors) are beautiful, I think.





I was intrigued with this pattern I found on the many steps that led down to the port. The cement is worn down, revealing a sort of grid pattern. The various fungus/ mushrooms form a organic, soft pattern. I like the colors too, and the contrast between the cement grid and the fungus. Reminds me of some Japanese prints, it became very clear when I included the twig with the leaves. The difference in color is due to the light when the picture was taken.

By the sea

We spent some days by the sea, at our place on the coast. Beautiful weather, and I had my first bath this year. Cold, of course. I took an enormous amount of pictures, I'll publish them on Flickr. So much inspiration for my printing. Plants, flowers, the pattern on the rocks. I I bought a very good book on printing, June Fish, Designing and Printing Textiles. I certainly have a lot to learn.

Yet another Coraline

It's not easy taking a picture of yourself. I found the position where the arm is raised upwards in a sharp angle, in order to get a full body photo, the most challenging. Arm a little shaky (to little exercising of biceps?), and picture gets blurred and totally out of focus. But you get the idea. My Coraline no 2 is finished. Well, it has been for a while, it just took some time to fasten the buttons. I decided to have more buttons than the pattern called for. I made size 36 ", in Koigu Kersti Merino Crêpe. It's hand dyed, if I'm not mistaken. I started the project when I was in hospital, quite weak, knitting in bed. Hence the somewhat imperfect hemline. The yarn was strange. In the beginning it was 'bleeding' dye, so my bamboo stitches got all orange and my fingernails too. Now the bleeding has stopped, it seems. The yarn is great, very nice to work with.