Announcing a new Dress Diary: "Bodemloos"
Since I had so much fun last time I knitted a big project, I decided to track my progress knitting (hopefully) the fastest sweater ever!
This was all muse's fault, who decided I should have a warm sweater. We She made me inquire about yarn I saw on the ZevenKatten website and so I arrived home with 80 euro of lush wool for a sweater last Tuesday.
Truth is, when I'm home alone and doing my knitting and sitting still all evening, it gets very cold. When it was freezing outside just last week I just couldn't get warm. I deserved a warm sweater! I checked my library, and lo' and behold, the pattern I had gotten for free around New Year's just happened to need worsted weight yarn. And one of my favourite yarns is Cascade 220 - a worsted weight.
I knitted a test swatch on Thursday and soaked it, using a meat thermometer to make sure my water was no warmer than 30°C to get an accurate gauge. This is probably the most work I've ever done to prepare for a knitted item. After blocking, it looked like this:
View the Ravelry Progress page here.
About the Yarn:
This yarn is so gorgeous in so many ways. It really blocks beautifully, and the yarn doens't pill at all. I knitted Windsong's cowl with Cascade, and I wear that often. Kat has a pair of fingerless mitts in the fingering-weight variety and they are still as gorgeous as the day they were knit. (Quite unlike the Harvest Cardi in Malmedy yarn from Anell, my first Big Knitting Project, which is pilling like crazy after half a season's wear.)
Secondly, it's a heather colour, which means it's not completely solid in colour but has small flecks of colour. There's grey in there, and violet, and everything in between, making it a colour with depth.
Thirdly, it's a worsted weight, which is a little thicker than I normally work with (that can be a relief to the fingers!) and it goes much faster than knitting socks.
About the Pattern
This pattern called "Boden" by Amy Miller was free for a limited time. It's an A-line sweater with a large cowl neck. The hem is longer in back than it is in front, and is shaped with short rows. It's a top-down pattern so I can fit at any time.
About the name
This one was a little more difficult. I normally name my projects after the name of the pattern, to make it easier to remember or browse back. But this time "Boden" didn't quite fit for me. I looked up the etymology and it's indeed a German word for 'ground'. Since Dutch and German are so much alike, I decided to name this project "Bodemloos".
The past few weeks have been rather rocky when it comes to news and current affairs. Trump's first week in office as POTUS has not been very good, some of the decrees and decisions he made this first week have really hurt me. Martin Belam's tweet "As long as you live, you'll never see a photograph of 7 women signing legislation about what men can do with their reproductive organs." hit home. The Dakota pipeline, which was so recently an issue, is back on the table. Everything was like a slap in the face.
But there was more, and much closer to home as well. Our MP Rutte wrote an open letter to the Dutch people, which stated a lot of things that are wrong with this country, but ended up sounding more like a patronising dad than a leader. And then the fake news exploded, with spoofs of that letter, confusing even more people. The upcoming elections in the Netherlands -- scary stuff when loud-mouthed people gain more votes than social people.
Today I stated I don't really understand the world we're living in anymore. I've done so very often in the past, and probably will do so a couple of times in the years to come. I hope we can still sympathise and empathise, and extend an open heart to the people around us, because if we can't, we're in for one hell of a time.
And to summarise that feeling: it's a bottomless pit -- Bottomless = Bodemloos. And because sometimes snuggling up in a warm sweater in your home, where you're warm and safe, is all you want. Because after the week we've had, we can all use a snuggly sweater.
(And then tomorrow, we can GO OUT and MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE!!)
The plan!
I'm very busy during the day but my evenings are pretty empty. That means I can knit, knit, knit like the wind and hopefully finish this sweater soon. Wouldn't it be lovely if I could wear it this winter?
More (very) soon!
This was all muse's fault, who decided I should have a warm sweater. We She made me inquire about yarn I saw on the ZevenKatten website and so I arrived home with 80 euro of lush wool for a sweater last Tuesday.
Truth is, when I'm home alone and doing my knitting and sitting still all evening, it gets very cold. When it was freezing outside just last week I just couldn't get warm. I deserved a warm sweater! I checked my library, and lo' and behold, the pattern I had gotten for free around New Year's just happened to need worsted weight yarn. And one of my favourite yarns is Cascade 220 - a worsted weight.
I knitted a test swatch on Thursday and soaked it, using a meat thermometer to make sure my water was no warmer than 30°C to get an accurate gauge. This is probably the most work I've ever done to prepare for a knitted item. After blocking, it looked like this:
View the Ravelry Progress page here.
About the Yarn:
This yarn is so gorgeous in so many ways. It really blocks beautifully, and the yarn doens't pill at all. I knitted Windsong's cowl with Cascade, and I wear that often. Kat has a pair of fingerless mitts in the fingering-weight variety and they are still as gorgeous as the day they were knit. (Quite unlike the Harvest Cardi in Malmedy yarn from Anell, my first Big Knitting Project, which is pilling like crazy after half a season's wear.)
Secondly, it's a heather colour, which means it's not completely solid in colour but has small flecks of colour. There's grey in there, and violet, and everything in between, making it a colour with depth.
Thirdly, it's a worsted weight, which is a little thicker than I normally work with (that can be a relief to the fingers!) and it goes much faster than knitting socks.
About the Pattern
This pattern called "Boden" by Amy Miller was free for a limited time. It's an A-line sweater with a large cowl neck. The hem is longer in back than it is in front, and is shaped with short rows. It's a top-down pattern so I can fit at any time.
About the name
This one was a little more difficult. I normally name my projects after the name of the pattern, to make it easier to remember or browse back. But this time "Boden" didn't quite fit for me. I looked up the etymology and it's indeed a German word for 'ground'. Since Dutch and German are so much alike, I decided to name this project "Bodemloos".
The past few weeks have been rather rocky when it comes to news and current affairs. Trump's first week in office as POTUS has not been very good, some of the decrees and decisions he made this first week have really hurt me. Martin Belam's tweet "As long as you live, you'll never see a photograph of 7 women signing legislation about what men can do with their reproductive organs." hit home. The Dakota pipeline, which was so recently an issue, is back on the table. Everything was like a slap in the face.
But there was more, and much closer to home as well. Our MP Rutte wrote an open letter to the Dutch people, which stated a lot of things that are wrong with this country, but ended up sounding more like a patronising dad than a leader. And then the fake news exploded, with spoofs of that letter, confusing even more people. The upcoming elections in the Netherlands -- scary stuff when loud-mouthed people gain more votes than social people.
Today I stated I don't really understand the world we're living in anymore. I've done so very often in the past, and probably will do so a couple of times in the years to come. I hope we can still sympathise and empathise, and extend an open heart to the people around us, because if we can't, we're in for one hell of a time.
And to summarise that feeling: it's a bottomless pit -- Bottomless = Bodemloos. And because sometimes snuggling up in a warm sweater in your home, where you're warm and safe, is all you want. Because after the week we've had, we can all use a snuggly sweater.
(And then tomorrow, we can GO OUT and MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE!!)
The plan!
I'm very busy during the day but my evenings are pretty empty. That means I can knit, knit, knit like the wind and hopefully finish this sweater soon. Wouldn't it be lovely if I could wear it this winter?
More (very) soon!