sights (and yarns) of antwerp

At the end of January I spent a long weekend in Antwerp with my parents and D. It was kind of by accident that we went there, since until the night before we left we had been planning on going to Ghent, but it turned out Ghent had some kind of festival going on that weekend, which wasn’t very accommodating of our last-minute travel plans, and Lille was similarly busy, so we went to Antwerp instead. I must admit that before we went, I wasn’t full of excitement for Antwerp, as I had been once before, aged about 13, and all we saw of the city was the red light district, the sculpture park and an Indonesian restaurant. (I imagine that might give you a funny idea of the nature of our family holidays, but it’s not as bad as it sounds – we were visiting friends who just happened to live bang in the middle of the red light district. And they were friends, not ‘friends’, honest.) Although the sculpture park was nice, we didn’t see any of the centre, and so I left without a great impression of the city. But this trip succeeded in completely reversing my feelings about Antwerp: we had an excellent time there, and I would gladly go back.

Antwerp Cathedral tower

The buildings (and especially the tops of buildings) were stunning. I loved these tall, narrow guildhall buildings in the Grote Markt, with pointy tops and so many windows. I would live there in a flash. One of the buildings on the other side of the square was up for rent, and need I mention that the idea of moving to Antwerp and setting up my own yarn store on the ground floor crossed my mind? No, I thought not. But I suspect the Belgians know how lucky they are, as I balked at the prices in one estate agent’s window, and thought it safest not to look again. We were lucky with the sunshine for these pictures, as a lot of the time we were there it poured with rain, which meant there was much cause for ducking indoors – which wasn’t strictly unfortunate, since this tended to lead to coffee, and if we were really lucky, cake.

Grote Markt, Antwerp

Antwerp came out well in terms of eating and drinking; we found a real gem of a restaurant, De Reddende Engel, near the cathedral. Despite the name, it’s actually a French restaurant, or, as the patronne explained ‘Ici, nous sommes en France!’ It felt slightly fraudulent to go to Belgium and eat authentic French food (and from southwest France, at that), but the feeling of guilt was quickly erased as soon as we started eating. We had the most exquisite meal there, and the patronne was very welcoming; I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Nearby was a highly eccentric bar, Het Elfde Gebod (The Eleventh Commandment), which was jam packed full of religious statues and artefacts, including angels dangling on chains from the ceiling. It was quite a sight inside. They had a great range of Belgian beer, and delicious moules frites, so that made for another fun night. We also found a nice bar for a late-night drink: the Brasserie Berlin, which was young and trendy and suitably replete with fancy Edison light bulbs.

Rockox House, Antwerp

There were so many different museums and galleries to visit, and the ones we saw were really first class. We went to the Rubens House, and although one wing was closed for renovations, the rest was amazing: a whole seventeenth-century ‘palazzo’, much of it designed by Rubens himself, including the garden. (Though for the David Lynch fans out there, watch out for the landing half-way round the house – I was momentarily terrified when I clocked the red velvet curtains and black-and-white tiled floor. Creepy!) Then since the Royal Museum of Fine Arts was completely closed for renovation, we saw parts of their collection in a number of different venues, including the Rockox House (above). The house was worth a visit in itself, and the Golden Cabinet exhibition was excellent. Lastly, we visited the MAS (Museum aan de Stroom), a triple museum of the historical, ethnographic and maritime collections of Antwerp, near the docks (below). It’s housed in a very striking building, which only opened in 2011, and is ten storeys high, with curvy windows in a spiral around the building and an open-air viewing platform on top. Unfortunately we didn’t get there in time to see the museum itself, but we did go up to see the view from the top. It was pretty wet and blustery up there, so we didn’t stay outside for long, but while we were up there, there was a rainbow, of the kind where you can almost see the full circle. Cool, quoi! I’m keen to go back and actually explore this museum, as we bought the guide book and it looks like it would be right up my street.

MAS, Antwerp

But of course, no trip would be complete without sampling the local yarn store. Part of the plan for going to Ghent had involved an excellent-sounding yarn and fabric store that my parents visited a little while ago, and so I was all fired up for that and sadly disappointed when I heard we were going to Antwerp instead. Luckily for us, though, Antwerp also has a beautiful little shop (I say little, but in fact it’s deceptive as it has two entrances, going round a corner) that sells yarn and fabric: Julija’s Shop. (They also have a lovely blog, albeit all in Dutch, but the pictures are great and quite inspiring all on their own.) Oh the joys of Ravelry! I am so grateful to have the ability to find a yarn store in a foreign city right at my fingertips, wherever I am.

Julija's Shop, Antwerp

My ma and I hastened to pay it a visit on the Saturday afternoon, and we had great larks there, stroking things, dreaming of future knitting and sewing projects and making plans. I think it’s pretty safe to say that if we had been left to our own devices we might have spent the whole afternoon there, but sadly we were only 50% of the group and, without naming names, not everyone was quite so keen on whiling away their holiday in a yarn shop. More fool them, I say. After we left I realised I hadn’t taken any pictures, and so I had to contrive to end up back at the shop while on a late night walk (‘Oh, look where we are!’), in order to take these rather poor-quality nighttime ones. If you’re going to Antwerp, I highly recommend a visit here!

Julija's Shop, Antwerp

Below is the booty that I brought home with me: four pretty fabric remnants (including some super cool neon yellow fabric!), and three balls of yarn, which I envisage will one day be striped together in some sort of baby outfit for one of the many babies that seem to be making an appearance around this time. I can’t get enough of the grey/cream/white with yellow combination at the moment.

Yarn and fabric booty from Julija's Shop

But oh, the imaginary booty that I would have brought home if I’d had the time to think up projects for it all… maybe it’s a good thing after all that we were taken away when we were?

the second skein

Maybe it’s something about this chill autumnal air, but after a two-year hiatus, I’ve been feeling a real urge to get my spin on again. Mostly I blame the juicy pictures of artfully-dyed fibre and freshly handspun yarn that I keep seeing on other people’s blogs, which make me so desirous of handspun yarn myself. (Alright, to some extent I can only blame myself for going out of my way to look for pictures of other people’s spinning…) I’m such a lover of all things woolly that there is little else that fills me with such lust than beautiful images of pure handspun loveliness. Except maybe pictures of dinner in recipe books. But that’s another matter. I think what really did it for me this time was something I discovered last week: WoolWench’s special Valentine’s yarn with crocheted hearts in. It’s stunning. I am so impressed by the patience and care that went into making this wondrous stuff.

Anyhow, at the weekend I found myself musing out loud about how lately I had been feeling more mentally prepared to start spinning again than I had done in a long time; then realised how ridiculous that sounded, and how I would never spin anything unless I actually sat down and did some spinning. So I fetched and dusted off my poor neglected spinning wheel and set to work. I picked up where I left off with the light grey Corriedale fibre that I was last using when I unintentionally gave up spinning two years ago, and spun until I had about half a bobbin’s worth. Then I started afresh on a new bobbin, and filled that one halfway too. And then I really went for it and plied the two together! Woah. All of a sudden Sunday became an unexpected spinning frenzy.

Fortunately, as I was pondering to myself on what to do next with my newest little beauty, I read the advice on the ever-wise Knitty about knitting with handspun yarn and discovered the importance of washing it first, before attempting anything else. I dutifully followed their instructions, and my yarn is hanging up to dry as I write. I quite enjoyed washing it, as putting it in hot water somehow made the yarn smell super sheepy and comforting. Maybe that’s not to everyone’s taste, but I liked it.

And now have a happy little 31g skein of very poorly spun light grey Corriedale, all ready to use. Initially I was hopeful that, if combined with my first ever skein of handspun yarn (that’s the one with the minty blue twist in the pictures) – of what I think was a mixture of undyed Wensleydale and Blue-faced Leicester for one ply and a light blue merino for the other – together that would be about enough to make a hat. But then I weighed the first ever skein and realised there are only about 14g in it, so I suspect that a whole grown-up sized hat might be pushing it. Which, I suppose, means I will just have to go and spin some more before I can go forth and create my crowning handmade, handspun masterpiece. Watch this space for further developments. But not too closely…

coming over all domestic

I don’t know what it is about the spring sun, but it’s making me terribly domestically-inclined. Every time it moves a little, so that the light shifts in the house and plays on the walls in a different way, it makes me reach for my camera with the desire to capture something of its brilliance and optimism. I had been innocently sitting at the kitchen table, working at my laptop, when all of a sudden I noticed how awesome my knitting looked, heaped up in its chunky pink felt basket, bathed in all that sunlight. It was due to the increased sunshine, I think, that I emerged, a few weeks back, from my wintery slumber of low knitting levels, and began to pick up projects that I’d started before it got cold and subsequently abandoned.

Last weekend I even got as far as venturing out to the still-fairly-new wool shop, just down the road from our house in Cambridge, The Sheep Shop. I’d managed to stay away until then – an attempt at saving my pennies – but having made the trip, naturally I had to bring back something as a souvenir. Hence that luscious looking skein of Malabrigo lace yarn in sunset shades, peeping out of my wool basket. Now I’m faced with that terrible affliction that troubles all fickle types like myself, where my natural inclination is to ignore whatever project I was working on until I obtained New Exciting Wool, and start knitting with that instead. So far so good: all I’ve done so far is stroke and fondle the new wool, and imagine what it will one day become.

On that same domestic note, I recently became the proud owner of a little pot of sourdough! It was a gift from my mother, who packed me off home with it when last I visited. It was only a very small pot, and so I immediately re-housed it when I got home, into an old Bonne Maman jam jar, in which it could be merry and grow. Then I made bread with it, not terribly successfully (it didn’t rise satisfactorily, and it came out a bit doughy in the middle), and realised that the jam jar wasn’t big enough, as it didn’t allow for enough sourdough to bake with and still have some left over for next time. So I re-housed it again, this time into an ex-gherkin jar (which at the time was not yet ex, which meant we had to rapidly eat the remaining gherkins on Saturday morning before breakfast), and that seems to suit it just fine. So we fed it up with lots of tasty flour and water, and left it to bubble, and went back to our reading and knitting, and forgot all about it… until late in the afternoon, when the deputy bread baker went to check on it. The lid SPRANG off at his touch, and before we knew it there was sourdough all over the kitchen. On the bright side though, sourdough bread round two was vastly more successful, and not doughy at all. Most delicious in fact. So at least we know what to do for next time. Minus the dough explosion…

Sadly, though, it would seem that my (haphazard) domestic touch doesn’t extend quite as far as I’d like. Here is my poor sad bay tree, a pitiable thing. Having left it in the weedy little plastic pot it arrived in last September for months, first it flourished, excitedly sprouting new shiny green leaves before Christmas. And then the actual winter hit, and rather took it by surprise. All its new leaves turned orangey-yellow, and suddenly it looked a far sadder bay tree altogether. I tried to coax it back from its depression, by buying it a brand new spacious pot to live in, with plenty of yummy new compost, but I fear I got there too late, as now its remaining green leaves are turning brownish, and starting to point downwards. The poor dear. Clearly my pink, duck-shaped watering can is not enough to make it smile. What can I do? Is this the end for little bay? We’ll have to wait for the next breathtaking instalment of Gardening with Agnes to find out!

first steps in spinning

If you’ve ever read my ‘About me’ page, you’ll know that my main aim in life for quite some time has been to learn how to spin. It was right bang in the middle of my finals that I decided to take decisive steps towards acquiring this skill (I have always been a dreadfully impatient girl), and so I ordered a spindle and a large quantity of undyed Corriedale wool fibre. The problem was always a fundamental one: that as hard as I tried, I could never make a continuous yarn. In fact I couldn’t make any yarn at all. It was a complete flop, and awfully disappointing. So I decided at that point that the only way I would ever learn to spin would be with the help of a fairy godmother, and at that point I resolved to sit tight and wait for one to turn up.

A couple of years down the line, what do you know, but up popped my fairy godmother and asked if I would like to go on a spinning course for my birthday! Naturally I said yes please, and thank you very much, and rubbed my little hands with glee! So a couple of weeks ago, off I went to the Handweavers’ Gallery for the day to learn all about the gentle art of spinning. We started off playing with spindles in the morning, and then moved on to wheels in the afternoon. I couldn’t believe it when I had a go on my spindle and all of a sudden I was producing a continuous yarn! I think I had convinced myself by that point that I was truly a failure and would never spin a yarn in my life. But I think the problem was just that my first spindle wasn’t very easy to use. I chose a top-whorl spindle, as I reasoned that I wanted to spin quite fine yarns, not chunky ones, but perhaps that’s just not a clever way to start off? This new spindle was a bottom-whorl one, and it worked a dream – well, that’s not to say I underwent a spontaneous transformation into a master spinner straightaway, but at last I was actually producing something!

After lunch, to my even greater amazement, I discovered that spinning on a wheel is yet more satisfying still than spinning on a spindle. It goes so fast, so smoothly, and you don’t have to keep stopping to wind the yarn on or to give it another spin. And so suddenly, my life’s aim was right there, within reach, and completely achievable! How often can you say that? Admittedly, I was still the slowest in the group to get the hang of it all, but even so, I choose to see that day as a great success. First I spun one yarn (in a mixture of natural-coloured Wensleydale and Blue-faced Leicester, I think), and then another (in a minty-blue merino); and then I plied them together to make a weird, mis-matched hotch potch of a yarn, which you can see in the picture above. It’s wonky, and has thick bits and thin bits, but that’s just how one’s first attempt at spinning is supposed to turn out, isn’t it? Wonky is just my style. I left the course feeling very chuffed indeed.

On the strength of that morning’s success with the spindle, though, on my way out I bought myself a new one, this time with a bottom-whorl, to see if I could repeat my newly learnt tricks at home. As luck would have it, this one worked perfectly too, so I was able to amuse my housemates by spindling around the living room in all kinds of strange contortions. (I’m sure it’s just a question of getting used to the action and adopting a suitable pose to fit it, but currently my spindling involves sitting down, standing up, bending over, feeding the fibre from over my shoulder…you name it.) And then, shortly after that, the bad idea bears piped up in my ears, as they always do in these situations, and in no time at all I became considerably less rich, and the proud owner of one of these:

I had to exercise the greatest restraint in the world, as I bought this wheel untreated, and so had to first oil the whole shebang before I put it together. Plus I had to go away for the weekend and leave it in the box before I even got to oil it! I amaze even myself, sometimes. But at long last, my darling wheel (I feel sure it – she? – needs a name) is lovingly oiled and assembled (thanks to considerable help from a kindly housemate) and stands proudly in the living room. In fact it’s probably just a downright nuisance to my poor housemates, as it’s a rather unwieldy object and currently stands right in the middle of the floor… I don’t regret it for one moment, though, as it’s a dream to spin with, and a million times more fun and satisfying than spinning with a spindle. There. I’ve justified myself. As usual.

the wind-up sheep in iceland

It’s been a shameful length of time since I last posted anything new, for which I offer my most grovelling apologies. Anyone who came looking for lovely pictures of what I’ve been up to of late, and witty entertainment in general, must have left again feeling sorely disappointed. But I’m back, and I intend to make amends.

At least a teeny part of the reason for my long absence was due to the fact that I sidled off to Iceland for ten days in August, to admire the landscape and the sheep. It was quite a trip, both in terms of landscape and sheepy goodness. I was terribly impressed that for once, the country’s so-called traditional clothing that is pressed upon tourists in every place they visit, in this case genuinely did appear to be worn by Icelanders as well as tourists. On my first night in Reykjavik, I was pleasantly surprised to see hordes of Icelanders out and about in huge chunky traditional knitwear: lopi jumpers, hats and mittens. In fact, while perusing the knitting patterns for sale in a wool shop, I even came across this:

I’m sad to say that in all my adventures around Iceland during that trip, I failed to see a single horse in one of these. But maybe I just went out of season; it was August, after all. I’m sure each and every Icelandic horse deserves a lopi jumper of its own, as even at the height of summer I was pretty frozen, sleeping in a tent (though that’s probably where I went wrong – I should have napped in geothermally-heated pools instead).

However, I’m sure I saw enough wool on my travels to knit thousands of horse outfits with. Every place we stopped, no matter how small or remote, had a plentiful supply of the stuff. Every single supermarket had a dedicated wool section, with yarn of all weights and colours, needles of all sizes, and patterns galore. It was quite an experience when coming from a country where a wool shop is a fairly rare and glorious sight. Somehow or other, I managed to come away from the one below with only a very modest quantity of wool.

The most exciting thing I bought was a little stack of discs of Plötulopi (the yarn on the bottom shelves on the left) with which to knit myself a woolly winter dress, in the style of the traditional lopapeysa. I was fascinated by this yarn, as it is not spun, and I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with it when I first set eyes on it. Fortunately, though, on my last day in Iceland I was treated to a detailed explanation by a very helpful American lady – thank you whoever you are! – who encouraged me to try it out, and told me that she finds it a pleasure to knit with. I haven’t tried it yet, so let’s hope it really is…

Aside from the endless knitting opportunities afforded by every inch of Iceland (there really are a lot of sheep; all shaggy and curly-horned), I also enjoyed my visit to the open-air museum in Reykjavik, Árbæjarsafn (my Icelandic pronunciation is almost certainly laughable). It is actually IN Reykjavik, as well – it’s surrounded on three sides by the only motorway in Iceland, which feels quite odd when you’re in the midst of lots of old wooden buildings with turf roofs and people in traditional costume. I suppose the city must have grown up around and beyond the museum over time. There were all kinds of interesting textiles, and particularly woven ones.

My favourite building of all was the original Árbær farm, which was the starting point for the museum when it opened in 1957. This was a farm, and a house and an inn, all in one long building. The sheep’s quarters were attached to one side of the house, so you could go directly from the hall into a small barn full of spinning and fleece-processing equipment, then through a tiny corridor into a room full of sheep pens. I bet it would have been the snuggest place for sheep to live in all of Iceland.

Then above the rest of the house there were two lovely bedrooms like the one above. All the beds had beautiful woven bedspreads on, and were enough to make me want to move in straightaway. Though I have no doubt that if I tried to last the winter there, I would probably be a very sad girl indeed. In spite of it being a house of sheep-heaven, complete with its very own buttery… So yes, Iceland = wool paradise, just a little chilly for my liking.

bootees!

My first ever baby knitting! I’m surprised I managed to wait so long before starting something baby-sized, since I’m always coo-ing over tiddly cardigans and sailor outfits, and threatening to knit them in spite of not actually being acquainted with a single baby. Aside from having deep reservations about babies themselves, I’d be only too happy if someone I knew would go and have one, or even a few, if they would also be happy for me to produce snuggly knitwear for their beloved offspring, too.

So you could say my dreams were answered when a colleague from work went and had not one baby, but two! At once! It was the perfect opportunity to whip up a pair of teeny-tiny bootees, following this pattern, which I have admired for a long, long time. I used some of the handspun Peruvian alpaca yarn that I was given for Christmas (and which I blogged about here) since I only needed a minimal amount, and plus it was perfectly soft for baby feet.

Also, since these babies came as a pair, I managed to encourage another of my colleagues who has recently taken up knitting to make a second pair of bootees, using some more of the cushty alpaca yarn. Mine are the red ones, and hers are the green ones. They are absolutely perfect, and especially impressive given that they’re only the second thing she has ever knitted before (the first being a garter stitch scarf), and this was the first time she had ever followed a pattern! (I’m hoping this will lead to great things in the office…) We opted for buttons in reverse colours, and wrapping to match.

They did sort of end up looking a bit like out-of-season Christmas presents when they were all wrapped up, but apart from this I think the non-standard baby colours were a good move. Far too many baby things are pale pink or blue, and some good wholesome colours can only be a good thing. I think the parcel must have arrived by now, but we haven’t heard yet whether the bootees fit (I so hope they do!) or whether the babies like them… We’re waiting on tenterhooks!

DIY Christmas

Whereas we gave home-made presents to many of our friends and relatives at Christmas, by some strange coincidence my mother and I both gave each other DIY gifts. I’m not quite sure why this is – we didn’t agree it in advance, or discuss it at all. Perhaps it’s just that we spent so much time in the same place before Christmas that we couldn’t possibly have made anything for the other and kept it remotely secret? Anyhow, that’s how it worked out. I gave her a selection of printed fabric in reds and pinks and purples, most of it designed by the wonderful Kaffe Fassett, with which to make a beautiful quilt of many colours. And she gave me two metres of lovely grey and cream checked linen fabric from a shop in Paris (which, outrageously, I have not had the pleasure of visiting) with which to make a tablecloth.

And oddly enough Father Christmas gave me a collection of embroidery threads in nice colours, so as to really drive home the point my mother wished to make. I think they’re in cahoots. As well as these, I also got a very nice book of cross stitch and embroidery patterns that would look nice on a tablecloth. Point made. (Incidentally, the book is written by the owner of the shop in Paris that the material came from.)

The only thing is, I can’t make my mind up how best to combine these elements and decorate my tablecloth. The checks are fairly small, so I can’t decide if I should stick within the borders or just stitch irrespective of the woven pattern. Or if I should follow a regular pattern or if I should do something freer, like little flowers or plants. Suggestions are, as always, welcome. I am, of course, more than a little daunted by the idea of two metres of stitch-able space, as this is far far more than I have ever embarked on before.

Besides this, just before Christmas (I think strictly speaking this was a very belated birthday present actually, but it felt more like Christmas) I received an amazing surprise parcel from Peru (via Hampshire, naturally), containing ten tiny skeins of alpaca wool in five different colours. It was so unexpected, and all the more exciting for that! It came from Laura, who was and still is adventuring her way around South America, and apparently occasionally stopping off in wool shops and posting goodies back to this side of the world. I don’t yet know what I will do with it, but I feel that just as I made the Icelandic wool into something of a Scandinavian nature, I ought to make this into something that would feel at home in South America. So maybe some kind of intensely colourful embroidered creation. Maybe with a llama or two? We shall see. But Laura – this is thank you. I’m most touched that you thought of me when faced with exotic wool 🙂

winding like nobody’s business

Although I started the new year with the vague intention of not buying any more new wool (I wouldn’t like to say it was a new year’s resolution, as that would make it sound far too serious and deep in my heart of hearts I know there is a very high risk of me going back on this decision), I made no such promises with regard to knitting accessories. So here we are in the third week of January, and today the postman brought me a wool swift of my very own. (This makes it sound as though perhaps me and the postman are close friends and he bought me a gift, but no, I paid for this myself and he was just doing his job.)

It arrived first thing in the morning, so I had to tear myself away from it to go to work, and then impatiently endure the rest of the day until I could go home and set it up. Since coming home I have wound an impressive (or some might say this was just pure sad) total of fourteen balls of wall. You can see the little wall of wool I was building up just in the background of the picture above. Never before have I wound wool at such a speed! I was expecting to be impressed by this thing, but truly it is a more wonderful invention than I imagined. I’ve wanted one for yonks, but have always been put off by the extortionate price labels that accompany these gadgets. A week or so ago, (and with the encouragement of my ne’er-do-well mother), I managed to put all my concerns behind me and bite the bullet, and I must say I don’t regret it. Nor does my mother – now she wants one too. Plus I like to think that perhaps it was worth the excessive cost, as it is a pretty sturdy thing and ought to last a lifetime or three. (Whether or not anyone but me will have any interest in adopting it after my lifetime is another matter.)

One thing that never ceases to surprise me when winding wool from skeins into balls is how very different the colours look depending on the way the wool is organised. The two kinds of wool in the photo above are exactly the same, but look entirely different as a ball and as a skein. As a skein it looks as though it might be dyed in short sections that chop and change quite frequently, but as soon as you wind it into a ball you suddenly realise that they are long, slow-changing colour sections. Anyhow, this toy has kept me well out of trouble tonight, and will probably continue to do so for a good long while. There are plenty more skeins where these came from!

nordic knitting

For my birthday (a few months ago now), I received a wonderful parcel of Nordic goods from my lovely neighbourhood geologist, aka the volcano enthusiast for whom I made the socks earlier this year. Among other things, in this parcel were four beautiful balls of undyed Icelandic Lopi wool, each in a different shade of sheep colour – cream, grey, faun and charcoal. I love the colours of undyed sheep, and am always amazed at what an incredible range of shades there is before you even think about adding artificial colour to the mix.

Anyway, I wanted to make something suitably wonderful from this wool, but I couldn’t think what would be most fitting. Until I hit upon the idea of a Christmas stocking! I made one a couple of years ago in red and white, which had ‘JOYEUX NOEL’ knitted boldly around the middle. So I chose some jolly Norwegian knitting designs from my book on traditional Scandinavian Knitting and set about combining them into a stocking that Father Christmas would be proud of. It meant of course that I had to re-master the art of the Latvian Plait and the two-colour continental cast-on, neither of which is any mean feat when you’re me (we have a difficult history), but I managed it in the end.

Just as I eventually managed to work out how to make the stripes line up when commencing work on the foot – it drove me crazy for a whole evening, and I had to ignore this project for several days in a frustrated grump, until I realised that Christmas would take me by surprise if I wasn’t careful. But I finished it in time to give it to the original wool donor as a Christmas present, who will be taking it to spend Christmas in the Seychelles (lucky bugger). I even attached three little jingle bells to the cuff, for added seasonal effect.

I really love the finished stocking, and I think it was the perfect use for this wool. It seems right to use Nordic wool with traditional Nordic patterns (and we can gloss over the fact that I blended the products of two entirely different countries in this one project). I only hope Father Christmas can find it in time.