Knitting

Lately I have been knitting and I hereby present you with a child like enthusiasm (look what I made!) my new wrist warmers and my new cowl:

Here you can find the pattern for the wrist warmers and here for the cowl (on the website of the honey cowl you see a picture of the longer version, I made the shorter one).

The wrist warmers are made of Lana Gorssa MEILENWEIT sock yarn. I love the colour but I'm not too crazy about the yarn itself. They where fun to make, kind of meditative since I really had to concentrate. Every time my mind started to wander I made a mistake. No watching TV while knitting these!

The cowl is made of cotton. I really like the texture of the honeycomb stitch and I was able to work on it without too much thinking. I stopped half away and made my own version of the cowl by adding two buttons. I love the combination of yellow and turquoise, a new discovery for me!

Before these master pieces there where two serious failures. The pink cowl was my first attempt of making the honey cowl. Does not quite look the same, does it? I somehow misunderstood the directions and started adding stitches. When I noticed my mistake I just tried to make something of it to only discover half way that I had managed to twist the whole thing.

This poor sock will never get a pair. I really liked knitting lace but combining it with making a sock with heels and such was a bit too much for me. I decided to forget about the sock and made something else instead, hence the wrist warmers.

Bad picture of a sock gone bad...

34

I turned 34 this month. On my birthday we went to Rotterdam and after visit to (the playground) of Maritiem Museum we had coffee at the Bijenkorf, a fancy Dutch department store. I do have a thing for fancy department stores, they remind me of my grandmother. There was however another reason to go there - Jean Paul Gaultier was celebrating the opening of his exhibition in Kunsthal by signing books there. I read about it a day before in a Dutch textile blog that usually talks about embroidery and history of textile, and since we were anyhow going to Rotterdam I thought why not. I did not stand in line to get a book signed but I did get a glance of him. It was fun.

On Tuesday I headed back to Rotterdam to see the exhibition. I do not follow fashion or read fashion magazines, but Jean-Paul Gaultier is one designer who definitely has influenced me. I was eleven when Madonna had the Blond Ambition tour and I think I still could dance the Vogue. Jean Paul Gaultier was of course the designer who designed those corsets. The movie Fifth Element  is one of my favourites, I think it is just entertaining. Jean Paul designed the costumes for it.

I notice that lot of the audience were women that would have been my age around the time of the Blond Ambition tour. I'm very curious about what their connection to Jean Paul is. Do they just follow fashion and art in general, or do they also have memories from the back in the day? And in 20 years, is there anything that would stick with me from this time? I have really hard time to think of anything, I have no particular interest to any of the popstars and celebrities that are IT now.

Some of the work reminded me of what I have seen in blogs and got me thinking what a revolution this is. In 1989 Madonna sent Jean Paul a letter describing what she wanted. In the 1990 we only could get our inspiration from TV and magazines and only from people who got their work on TV and magazines. Now everybody can express themselves and share it with the rest. How amazing and wonderful! So maybe I don't know the latest hits but I do follow the grassroots and love it.

Double Dutch

I have had really slow start of the year what it comes to sewing, expect for one very exiting news: I'm part of a real life sewing group! And I kind of started it as well, although I must say I just really took the first step by contacting lovely Muriël from Hopfaldera and after that it has been a complete team effort. The group is called Double Dutch and you can find us on Flickr. We have met once and are planning our second meeting. 

The night before our meeting I kind of panicked about what would I do and came up with design using yellow, orange and pink. I have noticed that I don't like to work with too detailed plans, so below is my "pattern"

And here are some blocks I made during our meeting. So easy and fun to make, now I just should keep on going with this. And finish my blanket and couple of other things. Oh well, I will get there. At least I finally got around to blog and that makes me always feel better!