Sofia (you can find her on instagram as @sofiastales) is a knit designer. Among her many designs are a series of beautiful mittens, and for this retreat she has picked two mitten patterns, leading the participants during the process of knitting them.
The group of knitters, from Norway and Sweden, are all avid knitters, and soon beautiful mittens are on their way.
No rain today, and even though it is nice to have a light cardigan, we can sit outside.
Today is The Day of the Swedish Flag, "Svenska flaggans dag" and also Sofias birthday. One of the participants picks her a bouquet of wild flowers and Paola bakes a strawberry cream cake.
If the night is clear, we can see all the way down to Firenze/Florence
I still remember the first time I visited my parents in law to be, almost 45 years ago. My bedroom was up in the attic, and I could not sleep because everything was so quiet. I was used to live close to a busy street, something I am today as well, and there you could here no cars, and very few sounds from nature as well. It was this same stillness I experienced last night in my bed in the small room where I have spent so many night before. Sharing one wall with the church, old stones, serene, and quiet. A good stillness, but how to sleep? Then I heard the well known sounds of the tawny owl, which we hear every night at our cabin, and with it, sleep came.
The knitting retreat has started. Everybody has arrived and I can feel it will be a good and blessed week. Sofia and I had a quiet morning, spending some time together after breakfast for the last preparations, knitting together, talking together, laughing together, being still together.
Paola and her two helpers, Ann Karin from Germany and Anna from Italy (it is Anna you see in the picture above) were busy in the kitchen,
and just in time for lunch the first participants arrived.
It has been raining on and off most of the day. Good for the nature, and we manage anyway.
Sunday Terje and I are flying south to Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. Our 9th trip there, and the first one after the pandemics.
Today I have been making plans for some knitting I want to bring with me, a pair of wrist warmers inspired by the amazing paradise bird flowers which grow on the islands. Already on our first visit there, back in 2011, I fell in love with the beautiful flowers, and could not stop taking pictures of them.
I am no painter, but I love doing it anyway, so today I tried to make a watercolour to use as a kind of pattern for my knitting.
Painting is one thing, finding the correct yarn/colours is quite another. I do think I am into something now though (I have done some changes after I took the photos) and really look forward to start knitting.
Back in October Terje and I spent two weeks in France. The first week was vacation, with hiking every day, the second week I was teaching knitting at a knitting retreat for Norwegian and Danish women.
We stayed at a B&B, Les Trois Fontaines, in Saint Paul la Roche, a very charming, very small village in Dordogne in France, south west of Paris.The owner of the B&B are Danish Karina and French Vincent, and they hope to make their place into a kind of art and craft center with different types of art retreats.
My retreat in October was the very first one, and for me it was the very first time to teach knitting in this special way. I can tell you I was excited and believe me, I had nerve es before the women came. But as soon as we were all together it was all pure pleasure.
These sun flower wrist warmers were some of the items I knitted before the retreat.
Karina has set up a very exciting program for next year, and she has asked me to come back for more teaching. I am crossing my fingers that there will be enough participants so that I will be able to go.
I did not blog during our two weeks in France, just two short posts from the first two days, but I still have it on my list to do make posts from what we experiences.......some day. I will let you know when I do :-)
Back in the spring I was asked by Danish Karina, who lives in France, if I would like to come to her place to teach at a knitting retreat.
Of course I said yes,
and the last few weeks I've been busy making preparations for my teaching.
Today I am on my way. Terje is coming with me. We will fly to Paris, rent a car there and drive down to Dordogne. The first week we will have a holiday, exploring the area, then, next Sunday, the retreat will start, with participants from Norway and Denmark.
Do you ever play chess? I know how to play it, but very rarely play. I do collect chess games though.
The World Championship in Chess has been going on this week. A few years ago I would have no idea there ever was a World Championship. Then Norway got Magnus Carlsen, a chess player who won everything. Our national television broadcaster (nrk.no) started to show the matches, people got interested, they developed a way to show us the games in a way everyone could follow and even understand. And then it did not take long till every single (well almost every single) Norwegian was glued to the television screen for hours, even days when Magnus Carlsen was playing.
I must confess I am among those glues to the screen. For two reasons. I love to watch Carlsen play. And it gives me great knitting time.
The WC in chess ended today, with Magnus Carlsen unfortunately not doing his best.
My knitting will not end and fortunately I am doing my best, at least that's what I think myself.......and I continue to love and collect chess games.
Do you play chess? Do you ever watch chess being played?
Snails in the garden, we do not like them much, do we? I am lucky, I do not have too many not those terrorist snails which eat everything, still, there are more than enough to get rid of, and during the summer months I fight the battle the best I can.
Luckily not all snails are demons, some are cute as buttons and made to be loved to the moon and beyond.
You see, I have a growing family of knitted snails in my garden. small skeins of left over yarn, a pair of needles, 13ish stitches and a few hours, and a new snail is born. So far this snail family has three members, but it is growing fast.
I talk about the snails and also describe in detail how I make them in the most previous episode of Britt Arnhild´s World:
Four years ago, on this day, I posted a knitted pattern in my knitting blog. The knitting blog was in English then, and I wrote the pattern in English, well, read: I tried to write the pattern in English, lol.
Today, four years later, I finally sat down for a few hours to write and post the same pattern in Norwegian.
Quite a lot has happened since then. My knitting blog is in Norwegian now. I have knitted a dozen or two Easter egg bags since four years ago. I am a much more confident knitter and pattern writer.......
The Easter egg bag pattern is based on a couple of egg bags I bought at Turvey Abbey many years ago. The blog post I write four years ago is here. The post I wrote today is here.
If you have been following Britt Arnhilds House in the Woods for some time, you will know that Lent is a lot about colours for me. Seven weeks of lent, seven colours in the rainbow, and so I have given each week is own colour, starting with red. Two years ago I expanded this rainbow calendar to also include knitting. I have talked a lot about this in my YouTube videos the last few years.
With Lent starting on Ash Wednesday, and each week starting on Sundays, we are already into the third week of Lent, which according to the rainbow calendar is yellow. I will come to that, but since I haven't been here for some time, I want to start with the beginning, with red.
This year I want to knit wrist warmers in the different colours of the rainbow. Using my own designs, kind of, I find inspiration in a wonderful book I have with watercolours by the Austrian Swedish painter and designer Josef Frank. In the images in this post you see both the painting which is inspiring me, and also the finished wrist warmers.
What a balm for there soul in is to sit here in my studio, looking at colours, making drawings, knitting.
If you want to see and hear more of my rainbow calendar, you are welcome over to this video, which I posted during red week.
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You can easily find my other active blogs through my new webpage, brittarnhild.no The other blogs, which focus on different themes, are all in Norwegian, but the images are all our shared language, and you can always easily use google translate :-)
On Facebook I hava a page connected to this blog, which I call, obviously Britt Arnhild´s House in the Woods. Feel free to subscribe to it. I am also considering making a group connected to this page, where we all can post, chat, have discussions, sharing and so on. Would that be of interest for you? Well, let's see where this path leads us, shall we?
I do have an account on snapchat as well, mostly for family and a few close friends. Let me know if you are interested in getting the stories I share there, and we might connect :-)
Lucky me to have knitting these days. I knit every day, not all day but not far from, and I have knitting projects around everywhere.
This rainbow cardigan, photographed at our cabin two weeks ago is on of my newest finished objects. Knitted in left over yarn only. Being a knitter for soon to be 60 years, hardly throwing away any left over yarn at all, I love challenging myself to find ways to used it. Knitting the rainbow.
I love the colours, I love the wool, I love the garment and have used it more or less every day since I finished it. Like every morning when I take my daily walk in the garden, feeding the birds, opening the greenhouse door, checking the beds.
All texts and photos by Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland
About me
About me
I am living in a red house surrounded by a blue garden near Trondheim, Norway. I love everydays and post about my steps through life. Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods is open to everybody. Welcome over!
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