Norwegians, Reindeer people and Amish

This past week a friend and I headed a few hours south and landed in the small town of Decorah, Iowa. Decorah is known for a couple things - it's the home of Luther College and it's the home of the Vesterheim Museum. The Vesterheim was our goal. It is a Norwegian-American Museum with a great collection of textiles and rosemaling among other items.

One of the current exhibits is about the Sami Reindeer people.Living at the Artic they created clothing for warmth but also for beauty.

 

The weaving looms were made from wood that was available and were not fancy like the ones we can purchase today but - they knew how to make beauty from these rough wood looms.
Their costumes were colorful and most of the ones we saw were combinations of red, blue and white.

 

 

They also used a great deal of leather, as you would expect. Again, beautiful decorations were added to their items.

 

 

The pouch and shoes are reindeer hide and fur. One thing my friend and I wondered about was the elf-like shoes. Why the little curved toes? This seemed a bit odd to us but we soon discovered the Sami were (are) a clever people. The curve is so they can hook their shoes onto the straps on their skis. Well, at least that mystery was solved!

The mittens look similar to the ones we see in the Scandinavian knitting books but these are the real deal. They are (if I right) from the mid 1800s. The cuff uses the braiding we use today and the design is created with stranded work possibly worked like intarsia. I only wish I could have taken them out of the glass case and checked the inside!

 

 

 

After the Sami collection we headed over the the regular displays. Unfortunately, flash photography isn't allowed so many of my pictures are pretty dark. Here's a few of my pictures that you can actually see what the items are:

 

 

 There were a few looms, all handmade. Stories of what people would pack into their trucks included bringing a spinning wheel but looms would be made with local wood once the family settled in.

 

 

There was so much textile work with more types than you could imagine. The crochet cabinet was light enough to get a picture.

 

 

Beautiful pieces that remind me of Irish crochet but, I don't know the exact name of this type crochet.

 

 

The knitting cabinet (one of them) had more knitting from the 1800s including a pair of fancy socks which I'm guessing were for church and special events.

 

 

The wool is very fine and the lace design is one I hadn't seen before. I tried to get a good close up but, no luck. However, the closeup does get the heel so you can see they were in flat and seamed together with the seam on the back of the heel. I don't think that would be very comfortable but then again, my feet don't like any seams, anywhere.

 

 

Wish more pictures would have turned out but no flash makes it tough. In the textile area they also have many types of embroidery, cross stitch, needlework, tatting, a beautiful darning sampler, and so much more. There's also rosemaling and other decorative painting, woodwork, full size boats, metalwork. The story of immigrants coming to the area.

 

It's a museum well worth the time if you are ever in the northeast part of Iowa. On the same street as the museum is a yarn shop and a quilt shop along with several other small shops to browse through.

 

Also, just north of Decorah in Minnesota is the Harmony area which is home to an Amish community. We did not do any tours of that area but while driving through we had many buggy sightings and had to slow down while passing a few on the highway. We also spotted a few barn quilts. All in all it was a great over night get away.



Momma's Little Helpers

I've been knitting but I don't have anything to show for it, at least not any pictures. I've been working on the 10 stitch afghan which I've been working on for many years. It's one of those projects you dig out whenever you aren't motivated to start something else. I'm making it with leftover worsted weight yarn and round and round I go not thinking just knitting.

While I've been stuck in 10 stitch land the boys are being boys.

Chief likes to hold the computer down because he knows there's nothing worse than a laptop suddenly deciding to fly away.

Bert takes over laptop duty on occasion and stays very close to make sure it doesn't jump off my lap. They're such good boys and good Momma's helpers except.......

Chief has now decided the new VHS/DVD player needs to be held down while watching TV. My old one gave up the ghost a couple weeks ago and I had to order a new one. I need a VHS/DVD player/recorder because I have so many tapes of things I want to keep that you can't get anymore. Old copies of Simple Quilts; Quilt in a Day; Elizabeth Zimmermann, the tornado that was less than a mile from my town house. You know, things you don't watch all that often but really want to have. So, I had to replace the recorder to be able to finish putting all these treasures on DVD. I really need to get the player back into the cabinet where the old one lived!

In the meantime - anyone know how to watch TV through an 18 lb cat?

Patterns are just a guide

That's one of my patterns - Rust Goes Green. It's a crocheted market bag and the statistics are from Ravelry. Do you see that? That's over 8500 downloads. That's a lot of downloads for any pattern.

This week at my knitting group a member of my family tribe (cousin's niece from the other side) came over to drop off Girl Scout cookies (thank you Jen. And no, they didn't make it to the freezer!) Anyway, Jen is a crocheter and told me she had made the bag and created a gift for her child's teacher who was going on a cruise. Rust Goes Green with several cruise related items in it. How clever is that! She also said it turned out bigger than my measurements given. But that was OK with her.

That comment got me babbling about all the emails and messages I've gotten from people who have made the bag. Now - before I go too far, let me say first - I LOVE getting emails from people who made any of my patterns and enjoyed the item. They give me that "you like me, you really like me" moment and boost my ego (which is pretty fragile and I need all the help I can get!) But, I do get some emails that surprise me.

Some of the things people ask me are:

My handles are longer than I like. Can I make them shorter?
I made the bag longer (or shorter). Is that OK?
Do I have to put a button loop on it?
My gauge is different. Is that OK?
and similar type questions.

At first these question were enough to drive me crazy but then I took a step back and realized there are many, many people out there knitting, crocheting, quilting that just don't believe in themselves enough to use a pattern as a guide but not as "THE law".

So - here I am giving you permission to knit - crochet - quilt with gusto. Use a pattern to get you started but change it all you want. If something doesn't turn out exactly the same or exactly right, that's OK. You've learned something in the process. Hopefully, something that worked and you can use in the future but maybe something that didn't turn out right and you've learned what you won't do again. Trying things different from the pattern is the first step to designing your own things. Have fun. Enjoy. Go out there and try something new!

Oh, and if you do make one of my patterns and you do something different with it. Let me see the results. I really do love to see all the variation!

Typical Winter Day

In a typical winter day around here 3 things happen.

1. I watch a lot of TV and when there's an award show I make snarky comments about people who don't know how to dress.

Sigorney Weaver at SAG awards

Seriously, I am not the fashion police and my wardrobe is nothing to get excited about. Much of it is decades old but - if I were to be on international TV I would look at my outfit from multiple angles and be sure it looks great in more than just the "pose for the camera on the runway" moment. This "silk pillowcase" dress makes her chest look less than camera ready. (how's that for being polite!)`

2. Chief will spend a great deal of time holding me down so I don't float away.

I'm always glad to have 18 lbs of cat on my chest. As a matter of fact, he jumped up while I was trying to write this so I had to take a 10 minute break from cuddle time. Before I forget, Chief celebrated his 11th birthday last week. The big boy has given me more joy ( and cuddles) this past decade than I can describe. He's such a lover boy!

3. Bert will find something to steal.

Bert delights in nothing more than finding a comb or knitting needle or something else to claim as his own. His latest thing has been my bamboo knitting needles. I have to be very careful to have them securely attached to the afghan before I set it down because within 3-4 minutes of me setting it down he is trying to nab the needles.

All in all, winter days around here are very pleasant. TV, knitting (or sewing), cats and a nice warm home.

Dressing for Minnesota

It's cold today. Really cold. Cold even for Minnesota standards.The coldest day in 4 years.

But -
we know how to dress cause we're from Minnesota.

 But today is also a special day in Washington DC. There's a guy out there starting the next 4 years of his job. It's a historic day.

As you can see, the boys are thrilled.

#2 this year

Just a quick post to show the completed Molly Scarf. I started it Jan 5th - finished tonight and love it. I had to play around a little bit to get the color repeated to match up to full yarn usage but when I was done.....

this is how much yarn was left.

And now - my 2nd started and completed in 2013 project.

I'm impressing myself but I know this won't keep up.

2013 is starting out good

2013 is less than a week old and it's already been a good knitting year. January 1st I started my first charity hat of the year and finished on Thursday at knit night.

 Then in the middle of the week I got a surprise. One of my friends gifted me a pattern I had in my favorites queue on Ravelry so I started knitting it this weekend. It's the Molly scarf and has been a fun knit. After the first couple repeats I got into a rhythm and found it hard to put down. I'd either want to knit till the next color change or knit "just one more ripple".

The one problem was changing skeins. I'm using Knit Picks Chroma in worsted weight (Pool Party colorway) and one of the skein had a knot in the middle of it. This meant losing about 1/2 a color repeat to keep things going OK. Then when I changed to the new skein - same thing. I've got 2 mini balls sitting next to my chair that I'm hoping I'll be able to work most of it into the scarf. I only have 2 skeins so I really want as much length as I can.

In the meantime, Chief and Bert have been monitoring all my knitting very closely. Some things never change no matter what the calendar year says!