September 2020

 

September is one of my favorite times of the year. The heat of summer fades away, our garden continues to give us back and I can start thinking about what kind of knitwear I will wear in the upcoming seasons.

This September is a special in a way that I have several knitting patterns published by a variety of third parties.

In my last blog post I wrote about four of the patterns that were published by I Like Knitting; link to these patterns here:  New Knitting Patterns

I also published one independent pattern; which is a playful variation and addition to my previously published knitting pattern by Knitpicks, in one of their knitting patterns book collections;: link to the pattern here: Meg and School of Fish

In the next few weeks I have three other patterns coming out with a three different publishers. It is very exciting and I do feel like a real knitwear designer. 

Stay tune for those patterns as they are all so different in a way, yet they all are product of my imagination and creativity.

Sometimes I write about gardening. I have been gardening pretty much most of my life. And I had a different outlook on gardening throughout the years. I always loved the fresh taste of fruits and vegetables, and I have learned the hard work that comes with it to actually get that fresh fruits and vegetables on your table. 

We have a small size backyard garden in comparison to what my parents and grandparents had while I was growing up. In those years we practically did not need to buy any fruits or vegetables, except some of the exotic fruits that didn't grow in our Central Europe climate. We did a lot of preservations and canning, and pickling. All of this experience I had as a child have helped me when we started our backyard adventure when our kid was small. 

I hope that the lessons learned will stay with our child into the future and will allow our child to appreciate it as an adult. Pictured here are our backyard gardening adventures. We have planted the blackberry bush and this year it has given us plenty of fruits. In the second picture our dog watch the vegetables I picked this morning, some kohlrabi, parsnip, celeriac, carrots, and butternut squash. We grew everything from seeds, event the butternut squash. Though that was an accidental. We have a compost, and last year I put some seeds and peels from squash and other vegetables and fruits. Apparently it has survived the winter and it started to grow from the compost pile. See the last picture. These are our not seeded and planted pumpkin and squash vines. When it started to grow, we just let them grow and now we have butternut squash and some kind of pumpkin. 

I will use the vegetables to make our meal today. It is a wonderful to know where our food is coming from, and that it is healthy and fresh.  

Thank you for visiting, and don't forget to see the upcoming new patterns. 

Summer 2020

As the pandemic continues its rampage through the world I am trying to adjust to what is happening around me in the real world and online as well. 

Under a normal circumstances I would be visiting my mom and friends in Europe. I would be sitting on my mom's balcony and knit, while the two of us would be talking. I would call my friends from the time I lived in Europe. We would get together and sit on a sidewalk in one of those little cafés, catching up on our lives. 

I miss that this year. 

But, whenever I am away I wonder what it would be like to spend the summer at home. This year is the year I can experience that. I am spending my summer at home. I have the time to watch my garden grow. I get to enjoy fresh berries and incorporate vegetables from our garden into our meals. It is exciting to sneak in a kale and create meatballs that turns green and cause raised eyebrows and musings about "What is wrong with those meatballs?", "Why are they green?". 

And a huge bonus is that I get to talk to my mom on daily basis on Skype. I love it. I know it is not as seeing her in person, but it is a joy to be able to talk to her. 

Aside from working on few knitting patterns that will be published in the future by a third party I also get to work on some fun knitting projects. 

Remember my pattern for One fish, two fish, three fish?

Blog post about it

I am revisiting the pattern and have fun with creating more fish and play with the idea of a food chain and who gets to eat who. I will be posting an updated pattern for this fun food chain sometime next week or so and if you are on Ravelry and a member of my group you can join the Knit-a-long hosted in my group. Otherwise the pattern will be available on Lovecraft, Ravelry. 

Recently I have opened a store on Payhip where you can purchase some of my patterns. I am slowly adding more patterns to that store, so check it out. Payhip store

Thank you for visiting.

Leonard and Lola, toy mystery KAL

As I mentioned in my previous post, the new toy mystery KAL is about to start.

Leonard and Lola

Leonard and Lola is the new toy mystery KAL, starting with clue one this week. The pattern will be released in four clues with the final pattern available June 9th.
Pictured is the yarn I used for Leonard. I have used Knitpicks Palette, fingering yarn held double. I will be using slightly different yarn (worsted Cascade 220 Superwash) for Lola. I have already knitted another sample about a year ago for a colleague from work. For her sample I used some random worsted weight yarn from my stash, held double to make the toy a bit larger.

More details and the pattern to download is here:
Leonard and Lola

Don't forget to join my group on Ravelry where you can find the coupon code and where you can participate in posting the work in progress pictures and chat with fellow knitters.
Stana's Critters Etc group

In my small stay at home world I continued on my baking adventures path. I baked my tried and successful recipes, some comfort food, and I tried few new thing. After many years of being asked to try and make the sourdough bread I have gone down the rabbit hole of sourdough baking. It is a challenge and I am not sure how successful I have been. I followed the book The Bread Baker's Apprentice  by Peter Reinhart and started my sourdough adventure last Monday morning with the Day one for Seed Culture, I continued with the Barm and yesterday evening we had the first sourdough bread. The sourdough bread didn't rise as much as my usual bread I bake using the commercial yeast, but it tasted good. I guess I just have to continue and I am sure with time and practice the bread will be better and better. Just like with knitting. My first attempts were so much different from what I am knitting these days. And it also took practice and perseverance.

Baking Week VII

 In my collage picture are: My first sourdough breads, Linzer cookies, Bread, Bread (I baked another), Focaccia (This time I added few thing on top to make it more interesting), Bundt Cake, Tortillas (my first time making them from scratch, they taste different from the store bought tortillas, and they were harder to use for Fajitas, but still tasted good), Ginger Bread (my mom's recipe, fast, easy and good tasting), and my Monday adventure of starting the sourdough seed culture, my bread (I baked it three times this week) and our comfort food of Chocolate Brownies (it's so good to bite into a warm, and soft chocolate brownie).

This week proved to be challenging for our garden. Last week we planted two Pear trees, Blueberry, Currant, and Raspberry bushes, and then this weekend we had a freezing temperatures overnight and it snowed. We will not know if the trees will make it through this temperature change and produce some fruit or not until late in the season.

Pear tree bloom

We also had our first crop of the season. We seeded the radishes early in March, in our new cold frame, and now they are maturing, and are ready to be picked and eaten.

Radishes

Yesterday, on my walk with our dog through the neighborhood I looked up and saw for a brief moment this wonderful heart shaped cloud.

Heart shaped cloud

I see this as a sign of hope, that we as humans will make it through this pandemic and learn to be better and kinder to each other and to the Earth especially.

Thank you for visiting.

Knitting versus Deadline Knitting

I like to knit.

Playing with yarn

Ever since I learned how to knit I enjoyed the process. I have knitted all those years when knitting was not fashionable. My first ever finished project was a sweater. I actually unknowingly started my knitwear designer career with my first knitting project when I calculated the number of stitches to cast on and how many rows I needed to knit. I also used three colors and intarsia technique, without actually knowing how to cast on. My mom helped me with the cast on process, and I continued from there. I knitted the sweater and created an original design element, small holes in the place where the yarns should have been twisted around each other when I changed them. I didn't know that at the time. I finished the sweater, my grandmother helped me to sew the pieces together and made the crew neck around the neck opening. I had that sweater for years. Last year, when I visited my mom I found an old picture of me in that first sweater.  The picture was taken by my grandfather. He was an excellent photographer and writer.

First sweater

I kept on knitting all those years. I might have thought about knitwear designer career from time to time, but I never pursued that until few years ago. It was when a friend of mine mentioned the website Ravelry and I joined the knitting website when I realized that there is a possibility to be a knitwear designer. I was given the opportunity to share some of my ideas and projects, and I learned to write knitting patterns. I started to submit to various magazines and yarn companies and to my surprise my ideas were accepted. This whole thing is a work in progress and I am still learning.

Somehow my hobby turned into a part time job.  I can create and knit, and sometimes I earn some money. With the opportunity to have my work published by magazines, yarn companies, or in a various knitting books  the deadline knitting arrives as well.

Knitting is a leisurely process created one stitch at the time.
However when working under contract for a third party, knitting turns into a deadline knitting and the process is suddenly less of a leisure and more of a stressful event as the whole process needs to be finished on time and delivered to the third party by a certain date. Sometimes there is plenty of time to work out the pattern and knit the sample. Other times the process is more limited and has serious time constraint.

There have been moments when I am complaining about knitting. It feels frustrating, especially if something is not working the way it should, or if I make a mistake and have to rip out portion of my knitting and start over. Yesterday morning I emailed the finished pattern and in the afternoon I mailed out finished sample that will be published by a third party. Now I have to wait until the pattern is published to share the pictures of my work.

Today I spend my morning in the garden picking out the berries.

Berries from our garden

And because I like knitting, I already started to think about my next knitting project. But that has to wait, first I need to finish the final read of my Voyager Sweater pattern.

Voyager Sweater

Thank you for visiting.

June and three new knitting patterns

photo by Knitpicks

Strawberry Twist is another dishcloth pattern that I have created for Knitpicks.
The pattern is free and available to download on Knitpicks' website, link here: Pattern
or you can visit my Ravelry store and the link to free pattern is there as well.

Strawberries

This time of year I am rather busy in the garden. Everything has to be planted, seeds need to sowed, cared for, and it all takes time that has to be taken away from my knitting time. That is the reason why it takes me longer to post new knitting patterns.  Also knitting and designing  for third parties takes priority over the independent designing. But this week I have managed to publish two knitting patterns for hats.

Rayas Hat is knit in bulky weight yarn in two colors. The slipped stitch pattern allows you to work only with one color per round. The color combination is endless. To purchase visit my Ravelry store, or click on this button:

Rayas Hat

Neva Hat is another bulky weight yarn project. The pattern is completely reversible.
To purchase visit my Ravelry store or click on this button:

 

Neva Hat

Thank you for visiting.

Rhinebeck and life....

I have to admit, my Saturday trip to Rhinebeck was not my first one. I went there already twice in the previous years. Each trip was unique and interesting in its own way.

This year I stumbled upon the Ravelry meet on the hill by accident. I saw Jessica, one of the founders of Ravelry and spoke to her very briefly. I saw many fellow knitters and their fabulous knitted projects. I also visited the book store and spoke to some of the authors who were attending and had their books for sale. I bough few things, and returned back home with many pleasant memories.

It was a wonderful trip and the weather couldn't be more pleasant, sunny and warm, with a hint of fabulous peak colors of New England foliage. I will definitively visit the festival again, though it might be few years before my next visit.

Rhinebeck treasure 

Since one of the books I purchased is named Slow Knitting, I have decided to try to live by the words, at least for a day.....

Sunday - knitting

Sunday  - reading about knitting 

Sunday - garden, and the end of slow knitting day.

Just in case if you are wondering, the vegetable on left is kohlrabi, and we usually harvest them in the early days of spring, so it was a nice surprise to find one still hiding in our garden. This year we tried to grow cabbage, but somehow it turned out to be rather a meal for the caterpillars instead for us. This little cabbage head survived and will be served for dinner as a salad.

Thank you for visiting.

Life.....

Fall colors scarf

This fall I have a class at school named Anthropology: Food and Culture. The two books that are assigned reading are quite interesting. Especially the book titled Earth Knows My Name, written by Patricia Klindients. here is  The link to book on Amazon page.
I have found the book fascinating due to several reasons. I live in a country that is not my birthplace. Also my father's side of my family worked the land as farmers for many generations.
Maybe the book fascinates me due to sentimental reasons, while reading it I think of my past and the way life used to be. I do not want to say that life before was better or worse. There are always two sides of a story and we need to look at them carefully. The convenience of modern life has its advantages and I do not wish to loose them. I love having the opportunity to use Internet and talk with my mom on a daily basis, even though there is an ocean between us. My father never had that when we were growing up. He talked to his mother only when we made that all day trip across the country to visit them.
However, one thing is sure, somehow slowly and at first reluctantly I have decided to continue in that tradition and started a small garden. Though my garden is very small in comparison with what  I have seen and worked on when I was a child it still gives us some vegetables and even fruits. It's awesome to see the plants grow from seeds, and care for them throughout the growing season. And yes, the salad from our garden not only looks delicious, it tastes better than any store bought salad package.

Salad

I also use up the extras from the garden and preserve it for later times. Pickling cucumbers and other vegetables is labor intensive and takes time, but it looks great on our table in the middle of winter.

Pickling

The time I spend in garden takes away time from my knitting, but I do not regret it. When winter comes, I know there will be longer evenings which I can spend by our fireplace with knitting needles in hand.

Thank you for visiting.