Friday, October 31, 2008

Tender Yarns / Něžné vlnky

On Wednesday morning I received a beautiful parcel from raining sheep. In the post office round the corner where I usually collect some official letters, bank reports and this every day life stuff, suddenly they handed me this parcel scented of distances and I realized that my bloggy life materialized in a real thing and I am holding it in my hands. The surprise rose even more when I opened it and this soft and colorful skeins fell out of it. It is Noro, the softest brand and it will be good for a pair of gloves, or a pair of hand warmers, or leg warmers, front part of a sweater for me, for the litle guy, a hat, a scarf and so on. If I didn't have three other things that have been already waiting for me to be finished I would just jump on knitting. Thank you, Raina, I will not owe you for long.

Monday, October 27, 2008

What happened to Bomull?

Which is the Ikea coverlet, as you all obviously know. As a cheap piece of fabric of immerse qualities it ended up as a bathrobe that we just needed in the family one day. Here it is:


And continuing in the Scandinavian manner, this little bag made out of the remaining fabric has been embroidered in this sort of folkish style dashed by Cilla Ramneck's designs for her book which (for me) has an incantation in the place of the title: Sticka Virka!

Friday, October 17, 2008

Ecological


These pants are made of an old sweatshirt bought second hand and never worn. It was enough to make two pairs, one in the collage picture bottom right (the pocket on the back was originally on the chest), the second pair (upper left) I sew out of sleeves putting a kind of patch on the bag so that I would fill the missing material. These PJ’s that Dominik has been wearing now inspired me to do that. The stretch belt was originally the hem of the neck and fits perfectly his round belly now.

Pants have been the only pieces of clothes that I have been sewing for my little guy. I don't need any pattern for them, I cut them after the old pants. It pleases me to use up the old clothes that I have that I don't want to throw away and don't know otherwise what to do with that. Also, I feel very ecological making clothes like that, almost ready to make Dominik pose for me in between the backdrops of our dilapidated apartement.

To view the images larger click on them!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Magic Noro

I always wonder about you who knit so fast how are you able to do it? How come, that you whip a sweater in a month and at the same time a pile of socks and hats and who knows what else? It always takes me several months before finishing something, even a glove (well, I don't know, maybe not a glove). I thought it is because I also do other stuff like taking care of the child but it is actually why I started knitting again because that was one of the very few things I could do while watching him when I didn't feel like playing with him. Knitting showed up to be like a good time consumer. I am probably just slow. I like slow films, Béla Tarr, for example. A book called something like Appraisal of Slowness. So I cannot be a fast knitter at that point.


Noro sweater for my little guy has Noro only on the front. First, it was expensive, so I got only one skein, Second, this kind of wool wouldn't feel nice on him and he would refuse it. So the back is Alpaca wool from Austermann, called Inka (I don't know if anyone is interested in this information really but it is such a habit on blogs so I do it too) and the sleeves are hundred per cent acrylic and it is a Czech brand called Elian. The color combination is my husband's achievement, beside being slow I am also indecisive. The pattern is my own or rather say doesn't exist, I just proceeded according to a different one that he already has. So that is the sweater. The little guy screamed only a little when I made him to dress it but now he doesn't protest anymore and he maybe even likes it. I like it too.

And, yes, the curtain, that it is photographed on, it is maybe the most nicest of all shown here (beside Dominik), VERY OLD, from the 60s, also rare because at that time, in socialist Czechoslovakia, it was hard to find designy things up to date.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Almost unbearable




A portrait of the two of us. Rather hidden in a shadow. The landscape behind us is like our past and future and the same time. I wish it was so beautiful.
The church and the place has a mystical feeling. It sits far from the contemporary town, in the mountains, in the place where a medieval silver mining village used to be. The church is gigantic, although very rural looking and so might have been the village at the time. The place has a nice setting, it oversees the valley in the first picture. What is the realistic side of it? The altarpiece used to have a wood-carved purgatory in its lower part which could be revealed by i wooden curtain, it was very stage design like. 18th century, unique piece. IT IS GONE! STOLEN! How could this happen when the maintainer of the graveyard lives right next to it? How? I am really suspicious. Angry. Sad.
Rather don't want to know how many pieces like these are stolen every day in this country. Every church has been robbed at least once. Many just yawn with emptiness.
You see, I wanted to write a nice sunny post and this is what it turned into. A true autumn melancholy. Sorry for that.