baby , BHWH designs , Dog House Yarns , Elizabeth Zimmermann , family , Hilltop Farm , home accessories , read-alouds , resources - books , swatching , sweaters , teen , The Scottish Collection , unit studies
Yarn-along: Scotland, Austria, Poland and England
~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! ~ Ginny over at small things
Good morning! Halfway through January … whew!
My rather cryptic title for this post will be explained in a minute. Can you guess the meaning from my yarn-along photo?
Yarn-along: January 16, 2013
Did you guess?
Let’s start with Scotland, probably the most unintuitive of the bunch: do you see that knitting I’ve started? It will be a red pullover for Hambone. The “Scotland” portion is the St. Andrew’s Cross I will work into the portion just above the waist-ribbing (and possibly up the sleeves). St. Andrew is my patron saint this year and also the patron saint of Scotland, so I’ll be scattering Scotish-ness throughout my designs this year (similar to what I did last year with my Brigid Collection for St. Brigid). Hambone loves these colors and is very much a lover of all things British-Isleish. I’m using Tatamy Tweed Worsted, a lovely cotton/acrylic blend from Kraemer, which I’ve used quite successfully in the crew-neck version of my Rib Tickler and my Colorwork Baby Tam and Sampler Project Bag designs. It knits and wears wonderfully!
Hmm, on to Austria — we’re just starting our 20th Century unit on the 40s — and will be spending January and February learning about WW2, its reasons for occurring, major battles and events during, and then its aftermath which left us with the Cold War, an Israeli/Middle East powderkeg, a divided Europe and a devastated Far East. So our read-aloud is Maria VonTrapp’s The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, eyewitnesses to the European debacle and the hope for new life in the United States. It is also, of course, the story behind one of our favorite family movies The Sound of Music and we also visited all over Salzburg and the area when we lived in Austria 10 years ago.
Poland — I think this one is pretty obvious: my reading this week includes Alan Schreck’s book The Legacy of Pope John Paul II: The Central Teaching of His 14 Encyclical Letters. This is a fabulous read! Much of JPtheGreat’s writing is deeper than I can delve but with Schreck’s clear elucidation, I am understanding more of the nuances and themes and purpose of the enecylicals. Excellent!
And finally, on to England, from whence came my knitting mentor and hero, Elizabeth Zimmermann. I recently wrote up a post on Dog House Yarn’s blog (yep, I do blogs over there, too!) about my EZ year and how I was revisiting her writings and design ideas. This month or so, I’ll be analyzing her first book (and the one that I rec’d from my mother in 1971, a newly minted copy which has since disintegrated and the copy you see here is a replacement), Knitting Without Tears. This is an amazing, provocative, knitting-life-changing book; I haven’t re-read it for a few years, so this time around is like sitting down and chatting with a friend you haven’t seen in a while but with whom you instantly reconnect.
That’s my knitting/reading week.
OOO, I almost forgot, I did just post a new pattern yesterday …. Miss Ellie’s Garden is a 48-inch heptagon/circle blanket that would be perfect for a baby girl (for whom I designed it) or even as a throw for those without baby girls. And here’s a link to a full post I did about those lovely swatches I mentioned last week.
Will you come and play with us over at Ginny’s?
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