Kooldutchlady

Why I knit (again)

kooldutchlady — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 11:57:54 +0000

When I was seven I learned to knit. Al the girls in my class received lessons in kitting, crochet, sewing and embroidery. (Boys didn’t need those female stuff; the learned manly things like pottery and fretwork.) Not hampered by a modern or feminist outlook, I thrived during these lessons. I graduated from potholders and baby boots to wearable clothes for myself when I was about eleven. From the age of sixteen I manufactured a big part of my wardrobe myself. Apart from that, I experimented I knitted and crocheted, I spun my own yarn, I learned handweaving – I had a big loom in the living room – and I took up sewing. And I liked it.

So when about ten years ago my hands started to hurt and I had to give up most of my crafting, that really was painful. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with my hands, save for an incidental inflammation. He prescribed pain killers. After a few years I demanded something more of him, so he sent me to a reumatologist, who put me through my paces in the hospital. There was nothing wrong with me. My hands just hurt. And my feet, and my shoulders, and the rest of my body too. More painkillers. A person can get used to anything.

I have a lot of other physical problems, and last summer it all came together. I finally found a doctor who looked a bit further than the tip of his nose, and after some blood tests it turned out I have Hashimoto’s disease. This basically means that my own body is attacking my thyroid, which get damaged and can’t do its job anymore. This is called a hypothyroid condition. As a result, I am always tired, I keep putting on weight, I get depressed, my hair gets thinner and my joints and muscles ache. There are dozens of other symptoms, but these are the basis ones. More info on thyroid.about.com, by the way.

Now I am on medication. While it takes time to find the right dose for me, I can already notice some differences. I am still tired and overweight, I experience bad hair days with an alarming frequency and I move like and old woman due to stiff joints and muscles. But I am much less depressed, I have the capability back to really enjoy things, and most importantly: I can knit!

Since I’ve taken up knitting again about two months ago, I started no less than five projects. Only one of them is completely finished: a lovely multicolored cardigan in a slip stitch, for which I got the idea from a pattern in the Knitty. I love to look at patterns an get inspired by them, but I seldom knit by somebody else’s rules. Most of the time I use a different yarn, which calls for a different number of stitches, which in turn calls for major alterations in the pattern itself, not to mention I might wish for pockets, another neck shape or something like that. The end result usually differs a lot from the original pattern. Anyway, this is my slip stitch cardigan. I think I haven’t lost my edge completely.

Knitting bag and more

kooldutchlady — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:03:24 +0000

The pictures of my knitting-bag-to-be have turned out fine. I used a simple stitch that looks complicated. In the purled sections of the fabric, the yarn gets wrapped around the stitches, which sounds complicated but isn’t. I used a linen yarn I inherited from a family member who was a handweaving teacher. She left me a room full of material, which I use from time to time. Lucky me to have a spare room to store all my stash!

Yesterday I visited a knitting fair in Den Bosch. To be fair , the fair was about patchwork and emproidery also, and lots of other textile crafts. But I went for the knitting stuff. Of course I bought some stash I have no time for to use, and started a sampler right away. It’s meant to be a shawl, but judging by the amount of stuff I am already working on, that could take a while.

New site

kooldutchlady — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:38:20 +0000

While I write this, the update of our site, www.kooltiel.nl, is being perfected. Instead of questionable – though colorful – homemade layout and buttons, it now has a professional and stylish look. There will be many bugs, of course, but that is a matter of time. This weblog is just me, the website claims to cover the whole arsenal of work, interests and hobbies of the entire family. It’s mainly in Dutch, but that is supposed to change too. So come and take a look!

Works in progress

kooldutchlady — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 14:52:18 +0000

As I have a whole list of Works in Progress, I thought I should talk about the most current ones first.

I am knitting a knitting bag. This project was conceived especially for when I go visit the Stitch ´n Bitch meetings in Utrecht. When talking to other knitters and looking through the books and magazines there, I get easily distracted. So I needed a rather brainless piece of work that still looks nice. Hence the bag. It´s basically one long, square part, but folded and equipped with a narrow side strip it becomes a simple bag.

I´m doing the side strip now, in crochet. So the bag is nearing its completion. I only need to stitch the parts together and manufacture a lining. That should take me a day or so. Unfortunately, I’m not able to go and visit the Stich ‘n Bitch meetings at the moment because the course in history of music Rob and I are doing is on a Tuesday night also. Oh well, my knitting evening will still be on in two months time, and this course is very interesting too.

The big plan was to put a few pictures of my bag next to this post, but I can’t seem to find the camera at the moment. And we need to eat in about an hour, so duty calls. I’ll add the pictures later, I promise.

New camera

kooldutchlady — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:29:17 +0000

Last week we bought a new photo camera, the Olympus E510 SLR. At the moment the camera is with Rob in Bulgaria, but before he left I made a series of pictures for practice. Look how pretty they are!

Here I am!

kooldutchlady — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:54:55 +0000

OK, I really did it. I have my own weblog!

To millions of people this isn’t very remarkable, to me it is important. Not that my life is so very special – well, it is to ME – but this is a window to the rest of the world that I plan to open a lot.

As I am not hampered by much knowledge of how weblogs work, I plan to study the ins and outs of blogging while I make my contributions. So maybe this will get interesting in time.