In Praise of Twined Knitting

Last night, I bound off on my twined knitting hat. I officially started it on 8 April and I officially finished it last night, but there was about a week in the middle where I didn't knit on it because I ran out of yarn. When I swung by De Afstap on Saturday, I found the one last skein of the green and (just my luck) it was the same dye lot. Perfect match. The colors look a little bit faded out here, because it's late in the day. I'm really happy with the results and I'm already planning a few other projects. The success with the hat may have made me decide to finally go off my yarn diet. We'll see.

The pattern, was give to me at the end of the Twined Knitting Workshop. It's by Carla Meijsen, but I had to change it a bit when I realized that my SSKs didn't look right, so I just did K2og, wich gives it that twirly look. So there's some creativity in it, but I'm certainly not taking credit for the design. (By the way, you can go to Carla's website and see some pictures of me with a posse of Dutch women learning twined knitting. There's even a little bit of text about me. Seems they were the slightest bit concerned about how I'd be in a room full of ladies. As I always say, "I loves the ladies." Always have. The entry I'm in is entitled "I Love Amstedam.)

There are tons of mistakes in the hat, which I won't bother enumerating. I'm really glad to have it off the needles so I can look at it. What's next? I might try to finish a hat I was working on, but that I got a little bored with. Or maybe a baby hat.

Several weeks ago, a guy I knew in NYC about ten years ago wrote to say that he'd found me via this blog. We had taken an upper-level square dance class together (C2 for anyone keeping score at home.) He'd moved to LA and was visiting the Netherlands with his partner and some friends. They took a fabulous boat trip from Rotterdam to Amsterdam and back again. Apparently, it went very slow and stopped here and there. They (eight of them) just sat around and talked and watched the Netherlands go by. It sounds fabulous. I finally caught up with them on Monday evening for dinner. Great to see them - Russell and David. Fun to talk to Americans here on vacation. They went back the next morning. I like guys who know how to vacation and they seem like those kind of guys.

The weather has been beautiful and what is really catching my eye lately is the cherry blossoms - I think they're cherry blossoms. They're all over the place. My favorite is when they've just popped open and the whole tree is light pink. There are a few here and there that are like that.

I'm okay with winter, even a really cold winter. But spring arriving makes me really happy. Hooray for spring.