Box award

So the "I Care A Lot" piece has to be in Germany pretty soon, preferably in one pice and in pretty good condition. This is a hidden side of being an artist, building custom boxes for your work. It is not easy, it has to hold up during transport to several exhibitions and you cant be there your self to make sure it is well packed and taken care of. Luckily it takes a lot to brake a pice made form fabric, as long as no one spills on it or something. 

Well, I am very proud of my work, thanks Ola for helping so much! It has padding on the inside and when you turn all the flaps in and put the elastic bands in place, it kind of locks the necklace in, so it wont move around. 

It'll be off tomorrow, hopefully, say hello to Germany.

Hepatica

I should win a "best made box for an irregular object" award today. Picture of that tomorrow.
But for today: Blåsippor or Hepatica for the non swedes. There is lots and lots of them around here, big blue pools of them in the sunny places is the forest, the white ones are making a good appearance also.

Little cardies

Little cardies and booties for Lily and Emma. It is so much fun to knit baby clothes, I can't resist. :)

Sand and Oil

The dessert has time.
The wind is slowly but surely turning the mountains into sand, the sand turning into sand dunes.
Underneath is the oil, plant material that over an unimaginable time turns into this thick, black, desirable liquid.
And the cultures are quickly blinking by. Forming and disappearing.


This is the piece which is going to be in the "I Care A Lot" exhibition.
Named; Sand and Oil.
Made from: various fabrics, sewing thread and linseed, dimensions: 46x46x3 cm.

When I thought about the middle east, I thought about the dessert and the thing that struck me was how small and insignificant humans, our arguments and beliefs are in the timespan of a dessert.
I want the viewer or wearer to think about this in a larger context, and to feel the majestic desolation and loneliness of it all.
In the application form I was asked to answer the question of what important figure in the middle east I would like to give my piece to. I want the archeologist of the future, who wonders about our lives, to wear it. Or maybe it would suit the people of the first timid civilisation that formed in the Middle East.

I Care A Lot

Yesterday I got very good news! I received an email that started; 

"Congratulations, (that is a good start to an email, unless it is from a fake lottery or a pyramid scheme) We are delighted to inform you that your work have been selected for the I Care A Lot exhibition!" 

It is a traveling jewellery show, a portable middle east discussion. 

I sent the submission in a while back and then I heard how many entries they had gotten, 252 works from 195 applicants from more than 30 countries, and I saw my chances drop. 

From all of that they chose 42 works and one of them was MINE! 

Talk about happiness!  

The exhibition is starting in Idare-Oberstein University in Germany, then in september it will come to Stockholm, and then Lisbon in november, then there is also a plan to exhibit in USA and the Netherlands and probably two more locations. My piece will be gone at leas a year.  

I'm going to live on this happiness for quite a while. :)

To be continued tomorrow with information about my piece. 

Look my liege!

I spent the day shopping for astroturf, after getting very good news. So I'm very tired, amuse your self with this video merging of two celebrated classics.

I made a swatch

I read the instructions, I made a swatch, I calculated my individual stitch gauge, I murdered the half done, to small recycled gold, and I boldly started a cardigan with my own design, made to my measurements! 

As instrukted by Barbara in "Knitting from the Top".

I have divided for the arms and are soon coming along with the decreases. It seems a bit big, which is probably a good thing since I usually make to small sweaters.  It has a V-neck and follows my contours with 2" extra room to move. I will pick up and do a 1 1/2" moss stitch border, possibly in another colour (grey or orange), possibly around the whole thing, hem and and arms and all, I don't know how much yarn I have.
This is the fourth time I try to make something for me in this yarn that actually fits, lets hope it will be the last.  :)

Mar de color rosa

Mar de color rosa, 

"A visual language blog focused on contemporary jewellery, including opinion, art, design, photography and curiosities."

Today Featuring: Me!!!

What a lovely name for a blog, pink sea. Go and have a look.

And also, Thanks Chloe, for bookmarking me.

Custom Knits

Custom Knits, by Wendy Bernard:

It seems to me, a bit like, Wendy has read "Knitting from the Top", custom made some garments for herself, got a lot of compliments, realised she could use the knowledge and her inspiration to design, and then wrote a book. I suppose that is how it goes. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, not at all, there is some very nice patterns in there that I would like to try, and they use some excellent techniques, as knitting from the top down and seamless set in sleeves, and there is nice colour-work and pretty stitch patterns as well. I am just saying that I can see the influence of "Knitting from the Top" in her book. 

If you have both of these books, which of course I do :), you can use the intricate information form "Knitting from the Top" and the design and inspiration from "Custom Knits", and you would most likely get a delightful result. 

(I can always see in my text if it is written after I have read or seen any "Jane Austen")

Utemöbler!

Finally we have furniture for the deck! After a horrible ordeal at IKEA where we stood in line fore almost two hours, we got the wrong thing, didn't notice it until we were at the delivery counter, then waited some more, and then I yelled at an IKEA employee and then was a bit nicer, got a coupon for a free meatball dinner and then finally got all our stuff! But of course it is IKEA so the building began when we got home. I am very good at reading the manual, so I do that, and Ola is very good at following my instructions, so he does that. We bought two sofas, two chairs and an extendable table. We have already had our first meal outside, in lots of extra sweaters and socks, it was lovely, a taste of how nice it will be in the summer. 

Knitting from the Top

Knitting from the Top, by Barbara G. Walker:

As it says on the back of the book: The woman is  a genius! 

If you have any intentions of ever designing your own sweater (or pants for that matter!) you should have this book. If you hate to sew seams in your knitting, you should have this book. If you want to try on your garment as you go, you should have this book. If you want to knit something that will actually fit (with reservations for emotions after I have actually knitted something from the book), you should have this book. 

In it, Barbara tells you exactly what you need to know to knit your own sweater, (or pants!) which ever style you like, for your measurements, with the yarn of you choice, from the top down. It is as simple as that, but that is not so simple. She goes through every eventuality, decreases, increases, collars, necklines, measurements, buttonholes and much, much more. This means that the book is text, a lot of text, there is a few diagrams here and there, but mostly page up and page down text. This is not a bad thing, all the text is necessary, it just means that if there is something you are wondering about, the answer is in there somewhere. I sat, and gladly read through a few of the patterns, just so I could really understand her way of working, and now, I cant wait to begin!

You should have this book.

Lily

Little lovely Lily in her perfect pepita pants.
I am glad I choose a stripy yarn, and I love how there is room in the middle for movement and diapers but then singes in at the feet. They are adorable, but I suspect that is because of Lily. :) I cant wait to meet her.

Books (in a) big blue bag!

A whole bunch of, much longed for, knitting books came in the mail yesterday, well actually they came to the post office in a big blue woven plastic sack, because apparently the cardboard box had ben broken somewhere along the way. Totally surprising, what the ... have I ordered that comes in a big blue sack? And the books were not supposed to arrive until early may! I ordered from Amazon, I usually order from Adlibris but they did not have one of the books, and with Amazons (horrible) shipping costs I thought I might as well order a bunch of them. 

Ok, so, I thought I'll do a bit of a book review of them, for you. And... also it gives me something to write about during the week, it is a bit tricky coming up with something to write about everyday!

The first one is: Knitting Socks with Hand-painted Yarn, by Carol Sulcoski.
I bought this because of some nice patterns I had seen on Ravelry, but I was very positively surprised. Not only were there several patterns I wanted to through myself into right away, but it had a large section on how to handle hand-painted yarns to get the best results. They yarns were classified into three groups, that then made it easier to choose a pattern that would really work for just that yarn, and there was also an enlightening part on pooling and how to avoid it or manipulate it. Personally I love pooling and when the yarn goes off and has a life of its own, but it certainly cant hurt to know how to recognise what yarn I can expect to do what. It was more than I expected,  I have of course not knitted any of the patterns yet, but so far it seems like a very good book to have in any sock knitting book library.

Crazy Zauberball Citron, not just funny words...

Ok, so, I am doing a Citron, like everybody else:

There are scores of them on ravelry, here, and here is the free pattern, but this was the one that made me want to do one myself. 

I resisted a good long time, but now I kind of see why everyone is doing it. It is a very pretty pattern AND it uses only (about) one 100 gram skein. Who does not have a single (mm, yes, one, lol) skein of something pretty lying around just waiting to become a ruffled neck-warmer? I had a lovely ball of Crazy Zauberball in the colour U-Boot, that just never wanted to become a pair of socks. So behold, my (not yet finished) Citron.  

By the way citron is lemon in Swedish. 

Lilys Pepita

I made this little number for Lily, my cousins daughter. Lily is just a week old, and adorable. I started it this fall, before I knew if it was going to be a girl or a boy, so I tried to find a gender neutral coloured yarn. That is trickier than it looks, but then when she arrived and we knew she was a girl, I found out that choosing a colour did not get any easier. I'm not a big fan of pink for girls and blue for boys. The pattern, called Pepita, called for a hand-painted yarn, but I wanted something that was going to be machine washable, otherwise it will just sit in the laundry basket. I want life to be easy for the new parents, at least the laundry part. :)

The feet are adorable on this thing, the leg is roomy and balloony and then it just scrunches (in a good way) into the foot.

Pardon me...

Due to a horrible, horrible headache accompanied by nausea, I will post this adorable video today, so I don't have to write anything els.

Middle of the week luxury sallad

I got a very interesting birthday present from my sister; it was a gift-certificate, for a whole weeks worth of groceries, with recipes, for four people, that comes delivered to the door! The company is called "Linas Matkasse". We got the delivery yesterday and tried the first recipe today:

Lightly breaded chicken filet and kamut wheat with a chévre, baby-spinach, apple, cranberry and roasted pumpkin seed salad with an orange dressing.

Have you ever seen the likes of this "middle of the week luxury" salad! This was just the first day, but if the rest of the recipes is as good and healthy as this one, this is a very good idea! The "Lady and the Tramp" spaghetti sounds wonderful, but the bean salad is more iffy. It is a bit too much food for just us two, but with clever planning and use of the freezer it might work. They only deliver every other week, which is probably a good idea, you need a break to do some of your standard dishes, and also you might not want to be stuck with a fridge full of food all the time.
And, Oh, we have discovered cranberries, wow, delicious!

Crocus

I am posting more pictures of flowers, deal with it, spring is a miracle! I wasn't sure it was going to reach us this year, or reach my mind. 

Premiere

Barbecue premiere today! We sat in the sun and ate hotdogs, some made from lamb, some made from soy, all with ketchup. There is something magical about siting by a fire, totally hypnotic and very relaxing. The smells the sounds, there is some basic instinct that comes to life in us, it is very "right" that we should sit calmly by a fire. The rest of the day we smelled lovely of fire and the "outdoors".

Deer candy

I have a visitor today, so no time for blogging. I am going to leave you with this picture of what is no longer.
Winter in Bredäng.
Rejoice, spring is here.
(Even if the deer have eaten all our spring flowers, I was not aware that I had planted deer candy.)

Mail yarn

Lovely yarn with the mail today. From Garnkorgen.se.
Lovely yarn that just might be turned into small, small, small things.

Sweater murder no. two

Yet another sweater murder. Sweater murder number two to be exact. This sweater: Pia, which I knitted last summer came out like an unwearable tent, is going to turn into this sweater: Yoked Cardigan, it is going to be a chic little number I will be able to throw over my shoulders on cold summer nights, and days too for that matter.

(Sometimes it is a good thing to have a drying cabinet, I could wash and dry all this in a day.)

For the interested: Sweater murder number one:
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four

Meet Hugin!

Meet Hugin! He is an 11 year old Yellow-crowned Amazon parrot.

He is a lovely, stubborn, cowardly parrot who looks like someone made him out of velvet.

He usually does not have that leash on him, but it was such a nice spring day, and we all wanted to be outside, and outside he has to wear the leash. He has full use of his wings right now, and he might just take off, or the neighbours dog might see him as a tasty snack. As the nice parrot he is, he never left my leg though.

Out here, where I can hear my self think

A little peak of what I am working on, in the art jewellery feeld. I'm working towards an exhibition I will be having in Gothenburg in May. There will be more information closer to the date I promise. :)

It is a bit strange, picking up the project I worked on a year ago, still, I never felt I was finished, and here is my chance to do it in peace and quite, out here in the country, where I can hear my self think. 

Art Forward

Today my jewellery was featured on ART FORWARD, a blog about contemporary jewellery or as it says in the title "wearable little pieces of art". The blog is written by Trine who lives in Copenhagen, this is what she writes about her blogging:

"A lot of skilled jewellers around the world make the most interesting pieces of jewellery… or wearable little pieces of art. Seeing how other jewellers work is a great source of inspiration for me and instead of just collecting these “moments of inspiration” for my own purpose I have started this blog to share it with you."

It is a joy looking through all the pictures of interesting jewellery on the blog, I recommend you have a look. Of course while you are there, you can look at my pieces too. ;)
If you want to see more of my jewellery you can click on portfolio to the left and you will be whisked off to my webpage.

Kommandobryggan

This proud piece of recycled furniture from Beata Bäck´s series Åter (Again), is called Kommandobryggan (The Bridge, as in on a ship, or Star Trek), and is now living in my hallway. Beata exhibited at Konstfack´s spring exhibition at the same time as me, and afterwords I contacted her to say that I really liked her pieces. It turned out that she really liked mine too, and we agreed to a trade. So today it arrived, it seems a bit lost right now, but I'll make a good place for it in the hallway, and I will find a nice mirror, in a similar style, to go over it, and put some mittens in the drawer, to make it feel at home. 

I find it really inspiring, the way old furniture can become something new in this way, It loosens old ways of thinking, it makes me think freer, it makes me freer.

Welcome Kommandobryggan.

Birthday!

Birthday cookies! 

Today I am 29! 

Thanks everyone who made today so special!

My 40th sock!

This is my 40th sock! The last one of those that is, it is my 20th pair. So, no more socks for a while!
I started on a sweater instead, that would be my fifth attempt to knit a sweater that fits me, I have high hopes. It is not that hard to make socks fit, or scarves and gloves, or even hats, but sweaters are hopeless. I think the problem lies in the tension swatch, my tension is tighter in the tiny swatch and then when I am knitting large sections of the sweater it self, I knit faster and way more relaxed. But I am starting to learn, someday I will make a sweater I can actually wear.
If I knit it, I will wear it, eventually, maybe.