Springtime Cowl and Beanie

The winter of 2019 seems to be just as endless in Chicago Land as last year's - so I thought that my friend Barb might welcome the warmth of a cowl - doubling as a beanie for the really Chicago-windy days - and in the spring color of green, with a few red, blue and yellow beads thrown in for good measure as a stand-in for spring flowers!

 Springtime Cowl and Beanie

The pattern is called: Barb’s Springtime Cowl and Beanie!

First: It is a cowl. Secondly: It is a beanie. Thirdly: You can wear it with the greener part at the top or at the bottom, upside down, inside out. And finally: The I-cord is removable and can be woven through the holes between the stitches either at the top or at the bottom. I crocheted the last two rows and the elastic bind-off to make an even hole-spacing for the I-cord.

 Springtime Cowl and Beanie

 Springtime Cowl and Beanie

After weaving the I-cord through the spaces between the stitches, pull it tight, make a bow and there you go, take a bow! Wear your beanie upside down whichever way you please. Oh yes, lest I forget, if you don't want the I-cord to show you can gather the cowl together at the top with the I-cord, make a bow, turn the cowl - now a beanie - inside out and there you go. How versatile is that!

Springtime Cowl and Beanie - I-Cord

Springtime Cowl and Beanie

Of course there is the option to wear it inside out and upside down, but that is totally up to the wearer-ess. The spiral-like green beads on the one end I bought in Shanghai in 2008. The colourful Rocailles (beads) I bought in Vienna in an incredibly well-stocked bead shop sometime at the beginning of this century. And the various yarns were bought during the past 6 decades of picking up so-called orphan yarns, i.e. where only one or two skeins are left in an orphan basket in yarn stores of every country we visited. Now they are orphans no longer but united in a hopefully useful accessory. They are in the colors of spring flowers. 
So there you go! An international Barb Beanie and Cowl!

 

Succulent - not a cowl or beanie, but green!

Do you prefer cake ?

Kindling your imagination: A small road in the countryside - leading your vision beyond the horizon.

Countryside

Buying yarn has something to do with having a vision. It is an exciting and rewarding experience, mind-stretching and nerve-racking at the same time. One visualizes the existing stash, colors, textures, quantity, suitability... The very probability of actual use takes second place to desire for more. We split our personality into two, one on the outside, giving us as much positive feed as we want, and one on the inside, the reality person, reasoning, weighing the pros and cons of the potential purchase, but also soberly searching for excuses to add to a vast existing stash and so forth.

 Doesn't this wrap's shape and strong neon-line colors set your fantasy in motion?

Then there is the lure of the yarn's presentation! We perceive not just skeins, cones or hard core balls, we visually caress Hankenskeins, and yes! CAKES and donut balls! See these and more in this illustration (Interweave). Various known and unknown gadgets cast their spell on us and our credit card. A Nostepinne (Wickeldorn, Ball Winder)
in various new versions, incredibly easy-to-handle Bamboo Curved Needle Sets for socks, hats and loops, a true must-have for a dedicated sock or cowl knitter... Dream on, knitters and yarn fanatics!

 

This wrap created itself in my hands last winter (2016-2017). The meanderings are the opposite to straight lines, back and forth they rise and fall and add peaks and valleys to the structure. Smaller glossy beads and heart-shaped buttons in green, black and purple will catch the eye when the wrap is worn and thus becoming alive. It is a gift for Hélène, our Parisian family member, and - true to proverbial expectations - a très chique and beautiful Parisienne, wearing the wrap with great aplomb (Glitzy freeform wrap / scarf for Hélène)

Northern Lights / Aurora Borealis

Photographs copyright Valerie Mader + Ute Mader

For a Friend Across the Ocean

No other words needed - this is for a Friend living in Taos, Faith Welsh.
She is a caring human being, a most creative artist of many talents, a cat person, a designer, spinner, knitter, painter, appreciates nature and glorious landscapes, mountains, rocks and trees and plants, the skies and seas, far-away places, foreign cultures - with her posts and her work she has helped me to overcome my homesickness for our former home in the country. This friendship circle is for her. I made it in October 2014.

Hopefully, I will one day be able to meet my friend in person:

Hope is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all.

~ Emily Dickinson

Relocating

Le Lauragais, in the Midi, in France. Walking across vast meadows, cut once in late May and now covered with a short gruffy aftermath, again offering visual protection for field mice darting through the new growth of grass and weeds, I think of the seasons passing year after year, eternally changing, coming and going, surviving us all.

A deer feasting on fresh green grass

I see the deer stepping out of nowhere, feeding on the new grass in the coolness of the evening. A summer meadow flower smell fills the air. I feel acutely homesick for the landscape although I have not even departed yet. I miss the feeling of belonging to this place we will have called home for so long - while I am still there and departure is but a remote day away. Ambivalence might come close to our state of mind.
There are not enough words to describe the feeling of loss and how I dread the time when for inevitable reasons that loss of our paradise becomes real and inevitable. I wish....     Cut.

Salix integra ""Hakuro Nishiki"; Harlekinweide / Zierweide, Saule

Relocating, again. Physically and mentally. This time it is different, circumstances dictated the move. We are heading for a life - a different life - in a city, in Berlin, one of the largest capitals in the world, a sprawling city of more than 3.5 million people, one third of its territory covered by forests, parks, gardens, and rivers. I am discovering private and public  gardens and consider them mine for the viewing.

Bridges: scarf with drop stitch ladders connecting cables

Garden flowers, so different from the wealth and unbridled abundance of wild flowers, so colorwheel-composed and arranged and yet not conveying the same impression of nature's harmony. Tamed for a purpose. Different. Bits of nature parcelled out to alleviate concrete monotony. Showcases in most places, gardeners tending designed gardens, meadows turned weedless lawns, wild flowers replaced by suitable soil and climate-adapted flower arrangements. But still - flowers and 440.000 trees, lovely boulevards and a surprising number of smaller parks contributing to the "green lung" of Berlin.

Bridges: scarf with drop stitch ladders connecting cables

Reapproaching textile work  - it is difficult these days. The now omnipresent conflicts in the world, the wars, and flight and plight of the refugees streaming into Europe, the rising of nationalistic parties in many countries, the presently apparent political chaos caused by the nation-splitting referendum in England - all of this makes it difficult to settle down to something seemingly inanely normal such as textile crafts, I almost feel guilty sitting down with my needles and yarn and concentrate on lacy pattern with a more or less intricate repeat...

Above: An off-white scarf made of ivory-colored mohair and the finest Chinese natural silk and Moroccan embroidery silk, three cables connected by drop-stitch bridges. Just right for days in spring with a northern breeze.

Moroccan Embroidery Silk - adding hues of color to other yarns

Below: Dipping into my huge stash, the approaching summer called for an intensely colorful scarf. It is knit lengthwise. CO on a multiple of 18. Roughly following a Feather and Fan pattern. Meanderings in bright colors and crazy lacy stitch patterns, alternating needle sizes and yarn gauge. If you are uncertain about gauges, this is a good site to get acquainted with yarn calculations. Color mix: of course nature is way ahead of me, could have added a million more colors! Just follow your mood...

Glitzy freeform wrap / scarf for Hélène

Britzer Garten (Berlin)

I thought it might be interesting to introduce a number of famous Berliner personalities:
1) Journalist, writer, author, satirist: Kurt Tucholsky "The New York Times hailed him as "one of the most brilliant writers of republican Germany. He was a poet as well as a critic and was so versatile that he used five or six pen names. As Peter Panter he was an outstanding essayist who at one time wrote topical sketches in the Vossische Zeitung, which ceased to appear under the Nazi regime; as Theobald Tiger he wrote satirical poems that were frequently interpreted by popular actors in vaudeville and cabarets, and as Ignatz Wrobel he contributed regularly to the Weltbühne, an independent weekly that was one of the first publications prohibited by the Hitler government."

 

This is from a poem (1924) on travelling through places and times: 

Die Kinder lärmen auf den bunten Steinen. 

Die Sonne scheint und glitzert auf ein Haus. 

Ich sitze still und lasse mich bescheinen 

und ruh von meinem Vaterlande aus.

Children play noisily on the colorful rocks.

The sun is shining, rays glistening on a roof.

I am sitting quietly, basking in the sun

and take a rest from my fatherland

Colors to Lift Your Spirits - Starting with Green

Although winter temperatures and trees bare of leaves will still be with us in the northern hemisphere for another month or so, I am now starting to knit colors for spring. These two hats are made with fuzzy yarns from my stash, one of them adorned with a pink heart for that little girl somewhere in a migrant welcome center in Berlin.

Spring Green Hat for a Baby

I used the Emily Ocker cast-on and German Short Rows for the earflaps. Adding a new color when knitting in the round: "jogless" is what you want so see this tutorial on how to joing a new color to your hat. I-cords and a little heart-shaped button - and the hats were ready to start their travels. For more helpful hints click here
and go to bottom of posts.

 

  

Spring Green Hat for a Toddler

O how I long again to see
The vernal face of Spring,
And hear, from every budding tree,
Some little warbler sing.

I long to see the forest trees
Clothed in their robes of green,
And swaying in the gentle breeze
Display their glossy sheen.

I long to wander by the stream
Where sport the speckled trout,
Or in the noontide's genial gleam
See lambkins frisk about.

I long to see the sons of toil
Perform the noble deed
Of breaking up the stubborn soil
To plant the fertile seed. 

I long to see the meadows green
Bespread with flowerets gay--
I long to have a change of scene
From winter cold and gray.

It won't be long--a little while
And snows will disappear
And Flora with her winning smile
Shall find a welcome here.

A poem by S. Moore (Canada)

Transparency - Compassion - Hope

"Sometimes the fog in the early morning, just before sunrise, seems to let us gently become aware of the light, opening opaque windows to the bluer sky beyond and wiping them shut a number of times before the gossamer fog cloak becomes transparent". This is a parable for each day, month or year: As time passes, we experience new impressions, events and changes in our lifes, some easily apparent, some hidden until the last moment.

Fog  Blanketing the Fields

According to the Gregorian calendar, the year 2016 is just a few hours away. I pray and hope for peace in the many troubled places around the globe. While the past twelve months were predominantly marked by horrible events, there were also sparks of hope glimmering as if one was asked not to give up and instead get engaged in helping no matter whom. Even if one drops but a penny into the cup a person in need holds out, at that moment you are momentarily engaged into caring about your fellow human being. A small token of your empathy- yet you do make a difference. Everybody does.

Winter Time

Sometimes life changes within a few moments. One sees an image, a picture one cannot wipe from the retina, it logs into our memory, indelibly. The picture of the small child, washed up on shore of a Turkish beach. It is this image of drowned Syrian boy Aylan that went around the world, it brought near the horrors of war, and it stirred a public outcry for help, commiseration and sympathy for the surviving father. I am hoping that we continue to see that image lodged in our brain and that we will remember the fate of this three-year-old child every time we must make a decision whether to accept a refugee or sent her/him back to a place he or she desperately wanted to leave.

Santolina

New Year Resolutions? I was not ever making any. This time will be the first. I don't have much to offer. But maybe teaching a small child how to knit would be a worthwhile gift, lasting a life-time?
Teaching a child the language it will from now on need to make friends, to feel at home in kindergarten, school, and indeed in life. Let us welcome those homeless people into our web of life.

Resilient and Strong

Winter time - I was knitting a few hats for children for our local Refugee Help Center. Always welcome are scarves, mitts, cowls and chokers. Here is a choker, knit in the round with bobbly wool, with a crocheted edge of silky ribbon and fine fuzzy mohair.

Choker

Loopy Yarn