looking for signs of spring in Hungary


Yes, it's been a while since I posted. The stomach virus killed my motivation and energy to do anything but sit and knit. I do have some pictures and a whole post on my 250th project prepared, but let me share something else with you today. Yesterday my mother and I drove to Hungary to have another look at the Eszterháza palace built by the Esterhazy family in Fertöd, a couple of kilometers over the Hungarian border. Here's a Wikipedia link (in English). 

The picture above shows the garden side, I didn't take a picture of the front, because the courtyard is currently being renovated and that doesn't look too nice. As you can see above and from the Wiki link, it used to be painted in what is called "Schönbrunn yellow", after the Schönbrunn palace in Vienna, which is also yellow. In an early attempt of corporate branding, Emperor Joseph II. ordered all buildings erected by the state and the Habsburg family to be painted in that color and so it became fashionable to paint everything in that yellow.


However, Schönbrunn used to be painted pink and grey and so did Estzerháza and while Schönbrunn will probably never be pink and grey again, Estzerháza is being renovated to show its initial coloring, which suits it much better. The beautiful gardens - also reminiscent of Schönbrunn, but less extensive and without the hills, fountains and follies - are also in need of renovation. There's a dell that probably used to be a fountain and you can tell where there were extensive flowerbeds and broad gravel paths to walk on, but those are all overgrown with grass.




Left over are the beautiful yew trees. Those attracted my attention the first time around when we went there a year and a half ago or so.

Back then, the grass was bleached to a pale green, the sun was wintry and faded and the black-green yew trees made such a stark contrast ... I still wish I had taken my camera that time. Ah well, I'll go again to capture it. As it is, I like the yew trees even now - I could probably stay a whole day and take pictures every hour to see how the light and shadows change.



But we actually went there to look for signs of spring and to take in the sun. I am extremely fond of spring flowers and while Vienna is showing definite signs, in the areas North and West of the city spring usually progresses far more slowly, so South we went.

And I was right, the sun was hot and the gardens of Eszterháza were teeming with violets and other wildflowers, bugs, ants and birds. There were so many violets that you could actually smell them, a sweet, delicious smell. Driving to and from Fertöd, we could see plum and peach trees in bloom already.

Apart from having fun with my new tripod, I had no fun at all messing with my camera settings. The blues in the violets and in these tiny star-like flowers which are native to this part of Hungary and are called Scilla buekkensis nearly drove me to madness, both in the food setting set on red (made the greens far too golden) and the macro setting (old problem of not catching the blue correctly).

I wonder why my camera can take pictures of the blue sky without any troubles, but these intense and unique blues and violets make it go haywire. Maybe it's the ultraviolet component. There ought to be a bee setting. Still, I think these came out rather well. Now back to knitting (and baseball anime).

sneaky March - musings on baby shirts

The sun is shining right in my window, so I can't watch anime - right now I'm on the Deathnote bandwagon and it's a little disappointing. I guess if you haven't seen much anime, this might strike you as the awesomest anime ever, but it's rather plotholey, shark-jumpey and too shounen (male-targeted) by half. Interesting that they've made the evil guy so good-looking and the good guy so strangely bird-like. Also, the one smart female character is treated like shit by her fiance and is killed off in one episode right at the beginning, while the annoying fanservice female character stays on and on and on ... gah. It is still an interesting thought experiment, though, which is always the best thing about anime.

Ok, enough of that. On to knitting. Lately, I've kind of been inspired to knit a few more baby things. I think the intended recipient must have been born already, I'm just waiting for the email. I wanted to use up some of the cotton yarn I had bought and so at first, I thought about making a knitted dress with large block stripes in turquoise and red, but it didn't look so hot (different yarns) and it would have fit a five-year-old.

I've actually already made a baby shirt a while ago, in summer 2008, as part of a set of playclothes, to try and use up cotton yarn leftovers (Lana Grossa Toccata, to be precise). I never got around to the pants, though. I had to reknit this because I wasn't careful enough about carrying the yarn between the stripes and there were large gaps and it looked awful. So, reknitting. And reknitting. And reknitting. I hate reknitting with cotton yarn. But I really love these colors together:

This was knit from the top down, following the construction I had put to use on an unfinished project that needs a lot of rethinking. I decided to end it with a rolled brim, because nothing else looked good. Consequently, I've been using the rolled brim in all my other baby shirts, too.

Leftovers can provide a lot of inspiration. As I repeatedly mentioned when writing about the Snow Bunny, I love the Lana Grossa Latte yarn - they also make rather a nice blue. So when I ended up with over half (too lazy to measure) a ball of the white Latte, I decided to buy a ball of blue latte and give in to this year's fashion. Yes, the French blue and white stripes have returned in force (from doing a turn in the 80s and again in the mid-90s). I love that look. Can't wear it, but I love it. So, why not make small children wear it, they can't defend themselves and look cute in it. (Muahahaha). I give you the Classic Baby Shirt. Done bottom-up, because ... no reason. I love it, it's soft and beautiful.

After this, I was on a roll. Having decided to abandon the block stripes, I thought about how little texture I had been using for the baby clothes I had made so far (with a few exceptions, but still) and how little lace! That had to be remedied. I wanted some sort of smocking effect, but not too much. And something lacy and textured. Well, one of those stitches that is really, really easy and never leaves my brain is the Trinity Stitch. Makes little cluster balls that look like berries.

I gave it the rather stark name of One Texture, I guess a cuter name would be Summer Raspberry, but let's not get too twee here. The yarn is Lana Grossa Bingo and it has been in my stash for a long time, so yay! More space for new yarn. I wanted to do a different top construction and ended up with this kimono-like thing - I just hope it actually fits. As usual, worries about arm and head size abounded, since I don't actually have a real life baby to put this on.

From One Texture to Texture Two (aka Pie Crust Shirt or something). This time, I chose the Classic Baby Shirt construction again, but decided to do a twisted stitch rib on the straps so they wouldn't grow so much. The yarn is Lana Grossa Linea Pura Organico, which has plenty of beautiful colors. Originally it should have been a summer hat - yeah, just what a baby needs, a heavy cotton summer hat. Design fail.

I think I could go on and on knitting baby shirts. But actually, I've gone back to hats, since I decided to make a few more things that can be used immediately. It's rather boring having to wait to use all the handknitted stuff, no? A bit of instant gratification never hurt. So, because there must be some cutesy things, here's a cutesy Litte Flower Hat, knit using Lana Grossa Linea Pura Flora.

And that's it. Knitting a slightly larger hat with a bit of a lace pattern in the pink Flora and watching Deathnote. Maybe to get in the mood for the next baby thing (not for the same baby), which involves hot pink and black yarn and skulls ...

spring has sprung

Only a day after complaining about the lousy weather it turned awesomely sunny. And even with a few grey days in between, it has stayed sunny. Spring is in the air and I'm torn between wanting to knit more mittens and abandoning all winter projects. Looking at my Ravelry projects, I thought I had more projects that had to do with spring - apparently not! And not all of them are in spring colors either. But I'll introduce them here, anyway.

The oldest project is the Spring Hat for little girls, a pattern of my own design.The yarn is Jaeger Matchmaker, a mercerized cotton yarn. Sometimes I just get the urge to knit something girly, even if I do favour gender-neutral children's clothing (or actually boy clothing because I like the colors better). I do love adding just a bit of ornamentation to an otherwise plain item so that the yarn can really shine, but is accentuated by the pattern. So that's what I did here.

 

Next up is a favorite pair of fingerless gloves, the Spring Flirt gloves, also my own design, the cable pattern is from the Vogue Stitionary 2 book. These werde done in Lana Grossa Furetto and I love their color combination. Sadly, the yarn has been discontinued. I love these especially because compared to other mittens and fingerless gloves I have made, they're pretty short, so they're useful if I wear a jacket or shirt with especially long sleeves.

Then there's the little Spring Bracelet from when I was doing a spot of beaded knitting. It's a modification of Knitty's Maryella design. I've since given up knitting beaded bracelets, because there is too much sewing involved - those snaps are a pain! However, I do want to do more beaded knitting and explore its possibilities ... some day.

The penultimate project (yes! I've finally used this word!) is the Spring Blanket - also my own design. It doesn't have a dedicated owner yet (more about that when I run out of material again) and so I use it to keep my legs warm on my couch in the morning. I used Lana Grossa New Cotton for this and recycled the white and green from a scarf I knit back in ... who knows when, at the beginning of the knitting obsession. I do love it very much, but it isn't blocked yet, though, so the squares still are as sloppy as they look her.

Waiting for Spring is the last project with "spring" in the name - these gloves are currently undergoing a redesign. I wanted stripes and zigzag, but the zigzag thing is seriously messing up my thumb construction and I don't want to bother anymore. Plain stripes it will be! which involves unravelling everything I've done so far, which does kinda suck. But if the finished product isn't nice, then what's the point.

Here you can see the inspiration from the baby cap put to use! And there's sunlight as proof. Dang zigzags ... I'm not completely convinced that I should undo everything yet.