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Sweater design

Most of the time when I make knitted garments, I start with a pattern, change the colors a bit, choose the right size and away I get started knitting.  But every now and then I decide to make my own pattern.

In Norway, because of the cold winters, there are still many people who use wool sweaters, often made by a loved one.  My husband made a request for a cardigan, so that he didn’t have to pull it over his head and could just slip his arms into it.

I started by looking through my patterns.  I also borrowed books from the library.  I went to one of the yarn stores and found a nice green on sale and bought all they had of a color that was being discontinued, plus a bright yellow.  I went to another yarn store just a few blocks away and found more of the same green yarn, same color number, but different lot number. I bought what they had plus a different duller yellow.  Now I had some colors to work with.  The two different dye lots of green did not seem to be different at all.

As I worked with the colors and patterns I had, my husband said that it needed another color, perhaps red.  So I went back to the store, and found a purple on sale.  Now I had bought sufficient yarn to make a cardigan, I had four colors, and just needed to decide what I wanted to do with it.  I had mostly green, two different yellows and a dark purple.  The pattern I decided on had to suit the amount of yarn I had in each color.

One of the books from the library showed lots of two color patterns for knitting.  I have always liked the star pattern that is very common here in Norway.  I found a flower pattern that was on 19 stitches, a number that as Bahá’ís we both like.  I started knitting some of the patterns I liked, trying to see what worked, how the colors fit together and how much I might use.  Some patterns I liked, and some just didn’t work at all.

Then I knit a sampler to try out the colors and the patterns.

dav

I decided on the following motifs, each row being separated by a single bright yellow row.

  • the main background color was to be green, which was the color I had the most of
  • a row of purple hearts around the bottom of the sleeve and the body of the cardigan
  • alternating rows of yellow stars and purple flowers
  • a single row of bright yellow was used to separate each row of pattern and also used to separate the front band from the rest of the garment

As it was a cardigan that was wanted, I decided to knit back and forth, and included the front bands as I knit up the garment.  The sleeves had a cap and were sewn in afterwards.  I worked out ahead of time how many rows would be worked so that the patterns matched up between the sleeves and the body, and that I ended with a full pattern at the shoulder. The sleeves and the body of the cardigan were made the same length as this made working the pattern much easier.

I was very happy with the finished result and I had fun making the garment.  The cardigan is used a lot so the wearer seems to be happy too.

dav

 

 

 

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Quiet

Susan Cain has written an interesting book (“Quiet, the Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking”, Crown Publishing, 2012) which gave me an awakening to something I hadn’t really considered before and made me feel like I wasn’t the only one in the world who didn’t fit in.  We live in a world where being an extrovert is considered the ideal, and yet it is not the extroverts who are the most innovative or creative.  I’ve noticed this as a teacher – the pupil who talks all the time, is not the one who is the smartest in the class or the most knowledgeable. In fact, the pupil who talks a lot may have problems listening and learning new things, and unfortunately may distract other pupils in the class who would actually like to learn new things.

“Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race.  And the single most important aspect of personality — the ‘north and south of temperament’ as one scientist puts it — is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum.  Our place on this continuum influences our choice of friends and mates, and how we make conversation, resolve differences, and show love.  It affects the careers we choose and whether or not we succeed at them.  It governs how likely we are to exercise, commit adultery, function well without sleep, learn from our mistakes, place big bets in the stock market, delay gratification, be a good leader, and ask ‘what if.’ ” (page 17)

The author continues to explain how especially the American world puts such an emphasis on being extrovert, that introverts will try to hide their own reality to feel part of the extrovert world.

What are some of the characteristics of an extrovert? “The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt.  He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong.  She works well in teams and socializes in groups.” (page 19)

The ideal of the extrovert is seen in offices without walls, project work for everyone, high levels of stimulation and little time for introspection.

Susan Cain has many examples of introverts who have given us scientific theories, art work, literature and businesses. I enjoyed her storytelling and learning how introverts have contributed to our knowledge of how the world works.

If you are an introvert, which I definitely am, here are some of the characteristics according to Susan Cain:

  • want less stimulation
  • like time to themselves
  • work slowly and deliberately
  • like to focus on one task at a time
  • can have mighty powers of concentration
  • relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame
  • prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues and family
  • listen more than they talk
  • think before they speak
  • express themselves better in writing than in conversation
  • dislike conflict
  • have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions

Does all of this sound like you?  If it does, I recommend you read the book.

Quiet Susan Cain 2012

For those of you who like to watch videos, she gave a TedTalk in 2012: https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts

Boken har blitt oversatt til norsk, og heter “Stille – introvert styrke i en verden som aldri slutter å snakke”, utgitt av Pax forlag i 2013.  Når vi lever i en verden der idealet er å snakke mye og være veldig utadvendt, det var veldig godt for meg å lese boken og få bekreftet at den typen jeg er, en “introvert”, er veldig utbredt.  Forfatteren sier at en tredjedel til en halvparten av folket er introvert.  Men det er mange som finner seg mellom ytre punktene og alle er litt annerledes.

Boken anbefales, særlig hvis du er en introvert.

Stille av Susan Cain

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Autumn place mats

For a long time I have bought place mats that are a standard size, standard weave.  I have purchased several different colors over the years so that I could have a bit of variety.  Suddenly they were getting old, stains that wouldn’t come out, colors that were unappealing, or I was just tired of them after 10 to 20 years of use.  When traveling in October we were eating at a private home and there was a different type of place mat put out on the dinner table.  I began thinking out of the box and a new sewing project was born.

It was fall/autumn and the leaves were on the ground.  I was out raking them.  We have a lot trees on the lot, some are native trees, some we have planted ourselves and watched them grow.  I think well when doing routine jobs like ironing and raking.  Why not make a series of place mats, one for each season of the year?  We are usually only two at the table, but with two children or guests, I decided I should have four place mats for each season.

But the next design question was what should the picture be?  As I was raking, I gathered some of the leaves and took them inside.  Most leaves turn a dull yellow or turn brown very quickly.  I wanted ones that had a nice shape.  In the end I chose the maple leaf (dear to my heart as a Canadian), the red brown of the beech leaves (which are mostly on the tree all winter) and the yellow of the birch leaves.   I decided on two each of the maple leaves, six each of the beech leaves and many of the birch leaves. I made cardboard outlines of the tree leaves I had chosen.  Most leaves have rough edges, but mine became relatively smooth as there would be many to cut out and sew on.

Which colors?  Which materials?  What would be the background?  How realistic should it be? So I went into my boxes of scrap materials which are mostly sorted by color.  The standard colors of fall are red, orange and yellow.  I found some orange that could be the background.  I found many different yellows and it took awhile to find which ones would work.  I don’t have much brown, so the beech leaves ended up being a dark red. The maple leaves are usually yellow once they have fallen off the tree.  A bit of hunting came up with something that worked well.  The birch leaves are small in comparison to the other two and I had decided to have a lot of them, in three different materials.  I always find this the fun part of designing, but it isn’t always easy to make the decisions.  Then there was to find something for the filling and the backing. But eventually the decisions were made.

Each placemat had the same number of leaves, but they were placed differently, so that each place mat is unique.  The maple leaves were placed first, then the beech leaves and finally the birch leaves were scattered to fill up the spaces.  There was no extra quilting, except the sewing on of the leaves.

I have done quite a few applique pictures in the last year or so, and as usual, the sewing of the pictures always takes a lot longer than anticipated.  Though I was able to use only scrap materials for the place mats, I had to buy more thread of the right colors.  But in the process I also used up several old spools of thread.  I think I ended up with about eight empty spools by the end of the project.

The place mats were ready by Christmas Day, a little out of season as the first snow had already come.  But we are enjoying the bright colors during the winter months.

Over mange år har jeg kjøpt spisebrikker i mange forskjellige farger, men etterhvert ble de utslitt.  Jeg hadde lyst til å lage noe selv.

Mens jeg var ute å rake løve om høsten, kom jeg på idéen til å lage en serie av brikker, fire for hver sesong.  Jeg begynte med høsten.  Jeg tok inn flere blad fra hagen og til slutt valgte blad fra lønn, bøk og bjørk.

Jeg har mange esker med stoff rester så da var det bare å finne frem, gul, oransje og rød. De fire brikkene ble litt forskjellige.  Ingen to er like, men de er komponert av de samme mengde blad.  Det er godt med fargerike brikker på vinterstid.

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Social media in 2018

It’s a long time since I have written a blog, but now that I’m retired I would like to share some of my thoughts (often sparked by books I have read) and projects.  I will primarily write in English, but those who read only Norwegian can skip to the end of most posts and find something in Norwegian. (Leser du bare norsk gå til slutten av teksten til å finne noe å lese på norsk.)

I have just finished reading “Writing on the Wall – the first 2,000 years” by Tom Standage (2013). Social media is not new and has been around since the Roman times, for 2,000 years, but the technology behind social media has changed over the centuries.  The author uses many examples to illustrate his point.  Most of his examples explain how the social media of the day helped to spread ideas to at least some of the population.  He also includes a chapter on the twentieth century where there was the opposite of social media – media was one-way and broadcast.

Writing on the Wall Standage 2013

In the past, writing letters or pamphlets was often the way of sending information to other people.  Letters and information were passed on to other friends, creating a type of circulation of information, often about politics or other current ideas.  The printing press just made everything go a bit quicker and allowed a pamphlet to reach more people as it could be reproduced faster.  One interesting example was from Pompeii where they discovered that people had actually written on the walls of the buildings.  Today we can use the internet to exchange information either through emails, blog posts, and comments on things that we have read.  No longer is information only one way, but by sharing we can enrich other people’s lives. So I have been inspired to write blogs more regularly.

It is interesting to see that though many things are different, we humans still have the same needs as people did 2,000 years ago, including the need to share our ideas using the technology of the day.

Nå at jeg er pensjonist, har jeg bedre tid til nye ting.  Jeg skal skrive litt om bøker som jeg har lest og de tankene som jeg får fra dem, og i tillegg vil jeg skrive litt om prosjektene jeg holder på med.

Jeg har nettopp leste en bok, “Writing on the Wall – the first 2,000 years” av Tom Standage som kom ut i 2013. Boken handler om sosiale medier og forfatteren går tilbake til gamle Roma for sine første eksemplene om hvordan folk kommuniserte med hverandre før. For eksempel, i Pompeii, skrev folk på veggene i bygningene for å gi beskjeder eller komme med kommentarer om andre.

Teknologien om hvordan vi kommunisere med hverandre har endret, men behovet for å ha skriftlige kommunikasjon med andre er ikke ny.  Før skrev folk mye brev eller småhefter, som ble sendt til venner og sendt videre til andre. Når ting kunne trykkes og papiret ble rimeligere i pris, ble enda mer skrevet og delt med andre mennesker. Idag kan vi dele opplysninger og idéer gjennom email, blogs og kommentarene til hva andre har skrevet.  For femti år siden var det meste av opplysningene bare en-veis, gjennom radio, fjernsyn og aviser.  Nå tillater de nye sosiale medier mer to-veis kommunikasjon.

Det er interessant å se at tross mye er annerledes, menneskene fremdeles har noe av de samme behovene som for to tusen år siden, blant annet behovet for å dele sine idéer med andre gjennom bruk av dagens teknologi. Så nå at jeg har vært inspirert, har jeg lyst å dele med andre gjennom denne bloggen.

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Christmas in Norway from a Foreigner’s Perspective

Today is the shortest day of the year and the Christians in Norway are busy following traditions that they learned in their childhood. Many of the traditions are good ones, including getting the family together for several days, enjoying a short holiday from work and eating special foods reserved for this time of the year.  In addition many families have their favourite activities together, including baking and decorating the house.

For those of you who read this and are not familiar with Norwegian Christmas traditions, it is almost as if there is a separate month after December which lasts until New Year’s Eve. The first day of this month “JUL” is the 23rd of December. This is called “Lillejuleaften” in Norwegian and translates as the “little Christmas Eve” or the evening before Christmas Eve. This is the traditional start of the Christmas “month” where the Christmas tree is brought into the house and is decorated.

The next day is Christmas Eve, or “Juleaften” in Norwegian. The shops close early and everyone heads home to get dressed in their finery. For those who are religious, there is a visit to the church and perhaps lighting a candle on family graves beside the church. Dinner may have been in the oven while the family is out, but on the return to the house, it is time for serious celebration to begin. Visitors may arrive. Children get very excited. First there is a meal to consume and then there are presents to be opened. A very special tradition in many families is to sing Christmas carols while walking around the Christmas tree which has been pulled into the centre of the room to enable everyone to encircle it. With each verse of the carols, the direction of walking changes from clockwise to counterclockwise and back again. Children are allowed to stay up as long as they wish, finally falling asleep from exhaustion.

As a Canadian in Norway, I have always felt that the Norwegians celebrate Christmas a day early, having a large meal and presents on Christmas Eve. Santa Claus, as he is experienced in North America as someone who comes in the middle of the night with gifts, is unfamiliar here. “Julenissen”, the Norwegian equivalent, may come to families with children but he comes while they are awake bringing them small gifts. He wears a red and white outfit, often has an artificial looking white beard and has a red cap with a white band on it.

Christmas Day is less hectic, even for families with children. They have opened their presents the evening before and now have things to play with. Many will visit other members of the family and eat dinner with them. Another large meal is consumed. If the weather is nice enough, a walk can be a pleasant way to pass part of the afternoon, before it gets dark. This is considered the First Day of Christmas.

The days following this First Day of Christmas are usually numbered and many communities have their special activities for each day. For example the Fourth Day of Christmas may be a children’s party at the local community centre with music, games, food and perhaps a visit from “Julenisse” again. Another day during this week may be set aside for the adults in the community to have their party in the evening. Amateur theatre groups often present their plays at this time and the advertisements for them will not be a day in December but on, for example, the Sixth Day of Christmas.

For those who have work outside their home, the workdays may be considerably shorter than normal, though stores are starting to stay open much longer than they used to. Offices may be only open between 10 am and 2 pm. Stores will usually be closed by 5 pm instead of staying open until 8pm. Schools are closed for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

This “month” of Christmas ends with New Year’s Eve where fireworks are the highlight of the evening, preferably at midnight.  Those who live in towns and cities will often be able to see public displays.  Those who live in smaller areas will go outside and, often in neighbourhood groups, shoot up millions of crowns worth of fireworks.  I live with a view over a Norwegian fjord.  We go outside (usually having to dress quite warmly) and watch others send off their fireworks.  We can usually see fireworks being sent off from between 5 and 10 locations.  Many of the displays are quite spectacular, though I often wonder what the wildlife in the forest thinks of all the noises.

New Year’s Day becomes a day to rest after all the activities.  This is always a holiday, but those who have travelled away from home may spend the time getting back to their own home or to their place of work.  Many will have spent time with loved ones and enjoyed the more relaxing days. Some will be looking forward to getting back to work and the regular workweek routines.

By the time everyone goes back to work in the New Year, the days have become just a little bit longer.  The knowledge that the sun is above the horizon a bit more each day helps (though those in Northern Norway may still have to wait for the sun to actually get above the horizon) me get through the dark, cold days of January.  Though it is officially winter from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, the promise of spring is around the corner bringing hope of new life in nature and more light and knowledge to mankind.

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Holy days in May 2010

As usual, May has had a lot of holy days.  In Norway, many of the public holidays are based on Christian religious holy days, such as Christmas, Easter and Ascension.  This year with Easter being early in April, May became a series of long weekends.

The 1st of May is Labour Day in many countries in Europe, including Norway.  This year it came on a Saturday.  As a teacher I didn’t get any extra day off, but the stores were closed and it felt like we had two Sundays in a row.

Ascension Day always comes on a Thursday and is a Christian holy day.  It is the 40th day of Easter and commemorates the Ascension of Jesus.  This year the schools were also closed on the following Friday, so we had both the 13th and the 14th off work.  On the 14th stores, of course, were open, but many people had the day off work.

The Norwegian Constitution was signed in 1814 and is always celebrated on the 17th of May, regardless of which day of the week it comes on.  This year it came on a Monday.  Stores are always closed and there are parades and parties in every school area.  In larger towns and cities there can be more than one parade in a day.

This then gave us teachers the 13th to the 17th off school, in other words a five-day weekend.  Lovely.

But that wasn’t the end of the Norwegian public holidays for May.  Whit Sunday (the 7th Sunday after Easter) is also an important holy day and the Monday after it is always a public holiday.  This gave us two long weekends in a row, though the second one was only three days.

It doesn’t often happen that a Norwegian public holiday and a Canadian public holiday come on the same day, but this year the 24th of May was a holiday in both countries.

So, so far there have been four extra days when stores and work places have been closed in May.

Now, as a Bahá’í, I also have several holy days in May, days which I am encouraged to take free from work.  The first one is the 2nd of May, the day that marks Bahá’u’lláh’s departure from the Gardens of Ridvan in Baghdad and the start of a long journey to Constantinople.  This year my local Bahá’í community celebrated the day by visiting a Bahá’í who has multiple sclerosis.

On the 23rd of May we celebrate the first event in Bahá’í history, Mulla Husayn’s meeting with the Bab in the city of Shiraz.  The Bab announced that he was the herald of a new messenger from God. We celebrated this historic occasion by hosting an Art Day, where participants made drawings or paintings, made delicious food (and ate it too), or made digital recordings of prayers in Norwegian.

On the 29th of May we remember the death of Bahá’u’lláh.  He passed away in the middle of the night in 1892 in Akka, Israel.  He was 75 years old.

This year I was lucky and didn’t have to try to take all these Bahá’í holy days off work as they are all on the weekends. But many years, I have to make the decision if I can take the time off work.

Well, let’s make a summary of the holy days and the other free days.  Norwegian holy days include Ascension (13th) and Whit Sunday (23rd), Norwegian public holidays include Labour Day (1st), Constitution Day (17th), and Whit Monday (24th).  Baha’i holy days include the 12th Day of Ridvan (2nd), the Declaration of the Bab (23rd) and the Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh (29th). That makes 7 special days out of 31.  Note that the 23rd was both a Christian and a Bahá’í holy day. Not bad, for having extra free time.

I usually make use of these extra days off work to get going in my garden, enjoying the spring sunshine and warmth and getting into gear for the summer.  However this year the weather was disappointing.  To be honest, it was cold, with snow coming both on the 3rd and the 10th of the month!! Gardening has gone slowly, though the lawn has been cut once.  When the sun does decide to shine, it warms up quite quickly and one day last week we actually ate dinner outside in the sunshine (and didn’t freeze).

I hope you that read this have also had an interesting May month.

Daffodils in May
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Creativity

What is creativity?

I’d like to start with a quote from the Virtues Project.

“Creativity is the power of imagination.  We are open to inspiration, which ignites our originality.  With creativity, we are resourceful and intuitive.  We solve problems in new and surprising ways… Discovering our own special talents is a gift to the world, whether making a meal, playing a sport, or creating a craft.”

For me, creativity is usually making things out of cloth, thread or yarn.  At the moment I have a loom set up with a long warp for making rag rugs.  As I weave in old shirts that have been cut up, or remnants from cloth from sewing projects, or bedding or curtains that have been ripped into strips, memories come back from the years that have so quickly gone by.

Today I also had someone from my first year in Norway contact me via Facebook.  Again memories came back, sitting at a loom, weaving Norwegian patterns and learning how to speak Norwegian.  Now almost thirty years have gone by since that first school year in Norway and my contact with the crafts of Norway.

While I sit at the loom, my mind has time to remember the past, but there is also the leap into the future.  Thus I decided (while sitting at the loom) that a blog was what I need to create next.  Though I have always been better at weaving, sewing, knitting or crocheting than at working with words, words have always been an important part of my life.  Usually it has been reading what others have written.  Now it is time to start writing more myself.

In order to develop creativity within ourselves we have to do things which give our minds time to think.  For me that is sitting at a loom, driving a car to work and back, or pulling weeds out of one of my many flower beds.  Once the mind has been inspired the next step is to do something active, e.g. starting a blog and sharing my ideas with others.

To be creative, one mustn’t be hampered by what other people think is right, what is fashionable, or the “in” thing to be doing.  Someone who is creative is often ahead of the rest of the people around them, seeing new ways to do things and breaking away from tradition.

One of the characteristics of being human is that we have imagination.  The imagination makes use of color, sound, taste, movement, smells and texture.  When creating something we can make use of some of these characteristics, or all of them.  When weaving I am primarily interested in color and texture.  When making a meal, I am interested in color, taste, smell and texture. The imagination leads us to explore new ways of doing things.

Where does the power of imagination come from?  Humanity is just one of the creatures in this world created by what we call “God”.  God created humanity in the image of Himself, and one of the characteristics that God has given us, is the ability to understand the world around us in a completely different way that most of the creatures we share this planet with.  With this understanding we can improve the world around us, if we choose.  One way I like to improve things is by making beautiful hand-made things.  I get enjoyment out of the making of them and I hope others get enjoyment out of either using them or seeing them.

So, what is creativity?  Creativity is using my mind and the imagination that God has given me to do things slightly different from everyone else.  Creativity is discovering our own talents and using them.  Creativity is one of the signs of God in this world.