A simple Shrug, a glimpse of Vordenstein, a Trip to Lier and Knitting Inspiration

Hello, my crochet friends, how are you all?

Finally I can tell you about my weekend when my family came to visit from Germany! I took so many photos, so I've been trying to edit them for you which took a while.

My family arrived late on Friday afternoon, and first my mum stayed with me, whilst my brother and his wife went on a quick dash into Antwerp! We sat on the balcony, the sun was shining and we had all 3 cats keeping us company which was nice! It was lovely to catch up and very relaxing to spend the time this way! I did a bit of knitting as well. Later we all went out for a wonderful evening meal together.

On Saturday the weather was absolutely glorious, beautiful sunshine and blue sky! It must have been more than 25 degrees, just like a summer day but this was in early October!

To make it easier for my mother to cope with walking, it was decided to go on a gentle walk visiting Vordenstein near Schoten. I was very thrilled about this idea, because we had been there once before fairly recently, and that time I didn't have a camera with me, something I remembered this time!

This is the sign outside the park at Vordenstein, which explains that the park has both French elements (straight lined paths) as well as English ones (more natural looking places). Amazingly anyone can visit this park for free!

Welcome to Vordenstein!

First we walked along these giant but gentle creatures...

Cows grazing in a field along the path

admiring the trees... most of them still showing green leaves...

Gorgeous blue sky

First Autumn colours

Then we came to the Park entrance, the gate was open...

The gated entrance to the park

As soon as we were inside there was this great feeling of space and calm (must have been the English influence the sign mentioned, I am convinced!)

Wide open spaces and beautiful trees

We followed the path and saw the walls which were surrounding the gardens (you might see it in the photo below towards the centre right in the distance)

Turning right towards the Gardens

Another tall tree...

I admit: I was naughty and strayed from the beautiful (and French!) paths and approached the walls from the side, I was eager to catch a first glimpse inside!

Catching a glimpse of the Gardens at Vordenstein

What was lying behind those gates? That is for another post! (Sorry to tease you here, but there was so much to see, it would have made this post impossibly long!) Please check back soon!

After our little walk around Vordenstein, we drove to another town, called Lier.
It is really pictoresque. Read more info about Lier

The houses opposite the Town Hall and the wide open space in front of it

Town Hall and Belltower, Lier

Zimmer Tower in Lier featuring 12 special clocks

More about the Zimmer Tower here (Interesting Wikipedia link)

On Sunday my family had to return to Germany, but we were so glad that we managed to spend so much time together and also that the weather had been extremely warm on both Friday and Saturday. The warm spell broke on Saturday evening whilst we were going out for a nice meal, it started to pour with rain!

And now a bit more about my current projects!

My Shrug is finished!
 
I knitted up the 6 balls of chunky yarn from Rico and this is what it looked like at the end: a rectangle measuring approx 70cm x 105cm.

Finished knitting! (06.10.14)

After adding 2 crochet seams

My new shrug (07.10.14)

From the back

(I know there seem to be a lot of stripes going on in these pictures, I only realized that afterwards!)

one more time!

As you can see, it is very light, yet stretchy and very warm! Apart from wearing it as a shrug, it could also double up as a scarf wound around the neck or as an extremely bulky cowl! Not to mention as an emergency blanket!!!

I'm totally loving the colours and the stripes and I'm happy that I had changed my mind midway and started afresh! It was worth it! I've been wearing it constantly since it's been finished!

Harlequin Blanket

I believe this photo was taken on Friday morning, it is the first photo I took where you can see the entire width of the blanket properly. The ruler measures 1m, so the blanket will be slightly over 2m wide!!!

Blanket laid out - Ruler measures 1m

Here some further progress the last 2 days (more crochet and less knitting, I guess!)

Harlequin Blanket 07.10.14

I'm currently enjoying pastel ice cream colours (Vanilla, Strawberry and Mint) after the 2 rows below which reminded me of blue mountain tops with snowcapped tops, underneath you can 'read' my Autumn colours (which I bought at the Hobbybeurs). Every row/ccolour sequence will remind me of the exact time when I crocheted it!

Adding Pale Mint Green

Here another sideway view close up.

Harlequin Blanket 08.10.14

Today I was busy with lots of household things, and this afternoon I got stuck in with trying to re-organize my craft magazines... I emptied out my cupboard, and started to get all my magazines together to put them onto the bookshelf instead of having them in various locations and boxes. This will make it easier, if I want to look up a pattern or at least that is the idea! They are looking good on the shelf now.

Meanwhile I had taken out half the contents of my cupboard, as well as 'finding' things here and there, so there were bits and pieces all over the floor. Finally I wanted to tidy up the rest and this is what I saw:

Cleo in the craft cupboard

Cleo must have thought, this is too mad, all this stuff in the way, and decided to lie in the cupboard instead! Or maybe she thought I had done it especially for her?!!! She was utterly at home in there! (I quickly grabbed the camera and snapped this photo before I had to 'evict' her!)

Last - not least, let me share with you some knitting patterns, at least in photos! My mum brought me the latest Brigitte magazines from Germany, upon my special request, since it contained a Knitting Special Feature with lots of Patterns.

Photos of the finished  Brigitte Knitting patterns - there are 84 photos!!!!

You can see them here in this photo, together with the original magazine and another little feature booklet which I found inside entitled 'Masche' (which translates as stitch) - showing even more wonderful things to knit - released by 'Initiative fuer Handarbeit'. Their website is here! It is a treasure trove of ideas and every one of these pattern featured in Masche is shown on their website with links to download the pattern/s for FREE!!! (Sorry, my English speaking readers - you would need to understand German to benefit from the actual patterns, but nevertheless take a look, I find the images themselves are so inspiring!)

Here is the Masche booklet in .pdf format, so you can browse through it yourselves!
Masche - Stricken macht gluecklich (Knitting makes you happy)

Sometimes it is amazing how many (good) free patterns there are about! I am subscribed to various online wool shops and very often their emails contain links to free patterns (usually available to those who are subscribed only), so it might be worthwhile to sign up, if you haven't done so already! (Of course, if your inbox is too full already this might not be a great idea!)

Let me just briefly mention that I noticed that a new Knit along (KAL) has started on the Rowan website - here, plus blogger Wink is featuring a Crochet along (CAL) here.

Many thanks for your lovely comments, I loved reading them. And yes, you guessed right, please feel free to leave a comment below, looking forward to read what you thought!

A Walk in the Woods, a good day for customers and some knitting

Hi! Good to see you back here! I hope you had a nice weekend!

This Sunday we went for a nice walk in the woods! Only this time I remembered to bring the camera, so you can all come along (on this virtual tour)! We went to one of the National Parks in Kempen (a lovely area in Belgium) - near a place called Donderslag (Thunderclap!).

This is my favourite photo of the walk!

The walk went through woodland, along fields, through wetland, heather, along a pretty lake. We chose to do the 8.5km trail (which was marked in blue on the map and also along the paths).

Start of our walk

I soon stopped to take more photos, there were toadstools, spiders and lots of acorns to admire.

Cute Toadstool

This is my wood - from a spider's view

After we came to the edge of the forest (see first photo) we walked along some corn fields.  I soon spotted a dash of colour in the grass along the side!

Dainty harebell flowers

A field of corn - very tall!

The corn stood over 2m tall! A bit further we walked along a huge ant hill and I spotted another colourful flower!

Purple Cornflower

We walked through the woods again and the ground became wetter. It was really funny, every time we approached a big and deep puddle, there were a dozen or more little frogs jumping into the water for cover! I tried to take a photo but failed! They were too fast! Finally we had this vista in front of us!

The Lake

View through the trees

A few more flowers...

Wild Camomile

Until we came towards a field of green beans! Belgians love their fine green beans!

A Field with Green Beens

Before the last stretch of the walk...

What a mighty tree!

Along Birch trees

...back to the car park with the map where we started! We were lucky with the weather!

The map with our walk marked in Blue (8.5km)

Afterwards, we drove to the nearest small town (called Meeuwen) and sat outside a roadside Ice Salon to enjoy some very special ice cream as refreshment.

Special Ice Cream and Coffee

I hope you enjoyed this little journey! Believe me, I limited the photos, I took quite a lot. The scenery was quite varied and it was very enjoyable. There was so much to see and experience.

Knitting WIP and Harlequin Blanket

This post wouldn't be complete without any mention of making things!

On Saturday I went back to the Lana Wool Shop that I mentioned before. I had received an invitation for the Day of the customer (Dag van de klant).

Here are some additional photos of the window displays. You can see a customer version of this blanket (A recent mystery Knit Along Afghan Blanket by Martin Storey for Rowan):
Rowan weblink
Ravelry link

Rowan Blanket in the Window display at Lana

Lana Shop, Antwerpen

Inside the shop the owner, Lea was holding a knitting cafe (Breicafe) for the customers. We sat around a table and enjoyed refreshments, there was coffee and Cava, Cake and Belgian chocolates. It was lovely to be with so many like minded people who were making some awe inspiring knitting projects from Rowan, having bought the wool here at Lana. Many of the people present had also followed classes with Lea. Maybe I should enrol, too?

I had decided on Friday evening that I wanted to make a sort of Loop scarf, so I cast on! (Below you can see my Autumn Loop Scarf and the Granny Stitch Crochet Scarf of Many Colours (made with 7 different colours of variegated yarn from Lang) that I both made about 9 months ago. I used them for inspiration and size guide.) I used RICO Melange Chunky yarn (size 6-7mm needles - I used 9mm!). I took this with me to the shop to continue knitting there.

The idea: Knitting a Loop Scarf

On Saturday and Sunday I did quite a lot of knitting (and hardly any crochet!), and this resulted in the scarf on the left below, shown here knitted up with 2.5 balls of yarn.

Laying it on the floor to photograph I played about with it and changed my mind about WHAT I was making! I thought I might as well go for it and use the 6 balls of yarn I had (instead of the 3 that might have been enough for the Loop Scarf). I decided that I would make a Shrug instead! I love the yarn so much, the colours are fantastic and I know I would love to wear it this season, so no time to waste!

So I cast on anew (with double the stitches) and began again.... (see right side, approx 2+ balls of yarn used)

Here's one I made earlier...

The reason I kept the first version was that I could do a sort of try out in front of the mirror to get an idea how large it might be when finished. Obviously it had to be unravelled so I can use the yarn for further knitting!

Oh, and look at that! No chance of photographing the knitting, Cleo my cat got in on the act!

Cleo inspects my knitting!

What do you mean - selfie?

 (We all know that cats own the internet!!!)

Here's a quick peek at the Harlequin Blanket today before I went to the knitting cafe this afternoon!

Harlequin Blanket 30.09.14

Adding green yarn...

Well done! You arrived at the end of this post. Thank you for reading this, I hope you found it worth your while. Hopefully you might feel refreshed and inspired (a little bit) and take this feeling with you whatever you will be doing next!

And if you want to comment, then please do so! I love reading your comments, it's like getting postcards from all over the world! :)