Wool

After a very busy weekend in which I celebrated my 55th birthday I will share some things I made in the last months. I like to create all kind of things, and these are of the woolen kind. In the summer I dyed some merino wool, and in the last months I spinned it into yarn.

The middle one was a light grey merino before I dyed it, so the colours are rather dark. The 3 skeins exist of a 3 ply yarn, which in this case means I Navajo plied the yarn I spinned, to hold the colours together. The thickness will be for knitting on needles 3 1/2 or 4, (European size) I think . I don't know yet what I will make of it.
The skeins weight about 150 grams.

And than, underneath the skeins lies the blanket I crocheted in october. Boy, I did crochet a lot!!

I used a design  made by Drops, which I already used for making shawls with their sockwool Delight, which comes in nice colours. But this time I didn't want to think, just crochet, and I made this from a rather thin wool which I bought some years ago in England. It measures 1.80 x 1.30, a nice blanket to crawl in on the bench when it's cold outside. I used crochet needle 3.

And this is my spinning wheel, a majacraft with double threadle. A pleasure to spin on. On the moment I'm spinning with this colour...

 Very summery colours, and I think I will navajo ply it again, I like to ply this way and I like the result.
Have a nice week.

Two days

I've been away from this bog for a long time, didn't plan this. It's mostly due to the fact that oldest has been very ill, which even resulted in an admission to the hospital for over 2 weeks. I stayed a lot in Amsterdam. Anyway, everything is allright now.

Last weekend we had 2 very different days, with respect to the weather.

First saturday, a dreary and rainy day....

But we went out for a walk in the woods of Velhorst, an estate which is owned by Natuurmonumenten since 1972. This is a wellknown foundation here in Holland, since 1905,  which goal is to preserve nature in the Netherlands, in a sustainable way. Nature in Holland is too small and fragmented, which makes it difficult for plants and animals to survive. 

But it still is beautiful...

And I was looking for this house..........

 Oh no, the other one, in this one very lucky people already live...

The house above, I took a photo of the front and back, in the midst of the rain, is for rent. The house and surroundings are beautiful; if you walk one direction you enter the woods, and at the other side there are meadows. Stunning vieuws.  If only............

And sunday the sun was shining, the colours were bright and autumn was so much in the air, so we went for a walk on another estate, owned by Natuurmonumenten, nearby, Huis Verwolde. This house is very familiar to me, I often went there when I was camping with my children, in bygone summers. It was a good bike ride from the camping  for little legs.

The house itself was closed, a surprise, but we walked for some hours...

We were looking for one of the most famous trees of Holland, the large oak tree about which our beloved Annie M.G Schmidt made a nursery rhyme; about a family which lives in that tree. The large oak tree of Laren, which is supposed to bee the oldest tree, and the biggest one, in Holland.

We ended our walk with these vieuws, these stunning colours...

Groetjes, Gerda