Filed under: Living in Europe | Tags: Bosnia, nature of knitting, sheep, spinning, wool, yarn
One week ago we returned from our short trip to Bosnia. As I already mentioned in some of my previous posts I love goig there because I can actually buy some good quality yarn for a good price.
As I spent quite some time as a child in Bosnia (actually, I lived there until I was 4 and later I spent months of summer holidays until the war) certain things were natural to me. For example – how the wool is spun into yarn and different uses for different types of wool.
Now, when I look at all the industrial products around and also on the beautifull yarns many knitters and spinners make, I realize, how basic these uses were. And actually that the yarn obtained /spun from Bosnian sheep is very scratchy, stiff and not gentle at all.
Our neighbour came to visit and she told me that local business of cleaning and spinning the wool has araisen again, so she would be taking her wool to that place. (It is still common for locals to have at least couple of sheep on their “farm”, so the wool is a necessary by-product.). She doesn’t know what to do with it anyaway and she likes to knit, so maybe she will make some socks for her family. They say that wool is good for healty feet, she was explaing to me.
To this my mother replied that we have sacks of wool up in the attic and if she would take our wool with hers and have the yar made for us as well.
We checked the wool and here’s an image of something I haven’t seen in a very very long time – a pile of yellowish-white unprocessed wool.
We spread the wool on the grass to "breathe and sunbathe"
Our neighbour said she has some of yarn from her last seasons wool in her house and if I wanted that she would bring me some to see what the end product looked like. Of course I said yes. So, the day before we drove home, she brought this to me:
Yarn and a "pattern"
(I am sorry the picture is a bit lousy, I hope to replace it with a better one soon).
She also knit a small pattern for me, because I mentioned I liked her vest and she said she was happy to meet a proper young knitter. To me, this was a nice compliment and true “nature of knitting” experience.
I am getting the yarn probably in May 2009 (I don’t think we’ll be travelling to Bosnia any sooner than that). I still have no ideas, what I will make out of this stiff yarn – maybe those gloves used in the shower as scrubbers? ;)
Filed under: Living in Europe | Tags: knitting, life in Slovena, picnic, Slovenia
First of all – thanks for all the nice comments on my last post. It means a lot to me that my visitors actually comment from time to time :)
I haven’t done much knitting lately – the needles I was writing about in my previous post came with mail today, but… Instead of 40cm the lovely lady sent 60cm (argh!)
I am thinking about not knitting sleeves in the round for the first half of the sleeve. What do you think – would that go? Basically I would knit the sleeve for about 20 cm from left to right and than join and continue working in the round. Has anybody tried that?
Months before December are usually very intensive at my work. All our customers want to finish the projects that they hoped they would start early in the spring, but then they started too late and didn’t do anything in the summer. So, there’s a lot going in the office. When I get home sometimes I just want to sleep, or sit on the sofa and knit which i think a lot of knitters out there seem to do. This assumption is based on the FO lists I (sometimes enviously) check on several blogs and Ravelry. I have started to wonder whether I am doing something wrong and what that could be. I narrowed my choices of “knittingstoppers” to several options:
- going to work
- sleeping
- spending time withy Tamara and husband
- cooking
- other housework
Hmmmmm. I don’t think I can minimize any of the above in favour of knitting time.
Ex co-worker gave me a very good advice once when I was feeling particularly unhappy about the way things in my life were. She said : “You should just come to terms with your own life.” I guess in the end it comes to that – somehow you have to accept that in particular situation this is as good as you can do.
We spent Saturday afternoon at a picnic in the hilly region of central Slovenia. This was a typical Slovene party – a bit offoroad venue (actually a hunting cottage), cooking “golaž” (goulash?) outside, lovely views and hosts trying to entertain different groups of people (as in good old Slovenian habit your guests will socialize only with people they have met several times before). Still, that was so much fun, especially for Tamara who was the only child there. (-> Theme for another post about peculiarities of life in Slovenia!).
View from the cottage
The venue - hunting cottage
Socializing the Slovene way :)
