husband is off to ukraine on a short trip

husband and a good friend left this morning to deliver these two vehicles to lviv. this trip will be quick and less nerve-wracking than the last one. they'll drop the cars off and then take a bus to warsaw and fly back home on monday. the cars have been donated by the danish geodatastyrelsen. they were used to drive around denmark, mapping everything and had been phased out of use. but they still have a lot of km in them. they're stuffed to the gills with all kinds of things - i saw heaters and pet food and more. i love and admire husband so much for doing this. 

i'm hanging out with my molly bestie (yes, that minnesota kitty we brought home back in 2012), indulging my new obsession with making beaded rings - i bought one in portugal and came home and bought beads and watched a youtube tutorial and learned to make them. 

he just called and they have stopped for the night in katowice, poland. he sounded tired. he said the hotel was really nice and they were about to go find some dinner. this trip definitely feels like it's lighter for both of us. no trip all the way east looming ahead. just popping to lviv and then heading home. 

since i was up early to see them off, i spent most of my day doing much-needed tidying up around here. i took everything off what we call the pirate shelf - our first piece of furniture that we bought together - and thoroughly dusted and washed everything, vacuumed up the spider webs and enjoyed putting it all back and thinking about each item. weird moment of enjoying cleaning. 

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i genuinely can't decide if this is terrifying or reassuring - the philosopher who is training claude. 

what i knitted this year

on january 1, 2025, i finished my first ever sophie scarf, the ubiquitous pattern by petite knit. it was to be the first of many. it's a little wonky and i hadn't yet learned an easy way to keep track of how many rows i needed between my increases, but it's warm and i still love the color. 

it was soon followed by a second one, which i finished january 20. there were also mistakes, but i soldiered on and when i wear it, no one can see them. it was fun to work with two yarns and see how the variegated silk mohair changed the vibe as i went along. 

and then january 26 there was suddenly a 3rd one in pink. i was getting the hang of it, but still a little inconsistent in counting those rows and remembering which side my increases should happen on. 

february 14, i gave myself a valentine in the form of a sophie hood. it's made of soft blue permin tweed that i found on sale at my local yarn shop. the child appropriated it in november, but she will be giving it back when i finish a cream colored one for her. 

march 1, i finished a brown sophie scarf for my sister. still with a few imperfections, but i was finally getting there on figuring out where i was at and i think i even managed to keep the increases all in the same side.

i finished a green sparkly sophie scarf on the plane to arizona on march 13, but neglected to take a photo of it finished. i immediately embarked on the next one.

march 27, i finished my first cashmere sophie scarf and decided that all sophie scarves should probably be cashmere. this one was for husband's middle child's birthday. 

april 20th, i finished a brown cashmere one for myself, but then later gave it to a friend. 

i had a period over the summer where i was weaving more than knitting, but i did manage to finish a light blue sophie scarf with a sparkle thread around the end of may. i think i finished my pink one around this time as well, or a little before, but weirdly failed to take a picture of the finished product. the pink one is cashmere and was also held together with a sparkle thread.

summer was approaching and my sophie scarf production slowed to a trickle. but i had to do one in a bright, cobalt blue. i finished it sometime in early june. 

so far, this is pretty much the year of the sophie scarf, and we were only halfway through. then i took a bit of a break and did a lot of weaving over the summer. summer feels less like knitting weather. 

september 20, i finished my first sweater vest. mistakes were made. but i've worn it quite a lot since making it. i immediately started on a pink one in the same pattern. held with a sparkle thread, of course. alas, it's not done yet. 

december 6, i finished another sophie hood, made with the beautiful japanese noro yarn i got when i was in minnesota in march. i held it together with a lovely silk mohair thread to make it softer. 

it was so fun to make another sophie hood, i dug out some cream yarn with neon flecks in it and immediately made another, finishing it dec. 16, because i was sick and able to hang out on the couch knitting for an entire weekend. the child wants one in plain cream, so i've already started that one, hoping i might be able to finish before she heads back to portugal. 

and that's it, all of the finished knitting projects for 2025. i do have quite some WIPs built up and it's one of my intentions for 2026 to finish all of them up. we'll have to see how that goes!

what i wove this year

we're closing in on the end of the year. what a shitshow this year has been, watching that spray-tanned satan and his band of evildoers dismantle everything good about the country of my birth is disheartening to say the least. so i'd much rather focus on something positive and creative. like everything that i wove this year!

i started off with tea towels for husband's eldest. we made the warp just before the end of 2024 and i finished them up february 19. 11 finished tea towels! they were made in colors she requested. i managed to make a few of them more my style by going for a madras plaid look adding some orange and red. i keep one from every warp for myself, as a memory of what i've woven. she got six of them and the rest were sold or given as gifts.

on april 5, we created the warp for taylor swift's lover album, starting my quest to weave all of taylor swift's albums as tea towels. i wanted it to sparkle like the lover bodysuit and sparkle it did! i think emmy, my weaving mentor, wanted to talk me out of it, but in the end, we are both glad she didn't. it took awhile, but i finished the warp on may 18. 13 finished tea towels!

on may 24, i started right in on the next album - reputation. it was quite the departure for me to work in black and white and grey, rather than a colorful warp. i broke up the monotony a bit by weaving in a bit of red and green sparkle. i also had a different kind of silver and black sparkle thread in the warp, but it didn't behave nearly as well as the sparkle thread i used in the lover warp. lesson learned there! i took them off the loom june 28. i got 13 finished tea towels from this warp, though there are only 10 in this photo. i had to weave some extra ribbon for the straps, so the last three weren't finished yet in this photo. 

on june 29, we already made the next warp - i took a break from the taylor swift project to weave a good long summery warp that i called rainbow sherbet. i finished it already on august 9 - 21 tea towels! unfortunately, they're already gone - as gifts and one person bought six of them for christmas presents! husband's middle daughter also got six of them for her kitchen. i wove in with some sparkly threads and all the ones she chose had those. 

then the loom rested while i went on a week-long weaving course at skals, where i wove 8 small test weavings with 8 different techniques. i didn't want to put a new warp on the loom in case i learned something that i wanted to try out immediately when i got home. there are two that i will do for future warps in my eras tour project.

on august 24, it was back to my taylor swift eras project. we made the warp for speak now. i had the yarn for that one is more or less why that album was the next one. i've actually not gotten very far on this one, so i can't show the finished product yet. i chose to play with what's called "color effect" and i can feel that i'm already bored with it before i'm even really started. 

i have to pull myself together and get to work on it. this was just the end, or should i say the beginning, where i get the warp started and try weaving a bit with all of the colors to see how they look together. as you can see, i've tried a couple of sparkle threads as well to amuse myself. i have a stack of these weavings to make small bags/purses out of, but i have yet to make any. instead, i've turned to knitting of late, though not on my christmas sweater that should have been finished last christmas, but more about that in a knitting wrap-up post. 

i did finish one more thing on the little loom in 2025. i took a new rag rug runner for the kitchen off the loom november 19. i've come a long way in my weaving ability since i did the first one down in randbøldal 5 years ago. it looks so nice, i really love it! there's still 6-7 meters of warp on the little loom, to make some more rugs, so i just have to tear up some old duvet covers and get going. this one took me most of the year - i can see in my photos (that daily photo project is still coming in handy), that i started this one february 9. it was a bit tedious, laying in each strip of fabric and making them meet and lay just right. but that's why it's nice to have two looms, so you can move between projects according to what you feel like doing. 

i got some wool ready to try my hand at making a proper wool rug on that warp, but have made two attempts and am not keen on it, so i frogged it back again (not sure it's called frogging when you weave) and i'm not sure what i will make next. probably another rag rug with some old duvet covers in shades of pink and green that i can use in the bedroom. 

a total of 58 tea towels and one four-meter long rug woven this year. if i'd kept up my head of steam, it could have been more, but weaving just takes the time it takes and that's a big part of what i love about it. 

at the end of a long weekend

husband should be home from his trip to ukraine in a few hours. i picked some roses and brought them in an attempt to have some serenity on the window sill that i haven't necessarily felt for the past week, worrying about him being only 30km from the front in eastern ukraine. that said, i am really looking forward to hearing about his adventures. now that i'm quite sure he'll be home safely. 

we've had a four day weekend, thanks to all those awesome spring holidays in denmark. i spent most of it in the company of yarn. getting started on my reputation era tea towels, planning the next ones, visiting the linen weaving museum, starting a summer knitting project (see above yarn) or two. it will be a vest. i started the yellow one and i want to make a pink one too.

i also picked a lot of rhubarb and made 9 bottles of rhubarb & ginger cordial. and you can't even see that i've picked any rhubarb. husband will be happy, as he loves my homemade cordial and we were getting dangerously low. 

got to weaving on the reputation tea towels. i tried a looser weave on the first one. i won't really know how it is until it's washed, but i already decided that i want to do my usual tighter weave, i think it's what makes my tea towels the lovely fabric that they are. 

i also spent some time trying to figure out what to name these two. butter & toast? peach & cobbler? peachbottom & featherstone? maybe something ukrainian, to commemorate that i got them while husband was traveling there? hmm...stronti & cesia after chernobyl? gogol & viy? perhaps a little too much existentialist dread. they're so sweet and i'm so happy to have ducks again. they're safely in the old chicken enclosure where no fox can get them. 

it's nice to be in this space again, jotting down a few things i'd like to remember. while i count down the minutes until husband is safely home again. 

so much weaving ahead!

1989 - now i have the right colors for this one

same for midnights - i like this color palette

the color palette for red

going to play with a so-called color effect for speak now

 the color palette for debut is probably the one that's most my vibe

i worked on these for five hours today, though that included cataloging all of the colors i have now, so i can keep track for future projects and orders.

i have so much exciting weaving ahead.

plus, they look pretty, just as decor!

these are part of the records i'm keeping.

so pretty, i can't wait to weave them.

next up - reputation!

 

i've already spent more than 11 hours and i haven't even started weaving on the reputation era. that sounds like a insane amount of time. but it doesn't feel like that at all. i guess that's what flow is about. 

this time, i'm looking to create a more graphic look. and i want it to look like the black & white of the type in a newspaper in some of the fields, to echo the album. i had to add a sparkly thread to the solid black panels as a nod to the reputation bodysuits.

the warp itself is black, grey and white, but i will create some dark green or red horizontal stripes, as an accent that also echoes the bodysuit and the bodysuit that wasn't (the green one that swifties kept expecting). i bought some threads with some small gold sequins as well for extra sparkle in my weft.

i do love this process and i feel like i'm getting better at it with each warp. setting up takes a long time, but i do enjoy every step of it. 

this morning, i was all ready to bind it up, check all the connections and get started. a few had broken (the cords connecting the shafts and the pedals), so it took some time to replace them. i have the old fashioned-style cords, not the newer polyester ones. they're easier to use, but there's something that feels more authentic to me about the cords. they've been good enough for my loom for around 80 years. maybe one day, i'll switch them out, but for now, i'm happy to be learning how to work with the traditional kind. 

i wove a little bit to get started before we decided to visit the linen weaving museum over on fyn. i needed to do something cultural to get my mind off husband driving around ukraine.  we got there just in time to join a tour with one of the docents. she told such great stories, i really enjoyed it. 

the lover era - tea towel stylie

my lover era tea towels are finished. i got 13 of them from the warp, plus two pieces of fabric that i can make into small makeup or accessory bags. i'm very pleased with the result and the touch of sparkle turned out great, though it doesn't photograph well. 

i've already embarked on the next era - reputation. i'm starting it in hopes that the clowning for reputation tv is actually true this time. and also because i had the right colors for what i want to do.  more about that in another post.

someone came yesterday to buy the last two kittens and she contacted me today to ask if she could buy some of these. i'm going to try to have enough to take to a market in september, so i'm not sure, but i love that she asked. 

i learn something new from every warp i weave. and i sit at the loom and think about all the cloth that's been woven on it. it originally belonged to cis fink, a renowned danish weaving teacher from aabenraa and then my own weaving teacher, emmy, wove many a meter of cloth on it for 50-some years before passing it along to me. i cannot help but think of how much more it knows than i do. and how patient it is with me. 

i can already tell that i somehow must find a way to get a set of these tea towels to taylor swift herself. i have time to figure that out. there are only 11 eras to go.