Almost Up!

Yeah! I got everything to work on an external server as well, as you can see from the URL. Phew, so many things I had to do all over again and half of the time I was clueless. The biggest hurdle was the picture gallery on the sidebar. The practice was quite different from the theory, but now I am ready to launch the site.

I still have most pages with information on the knitting course set on invisible. Those I saved for a real launch to which I will attach a celebratory moment including a bite and beverage.

In the meantime I also worked on advertizing the site apart from facebook. This will be my business card / flyer:

flyer breien in oost

Ordered with that company that also advertizes on TV: “250 business cards for € 3.98!”. Right! Then the mailing costs another € 7.- and if you upload your own image the price doubles as well. You can see how I messed the picture up a at the bottom, because I didn’t get the dimensions right, but I figured no one would notice once they are printed at that small size of business cards.

How to knit

The book I referred to earlier – Useful handicraft – arrived in the mail and so did the scanner. Now I am able to show some of the stuff I have been taught as a little girl. The 10th edition copy I got is from 1965 and the year I learned knitting must have been 1968. The book only addresses girls, and the teacher was obviously female as well. While we were doing needlework, the boys were taught how to play chess!

There was no such thing as You Tube in those days, so this is how the teacher was supposed to teach us:

Casting on

We will start now with learning how to cast on. The teacher has two thick wooden needles and very thick wool. Each girl has a ball of cotton plus two needles.  For the time being we don’t need needles, as the children first need to properly master how to wrap the thread around their fingers. The teacher first demonstrates a few times and then lets the girls go along as follows:

  1. nuttige handwerken - opzettenMeasure a length of yarn and hold this point between thumb and index finger of the right hand.
  2. Put he index finger of the left hand under the thread, which is on the side of the ball of yarn, put middle finger and ring finger on top and the pink under again.
  3. The thread that we are still holding in our right hand, should be wrapped around our thumb and then we place it between ring finger and pink, over the pink. We keep our hand slightly bent, the loops on thumb and index finger over the first phalanx, thumb and index finger almost together.

First Projects

Are you still there? No wonder so many of the girls developed a dislike of knitting. The projects we embarked on weren’t all that exciting either. In my memory my first product was an egg warmer – a little hat to keep you egg warm !!

The book’s first project is this must-have needle booklet:

nuttige handwerken needle booklet

And here below the notorious doll’s dress. I asked my teacher if I was allowed to adjust the measurements as this one wouldn’t fit any of my dolls: not the Barbie nor the baby doll. But she wouldn’t hear of it. So it got buried in my little suitcase with useless projects.

nuttige handwerken- doll's dress

The YouTube way

For an easier way to learn knitting -besides following a course or workshop – here are a few really easy-to-follow instruction videos by Twirre, owner of  crafts store Handmade Heaven in Amsterdam-East.  It is all in Dutch but the images are self-explanatory.

And here are the links to  the next three classes.  Besides binding off these are all the basic techniques you need, everything else is just  different combinations of these four.

Another way of casting on, even knitting, and purling.

 

Patterns… more than you can knit

In case you are thinking that I am just wasting my time browsing the internet, no, this is all about practicing how to insert images and link them properly. But what a marvelous website I ventured into this time! The patters are $ 3.00 each and the proceeds are for abused,homeless, & high-kill (huh?) shelter animals. Ah, well..

Always wanted a Peter Pan collar?

1950s Horizontal Rib Yoke Sweater with Cap Sleeves & Peter Pan Collar

vintage green sweater with peter pan collar

http://missjuliavintagefashionpatterns.blogspot.nl/2013/01/760-1950s-horizontal-rib-yoke-sweater.html

Embellishment

Today I looked at possible fonts, way ahead of my technical capabilities, because with WordPress I cannot even choose a single different font yet.

Nevertheless I have the ambition to do something nice with fonts on my website and I found this great site with hundreds of fonts:

1001fonts.com

Most of them are for free when you don’t use them commercially and it is really easy to download and install them.

You can search with great tags such as: chunky, vintage, 1970s, art deco, and on and on. T0he categories are endless.

What is even more exciting is the possibility to upload your own font. I want to make a font of my own handwriting! I haven’t tried yet how easy or difficult that  is, first need a scanner probably. I ordered one, it is supposed to arrive soon.

breien in oost 1001 fonts

Day 3 – Lost in Nostalgia

Today I got distracted when searching for the type of cotton yarn they gave to us in school back when I was first learning. I was wondering if there are still stores that sell yarn that is not very cool, 100 % natural, utterly beautiful but extremely expensive?

Yes, there are. I found a beautiful small shop, family owned since 1891 – 122 years. They have a webshop, where they are selling Durable cotton in every imaginable colour at € 2.60 for 50 grams only !

Het Kleine Winkeltje in Millingen.

het kleine winkeltje in millingen

They are selling underwear as well, solid, white, cotton underwear and old-fashioned pyjamas!

The pathway to perfection

This picture is from the book: “Vivilore: The Pathway to Mental and Physical Perfection” – 1904

The caption was: “Busy and Happy.”

Day two of building & blogging

Knitting in primary school of traveller's camp

Day 2: I learned about the content of the kitchen sink button which enabled me to insert headings. I learned that I shouldn’t just copy and paste from Word, very important! And I learned how to link the posts to facebook, which I did to a small group of friends. I hope you appreciate this. The blog itself is public now, no need to restrict access, but until the self-hosted site goes live, no need for wider sharing yet.

Hip

Knitting is hip again! Wool and knitting stores are popping up across Amsterdam. Norwegian designers are creating home-knitted christmas decorations, knitting artists are wrapping lamp-posts in colorful knitted fabrics, throughout the country knitting cafes are abounding and on the internet you can get literally get lost in knitting blogs:

Sustainable

Knitting is okay! You can make your own clothing without involving underpaid textile workers locked in factories that are a fire hazard. It is sustainable due to the quality of self-made clothes, which is far superior to the  stuff you buy at shops like H&M for a few Euros. Knitting yarn can be re-used, you can make fun things out of leftovers. And if you use natural materials from an ecological source you can’t get any greener!

Breien in Amsterdam – Knitting in Amsterdam

Dear all,

As you know – or don’t know – I am going to develop a knitting course, to be given this fall in the East part of Amsterdam and I created this blog to practice making the website for this course: breieninoost.nl

This post is my very first attempt to publish something on-line. I am going through the WordPress instruction video, but am a little impatient and want to see results!

I think I also prefer learning by trial & error instead of going through all the instructions. I guess it will have to be a combination of both..

While I practice, I will keep a record of my experiences in this blog – until the real website goes live. There are a lot of new things to learn. I have made a start with collecting materials for my site:

  • images of self-made knitted materials
  • other types of illustrations
  • text for the site, in English and in Dutch
  • links to woolshops, other knitting courses and social knitting media

One illustration sample:

de nuttige handwerken

Useful handicrafts

This was the book that teachers used for handcrafts classes in primary school: “Useful Handicrafts”. Although I went to school in the sixties, the style and content of teaching was totally fifties – very old-fashioned. I found and ordered a copy of this book on internet and can’t wait to hear it drop in my mailbox! It will bring back memories of dropped stitches, sweaty needles and a mean teacher.

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