September is here...

 

...and there is a Knit-a-long for the Farmer's Market hosted in my group on Ravelry or anywhere you happen to be knitting. It's just for fun, a toy to give to someone, and also perfect project to use up all those remnants of yarn from your stash. 

In this blog post you can find the links to the pattern where you can purchase it:

Farmer's Market

In the picture bellow you see a behind the scenes when I was working on the Voyager Sweater few years back.

See the blog post about the sweater here: Voyager Sweater 

Over the past few months I have been busy with work that has yet to be published by a variety of third parties, or has been published and I have not had time to post about these projects, yet. At the moment I am busy with two other projects that will be published at some point in the future and I don't have as much time as I wish to work on my independent work in the meantime. 

Sometime this month I hope to send out my first newsletter, for which you can subscribe on my website: 

https://stanascrittersetc.com/

In the meantime, thank you for visiting and reading my blog. 

Farmer's Market

 

Farmer’s Market is a knitted version of our shopping bag filled with fruits and vegetables bought at a local farmer’s market. The fruits and vegetables are nicely stored in the knitted shopping bag. 

You can buy the knitting pattern in my Payhip store: Farmer's Market 

or in my Ravelry store: Farmer's Market

or by clicking on this button:  

In the picture bellow you can see all of the fruits, vegetables that are in the bag.

The pictured sample uses Knitpicks's Brava Mini Pack in Jewel colorway. In the picture bellow you can see that there are still plenty of leftover yarn from that Mini Pack. 

All of the items in the bag use small amount of yarn and are ideal for using up scrap yarn.

Here is the list of the fruits and vegetables in the bag:

Finished Measurements:
Shopping bag 9.5” wide x 10.5” high; handles 27” long
Fruits and Vegetables:
Apple 3” diameter
Beet 5” long
Blackberry 1.5” long
Blueberry 1.25” diameter
Carrot 7.5” long, including the leaves
Cherry 1.25” diameter
Cucumber 5.5” long
Eggplant 8” long
Grapes 5.5” long
Pear 5.5” long, 3” diameter at widest point
Plum 2” diameter
Pumpkin 3.25” diameter
Raspberry 1.5” long
Strawberry 1.25” diameter
Swiss Chard 5.75” long
Tomato 2.75” diameter

Thank you for reading and visiting.

September 2020

 

September is one of my favorite times of the year. The heat of summer fades away, our garden continues to give us back and I can start thinking about what kind of knitwear I will wear in the upcoming seasons.

This September is a special in a way that I have several knitting patterns published by a variety of third parties.

In my last blog post I wrote about four of the patterns that were published by I Like Knitting; link to these patterns here:  New Knitting Patterns

I also published one independent pattern; which is a playful variation and addition to my previously published knitting pattern by Knitpicks, in one of their knitting patterns book collections;: link to the pattern here: Meg and School of Fish

In the next few weeks I have three other patterns coming out with a three different publishers. It is very exciting and I do feel like a real knitwear designer. 

Stay tune for those patterns as they are all so different in a way, yet they all are product of my imagination and creativity.

Sometimes I write about gardening. I have been gardening pretty much most of my life. And I had a different outlook on gardening throughout the years. I always loved the fresh taste of fruits and vegetables, and I have learned the hard work that comes with it to actually get that fresh fruits and vegetables on your table. 

We have a small size backyard garden in comparison to what my parents and grandparents had while I was growing up. In those years we practically did not need to buy any fruits or vegetables, except some of the exotic fruits that didn't grow in our Central Europe climate. We did a lot of preservations and canning, and pickling. All of this experience I had as a child have helped me when we started our backyard adventure when our kid was small. 

I hope that the lessons learned will stay with our child into the future and will allow our child to appreciate it as an adult. Pictured here are our backyard gardening adventures. We have planted the blackberry bush and this year it has given us plenty of fruits. In the second picture our dog watch the vegetables I picked this morning, some kohlrabi, parsnip, celeriac, carrots, and butternut squash. We grew everything from seeds, event the butternut squash. Though that was an accidental. We have a compost, and last year I put some seeds and peels from squash and other vegetables and fruits. Apparently it has survived the winter and it started to grow from the compost pile. See the last picture. These are our not seeded and planted pumpkin and squash vines. When it started to grow, we just let them grow and now we have butternut squash and some kind of pumpkin. 

I will use the vegetables to make our meal today. It is a wonderful to know where our food is coming from, and that it is healthy and fresh.  

Thank you for visiting, and don't forget to see the upcoming new patterns. 

Food KAL

In the past few weeks I was busy picking up fruits and vegetables from our garden and preserve them for the winter. Even though our plum trees produced only two plums, we are having some yellow raspberries and alpine strawberries to snack on and we still are having an abundance of cucumbers. I have been pickling them at least twice a week.
Our friends and family might be receiving homemade pickles as their Christmas presents.

Dog approves

I cannot really share the recipe for my pickling liquid as it seems to be every time slightly different. I am following the recipe my mom gave me when we started to do our own pickling.
She said: "I use water, vinegar, pickling salt, a bit of sugar, spices (All Spice, Black Peppercorn, Bay Leaves, Cinnamon, Clove), try how it tastes and add what you think is needed. In the jar put some mustard seeds, fresh dill, sliced onions, garlic, peppers, carrots and cucumbers. Fill the jars with liquid close the top and boil in a pot with a kitchen towel on the bottom for about twenty minutes."
We have been using her recipe for some time, experimenting with variety of flavors, adding hot peppers to some jars, etc. Each batch that I make tastes slightly different, and that is what I enjoy about it - the unpredictability of what it will taste like when we open a new jar of our pickles.

Apples

I was also thinking about the next KAL for my group on Ravelry. I decided that we should knit anything that is food related. Aprons, dishcloths, knitted food, knitted parts of a food chain...…
The Food related KAL will run from now until the end of October, when I will pick the grand prize winner and some more winners to win other things as well.

To start the KAL I am offering  a 25% discount on many of my food related knitting patterns. The coupon code is valid until September 25th midnight EST.

Bowls

Use the coupon code Food to receive the discount.

Joint the fun and a chance to win my group Stana's critters etc on Ravelry.

photo by Knitpicks

Thank you for visiting.

Fruits of our labor

Plum tree blooms

All my life I had an access to fresh fruits and vegetables. I know the difference of taste between fruits and vegetables bought from a store and freshly picked from the garden. I had learn how much work it requires to grow the fruits and vegetables.

One side of my family were farmers. Even though their land was confiscated by the communist party during the totalitarian regime, their were allowed to have a small plot of land near by their house that they were allowed to live in. As a child I remember to visit my grandparents and being able to pick fresh fruits of the trees, or vegetables from the small garden. I thought it was normal for everyone to have this opportunity.

I do not want to bore you with my family history. When I had my child, I wanted to offer the  opportunity to try fresh fruits and vegetables. Our small garden is nothing in comparison with what my grandparents and parents had, but it let my child experience the process of growing up your own fruits and vegetables.

Two years ago we planted two plum trees. This year the plum trees bloomed wonderfully. I was looking forward to have some plums. Then the June drop happened and the green little plums disappeared, except for two. I keep an eye on these two plums and check on them frequently.

Plum I

Plum II

Not all of our gardening attempts are as bad as our plum trees. We had plenty of fruits from our berry bushes and our cucumbers and beets are doing fine as well. I have been rather busy with preserving some of the vegetables for later. Therefore my knitting time has been rather limited and my progress on various projects has been slow. This weekend I will be doing another batch of pickled cucumbers and some sauerkraut as well.

Berries

Pickling 

Thank you for visiting.

Life.....

Fall colors scarf

This fall I have a class at school named Anthropology: Food and Culture. The two books that are assigned reading are quite interesting. Especially the book titled Earth Knows My Name, written by Patricia Klindients. here is  The link to book on Amazon page.
I have found the book fascinating due to several reasons. I live in a country that is not my birthplace. Also my father's side of my family worked the land as farmers for many generations.
Maybe the book fascinates me due to sentimental reasons, while reading it I think of my past and the way life used to be. I do not want to say that life before was better or worse. There are always two sides of a story and we need to look at them carefully. The convenience of modern life has its advantages and I do not wish to loose them. I love having the opportunity to use Internet and talk with my mom on a daily basis, even though there is an ocean between us. My father never had that when we were growing up. He talked to his mother only when we made that all day trip across the country to visit them.
However, one thing is sure, somehow slowly and at first reluctantly I have decided to continue in that tradition and started a small garden. Though my garden is very small in comparison with what  I have seen and worked on when I was a child it still gives us some vegetables and even fruits. It's awesome to see the plants grow from seeds, and care for them throughout the growing season. And yes, the salad from our garden not only looks delicious, it tastes better than any store bought salad package.

Salad

I also use up the extras from the garden and preserve it for later times. Pickling cucumbers and other vegetables is labor intensive and takes time, but it looks great on our table in the middle of winter.

Pickling

The time I spend in garden takes away time from my knitting, but I do not regret it. When winter comes, I know there will be longer evenings which I can spend by our fireplace with knitting needles in hand.

Thank you for visiting.

Fall

Pumpkins

I believe that each and every season has its magic, and I like them all. However, when the heat of summer gives away to foggy misty mornings, intertwined with warm sunny days and cold evenings I enjoy it most. As a knitter I am happy that I can finally wear some of the garments that I have made in the past, and I dream about what  I would love to knit next. As a photographer I love the colors in nature around me and I have a sudden urge to capture the beauty of every leaf. The weekends aren't long enough for everything and just I wish that schools would give vacations on those beautiful days before the winter arrives and forces us to spend more time indoors then outdoors.

Thank you for visiting.

Tomatoes

I love fresh tomatoes. These tomatoes were picked from our garden.
Just for fun, I knitted two heirlooms tomatoes. The pattern for the tomatoes is work in process at the moment, and at some point in the future will be available.


Thank you for visiting.

Fruits and vegetables

not all of these knitted creations are my original patterns. The banana, strawberry and pumpkin are not my original patterns. I have found the patterns for these on various web sites. I am still working on creating other knitted variations of fruits and veggies.

Thank you for visiting.