ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

The websites are back up – thank goodness.

I will upload the photographs we took in the rain today. That is the photographs of the Grote Markt (Town Square) of Haarlem in the rain, and no balls for the ball warmers to warm, or to protect from the rain. Hope the photos are okay as it was a dreadful day here.

If you should know where the great balls of Haarlem are please let me know – as you can’t take it (the knowledge) with you.

I have had an offer from Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, to send one of the Wellington balls to me here in Haarlem. Should these balls be the same size as the Haarlem Balls – I think I should probably send a Ball Warmer or two to Wellington for them instead. The balls are too heavy to send across the world. Nice thought though, bringing a Wellington Ball to Haarlem.

Someone out there has my first ball warmer – here are the photographs.

Help! They are gone !

Who took the Haarlem Balls?

Those elegant balls in the most gorgeous town square (Grote Markt) we have been in. Those gorgeous balls that were used to sit on and talk to your buddies in the summer.

Those elegant balls on an elegant curve delineating the road from the square.

Those balls that were so right in a town square of such age, beauty and elegance. No other shape, or style of divider could ever do in that space.

And then of course there are the Ball Warmers themselves, so far none of the measured balls in Maastricht or the loosely measured balls in California match the size of these Haarlem Balls.

So my knitting pattern suggestion will never have another use.

The snow ball and the formal ball gown – will not have a place where they can be proudly displayed.

Snowing, a grey ball being disguised as a snow ball

Why oh why has this happened?????

Is it because I cannot read sufficient Dutch to have known they were to be removed?

Or is it because the newspapers that I can manage to read some of, were not delivered?

I could have installed the Ball Warmers – even for a brief time. These Ball warmers will never be seen in all their glory. People using the square will not be able to smile at the silliness, or the surprise, or the delight of great concrete balls with covers; knitted art designer covers.

Right now I am so shattered, and as I didn’t take my camera with me today – I do not have a photograph of the square without balls.

I will add photos of the square without the balls later maybe, when I have the strength to return. Maybe, just maybe, they will be put back before I can return there.

And this will just have been a nightmare.

Best Beloved is in Maastricht today armed with my tape measure to enable him to measure a Maastricht ball or maybe two. We had left the tape measure in Haarlem when we tested our white ball warmer a couple of weeks ago. Of course on the day we were there, Best Beloved to work, and me to check out the balls of Maastricht, it was sooo cold, my hands could not have measured a ball accurately at all.

I was excited and maybe just a little horrified as I walked along the road to our rendevous point that bitterly cold day – there were many balls in Maastricht and they were obviously in several sizes. I counted at least 48.

Could there be 48 or so textile and fibre enthusiasts in and around Maastricht who would take up the challenge to create a ball cover for an amazingly different fibre festival event, should we be able organise it. I do hope so.

The measurement of the first ball was phoned in from Maastricht before lunch, and it is only 124cm, at least 36cm smaller than the Haarlem Ball (which was 150 plus my handspan). Less knitting, felting, patchwork, embroidery, crocheting, weaving, basket weaving, textile and fibre work for these balls – so maybe there will be interest from others, just maybe.

Oh no – Measurement been phoned in from Maastricht just before Best Beloved’s 2pm meeting, and the second ball measured across the road from the first, is 142cm and trust me, Best Beloved is not dyslexic.

What is it with these ball creators?

Now we have balls in three sizes and I know there are further balls even smaller in Maastricht. Best Beloved may not be able to measure those on this trip. Generally when work is over it is a race to the next train. The train trip home is 2.5 hours, and I cannot expect more measuring when the journey is so long already. Stopping to measure may mean an additional 1/2 hour between work in Maastricht and home in Haarlem. It wouldn’t be reasonable to expect it. Would it?

I have had a really wild week.

It is has been freezing, snowing and my hands have really struggled with the activities we have carried out out in that cold wintery environment.

On Wednesday I was interviewed by Leandra and her team on Amsterdam English Breakfast Radio. That was a great experience, and the radio interview is also on video. (Radio with pictures – was a New Zealand TV programme many years ago).

We then tested a ball for size in a freezing Maastricht, and followed that with the ball dress rehearsal in Haarlem. Both of those freezing activities are on video. We are amateurs for sure, the commentary is bizarre – that is I didn’t realise it was recording the activity, let alone what we were saying. We will change it when we work out how. But in one wild wintery week I have been on video in three separate cities.

I do have to get away from these balls. My black formal ball warmer is progressing well – and I keep seeing ideas in my head for new ball pieces.

So I am not creating ball warmers anymore, that is until the next time

I am creating an intarsia piece with hairy “carbon footprint” design. This may well be my only ever graphed intarsia piece. I just don’t knit pictures.

I am a free form flowing kind of knitter, I just don’t like graphs. I know I can do it – but when I am surrounded by many yarns and many colours of yarns I really just want to play.

So I am going to work through the list below until I can play some more

1. Knit Carbon Footprint in intarsia

2. Complete Carbon Footprint – shadow knitting version

3. Knit 2 berets for a very dear friend – I have the yarns and I am playing with them – sorting, changing the colour order, thinking about what other colour or yarn type I could add.

4. Finish formal black ball warmer

then

colour

colour play

and then colour play some more

that is the plan

Look at the people not looking at us. How many people went by without so much as a glance sideways. Did they watch from across the square? Were they embarrassed at the sight of two oldies playing with large cold stone balls? Did they wonder what we were up to? Did they speed up on their bikes – so they didn’t have to consider properly what they were seeing? Do they wear blinkers here in Haarlem?

The white ball warmer did fit the Haarlem ball well and it was clearly too large for the Maastricht Ball that we tried it on on Wednesday. So I do know for certain now that this ball here in Haarlem is 160cm round.

The black ball cover is not finished yet, but as Best Beloved said it was still at an embryonic stage.

We will need to install these two in daylight because our little camera and the poor light will make it impossible to see the black ball warmer when it is done if we repeated this at night in the Grote Markt.

When these are done and dusted – installed they will be the Black & White Ball Show

Yesterday I went to Maastricht with my white, large, ball cover – to test it against one of the many balls in Maastricht. Now I had not seen these balls previously, I didn’t know the size, I didn’t know how public the space was, and I didn’t know just how cold it would be.

When I left home in Haarlem at about 7am, the temperature was -5.1, and that is cold and everything was very white. The flurry of snow we expected had covered everything with white icing. Not thick icing, but just enough for that beautiful look.

Now my ball cover and I have not met much in the last week or so, well, not on a regular basis, and it was still unfinished. But my partner in these activities, my best beloved was to be in Maastricht on business and we arranged to meet after one of his meetings – so he could help with the plan. Which meant I had to knit on the train – and I think I’ll tell about that in another post, because that was an experience.

Now Best Beloved had discovered the balls of Maastricht, well he had eventually noticed the balls on one of his many trips there, as you may remember there has been lots of ball talk in our house of recent times. So the balls drifted to the surface one day and he remembered to tell me there are many such balls in Maastricht and Maastricht is very very cold. Have a look here for a story about a very cold Maastricht

As I walked along the road to our rendevous point – it began to snow and it was frightfully cold.

Snowing, a grey ball being disguised as a snow ball

We met, quickly chose a ball, took off our gloves in readiness, BB to take a photo or a video and me to cover the ball. Just picture it, two over 60’s disguised by many layers of clothing, acting oddly by a long row of very cold balls and without the comfort of darkness.

The spot was at a roundabout – and in the centre of the roundabout is a forest of stars. The stars sit on top of poles of various lengths – the lower ones are easily within reach of a tall person and they are all white and those stars turn on the top of the poles with the breeze. Couldn’t they be a coloured forest of stars?

I digress – In the freezing cold we managed one photo, a video with really bad conversation on it – “look at my cold hands, the cover is too big, it fits better because it goes over easier, but that means it is too big. Are you really recording, don’t you have to have your finger pressing the button, My hands are frozen, look at my hands”.

And then we saw the other balls – further in – and they are big like my Haarlem balls.

No, we didn’t do it. It was just so cold that we did not have the courage or strength to take the ball warmer and try to put it onto one of the bigger balls.

We went had lunch at a place called Ipanema instead. The food was great, coffee okay, the place was warm, lovely and warm – but there was nothing Ipanema’ish about it.

I have finally finished the graphs for my Carbon Footprint design. Graph 1 – can be used for intarsia knitting and Graph 2 is a line by line Shadow Knitting opportunity.

It is not that the graphs themselves that have taken so long – I just have too many projects going at one time – and that snowball white Haarlem Ball Warmer keeps on beckoning.

As I said in an previous post I have purchased a digitally restored eBook which included the pattern for a crocheted bathmat with a chart to use to embroider a footprint on to the crocheted bathmat. This pattern was originally published by The American Thread Company, Star Rug Book No. 93, in 1952.

I have altered the embroidered design to make the shadow knitting work better. I am knitting the bag, and I have knitted the design itself several times and I have found that it is not essential to work with a solid light and a solid dark yarn to make this work. I have created it with variageted lightish yarn and a black mohair – and it is great.

The bag is being knitted with cream and rusty red coloured cottons. The curiosity of working with shadow knitting – is that it is not always so clear that it is working while you are knitting it. So when I finished the second wall hanging I was pleased to see that it did work (and better than the first) and my carbon footprint certainly exposed itself when viewed on the angle.

Not many carbon footprints in this world are so clear.