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Learning a New Skill

A few weeks ago, at the end of January, I went to Amsterdam and I had a lovely day with a friend. We were on a mission though: we were there to learn a new skill. Both of us are getting more and more interested in knitting and we’re both improving our skills. We’ve tackled the basics and, slowly, we are ready for a new challenge. So we booked a workshop in Amsterdam…

Since we live in different parts of the country, Dorien and I met at the central train station in Amsterdam. With Google telling us where to go we walked to our destination. Taking photos along the way. I don’t visit our capital a lot, but I do really like the houses and the canals (don’t like the huge number of tourists that much though).

The obligatory ‘bike, canal and houses’ photo can’t be left out, of course!

We arrived at our destination: the beautiful yarn store that is called Stephen and Penelope! With yarn bombed bike in front of it, as it should be.

Of course we had to browse all the gorgeous yarns… If only I could have a wall like this at home, haha!

We’ve booked a workshop here to learn mosaic knitting. And our teacher is the very talented Natasja Hornby who you might know as Moonstruck Knits. She told us that she has picked up knitting again just a few years ago and almost immediately started to make her own designs. Above are two of her knitted shawls that she brought to the workshop. Both of them use the mosaic technique to create the stunning, graphic effect.

And this is my attempt so far… well, actually, I managed to do a bit more. Mosaic knitting is fun to do and absolutely not as difficult as it may look. Once you get the hang of it! I will definitely give this a try…

Photo credit: Natasja Hornby/Moonstruck Knits (click to visit her pattern store on Ravelry)

These are two of Natasja’s patterns… Left is Lunae and right is Maan. I really like both of them and definitely want to make at least one of them… I think I will be yarn shopping for Lunae soon… Thank you Natasja for teaching and inspiring us!

Now, you can’t leave a candy store empty-handed, can you? I, for sure, can’t! So this is what came with me… Gorgeous skeins of Brooklyn Tweed Shelter. And they’ll be turned into this:

Photo credit: Andrea Mowry/DreaReneeKnits (click to see on Ravelry)

Yes. A jumper! Although I love to knit (and crochet) shawls because of their reasonable size, I’d like to challenge myself with something else. It’ll be my first knitted jumper and to quote Pippi Longstocking: ‘I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that’!

I’ll keep you posted! 🙂

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