May is a busy month for us but it is also the time of the year when we usually travel somewhere nice for a week, to get away from it all. This year, we chose to combine a business visit to the Rowan Mill in Yorkshire with a holiday tour of some of our favourite gardens in the UK as well as a visit to Chelsea Flower Show.
At Rowan, we were able to discuss the new collection we will be designing for autumn / winter 2020-21 and we also put the finishing touches in our design magazine for Rowan “New Nordic Men” which will be released on August 1st. We also got to participate in the selection of covers for the upcoming magazines as well as the smaller publications.
Arne is busy thinking and selecting his favourite covers. You’ll have to wait until August to see which ones made the cut.
After a great and creative day at Rowan, we returned to London to meet up with some friends and went on visits to many of our favourite gardens and estates, such as Sissinghurst (Kent), Charleston House (Sussex) and Hidcote Manor (Gloucesteshire). Then we continued on to London and Chelsea Flower Show, which was absolutely packed with people. The sunny weather made it really hot and unbearable, but still, we did enjoy it and managed to get lots of inspiration for both our garden and future design work. We also came home with lots and lots of seeds! Here are a few photos from our trip:
Carlos enjoys the stunning cottage garden at Sissinghurst, in Kent.
Arne dressed in camouflage at Chelsea Flower Show.
Beautiful display at Chelsea Flower Show!
Flowers and floral displays all over London. Here from Sketch, where we went for afternoon tea.
Another photo from Sketch with some floral displays which we are certain were inspired by Chelsea Flower Show.
Even Rowan at Liberty had flowers on display in honour of Chelsea Flower Show: Our cushions!!
Another part of the Rowan store at Liberty had a display of designs from the latest magazine. Our monochrome top, Bernice is displayed in the front of this photo.
In front of Charleston House, the Bloomsbury group’s home in Sussex. This is such an inspiring place – both the house and gardens!
So, all in all, we had an inspiring and fun week’s vacation in the U.K, spent in the company of some lovely friends! We can’t wait to go back to the UK for more inspiration and luckily we won’t have to wait for long, as we are taking a group of people to the UK for a garden tour in August, where we will visit some amazing places in the Cotswolds, including The Prince of Wales’ garden at Highgrove! If you want to join us, we do have a couple of spots available. Click here for more info
Now, let’s talk about this week’s episode!
We really do read comments and do our very best to answer as many as we can on our YouTube channel and also here on our blog. It’s such a great way to interact with you! We also get lots of ideas for new episodes by reading comments, as many people do ask us to teach them a particular thing. So, by popular request, we finally have recorded our short course in Norwegian knitting language, so that you may learn the basics. Once you’ve learnt some basic Norwegian terminology, you will be able to takle those beautiful vintage patterns in Norwegian that you may have laying around in your house!
You can check out the video here:
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And here is a recap of the most important words in a Norwegian pattern.
Stitches, sts = M, Masker
Cast-on, CO = Legg opp
Knit Two, K2 = 2r, to rett.
Purl Two, P2 = 2vr, to vrang. Vrang also means “cranky” – which is what Carlos gets when he isn’t fed at the right time, as his blood sugar drops if he doesn’t eat at regular times.
Bind-off, BO or Cast-off, CO = Fell av
And of course, after the video was edited and ready for publication, we realised that we totally forgot to teach you the most obvious words like “knitting” in Norwegian which is “strikking”. The verb “to knit” is “å strikke” and “strikk” means “knit” or “knitwear”. However, “strikk” can also mean “elastic band” or “rubber band” in Norwegian, and this may very well be the translation you may get if you use Google Translate… Once, we wrote a post on instagram in Norwegian, which should have been translated into English like this: “Knit a snug sweater for yourself” (strikk deg en deilig genser). But Google Translate came up with the following translation into English: “Rubber band yourself a delicious sweater”. This was so hilarious and it also proves our theory that both Google Translate and Autocorrect don’t know the first thing about knitting and are completely insane!!
Next week, we embark on the Norwegian Coastal express for the “Knitting under the Midnight Sun” cruise and look forward to writing up a trip report here in the blog!
At the garden in Monk’s house, Virginia Wolf’s home in Sussex.
Calendar of events (click on links for more info)
NEWS!! Dream Knitting Cruise from Sydney to New Zealand. Yes!!! We are delighted to announce that we are returning to Australia and visiting New Zealand in 2020. Join us for this amazing 12 day, 11 night Knitting Cruise that departs from Sydney on March 27th, 2020 and visits all the amazing sights in New Zealand! More information is available here and here.
NEWS!! The TAOS retreat with Vogue Knitting has just opened up for registration! It will take place from October 24-27, 2019 and you can sign up here. This retreat is almost full, there are only a few spots left and the early bird offer ends on August 18th.
August 15th – 19th, 2019: Tour some of Britain’s most stunning gardens together with us. In addition to visiting some seriously beautiful gardens in the Cotswolds, we have tickets to Prince Charles’ Garden at his private residence, Highgrove. These tickets are almost impossible to come by, so this is a unique chance! There are still a few spots available. We are SO excited about this trip!! More information is available here.
March 3rd – 9th, 2020: “Knitting under the Northern Lights”. Cruise along the stunning Norwegian coast together with us. We just opened this cruise for registration and half of the spots are already gone. We expect it to sell out very soon. More information is available here.