Viking Patterns for Knitting: Inspiration and Projects for Today's Knitter

Big fan, have lots of her books that aren't listed on goodreads. This discusses her books generally.

As I took possession of Zarah http://www.ingenkonst.se/eyc8_e.htm today, I wondered yet again about my love affair with the Elsebeth Lavold, Sweden’s best kept secret as far as the knitting world is concerned. Most of my knitting friends don’t understand. A lot of her stuff is plain frumpy by our standards – by Swedish standards too? - that I don’t know. It even becomes comical:



Again, by our standards her cable work is wooden, set into boxy shapeless designs. Compare, in particular Debbie Bliss’s modern adaptations of cable themes. And yet.

At her best, she is so good. Look at the cover of Out of the Wood:




Or this:



And, of course, show more she insists on using real people as models and this has quite an impact on the look of her work.



It’s fascinating to compare the picture above with one of an overweight woman badly dressed:



Suddenly the very same pattern looks – well, would you knit it? And yet just before you turned to that page you’d thought how much you loved this. I must say, the two pictures have me confused. I want to look the girl ‘a’ not girl ‘b’ and I’m just not sure what would actually happen if I knitted this.


One of the things I like about her is her responsiveness to queries. I wanted to knit the cover design Mellow Yellow a few years ago, but the recommended colours were discontinued. When asked she came up with some nice alternatives. I bought the yarn, about a year later set about knitting this jacket, only to discover that a really careless mistake had been made in the pattern and I had only half as much of one of the two colours as I needed. Bugger. The thing that amazes me, though, is this is a world-class designer, it is the cover pattern of a book and yet evidently I was the first to try knitting this, well after the book appeared. Therefore I was the guineapig.

Look on Ravelry and none of her patterns are very popular. She is making a push in the US and she has a really nice line of yarns, so maybe this will change. She DOES deserve to be right up there so I hope she really does make it out of Sweden and into the world at large.

She has a comprehensive website, with her biography, all her books and pictures of most of her designs here: http://www.ingenkonst.se/. show less

Big fan, have lots of her books that aren't listed on goodreads. This discusses her books generally.

As I took possession of Zarah http://www.ingenkonst.se/eyc8_e.htm today, I wondered yet again about my love affair with the Elsebeth Lavold, Sweden’s best kept secret as far as the knitting world is concerned. Most of my knitting friends don’t understand. A lot of her stuff is plain frumpy by our standards – by Swedish standards too? - that I don’t know. It even becomes comical:



Again, by our standards her cable work is wooden, set into boxy shapeless designs. Compare, in particular Debbie Bliss’s modern adaptations of cable themes. And yet.

At her best, she is so good. Look at the cover of Out of the Wood:




Or this:



And, of course, show more she insists on using real people as models and this has quite an impact on the look of her work.



It’s fascinating to compare the picture above with one of an overweight woman badly dressed:



Suddenly the very same pattern looks – well, would you knit it? And yet just before you turned to that page you’d thought how much you loved this. I must say, the two pictures have me confused. I want to look the girl ‘a’ not girl ‘b’ and I’m just not sure what would actually happen if I knitted this.


One of the things I like about her is her responsiveness to queries. I wanted to knit the cover design Mellow Yellow a few years ago, but the recommended colours were discontinued. When asked she came up with some nice alternatives. I bought the yarn, about a year later set about knitting this jacket, only to discover that a really careless mistake had been made in the pattern and I had only half as much of one of the two colours as I needed. Bugger. The thing that amazes me, though, is this is a world-class designer, it is the cover pattern of a book and yet evidently I was the first to try knitting this, well after the book appeared. Therefore I was the guineapig.

Look on Ravelry and none of her patterns are very popular. She is making a push in the US and she has a really nice line of yarns, so maybe this will change. She DOES deserve to be right up there so I hope she really does make it out of Sweden and into the world at large.

She has a comprehensive website, with her biography, all her books and pictures of most of her designs here: http://www.ingenkonst.se/. show less

I used cable patterns from this book to make an enormous and beautiful wedding afghan for a friend. Although the sweater patterns that are included in the book are ok, the real strength of this book is as a library of wonderful cables to include in original projects.

Lovely improved cable techniques! The patterns as such are perhaps not that interesting, but the cables are extraordinary!

Lavold's patterns can be a bitch to follow, but no one designs cabled sweaters as lovely as hers.

Indeholder "Forord", "Et projekt bliver til", "Mønsteranalyse", "Ring og kæde", " Hermod, sweater i gittermønster og løs hætte", " Siv, jumper med ribkanter og flettede borter", " Fjörgyn, stortrøje med hætte", "Vandrette borter", "Fletværk", " Hervor, sweater og hue", " Rafn, trøje med sjalskrave", " Ragna, sweater med slidser og hue", " Frode, sweater med Sankthanskors og flettede kanter", "Enkeltknuder", " Vebjörg, figurstrikket trøje", "S-krogen fra Ardre", " Harald, sweater med flettet bærestykke, hue, sokker og vanter", " Vigdis, vams med løs hætte", " Fjalar, sweater og hue", " Freja, jakke med bort fra Vendel", "Borten fra Lillbjärs", "Runeskrift", " Kysmik, barnesweater og herreslipover med runer", show more "Dyreornamentik", " Fafner, pude med dyremotiv og kant med rundede hjørner", " Strik rundede hjørner", "Hvordan læses diagrammerne", "Kryds", "Sådan gør man", " Udtagningerne", " Indtagningerne", "Råd og vink", " Størrelse, mål og materialer", " Strikkefasthed og pinde", " Kantmaske", " Opslagning", " Rib", " Indtagning", " Udtagning", " Markering", " Sæt masker på en tråd", " Aflukning", " Endehæftning", " Opspænding", " Sammenstrikning", " At samle masker op", " Sammensyning", " Knaphul", " At skifte garn", " For", "Forkortede pinde", "Størrelse og pasform", "Garn", "Vedligeholdelse", "Foto og Forlæg", "Forhandlerliste", "Mønsterfortegnelse", "Diagramsymboler".

Pæne mønstre og lidt forklaring på simple spørgsmål og teknikker. show less