Every Journey Begins With a Single Step

After MS3 wound down, late last Summer, I did a little shopping to treat myself for surviving it. Shopping in Sweden to be precise (OK, it was online, but with the Internets you can shop in Sweden - it's easy). I picked up a few of the Bohus knitting kits from Solveig Gustafsson. I had been drooling over these (although in a delicate and charming way, not the way Finn drools on Ramius) for a while and decided to splurge.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Bohus designs or these kits, these are put together with yarn that is spun especially for them as close to the traditional yarn as they can get, which is a fingering weight fine wool/angora blend (yummy doesn't even begin to describe this yarn - this is the kind of stuff you want to strip down and roll around in nekkid - maybe too much information there, but you get the idea, ahem). Then the colors are hand dyed to match the originals, the designs are reproduced from the original charts and directions, and we can purchase them as kits either from Solveig or (I believe) through the Bohus Museum. As I understand it, Solveig is doing this singlehandedly and without an apprentice, so my guess is that these kits (which are about as historically accurate as you can get) will not be available forever.

The yarn you see above is for the Grey Mist design with the folded down neckband. (Click on the link above for Solveig's website and Click "Nyheter" at the top to see pictures of the Bohus kits she has available. Scroll down for the Grey Mist design.) The color that's in the two big yarn balls shown is the main color and there is more of it, but I didn't put it all in the picture. Each skein of yarn came labeled with a number that corresponds to the chart and there is also a small yarn sample of each color attached to the chart to help keep me straight as I knit. The directions do come in English, which is good since my Swedish is extremely limited (or perhaps non existent would be a better way to describe it). I am currently waiting for a needle to come in the mail since I didn't have all the needles I needed to get started, and then I will cast on. This will probably be an ongoing project, not one I crank out in a week or so - definitely more about the journey, and not so much about the destination, but I won't blog every stitch I take - don't worry.

If you're interested in ordering one of the kits, there is an email address on her home page and you can drop her an email with what you're interested in and a shipping address and she'll get back to you with a price. Solveig does speak English very well (again, with the limited/non existent Swedish thing, this is good) and while I don't remember exact prices (which are also dependent on the value of the dollar to the Swedish Kroner), I think that the kits come out under $200 including shipping. This seemed pretty reasonable to me for a historically accurate, hand dyed kit with such a luxurious yarn.