Lately, we have gotten a lot of rain. This is in stark contrast with the past few years. Nature is soaked with water. Because the groundwater level is already so high in The Netherlands, this has created plenty of extra ponds, or bonus ponds, as I call them.

As I hike,

Have you ever tried mosaic knitting? It’s a really fun and super easy colorwork knitting technique. You should give it a try, for sure (me saying)!

Mosaic knitting is truly the best kept secret of colorwork knitting. With mosaic, we are working just one color at a time.

It was that time of the year again: We’ve got heather season in The Netherlands!

Just like the past years, I could not resist the purple hills 🙂 so I went hiking. That weather was not entirely ideal, but it was mostly dry, and the heather was wonderful!

One and a half years ago, I was hiking in a forest in the South of The Netherlands. As I turned a corner, I discovered a large path in the woods, bordered by rows of mighty trees, some with green leaves, some with dark reddish-purple leaves. I love trees and shrubs with red,

Winter means that natures slows down. But it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the great outdoors. And the sunset colors can totally be beautiful and inspiring.

Kiskadee is an lace elegant cowl inspired by birds in flight and their acrobatic skills.

The Kiskadee cowl is named after the bird the Great Kiskadee. They are swift, have an exuberant call, and have beautiful colors (color inspiration anyone?!). They seem to draw loops and curves in the sky.

Here in Europe, we’re heading toward Autumn. The days are noticeably cooler, the weather turned more humid and we’ve got alternately sun and rain. Yet, it’s also been unexpectedly warm for this time of the year, so I’m enjoying these days where Nature slows down.

I like Autumn because of the subtle changes it brings to the landscape.

When planning any type of colorwork – think stripes, mosaic, intarsia, stranded, etc. – you probably give some good thought to your color choices. And there is plenty of room for experimentation. So why not combine orange and burgundy as I did with the Rockscape shawl (shown above),

Do you sometimes find yourself torn between choosing a project with lace, or with mosaic, or with special shaping, or with cables, or with some colorwork, or with…? You see what I mean, right? There is only so much time in a day, and we want to maximize our crafting time.

Do you like knitting lace? I love it! And I want to share a cast-on tip with you. This is a modified long-tail cast-on that I use for lace and it’s super easy to do. And this is a useful tip for lace knitting, especially for cowls because they usually imply casting on many stitches.

The rule of thirds is a guideline that allows you to easily create a pleasing composition for your photographs. Basically, the photo frame is divided in thirds: with 2 horizontal and 2 vertical lines, you divide the photo in 9 segments of equal size. It’s like a 3 by 3 tic-tac-toe grid that you overlay over the frame of the photo.

Let’s kick off the series about yarn! In this post of The Explorers Blog, I’ll start with yarn weight. Yarn weight refers to the thickness of the yarn itself (the thread) rather than the weight of the whole skein or ball of yarn. One could wonder why we would need to have a yarn weight defined in anything else than grams (or another weighing unit)…

Hello dear Explorers and welcome to this blog!

You can expect background information about knitting, yarn and photography, tip and tricks, news and information about new releases of knitting patterns by Skeinwalker.

If you enjoy the blog or want to know more, join The Explorers Weekly newsletter.