Welcome!
My name is Valda, and I am a passionate hand knitter in my free time. I am here to help you find new ideas, inspiration and knitting lessons and many other wonderful resources for your knitting journey.
-"What One Man Can Do, Another Can Do"-
Robert A. Glover
How I Get Started
Get inspired in Latvia!
When I visited Latvia in 2015, I came across Maruta Grasmane's book, Latvieša Cimdi. It inspired me so much that I knew I had to start knitting mittens. Back home in Iceland, I picked up some Kambgarn merino yarn and cast on my first stitches.
Soon enough, I realized it wasn't quite that simple. The book's charts were meant for much finer yarn, with some designs calling for 100 to 120 stitches for a single mitten!
My first idea was to put together little gift boxes containing the charts paired with Icelandic yarn that actually worked for them. But after making five boxes, I thought, Why not make a proper pattern booklet? Something lightweight, easy for knitters to use, and not too heavy to carry around.
That is how my first Latvian mitten pattern booklet came to be. I was so touched and impressed by how warmly the Icelandic crafting community embraced it. We printed 1,000 copies, and now they are almost all gone, with just a few left resting in a couple of shops here in Iceland..
The Spark in Köln
I had always wanted to learn machine knitting. The thought of getting a knitting machine kept popping into my head, growing stronger over time until I finally decided: I am going to get one.
Of course, that was just the beginning. I quickly found out you need special yarn for machine knitting—you couldn't just use whatever yarn you had lying around at home. I started hunting for machine-knitting yarn in Iceland, but I couldn't find a single shop that sold it. We are such a small community here that there just isn't a market for it. So, I tracked down a wholesaler in Italy and ordered directly from them. As a thank-you for the order, they gave me a free ticket to H&H, a massive knitting and craft event in Köln, Germany.
And so, I went. There was so much to see, but what caught my eye the most were these gorgeous knitting needle sets. I knew I had to have them. I walked up to the person at the stand and asked how I could get my hands on them and if they were selling them right then. He wasn't very welcoming at all—he just said "no" and turned away.
Well, that certainly didn't stop me. I just walked one loop around the hall and came right back to ask, "What should I do to get them?"
That turned out to be the magic question, and he finally gave me the info I needed. After that, he grew curious about why I was at the exhibition and what I did. I showed him my little mitten booklet, and he was genuinely impressed. He looked at it and asked, "Can you make something like that for other yarn?"
Of course, I said, "YES."
And that is how my second booklet, featuring Patagonia Organic Merino yarn, came to be! I spent that entire summer knitting every single mitten for the new book. By the way, I found out later that the man I had badgered at the booth was none other than Sion Elalouf himself.
My first trip to Vogue Knitting in NY!
Landing in New York
Our trip to the USA began with just my 14-year-old daughter and me. We were traveling with four large suitcases full of materials for the Vogue Knitting event and two small carry-on bags—six bags in total. I was pretty nervous because I had no idea how customs would go, whether they might stop us because of the heavy luggage, or because I didn’t have the right paperwork for selling.
Strangely enough, everything went completely smoothly. We passed all the checks without any problems, and the last thing left to do was order a taxi. We arranged it right at the airport desk and were given a taxi number.
Okay, let’s go to the hotel. I gave the driver the correct address and the hotel name, breathing a sigh of relief and thinking all our travel stress was behind us.
But when we arrived in the center of Manhattan, the driver suddenly pulled over and said, “Here is your destination.”
I looked around and frowned. “I don’t see my hotel.”
He replied, “Here is Paris Hilton—isn’t that yours?”
“No,” I said, “this is definitely not my hotel.”
He checked the address again, told Google to take us to the right spot, and we drove around for another ten minutes. Then Google cheerfully announced that we had arrived. Somewhere in between, I had already paid him—including a tip—which turned out to be much more than the price we were quoted at the airport.
The driver stopped the car, turned around, and said, “Go out. I don’t have time for this. It’s here.”
I tried to explain that I still couldn’t see our hotel and begged him not to leave us stranded in the freezing cold in the middle of Manhattan with six giant suitcases. But he was already out of the car, hauling our bags out and dropping them right onto the snowy sidewalk.
It was the middle of winter, and the streets were full of snow walls. It was hard for anyone to walk there, even without any luggage at all.
“Here is your destination,” he said again.
Still completely confused, I watched him walk over to a traffic police officer in the middle of the street to ask where the hotel was. He came back, pointed in the exact same direction as before—toward the next corner—said, “I already told you, it’s there,” and drove away.
Great. Standing on a freezing New York City sidewalk in the snow with six bags.
Of course, it couldn’t be too easy—we clearly needed a proper travel challenge right from the start!
