Brocade leaves sweater - ready to start

I am going with the Brocade Leaves sweater this time (my name for it). The others are gorgeous, too, and I hope I can make them in the future. I have still not yet made more than one sweater out of any one book, but it's good to have dreams, right?

The saturated colors in the brocade leaves are just so beautiful to me.


The yarn came in 100g hanks and 50g hanks. I love yarn that comes in hanks like this. They look so sensual, compared to the usual prosaic skeins.

Gorgeous blues for the body

And the peach, pinks, green, ochre, and white for the border.

I leave you with some shots of my original Oleana jacket, which is the same one you can see in the sidebar. I hope they inspire. The colors are more beautiful in real life, among other things, the light colored stripe is a pretty green, but at least you can see the pattern. It's knit of a finer wool, so it is more detailed than the patterns in the book, and it has velvet trim. I loved it, and dreamed of it for years, before I managed to buy it.

What to make next...

One of my favorite knitting books is Poetry in Stitches by Solveig Hisdal, which sadly is in its final printing run right now. I have always loved this designer, and I even own one of her sweaters for the Oleana label. Her style is very romantic, inpired by Norwegian traditional crafts, bunads and other historic garments. Most of the short sweaters in the Oleana collection have a "special occasion" feeling to them, and there are matching long, full, silk taffeta skirts in rich colors which make you feel like a fairy tale princess. The book contains more casual looking sweaters as well.

I need to knit one of her sweaters now. Deciding which one is hard. I have been speculating on this for months now:

Should it be a Peony cardigan with a large floral border?

Or an all-over floral Peony sweater? Both inspired by a painted chest from Lofoten.

Or maybe a sweater based on brocade leaves? Inspired by a bridal gown from Hallingdal.

And for the summer:

I definitely need a cotton camisole, maybe pink. A copy of an antique garment.

I want to make one of the wool sweaters. AND the cotton camisole, which looks like such a flattering shape. Several other Oleana sweaters can be seen in this article on the Knitter's website. I plan on getting the yarnpack from Nordic Fiber Arts.

This is going to be my little feel-good, feel-Norwegian project for the winter.

For pictures of Norwegian bunads, this is a link to Husfliden, the Handicraft Guild. Follow the link which says "Bunads in Norway", and then select a county, such as Buskerud to see what a Hallingdal bunad might look like, or Hordaland, to see bunads from Voss and Hardanger with beautiful beaded bodices.