Third Floor - Knitting Room

Here we are - the third and final floor. Well actually, after the knitting room is the sewing room but since it was being restored, the knitting room is the final room on the tour.

This is where all kinds of crazy machines, of varying shapes and sizes, turned the spun wool into webs of woven wonder. So exciting!

One thing that really surprised me was all the machines knitting in rounds. Of course up in the sewing room they would just cut the pieces and make whatever they wanted, but I was surprised that so much of it started in circles.

It was also amazing to see that each machine was knitting in different patterns. Some, such as this one, typically Norwegian in style.

The colours were especially lovely in the area where they knitted lots of small details and trims...so pretty!

The most astounding machine for me though, was the sock knitter. It knitted pairs end to end and spat them into a collecting tube. So funny! So clever! Seeing those socks just streaming into the tube, a new one every minute or so, really made me look industrialisation in the face. Kind of entrancing really...

So I hope you have enjoyed your tour of the Salhus knitting museum. The next post will be all about Christmas in Norway. Wishing everyone and their families a very Merry Festivus ;) Eat, drink, eat some more, drink some more, snooze in the afternoon and be merry! Loves of Love and Special Christmas Kisses...

Second floor - the spinning room

Moving on to the second floor...the superbly splendiferous spinning room! Mmmmmm...

This is where women, and children entered the production process. The women operated the machines and the kids ran the errands :)

First the wool was spun from the big bobbins downstairs onto more manageably sized cones.

While the enormity of some of the machines spinning the thread from the bobbins to cones was truly astounding, the view from the window was not bad either!

As you can see, a lovely light pink shade at about 2:30 in the afternoon...

This is also where they got to do cool things like spin different colours into one thread, so we can all make cool things like gorgeous speckly socks! Yay!

Next time I will spin us from here up to the knitting room....wooohooooo.....

Salhus Knitting Museum, Tour of the Bottom Floor

Well winter is well and truly here.

Darkness has set in and I know this because I have had to buy a 'dawn simulator' alarm clock, which wakes me by slowing lighting my room with all the power of an artificial sun. The cold, dark, long, lonely nights (okay not so lonely given the delightful presence of J and the hounds!) have reawakened my desire to deck myself in wool and wile away the hours click click clicking on some knitting needles. And yes Dr Kylie, the first thing I decided to knit was my very first sock!

A lovely Spanish girl and fellow GM crop researcher and activist who is currently visiting my research centre for 3 months, Miss Rosa, kindly offered to be my guide. She is in the process of knitting socks and many other wonderful things herself. In honour of the birth of my first sock, on sunday we decided to celebrate in style and visit an old knitting factory on a fjord in Salhus - about half an hour bus ride out of Bergen.

So glad we did! Very interesting! And surprisingly beautiful! For someone who had never visited a textile factory before, it was completely fascinating! I was intrigued by the cold metal of the machine against the soft supple touch of the wool. I was fascinated by the complexity of the whole process from sheep to sweater. I was amazed by the scale of the operation. I was amazed by the speed of the operation. Humbled in my own little struggle to create a single baby sock. Pondering the difference between mechanical precision and the art of the handicraft.

In this first installment, I send you some pics from the bottom floor. The start of the factory process. ..The 'men's work' floor, where the wool was combed and spun onto massive bobbins.

In it goes...

The combing cogs in natural colour

The machine that places the wool on the arm length bobbins...

Like I said, the boys floor of the factory...

Next time...I will take you to the spinning room - are you excited yet?? xxx