Sunday, February 2, 2020

Knitting -- Dale

I thought I had found an article saying that Dalegarn had published their patterns for free; it gave links to a site that had them. Are you drooling?

Only thing. The article was from 2010. You know how fast links rot. Same here.

Well, I couldn't let it go. I found the home web site.
https://dalegarn.no/

It's in Norwegian.

Never say die. There's a box in the middle of the top of the page that says "ga til katalog". That last word ought to mean something to you.

As a matter of fact, you should really click on the top left box most sites seem to have, to get the menu. One line is "Kataloger". Guess what that means! So click on it.

It's still in Norwegian. There are filter boxes down the left side. For pullovers, click Genser; it will also get you button-front sweaters. Then go down and find the box that has two words, one of which is Filter (the other word means "search") and click it.

You still get way too much to absorb -- 4 pages worth -- so I'm just going to tell you how to find the chart for the pattern(s) you like.  So one of the top ones says Olympic Passion. Click that. It's catalog DG345.

Now go to the bottom of the page. You'll see photos of the pretty people wearing their gensers that match the catalog cover photo. Click on the lady or rather, so you can get back if you mess up, open it in a new tab.

There are two buttons. The left one says "ned last" which is Norwegian for "download". You get an 8 page PDF that you can download to disk for later printing. Sure, the pattern is in Norwegian. But all you need are the charts, so you can paste them into your spreadsheet and make sure they fit the stitch counts you need. You also need the photo cos sometimes the sleeve pattern is different from the front/back pattern. Everything else is irrelevant.

Make sure you go to page 3 and click on DG280 which are Olympic patterns. Or the anniversary catalog, DG189. Or DG381 for some patterns so fancy you'll swear they are woven.

Now. For DG267 they threw me a curve. The "last ned" button also says Katalog. The other button means "order yarn here". You can click on that; the top menu has the word "strikkepakker" on it. That means "kits". Click on that and you don't get the kit for DG267, you get pages and pages of kits. Go ahead, click on it, and then click on anything in the top row. Page down and you will see things with numbers after or below them, the prices of the things in the kit. Last there is a box that says "last ned oppskrift". That means "download pattern." This is the House of Yarn site, which carries products from other vendors than Dale, so see, I just gave you a whole world of needlecraft patterns to make your life miserable.

Back to DG267. It turned out that the catalog has the actual charts in it. They are gorgeous. One is a type of pattern I'm going to write about when I finish making one.

Now aren't you glad I don't give up easily? And if you see something that is too delicious to pass up, and it's not a charted design, well, you can use Google Translate and realize there's no such thing as a good machine translation even after 40 years of trying, or you can try one of these sites.
https://spellingtuesday.com/knitting/learn-norwegian-for-knitters/

The next one goes in the wrong direction but you can always use your page search function in your browser to find the word you need. You also ought to be able to use the Print function and turn it into a PDF, which you will be able to search. I've done it tons of times.
http://www.strikkeoppskrift.com/engelske-ord-og-uttrykk

Another great Nordic site is Sandnes Garn, which I will mention in a future post. Here is its site for free patterns for women. You can change the filters at the left to see other free products, just don't uncheck "utgatte hefter", that means "free patterns".
https://www.sandnesgarn.no/hefter/filter/dame_/klassiker_norske_ikoner/utgatte_hefter_gratis

Do not plan to buy kits from Dale or Sandnes. To make sure it gets to you, you need to pay for tracking the shipment, and you need to pay customs. By the time you've done that, the price has doubled. It's the same all over the world. An Australian site that has what may be the world's last two units of DMC Cebelia will calculate it for you. When you buy gansey yarn, you must get it from U.S. sites like Woolly Thistle, Kirtland's or Churchmouse Yarn and Tea; the price shown on a UK website will not include tracking or customs.

I found a web page that referred to worldwide networks for buying Sandnes and Dale products.  However, the Dale yarn site has huge discounts because the products it listed are no longer available.

The site listed for Sandnes yarn is closed. I checked out a possible Canada retailer; their site does not list Sandnes Garn as something they sell.

So download the patterns, but you will have to make them with somebody else's yarns. Of which there are plenty in the US.

p.s. I didn't tell any of this to the person who wrote the article. I tried to write to her but her email address isn't valid any more. So this is our little secret, OK?

p.p.s. Please don't tempt your significant other to put curses on me for posting both the Dale and DROPS links. Make an extra effort not to spend all your time and money on new gensers.

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