I was so happy to be invited to my first “Putefest”, except that it was not a party where we were throwing cushions at each other but the launch of Nina Granlund Sæther’s new book – no 6, yes, I am in awe of the years of work that calculates to be when it comes to handicraft books – at Cappelen Damm last Monday! Just her latest book took approximately 40 hours per cushion and there are 70 cushions and 2 blankets in the book, all of them knitted, crocheted or embroidered by her while she was working full time as an editor in chief for the magazine “Hus & Bolig”/House & Dwelling. But then Nina is a former teacher and journalist who knows everything about deadlines and has learnt the lesson of working even standing waiting for the bus. Her mum, present at the launch, was claiming that the only place she did not work on a cushion was at funerals…

The book is stunningly photographed by Guri Pfeifer – yes, she has also photographed some of my swatches, see more photos on her website: guripfeifer. Nina’s cushions are in different styles to suit everyone and includes a few with texts you do read twice in astonishment since it does not sink in the first time. An American publisher is among the interested foreign ones but did want to exclude a small selection. Do look at Hobbyklubben’s webpage and you will soon find one of the suspects, klick on: “se bilder” on hobbyklubben.

Mostly, I admire the newspaper cushions where she has transcribed only a small part of the text that you can read but the rest is clearly embroidered or crocheted to look like printed text. Do take a look at Nina’s blog – use Google translate if you do not read Norwegian, it is worth the effort – to see more photographs and read some of her other post! Here at syl.tynn. I, for one, am happy she has started blogging again after completing her latest book.