Progressing Slowly

Dear Brother,
Remember these? Maybe I'll have them ready in time for your 26th birthday, next year.

Ideas

A couple of things I would like to knit, that are not in my Ravelry queue:

Pie Knits Jae Buckle Tank, modified quite a bit. I imagine it hip/tunic length in loosely knit dark purple linen with matching purple tweedy wool for the straps (or perhaps black leather?) and wooden buttons instead of buckles. Looking forward to seeing the pattern!

Anna Bell's Tiggy, I'm hoping for a pattern some time in the future.

Meanwhile I seem to be preparing for autumn. I find myself knitting hats and mittens, sewing scarves, making soups and baking bread. The picture below is of a patchwork scarf made from thrifted wool fabrics.

Budding

Look the cherry trees at Järntorget are budding! In another couple of weeks they'll be in full bloom. I think I'll start walking that part of the way to University as soon as the snow has melted away.


My lace skirt is almost done, I just have to finish the picot edgings and the waistband now. I found the perfect yarn to do them with, Garnstudio's Cotton Viscose in a blood orange color. Nice and shiny! It's the same type of yarn that I used for my Circular Shrug.

March was the month of books for me. I bought a bunch of new ones, for crafting mostly.

• Papper is a paper craft book filled with lots of uninteresting projects and few interesting ones. It's very basic, which is probably why I find most of it kind of boring. I really appreciate the 3 featured bookbinding techniques though, they are the reason I bought the book. I'm using one of them for the Scrapbook Cookbook Swap at Craftster.
  
  Here's a little glimpse of what I'm planning for the swap by the way:

• New Knits by Erika Knight has an awesome pattern for a club chair cover, and I happen to have a green kind of boring club chair that's just waiting to be made over. It's a monstrous project requiring massive amounts of yarn, time and arm/wrist/hand muscle strength. ;) Just the kind of thing I love making.

• In Simple Crochet my favourites are a floor cushion made with leather string, the round cushion and most of all the net grocery bag in plastic string.

• The quilt book was a chance buy, I saw a scarf from it on a couple of blogs and ordered the book on impulse. Which I'm glad I did. As I've mentioned my mother in law is really in to patchwork and quilting. She has made some really awesome projects, including a "Millennium Quilt" that contains 2000 tiny fabric squares, donated from different people and all from differently patterned fabrics. Anyway I know she's been wanting to make a quilt for us. The problem is we don't have a quilt kind of home. But in this book I found a really cool quilt that would look great on our bed. Just switch the pink and red in the picture to turquoise and dark blue. A possible future Christmas gift perhaps? (:

Oh and I'm happy, happy, happy today, because of a bunch of study related stuff. I got a summer job at the local pharmacy (finally something related to my studies!), I did really well on my organic chemistry exam, now I have 5 days off before my next course begins, and I am typing away on an application letter for an exchange semester at University of Brighton next year.

Winter

This was not what I had in mind after the long mild winter we've had. Spring was officially declared in mid-february. Charming, though, that nature doesn't always agree with us people.

I haven't posted much lately for several reasons, One of them being that my camera is really messed up. Well actually the batteries are the problem. I load them properly, but they're stone dead after I 've taken one or two pictures. And crafting posts without pictures just aren't as fun.

I tried to get some pictures of some winter accessories now that there's actually winter weather, and I did get this before the camera died:
It's Urchin by Ysolda, knit in Garnstudio's Eskimo that Charlotte gave me for my Birthday. Warm, green and a little too large, just so it won't mess up my hair too badly ;). It's a really easy pattern to follow and becuase of the bulkyness of the yarn it's finished in no time.

Long time no post

All I have today are some photos. The knitted piece is the Circular Lace Cardigan I finished in October. It's from the book Feminin Strik by Lene Holme Samsoe and is made with thrifted wool. The fit isn't perfect, but in my opinion it's a really innovative and beautiful piece and it deserves nice pictures. Maybe I'll see if Chris can get some posing pictures of it on me, so I can show the fit. But that will probably take another 6 months if I know us right...

Flicca Yarn - finally arrived!

They called from Strikk, the 10 balls of Greenland I need to finish Flicca have arrived!

However, I'm having a knit-free week. I need to study for an exam I'm taking this Friday. So actually it's more of an anything-other-than-biomedicine-free week -and still I find time for blogging a few lines. ;)

We've generously been given three days off after the exam(which by the way is on Friday evening)! I bet they'll be very three very intense days knit-wise...

Flicca Frustration & Retro Fabrics

I've been waiting for the yarn I need to finish Flicca for more than 6 weeks now. The staff at Strikk have no idea why it's taking so long. I don't feel like scanning the city for other retailers (who are likely to have the same problem anyway). Annoying, indeed, I would like to be able to wear the sweater while it's still winter!

Nothing bad comes without something good, or what is it the optimistic say? While waiting for my Flicca yarn I've worked on several small ideas I've had for a while.

This sweater was boring and never worn. The orange shade is wrong for me. Too much pink? I'm not sure why, but I don't like it. I didn't dare to attempt dyeing it, instead I tried to cheer it up with some appliqué, et voilà:



I'm not sure I'll wear it more often, but it certainly looks more interesting this way.

I recently recieved some very cool retro materials. A distant realtive to Chris, who has worked a lifetime as a seamstress, was moving and needed to get rid of some stash fabrics. Of course my patchworking and quilting mother in law was called in to salvage whatever she could use. She rescued some awesome fabrics for me. Lovely, boldly printed textiles from the 60's and 70's! Most of them were already cut into pattern pieces for large blouses or dresses. But that's something that certainly doesn't discourage me. Future projects:

1. Blue printed cotton - use for retro dress

2. Silky blue floral - use for handbag

3. Crazy 60's floral print - use for blouse

4. More flowers, semi-transparent - use for skirt

5. Wild flowers and bees - Use for dress

Finally I'll get to use some of the dress patterns I mentioned about 6 months ago!

Dad's Socks

Finally, I present to you my father's socks, finished back in September and modeled by the man himself:

He reports that they are very warm and way too fancy to walk around the house with. Perfect to put on before he sits back in his armchair to peel himself an orange and watch the evening news.

Yarn: Swedish wool yarn in three different natural shades of grey.
Pattern: Knitty's univeral toe-up sock formula combined with a traditional Baltic mozaic pattern that I found in the book Vantar från När och Fjärran by Eva Maria Leszner

Flicca and Birthday

I finally bought yarn for Flicca: Greenland from Coats HP, a mix of wool (50%), acrylic (35%) and some alpaca (15%). It's very soft and dark brown with discrete white strands here and there (the alpaca I assume). Excellent for a household with two white cats.

It's amazing how quickly this cardigan is knit. I've already finished the full back. I'm really looking forward to wear it. It's getting cold here; the temperature is creeping down towards 0 celsius.



I celebrated my birthday, the 16th, in a calm manner, attending classes and reading up on steroid hormones. No cake, but I did get some really nice presents.



Christian's sisters spoiled me rotten and literally gave me everything I really wanted, it was almost like being a 6 year old again. The beautiful gold & wood leaf earrings are from them. So is the Fitted Knits book, the moss green yarn (Garnstudio's Eskimo) and the giant tub of herbed salt(yum!). I used the yarn for an Urchin, but made it full of mistakes and one size too small (apparently I have a large head...), so I'm going to re-knit it.
The necklace is from my wonderful childhood friends, who spotted the earrings I was wearing and thought I could use a matching necklace.

I recieved some financial support from dad and the in-laws, very much appreciated as well. Dad's gift magiclly transformed into 28 Balls of Greenland for Flicca, A Laptop Lunches Bento Box, and Some Expensive Food. The rest I'm saving for a reading lamp and a pair of brown wool pants.

Thanks everyone!

Wristwarmers & Magic Yarn Ball

The lacy circular cardigan is finished and totally wearable. Pictures will be posted as soon as I can get some decent photos of it.

I made a bunch of wristwarmers this summer:


I'm thinking of making the yellow/grey one in a red version as Christmas gift for my mother in law. She gave me an inspirational book with tons of different patterns for wristwarmers last Christmas, and has been hinting that she would like a pair for herself. The pattern on these specific wristwarmer's are a sunwheel from Gotland, where some of her ancestors are from.

I recieved two lovely Magic Yarn Balls from Greenapples. Instead of just unravelling the yarny goodness all at once, I really wanted to knit them both out and gradually discover all the little hidden surprises. It's so much more fun that way. My knitting time, however, is very limited at the moment so I made a little compromise with myself. I decided to knit the green scarf yarn ball out and then unravel the purple one before knitting the hat. I even started on the scarf. And then I brought the MYBs with me to class and showed them to a friend who was very excited and convinced me to unwind both of them there, immediately. Ok, so it didn't really take a lot of convincing ;). Here they are, unraveled and awesome:


The purple yarn is for the Shedir cap from Knitty and the green yarn is for another Knitty pattern, Branching Out, which is by now finished and very much loved!

Still knitting...

My summer of funemployment is over and I'm back at uni. This means less time for everything other than either studying too much or being anxious that I'm studying way too little.

But I still have some crafting content: my father's 60th birthday is coming up and I've been working on a pair of socks for him since August. I'm using knitty's universal toe-up formula combined with an old Baltic pattern I found in a mitten knitting book.

The socks are taking forever and are not half as fun to knit as I hoped they'd be. But I have learned several things about knitting intricate mosaics with several colors along the road:

• Don't knit too tightly, try to find a relaxed gauge.
• Don't knit too relaxed or you'll get loops to get stuck in on the wrong side.
• Avoid mosaics on garments that are supposed to be elastic (I knew that already, but didn't expect it to be this bad!)
• Don't knit a tight fitting gift and expect to keep it a secret all the way until you give it. I tried the socks on myselt and found them a bit tight. Now I have big feet for being a lady, but not as big feet as my dad, so of course that worried me. I had Chris (who could probably wear canoes for shoes) try them on. He said they cut off the blood-flow to his feet. Not a good quality for a piece of clothing that is supposed to prevent gangrene rather than iniate it. So I had to let dad try them. And indeed they were too small. But only over the ankles, which made them totally rescuable. I just made a ribbed leg instead of a patterned one. Not as pretty as a mosaic leg, but it's not like he'll be wearing them with shorts anyway. I've finished one sock so far and knit the toe on the other one. Now I have about a week to finish the other one too.

Dad's Socks

Flicca was supposed to be my next big knitting project, but I keep putting it off. Earlier, I didn't have yarn money, and now when I have it I can't choose color. I bought a light grey wool/acrylic mix yarn and was meaning to make a swatch of it, but on my way home from the yarn store I changed my mind and decided I wanted to use brown instead. This happened despite the 30 minutes I spent staring at different colors in the store. But now I think I'll settle for a nice chocolate brown, it probably looks better on me than gray.

The scanner-squished skein of yarn that won't be used for my flicca. Now, the question is should I take it back or should I use it for something else?

Meanwhile I've been working on a lacy cardigan from the book Feminin Strikk. It's a really entertaining and different piece, knit in the round with an interesting lace pattern.

Book picture from Feminin Strikk by Lene Holme Samsoe

It's written for a kidmohair yarn, for instance kidsilk, but I'm using a thin moss green vintage wool. It's a one size piece that is said to be "extremely elastic". I just hope it doesn't end up too big.

What will become my lovely lacy cardigan

I found a new project I really want to make, the Geneva Camisole from Rowan Magazine #42, a beautiful lace camisole made with merino wool. Once again the color is an issue. I want to use the recommended yarn: Rowan's 4 ply soft. But there are several pretty colors that I can't choose from: Sooty, Dove, Folly, Clover, Daydream or Leafy. See my problem? I can't even determine if I want to go with a more red or green shade. :/

I was looking through my stash of old knitting magazines the other day. In a 1969 issue of Woman's Day Knitting Book I found this mini dress.


I love it! Wouldn't it look great with a ribbed turtle neck added? I'm going to put it in line with the rest of my future projects right away!

I figured out how to solve the shoulder problems I had with the green cardigan in my last post. It didn't even require any thinking from my side. Ever since I wrote that post I've been stumbling over yoke sweaters everywhere (Knitty, Interweave Knits - Eunny Jang's Tangled yoke cardigan). A yoke. That is clearly just what my cardigan needs. But don't expect any FO in the near future, this is a long term project. Lots of thinking to do before I get started. Well, at least I don't have to worry about colors this time. I've already established that I want my cardigan to look as much as the original as possible!

Some inspiration

I'm back from a nice and lazy week in Greece. I survived the heat and mosquitos. At the moment I'm house-sitting for the in-laws, and the things I have to occupy myself with, apart from household chores (there's an impressive amount of plants to water!), are sockknitting (ruled out due to a case of wry neck) and the computer. Long live the internet, if you can't craft, then craft-surf!

I came across an amazing wedding dress while looking for some sweater yarn. This would be the one thing that could convince me to get married, if it justified knitting a baroque wedding gown. For anyone seriously interested in the dress a free pattern will be available at Järbo Garn in October according to their announcement. However it will probably only be in swedish. To accompany the dress pattern there will also be one for the bridal crown. For some reason I don't feel the same urge to make the crown...

The reason I found the dress was because I was searching for yarn to make a sweater similar to the one on this book cover:

I love the color combination used, the location of the patterned panel, and the overall style of the cardigan. In fact I would like an exact copy of it. I've already begun to draw a chart for it and I added it on ravelry. However I'm not quite sure how it's made, the image shows no trace of raglan or sleeve attachment seams. Are the seams concealed in some clever way I don't know of, or is it simply knit in one, maybe two pieces? I think I've seen something with similar shoulders and neck in one of my craft magazines. As soon as I get back to the flat I'll go through my enourmous pile of magazines and see if I can find it. I really want to make this cardigan!

Seaside Knitting + Finished Shrug

I finished my circular shrug and decided to get some action shots. It's made from a pattern I found on a craftster knit-a-long. I wanted a shiny fancy yarn as I intended to wear the shrug to a wedding, so I used Garnstudio's Cotton Viscose in dark grey. The wedding was in April and I finished the shrug yesterday, so that plan didn't work out. But I'm still very pleased with it and find it very wearable.

Grey, Grey, Grey, What A Rainy Day!

And The Back...

At the beginning of this week I went on a mini vacation with friends Jess and Jo. We drove southwards along the coast to Varberg where we rented a cabin for 2 nights.

Ice Cream Man Welcoming Us

It rained non-stop, with the exception for tuesday afternoon. In addition Jo had was overworked and had a bad cold, so we spent a lot of time indoors chatting and watching American talk shows. Cozy indoor chats and crappy tv both are both great opportunities to multitask and do some knitting, and so I did.

Knitting On The Rocks

I worked half way through my cabled vest, just to realise I'm probably never going to wear it. I'll put it away for now. Maybe I'll finish it some other time, maybe I'll frog it and use the yarn for something else. I also finished a rather short version of the Falling Water Lace Scarf(PDF-link) in some kind of blue mohair blend that I bought at the Red Cross. Not sure if I'll ever wear it. I'm starting all kinds of small projects, but I'm not really inspired for any of them. I just want to get started on my Flicca. I purchased the pattern today. But I won't be able to afford any yarn until I'm off my cheapskate summer budget. I'm trying to decide whether I should go with Garnstudio's Eskimo or Lovikka Yarn. It's going to be one warm coat, both yarns are 100% wool!


Good Night All!

Circular Shrug and Fitting Doll Pictures!

Hooray! I only have 7 cm to go on my circular shrug! I cast on for it in February with the intention to wear it to a wedding in April. Lofty ambitions, indeed. No need to say I was doomed to fail on that goal. It's a small gauge project and quite monotonous too, as it's essentially just one long rectangular piece. A typical "TV-knit" or "bus-knit".


The ribbing is 400 sts wide and the main part is 200 sts wide in mock rib stitch. By know I have knit 53 cm on the 3 mm needles I'm using. But now I can see the end of it, that's what keeps me going.

Just for fun I compared it to one of my other projects, a cabled vest of which I've knit 1/3 in 3 days...

I'm not a big fan of chunky knits, I think they usually turn out too bulky for my taste. But I might be on the verge of expanding my horizons, after all I'm knitting a vest on 6 mm needles. And the othe day I had a look around and found a project that really fell into my liking: http://soknitpickygallery.blogspot.com/2007/05/shopping-tunic.html. Doesn't it look wonderfully warm and cosy? Makes me think of windy autumn days... (:

And just because I've been going on and on about it in previous posts, my duct tape dress form is finished and I have pictures!

We chose the worst day possible to make this. It was the hottest summer day of the year with 32 degrees celsius outside and glaring sunlight flooding in through the windows. Our apartment has no balcony and is very easily heated to a nice sauna temperature. To that, add having duct tape firmly wrapped around your chest and upper body. It's a miracle we didn't pass out!

The dress forms however turned out great and are extremely useful.

Finished Cardigan!

Finally I'm done with my cabled cardigan!

The cables run from shoulder to bottom edge and gather in the waist both on front and back.


I chose vintage looking metal buttons to get the right look ;) . There's picot border around all the edges:


As I mentioned in a previous post I had problems with excess shoulder width, so I "cheated" a bit, there's a good 5 cm of the back piece hidden in parts of the side seams:

Looks like I'm not the only one loving my new sweater!

Burda Binge

The past 3 months I've been buying every new Burda issue. Usually I just frown at them because the style of the clothes tend to be too "mature" for me. But in these mags there are some garments I could really see myself in. I probably won't make many of them, as usual. But I keep thinking that someday when I'm looking for that cute blouse or cool dress, then I'll go get my magazine stash and sewing machine.



Some of the things that caught my liking:

Burda 6

• Blouse 1
• Blouse 2 , I'll try to reconstruct a large white men's shirt to make something like this.
• Top with semi open back, I just need to find some nice jersey! A second hand XL t-shirt in a nice color would be nice.

Burda 5 (The "dress issue", hooray!)

• Dress 1
• Dress 2
• Dress 3
• Skirt
• Jacket

Burda 4

• Waistcoat
• Bag - couldn't find a link :/, but it's a beautiful suede bag.
• Dress

I'll go through my fabric stash some rainy day to see if there's anything useable for the patterns above...

Some updates on my ongoing projects:

Cabled Cardigan - Good news: all the pieces are knit, blocked and seamed. Bad news: it doesn't fit very well. It's way too wide over the shoulders and the sleeves are too big. I made the sleeves short by the way, I liked how it gave the sweater a more contemporary look. The sleeves aren't really a problem though, I'll easily fix them. The excess shoulder width, however, has caused me some trouble. I don't at all feel like unravelling the back piece, which is the piece with the most exaggerated width. I think I'll just take in a couple of centimeters in the seams. That will make the seams lumpy and not as pretty, but I really don't feel like reknitting anything at the moment. Maybe I'll do that at a later point.

And my favorite project at the moment, my duct tape Fitting Doll is just about finished. I only need to stabilize the stand! It turned out quite well and looks like me apart from a slightly larger waist. A few hours of being tightly wrapped in duct tape would probably lead to substantial bloating on any day of the year. The day we chose for our project also happened to be the warmest day of the year this far. Solution to the problem: I didn't stuff the waist as hard as the rest of the doll, so it looks a little floppy and deflated, but the measurements are right at least. I will post better pictures when I can get it to stand on its own.

I made two necklaces from all the lovely beads I've been getting from my Handmade Bead Swap partners. Here they are, green leafy and most wearable! And yes, the white shirt is mounted on Ms Duct Tape.

Onsala Weekend

We spent the weekend at Chris' parents' place and I got a lot of knitting done. (:

I'm working on a cabled cardigan and I almost got one of the sleeves done. After that there'll only be one sleeve, picot edgings and seams left, and then I'm done, joy! Although, I am a bit worried as the front and back look quite wide, especially around the chest. Probably I'll be able to adjust the shape when blocking, but it still bothers me. I'm knitting from an old pattern from 1983 and I'm not sure my choice of yarn is compatible with the pattern... But I'll find out, I suppose. :P

The lovely pattern:

I almost finished the wrist warmers for Chris' mother, I just have to sew the last one together. Knowing that she won't read this, I'll post pictures when I'm done. I'm going to have big problems to keep myself from giving them to her right away. But it's summer now, warm and fuzzy wool wrist warmers are not in season!

I'm thinking of making myself a pair, just to use up some acrylic yarn I have stashed. I'm not a big fan of acrylic yarn, but I bought it, so I have to use it for something. I'd like to make them in a zigzag pattern but I can't decide whether I should use one, two or three colors. I made a swatch to see what white and grey looks like, but I didn't really like it. Maybe I should stick to one color? This is what I have to play with:



Even though I have a ton of projects going on, I keep finding new things that I really, really want to make. I've been browsing loads of knitting blogs and the knitting forum on Craftster and have added some new things to my constantly growing to-do-list:

• First there's Flicca, have a look at it and you'll understand why I want it!
• Second, the beautiful Nora Gaughan "Capecho" from Vogue Knitting. It's from the winter(?) issue, which I didn't buy, because that was the only piece I wanted to make from that magazine, and I didn't think it would turn out well. But after having a look at a knitalong for it I changed my mind. With some modifications it should be possible to make something nicely fitting from the pattern. So now I need to get my hands on that pattern!

And finally, this weekend I recieved partners for the Hand Made Bead Swap, so now I can really start working on the beads!