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.

Fitting doll research

I've been doing some further research for the Fitting Doll Project Helen & I are doing.
I found some interesting reads:

Sewing Stunt Double - How-To Guide
Craftster Discussion

Duct Tape Body Double

I was at Helen's for one of our sewing nights yesterday. She has a serger, so I took the opportunity and finally got started on my black 20's cocktail dress. I didn't get very far though, that piece is advanced! Advanced in this case means that it calls for a lot of hand stitching, which is very time consuming. But, I did get the top half, or the "bodice", almost finished. No pictures yet, I have to sew the shoulder seams first, at the moment it just looks like a black pile of fabric.

Helen is really in to designing and constructing her own patterns, and has been looking around for a good fitting doll. While searching online forums for affordable ones she stumbled upon a DIY guide on how to make a customized fitting doll. Now, how awesome is that? A fitting doll that is your own double, not just with 3 adjustable measurements, but one that perfectly matches every inch of your own body! This is where to find the guide: http://www.sysidan.se/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9327&highlight=provdocka (in Swedish), which in turn is based on this: http://www.leanna.com/DuctTapeDouble/ (in English)
So we booked one day for supply shopping (loads of duct tape, old t-shirt & some kind of stand) and one day for creating our Duct Tape Body Doubles. :D Now that's something to look forward to!

I'm stuck on the cabled sweater. I got the idea that I could make it a short-sleeved cardigan. It would definitely look good, but would it be practical? When am I likely to wear a short sleeved wool garment? Will it look good with a longsleeve t-shirt underneath, so I can wear it in winter time?



I don't know. We'll see.

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!