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!

Swaps Galore

(For my Matrioshka Doll Swap partner koi, if you by any chance read this and haven't recieved your package yet, it will spoil the surprise!)

Here are the photos of the swap items I've been making that I promised to post.

First some wallets for the Sweat Shop Swap:

I made a bunch to try some different ideas. I'm going to make more of the orange one, the one with green chairs and the retro flower print one and put up for sale on my etsy.
I chose five of them to use for the swap:




And now over to the Matrioshka Doll Swap! I decided to make a stenciled t-shirt, which was on my partners wishlist, and some other useful trinkets.

T-shirt sizes can be trucky when you don't have the right measurements. I had a men's size small baggy white t-shirt to start with and needed to transform it to a size small womens t-shirt... I looked up clothing patterns for measurements, and did my best, hopefully it fits. At least I'm certain it won't be to small! Then I got to the fun part stenciling! I made the stencils from adhesive plastic. The black lines are done with a fabric marker.

I loved the result and I'll have to make one of these for myself. It was really sad to part with it! Hopefully koi will like it as much as I do!

The notecards below are made from magazines that I surprisingly, but also very conveniently, found in one of Chris's stock magazines a week after starting the swap.


I also wanted to use one of the cross-stitch diagrams I designed, so I made a cross stitch keyring to go with the rest.

The grass is greener on the other side

I am blogging from my brother Adam's student's room in a Stockholm suburb. It's my last night here and I thought I'd give a brief account of my visit. I've done the necessary walk in the city, but this time I had Adam as a guide, which was far more enjoyable than getting lost on my own as I did last time I was here. He took us out to eat at one of his favorite restaurants, Same Same But Different, a thai place on Södermalm. Getting used to the dim rooms, lit only by fluorescent UV-lights and a candle or two took some time. The food was all right, very spicy indeed. Definitely a fun place to have lunch, and probably an awesome bar in the evenings, but beware of the washrooms! People washing their hands only need to turn their heads slightly to get a view straight into one of the booths. I learned the hard way. I won't tell if I was the one washing or weeing, though. ;)

We spent day two in the archipelago on the quaint island Grinda. It takes a good two hours by boat to get out there, but it's a nice boat trip. Out there I saw this:

Apparently in Stockholm, like everywhere else, the grass is greener on the other side...

Today, on our third day, dad and I went to Sigtuna, a small town with a with ancient church ruins and rune stones everywhere. Interesting, indeed.

Before I end this for the night, I have some crafting content. I've been working on the theme matrioshka dolls, because of a swap I am organizing on craftster. I've been trying different techniques on the theme, and here is one of my favourites, cross stitch on a thrifted remodelled giant tee:



I'm very proud of the fact that I designed the cross stitch diagram myself! I'll see if I can post a template here if anyone is interested.



I will be back soon with more matrioshka doll stuff, and also some pictures of the wallets I made for the Sweat Shop Swap.

Cheers!

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.