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

Sketches

Labwork and Studying have kept me busy lately. So not a lot of crafting going on. I have spent some time at my dad's place however, and he has a shelf full of old photo albums that I've rummaged through. Except for nostalgia and longing for loved ones who are gone, the photos also gave me a strong urge to pick up my pencil and paper and draw, which is something I haven't done since I was in art school three years ago. Lately it seems the only thing I use pencils for are taking notes.




These are quick little sketches, nothing I'm going to frame and hang. But I did enjoy making them. I just wanted to make the top one as a tribute to my Grandpa, who I got to see way too little of. I don't remember talking to him very much, just that he was one of the kindest people I've known.