Pretty pretty...

First of all; thank you very much for the award, Moan!!! I am honoured :-)

Princess is very happy and pleased with her new stockings - she designed dem herself for me to knit, and they were done just in time for the Easter break. She wore dem indoors during our weekend at the mountain cottage, but the original idea was to wear them on her way to and from her dance class. Alpaca is not exactely a durable fibre for socks, so I guess my "thumb-heal" will come handy. It is easily replaced - I keep the scrap yarn on hold ready for the first hole on the heel to appear ;o) Design: Princess Pattern: My own Yarn: almost 100 g of Drops thin alpaca Needles: 2 mm dpns

PS - the ripple was FINALLY finished during Easter - stay tuned for some bragging pictures!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, all! I hope for nice weather and plenty of knitting- and crocheting time... maybe - just MAYBE - I will finally finish my ripple??? The colours match the season for sure :o) The eggs were painted by Princess & me.

Hello, my name is Lola

Finally; here she is! Lola & I have already grown a close friendship. She teames up beautifully with my jeans making herself more of a tunic, and as you can see she is sort of a party girl too. The cozy kind of party, that is! Even though I am a bit more chubby than I like right now, I am sure that Lola will flatter a slightly less curvy version of me as well. The sketch below was drawn in my almanac in November, and I must say I am very happy with the accuracy between the sketch and the real life Lola :o)

Above: Lola relaxing in my friends coach. We both had such a good time with the girls last weekend, with superb home made pizza and excellent coffee at short intervals :o))

Todays title was inspired by one of my favourite creative fabric obsessed designer and blogger at Hello my name is Heather

Thank you Supernøtt for the beautiful handmade ceramic buttons! The xmas gift really came to good use :o)And thank you Marihøna for taking these photos!

Wind me up - in style, please!

Lola is growing into a pretty darling - and I feel confident that the yarn shortage situation will actually turn into a blessing. The purple/plum skeins I got from To damer will add more interest to the garment, but not in a visually noisy or striking way, as the musty wine red of the original Misti bargain (...that I just recently realised was such a bargain because this specific shade would be discontinued...) combines well with it. Tonights knitting café will be the perfect place to let Lola grow further into her final shape :o) As you can see I am treating my super soft and beautiful new skeins of Miski (100 % Baby Llama!) well; as they start their journy towards balls of yarn on the back of my Scandia chair... this is a much cherished lounge chair for the actual knitting too, especially when strategically placed right in front of the telly ;o) PS: To damer has proven the concept of snail mail wrong - I recieved my yummy skeins 24 hours after ordering, and this was by ordinary mail service!

A Big Deal

We are a number of local knitters/crocheters/embroiderers with mixed feelings right now. Our beloved and longest existing LYS is closing down. I have happy memories dating back to my early childhood from this store. I used to come here with my skilled mum when she needed supplies for her many projekts. As grown ups we have both kept the habit of doing most of our yarn shopping here, but never together as far as I can recall. Yesterday I dropped by to check out the closing-down-sale. The shelves were partly bare, but still there were excellent deals to be done! After paying for my 13 balls (650 g: 2,6 km of yarn!!!) of Silk Tweed, 15 balls of fingering Alpaca (750 g: 2,7 km of yarn...), a few sets of circulars in odd sizes + a heap of pretty dyed mother of pearl buttons, I turned to the door for the very last time, and who do I spot in the line behind me? Mum!!! The circle has been closed. We (and hundreds and hundreds of fellow knitters) always love a yarn bargain, but we agree that this one has as much bitterness as sweetness to it. Thank you for all the years of excellent service, room for pondering, squeezing, smelling and endless possibilities for purchasing high quality yarn, Garn & Vevstuen! PS - I just HAVE to go back during my lunchbreak today for one last, LAST time; I feel like I haven´t said my proper goodbyes yet!

In The Pink

After swatching at the last knitting café I finally got around to actually start knitting stockings for Princess. Pretty, pale pink alpaca and a simple lace pattern on 2 mm bamboo dpns will hopefully end up as beautiful, soft and warm under the knee stockings. Princess knows exactely what she wants; her design talent is significant - but it is up to me to transform her ideas into functional garments ;o)

Doing & undoing

The Next Big Thing has shrunk!!! No, I didn´t have a laundry accident - I just realised that I had to rip poor Lola when she was half done. She was getting too wide, and I was running out of yarn. It also seems that the colourway of my beloved Miski has been discontinued (wich is probably why I found it on sale in the first place...). Maybe the yarn will last for a slimmer fit? Here I go again, from where the yoke is divided into sleeves and body. Fingers crossed & needles at high speed for a better result this time!

The Next Big Thing

...will be Lola! She has been lingering in my head as well as in my almanac (the blank pages are excellent for quick sketches!) since mid November - and was reluctantly put on hold because of the x-mas present knitting. Anyway, here it is - the Next Big Thing on the needles! I am going for a tunic/dress kind of garment, and I make the pattern up as I go. As usual... The Noro Coucharon - here seen in its previous life - has a tighter 1 ply twist while the Miski (100 % baby lama) from Du store alpakka - seen here, scroll down a bit - is a very soft and light 2 ply. So I actually did knit up a fairly sized swatch to reality check my great idea! 6 mm needles seem to be good for both the 2x2 rib and the drop stitch pattern. It looks like this top-down-raglan-dress will finally unite the two georgious yarns - and I think in an even better way than I imagined when I first bought the Miski. Our upcoming weekend trip to a mountain inn will probably provide plenty of outdoor/skiing time AND indoor/knitting time. Perfect for some progress on The Next Big Thing! Why she is called Lola? It just fell into my head at last Thursdays knitting café, so I´ll keep the name for now

Ta da!

So here they are; my news! I hope you did not hold your breath waitng, Moan... he he! It is my 11 year old Princess modelling the vest and the armwarmers. I hope to get some photos of myself wearing it later, as the construction of the vest is a good one to show off grown female curves! All in all an intriguing project as I started off h o p i n g my 200 g would be enough for a slightly cropped U-neck vest. Previously I had knitted a couple of Ishbels from 100 g balls of this yarn, and learned that the yardage of the beloved Silkblend is substantial. When I still had 70 g left from the vest I was hoping for regular wristwarmers but the arm warmers just grew and grew - and this is what I got... I am pleased! Both patterns were made up as I went, using 5,5 mm circulars and 200 g of Manos del Uruguay - and I still have a few yards left, for a crochet flower or something.

News on hold

Knitting is a bit slow, but the biggest blogging obstacle is the lack of daylight and TIME to take pictures during the few hours of mid winter daylight that we have in this part of the world... The photo above is a reminder that spring WILL come (in a while...) despite the winter wonderland look outside. I´ll be back with a few little FOs soon - I hope...

Yard after yard

The rest of the autumny Manos del Uruguay silk blend turned into yard after yard of neckwarming softness for my dear father - the last xmas present to be finished in 2009. Just a couple of hours before the presents were unwrapped, to be precise ;o)

Hello 2010! Hello Ishbel the 3rd!

This Ishbel was pure bliss to knit - the same wonderful silkblend Manos del Uruguay on some speedy 6 mm circulars, and the pattern well memorized from making Ishbel the 1st and Ishbel the 2nd. This autumn leaves coloured version was a xmas gift for mum.

Branded hat

A cute, warm and hopefully cool enough hat to wear for a little hero!

This winter I have finally started adding the "brand-tags" on my work, to make sure the recipient remembers who knitted the gift with love ;o)

Off the needles

Soft and pretty alpaca wristwarmers adorned with little beads - Santas little helper is quite pleased with theese, despite the evidence of lacking concentration on the hem of the second one... Yarn: Fingering 100 % alpaca from Du store alpakka. Needles: 3 mm bamboo. Pattern: My own. Ornamental beading strongly inspired by a pattern for a babys hat in Solveig Hisdals Dikt i masker/Poetry in stitches

Ishbel the 2nd

Ishbel the 2nd has been waiting for some decent daylight to be documented for blogging. Decent or not; one should not keep a lady waiting, so here she is anyway. The Ishbel pattern is now kinetically established in my hands, so Ishbel the 3rd will probobably materialise before Xmas. Yarn: Silkblend from Manos del Uruguay. Needles: 6 mm

Ishbel the 1st

Here she is, in all her glory - my dear, little Ishbel (that actually turned out to get even bigger than the largest size of the pattern - the yarnage of the Crazy Zauerball Sock Yarns was impressive!)

Santas little helper on duty!

The gift-making has started - finally! My ambitions are big enough... time will show how much this little helper will actually produce. As usual my gifts will be a mix of homemades and readymades. I love the planning, shopping, producing, wrapping and tag-making - but despite this I always have at least 2-3 gifts to give that really challenge my creativity. Every year I wrench my brain to come up with something nice or/and useful that the same few recipients will appriciate... is this a familiar "problem" to any of you bloggers?! I guess I´ll have to surrender to gift vouchers yet again... ;o)

It´s better to light a candle...

This beautiful little pale pink heart candle was made for ME by my Princess! She has added some dried rose petals - they are sparkling and fragrant. The candle is even embossed with an M for MAMMA (mum)... this is what I call heartwarming :o) Thank you so much, sweetheart <3

Reload

Here she is, my Indian Princess! She still needs some support to keep her shape - some stiffening up beneath the handles. The Sari Silk makes a heavy fabric, so the bag is drooping from its own weight. The red lining and matching flower look good though. As soon as the desired support is added I am ready to take the Indian Princess out and about :o)

Preparing for Christmas

The weekend was a real good one - as it included some surprise yarn shopping :o)) I have known about this yarn shop in Fagernes for a while, but never came around to go there, until this Saturday. It was a sight for sore "rakfiskfestival"-eyes! All natural fibres and a few exciting brands as well, wich I did not expect - so I was surprisesd! I shopped a bit for Christmas presents; this was NOT surprising, though... time will show what these beautiful silk/merino-skeins will turn into. I have a few plans - also for the alpaca ball.

Below: a quick update on the Ishbel: I finally cracked the code for the lace part after searching the Ravelry groups dealing with this specific pattern. I think what really helped was discovering the hundreds of knitters grinding their teeth over this one... as the pattern is not really complicated at all, I mean. It is just good and encouraging to be among equals in such trying times ;o)

Waiting for Ishbel

Ishbel will be around pretty soon, I hope... The stockinette stitch part is done and both of us are ready for the lace adventure! This version of the Crazy Zauerball Sock Yarn is a 2 ply which creates a speckled variegation. I can´t wait to see how it will work on the finished Ishbel!

Blurry pictures will be more common than sharp ones for a few months - winter is coming and daylight is going! But the colours turn out quite accurate and to a colour-freak like me that emends the fogginess :-))