Inspired!

Inspired by both Dans på roser and Formigrafisk I made this narrow scarf/neckpiece for a friends 40iest on april 15th. Congratulations to you, dear, and thank you for sharing your day with me and the other girls. A great night in even greater company! Thanks also to Dans på roser and Formigrafisk for all the inspiration you give us all on your great and beautiful blogs :o)

The scarf was made from scraps of cotton (the middle section) and two tones of Plumet (mohair/lambs wool/nylon). Moss stitch in the centre and a crochet lace all around. A crochet flower with a safety pin on the back makes it easy to vary the use and look of the scarf. It was a joy to make and a joy to give away, as the recipient texted me the day after to let me know it looked great on!

Yet a gigantic blanket?!?

As usual, I tried NOT to think of ideas for new, big projects as I finished the last (the ripple), and as usual I just could not help myself... The colours of these granny squares are a bit musty and retro-ish pointing vaguely bacwards to the 70s and will work great in my parents mountain cabin. So far, all the yarn has been found in my considerable stash of scrap yarn/odd balls - but I will need refill to make the blanket as big as I like. It should cover a bed measuring 120 x 200 cm, as this is the size of our guest bed at home AND our bed at the cabin. I also like my blankets to fill more than one purpose. If "draping my self in velvet" is out of reach (ref. George in the Seinfeld show...), this size will make sure I can really wrap myself in granny squares, snuggling up on the comfortable corner sofa. I already bought a couple of thin alpaca balls in an coordinating colour, for the joining together of the squares and my experience with so called scrap projects is that these will not be the last.

As usual, I tried to convince myself that it is OK to make the blanket as big as the yarn I already got allows, and as usual I did not buy this sensible yet unreasonably idealistic idea - so we´ll see if my stubbornness wins this time as well. My latest calculations concludes that I will need 126 squares + a border to make the blanket the desired size. 54 squares done, 72 to go... It can be a bit of a challenge being equally impatient and enduring! Update: while blogsurfing right after posting this, I discovered a VERY familiar-looking crocheter in the formigrafisk blog. Likewise, dear friend - it was a great catch up on life and rippling - and you are making excellent waves! :-)

The Rising of the Ripple

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SISTER DEAR!!! I hope you have a great day, and that you enjoy the present (not the ripple, I´m afraid...)

So, this is it for the ripple... it took me a couple of years! Most of the time it has been stashed away while I´ve been working on other stuff, but here it is, all 155 x 200 cm of it! As you can see, even the last little scrap of yarn was used for the narrow border. This fact makes me feel sooo proud, as it is kind of a proof of this being a scrap project ;0) It all started here, and as I had miscalculated the number of stitches for the original width of 90 cm, I soon realised I would need more baby wool. MUCH more!

Yarn: 1626 g baby wool (different brands)

Pattern: Traditional ripple; 6 double crochets between every zig and zag!

Hook: 4 mm

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