Hiatus

Well hello dear knitting blog. It's been a while.

And that's because immigrated to Sweden! Land of potatoes, kaneelbullar (cinnamon rolls), and yarn in every store and supermarket. I had to prepare for the move and since then I've been extremely busy, working on my Swedish and starting my new job.

I've also promised myself not to knit a single stitch until I finish the cross-stitch I started last November for my nephew, Josiah. I'm about 95% done and I'm hoping if I work hard, that I can finish it next week. I've put in hundreds of hours and it is shaping up quite nicely. I will make a post showing that off once it's done, so you can expect to hear from me in a week or so, I hope!

Cheers!

Golden leaves hat

The day has come; I finished my first hat and I didn't even run out of yarn. It was a fun project from start to finish:

My friend Jessica showed me how to work with 4 DPNs. I was amazed - it always looked so complicated that I never dreamt I could do it myself.

After the ribbing was done, I switched to my 60cm 4mm circular needles

Near the end I had to switch back to DPNs because the circular needles were too long. This looks (and was) a complicated mess!

Tada! The finished product. As you can see, it was way too warm to actually wear a hat.

What a weird picture of me, but I didn't feel like taking more.

Right after finishing my mini photo shoot, some hot air ballons passed directly over our neighborhood. I didn't think to take a picture until they were a distance away.

The hat was a relatively quick knit (I finished it in 5 days) and I feel very pleased at the end result. Not to mention the colors! Too bad it was the last skein of a discontinued yarn. Maybe I can find more online somewhere.

Next time, I'll be showing off some very nice yarn that my sister-in-law acquired for me, to make something adorable.

Oliver Octopus

First of all, my sincere apologies for my absence. I would of enjoyed nothing better than being able to post something at least once a week here for the last 3 weeks. Unfortunately, house renovations has taken up most of my free time. Knitting came to a complete halt until 2 days ago.

For those who haven't seen it, here's a picture of our living room, at our house warming party in 2009 (It's not a great picture but I can't find better ones at the moment).

Here is the living room after Andreas' paint job:

Looking towards the kitchen:

Front entry way:

It feels so awful and bare with the orange gone in the living room. It went very well with our brown furniture and made it feel like eternal autumn in our house. Autumn is my favorite season, so fine by me.

Regardless, I managed to get some knitting in this past weekend. Oliver Octopus is done and ready to make his debut. *drum roll*

I started on a new project yesterday, and luckily my knitting friend was here, because it turned out this hat was supposed to be knit in the round! Panic! Pleasure! I was about to uncover the secret of knitting in the round! I had to start over once but I've got the hang of it now (I think?). I must honestly say I have no idea if I'm knitting on the WS or RS but luckily it's just a simple K1, P1. This should turn out interesting... did I mention I only have 1 skein of this yarn, and it's discontinued, and I have no idea if I have enough for the hat? More details to follow later this week!

Weekend in Amsterdam = bigger stash

Last weekend Andreas and I headed down to Amsterdam to visit Andreas' brother who lives there. We had a very nice, relaxed weekend that included rummycube and homemade chai tea. But one of the highlights for me was getting to check out a new yarn shop.

Originally I had wanted to go to this shop called "Weldraad" but seeing as the metro line that went there was being repaired and the bus would take a long time, I had to 'settle' for "De afstap". De afstap was a beautiful yarn store which while tiny in square meters, was jam packed with yarn. They carried almost the entire rowan collection with a small selection of other high-end yarn. Fine by me! I had no idea that rowan made so many types of yarn.

New additions:

As you can see, I found quite a few nice things!

This outrageously red yarn is destined for a beautiful skirt

I love the texture and colors of this silky tweed. This will become a warm winter scarf for Andreas.

This wool is some of the softest that I've ever felt. It should make a nice hat for me.

This colorful yet refined felted tweed will become the cutest gloves I've ever owned - I'm sure of it.

100% baby alpaca for a set of very warm arm/wrist warmers. Nice for biking.

I can't wait to get started on all of these projects but first I have a few other things to finish. I'm currently working on Oliver Octopus, whom you'll be meeting in my next blog post. Oliver is a bit shy so it might be a couple of days, but who knows.

Edgar

Edgar is finished and is patiently awaiting fall weather so that I can adorn my neck with his beautiful colors. Although, with the type of summer that we've had, I could almost wear him now.

I just love the shape of the scarf. Amazingly, the technique to create such a shape is quite easy - just decreasing in the middle of each row (S1, K2tog, PSSO) every time on the right side. After so many rows, it naturally forms the shape you see above, and then you cast on stitches on both sides to start over again.

For the nice edge you slip 1 stitch purl-wise at the beginning of every row. The pattern can be found here: http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall05/PATTedgar.html .

I made mine quite a bit longer than the longest amount of squares called for in the pattern (I kept going until I used up both skeins of my noro silk garden, minus a bit of the black colored bits), but of course with this sort of pattern it doesn't really matter how long or short you make it - whatever suits you best.

Cletus is cleverly clawing around...

... now that I've finished him! Check it out:

He was a lot of work to make because all of the claws and legs are seperately knitted and then sewed on to the body. Some of his legs were over stuffed because it was hard to get tiny pieces of stuffing into those tiny little legs. Those cute tiny little legs, I may add. I sewed the eyes on and then super-glued them. A few years from now we'll see if they withstand wear and tear.

This little guy gets to hang around until someone comes along to play with him. :) In the meantime he'll make a very cute addition to my desk.

Edgar is eager for me to finish

'Edgar' is coming along nicely! The bottom square is a bit larger than the following ones, but that often happens, at least for me, when starting a new pattern.. my gauge is too large in the beginning and then falls into a rhythm. In any case, 4 1/2 squares out of 17 completed. See for yourself..

I just love the colorway on this noro yarn! The only thing I'd change about it is a little less black.. there is quite a bit of it in there. Also I wish the yarn hadn't gotten tangled before I started, it made it pill quite a bit and the finished product won't look as pretty as it could have. Oh well - a learning lesson. Take care of your yarn young men and women! :)

On a side note, we also plucked these wonderful pieces of food and art from our garden this afternoon...

The beets are amazing.. such vibrant color. I would love to have yarn that color.

Another shot for the fun of it:

And now I must be off. Andreas is taking me to see Petticoat tonight at the Martini Plaza. I'm looking forward to it.

Hi!

*waves*

I decided to start up a knitting blog! Not to say that other stuff won't come here, but I knit a *lot* and I really enjoy sharing my knitting with others. I want to open an online yarn store in the near future (within the next 2 years) and I think I will call it fiddlesticks.. so the name seemed fitting for the blog as well.

Here's a picture of a project I just started working on.. just a teaser!

Hopefully I'll have a very nice set of pictures of this after the weekend.

Have a nice weekend!