A New Start

I finished the More Stripes shortly after Easter.

It does fit well and the yarn is really nice and soft. I could stroke it all day.
The knitting has been fun, as usual when I work with Noro. Just all those color changes are really pretty cool. I've had about one knot per ball of yarn - the downside of Noro, but I spit-sliced them and it's really hard to tell where they have been.

I was knitting away on an older scarf project (I started knitting on this one on my last trip to Japan, which has been over a year ago), when last week I German knitting magazine fell into my hands with a pattern I really liked. The pattern is using ribbon yarn, and as it happened I still had that semi-finished Bombshell (just scroll down a bit) sitting around. I finished the sweater, but never wore it and eventually decided I don't like it at all.
By now I've ribbed all of it up (with the help of some friends), wrapped the yarn into hanks and washed them, so all the dirt and the crinkle get out.

I started knitting, with some modification to the pattern.

So far so good.

After Easter Lunch

Traditionally, at Easter it's my turn to feed my family (that is my parents and my sister and family) at my place. At least that's the tradition since I finally have a place big enough to do so - meaning for the last three years.
Now, this year my sister and her family went away for Easter (we had the good weather at home, they didn't), so we moved the whole event by one week.

As the asparagus season already has started I decided to make an asparagus salad for the starter. It turned out quite yummy, if I may say so myself.


But the (sadly photoless) lamb with potato gratin and green beans was also very good. And by the time the lemon cream with raspberries (made by my mom) came round, we were all pretty stuffed.

Facing the Facts

I've always known I've got a bit of yarn. I have some in some boxes in my bedroom (mostly the really old stuff that moved with me at least two times), some in my workroom (sock yarn mostly) and some in my living room (sock yarn again and the cotton and some of my odds and ends)

Today I took all the yarn to one place and took a long hard look at it.


Realizations:
- I have a lot of sock yarn (no surprise there, really, I had known that, though I have to ask myself why I keep buying more if I already have plenty?)
- I do like the color blue (again, no surprise)
- I do have a lot of single yarn balls (which would be okay if I'd knew what to do with it)
- I think one of my next projects needs to be a crazy quilt afghan or something along that line in order to get rid of all those single yarn balls
- I may have enough yarn for the short sleeved cardigan I've been thinking about since last weekend (how cool is that?), though the yarn is fairly old and I need to take a good long look at it before I decided I really can use it
- I have a lot of yarn I have no idea why the heck I ever bought it (other than I may have been on sale)
- I really should stop buying more yarn ... at least for a while (who am I kidding? I know I will buy more yarn, though I hope to be more project orientated than before)

Something Really Scary

Happy Easter to everybody!!!

If there's one thing a knitter fears it's putting a scissor to your knitting. It's just not done. It's evil. It's really, really scary.

Now, the More Stripes Vest was asking me to do just that *shiver*
The idea is to keep the continuity of the stripes at the left and right hand side of the neck opening. As the stripes are coming naturally from the yarn and they have really long and fairly random repeats, there's no way to keep the symmetry if you knit the left and the right side separately. So, what you do is to knit the neck opening in one go and then *gasp* cut down the middle of the knitted piece in the end. This, by the way, is called steeking.

Before you cut, you sew two lines on either side of the intended cut with a sewing machine. To illustrate this I drew white lines (for the sewing lines) and one red line (where the cut is being made)
Some people recommend a strong drink before cutting, but I managed without.

(just after the first couple of snips - hmm, could be the picture is a bit out of focus because I'm still shaking so much ;))
Right now the front - with open neck hole is blocking, and then I'm ready to sew everything
together.



I'm also presenting to you the block number 18:
and block number 19 for my Aran Afghan

Spring's Here!

Finally!!!

In the last week, the temperatures have risen by a good 15deg C, there's sunshine and I spent some time on my balcony today and yesterday.


The trees are not really green yet, but they're working very, very hard on it.

On the knitting front I'm back to potholders. After trying to show my friends how the double knit technique works, I got back into the mood and did some more.

First pair is basically a repeat of the pair I made a few months ago (--> link), so only a detail picture this time to show off the colors.

Second pair in the works is the resurrection of the Transformer potholders I've tried to do a while ago, but found a bit confusing at this time.


First the Decepticon symbol and I'm in the middle of the Autobot symbol (doing it red on black). It certainly is fun to do and if I come up with a few more pattern, I will probably give it a try too. I've got a good set of colors now, though I might run low on a few eventually. Finding the black was pure luck last week, as I had not been successful before, but then discovered three skeins in the clear out bin at the Wolle Rödel in Frankfurt. Only, they are discontinuing that yarn, so there won't be any more.