Listening to Knitting

Last year in July I bought an ipod. I used to have a different mp3 player before and was okay with it, but eventually I decided to upgrade and enter the world domination of Apple. Not that I don't like my ipod, I do and I love that I actually can play little movies, but what had put me off for the longest time was that for using an ipod, you also have to use itunes, which I was rather opposed before.
But what makes it all worth (at least to me) is that opportunity to download podcasts, and though I started rather late actually doing so, I'm now hooked.
(and, yes, I know, you don't really need itunes and an ipod to listening to podcasts ...)
It all started when I knew I had to spend 8 to 10 hours sitting in a plane on my flight to the US. There was a discussion on Ravelry at this time about the best knitting podcasts, and two which had been recommended were 'Electric Sheep' by Hoxton Handmade and 'Cast On'. 'Electric Sheep' is currently on episode 30 and 'Cast On' has a whooping 88 parts already. This is a lot. Though I listened to and enjoyed only two episodes of 'Cast On' so far, I'm now on episode 21 of 'Electric Sheep' and my plan is to keep on listing until I get them all.
Interesting enough, 'Electric Sheep' isn't so much about knitting. Hoxton Handmade usually starts out with an essay on whatever topic that comes to mind (something having something to do with knitting, but sometimes not) and then goes on things that caught her attention, may it be knit wise or not. She does have a lovely English accent, which is something I really enjoy listening to. She talks alot about what's currently going in and around London, and though I have no chance to go to all the places she recomments, I still enjoy hearing about it. There are clearly worse ways to spend have an hour knitting each week.

Speaking of knitting. I'm currently working on several things.
A) is a very popular scarf on Ravelry called 'Baktus'. The idea is to knit in plain garter stitch (every row is knitted), increasing on one side every fourth row. By the time you have knitted half your yarn (determined by weight) you start to decrease every fourth row, making sure that you pretty much use up all your yarn and have none, or rather little, of it left once you done. I think this is a brilliant idea as my stash of left over yarn is occupying a rather large box in my work room with no idea what to make with it.


I'm using a Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball for this pattern, which I split in two smaller ball in order to make stripes. It doesn't quite work out as strippy as I'd hoped, as the dark colors and the light colors seem to like to group together, but after ripping the whole thing to that point once already, I decided not to care. I've just hit the half way point at 80 stitches and am now on the decreasing.

Project B is the 'Flower Trim Bag' from a little book I've bought in the US, 'Stitch Style Bags'.

(that picture is ...ehr, borrowed from here)
I'm doing it in the recommened yarns and it's breezing along fabulously. Only downside, as this bag is not felted, I will need to line it somehow, and I'll need to find out how.
There are two more pattern in that book I really like.

Last, but not least, is a pair of socks I'm working on. I've knitted socks cuff down (my normal modus operanti), toe up, even sideways, but this is the first time I'm knitting one heel out. The pattern is called 'Hat Heel' and can be found here.


I actually finished the first sock, but then discovered that I misplaced my printout of the pattern, so I had to print it out once again.
It really is a very nice fit, and the bright, strippy yarn makes it look interesting.

Florida

I've been away to Florida for about a week.

I saw palms:

I saw pelicans:

I saw alligators:

The space shuttle (Well, technically, I only saw the external tank and the boosters, but they promised me the orbiter is there as well....)
I did plan my vacation so I could see a shuttle launch, but then the launch was pushed out by a couple of days just to the day I was flying home. A well, at least I've tried...


I saw lots and lots of water

I saw surfer dudes


And, of course, I saw a lot more but there's just not enough space for it here.

A few sizes smaller

One of my favorite yarn stores had a sale a couple of weeks back. I've managed to score a bit of yarn, though not enough to make myself a pullover, and not enough to make something fully in one color. The yarn, though, had a nice rustic look to it, and I really wanted to make a pullover for my nephew with it.
I decided to make the body in one color and the arms in another and just add a couple of green stripes to keep it interesting. I've got the measurements from my sister and then I started knitting.


I'm quite happy with the outcome, really. The interesting question now is: will it fit?
I already know the arms are too long (that's after I already did the arm again taking out a good 3 inches in length), but I guess my nephew always can fold the cuffs over.


There's still enough yarn left to make a hat and a scarf.

Next Sunday there's a chance to see if it fits, as my sister and her family make a stop at Frankfurt airport on there way from South Africa to Sweden.

I'll be flying to Florida the same day, so I have to be at the airport only a few hours earlier to meet them. My parents are going to pick me up and give me a lift.

I'll be in Florida for about a week on vacation. I've never been there, so I'm really looking forward to it. I hoped - and planned my fights accordingly - to catch a shuttle launch, but last Friday I've found out they moved the launch window out a couple of days to the same day I'm flying back home, so no luck there. Ah well, at least I've tried.

There will be no blog for the next two Sunday, as I'll be without computer on my trip.

Coloring

I've always wanted to try and dye my yarn myself. Just to see how it turns out. My original plan was to take some of the cheapy, natural colored yarn I've bought last time Aldi had sock yarn on sale, use the Kool-Aid (natural food coloring) I've picked up for that purpose last time I was in the US and go for it.
The first problem I've soon discovered was that I didn't pick up any Kool Aid last time (of for that matter any time). I did pick up some Dye Rite instead. Well Dye Rite is more for cotton and I wanted to dye wool, but after searching the internet a little I've found that it does seem to work with wool as well, so I decided to give it a shot.

I took the two skeins of yarn, wrapped it into a hank and placed it into a glass dish.


Then I added water


The next steps have no pictures because I forgot to make them. Sorry.
I've had three colors: Teal, dark green and dark blue. I've mixed them up with water and just poured the dye over the wrung out yarn. After everything was saturated I placed the dish into my microwave and nuked it for a good ten minutes.
I've then tried to wash the superflues dye out, which took a long time (like ten times and still dye got out).
After drying it it looks sort of like this:
A bit more green than that really, but I seem to be unable to take a proper colored picture of the finished yarn.
All in all I'm quite happy and am looking forward to see how it knits up.

I've finished a scarf - Kernel using Noro Maiko.




Seriously lovely!!!

200

Yeah, this is my 200th post here.

*throwing confetti into the air*

I've started blogging about 3 years ago. My idea was to show of my stitching (which was at that time my primary hobby) and give my family and friends an opportunity to take part on what I'm doing when I don't see them. Due to my job I do travel a lot, so I do see them not quite as often as I would like.
I finished quite a few stitching projects in the mean time; travelled to Japan, Scotland, Iceland and the USA; switched my focus from stitching to knitting; bought a new, really nice, Nikon camera and really enjoyed to sit down once per week and let everybody in to my life.
One positive side effect from this whole blogging business is that when I try to remember when I work on one thing or another, I only need to go to my blog and check out when I wrote about it.

This week I've finished a new pullover, and just in time. I did snow in Dresden on Thursday, something I didn't figure on when I packed on Sunday, so the fact that I had something extra to wear was very, very good

The pattern is Margot, from the last Knitty, the yarn is called Soft-Merino from Wolle Rödel. I love the color of that yarn and am quite happy on how the pullover turned out. I haven't washed it yet, and hope it's not expanding - this would not be good. I've got one ball of yarn left, and right now I'm thinking about making the pullover a little bit longer, but I'll wait for the after washing to decide.

My mom asked for a winter hat, so I quickly made one
This pattern is called Coronet and is also from Knitty. My mom's request was for the yarn to be machine washable, which it is. I quite like the result.

S.E.X.

This is not what you think it is - or maybe it is, but I don't think so.
S.E.X. is nothing dirty and has nothing to do with what two consenting adults might get up to if they find themselves alone. S.E.X. stands for Stash Enhancement eXperience - or, in other words, a shopping trip.

There have been two during the last week. One was in Dresden where I found this really nice yarn store that stocks a lot of the stuff I really, really like, i.e. Rowan yarns, Noro and, best of all in my book, lopi, the Icelandic yarn. I tried to hold myself back, but I did end up with two really nice yarns.

One is a Noro yarn I've haven't heard of before (and even Ravelry couldn't help me with it). It's called Noro Silk Camdeboo and is a mix of 35% silk, 35% lambs wool and 30% kid mohair. When I googled 'Camdeboo' I learned it's a province in South Africa. The area is (I'm sure among other things) famous for their angora goats from which the Mohair is coming from (why it is that mohair comes from the angora goat while angora itself comes from a rabbit, I have no clue)


Anyway, it is a lovely yarn and I bought enough for a nice, luxerious scarf.

The other find was four plates of unspun Icelandic aka Plötulopi.


I've bought some of this on my vacation in Iceland and made a felted bag with it and plan on making another bag from this one. Though it's not really easy to knit, once it's felted its really sturdy and looks really nice.

The other shopping trip brought me to Michelstadt in the Odenwald. Every year there's a needle craft fair going on there and it was our second time we went there. There are a lot of German needlecraft stitch designers there with a lot of really lovely stuff. Not much yarn, though felting was a big topic and also quilting.

I bought three pattern (even though I haven't really stitched anything in a while) and also what I think might be the start to my christmas card production.

I'm not 100% sure yet if I'll try to work with the hand painted fabric or not. Guess I'm going to play around a bit with it first.

Other than that, I've got two pairs of socks to show:

Those went to my sister and she got them and they fit, so all is well. My sister is working a lot with beads, so my though was that a beaded sock would be perfect.
The pattern is from the book 'Socken aus aller Welt' from Stephanie van der Linden.

The second pair is for a friend of mine. Her feet are about 4 sizes bigger than mine and as I couldn't ask her to try them on (we live quite a bit apart) some of my friends closer by got asked several times while I was working on them what shoe size they had and, when they had the correct size, to try them on.

The sock does look a little bit strange in the pic, but only because I pulled in onto a made up sock blocker for the photo and I think I went in the wrong direction with the width versus the length ratio.

Pattern is also from Stephanie van der Linden, but this time from her book 'Der geniale Sockenlehrgang'

I'm Done!!!

After a good 18 months, I've finally finished my Great American (Aran) Afghan.


I used two booklets from 'Knitter's Magazine', one, The Great American Aran Afghan and, two, The Great American Afghan. The first books has the pattern for 24 squares and the other has 25 squares. In the end I've picked 24 squares total, a wild mix and match from both books.

For the border I've sort of made up my own thing, though the braid is based in part on one of the existing squares. It was six meters of that border and in the end I really had to force myself to push on to finish it. But the result was so worth it!


The afghan is a wooping 2.05 meters by 1.45 meters large.

I bought in the beginning 37 balls of the yarn I've used and I used every single one of them. I've got maybe half of one ball left, so I couldn't be any happier.

Even though it was a rather long project (though, of course, I didn't work on it continuesly) I really enjoyed it. There was a lot of different styles and ideas to try out and I learned a lot of different techniques. Some squares have been knit from inside out or outside in, diagonally across or in stripes and then joined again on the go. Some have been plain cables, others are more visual (I'm quite fond of the crab or the fish). There was entrelac, ablique, acorns and trees, bobbles and leaves. Some turned out bigger than planed, some had to be blocked within a inch of their lives to fit (more or less)
Each square contains some fond memories for one reason or another and (except for the border) it really never got boring.

I know it's not a perfect afghan and I wouldn't win any prizes with it, but I loved doing it and I love having it.

(and I found out that taking pictures of something mostly just off white is a pain ... sorry for the bad quality)

The Fun Of Throwing Things Into The Washing Machine

Step 1: knit a swatch (18 stitches, 25 rows)

Step 2: throw swatch into washing machine
The top part is the original swatches. Left side is some unspun Icelandic wool (held double) I've bought in a super market in Reykjavik, on the right is Cascade 220

Step 3: admire how much the swatches have shrunk

Step 4: knit a bag

The pattern is the French Market Bag from Knitty Winter 2003

Step 5: throw bag into washing machine

Step 6: drink something strong, or pray - whatever works for you

Step 7: admire how lovely the newly felted bag looks


Step 8: put yarn for your next project into bag

New Socks

I'm not a big fan of stranded (fair-isle) knitting. Whenever two colors come into play I have a problem. But once in a while a pattern comes my way that I like so much I have no choice but to knit it, and my fear of stranded knitting be damned.

One such pattern is this one:

It's called Route 66 and is in the book 'Socken aus aller Welt' (socks from around the world) by Stephanie van der Linden. Stephanie has a lot of really nice sock designs, and her book really got me in to the mood for sock knitting again.

Another sock (singular as in ONE sock) also started out as one of her patterns names 'Metropole der Mode'. This is a sideway constructed sock and as I saw she used some new approaches (well, some I haven't seen so far) I though to give it a shot.
I didn't like it a bit. For once, the sock was way too big (like five sizes too big). The leg part was super long, and due to the nature of the beast, the cuff is so tight it would hang around my ankle most times. Still, I like some of her ideas, and decided to combine her pattern with another pattern from another book, namely the 'Two-yarn resoleable socks' from the 'Favorite Socks' book.


So, I started out knitting sideways, and when I reached the part where the heel starts I left the foot stitches resting and knitted only the leg part. This leads to a slightly deformed 'L' shape in the end. I then closed the leg to form a tube and picked up the stitched for the heel. I did a standard turned heel and then started to knit the sole, joining it with the upper foot as I reached the end of each row. In the end I knitted the normal toe and also knitted the cuff.


I do like the sock - sort of.
The foot fits perfectly and I really like how the colors go with this.
What I hate is the fitting of the leg - the cuff is so tight, it's hard to believe I got it as high in the photo shoot as I got. If I do this again (and I might ...) I do it even shorter, at least another 10 stitches. But for now I leave it at rest and won't knit a second one in this color ... the yarn has already gone on to another project ;)

Yesterday the newest knitty came online and I fell in love with a pullover there: Margot. Simple, classic ... I bought already wool for it.

The Art Of Blocking

When you knit lace and you're done with it (or actually, already in the middle of knitting) there always will be a point when you ask yourself what the heck you've knitting and WHY?
Because, when you're done with your knitted piece of lace it usually doesn't look very nice

See here. Just some squnched up piece of fabric (and I know there's not such word as 'squnched', but I sort of like it, so it stays)

Then you drown your work of the last weeks into water and queeze it out very carefully and then you pull out your blocking boards / old couch / bed (or, in my case, some foam puzzle mats) and, using a gazillion pins, you begin to stretch your fabric out and pin it to the board / couch / bed / puzzle mats.


And a few hours later, when you take it off it will have transform as if by magic.



Magic, I tell you.


pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague
yarn: Regia Hand-Dye effect, circa 60g

Oh Crab!

On my last vacation in Alaska visiting my friend Bill, we ended up one evening in a dinner theater. Before the show started we had all you can eat crab and we didn't hesitated to eat as much as we could. Very, very yummy.
Now, when I saw this pattern on the cover of the last edition of knitty, I knew I had to make it for Bill. If I may say so, Crabby came out really adorable. I might end up making another one, as it will be very hard to part with him to send him away to Alaska.


I also tried my hands once again on felting. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.
Two weeks ago I bought five skeins of Rowan purelife - British Sheep Breeds. This yarn is all natural, the only colors available are those nature (and the sheep) provide. Though I had been thinking about another project when I bought the yarn, I later changed my mind and decided on a modular bag. I didn't have a pattern, but found some progress pictures from somebody who had made the pattern before. From there I winged it.


My guesstimation on how much yarn I would need was pretty spot one (especially after I switched from 25 stitches across on square to 21 stitches) and ran short on the white yarn in the end by only 5 stitches (I improvised then and used some similar yarn I still had)

Above is the picture before I threw it into the washing machine. Below is the one after. It shrunk from 55cm (21.5 inches) across, the 47cm, which is not too bad.


Now, what to use for the handles .....

Golden

Yesterday, my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

In those fifty years there have been many ups and downs, and trials and tribulations, but through all of those they stood together. Together, they raised three daughter, enabled them to grow and to find their own way in the world, and for that I will forever be grateful to them. It hasn't been always easy, but I always knew if push came to shove that I always could go to them and ask for their help.

Thank you for everything.

New Starts and Old Ends

I finished one knitting project and started two new ones - at this rate I'll have too many projects eventually.

Finished:


Juno Regina, a shawl I thought about doing for quite a while now. I made it wider than the pattern said because I wanted a wrap and not a shawl, and it worked out quite well. It was a fast and fairly easy knit, even though I realized later that I've made a mistake in the lace pattern on one end - I doubt anybody but me would ever notice, so I don't care.
The yarn is Trekking Hand Art, three hanks (about 280g in total). On of the hanks had much less of the lighter blue highlights and to hide that I knitted the middle bit of the wrap alternating 2 rows with one yarn and the other two with the other. I can't see the transition now.
Dimensions are (after blocking) 196 cm long and 49 cm wide.

A little bit more on the details of the lace:

First new start is a sock - easy, portable, in-between knitting. The yarn is rather splotchy, so any lace pattern would have been lost, instead I've got a bit of random cabling going.

Second start is a bit longer termed. It's a sleeve cover for my wii balance board. I'm using left over sock yarn (which I have a lot of) and an easy slip stitch pattern, which makes knitting taking twice as long as normally, but looks very lovely with the different yarns.
The plan is to knit a 50cm wide and 70cm long piece of fabric and then sew up the sides. I know, there are easier ways to do it, but I've got to use the left over sock yarn for something, right.
So far I've got less than 10cm - I mentioned slow going?


I've got a week worth of vacation next week, but will spend a lot of the time running around and preparing for my parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary.

Hot Air

Nothing much to report on the knitting front. I'm moving forward on the Regina Juno shawl and on the border of the Great American (Aran) Afghan. Nothing too exciting, so no pictures.

Instead some pictures from Dresden last week, when I was lucky enough to be there when they made two hot air balloons ready to go up into the air.

The first balloon is called 'Wilhelmine' - which is the lady in this picture.

The second balloon was very yellow.

And here it's up in the air a minute or so after the start.


One thing about Dresden is that it's never short of interesting skylines - here's one which most people wouldn't immediately associate with a city in the East of Germany.