A New Start

One of the pattern I've been wanting to knit for quite a while now is the Central Park Hoodie. It is an immensely popular pattern, especially if one considers it's not free. Currently over 3000 people on Ravelry have knitted this cardigan up and almost 5000 more have it queued with the intention to knit it up one day.
I did queue it a year ago, but it took me forever to decide on the yarn I'm going to use. As I'm not living in the US, most of the substitutes are not really doable for me, and I wasn't really happy with the options I have here. Now, finally, I've decided on a yarn called 'Lord' by Lana Grossa and using the last of my vouchers from my birthday, I didn't even crinch too much about the money.

The pattern knits up fast, and I finished the back already. After washing and blocking it did grew a bit, though I have yet to see how it will behave after drying.

My current interest in jigsaw puzzles had me dig up an older puzzle I've bought years ago with the intention to give it to Bill one day. As this is not going to happen now, I've decided to put it together myself. It was quite tricky and I did curse a few times, but eventually I managed to put all 1.000 pieces where they belonged.

At the moment I'm working on figuring out how to get is up on my wall. I think I've got just the perfect spot for it....

Statistics

I hope everybody had a good start into 2010.

It has been a rather productive year, knitting wise at least. I just counted my finish projects and am quite impressed by myself.

socks - 10 pairs
potholders - 6 pairs
bags - 6 (5 of them felted)
shawl / scarfs - 5
pullovers / vests / cardigans - 5
mittens / gloves - 3
hats - 2
toys - 3

Obviously, I don't need to worry about cold feet and burning my fingers on hot pots shouldn't be a problem, except I didn't keep any of the potholders for myself (most of the socks stayed with me, though)

2010 already saw two finished projects.

The mittered stripes back was finished knitting in 2009, but the sewing together and the felting was done in 2010. I did block it using old video cassettes which worked great and I'm very happy to see it does stand up on it's own. I does shed a bit, still, though.
The felting made it shrink by 10 ~ 15%. I would have liked a bit more, but ah well.

The gloves are 100% a 2010 product. I *did* start on the 31st, but had to rib everything up again.


The turned out to be rather small, but they are perfect for me. As it snowed today, maybe they will so some action today already.

Other than that, my mom got me back onto jigsaw puzzles.


This 500 pieces puzzle was fairly easy, but now I'm on another one that's somewhat harder.