January's Goal Reached

Hey all!

First, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who left a comment about the Inga Hat and the reasons for its creation. It was so nice to receive those congratulations and good wishes from you. It has been quite an emotional couple of weeks, to say the least, and lots of love has been in the air. So thankyou.


Now, onto serious knitting topics.

I managed to reach my target of 40% for the month of January with the Frost Flowers and Leaves. The goal is to complete 15% each month until the end of May, then a few weeks for the border and blocking, then it will be ready by the deadline of the 22nd of June, 2008. Hahaha, almost wrote 2009 then. Wishful thinking. 15% really doesn't sound like much at all, but in a project with 134 768 stitches (excluding the border), it adds up. And I'm absolutely determined to do all of the repeats of chart 2 (that's seven repeats, folks, and each one just gets loooooonger), but I'm not sure why I'm so determined.

Sorry for the crappy foto. It takes so long to put all of those stitches onto different needles and place them all nice and flat and stick the pins in, etc etc, so this time it's a picture of a scrunched up piece of knitting that may or may not look good, but only 60% left until we find out what it looks like. At least it looks bigger than last time. The innermost lifeline is where I took the fotos at 15%.


Of course there's no rest for the wicked - the target of 55% for the end of February is looming large.

The Inga Hat

I finished it in time! The Inga Hat is done!


Pattern: The Inga Hat by Sheila Macdonald, you can find it free here.
Yarn Details:

• Garnstudio Drops Alpaca
• 100% Alpaca
• 50gr = 180m
• colours #3620 (red), #517 (grey), #100 (cream)
• about 20grams of the main colours used

Needles: 3.25mm for the band, 3.5mm for the rest

I made this as a wedding present...for my husband! We were married yesterday, the 25th of January in a short ceremony here in town.

We got engaged in October last year and had no firm plans for a date for a wedding, but then just over a week ago, we set the date for Friday the 25th. I was already making the hat for him in secret, but then I had to step-up the tempo a bit! It was tricky to finish it in time, because I could only do it when I was at home and he wasn't, which wasn't very much this week, so by Wednesday night I was almost ready to start the decreases for the crown and decided that I would have to finish it on Wednesday night if I wanted to have it done in time to wash and block it, etc.

Wednesday night, I waited until he fell asleep and then secretly tiptoed out of the bedroom and stitched as silently as I could! Then I washed it and laid it out to block in the sauna, hidden in the corner.

So on Friday, after the ceremony, we were out for lunch and I gave it to him then. He loves it! It fits perfectly, he likes the colours and the style, and he had no idea that I was making it! A success all around.

But, of course the best part is that now I'm married to a wonderful man whom I love dearly and who happily receives all the goodies that I make for him!

Ingdulgence

Wow, talk about a niiiice delivery today...it's a package from Kim Hargreaves...

...it's...just...so...beautiful!!!

First, the lovely box opens to reveal the pretty tissue paper, ribbon and card:

Then, the tissue paper is peeled back to reveal the pattern:

And finally the oh so smooth and velvety yarn:


The pattern is called 'Flo' and you can find more pictures of it here at the Kim Hargreaves website. Everything is just too pretty and delightful and lovely and if anybody ever wants to spoil me at all, for any reason whatsoever, send me more of these!

The yarn is Rowan Classic Cashsoft 4ply and Rowan Kidsilk Haze. I'm quite glad to get my hands on a ball of the kidsilk haze, as I've heard so many people ooh and aah over it. We'll see how it knits up.

I want this project to come out perfectly. That means swatching comprehensively, testing, checking, altering, ripping out, all of it, I'll have to do everything properly and not get impatient or lazy.

But when will I start? There are so many things on the needles at the moment (and absolutely NOTHING on the hook, can you believe it) and I absolutely cannot, can not start another new project, especially something like this which will require a lot of concentration. So first I definitely need to finish the Inga Hat for the man, the Anemoi mittens, the Zig-zag jumper, and dare I say it...the drops long cardigan. There's a lot of stocking stitch between me and the end of that cardigan, plus a lot of seams.

What am I doing still here rambling on? There are stitches to be made!

Ultra quick

Hi all, just a quick note to let you know that I'm knitting furiously to finish a present for the man before Friday. It's the Inga Hat, and I'm close to being done, but as this is all secret squirrel business, it has been slow-going.

So, hopefully a fabulous finished hat by the end of the week!


Happy stitching :-)

A bit of fun!

Here's a little video of me which has absolutely nothing to do with knitting or crochet, but the weather has been really sh*t all week and it's unbelievably slippery outside, just like one big ice-skating rink - but with no handrails to hold on to. It's so crap! So here's a short video of me when I felt better with all of the snow and ice and winterness: my first time skiing! This was November last year in Levi, and from memory I wrote on the blog that I'd been skiing and that it was okay, but now here's proof!

But before I let you see it, I must add a disclaimer.

Keep in mind that this was my first ever time skiing (I went snowboarding once, a year ago, and that was a total disaster), and at the time the video was taken, I'd been at it for about an hour and a half (this means that you shouldn't expect anything even remotely impressive). There were a couple of other videos in which the skiing was ever so slightly more coordinated, but I chose this one because of the victory pose at the end. :-)

One last thing before I go:

Hey mum!! Look at me!! I'm skiing!!

One warm hand!

My first Anemoi mitten is (almost) done!

Quite pleased with this, even though I made several rather big boo-boos. I suspect the major stuff-up was with the tip; I did the three-needle cast off that the pattern suggests...but I forgot to turn the mitten inside out before doing it! Arrrgh, undoing that, turning the mitten and picking up the stitches again was very frustrating and to be honest, it wasn't that successful. But I didn't dare try it again out of fear of messing it up even more. Second mitten lucky!

However, one big success was the 30cm circular needle that I changed to from the double-pointed needles at about the 1/3 mark. It was oh so easy to knit with the circular! The fabric turned out so smooth and there were no worries with tension or puckering. I did have to change back to the dpns after a few rounds of decreases. Oh, for Anna, thanks for your comment about tightening the second stitch on the new needle when using dpns - I read that too and did try it and it did improve the seam somewhat, but nothing can compare to no seam at all!

The two fotos below show two sections - the top section of the mitten used the circular and the bottom section used the dpns. All of that puckering stands out terribly! Click on the fotos to get a ludicrously detailed shot of the UNBLOCKED palms and judge for yourself. :-)

Tidbits

Hiya all! Only a few more days of holidays left, and what a nice little holiday it has been. Stitch-wise, I feel like I've been doing lots of work, but the effort has been spread quite widely and hence it hasn't felt like I've actually been achieving terribly much. But here are two sleeves that can prove that at least something looks like progress.


These sleeves are a part of this pattern for a long cardigan. I'm using the exact yarn specified in the pattern (Drops Silke Tweed) and with needles 0.5mm smaller than stated, my gauge is spot on, which is truly a rarity in my book. At the moment, the yarn is quite rough and stiff, but with use I'm sure it will soften up and provide a nice drape to this garment.

This has been quite slow-going, with 3.00mm needles and the wool being quite fine - 50gr=200m. A couple of good points though: I was able to concentrate on evening out my tension in stocking stitch whilst knitting this. I identified that the knit rows were looser than the purl rows and was able to improve that for a much smoother look. Also, I was quite pleased with my invisible increases, fotos of which shall appear later in the program, I believe.

On a completely different topic, I recently ordered some 30cm long Addi circular needles. I've been getting fed up with not being able to make clean joins between double-pointed needles, even though it seems like I've tried everything to avoid ladders. Hopefully I'll be able to finish the Anemoi Mittens (amongst other things) with a circular so they look a bit more pro than they do now! And if the 30cm circulars don't work, I suppose I'll have to try the magic loop thingy that lots of folks talk about.

Perhaps a teeny bit embarrassing...

Okay, here's a little post that might be embarrassing for me to share with you. But if we can all act like adults, then it will be fine!

Slowly, over the last few years or so, I've been growing increasingly environmentally aware, as I think many of us have been. There are so many messages in the media about climate change and consumerism causing terrible damage to our Earth. As a result, I've been finding myself switching off everything at the plug or even unplugging items when not in use, recycling like a madman, turning the heaters down, and so on.

A friend back in Vienna sent me a present of a dishcloth a few months ago and I had been using it in the sauna for a while as a gentle scrubber, when one day it came to my mind that I could use it as...toilet paper. Loo paper, bog roll, toot paper, call it what you will, it all does the same job and we all need to use it from time to time!

Sorry Sarah! I'm sure that when you were making that pretty purple dishcloth, you weren't intending me to do this with it!!

Now, it's important to note that I'm only talking about using dishcloths as a replacement for toilet paper when one makes, let's say 'a short trip to the bathroom'. For 'long trips to the bathroom', I don't feel that dishcloths are appropriate and I think that most of you will aggree with me.

So after a 'short trip' to the bathroom, I always give the cloth a good rinse and hang it to dry over the heater in the bathroom and so it's usually dry by the next time I need it. When I first started using it, I was worried that it might start to smell after a while, but I can confidently say that it emits no foul odours!

So now that I've been using my 'toilet cloth' happily for a while, new ideas have started popping into my head about what one can do with the humble dishcloth. I'm aware that many folks use them as facewashers, and I myself have a couple of hand towels that are in regular rotation.

But what about an old-fashioned handkerchief?

When I walk outside in the cold for anything longer than a couple of minutes, my nose starts to drip, and I've found myself either using a tissue, or, if a tissue can't be found, a mitten - ew!!! (what a horrible thing to admit...but I know that I'm not the only guilty one!) So instead of wasting a tissue or making my mittens all yucky, why not make a really nice cloth handkerchief? And it can just be rinsed out at the end of the day and be right as rain the next day for more nose-wiping adventures.

The way I see it, it's a win-win situation. Cloths can be used time and time again, so there's no paper being thrown away, and they're enjoyable to make!

There are so many lovely patterns, they're small, quick and generally easy to make. Another good thing about making dishcloths is that you can use them as a form of technique practice. It doesn't have to be fancy; you can even make simple garter stitch squares, but concentrate on your tension or perfect a new knitting method (see this post for the knitting method that I'm practising!). They're wonderfully portable, you can experiment with new stitches, or, if all else fails, they're good for using up those scrap yarns. Last but not least, they're nice as little gifts for special people. :-)

Cotton is a good fiber to use for these projects, and a nice tight tension is best for top absorption.

Alright, without further ado, here are a few nice patterns from the net, all of which are free, and fotos which aren't mine but the appropriate credit is given to the creators.


This round dishcloth designed by Amy Carpenter, is free here.
Foto thanks to Adelle (find her here on Ravelry)


These butterfly cloths, designed by Nicole Randome of Purple Duckie, are free here.
Foto thanks to Jamie (find her here on Ravelry)


This doily style dishcloth, by designer unknown, is free here.
Foto thanks to Cheryl (find her here on Ravelry)


This gartrelac dishcloth is from Criminy Jickets, and is free here.
Foto thanks to Diamond (find her here on Ravelry)

This ripple dishcloth, designed by Leanne from To Knit is Divine, is free here.
Foto thanks to Vicki (find her here on Ravelry)


These crazy dishcloths designed by Kimberly, are free here.
Fotos thanks to Kimberly (find her on Ravelry here)

Ambitus Neckwarmer

I finished this one a few days back: it's the Ambitus Neckwarmer by Lankakomero.

I like this pattern - it is comfortingly circular. Unfortunately for me, it's way too big...thanks again to my lovely loose knitting. But for this project, I used the Eastern Knitting technique, which I had assessed to be tighter than my English style knitting. 'Twas not to be. The shoulder part sits very nicely, but the loose neck part lets the chilly wind in.

Pattern: Ambitus Neckwarmer by Lankakomero
Yarn: Novita Florica, 100% wool, 50gr=175m, colour #80, about 65 grams used.
Needles: 3.5mm and 4.00mm

So, there you have it. I do like this, it feels nice and I like the shape, but it just turned out too big.

The good news to come out of it is that I feel quite comfortable with the Eastern technique and had lots of opportunities to fiddle about with increasing techniques in both knit and purl. I'm not entirely sure if I've found a good way of making increases, so there will be more experimentation coming.