Frost Flowers and Leaves

Remember this???


Have a look at it now!

Wooooooooo hooooooooooo! After approximately NINE MONTHS of slogging away at this beast, it's hard to believe that it's finished! I calculated that this shawl is made up of aroundabout 130 000 stitches. With that number, I suppose that it's not so surprising that it took nine months. To be fair, though, I did complete more than thirty other projects in the meantime. I wonder how long it would have taken me, had I worked on it exclusively?



Project: Frost Flowers and Leaves
Designer: Eugen Beugler
Published in: A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swansen

Yarn Details:

• Jaggerspun Zephyr 2/18
• 50% merino wool, 50% silk
• 454gr=4609m
• colour "Basil"

I can't really specify how much of this yarn I needed, as I'm not sure whether the weight of the cone is just the yarn, or the yarn plus the cone. Either way, the cone now weighs 304gr.

Finished measurements: 125cm square (i.e. bloody huge)

Needles: 3mm bamboo dpns and circulars in length 60cm, 80cm and 110cm

When I started this back in October, I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how much work this was going to be. Just getting past the first ten rows was a task in itself and that took about twenty restarts to get it right.

After many months of knitting and not getting very far very quickly, I realised that I would need to set myself a finishing date, otherwise it might languish in the WIP pile like too many other things. So, the final finishing date was set for the 22nd of June and monthly goals of 15% were planned to keep things moving along smoothly.

After six repeats of chart 2, I'd had enough. The pattern calls for seven repeats, but seriously, I could see that it was already massive and that seven repeats would be overkill. The most painful part was the border, which hibernated frustratingly for about three weeks at the half-way mark.

In the very early hours of Thursday the 19th of June, my husband looked on as I triumphantly finished the last stitches. At last!

I didn't use any pins or blocking wires to block this, as it didn't really seem necessary, and besides, I didn't have nearly enough pins to block it anyway. Quite a few people have commented about this yarn bleeding a bit in washing, but the water was only the faintest green colour in this case. After reading more, it seems that it's mainly the red hues that seem to run.

So now that it's done, I'm too scared to use it! Can you imagine what a disaster it would be to get it caught in a zip, snagged on a tree branch or stuck to some velcro? My friends and I were joking that I need to frame it in special fire-proof glass and hang it on the wall. Or, better yet, put it in a safety deposit box at the bank.


Finishing this shawl has given me a great sense of achievement and pride, as well as relief! I've come a long way in a couple of years of solid crafting and this is something that I'll always have with me.

Meet the new family members!

Maaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwww! Our little babies are just over two weeks old, born to my father-in-law's kitty. When I saw them last weekend, their eyes weren't yet open, but this weekend they're so much bigger already and are looking around and wobbling about on their teeny tiny little legs!

The ginger-coloured one is rather vocal and doesn't like being away from mum for too long. The white, ginger and grey one moves her head around a lot. The white and grey one is so sweet and seems to enjoy hanging out with me more than the other two. She even fell asleep on my chest a few times! I left her on the blanket alone for a few minutes and when I came back into the room, her head popped up straight away and she started doing her little wobble-walk towards me for some more cuddles.



How can you not love kittens?

Shedir Hat

KNITTING TECHNIQUE CHECKLIST

Colourwork? Check.
Lace? Check.
Cables? Uh, erm, no.

Well, we'd better get cracking on some cables then, hadn't we? Instead of full-on aran cables, let's start with twisted stitches first - a whole hat of them!

Indeed, it's true, my cable skills are woefully lacking. Last year I had a bit of a play around with some cables for a pair of socks, but only got about ten centimetres into it. This time, I quite enjoyed making the little twisted stitches, at first using a cable needle and then figuring out how to do them without the needle. And Mauno the doggy appreciates his hat. :-)

Pattern: Shedir by Jenna Wilson, free in the Knitty special surprise section of Autumn 2004.

Needles: 3.5mm bamboo 40cm circular and dps

Yarn Details:

• Rowan Calmer
• 75% cotton, 25% acrylic
• 50gr=160m
• colour #479
• about 0.95 balls used - seriously, only a few metres were left

A quick look on Ravelry at the 970 Shedir hats already there showed me very quickly that many people thought their hat turned out too long with the original number of repeats, and many others stated that they had reduced the repeat number by one or even two. As I was making this hat to be shared between the husband and me, I figured one repeat reduction would suffice.

This wasn't the easiest project I've ever done, but it was really satisfying to see the travelling stitches growing out of the fabric and to notice my technique improving.

And the yarn! This was my first time working with Calmer, but oh boy not the last. Apart from being rather pricey, I can't fault this yarn at all. It's unbelievably soft and is amazingly stretchy for a cotton/acrylic blend. To be honest, it didn't feel like I was working with those fibers at all.

Btw, I think that 'Mauno' is the funniest Finnish name out of all the other funny names there are here. :-D

HAPPY WORLDWIDE KNITTING IN PUBLIC DAY!

Bluebell ja Rose Kesäpipot

So, not everything that I've done lately has turned out like I had wished. Take the following foto as an example. Try and guess which one I did first - the red one or the purple one?

If you guessed the red one, you would be correct. So why do I not class the red one as a success? Because it was supposed to be for an 18-month-old baby. And it's even too big for my noggin. The purple one came second and seems to be a much more fitting size for a little girl. Oh well, live and learn!

Pattern: Bluebell ja Rose Kesäpipot (bluebell and rose summer caps) by Pia Tuononen (her blog here), published in Ulla 02/05 in Finnish here and in English here (Ravelry link).

Red cap

Needles: 4mm bamboo dps

Yarn:

• Sublime Yarns Extra Fine Merino Wool DK
• 100% Extra Fine Merino Wool
• 50gr=116m
• colour #017 (red) and #019 (green)
• about 40 grams of red and 10 grams of green used

So the original pattern is designed for a 6-month-old and the little girl in question is 18-months-old. I had a look at some charts of the difference in head size between kids of those ages and realised that the difference is quite significant, which is why I chose to go up a needle size from the pattern-recommend size.

Not the best idea that I've ever come up with, but you can't blame a girl for trying.

And so came the second cap.

Purple Cap

Needles: 3.5mm 40cm bamboo circular and bamboo dps

Yarn Details:

• Garnstudio Drops Alapca (yep, can't get away from the stuff for very long)
• 100% Alpaca
• 50gr = 180m
• colour #3770 (purple) and #7323 (green)
• about 20 grams of purple and hardly any green used

Much better! The cap looks to be the right size and feels nice and soft and warm, thanks to my favourite yarn.

This pattern is really easy and quick. The only change to the original pattern that I made was every second decrease at the crown. In the original pattern, all decreases were the same, but I modified every second decrease to a central decrease (sl2togkwise, k1, p2sso) to match with the corresponding increases on the body of the hat.

The Revontuli Huivi

Before I start, be warned: foto-saturated post ahead! Last weekend we had the most perfect weather ever and I couldn't help but spend some time in the park getting snap-happy with my new creation!



Pattern: Revontuli-Huivi (this translates as 'Northern Lights Shawl') by AnneM, available for free in Finnish in Ulla 03/07 and for free in English here.

Needles: 5mm bamboo circulars

Yarn Details:

• Kauni Effektgarn 8/2
• 100% Wool
• 100gr=400m
• colour EQ (Rainbow)
• about 180-190gr used

There isn't much to say about this shawl except: LOVE!




I do have one complaint about the yarn, though. I ordered two balls of this, at a total of around 250gr. Towards the end of the first ball there was a crappy yarn splice from violet back to light blue, and after that point the colour sequence was reversed. Upon closer inspection of the second ball, I recognised that that ball's colour sequence was opposite to that of the first. So, some rewinding and resplicing later, it all turned out well, but it still bugs me. I wrote to the place from where I purchased the yarn and sent them some pictures of the splice and they asked if they could send the information to Kauni themselves.

I know I'll still buy more of this yarn again in the future anyway. It's just too gorgeous.


Oh yeah, if I can stop looking at the fotos, I'll tell you about the pattern modifications I made. I changed both the increases and decreases. Increases were originally (m1, k1, m1) - I made (yo, k1, yo), mainly because I was too lazy to do the written increases. Decreases originally (sl1kwise, k2tog, psso) - I made (sl2togkwise, k1, p2sso) for a more linear look.

Alpaca Cardi

I'm not usually one to make garments, for several reasons, the most prominent of those being that I don't much fancy the pressure of having something fit exactly. I've also felt like my knitting skills have been lacking in certain areas. Since I got into the online knitting and crochet world about a year and a half ago, though, the wealth of information that I've gained has been incredible and I really feel like I've made progress.

With that sentiment in mind, let me present to you my first made-to-measure garment, my little alpaca cardigan!

Woo hoo! I couldn't be happier with the way this turned out. It fits perfectly! I felt all svelte and cute wearing it and couldn't help getting some model poses happening!



Pattern: Drops Short Cardigan with Crochet Borders in Alpaca (geez, what an inspiring name), free on the Garnstudio website here.

Yarn Details:

• Garnstudio Drops Alpaca
• 100% alpaca
• 50gr=180m
• colour #3770
• about 175gr used

Needles: 3mm circular and 3mm crochet hook for borders

Like I said, I couldn't be happier with the finished product. The written pattern, however, was another story. First of all, I used waaaaaay less yarn than the pattern stated. The pattern recommended 250gr for my size and I hardly used 175gr. Not the first time that this has happened. Also, time and time again I'm disappointed with the shoddy translations that Garnstudio provides. The instructions are often vague and ambiguous and it's such a shame, really, as so many of Garnstudio's designs are fabulous. Btw, the new season's designs are up on the voting site at the moment. It's so hard to choose just ten!

Anyway, the actual knitting part of this sped along easily, but the finishing was the part that stalled. Such small stitches and all of those seams!

The success of this project has give me some confidence to continue making garments to fit me. There are lots of things in my Ravelry queue...

A final note about the pictures: I was described as looking rather 'boobalicious' in them. To that, my mum says, "it's all smoke and mirrors", and I say, "it's all angles, baby!"