When looking at my WIP (Work In Progress) items on Ravelry today, I suddenly realized: all projects on the top row are RED!
Even though red is my favorite color, I had the feeling I have usually been making blue things. Turns out that isn’t so bad anyway – actually, the blue things I’ve knitted are the ones I’m using the most! It’s not like I’ve made THAT many things in blue.
I guess this is a red period coming up. Perhaps it’s alright with a color change.
In my experience, Wollmeise yarns have perfect stitch definition.
It’s already evident when caked, isn’t it?
This is Dunkle Kirsche on WM Lace.
Perfect stitch definition has one disadvantage, though: Every mistake pops out very clearly. I hope I’m able to avoid mistakes this time.
(Keep dreaming!)
Some time ago I went a bit crazy and ordered buttons on ebay. Lots of buttons. Pretty buttons.
It’s nice to have a button stash. You always have a button, and there are several to choose from. I looooove buttons.
On a whim, I bought 5 skeins of Lush Twist from The Uncommon Thread, in the lovely grey called Nimbostratus:
I yummie yummie blend of merino, cashmere and nylon. And I wanted to knit it up straight away!
After a false start with lateral braids (the yarn was far too fuzzy after some touching to make lateral braids work), I decided on knitting two strands together to make a dk/worsted weight yarn, so I could make Acorns. The first time I saw the pattern I didn’t like it – the pattern page didn’t appeal to me, I think I found the cardigan boring in the light blue. Luckily I had bought all of the 5 skeins of Lush Twist available, 4 skeins wouldn’t suffice I think!
That’s when Ravelry is my saviour!
Browsing on Rav, it is possible to see what other people have made of a pattern, if it works and how it looks on different people. And Acorns – well, there were some really perfect pieces out there!
Now this is my contribution to the finished Acorns:
In the end it turned out I didn’t have enough yarn to make long sleeves, so they got 3/4 instead. But the fabric is so warm that it doesn’t matter, 3/4 sleeves is alright!
The red buttons are a classic as well as a twist. It was a decision process, but in the end I couldn’t help it – I LOVE red buttons, and they just complement the yarn so well!
Wanna see more? My Rav project page has more images and info :)
At the end of last year, I wrote a blog post about joining this challenge to knit one sweater a month (in average) during 2011. I had 3 projects already on the needles at that point, and the first one was actually finished on the 1st of January 2011.
In the middle of the year I grew very very tired of the challenge, and almost discarded it. I didn’t really feel for doing any more sweaters, and any summer tops didn’t go the way I planned them.
Then the last couple of months of 2011 went on a roll! I finished 5 sweaters in 4 months, and it felt gooood! And – that means I made it :o)
So, here comes a listing:
 Idlewood-hood (finished Jan 1, 2011) |
 Bottom of the sea (finished Jan 20, 2011) |
 Betty Draper’s cardi (finished Feb 18, 2011) |
 Hemlock-something (finished April 11, 2011) |
 Velvet Stone (finished May 12, 2011) |
 Black Feathers (finished June 21, 2011) |
 Vitamin C (finished July 6, 2011) |
 Avalon, here I come! (finished Sept 6, 2011) |
 Dark feathers for a shiny dress (finished Oct 7, 2011) |
 Possum Almond (finished Nov 24, 2011) |
 iA (finished Dec 3, 2011) |
 v e r s i o (finished Dec 19, 2011) |
The whole lot – including sweaters started but never finished – is to see on my project listing on Rav.
During the whole of January, I didn’t have any sweaters on the needles. I’m not sure I’m going to join this year’s challenge either. Let’s say that we’ll see, right?
158 meters and 92g of Merino/Silk 70/30 from Wingham Wool Work, some of the first fiber I bought.
And this:
210 meters and 4 oz (appr 105g) of Alpaca/Tussah Silk 50/50 from Spinneretta’s Studio.
And even this:
A mixture of a Rainbow colored merino fiber from World of Wool, plied with some ordinary natural lambs wool of which I don’t know the originin (well, a sheep, obviously – but which sheep I don’t know!). There’s 70g, and about 108 meters.
This last one was an experiment. Perhaps I’ll write more about that later. Right now, I am in dire need of more playing with the tool that made it!
I love colors, as so many people do. And when Veera Välimäki showed off her newest design Color Affection, I couldn’t stop jumping up and down!
She has something with stripes and short rows – as seen in Stripe Study and Different Lines. It looks amazing, but none of those two really caught my interest completely. But Color Affection did, because of its shape and size, and because it looks kind of daunting and easy at the same time. I wondered what the secret was!
To begin with, the pattern is only sold in a kit from The Plucky Knitter. And I joined in “the update that shall not be spoken of”, aka the update on December 31st, where the new Plucky webshop went down completely by the hordes of knitters wanting a kit. I was lucky, I got (a) kit(s).
So, 1½ weeks ago Veera sent me the Color Affection pattern, so I could place it in my Ravelry Library. And of course, I couldn’t help finding yarn and casting on, even though the Plucky kit hasn’t even shipped yet!
It took me 3 days to choose the right color combination, another 6 days to knit it. And this is the result:
Stripey goodness!
Stripes combined with short rows = dangerously addictive. And combined with garter = dangerously easy.
The yarn I chose is Socktopus Sokkusu Sock in Summer Crush (the pink), Drops Baby Alpaca Silk in natural, and Sundara Sock in Fire Studies #182 (the dark red). The last one bled a bit while I soaked the shawl, but not as much as anticipated – afterwards, I’m pretty sure all that excess dye just went directly to the natural Baby Alpaca Silk, as the stripes adjoining the dark red ones have all gotten a light pink shade instead. No worries – it actually looks good!
More of the technical info (along with a lot of calculations for yarn usage etc.) on my Ravelry project page.
The evening before I left for Tenerife, the trip I told about in my last post – I discovered that Lisa Mutch had finished another design, and wanted test knitters for it. I quickly volunteered, and actually began winding the yarns I wanted to use even before she responded. As it may, I actually got the pattern the same night, so I cast on as soon as I boarded the plane!
It made for a lot of pool knitting – a relaxing knit, as I didn’t really need to do anything else, and it was easy to read while knitting.
And, I finished it two days before the end of our stay!
It’s a lovely pattern, a lovely shawl – blocking it made it smell like old seaweed (I used Fleece Artist Sea Wool – yup, there really must be some sea in that stuff!), but luckily the smell disappeared once dry.
The fabric is light, probably lighter than the pattern suggests – I accidentally used 5 mm needles instead of 4,5 mm, due to an early mistake in the pattern – but I don’t mind. I like it this way.
The color combination is something I haven’t tried before. It’s pretty neutral – with the contrast stripe being one of the Wollmeise colors I thought I’d never use! It’s a very yellow-ish green, not really my sort of color. But it fits in perfectly here.
Consisting almost solely of short rows, the knit was pretty addictive. Nothing can make me knit so fast as short rows – just another row!
The shape and patterning of the shawl reminds me of Tenerife, especially the volcano Teide.
(image borrowed from http://www.tenerifehiking.com/)
Wanna see more specific details? See my Ravelry project page – or the pattern page for Lisa Mutch’ Heartbreak shawl.
Lisa, thank you for letting me in on the test knitting!
At the beginning of January, I went on a sunshine vacation; 3 of my sweet girlfriends and I went to Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. Tenerife was just as it should be: the wind was warm, it was about 24 degrees Celcius during the day, and the sun was shining most of the time. People were wandering around wearing comfortable clothes, and we suddenly spoke of nice, baggy-ish pants of light fabric, with lots of room.
So, I got home – and googled! It must be possible to make them yourself, right? I was googling “harem pants” and “turkish pants”, but nothing like the ones I was looking for appeared. Lots of harem pants out there though – and they seem very easy to make! I just don’t like the crotch between the knees, so those “classic” ones didn’t attract me.
I ended up finding this page, where the result looked more like what I wanted – there even was a diagram the author had picked from another site, and it looked SO easy!
Deciding to use some of the more interesting fabrics I have, I pulled out one of the 3m pieces of Liberty I bought in London last summer. After a lot of thinking and talking to fabric-knowing people (my mom, for one!), I decided on cutting the pieces in the width of the fabric, instead of the length, like all patterns usually say. I would be using less fabric, and hopefully it wouldn’t make a difference!
My result:
Perfect baggy pants!
I added a casing at the waist and a 3 cm wide / 135 cm long tie, and casings at the bottom of the leg, complete with drawstrings (about 1 cm in width), sewn from the same fabric. I’m telling you: perfect!
Top casing
Bottom casing
I made buttonholes to pull the drawstrings through, and stitched at the top as well as the bottom of the casing, 1/4″ or so from the edge.
The light light fabric makes for a perfect drape.
(side note: the green of the fabric is much greener – more of a dark lime. But the red/green issue with cameras is always bothering me, and this time I didn’t have the patience to try out other settings :o) )
In the middle of the year, Lisbeth told me that if I wanted, I could very well join the 11 shawls in 2011 challenge on Ravelry.
At that point, I had already finished 7 shawls, so I didn’t have far to go to get to the 11 in total.
I joined a bit halfheartedly, for why should I knit 11 shawls? And would I even want to? But hey – during the whole year there were prizes to win, sponsors giving away knitting related stuff every month! I could just as well post my shawls in those threads and be in the drawing. No 11 shawls necessary to participate during the year.
Guess what?
I did it! It turned out that churning out the Camomille shawl 4 times in a row made a pretty nice count.
You can see all of my 2011 shawls here (Ravelry link – you might have to be logged in to see it).
I had other challenges this year, right? I’ll get back to that one.
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