Will I have to fight her for my stash?

M mastered a new skill last night. She even found the hook in the right place by herself. She's paid attention to where I keep my good stuff.



The yarn... I can no longer remember the name of, but she picked it out by herself the last time I went yarn shopping. At least for the time being we have very different taste in yarn. If her fondness for funfur and multi-coloured, syntetic tape yarn ever passes I guess she'll sneak into my stash yarn. Maybe it's time to hide the Baby Cashmerino and Sea Silk?

What it's going to be, you wonder? Christmas tree garland... A very, very long one!

"Mom, why are you knitting with sewing thread?"

...said M a few days ago.



This work in progress has great drape and feel. And I love the colour. But it's knitting up ever so slowly. I love working on it though.
It's nothing but plain old garter stitch now. 150 stitches a row on 3mm needles. But there is a plan for some spruceing up with a crisp white crochet border and some lovely blue seed beads. I have never tried adding beads to crochet. I hope I can make it work. And if I can make it work without pre-stringing the beads I'll be very, very happy. There's still a fair bit of knitting to do first though.

Most of my time these days are spent with a paint brush in hand. I hope I'm all done before mom and dad come to visit next weekend. Before that, I hope to finish the border on a shawl for mom too. If I do, mom will bring me back my purple Shetland triangle shawl. She kidnapped it last time she was here, telling me I would get it back when I finished the shawl for her. So far, it looks like it worked...

And because it's Saturday, and really dark and wet outside, I baked.



Aniseed buns. I've had a craving for these for about a week now. They're cooling down at the moment, I've only had one to taste, but we'll dig into them for real as soon as P and M comes back from a few hours of swimming. Yum!

Mid day snack

I don't care if it's snowing outside. The fire place is lit and I have time to sit down and enjoy a mid day snack.



Home made banana bread and dried apple rings. Accompanied by my favourite tea, sweet coconut thai chai.

Another one

Another hat craving, another hat, another pompom.





Using up stash yarn in a fast way.

White is maybe not the best colour for a young girl who tends to get moss, leaves and mud on everything she wears. We'll see how it looks a month from now... I'll also take care not to mention that I personally think the yarn, Alfa, is a bit on the scratchy side.

Worked this up as I went along, using the cable chart from the Yellow Harvest mittens in last winters Vogue knitting. M helped out with the pompom. If she had her way she would probably pompom everything.

Whose idea was this anyway?

I only have myself to blame...



Yesterday afternoon I found a half empty can of paint in the garage and had the idea to spruce up the closet doors in the hallway. Things kind of escalated (another half empty huge bucket of paint was found) and I've been prepping and painting for 10 hours straight today... In a couple of hours (a third coat is needed) our hallway is going to be gorgeous, white and bright. No more dark and dingy wood paneling.

In addition, a carpenter is working wonders outside on our porch. More white paint lies in my future, but it's going to be sooo awsome in the end.

Monochrome

Lately it has seemed like anything and everything I make is blue. Over the past coulpe of weeks I have seen that this is in fact not true. There is a great deal of black/white/gray going on too. And that feeling of never finishing stuff has gone away too.

Evidence 1: Mojo vest

This spring I gave my brother the promise of a vest for his birthday, and though I'm a little late delivering (his birthday is in July) I could finally present it to him this past weekend.



It fits him perfectly and he's very happy with it. He's even told me later that he receives a lot of "cred" for the vest. Wich I suppose is a good thing, and the correct lingo to use in hip musician circles.
I've named the vest "Mojo" because my brother really needs to get his mojo back. He's been unfortunate enough to breake his legs three times in less than a year (one car crash in Dec.-08, one fall accident in July and one bicycle accident in September). Absolutely not good for a guy who plays the drums for a living. He's doing amazingly well and is able to work almost full time. And he's been lucky enough that the two last breaks were in his left leg. He can work his music magic without that apparently.
Ravelry link to Mojo

Evidence 2: Big pom-pom hat



Knit with the left over yarn from the Mojo vest. During the last leg of the vest knitting I got a very strong hat knitting craving. This was just the remedy for it. An awsome pattern, though a little bit fiddly with two cable needles in use at once, I really loved this pattern. And the pom-pom is just so fun to make and wear.
Ravelry link to pom-pom hat

Evidence 3: Living room chairs / reading corner

Making this


(grandma and grandpas old chairs, where they used to read me stories as a child)

into this



It's taken me about 1.5 years, and I've had the chairs for 5 years but they're finally all done. Except a little bit of help with wrapping and holding the fabric in the end (thanks BIL) I did this job all by myself. I've spent a lot of hours sanding the wood down on these! All the old sticky varnish was sanded off and then colour and oil was applied after. The old fabric was also a bit of a hassle to get off. I think there were about 500 staples and nails to take out.
Everything was finished in time to surprice my P when he got home from a week in Poland last Thursday. He's really happy too.

(Norwegian readers; if you go see the movie "Knerten" pay attention to the carpenters sofa, it is upholstered in the exact same fabric these chairs used to have. That is: if you're able to take your eyes away from all the gorgeous knitwear going on in that movie)

Evidence 4: dining room chairs



I bought wayyyy too much fabric for the reading chairs. Twice as much as I actually needed. So I put new covers on all six dining room chairs. I love how everything matches now...

Evidence 5: zebra leggings are in use
(and an excuse to post a very cute picture)



M is wearing these leggings almost daily now that colder weather has hit us. She loves them.
Ravelry link to leggings

Is gray my new blue???
I don't think so. This is blocking as I type.



That's for next time...

Cocoon

Finally, something is finished, wearable and bloggable.

A few weeks ago I finished my modified Cloud Bolero. Started sometime last winter (can't exactly remember when) and put in the "naughty corner" for a very long time due to some serious issues whith the transition from body to sleeve. When I picked it back up in September the sleeves just flew off the needles. No problem at all, and I can't really remember what it was I got stuck on either.



I was a bit worried that I would not have enough yarn to make it long enough. I used three balls first for the body, then knit the sleeves to desired length with the fourth and finally, with the remaining yarn I knit two more pattern repeats at the bottom and bound off. The possibility to do this, and try on as you go is my favourite thing about top-down patterns.

Once the knitting was done the vest(?) reached my waist. Once washed and blocked it had grewn lenghtwise to just below my butt. Great! It's a perfect fit. Only problem with this is that the button holes grew a bit too. I need to crochet them more snug I think.

The yarn, Rowan Cocoon was great to work with. An excellent candidate for wet splicing means less bulky ends to weave in and it's kitten soft and has great drape. Only downside to it is that it sheds. A lot! I know loosely spun singles do, but it seems like it's never going to end. I hope it does.

As I was wearing it for the first time P commented that it looked lovely. "When did you knit that?" I guess it's hard for him to keep track of months old works in progress. And it truly is lovely.

Not knitting

For the past couple of weeks a tendonitis has tried to take me away from anything crafty. And by craft I mean knitting and crocheting. So I've found room to do a lot of other things instead.

Mushroom picking.

Baking.

Painting.

And last, but not least

Spinning.

A little bit of the wool Theresa gave me when we went mushroom hunting (successfully), has been transformed into lovely sock weight singles that will be transformed into a shawlette at one point. I'm thinking something along the lines of the lovely Multnomah.

I've never successfully spun singles before, but a couple of days ago I stumbled upon a tutorial for how to full singles. I just had to give it a go!(I can't for the life of me fint my way back to that blog, I'm sorry...)

I have been doing a teensy bit of knitting and crocheting over the past weeks too, just to see how much I can do before I have to "listen to the hands" and give them a rest. And I've been weaving in ends and doing some clearing up in the huge UFO-pile too.

Tomorrow I'll be back to the knitting again tough. I have a funeral to go to, and with that a 8 hour bus ride. I'm packing easy stuff and hope for the best. If what I take with me really does not suit my hands, my home town has a really nice yarn store... So I know I can keep myself occupied on the 8 hour bus ride back home too. Then, if time permits it I'll be going on a road trip with my father in law on Monday, and will most likely get some knitting done then too.

Right now though, I'll head outside to see how my brand new vest is doing, it's drying outside in the sunshine :)

Comfort food

I think the tendonitis monster is trying to sneak up on me.

I'm more than a little bummed out about this, since I have three things almost finished, a new pattern in the writing and too much time on my hands.

I guess I'll just have to keep baking, and eating!

These oatmeal cookies are the best I've ever tried. I found the receipe here.

I had to wing it a bit though. My pantry could only come up with six walnuts, so I put almonds in instead. Not too bad, almonds are my third fave nut. And I've heard they're healthy too... I don't know if walnuts are?

Now we match

I've practically used up all my very blue Falk yarn that I had a drawer full of just a few months ago.

About three weeks ago I finished knitting "Sundog" for M. And a few days ago I pulled myself up by the ear and wove in the last ends and blocked it.

Now M has a new wool sweater that matches my Pioneer.

I'm very happy with it. It turned out great, and was also a super holiday project. The yoke is fun to knit and is well constructed, the whole thing is seamless and the sweater is designed to grow with the child.

The cuffs are turned up, and I knit extra length to the body, so I am pretty sure we'll at least get two seasons wear out of this.

(Ravelry project page here)

While checking that I had not squirreled away even more blue Falk yarn I actually found yarn for and started another blue project. This time with added gray. More holiday knitting. This time it's a "how to avoid cabin fever"-project. And for me!

The blue Falk is as good as gone. When I finish up this latest project I'll have used up a whole drawerful of blue yarn this summer.