Chicken. In a hurry...

What do you do when you realise Friday evening that you somehow did not manage to read all the words on a an invitation for a birthday party, and one of the words you've missed out on is carneval ("dress up party").

Crochet to the rescue!


(and an old Picachu costume too)

I'm happy. She's happy (and cute)! The Saturday was saved! (though my wrists hurt a bit Friday night...) There was even a cute little crochet bag in the birthday present.



Since last tuesday I've managed to complete said bag and "chicken", and a whole, huge baby blanket! Just the finishing touches to go. More on that soon...

A bit of rock'n'roll for the weekend

While I concentrate on finishing my pattern writing and other knitterly stuff. Here's som good old fashioned music for the weekend:



So, while you listen to We did it all, I'll try to do it all, and then blog about it!

Honourable mention

I've received an award from Laughingmuse.



I'm very flattered and honoured! It came out of nowhere, on a day I really needed a little pick me up... It's always good to know ones creativity is appreciated.

8 of my favourite creative blogs are
knottygnome
danim
Ann - med pinner
Thorvalda
Hespetre - the other Guro
Bea
The keyboard biologist
Kverulantinnen

The rules are as follows for the nominees:
1. Copy the award to your site.
2. Link to the person from whom you received the award.
3. Nominate 8 other bloggers.
4. Link to those on your blog.
5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominated.

I always enjoy it when I stumble upon other peoples awards on their blogs. It gives me a chance to peek into what they enjoy to read and look at. It's a good chance to see some new things and maybe befriend a few new blogs.

Other than this award; what else is new?

I feel like everything I work on is progressing very slowly these days. I am also finding myself casting on a number of new things, or just plain working on stuff with no purpose. I realised on sunday I've crocheted 20-ish flowers with no plan for them. They are scattered around the sofa and inbetween my wips in a not-good way.

The flower facination started with this



A very cute toddler hat found in my newest knitting book; 101 luxury one skein wonders. A great little book with a lot of promising patterns. The problem with this hat (not considering the funny looking thingy on the top) is that I don't know any little girls who can wear it at the moment... Ah, well!

To make knitterly things progress even more slowly I'm trying to justle up not one, but two different knitting patterns. Procrastinating A LOT! I'm also napping regularly in the afternoons in stead of knitting (or doing house work).

A last note: I WENT TO COPENHAGEN AND DID NOT VISIT A YARN STORE! I did not know that could ever happen to a knitter.

Trying to capture spring in yarn

Today is a nice and sunny day, a great change from the last couple of weeks of snow, fog, slush and gray. It's supposed to snow again tomorrow. I long for spring so much. Flowers and grass turning green. The sound of melting snow, the drip-drip-drip from the iceicles hanging from our roof. Not having to watch my every step leaving the house in the mornings, in fear of slipping and falling on the ice in our drive way. I planted a Helleborus last winter, and now I have this vision of a beautiful flower under all the snow in my garden. What if it's done blooming once all this snow is gone. Poor flower!

To keep my mind off all the dreary grayness outside I spun up my roving of Electric Iris Avenue by Dyedinthewool last weekend. It's very springy indeed. And I think my spinning skills have improved too.





This cheerful handspun has made me want to spin more, and I've started spinning up some roving in different shades of reds, browns and pink. A real energy boost! Great fun, and looking very promising so far.
I've also croceted a hat, and knit up and started to write down the pattern for a baby bonnet. Silence on the blog does not mean the needles aren't clicking and the wheel is not clacking...

I keep falling behind

Pictures from last Monday





I've worked on and completed a small number of things since then. Seems like I manage to spend a good deal of time crafting, but not nearly as much photographing or playing online. I've moved my "craft corner" to a different part of the living room, I've tidied everything up a bit and gotten rid of a lot of stuff. A whole bag of scrap yarn and ugh-yarn was donated to M's school. I've frogged three projects I think I would probably never finish and I've now got all my wips in a "sort of" system. I've also spun quite a bit! Things are going on! Now I just have to get a grip on this showing it all off and telling you all about it-thing. It used to be easy, now it's for some reason very hard.

Anyway... The stashbusting blanket is gorgeous and soft and just how I hoped it would turn out. A tad bit boring to work on in the end, but still a very enjoyable project. I gently felted it in the end. Now that's magic. It's so soft and squishy now :)

End of todays story. Hoping to be back with more soon

One Oleana, two Oleana, thr... No, wait...

One week, one pattern, two hats. What can I say? I've been snowed in (not really) in a cabin in the mountains for a few days. It took a total of 9 hours and 45 minutes to get there and back too. I'm glad I knit! The gray is mine, but I foresee my mom wanting it. The purple is also mine, but M has tried to "hat nap" it a number of times already.

A big thanks to Wenche for making this pattern. I think I've knit my share of tucks for a while now...

Ahem... (and a story about cold feet and good socks)

I should probably blog...

I swear I do crafty stuff all the time, but there is not much to show for it. I blame winter... Luckily the daylight hours are getting longer every day. If I'm lucky I'll get to snap a few picutres of "stuff" tomorrow before I go to work.

I had a very nice "wooly moment" this afternoon. After crossing City Hall Square to get from work to my LYS (yarn for Oleana, Rav-link) and back again, I was boarding the ferry and could feel water from the brownish gray salted snow slush covering the city seep into my shoes, getting sucked up by the very thick wool soles in my boots, soaking my handknit wool socks thoroughly and making my toes cold and swollen. By the time I got home, after a quick stop to get groceries and wading up our steep driveway through 10 cm of fresh snow I knew there was only one thing that could help my drenched and frozen feet; Blue Faced Leicter!
My favourite socks. A gift in a sock swap a long time ago. Hand dyed, cheerful yarn. Perfectly knit socks. And I swear, Leicter The Sheep is the hottest ram in the flock. These socks have an instant warmth to them that I have not found anywhere else. I love them! Saved my afternoon they did.



After re-gaining the feeling of my pinkie toe I spun a bit and did yarny stuff. But that's a story for another day...

A lovely morning

Birthday tradition; breakfast in bed.

The rest of the day is pure me-time!

Tomorrow is mothers day here in Norway, another breakfast-in-bed-day.
Though it has just started, I know this is going to be a great week end.

Baby, baby, baby

The title sums up this post to a tee.

Baby mittens



Baby cardigan



Baby blanket in progress



The mittens have been done for quite some time, so has the BSJ. But I kind of lost my felting needle, and you all know how long it can take to find the perfect buttons and actually sew them on... So this is not me being unfaithful to the project "cocoon cloud" that I swore I'd be monogamous to in my last entry!

The blanket however, now there's where I'm cheating on my "cocoon cloud"! Then again I figured I'm allowed to have one "knitting relationship" and one "crochet relationship". Especially now that the knitting has proved to be a pain in the butt. The sleeves are giving me a lot of trouble. To get everything to match up and the picking up under the arms to look nice I have to pick up too many stitches, and the sleeves end up too wide, and the math does not add up after all... AND CROCHET IS JUST SOOOO FAST AND EASY AND RELAXING FOR THE MIND. I'm allowing myself to have a crochet affair, OK?

My week in feet

It's actually a challenge for me, trying to take a picture of my feet every day, getting it uploaded and added to the correct group on flickr. I knew there was a reason why I never threw myself on to the "365" bandwagon. I know of various things that would have made this task easier for me, but most involve quite a bit of money (new camera, lap-top...)

In the end I'm relatively happy with most of the pictures. I've had some learning moments, that's a good thing! (Like, my camera will never under any light or circumstances get the colour cyclamen pink right!)

So without further ado, I present to you
A WEEK WITH MY FEET
(most recent pictures first because I got terribly lazy in the end...)



I'm amazed and happy with the amount of red in there. I should pay more attention to red in my knitting too. It's a really pretty colour!