October 23, 2007

It's not always about knitting

Let's just say I had great fun on Sunday!
Chainsaw
Chainsaw

We're nearly ready for winter now.
Firewood

October 21, 2007

Tuscany shawl class and stuff (photo heavy)

First of all I have to show you the yarn, because it's so pretty!

Yarn for Tuscany shawl
Indian handspun 100% pure silk. It's like knitting with pink butter.

Now the shawl

CIMG5085
That's about as much as I did in the class. Only I did not knit that in the class. I ripped what I did there, there was some fudgeing and stupid corrections on that shawl, and after thinking about how the fabric looked I also felt the need to change needles.
You can also see the variegation in the yarn a bit better in this photo.

After three hours of

Tuscany shawl

Shawl pin

Theresa WANTS the needles!

Theresa

We headed to downtown Oslo

Love Amy's Lexie Barnes bag! Being driven around in Oslo
(Love Amy's Lexie Barnes bag)

to see the Strikknikk exhibition at the Decorative arts and design museum.

Then food at a nice little place called Bacchus

Bacchus
That's Theresa, trying to hide behind a nacho, Amy and Sandy.

Giggles ' Heeey, take the picture already Amy and I

Also I have a new little knitting bag, that I love!

New knitting bag New knitting bag New knitting bag
Felisi is a very smart woman!

And a new work in progress that's looking like it's going to be very pretty!

My socalled scarf
My socalled scarf. There is one thing I find odd though. I'm sure I cast on 46 or 48 stitches, there are now 44 and I can not for the life of me find out where I've dropped or lost stitches. Hopefully I will not loose any more. I'm not aming for a triangular scarf!

October 19, 2007

She's HERE!

Amy

Talking about knitting

Amy at Tveita

Taking pictures

Picture time

And Theresa...

Theresa

... is translating, organizing, knitting and being wonderful!

My Tuscany shawl class is tomorrow. I'm like a child before Christmas...
Amy's already helped me sub the yarn for the shawl. We're getting some lovely alpaca/silk yarn in the class kit originally, but recently knitting with some alpaca yarns has made my throat hurt and my eyes burn. So I've subbed the alpaca for some gorgeous pink indian handspun silk. Pink!

You'll hear more about this!

October 15, 2007

I'm getting knitted

Finally, it's here! I ordered this yarn September 28th, on October 4th I got an e-mail saying it had shipped. Today, it arrived!

Get knitted yarn and needles

I've ordered two more sets of sock needles from Knitpicks too. I expect they'll be here sooner or later.

I've already cast on for socks with the tiger yarn. My cousin has asked me to knit socks for her guy for his birthday. I knit their son some tiny tiger socks back in May. Since then he has been completely facinated by the socks. Muttering "oh, if I could have tiger socks too" under his breath when he puts them on his son. So, he's getting tiger socks!

I've wanted to try the Trekking pro natura for a long time. Now I can, in a fabulous blue. I might want to do something besides socks with it.

Also, I ran to the grocery store to get potatoes and cinnamon on Saturday.
This followed me home!

Mor Aase

20 balls of Sandnes Mor Aase in a nice shade of charcoal gray. I might use it for some kind of E. Zimmermann sweater for hubby (if he wants one), or maybe a Hemlock Ring blanket.
It is so much cheaper to buy yarn at the grocery store than at a LYS. I paid 8 NKr a ball for that yarn ($1.49/£0.73/1.04euro). And it's good yarn too I think.

Mor Aase

October 14, 2007

Spinning

It's been a while since I wrote that I had ordered a new wheel. Well, I thought it was about time to show off a bit of what I've done with it.

First it's the yarn I spun from the wool that came as "practise wool" along with the wheel.
You can really tell from the picture that this is not the best yarn in the world. But towards the end of using this wool I had gotten a hang of how my Louet works.

spinnvilt white handspun 2-ply

After using up all the white wool I dug straight into a big bag of gray mystery wool I got from a lady I took spinningclasses with. She had received two bags of the stuff from a girl at our S'n'B, and thought it was too much for her alone.

The wool is rich in lanoline, smells strongly of sheep, but is very nice to spin and I really like the result I'm getting.

gray handspun

gray handspun

gray handspun

That last picture shows three skeins, there are four. The last one was outside drying when I took the photo. Each skein is about 100 grams. There is still quite a bit of wool left too. I'm hoping I will have enough for a sweater or short sleeved cardigan in the end. Something from Fitted Knits (S. Japel) I hope. The yarn seems to be knittable into the same gauge as Cascade 220, but I will not know that for sure until I knit a swatch. I'll also try to remember measuring the wpi of the yarn.

Last, but not least, there is this skein of pink yarn.

pink-mix handspun

pink-mix handspun

I spun this up when I was starting to get a bit tired of gray. The bright pink stuff is labelled "Nepal wool" and is quite rough, short stapled and almost seems felted. When I carded it together with some baby pink merino it spun up quite well. I did not manage to spin either wool by itself. It kept breaking on me. The finished yarn is very soft and squishy.
Marie wants me to knit her a hat from this, spesifically the Diary Queen hat (Three spiral hat) by E. Zimmermann (from the Opinionated Knitter book). I really like that idea!

There will be more spinning posts to come, I'm sure...

October 11, 2007

Make due with what you've got

I was going to take some nice pictures of the baby socks and booties I knit last weekend. Only problem was finding a place to take some decent photos. The best of the outdoor pictures in the low afternoon sun was this.

CIMG4956

I know it's not terrible, but I'm not happy with it either. And I know things will not get any better when winter comes and there are only a few hours of daylight most days. I've been wanting to build one of those DIY lightboxes for a while, but have not found a cardboard box big enough. Then, while I was rummageing through the various places I keep knitting supplies, looking for a spesific circular needle (no, I did not find it), it hit me. I CAN USE THIS!

THIS! Lightbox

Like this: Lightbox

So, here's booties and socks for you!

Saartjes booties
Saartjes booties in Regia 8-ply

Gray socks
Baby cable, Better than booties baby socks by Ann Budd
(ok, say that three times, fast...)
Lanett yarn

Brown booties
Baby booties on two needles, from Knitting on the Net. Regia 6-ply.
(converted to be knit in the round, so it's five needles after all)

It's a nice gift for a cute little baby boy I think!

Gift for Olav

And I managed to use up a bit of all my various leftover sock yarns.

And after that I took what had been in that newspaper basket and frogged it, because I did not like it at all!

Ugh shawl Ugh shawl Frogged

October 08, 2007

Bainbridge

I'm back from my little fall break. As you can see it was very nice and sunny.

Bainbridge scarf

Bainbridge scarf

These pictures were taken while we hiked around Swedens highest waterfall. The top one shows the yarn and colour best, and the bottom one shows the way the bainbridge is worn.

The Bainbridge Scarf is a neat little thing. The idea behind it is great, but I think I picked a yarn (Garnstudio Silke-Tweed) that is to "floppy" for this project. The ties come undone and the front half flops open if I bend forwards. I also think it might just be a bit big. I have a skinny neck, and even though I cast on fewer stitches than the pattern said and with thinner yarn and smaller needles, I can tie the ties as tight as the Bainbridge allowes and it's still not as snug as I want it to be. It does keep my neck warm though. I'm going to gift this to someone with a thicker neck, and make myself a new one in woolier, less silky (drapey) yarn. I have yarn for it in the stash, I feel like the chest I keep my yarn in is brimming with single skeins and oddballs these days.

Speaking of oddballs; I managed to knit five and a half items of baby footwear (socks/booties)out of leftover yarn this weekend. I'll finish up the last sock and show it all off soon!
I could have made a substantial progress on the socks for me too, but the stripes on the second sock would not match the stripes on the first one, and I did not want to throw a knitting fit on the bus...

October 02, 2007

Autumn

I left work a bit early today. I wanted to go to one of my LYSes to get some Noro Silk Garden (or Kureyon) to make a Noro Striped Scarf (you know, Brooklyntweed-style). When I got to the yarn shop there was no wool Noro to be found in the shelves, just that weird papery yarn I can never remember the name of, and one lonely hank of Blossom. I asked the LYS lady if she had stopped taking in more Noro, with great disappointment in my voice. She told me she really wanted more of the stuff, but the Noro people had not answered any of her e-mails since May. I really, really hope she can get more eventually. I have the hardest time picking colours of Noro if I have to order online!

So, I went home and mowed the lawn, probably for the last time this season. Then I spent 2 hours stuffing twigs down our chipper. I cut down some bushes on Sunday, they were getting in the way of my lilies this summer. In the end I planted some bulbs, I love that. Getting the garden ready for autumn, and for spring.

I'm leaving Oslo tomorrow afternoon to join Petter and Marie at the inlaws cabin in in Trysil, very close to the swedish border. I'm looking forward to a few days off, in the peace and quiet of the deep pine forrests and the mountains. I'm hoping the weather will be as good as it was here today, but I'm not sure I'll have such luck. I'll be grateful for some real "Stay inside and knit"-weater too. I've packed my knitting already. There's yarn that I got today instead of the Noro (I went with Garnstudio Eskimo Print, but it's not really working out the way I hoped) and then there are a lot of oddballs and leftovers of sockyarn. I know a little guy who needs new sock for winter, desperately. He's grown completely out of his Dinosaur baby socks, and his mom has kindly requested I knit him some more. My mom even sent me some yarn she had left over from what she knit for him, so he can have matching socks and wooly pants. And last, but not least, knitting for the bus ride up there, a pair of socks for me. It's really just one sock left to knit, I've already started the toe decreases on the first one, and they'll be done and the toe kitchenered before I go to bed tonight.

One last thing:
I'm going to meet Amy Singer! I've signed up for one of the Tuscany Shawl classes she's holding here in October.
Yay!

Or rather; YAY!!!!