Ready!

Tomorrow, when I wake up, I'm officially on my first day of summer vacation.

I'm catching the bus from Oslo early afternoon with my brother, a great travel companion. We don't see each other too often so it's good to have a few hours on a bus to catch up on things. We're teaming up with my daugther and man, mom and dad at the inlaws cabin for a day, before heading to Sweden for a wedding. Then slowly but steadily towards the mid west coast of Norway for a good week of relaxing and hopefully hiking in the mountains. I know for a fact internet access is not going to be great, so I take this moment to wish you all a good summer.

I'll be back with knitting and holiday photos in a while.

Blue like summer

On my way to work on Sunday morning. Such a beautiful day, sometimes I have the best way of getting to work there is.




I went home and finished Nottingham (ravelry link). I think the hat looks like the water. Do you see it too?




The cables look good but not great in the variegated yarn. I knew that this yarn wouldn't look do the cables justice, but it's great for the recipient and the intended use I have in mind.

I've already cast on for a second one. Slightly larger, I'm having to play with the pattern and needles a bit. I'm thinking the cables will look a little bit better on one size smaller needles, the ribbing sure does.
Two balls of Bunny Hop out of the stash when I'm done :)

New and new old woolies

I got all these lovely things from Virtualknitter in a Nordic Knitters swap on Ravelry. So much fun in this (not so) little package. KnitPicks (my first!) Alpaca Cloud and Sock Blanks for dyeing self striping sock yarn. Red and blue border leister locks for spinning, there is lots more, a big zip-lock bag of the blue and a smaller one of the red. And yummy Washington candies and tea. I love it all!

Then I got this bag of yarn from my aunt. She recently re-decorated her bedroom and found some yarn stashed away at the very back of her closet. Petter brought me the bag and said "Here's some yarn from that place you love", not meaning the back of my aunts closet, but rather Rauma Ullvarefabrikk*. I guess that 2.5 hours he had to hang out with me at their factory outlet two summers ago left an impression of some kind.
(* If you click the link be sure to take a look at the new Rauma patterns for adults and babies (top pictures), looks like they used their mill as location when they took the pattern photos. The patterns don't tickle me much, but the backdrop does.)



The bag also contained 4 and one partial skein of some blue mystery yarn. I have no idea what this is. I'm guessing a wool blend. Sniffing it did not tell me anything useful.



At the bottom of the bag I found this:



Looks good at first glance, but on closer inspection...





Very, very worn.

I'm not expected to fix this. My aunt just thought I would find it interesting to have a look at it, and I do. It's a traditional norwegian cardigan construction. Stranded and steeked. I'm guessing my grandma or my great grandma knit it about 40-50
years ago.

The colours are not exactly my cup of tea, but I find the pattern very nice. Simple and classic, and I do like that.

My summer companion

Sometimes, while browsing through knitblogs or Ravelry, it seems like every second (or more) knitter has at least one cat.
I never had pets growing up, something I missed a lot at times. Allergies can be serious, and getting a furry critter was not something my parents were going to give in on.

That is why I really appreciate contact with animals when I have the chance. Like Billy, my summer companion. Billy came with the house. He used to live here before we bought it. He belongs to our neighbours, but our garden is part of his domain and we see him around a lot. Every summer he comes and spends most nights in a chair on our porch. He's there for a cuddle before I go to bed and greets me with a meow in the morning.

Billy's old. Not very fond of kids, and usually goes away if there's more than two people around. Now that I've been home alone for a couple of weeks I've been seeing a lot of Billy. He even let me snap some pictures of him, though he was not as comfortable with the camera as other cats I've seen.





I made a decision about one of the works in progress I've been working on for a really long time (2006).

Now you see it!



Now you don't!



Good thing to get off my mind. I'll re-start with larger needles as soon as I get some other things out of the way.
And get a bit further on this:



Swatching is done. I've washed and tumble dried and cast on. Hope this turns out as good as it is in my head.

It's Friday!

First of all; HAPPY BIRTHDAY NELSON MANDELA!



Working today was different than my usual days. We celebrated Mandelas birthday; speaches, band, cake and all.
I do like my desk job, but it's nice to be where the action is sometimes too.



Then I came home and did one of my favourite things when it comes to redecorating and painting.



Removing masking tape from the newly painted bedroom walls.

It's going to be so nice waking up in this room now.



No more feeling of waking up inside a cucumber.
I'll get new curtains. The ones we have did not look good with the old colour and will not look good with the new colour either.

And I'm starting a new sweater. Mostly from my own head, with guidance from a few other patterns.



I'm even swatching.

I'm looking forward to a nice and relaxing week end. Petter and Marie might be coming home on Sunday. With loads of laundry and happy smiles!

I crocheted

OK, so it was not much, but I did crochet!

So let me present to you the very first crochet on this blog; the edge of this shawl



The edge looks a bit strange, but that is due to an urge to get this blocked and ready fast. I did not have enough blocking pins for all of the loops and only did every second loop. I'll re-block later, but I absolutely don't mind this look so I'll wait a while.

The pattern for this shawl is Diamonds and Pearls from The knitters book of yarn. I was a bit sceptical when I first started this, the pattern is not charted and also is written for a drapey (heavy) silk blend yarn. What I had was a very nice but rough and rustic Finnish wool yarn called SeVILLA. After 20 rows or pattern I was absolutely sure this was going to be beautiful and knit happily on. This wool was a delight to work with. A diamond in the rough so to speak. At first glance it might not look like much in the skein, but on closer inspection it has that great handspun quality and great "I come from a live animal" thing going for it. The wool is mostly a pale brownish gray, but with the odd flecks of chocolate brown in there, and some longer black hairs.

No big changes to the (great) pattern. I knit an extra repeat of the diamonds lace part, and stopped before recommended 18 rows of holes at the bottom (I have 15). I did not knit the bind off as written either, instead I bound off purlwise on a large needle, and then... Well you already know about the crochet. 6 crochet loops for every 3rd edge stitch. I cast on for this shawl on Friday evening and finished Tuesday at S'n'B. Very fast, but that's usually how it goes when you find yourself with a great pattern and yarn. I just could not put this down at times.

The blocking went fairly well, though I was in a hurry to get it done. I desperately wanted to see the finished result and also I did it late at night. When I came home from work on Wednesday I was so happy to see that it was more beautiful than I imagined. Also, it smells really, really good.



Ann was inspired by that photo to both write a blogpost and start a group on Flickr.

Ann; here's a picture for you


I treated myself to some new yarn today. Eco cotton.

I smell all yarns at the LYS before I buy. I also have a sniff at my own favourite yarns repeatedly. It's as natural to me as looking at the ballband. I prefer wool, but other natural fibers are good too. Lighter coloured yarns smell better than the really rich, dark colours. I think it's the dyes.
This cotton is one of the better ones I've sniffed, No strong chemical dyes (eco y'know), it has a faint smell of dry grass.

It was on a sale, 50% off. How could I not clear them all out of this colour?



11 balls. Now excuse me, I'm off to cast on for a blue cotton sweater.
I hope you take time to sniff your own yarns, and maybe snap a photo to share with Ann.

Well finally! You may congratulate me.

My first adult size, not cropped, with sleeves, even-swatched-for-this sweater is done! It only took a year and a bit.

Actually, it took a lot less than a year to knit this, but I thought I wanted the belt the original pattern has. Turns out after knitting a belt twice that I did not care for it after all. It also took a long time for me to start the belt, 6 months or so and the actual belt knitting took 2-3 months! Go figure.



I think the overall outcome is rather good. The sweater is a bit heavy and stiff, but wiht a bit of fabric softener and a bit of wear it will go from that and onto a good drape instead.
It's simple and classic, a style I like. And though the seed stitch was really boring to knit I love the way it looks.



Sure, I completely deviated from the original pattern (from IK spring 2007) and went top down and in the round instead of knit flat and bottom up. Anything to get out of seaming when there is no real need for it. It's worked out great. I had a bit of trouble getting the increases and decreases for the waist looking good so I added "fake seams" of 2 stitches stockinette down each side and knit the inc's and dec's into those.

I've been playing with my new camera to get these shots. It's still a bit of a stranger to me but after about 70 pictures, 3 turned out ok. It's not just the fact that I've not bonded with my lime green toy though, white is hard to photograph in bright sunlight. I managed to find a solution that worked in the far end of the garden, with the gorillapod as my assistant and Marie's playhouse as a nice backdrop.



Then I went inside to edit the pictures.



I have a gazillion things on the needles right now. Much more than my ravelry projects lets you know! A lot of it is nearly done and I hope to be able to show off some of them really soon.

So quiet

I'm home alone. I have been for a week and will be for at least another week. The house is so quiet. Also, I have been without both camera and internet at home. Both are now fixed. The internet connection was suddenly just back, I have no idea how, and on Thursday I weant out and got myseld a brand new camera (lime green, yay) and case and a gorillapod. The camera is tiny and will stay in my purse all the time!

I've been getting a lot of knitting done these days alone. Last night I felt the urge to cast on something new. I've had this great finnish yarn from a swap in the back of my head for weeks and then suddenly I knew I had the perfect pattern for it too.



The yarn, SeVILLA, is one of those wonderfully sheepy natural yarns.. The woman who sent it to me told me it comes from a Finnish breed of sheep. It is both wooly and hairy at the same time. Not super soft, but I am sure it will soften a lot once washed. The colour is a grayish beige with a bit of chocolate brown mixed in, and some black longer hairs to. So delightfully rustic!

And last. The new camera has this neat feature that goes so well with the gorillapod. I can now set the camera up for a shot. Place myself in front of the camera and when I'm ready (none of that running to catch the self timer) I smile, and then the camera goes click-click-click.



I need a bit of practice on this, but it seems easy enough to be a great knitters "fo shot" feature.
(Can you tell I cut my hair on Tuesday? Well over 2"/5 cm. Neither can I, but I know it's off because I saw my own hair on the floor of the hairdressers. Strange. Can't feel it, can't see it.)

You might not have been reading this blog long enough to remember this:



My swatch for the Green Tea Raglan from last springs Interweave Knitting.

The sweater is done and will be blogged soon. I have finally decided I want the belt and that is going to be finished in a little while.

Meanwhile the swatch is no longer a swatch, but knitted grafitti. It's so much prettier hanging on a tree by the river Akerselva in Oslo than at the bottom of my knitting basket.



This picture was taken on Tuesday, when the By:Garn ladies, the "knittah, please" ladies of Oslo, were out "tagging" the city along with a journalist and a photographer from one of Norways biggest glossy ladies mags. I heard the journalist mention the words "four page article". Exciting!

We had great fun, and I am already looking forward to the next time we go out to put our knitted tagging up.









I got to borrow pictures from IreneSol. Thank you Irene! Also, the lady in the pretty, lilac tank is Hildegunn, a good partner in crime. My favourite tag of the day was on her behalf. I managed to tag her bike without her noticing at first ;)

Not finished for spring, but...

The bolero sweater is back right at the top of my knitting basket. I have not worked on it for ages. Not since I had to frog the entire first front back in the end of March.

This time I've started the second sleeve, and hope to be done with that in not too long. Then there is just the two fronts and edgeings to tackle, and I do hope I get it right the second time I try.I'm pondering knitting both at once, but I'm not sure if it's wise. If I do that and have to frog again I'll have to frog both fronts. Twice as much as the first time. There is something entirely confusing to me about how the increases are done for the fronts. Must put my brain to work on it properly before I start.

I was sure this would look great for spring. Now I'm sure it will look just as good as a fall bolero. With jeans and one of those pretty white tunics that are all over this year underneath. If I manage to knit the fronts that is... Fingers crossed!