Appreciating warm hands

Did you ever try to peel and eat an orange, outside, when it's several degrees below freezing and windy? Did your fingers turn so cold you tried to peel the last half wearing hand knit wool mittens?

Easter ski trips and oranges go hand in hand. Sometimes the hands get too friggin cold! I had to make myself some fingerless mitts for future outdoors orange peeling.



My easter holiday was great! Mostly sunny and filled with lots of snow and ski trips. I even rented carving skis and had a go at going very fast downhill for the first time in 15 years. The Inga hat was worn and loved every day:) And now I've just finished unloading the 8th load of laundry since we got back home. 5 of them were wool cycle washes. The house smells faintly of very clean wet sheep. (It's a good thing!)

There is someone lurking about

It's The Easter Bunny!



I'm wishing everyone who hops by this place a happy easter! I'll be searching for bunnies at the inlaws cabin for a week. I'm sure I'll just find mice.

Back with finished knits soon.

And Guro said...

... let there be light. And there was light. And Guro saw that light was good



and wanted to paint the entire house this lovely shade of white.

I'm closing in on finishing the paint job in the upstairs hall. No more red! All the wood stuff needs another coat, but the wallpaper has got the two coats of "half vanilla"* on it. I think this might be a really good colour (or lack there of) for the green bedroom too. I'll tackle that later. And then, if Petter decides to help me out, the stairs and downstairs hall will get a lick of two of paint too (huge job). I secretly want to paint the kitchen too, but I won't tell anyone about that just yet.

I think it was smart starting with the smallest room and letting Petter see how much a lick of paint can do. Petter is starting to think painting is not such a bad idea after all.

*the colour is called vanilla, but it's mixed with twice the amount of white paint

Colour!

Yes, I know I said in my previous post that I was back to the black knitting. That did not last very long, did it?

Just look at this:



Colour! So fun!

I'm not going to go ahead and tell what that is just yet. There might be a pattern for it sometime in the future though. I'll just have to see how this works out, then do some math and pondering, knit the pattern again and hope all goes well.

It seems to be a really good sock yarn stash buster!

Very short update

I'm back to the black stuff... I managed a full pattern repeat on my dads Koolhaas hat yesterday. And the first bunad stocking is all the way past row 80 (out of about 115 for the leg). All the decreases down the back of the leg are done and the chart is becoming a bit easier to do since the pattern now repeats itself over two rows.

The biggest update this time is a really good one, at least for me. I got a new job! I start right after easter. I'm really exited about it. New people, and lots of new things learn and love. In the beginning tough, I expect all the new and exciting stuff might take some time away from my knitting- and knitting related internet time. Just so you're warned.

And since I don't like to leave a post completely pictureless I leave you with a link to a picture Amy the Great (is new Knitty here soon?) took last fall, visiting Oslo. You may think what you like about why I picked that one. I'm not the one to go mixing work and blogging;)

I might just enjoy watching paint dry

If it was paint I painted myself that is.



When we moved into our house four years ago everything was just painted and "new" and we did not really feel the need to do anything but get unpacked and start enjoying our cozy new home. We still have not done anything to make the inside of the place look any better than it was that day in October 2003. It's starting to show. Also I was hoping that some of the colours would grow on me. They have not!

Upstairs has the typical bright, primary colours feel.


Very red!


Very green!

There is also a blue room and a yellow room, but I don't mind those so much. Office/guest room and main guest room (spinning room, ssshhh).

That green... It's like sleeping inside a cuecumber! What's really starting to get to me though is that I can no longer turn a blind eye to the little details showing how absolutely sloppy some of the work has been done, and the fact that we are also wearing our house down faster than I thought.







Getting the bedroom painted would also be a good opportunity to get new bedroom curtains. Though that would mean getting rid of the ones P so lovingly hemmed. Look at that job...



He did not even use cissors for the whole operation. That is one gorgeous 1+ meter hem.
(Did you not catch the dripping sarcasm here? Try again!)


What's the point in all this, in a supposed-to-be-knitting blog? Petter does not want to go to look at, decide on or buy paint with me. I think he's afraid of the whole experience being like going to a LYS with me. And I think he might be right. I know I'll spend ages pondering colours, textures, tools and tricks. Wich are things I like and he lothes. But I think it's important that he has a say in it too, we'll both be spending countless hours with the result. That, and the fact that when I said he had to give me one colour he'd consider he said white. He turned the volume on the tv up when I made him understand there is more than one kind of white.

I think I've scared him off by asking too many times "Will this end up looking like a zebra?"


(That's todays knitting content, I squeezed it in)

So now I turn to you, my few but faithful readers to answer this question:
*What colour paint do I pick to go with these tiles?

(Hint: I know red does, but I don't like that any longer)

Close your eyes and think of spring

It's not far away now. I'm really looking forward to the easter holidays. Hopefully it will involve some skiing, because Inga is going to be my new skiing hat.



Such a great pattern. The chart is a tiny bit much at times, and there are some long floats to handle, but gosh, the final result is gorgeous.



I used a blue/purple/red variegated yarn (Gjesdal Nagano) as contrasting colour to the white PT5 Sport by Rauma.
Love how it turned out.

Modifications:

A fun looking liner knit from leftover alpaca yarn

Picot hem turn

While I was outside trying to get good shots of Inga and I, I noticed this to:





Spring is right around the corner!

Missing the Casio

I miss our camera. I's still away with P and M. They'll be back tomorrow (yay), so normal pictures will be back soon. There are nice stuff to photograph too!

I finished some Breeze ankle socks last night. This morning the sun was shining on my bed as I was changing the linen on it and I took the opportunity to see what my little phone camera could actually do.


Normal setting


Daylight setting


Negative setting


Retro setting

I think the retro does the socks the most favour, though I am fond of the negative too. Makes me think of the girl in Charlie and the chocolate factory whose face turned all purple. (Was it really a girl? I don't remember and I can't find the book.)

About the socks; Breeze is a great little pattern. If I was ever to change anything about these socks it would be to knit the first four rows of ribbing on smaller (2mm) needles. I'm predicting a sagging problem. I don't think I had any when I started the socks way back last summer. They only took one ball of Mandarin Petit, so This might be a nice stashbuster.

This could have been a pictureless post

I'm home alone for a week. The camera is on holiday with man and daughter. I was not so much looking forward to a whole week without snapping a single picture, so I thought I'd give the camera on the mobile phone I got for x-mas a try. It did not turn out too bad I think.



That's my Saturday and Sunday right there. Knitting the gorgeous Inga hat (Ravelry link) and watching TV by the fire.

Knitting is kind of slow, I take a lot more breaks than I normally would. Break: Put knitting in lap, stare at roof, nod off. I've had some pains knocking me out recently, but I've taken action and found myself an accupuncture guy. His tricks are working already, I'm glad to say. So I'll be back working on all my fluffy works in progress that need my attention soon, and spinning. I really want to do some spinning when I'm all better.

(Do I believe in accupuncture? Dunno. Do I understand it? No. Is it working? Yes. Do painkillers make throw up? Yes. In case you were wondering why I did not just see my doc.)

2008 - not the year of the sock

I caved!

What can I say, I could not contain my inner Sunnmøring*. There was a sale and I could not help myself.

I was pretty determined 2008 was not going to be as full of socks as 2007 was. I hope to be knitting more big things.

However, this is now going to be on it's way to me real soon and I want to cast on with it as soon as I get my hands on it!


Lorna's Laces Sheperd Sock in China Blue


Lorna's Laces Sheperd Sport in Irving Park


Fiber Trends sock blockers

All I can think is Yay! I could not even manage to wait until the yarn was actually here to share it on the blog.





*I realise a lot of my readers may not be familiar with the term Sunnmøring (I now have a blogpatrol installed here and can spy on my own blog;). Who knows, when I type it it may even show up funny on some of your screens. Is Sunnmoering better?
I was born and raised at Sunnmoere, tough I'm not pure bred. Word has it people from my part of the country are careful about their money (some claim greedy), is always up for a good bargain or ways to earn or save money. Place a sunnmoering on a desert island and soon you'll have a thriving community with a furniture factory and a small fleet of fishing boats. Another claim is that we cannot swim, because we can only motion our arms towards ourselves instead of away from us, and drown as a result.
Anyhooo, I just could not pass up this sale. I have been thinking about that China blue for over a week!
My dad can't walk past a sale to save his life, and he's not even born sunnmoering, only lived there for the past 35 years. The force is strong!