a year in review

This is kind of embarrassing, but… I managed to miss my own blog anniversary! I didn’t completely forget, but I just didn’t check the date early enough, and the actual anniversary passed already. And I was going to make a big deal out of it and everything… oh, well. I’ll just have to do it now!

Happy birthday my blog! :)

It has been so much fun sharing my work with you, and starting to get comments has been just thrilling to me! I’m so glad I started a blog, and even though time might be scarce sometimes, I try to keep a fairly regular schedule of posting, because that’s what I appreciate in others’ blogs, too.

I wanted to reflect back at the things I made during the year, and especially all the new things I learned. I usually try to incorporate something new in each project I start so as not to get bored with the process. I rarely knit the same thing twice and even if I do, I try to do it a little differently the second time. Here are some of the new things I’ve learned/done this past year:

A lace scarf (believe it or not, I had never made one before)

Provisional cast on

Provisional cast off
Kitchener stitch

Toe up socks

Short row heel

Dutch heel

Entrelac

Dyeing yarn using different methods

Twist cables and frilly cast on in the Latvian mittens

I-cord edging

Twisted stitch ribbing

Steeks

Swirl knitting

Attaching a zipper to a knitted cardigan

Felting in the washer

Beaded stitch markers

Crochet cast off

Three needle cast off

Slip stitch patterns

Quite the list, huh? I’m not sure if I can find as many new techniques to learn this year, but I’ll try! If it weren’t for all the knitting blogs out there, I would still be knitting all my projects using the few basic techniques I learned years ago. Reading blogs has taught me so much, and I am a firm believer in the power of the global community! And not only have I learned new things, but I’ve also gotten new friends that I otherwise would never have met.

To add a little excitement, I want to give away a prize, and I want to do it by the way of a contest. Sort of. The task is to vote for your favorite FO (finished object) from the past year, and we’ll see, who can match mine. Now, I know that those, who know me well have the advantage of being better able to guess what my favorite piece of work might be, so I will draw the winner of some hand dyed sock yarn from all the commenters (heh, that word doesn’t pass the spell check…), not just the ones that guessed right. So if you haven’t been reading this blog since the beginning, browse through the archives and find your favorite thing! In my next post I will reveal what was my favorite thing to knit.

color fixation

Does it ever happen to you that you find yourself obsessed with a color? Maybe a color that isn't your usual choice, but something a little outside your comfort zone? This happens to me every now and then. I seem to pick things in that particular color quite unconsciously, until I've had my fix. Then I can move onto other colors again. This time the color is this deep reddish brown, or brownish red, I can't even decide which to call it. And I don't know one of those fancy color names for it, like "chartreuse" or "turquoise" and the like (I'm terrible at those... for me it's red, dark red, light red, bright red, orangy red, bluish red and so on.) I realized after I got home that the Cascade 220 I bought on my trip matched with the sock yarn I had also just bought, as well as with my new shoes:
Later on I noticed that it also was the color of the purse I dug out and wanted to start using again. We'll see if this will extend to my whole wardrobe, or if this will be enough for now. :)

By the way, I'm in love with Cascade 220! It is yummy soft and sooo nice to knit. And not terribly expensive, either, and the amount of colors that are available is just mind boggling. I've started this (actually just finished the back piece, but it's not blocking yet, just pinned down for the picture):

Can anybody guess what it is? Here's a hint: the original (from a knitting magazine) is knitted in the same yarn in a lavender blue.

Thank you all for your comments again lately. I'm sorry for not being more diligent about replying to you, but lately I haven't had a lot of time to devote to blogging. I wish I did. A lot of the comments also don't link to your e-mail, so even if I wanted to, I can't always reply. Nevertheless, all comments are greatly appreciated and are very important to me. Thank you!

A very good trip...

I just got back from Chicago, where I attended a conference with a coworker for a few days. A "Nerd conference", according to my friend. :D This still cracks me up, and we made fun of it every day of our trip. Weather was lousy both there, as well as back here, so I got quite a bit of knitting done. Delays on airports, flights, spending evenings in the hotel room (we're nerds, remember), and an extra day of travel because of the snow storm in the upper Midwest.

I finished the blue stripy vest just on time for the end of the yarn diet, and actually wore it to class on Thursday.
Ta-daa!!I am very happy with the fit, and the thickness of it is ideal. It's thinner than the Argyle vest, and not as hot.

I also started a pair of Pomatomus socks in one of the Trecking colors I just ordered. I LOVE the color, but the sock leg turned out too tight, so I decided to turn them into wrist warmers. I neede pretty ones anyway, so these will definitely fit the bill:
It's a crappy picture, but trust me, they are really very pretty!

I also went yarn shopping (in March, mind you! I didn't break the rules of the yarn diet.) at Loopy Yarns, that was a very nice little yarn shop with a very nice selection of yarn and not too high prices. I'll have to post about my purchases at another time, as it's getting way too late, and I need some shut-eye.

Change of plans

Last week I was going to start another sweater after the one I finished, but then I changed my mind. I've been wanting to make another vest for a whole, but just haven't found the perfect yarn. Or, well, there's a lot of perfect yarns out there, but I was looking for the perfect color combination, and just hadn't found it in any of those otherwise perfect yarns (price was also a factor -I didn't want to pay upwards of $ 50 for a vest). And since I'm on a yarn diet, I decided to take a close look at my left over yarn bin. And lo and behold, enough of blue yarns in DK weight to make at least one vest, if not more! Who would have guessed! :D

I'm going for just simple stripes, nothing fancy:

With 3 mm needles it's kind of slow going, but I'm still enjoying it very much.

Just in time!

Just in time before it gets too warm to wear anything thick and woolly, that is! I finished my burnt red cadigan:Pattern: my own, started on Feb 2, finished on Feb 17
Yarn: Tahki Donegal Tweed
Needles: 4.5 mm circular Knitpicks


I very much like how it turned out, but the yarn wasn't the most pleasant to knit with. It was quite rough and non-elastic, so it was very hard on my fingers. Especially since I was only knitting this and nothing else for the last two weeks. But again, I like the end result, so I guess it was worth the pain.

This tweedy yarn is very light, it only took about 550 g to knit a medium size sweater, which is not very much at all! I had bought a full bag, which was 8 100 g skeins (not 10 as usual and as I thought it would be), and first I wasn't sure if it would be enough. Well, it was plenty, and now I have over 2 full skeins to figure out what to do with.

As far as I can remember, this was the first zipper I had put on a cardigan. It wasn't as diffucult as I thought, actually it was easier than most zippers, because you don't even have to fold the fabric under, so you can just sew over it once and you're done.

When I find the time, I will write the pattern out and publish it here.

Next is another sweater from a fine boucle yarn. I'll tell more about that when I have finalized my plans.

Bag

I know this is supposed to be a knitting blog, but I just have to show you all my new tote bag. I found this coolest ever fabric (I'm sure you'll agree) at a store in Minneapolis, and made a bag out of it. I'm one of those people who are always hauling a whole bunch of stuff with them everywhere, and sometimes I feel like I look like a bag lady... So I needed a nice new bag, so that I can at least look like a stylish bag lady!

Here's the inside (they also had very cool matching fabrics for lining):

And a close-up of the coolest ever fabric:

I think the name of the store was Calico Corner. Very nice little fabric store -I could hardly get out of there, because I wanted to buy just about everything they had, but my pocket book just wouldn't allow it. I did also got a couple of other fabrics for more bags, but those will have to wait till later.

There has been some knitting progress, too, mainly due to the thicker-than-usual yarn.


I've finished both front pieces and have started the back:


(Lankahamsterit: tässä on vähän vajaa 200 g lankaa. Erittäin riittoisaa, muuten...)

Socks and sweaters

Remember the yarn diet I was participating with? Well, that started February first, and one of the ideas of this whole thing is to try to knit as much as you can during the month of February. The winner takes home a prize that -of course - is yarn. But only projects started during this month count, so I was trying to finish off a couple of projects. The first one was E's sweater that has been in the works since Thanksgiving. And I have to admit that it still isn't quite finished, I need to bind off the collar, and find a suitable zipper.

I used a crochet enforced steek for the front:
Cutting the steek:And here's what it looked like after cutting:


The steeks were folded under and stitches picked up from the top:
I don't have a picture of the collar yet, but maybe some day you'll actually get to see the finished product.

I also worked on my travel project, a pair of stockinette stitch socks from Koigu KPPPM. I haven't really shown any pictures of these before, because they've lived in my bag and in my car. I don't remember the colorway, and my Little Helper took care of shredding the bands before I got a chance to write it down. He's very helpful that way. ;) Anyhow, here are the finished socks:
I liked the color much better on the skein than knitted up. The colors, even though lovely, turn out a little messy looking. But I love my new socks anyway!

Then onto the new project. I started from scratch, planning the pattern using my Excel spreadsheet again:Not the best picture ever, but you get the idea... I like it how once you've got the spreadsheet, figured out, doing the math for a new project is a breeze. Then I just print out the sheets, and off I go. I'm using Tahki Donegal Tweed and 4.5 mm needles, so it's coming out pretty fast:This is the right front. It will have a zipper closing, raglan sleeves and minimal shaping at the waist. I might add pockets, not quite sure yet.

Last Friday the UPS-guy brought me this:The Unexpected Knitting by Debbie New.

It's not so much a pattern book, but more of an art book. Knitted art. A wondreful resource that opens your mind to new ways of doing things. Debbie New proves that you don't always have to knit everything straight from top to bottom or bottom to top. You can go in swirls, circles and labyrinths. The fashion is a little dated, but it's not the style of the garments that matters, it's the techniques. You can always adapt the technique to your own style.

After reading this book, I feel... liberated! I've had several ideas for socks that can't be done very well using any traditional technique, but now I know what to do! I think using the ideas from this book, I can not only draw the ideas I have, but also knit them. This will be so much fun! I can't wait to start experimenting! Here's a picture from the book of swirl socks:

I wanted to get started right away, but planning for socks made out of swirls is a little tricky. It's hard to wrap your mind around it -what shape should the swirls be that it actually makes a sock? And a sock that would fit somebody! So I started by cutting up an old sock into swirly strips of fabric. Then I drew my pattern:

Yup, that's a sock pattern! And here is one of my pieces:

The pieces of red yarn are just markers to mark the different sections of increases, decreases and straight knitting. I'm not quite sure yet how I will piece them together. This is definitely an experimental and a "learn as you go" kind of project. I've wanted to do something like this with yarns such as Trecking XXL that have slow and gradual color changes, and now I have the perfect technique to do that. So expect to see some very odd looking socks in the near future. ;)

Talking about Trecking, I'd seen some colors that I couldn't find anywhere, at least not more than one or two of them in the same place. But then I found this German yarn shop that had tons of colors! Maybe even all of them... I think I have almost all of the darker, more saturated colors from the row with numbers 71-77. And ordering from there with overseas shipping was actually cheaper than buying from here at a local yarn store. And once I had the kinks worked out with Paypal, my shipment came very fast! I was most happy with the service, and will definitely order from there again.