Ben ik weer eens

Maar weer terug naar het Nederlands, dat schrijft toch even wat makkelijker.

Een hele tijd geen blog, eerst vakantie (erg leuk gekampeerd, weinig gehobbied) en daarna ziek, ziek en alweer ziek. Mijn stevige verkoudheid kreeg gezelschap van een longontsteking en daarvan ben ik nog aan het bijkomen.

Dit gaf me wel heel veel tijd om werkjes af te ronden en nieuwe te beginnen.

Voor de vakantie was ik begonnen aan een trui waarvan het garen al heel lang in huis lag te wachten. Door het kabelen heeft het even geduurd voor hij van de pennen kwam, maar ik ben tevreden met het resultaat. Wat minder met de foto, maar vooruit.



Het patroon is van Bergere de France, nummer 867. En het garen is ook van Bergere de France, Bergereine. Ik vond het niet het prettigste garen om mee te werken, het spleet nogal.

Omdat het kabelen de eerste dagen na de longontsteking aanval niet zo wilde lukken heb ik een tweede eenvoudiger werkje op de pennen gezet.
't Garen is Alpaca van Drops. Het grijze had ik al in huis en de andere kleuren heb ik er later bij gezocht. De trui is gebaseerd op dit patroon. Omdat ik roze sterren niet zo leuk vond, heb ik het patroon aangepast met rozen.
Met het volgende resultaat.

Ook de hals heb ik aangepast, met wat verkorte toeren heb ik de neklijn wat hoger gemaakt.

Just for the yarn

When shopping for my 2.75 mm circs for the peace replica, I noticed some Noro Kureyon Sock yarn. Lovely colors, just could not resist.
At home I had to find a pattern for it, just one skein and it should show of the colors nicely.
I found the Wavelength pattern by Dawn Ellerd. It is crocheted, a nice difference for a change.
After a few evenings I had a lovely scarf.



I have 1/3 of the yarn left, my little girl wants a scarf too.

Peace proces

How is my 'peace proces' going. I have the charts. I ordered some yarn for test knitting. It is GGH Merino. A nice soft and round merino yarn. The first swatch I made with off white background and light brown contrasting color on 3mm needles.

Here I got 29 stitches per 10 cm, a little to loose. I like the color combination.
There are a few rows in the chart with only a small part of the round stranded. In this swatch I tried using a long tail of yarn for these parts and knit back the colored part in the uneven rows. I'm not really happy with this approach. It pulled at the row changes.
The second swatch is with a dark background and off white contrasting color with 2.75mm needles.

The gauge is better with 31 stitches in 10 cm. This time I just carried around both strands every row. The stranded bit is better now, but it is noticeable in the single color parts. Not sure yet what to choose.
Now finishing my charts and 'designing' the seamless set-in sleeves.

Spring in a sock

For the spring 2009 of the Midsummer Magic Club the task was to catch spring in your socks. For that we recieved a sock blank, some spring inspired dye and instructions for painting and knitting.
For the painting of the blank I had a lovely little assistant.


We taped the fingers of her gloves and she painted flowers on the blank like she had done it for ages.


Leaving the background for her mother to fill.

The included pattern was a nice lace pattern with butterflies and little tulips.
I knitted them both at the same time using magic loop. This was a little complicated, as the first lace pattern had stitches traveling from one needle to the other. But a savety pin did help a lot.

socks

I finished a few pairs of socks in the last weeks. The first ones were the second pair of Big Basin socks. The first pair I knitted for the magazine Handwerken zonder grenzen, as part of a green sock yarn item.

The magazine should be out any day now.
I liked the pattern and fit of the socks, so I took my Jitterbug yarn and casted on a second pair.

The Jitterbug yarn is a little thicker that the Araucania Ranco Multy, resulting in a little bigger socks. I've not decided yet if they are a little too big. Being winter socks, I did not use them yet. They are a little short, but there was no more yarn. Maybe better to knit them again in a smaller size this fall.

The other finished pair was for the Midsummer's Magic Club. I dyed the yarn during the Christmas break, but finishing the socks took some time.

The pattern is from Cookie A, the Monkey socks. The yarn has a little silk in it. This gives it a nice shine.

Peace

Dale of Norway not only makes beautiful knitting patterns, like Kashmir, but also great machine knitted garments. I like this one a lot:

But being a knitter, I want to knit it myself. So I started charting a pattern from pictures of the internet.


The charting is done. Now to look for yarn which will give me around 32 stitches on 10 cm. And to choose colors. Will I go with the off white and brown version? The red one is great too. Or choose realy different colors?


Hmm, maybe just get samples of several colors.

I am a .....

You Are a Cardigan

You are traditional, old-fashioned, and even a little conservative. More than anything else, you are a creature of habit. You haven't changed much over the years. You shy away from flashy ideas, people, fashion, and foods. You have simple tastes. You go for established quality and longevity every time.

What Kind of Sweater Are You?

Somehow I don't recognize me in the picture ;-)

Finally done: Kashmir

A year ago I started my Kashmir sweater. After a long summer stop I picked up knitting on it during autum. And beginning December I finally had enough length to lay the bottom flat and to measure. A day later I had this:

It was to smal. I could have knitted on, hoping one day I would fit the sweater, but was afraid I would lose faith in the project. So I ripped it, steamed my yarn, bought bigger needles and casted on a few extra stitches and started all over again.
Beginning of February I was back at the point where I had ripped it all and this time it was ok.

Half March the body was done:


Beginning of April the sleeves were knitted and the steeks sewn and cut.

The pattern has a rolled hem at the neck line, which I do not like. So I used this way of making it look like the bottom and sleeve hems.

And now it's done. Finally.

Hats and mittens

Winter was coming and so was the need for hats and mittens.

I had a lot of little balls of yarn left over from the Norge 2000 projects and this pattern also happened to have hat patterns in it so I started with a little lovely stranded hat for my little girl.

When I finished I saw that my little girl was not that little anymore. It was to small. I gave it away to a friend with a 4 months old girl, she will grow in to it.

I loved the combination of red and orange so I decided to use that for a second attempt. I casted on some extra stitches, looked for girly stitch patterns and knitted away.

The new hat was a little big, but she likes it that way, hiding behind the edge of the hat.

Then there were cold little hands. The orange yarn was almost gone, so this time off-white became the companion of red. I copied the butterfly pattern from some adult mittens I saw on the internet, 'Kotka' from this book from Eeva Haavisto.

My pattern should be much smaller, so I made a new chart in excell. I also made a pattern for the other side of the mitten and a little patterning for the thumb, but decided later on not to use that one.


The little mittens were a quick knit. I added a cord to go trough the sleeves of her winter coat and one child was prepaired for winter.

My son did not want a hat. He liked the fleece one he got in LegoLand.
What he wanted was a bigger version of his mittens from last year, the pirate mittens. These were made with sock yarn and the Norge 2000 yarn was thicker, so I figured I could use the same pattern.


I had to improvise a little with the left overs, combine some colors. The result was very well recieved. Winter could start.

Where to start

I have neglected my blog so badly, I'm surpriced it would let me in ;-)

Where to start with all the things I have done since november? Maybe I'll just start with the thing I finished most resently and work backwards.

The last thing I finished were a pair of beaded wrist warmers. I made them for myself and not only because they are pretty but with a purpose. At work my desk is next to the window and alltough the building is warm enough most of the time, my desk and things on it can be cold. Resting my wrists on the desk while using the keyboard sometimes leads to very cold hands. Just my hands, so no reason to put on a thicker sweater.
When I saw these nice wristlets on ravelry, I wanted to make a pair of my own. I took some sock yarn and ordered some beads (9/0 beads, from this shop). I got a pattern from this book: Beads knitting by Kotomi Hayashi.
The book is in Japanese, so I only used the chart and figured out the rest myself.
First to thread all the beads I needed. I used some beadwork thread to load like 20 beads on and folded an eye in it to transfer the bead on to the sock yarn. The sock yarn was to thick to use in the eye of the needle. I had to split it a little, remove part of the plies and use glue to make a nice transition. When all that was done getting the beads on was easy, but time consuming. Somewhere in the book I read 30 grams (beads? yarn?). After one evening stringing beads I was at around 18 grams of beads and desided I had enough for at least one wrist warmer. I wanted to get going with the knitting.

I started with a provisionaly cast on with 40 stitches, but that was to much, so I ripped it again and made a new start with 35 stitches. This turned out nicely. Knitting was realy easy, just knit and when the pattern asked for a bead slide a bead between the stitches. It could haven been done in a few hours, where it not that al those beads had to be slided over the yarn during the process. So I would knit a few rows and stop and spend 5 minutes sliding beads.
After 3 pattern repeats the rectangle was big enough.

I removed the provisionaly cast on, picked up the begin stitches on the other point of the circular needle and started grafting both edges together. Resulting in a beautifull seamless cilinder.
One down, one to go. More than half of the beads were still on the yarn, so no threading beads for the second wristlet. One other evening and that one was done to.

I'm very happy with the result. I will sertainly make some more, maybe in another color.

Although, there are still a lot of beads on the black yarn...