Big bag of scraps!

Today has been another lazy day for me, don't really have much progress to document on my current projects either. But I'm really in the mood for starting a new project! I've got some ideas allready for what to make, and it will most likely involve my big bag of scraps here!

A few months ago, I cleaned up and sorted through all my scraps and I managed to shorten two bags down to one. But it's stuffed! Mind you, there's no acryllic in this bag.

Not too many fun colors though... I'm hoping to work up a pair of "yoga socks" of some of the 100% wool that's located in the bag to the right. I love wearing wool socks, all year round, even sleeping in them. But summer is too warm for that, sadly. Though, resently, I read a blog where someone recommended yoga-socks for summer use for the wool sock maniacs, and it opened a whole new world for me! I need to try this!

If you got more scrap yarn ideas or patterns for me, let me know! I don't have enough yarn in here for a blanket though.

Cowl, headband and blankets!

And there we go! Three projects are finished!

First and foremost: the damned granny square blankets can finally be crossed off my list! Feels so good to be done with them! Washed them yesterday and now they were dry enough to photograph and folded. My mother will pick them up tomorrow sometime and I can't wait to get ridd of them!

Pickle's cowl is also finished! Washed it at along with the blankets and it is also dry enough to photograph finally. Yarn used is Trysil Garn's Alpa in 15%wool, 20% alpaca and 65% acryllic, but it doesn't have that icky acryllic feel to it. Knitted on needles 3,5mm.

Last but not least is the headband for Pickle's friend, Drunk Uncle June. She requested this after she was told I was making a cowl for Pickle. Made in the same yarn, on the same sized needles. The pattern sadly was in finnish so I couldn't understand a damned thing! Lucky for me, it had charts, so I did my best as to follow them, but I had to make some changes and it's not 100% the same after all...

Good to get these projects done and over with! Next projects are a wine holder for Bård's aunt and a pair of socks for a Zelda contest! The wine holder yarn is currently sitting closest to me, so I guess I'll start that next... See ya'll later!

Yarns and squares!

A little late for an update like this, but oh well... Got mail today! More squares from my lovely share-a-square attendants! I'm now up to 8...and we're two months on overtime...it's SO good that people actually follow through with this events and let ALL the others down by NOT sending out a single square in ALMOST A YEAR! Please note my sarcasm...

Anywho... My two squares came from MadeWithLove8 and they are beautiful!

I've also been yarnshopping today! Nothing much, but some skeins for some projects. I'm trying not to overdo my hoarding... Got two skeins of Alpa for a headband and also to complete Pickle's cowl.

Then I got some Artic, which is new, pure wool for felting. I've never tried this yarn before so I got some extra just in case. This will be a "santa gnome" wine holder, pattern can be found here. Bård's aunt really liked the one I made for his parents so I'm going to make her one as well. I'm hoping to get it finished pretty quickly cause Bård is going to visit his parents in march, and it would be great if he could deliver it for me.

 

There haven't been much progress on my projects today though... I've felt kinda tired and unmotivated so I haven't done much on my skirt, but it's looking pretty good so far! The colors go well together and look pretty in general. Any kind of flash is killing it though, so I'll have to get some good pictures in natural light when it's finished to really show it off! It's a hassle to knit with 5 different colors at once cause the yarn keeps on tangeling, but it's so fun to see it grow and to see the colors unfold.

But except for some rows on the skirt, I've been working on my eternity scrap blanket all evening. I got a bunch of scraps flowing around so I figured I'd clear some out of the way.

Yarn winder!

A little while ago, I ordered myself a yarn winder off eBay for little to nothing! I've been wanting one of these since I first saw one, and today it finally arrived in the mail!

Look at the awesomeness! This thingy will wind up all my yarn into pretty little yarn cakes!

It's both easy and entertaining to use, so I got to restrain myself before I start to wind up everything in sight!

All you have to do is to thread the yarn through the yarn guide, push the end down in the notches on top of the cylinder and then pull the crack clockwise.

And that's all you got to do! The yarn wraps itself unto the cylinder and creates a pretty yarn cake!

When you got all the yarn weaved up, you just pull it off the cylinder, easy as that! Then you can start pulling the yarn from the center of the cake, it'll sit still and it'll be easy to pull out more while working. And it's cute! All the kawaii desu right now!

 

I got a feeling that I'll be winding up all my yarn from now on...

I am currently working on a secret project so excuse me for not doing a "progress of the day" update...

Progress of the day - 18th of feb

Again, it's been too long since I did one of these... I would have done one yesterday, but DropBox was being an ass and wouldn't let me upload pictures to the computer from my phone, so I didn't get the chance to post anything.

Anyway! Now that Batman is finished, I've picked up the rompers for baby CarCar. I'm more or less finished with the knitting part, gonna weave in the ends and finish what I got. I am planning on doing the remaining knitting (neckline and those things) after I've heard the gender. The blue color I got was too bold to work with the other gender neutral colors without feelin too "manly", so I'm waiting to hear if it's a boy (and then do the remaining in blue) or a girl (do the remaining in either purple or yellow).

I've also started a little something for Pepsi. Last week, someone posted a picture of a crochet hammock for cats hanging under a chair and I knew that I had to try and make one for Pepsi. He'll most likely ignore it since he doesn't like to lie soft for some reason...but I want to try! So I pulled out this Caron skein that I got from Tiffany and some blue polyester yarn I had and started crocheting a flat, sturdy piece with single crochet. I hate working with synthetic yarn! It's horrible! But for Pepsi and as an experiment, acryllic and polyester gives a better and sturdier result than wool would have. It doesn't stretch much.

Batman sweater WIP

A quick little WIP on Batman here!
I'm only working on this sweater until it's finished, and since it's such a huge piece, it takes some time to make progress on it. I've done quite a good chunk of the fair-isle now and I'm almost done with the Batman logos in the middle. Before you ask, yes it is based of the ever so popular Marius pattern so you could say it's just another Marius version...but I still like to call it Batman.

Note to self though... Silja looks best when worked fair-isle on 3mm needles or thinner... I am using 3,5mm needles and I feel that the knitwork feels a little loose and the fair-isle ain't the prettiest... Gonna need a hell of a blocking when it's finished, that's for sure. Still love this yarn and I will for sure make more garments with it!

Batman is currently only 9 days in the making!

Tanja jacket?

Hello everybody! How's your crafting going? I'm not doing much today myself...working on some squares for a square trade which I'm super late on... Oh well... I only got like two squares left and I'm almost finished with one of them...and the second is no hurry cause the reciever is currently in the middle of moving, so I'm waiting until she can give me her new address...so I might not post a "progress of the day" today...

Anyway! It recently hit me that I only got one "everyday knitted sweater" and I use it freakin' all the time... But today I managed to spill some sauce on it during dinner and it needs to be washed...which means that I won't have a spare one that's not too fancy... And I only got two...three if we count Jackie which still needs blocking and buttons.

I've been thinking about making myself a new Marius sweater soon, but I'd have to buy all new yarn for it, and this year, I am trying to buy as little yarn as possible... Though, I recently bought yarn from an online friend that I'm going to use for a sweater, but I need to buy the extra yarn for it too, since it's knit with two strands... I've been contemplating if I should just use whatever I got in my storage and make it striped and crazy and ugly as fuck...but I don't know...

The Marius I got now is made in a yarn called Lima from Drops. I made a sweater for Bård in the same yarn, and I got tons of leftovers lying in my storage! About 20 skeins or so + scraps! In 7 different colors as well!

4088 - 8465 - 6235 - 0100 - 5610 - 7219 - 7810

As you can see, there's quite a variation of colors and they're all pretty natural and they do go well together, so I thought why not find a pattern for a sweater or whatever so I can use all of this? After a search through Drop's patterns for this yarn, I found out that there's not much to be done with this yarn, so making a sweater would be a good idea. Sadly, they didn't have many sweaters that caught my eye... They did have some jackets though, and after some thought, I've kinda decided to go for Tanja!

I'm still debating if I should make it, but I really love how it looks and I couldn't find many other sweaters/jackets for this yarn that I really liked... I was kinda stuck between Tanja here, September Sweater,  Gladiola,  Sheer Comfort and Greenland.

When will I start this? I have no idea... But right now, I gotta start making baby clothes, a cowl and try my hands on Lalylala's fox doll!

Pickles swing skirt?

I can't remember when I saw this skirt from Pickles, but I knew the moment I saw it that I NEEDED to make it, and it slid right into my non-excisting "have to knit" list.

But what yarn should I use? What colors? I was certain that if I were to make this skirt, I should make it in different colors, maybe even more colors than just two! And I would prefer it if I could use yarn from my own storage.

At first I thought I could use some of the remaining Lima yarn I got lying around, we're talking 20+ skeins here in different colors. But sadly, that yarn is thicker and more dense... It would take all my yarn and the skirt would probably end up way too big. The free patter size are L/XL, which should fit me (if not being too big), so I'd rather use a thinner yarn than a thicker one.

After some thinking and roaming in my yarn storage, I came across 10 skeins of Silja, a though superwash wool/nylon blend made for socks that could work perfectly, but the colors I had lying are horrible and don't fit well together... Three skeins of the colors 311, 304 and 318 and one skein of 390. More sad is the fact that I recently ordered yarn from this store... They got 20% on everything yarn right now, so I should have been smart and ordered some other colors while I could. I don't think I'll be able to order more from that store while they got this sale going...

What should I then do? Just go ahead and knit the skirt in horrible colors, hoping it'll turn out ok, or wait and maybe get more yarn at a later time? I'd really wish I could start this skirt soon...

Making the connection!

So, earlier today, I finished the last 7 granny squares for my mother's blankets, making the total number 120! Oh what a glorious day!

But then came the hard part: asseble and connect them! Oh my god, this has been giving me a headache ever since I started to think about it. I was for sure going to crochet them together cause sewing is a bitch and I wouldn't be able to finish it at all if that was the plan. I was also hoping to get them all more or less crocheted together in one turn, having to weave in only a few ends, but as it turns out, I might need to do some kind of crocheting across of things.

My first plan was to just connect them without any more work...but seeing as that doesn't look quite good when the last round on each square are different colors.

Also, my mother wanted them on a black background...

So I had to crochet around each and every one of them, but a whole nother round of double crochet could be too much, so I just did single crochet and then slipstitched them together. But as I said, doing it all in one go can't be done.
The way I'm working right now works just fine. I start by crocheting around the left square (the pink in this case), going against the clock. When I'm back where I started I do the white in the same way. When I'm again back at the starting poing, I connect them down the middle and then continue to the square going underneath the pink.

When they're all connected like this, or atleast half of the blanket, then I'll do the other half the same way before connecting them horisontal and then the last vertical line in the middle.

...I really do prefer knitting over crocheting...

Can you craft with all the colors of the scraps?

Progress of the day - 7th jan

I'm not done crafting for the day, but Bård is doing some recording stuff with his American friends in the livingroom so I've moved into the bedroom with my computer and granny squares. Don't really plan on taking much more pictures so I'm gonna post what I got for now.

The Anna mittens ofcourse... Alongside the final felting of the slippers... Doesn't really have to show it off but I'm doing it anyway!

But I've been crocheting most of the day otherwise! Here's all the finished squares I got! This is not the final assemblent mind you. I only put them out like this so I could easily see how many I was missing cause I kept counting them wrong. The chair blankets will be 4x15 squares like this with a black boarder around it all. There's 7 squares missing in these pictures, I got two more ready, just needing ends weaved in so I'm really only missing 5, which I'm working on now. All of them have been started, I am alternating between them with the colors I got, it seems faster that way. So I will most likely (I'll hang myself if I don't) have all the squares ready tomorrow and I might start to connect them all! This might be fun!

The good thing about this is all the new scrap yarn ends going for my eternity blanket!

Todays progress - 7th jan

Another day full of crafting...or half of it atleast... Let's start with the Anna mittens!
I am closing in on finishing them, luckily, but there's still alot left. I did manage to finish of the diamond snowflake on the first mitten yesterday, and I'm almost halfway there on the second, but again I burned out and had to stop before I was going to kill someone. Also the fact that I managed to misplace one stitch on the first one are killing me, but I am NOT going to undo THAT much work, now way in hell! I got a feeling that these mittens are either going to make or break my day and my look at stitching + felting.

 

After I pulled out my UFO's which you can read about in the previous blog entry, I decided to pick up and hopefully finish the chair blankets for my mother. There was a few half done ones and a bunch that needed ends weaved in so I took care of that. After a recount I found out that I'm missing 12 squares before I can start to assemble them. I know there's one square missing in this picture, one fell out of the pile before I took the picture.

So yeah! Progress! I've been working on Anna's mittens for 4 days, I will get them finished this week. I have no idea about my other projects so we'll just have to see how things are progressing!