Always a procastinator...

I really am the worst at everything... Minecraft have managed to suck me in again, so now I'm stuck in the hole called procastinating. To top that, I'm lazy and in a "bored but doesn't want to do anything creative" mood, so I've done little to nothing called knitting lately...

I did finish the knitting part of Melissa's Christmas Stocking a few days ago though. I've been lazy with it, but it's more or less done...for now.

The green and purple yarn in the back are for the second stocking she's commissioned. I've yet to start it cause I'm in a foul mood and it demands a lot of reworking. The patterns ask for completely different needles and yarn thickness, so I am planning on redrawing it to fit the same bill as this one here... But we'll see... Worst case scenario, I could work it double stranded to get the right measurements, but I don't trust my yarn to last...

Both of the stockings will be lined with fabric and have bells all over for extra Christmas spirit an joy! I really can't wait to see them finished, but right now, I can't be bothered... Good thing there's still 2 months until Christmas! Or atleast one month (or something like that) until I've got to ship them. Shouldn't be a problem.

On the 14th of october, I frogged and restarted the Setesdal's mitten I started on back in august. 14th of october is the first day of winter according to the runic calendar, and it's marked with a mitten, so just about all of yarnster Norway was knitting mittens on that day. I'm still not 100% pleased with this first mitten...expecially not the thumb (I will most likely be redoing that thing at some point cause it is just horrible).

Last night I decided to just put everything on hold and so something familiar and mindless, so I started another pair of my favorite fair-isle socks. Snow Lily from Drops Design. I'm so happy that this pattern finally have gotten a name! I haven't made a pair since last Christmas! About friggin' time I make another pair! It's very much needed as well since all of my old pairs (except for the blue pair) have holes in them, and I'm too lazy to patch them up...

This is how my morning looked today:

I decided to finally use the first Kool Aid dyed yarn I've done! It looks fantastic with the petrol yarn. The white is just some scraps I had lying around.

I am taking it slow however... My right arm ain't too pleased with my crazed Minecraft gaming that has been happening lately... So knitting on top doesn't make it any better to put it that way.

One last thing before I end this blogpost. Needles are friggin' expencive and hard to find! I've been searching all over the place for 12mm needles! If you remember the gignatic ball of yarn that my mom got for me and the pattern that I wanted to use it for, I'm in dire need for a 12mm 80cm circular needle. I've been searching high and low for a pair, and the closest I've come to find a pair was on Strikkenett.no, but the shipping wasn't worth it and I really shouldn't be buying more yarn for a while... I did end up getting a 10mm 80cm one at Nille today though. Even though it's 2mm thinner than suggested in the pattern (and also friggin plastic... YUCK!!!), I figured that I could try it out. A little swatching never hurt anyone. Worst case scenario would be going up one size or adding a few more stitches... Though, I don't see how much difference it would be with such huge needles...

That's all for me for now! I'm gonna chill out with some coffe before I crash and burn... It's only 5pm over here right now, but I'm already super tired...

WIP Setesdal's mittens!

Since the 14th of october marks the first day of winter on the runic calendar, I decided (along with the rest of yarnster Norway) to work on mittens this day!

Now, I've had this pair of Setesdals mittens in burgundy and ochre/gold lying around that I started in mid august but never really finished. I do love this colour combination (no, it does not stand for Gryffindor, that's red) and I love the Setesdal pattern, so of course I needed to finish them up! But looking at my stitches, I decided to frog it and start over. I do prefer to work fair-isle on circular needles, and I started these on DPN's since I didn't think my 30cm circulars would be small enough. But they just about worked, and my stitches are way cleaner already!

I can't wait to have these finished! I really should have been making more mittens before christmas...so I think perhaps I need to wait with my sock and sweater fever and get some hand wear out of the way first. It's kinda annoying with mittens, they have more ends to weave in than socks... Danged fingers...

Yarn for days!

Hello everybody! I am back! I've been without a laptop for a week and a half now so it's good to be back and now able to watch my videos on a bigger screen with better speakers and a actual working keyboard! I serriously have no idea how people can go on with tables and smartphones only... They're handy and easy to carry around, sure, but they are so danged limited! I'd go nuts without my laptop for a longer period of time!

Anyways... I'm finally back after a very hectic and active week and a half. From monday to thursday, I've been in Oslo, the capitol of Norway with my mom and aunt and we've been walking around in blazing heat for four days! On tuesday we walked for 18km (11 miles)! We were all over the place...more or less. We did a lot of shopping of course and I managed to get me a good bunch of yarn...and other small things but they aren't really important for this blog.

First yarn purchase was five skeins of Alpaca from Drops. I love this yarn and I'm using it for another pair of leggings for my niece. I'll tell you guys more about that at a later time.

Next up is 10 skeins of this amazingly fluffy mohair yarn. Marks & Kattens Kid Mohair, 76% kid mohair and 24% polyamid. This is some old brand that I found a bunch of at a hobby store at a very low price. I just couldn't pass it up! I bought it all with the intention of working up another hoodie like the blue baked bean one. Just need to wait for another yarn sale so I can get some cheap alpaca or maybe even merino to go with it! This one will most likely be a huge Creeper reference so I will have to get black buttons! BTW, the yarn is bright green apple-ish in colour.

Lastly, we went to this store that has just about everything you'll ever and never need called Søstrene Grene. I did purchase some other things that I'll never need too (like paper napkins with the UK flag on it), but I was originally stopping by to pick up some cotton yarn. Søstrene Grene has so many interesting and unique colours compared to my regular cotton brands, and I've never tried these before, so of course I had to get some fresh ones! Just look at these! Ain't they beautiful?

And of course I've done some knitting too, not as much as I've liked to, but during the evenings and the train rides, there was enough time to get enough work done. I managed to finish up three dishcloths, all from new patterns made by Bittami. I'll probably get better pictures of them sometime later after I've weaved in the ends and whatnot.

I also brought my watermelon shawl with me and maneged to finish it up. I've yet to block it so new updates with better pictures to come, but I'm very pleased with the shape and size of it! Will most likely end up using my remaining Delano yarn for two more shawls.

 

BUT IT DOESN'T STOP THERE!!! Last sunday, I walked the "Dovrefjellsmarsjen" which is a path going up the mountains in Dovrefjell from Grønbakken to Hjerkinn. It's tiresome, expecially for me being the least active person on earth, but I managed to finish it, making it my fifth time ever to walk that path. One more time and I get the silver pin! But enough about that...when my mom and I reached the other side, we went to the cafeteria/resturant thingy for food, and they had a tiny section for souvenirs, which included this knitting kit for the Dovrevotten/Dovre mittens. It has the Pilgrimsleden symbol on it as well and my mom just had to buy it. Once we got home, she handed me the kit and told me to work them up for her. I love fair-isle, but I have little to no experience working fair-isle on DPN's, and it always turns out way worse than it usually does on circular. But I am a bit pleased with the result of this first mitten! It needs a good bunch of blocking to get the stitches cleaner, but it is not half bad. Will have to work up a bunch of these just to practice!

 And one last yarn related thing while I'm at it... My mom's boss gave this huge bag full of yarn to my mother some time ago. It was all a huge UFO of a jacket she had been working on at some point in the 90's if I were to guess. Apparently, she was so tired of it all and never wanted to see it again. My mom then handed the bag to me and told me to frog it and maybe work something else up with it all. Here's a picture of the back of the jacket. I was almost a shame frogging it all...

And frogging it was a total nightmare! Just look at all this! All these skeins had been worked on at the same time! That's a lot of work...

I hardly know anything about the yarn itself either. It's called St. Germain and looks really old. It's fluffy, kinda chunky and fairly thick. The label reads 96% Schurwolle, 4% Polyester and my guess is wool. If there's any german speaking people reading my blog, please, let me know if you know anything about this yarn, or can tell me what Schurwolle actually means...or confirm that it's actually just normal wool.
There's tons of skeins in these four colours as you can see in the pictures above. Several of the scrap skeins are really small, so I'm pondering the idea of making a granny square blanket of it all.

Phew! That's a lot of yarn speak! But that's what happends when you go so long without updating! See you guys later!

BLAAARG!

Yeah! Short story: had to frog the end of the mitten cause stupid me started decreasing when the pattern told me to. I could make one more pattern repeat before starting to decrease, and I realised this too late, I was almost finished with the decreasing when I realised that the mitten was way too short for my hand.

So woopie freakin' doo! And I will most likely have to make the next mitten in TOTALLY different colors, or buy more yarn in the same colors. Really defeates the purpose why I actually started the mittens in the first place...

Yeah, as you probably can tell, I just had to put it aside before it flew out the window in frustration. Still love the pattern, still love how they're turning out, but man, I'm furious right now.

So I'm back on the granny square blankets for now.

Got 7 more squares to connect and I can crochet the two pieces together and do all the horizontal lines, and I'm more or less done with the first one!

Quatrefoil mittens WIP

Quick little update on the mittens before bedtime.

To start off with the bad news first, I will not have enough blue...or maybe even green and pink to finish of the second mitten...so I might actually have to buy more yarn to finish them off... Sad to think that a pair of these awesome mittens would cost me 6 skeins!
I'm thinking about maybe doing the second mitted totally different or mix the order of the colors if I have enough yarn. Whatever I can do so I don't have to buy more.

Good news though, it's simpler than I thought and I can work them on my shortes circular needle! I really do like how they turn out and I'll probably end up making more of these! And this pair is the third overall mitten pair so far this year! OMG! 2014 is the year of the mittens everybody! Watch me not make a single pair after I'm done with these...
Oh well... They look awesome though! Even though this is a color combination I would NEVER pick out for something for myself...but they will just have to be mine if nobody claims them. Maybe just pulling whatever colors I have from the storage should be a thing for me this year?

What do you guys think? Are they crazy enough for ya?

Anna's mittens - finished and now photographed!

Sorry it took so long to get these photographed, but I was waiting for some snow so I could get a decent background for them. Ofcourse, we're in the darkest time of the year where we hardly got any daylight, so even though the pictures look crappy and dark, it was the best I could produce for you guys at this point.

I've said so much about these mittens allready, so I'll spare you more details and rambling and fuming about them. If you're new to my blog and want to read about them, then go back in my blog to the older blogposts, I've written ALOT about them.

And yes, I have been thinking about taking on Elsa's gloves as well. I am currently researching them, but for now, I don't have anything to show you guys from it yet though, and I do not know when (or if) I will be making them.

Dragon scale - fingerless mittens!

They are now finished! Made these for the chinese zodiac contest at dA since my zodiac are the dragon. Wanted to make something a bit more abstract since I'm not too good with making amigurumi and them actuall physical resemblences of animals...if you understand what I mean.

I wanted to take an object from the dragon to represent it, for me it makes for a more elegant result than actually having a dragon stitched on, or having my hands stick out of the mouth of a dragon.

The yarn was actually decided before anything else. I've had this skein of some kind of mysterious wool blend yarn for quite some time now. Carolyn gave it to me ages ago and it didn't have a lable. As a result I didn't know what to make with it. but it's soft and the color are soothing.

To make it more interesting and more royal (like all dragons are), I decided to work in a thread of gold decoration thread along with it, leaving only the ribbing plain purple. With this it makes me think about how Smaug in the second Hobbit movie had tons of gold coins stuck between its scales... Also Smaug's scales plays a big role in both the movies and the book and (spoiler) are the way they kill him off, so why not highlight them?

As I've said before, the pattern was ment for gauntlets actually, but I decided to shorten them down. For one, I prefer shorter wristwarmers/mittens, and while these seem to be long enough, they're just a little over half the lenght of the original pattern.

Good thing I did though cause I didn't get much yarn left afterwards! I couldn't have made another repeat of the pattern atleast...that's for sure...

Yesterday's knitting progress - 5th jan

Not sure if I'll be able to keep up with all these "progress of the day" posts so I might end up do them like this...the next day. Then again, I might not do one of these every day. I should quit blabbering now and get on with it!

I finished one of the diamond snowflakes, so now I only have to do the whole thing over again on the other mitten. Not really looking forward too it, seing as it makes me go insane, but then again, I can't wait to see them finished  and hopefully they will not get ruined during felting, cause then I would kill myself for sure...
Even though they're turning out to be my worst enemies right now (and I'm seeing now that I managed to missplace one of the stitches...ffffffffffff), I just love the design of this diamond snowflake so dang much! I fell in love with it and the mittens when I first saw the movie, hence why I'm now making them in real life. They are a bit missplaced compared to the one in the movie, but it was the only way it would look good cause of the round with increasing around the wrist area.

During my rage quit on these for a moment in the middle of the night, I actually started two other projects. One is a very unimportant one and just for inbetween stuff...even though I really should have been working on the granny squares for my mother's chair blankets, I started a simple granny square blanket with a bunch of yarn I don't really like using. Might give it to Pepsi if I ever finish it...though I might frog it down in a month cause I've forgotten about it. And yes, that is a Joker band aid... I cut myself while slicing a bun... Batman is freakin' awesome!

And the last project I started will most likely be another eternity project. I found this awesome FREE pattern on Ravelry the other day and I knew that I needed to make this for baby CarCar. Yes Carolyn, this is for your baby! It's a baby blanket! I dug out some yarn from my storage and hopefully I won't have to buy too much extra yarn to finish it up. I'm trying to use as much as possible from my storage, which means the main colors will be coconut grey (which is a beautiful color in my opinion) white and either green or red to spice it up a bit. It will also make it more or less gender neutral since it's too early to tell if baby CarCar will be a boy or a girl. It's not much too look at yet so don't freak out, Car...save it for when the fair-isle has started. I do not want to cut in my knitwork...cause I'm a wuss...so I'm knitting it double...not double knit, just double... I hope it won't get too bad...

Tired of stitching...

I never learn. I haven't done this on many projects, but damn, I really should learn NOT to do this on future projects. My mind thinks that it saves time and yarn, but in reality it takes more yarn and more time...and more of my sanity...if I even have any left...

Sewing any kind of image, letters, decorations...what have you on any kind of knitwork (or crochet for that matter) is boring and it really takes forever. Since I'm not that good with sewing to begin with, it feels even more tedious and turns out even uglier than if I were good at it.
Except from doing the thumb, this is all progress I've done today...and that's saying something! I'm still on the first glove for Joe Pesci's sake! Please don't look too closely on the stitching... I know it's uneven and ugly... hopefully the felting will even it more out and hide the uglyness...

 

For being the first fresh project of the year, it sure is a nightmare. It is litterally giving me a headache and it's grumping me out...not to mention the lack of winter outside are making them kinda worthless and a waste of time... I need to start a different project before these end up in the blender...

Bottom line: no snow, no cold, Americans complaining about having "too much snow and cold" and a tedious project doesn't sit well with me when mixed...

More popular than my old blog!

Might just be a thing now in the beginning, but this blog has gathered more popularity, views and followers so much faster than my "main" blog. Only 6 days with active blogging and I've gained 222 pageviews, 7 followers and 6 comments overall on my 12 blogposts.

My other blog have been active for almost three years with only 21707 pageviews, 13 followers and 130 comments overall on my 157 blogpost. There's quite some difference there.

Now I've never been a popular blogger and I've never expected any popularity with my blogs, but this is making me quite happy, and if things keep going steady like this, this would make my most popular blog yet! But lets face it, that's never going to happend

And just to give this blogpost a picture like the rest of them, here's my progress on the mittens! This is taking forever! I hate stitching on patterns like this...

 

It doesn't look like much yet, but hopefully the result after felting will be awesome!