Saturday, August 30, 2014

Starting the sleeves!

Finally finished the body of the purple fair-isle sweater now! Or...so I hope. Not sure if I dare knit it much longer cause the amount of yarn I've got left is kinda alarming. But we'll see! I'm loving it so far!

And yes, I've started the first sleeve, hence the title of this blogpost.

As I did with the body, 4mm needles on the ribbing and 5mm on the rest.Thypically enough, I only had bamboo 5mm needles, so I picked up some metal ones while I was out earlier. They're not high quality or anything...but I can't stand bamboo needles, so anything's better...except plastic ones...eww...

Woop woop! Back to knitting!

Friday, August 29, 2014

Old, failed knitting!

Decided to do a little lookback today. Back in 2006, I was going to work up a pair of socks for the daughter of someone in my class... But I ended up dropping out of school (needed a year off cause my life was a mess at that point) and therefor never finished up the socks. So I've had one pink baby sock lying around in my yarn stash since forever.


Now that I've gotten more experienced and could knit socks in my sleep, looking back on this one sock is like a nightmare. It looks just terrible and it has so many errors!

To start with the top, the edge and cast on is terrible and uneven! It's pretty stretchy so that's something atleast...

Then the ribbed cuff ain't THAT bad. It's tight and even...for the most part...except for this one are in the middle on the front where I've done purl instead of knit... Such a n00b.

The heels aren't that bad... Stupid me forgot to photograph the other side though, it looked much worse for some reason.

Then we got the sole. Right under the foot, close to the toe, there's a purled stitch... Why? I have no idea. It looks terrible though.

Then there's the toe itself... It's pretty stubby, way too short and it has horrible decreases in the sides.

I'm kinda glad I never finished this pair. I don't think I could ever live it down if my old classmate showed these to me today. Needless to say, I've now frogged this one sock down to be used as scraps in some other project at a later time. Some would say that I should save it so I'd have something to look back at when I'm an old lady. But honestly, this wasn't my first knitting project, nor was it my first knitted sock. This little blogentry here with these pictures is all the documentation I need.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Sweater WIP and stitch markers!

The purple fair-isle sweater I've got commissioned is slowly growing. If you got a good amount of stitches, then it's still slow work no matter how big the needles are. Right now I'm at the boring mindless part where it's just round and round and round without any pattern, so I need something really entertaining to watch to keep it going at a normal pace...



The fair-isle at the bottom is so cute! It's these heart shaped thingies and at a distance, they look even better. These will be repeated around the wrists of the sleeves too. Also, the colour is deeper purple IRL, the daylight and my camera did something weird here...

And today some of my stitch markers arrived! I'm addicted to using these safety pin-ish markers in my knitwork. They're easy to remove and they're light which makes them easy to work with. But they tend to dissapear too easily! Which is annoying! Lately I've had a hard time finding ones in the colours I need, so I ultimately went on eBay to order a butt load of them. They're super cheap as well, so loosing a couple here and there doesn't matter too much. The pack of 300 that I've ordered arrived today and boy oh boy, they came in the nick of time! I had to organize my little craft item box that I keep next to me so I had room for them, and I could hardly find any of my old markers in there! Where have they all gone? I know I had just about 100 or so, but there was hardly 20 in the box...
Welp, now there's 300+!

Mainly just 3 colours in there though, but that should be enough. Maybe I should look into getting some white ones...

Monday, August 25, 2014

Leggings, mittens and commissions!

The weekend is over, I've returned home from spending the last few days at my brother's place and I've gotten some decent sleep finally. For some reason, I haven't been able to sleep much for the last week...just horrible... But yeah! Yesterday, sunday was the birthday party for my younget niece! I ended up just staying over from saturday since I don't have a car myself, so getting there is always a pickle if my parents don't have room in their car. I got to deliver the leggings that was ment for my middle niece, and she was so happy with them. My youngest niece, whos birthday it really was, got the leggings I had made for my middle niece for her birthday back in april. Since they were too small, she never actually got around to wear them, so a little switcheroo happened there.

Saturday morning was spent taking pictures of the leggings, so here's the final product in all it's blurred glory!

A little techical shizzle wizzle...
Pattern: Drops - Cecilie
Yarn: Drops - Alpaca in three different colours - 7240 - 3620 - 2919
Needles: 2,5mm


Late late LATE friday night, I managed to finish up the Dovre mittens I started on while I was in Oppdal the last time. Haven't really had time to work on these afterwards because of the leggings, but they're done now and I've delivered them to my mother who went all crazy for them! Now, I'm not too experienced with fair-isle on DPN's in the round, and believe me, there is a difference working it with DPS than circular, the latter being much easier and creates a more smoother result. My stitches are all over the place on these...

Pattern:  Kirstens vevstue, Dovre / Dovre Husflidslag
Yarn: Rauma 3 ply - 101 - 164 - 127
Needles: 3mm

While I was at my brother's place, I started another pair of mittens, but in a different pattern! This time, I tried to work out the Setesdal pattern for mittens. They're much simpler than the Dovre mittens, but the pattern itself holds a special place in my heart since I've lived there for three years.

But these will have a good long break for now, cause I've got more important things to do! I've got not one but TWO sweater commissions waiting!

The first sweater is for a friend of mine. I was hoping to get started on it last week, but it had to wait until today because of all the other stuff I had to get done for the weekend. Luckily, it doesn't have a hardcore deadline on it, so I can enjoy every bit of it. The pattern is 116-12 from Drops, but I'm using Baby Merino instead of Alpaca for it. I'll be making it in a beautiful dark purple colour with white for the fair-isle parts. Easy, simple and classy at the same time!

The other sweater doesn't have a deadline either...well...before christmas they said...which won't be a problem at all. This one will be like a walk in the park. Someone my aunt knows asked for a Marius sweater with round yoke, but since she's not as knitting freak as I am, she gave the commission to me instead. Give me some measurements and the yarn and I'll knit it, no problem, I said, and so it was done. My mom brought the yarn over this weekend and I got really excited when I saw what kind of yarn they had gotten. Might not be the most interesting colours, but I've never tried this yarn before. I've seen people swearing to this brand and the pattern suggest using it for the Marius sweaters. Me being greedy, I tend to use cheaper brands, so I'll do a full on comparison of this to Drops Karisma later on since I'll be making the same sweater for myself later on.

So sweaters in the future!

ALSO! While remember it! I've all of a sudden started using Instagram! Feel free to follow me there at LARvonCL. I update with loads of yarn stuff there too.




Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Inbetween projects!

Zup?

I finished up the leggings for my niece the other day and threw it into the washing machine yesterday so now I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can snap proper pictures of it. But this thing was horrible...and I knew that when I started it. This is the third time I've made leggings, second time in ribbing and let me tell you something...I hate it! I don't mind doing ribbing on sweaters and socks and whatnot, but leggings, that's ALL ribbing on teeeny tiny needles...that's just pure nightmare. But I did it! Once again! And I'll probably end up doing it a couple more times if I know myself right, and I'll bitch and moan just as much about it when I do. But for now! I'm done! I finished these and they look good! I just hope that they'll be better than the last pair I made. These are ment for my middle niece, but I bet that my oldest niece could easily fit herself into these.

*sigh* Another project done... (I'll get new and better pictures up sometime later) And now I'm in that inbetween spot again. It's weird...after every big project with a deadline, I feel kinda empty inside and have problems starting on the next one. There's these couple of days (or sometimes only hours) where I don't know what to do next...and I just end up doing some small, mindless things instead. Like my Granny Bacon blanket! I worked a few rounds of that one before I pulled out the Dovremittens again. 

I did 20 rounds on the second mitten before I pulled out scrap yarn and started working up some Granny Squares.
For some time now, I've been longing for my own traditional Granny Square blanket. And while I've got a bag full of wool scraps lying around, I've been putting it off... The thought of Ugly Scrap Socks has claimed all my scraps already.

But last night, I did pull out a bunch of small scraps from this bag (which only made me want to tear Granny Bacon to pieces and save more scraps) and worked up some squares. The plan is to do a good bunch and then join them together by the last round. I'm too lazy to sew them up together, and I'd like to not use too much fresh yarn skeins. I'm using scraps for a reason.

NOW! Just watch me grow tired of it only to have a handfull of finished granny squares lying around for months before I either frog them or use them for something else...

Sunday, August 17, 2014

The motivation sucking monster!

I usually don't mind ribbing...but for some reason, making leggings that consist of almost only ribbing really kills my motivation. Yesterday I managed to finish up the first leg of these and I was so danged happy, but I was quickly brought down again with the thought of it only being the first leg... I did work the red part of the second leg at the same time as the first, but nothing further than that. I am now struggling with finding motivation to continue working on it. Each leg measures 58cm (22,8") and I am working on 2,5mm needles. If this were fair-isle, it would be done last week or so, I bet!

I need them done by next weekend, sunday if I'm not mistaken, shouldn't be a problem really...I just need to get my motivation going and stop getting tempted by "Papers, Please!" and Granny Bacon...

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Slow works in progress!

And sorry for yet another quick break there... Attended Torucon in Trondheim this last weekend and it really tired me out on top of my "vacation" earlier. There haven't been much crafting either to be honest. I brought some WIP's with me to Trondheim so that I had something to do during the down times at the stand...which happened to be almost all the time we were there (I hardly sold anything, pretty dissapointing).

On saturday, I brought my Granny Bacon blanket. It has really grown now and has reached a size where each round feels like an eternity...which is crazy since I'm still at the very beginning. I did get 4 rounds done, so that was nice! Still not 100% happy with this new style on it though. It grows more evenly, yes, but it uses a lot more yarn for each stitch, and it really rules out a lot of my smallest scraps. It doesn't look too bad right now, but that's just because there's tons of bigger scraps (too big scraps if you ask me...what was I thinking?), after I hit the half way mark on the scrap ball, I'll run into many many small scraps that I'll just have to exclude for now. I'll have to figure out something else to do with those later.

On sunday, I brought the leggings I'm doing for my niece. I've made leggings for my oldest and my middle niece already, so of course I had to work up a pair for my youngest as well. But as it turned out, the ones I made for my middle niece didn't fit her, so they went straight to my youngest niece...which of course is fine, I'm happy that they're still useable, but I wish that I was told so that I could maybe have fixed it. Anyway, I was ready to start this pair for my youngest niece since her birthday is comming up real quick now. Luckily my mother stopped me just in time and told me about the previous pair I made. So I contacted my sister-in-law and got some measurements for a new pair for my middle niece instead. And here's the weird part. I made the last pair to fit size 7/8 year olds. My niece turned 4. I was hoping it would give her something to grow into. But it didn't fit her at all, even though she's not overweight or anything. To be bloody sure these will fit now, I'm working them probably way too big, but I went up one size, so they're going to fit kids 9/10 AND I'm working it in ribbing...and I hate working in ribbing for this long on 2,5mm needles. These will probably fit my oldest niece that actually is 9 years old.
Enough backstory... I brought these with me on sunday to work on them cause I need to hurry the fuck up. I started knitting, good mindless knitting... 2 knit, 2 purl and cable every 8 round, no biggie. When I get home and look at the pattern, I see that I've missed the fact that there's supposed to be decreasings. That just shows how tired I've been lately. So here I've been working for a whole day, doing 1/4 of a leg on these leggings...and I just have to frog it all again... That's a whole day wasted!
But I'm back on track now and it's tuesday! It's a really unmotivating project though...

On a more fun note again though, I just recieved yarn for a commissioned sweater that I'm gonna start as soon as these leggings are done with. My friend Linda whom commissioned a sweater for her boyfriend last year wanted one for herself, and we've been talking about yarn and patterns for quite some time now. I ordered the yarn before the weekend and I got it today! Fast shipping ya'll! Love that shait! This is all merino yarn from Drops! Soft and silky and oh so warm and cozy and I just wanna cuddle it all! Can't wait to get started!

With this yarn order though, I did order some yarn for myself. As you probably know, I've yet to make Lewis and Duncan in these amigurumi dolls, and the reason for my hiatus on that project, is because I'm still looking for a good burgundy for Lewis' coat. The yarn I've been using mostly for these dolls so far do have a burgundy colour, but the website I order that yarn from has mixed up the numbers on their website, so I've been putting off ordering from there lately until they've fixed it (which they did today actually), just to be sure that I would get the right colour. While ordering all this merino yarn though, I looked through all the other kinds of yarn Drops sells just in case I find something that catches my eye, which I did this time! Looking at their thin sock yarn "Fabel", I saw that they had a beautiful burgundy. It looked maybe a tad too red in the picture, but I've noticed that some colours on their website aren't 100% accurate, so I took a chance and ordered one skein. But, I'm not pleased with it's colour I'm afraid.
Once I pulled it out of the bag, I though it was just normal red. Comparing it to the fingerless mittens I made some time ago in the most perfect burgundy colour ever (couldn't use it for a amigurumi jacket cause it was too thick), it looks all kinds of wrong. Doesn't even lok burgundy, more like wine red. Of course, no picture makes it any justice either. I tried with flash (which is the picture underneath here) and it looks way more pink than it really is, and without flash, it looked more like a dark magenta colour. It's just not purple enough... The search continues! Now I'm just hoping for a yarn sale on Spark Kjøp or some kind of free shipping offer and I'll snatch up some skeins in what's hopefully a better burgundy!

Thursday, August 7, 2014

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!