Two finished pullovers and a cowl!

Well...finished and finished... Two of these have been finished for a few days, but again, I've been lazy and haven't gotten around to photograph them until now. The third are still left with a bunch of ends that needs to be weaved in. ALL THE LAZY!!!

But lets take one project at the time now. First lets do the cowl. I started this, thinking I could get ridd of some scraps and at the same time make something a bit different from my usual preferences and also kind of mindless. I'm currently stuck in a yarn block (the yarnsters version of art block...totally made both those therms up myself) and need something that don't demand much brain useage.
So yeah, I started this cowl from one scrap skein of Drops <3 You #3, thinking I would use up a bunch, but ended up just using just the one. Casted on 100 stitches on a 7mm needle and alternated between doing parts in garter stitch and parts with drop stitch, simple, easy, done!

A few days ago, I finally recieved the baked bean buttons that I needed for my blue hoodie, and after sewing on 42 of them (36 of which on the hood alone). Had a lot of fun just placing them around randomly. This pullover has been nothing but fun and games and references! So refreshing! I used two strands to make it fluffy and textured, one was Bernat Mohairlaine in the colourway 7566 and the other was Drops Alpaca in the colourway 2919. Got the Mohairlaine from Brooke ages ago and the Alpaca I got on a crazy sale. Again, 7mm needles, no pattern.

The last thing is another pullover! This thing I finished up back in june but didn't give a rats ass about weaving in the ends and actually finish it up. It's still not finished really, I just wanted to photograph it and get it over with, it's been a month overdue already. Weaving in bamboo (and cotton for that matter) ends are pure nightmare fuel. The best (and kinda only) way to do it is to split the ends in half and weave in each of those ends. Example: look at a dishcloth with one end in each side. You'd think you got only two ends to weave in, right? Wrong... You actually got four if you want then to be fastened good and have durability and quality on it. Since cotton and bamboo is so slick and hard, it doesn't attach itself to...itself in the same way wool does. Hopefully I'll get enough courage to weave in these ends...some day...

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!

Progress of the day - 7th march

Wow! Finally, a progress of the day blogpost! Why do I got a feeling nobody cares about these?

Today I actually managed to get ALOT of shit done! Or so it felt atleast... First off, I've done quite some progress on the headband. It doesn't look exactly like the pattern, but when it's all in a language I don't understand, I'll just have to do whatever I can to make it work! It's almost halfway there and allready I have more cables than the original one. It doesn't look bad, but it's a bit slimmer than it should be. I don't mind and I hope the reciever don't mind.

What's more exciting is that I've finished the danged chair blankets for my mother! I've washed them and they are now currently drying! So happy these are done! You have no idea! I started them around easter, a year ago, so you can only imagine my reliefe! My mom will stop by on sunday and pick them up, and I can hardly wait to get them out of my house.

I've also washed up Pickle's cowl and it is currently drying...don't have any pictures of it, sadly... Just...use your imagination!

Night folks! I am off to bed! Been trying to wrap my brains around my entry for the Zelda contest over at KnC... I swear, I'm having a harder time getting anything done for this one than I did for Batman... I've been sketching up and drawing out chart after chart of crappy, unuseable fair-isle patterns, I'm more or less stuck...I think...it's hard to make it look good!

Now I'm just being lazy...

...and unmotivated. I can't keep focused on one project at the time these days and it's getting really annoying.

Pickle's cowl  currently measures about 21cm (8,2") and ofcourse I ran out of yarn. Need to do some yarn shopping for another skein pretty soon so I can finish it up and get it out of my life.

Right after I ran out of yarn there, I started this crocheted amigurumi doll, Fibi from Lalylala...with good help from Pickle actually. Since she gave me the pattern, she was also so nice to help me out whenever I needed it...which was quite often actually... BUT! For me being a complete n00b when it comes to crochet, I'm quite proud of myself to have gotten this much done!

Around the same time, I started on granny squares for charity! Ofcourse my phone ran out of battery so I couldn't get flash to work when I took this picture... But I got 10 squares finished and another 6 still in the making! The wool scraps are being slowly used up which makes me pretty happy! Can't wait to get to the more fun colors cause these are quite depressing in the long run.

And at long last, I got started on the swing skirt from Pickles...not to be confused with my friend Pickle... Got the waist band done now and I've ordered some elastic band from eBay.

But I'm still stuck on color combinations for the skirt itself... I don't want to end up with just a bunch of random colors either... But every combination I can think about gets shot down, so I don't know what to do with this thing...

Boring projects and crochet!

For some time now, I've been slowly working on this cowl in the swedish weave techique for dearest Pickle. But it's so slow and so boring and so tedious, that I can't help myself wanting to work with everything else, even though I promised myself not to start a new project until this cowl was finished.
I'm now at 16,5cm (6,5") so a little under 10cm (4") is left before I'm finished.

Last night when I just couldn't work on it anylonger, I picked up the Quatrefoil mittens I worked on in january and finished up the hand on the first one.

But tonight I didn't feel like either of the two projects, so I decided to start Fibi, the fox doll from Lalylala! Pickle sent me this pattern right after I talked about it previously on my blog. She had purchased the pattern for the fox some time ago, but it turned out too big for her taste, so she sent it to me so I could try it out. So I started it tonight! Got my yarn out, Senjagarn if you were wondering and my 2,5mm hook! It took me 4 failed attempts to get the magic loop method to work, but I am currently on round 4 (hopefully) without fail! Too proud of myself right now! I still got a hard time understanding the stitches, where each and every one of them are, where the end and the start of a round is and so on... so confusing and much more complicated than knitting...

 

But I really hope that I can do this doll! I've been drooling on several of the Lalylala dolls, expecially the sheep one...want it so bad...so if I can do this one, then I'll for sure purchase the sheep pattern! (their page is currently under construction, so the links to Lalylala might not work at the time this blogpost is posted).

Hammock for Pepsi is done!

A little late blogpost today, sorry about that! I decided to pull an allnighter last night and I crashed so bad in the afternoon that I forgot to do the bloggy thingy...

Finished up Pepsi's hammock early today and tied it on to a chair. Sadly the chair is too low so here's not really much of a hammock really...since it reaches the floor... But since Pepsi likes harder surfaces, he doesn't seem to care and has sat himself down on it a couple of times, which surprises me!

 

The yarn is Caron Simply Soft (red) and SparGarn (blue and grey) on 3,5mm hook. Single crochet all the way! Will have to find a different place to hang it up or make a new hammock for it to work properly...

Oh well! I finished off the secret project yesterday, it was a quick one so no big deal really... But still, it'll be a while before I can show it off on the blog so stay tuned... It's nothing special really, but since I like to document everything I make (even the failed ones *cough*hammock*cough*), not being able to document a secret sucks...

Other than that, I continued on the cowl for Pickle! I started this about the same time as I started the hammock, but the dang "swedish weave" techique is so dang tedious to do and makes the knitting of the cowl go slower than snails! It looks pretty awesome though! I'll try my best to push it on until finished.

But since I grew tired of it again right after I started it (and then crashed), I moved on to some yarn cleaning! I'll blog more about that sometime later, cause I still got alot to go through...

Progress of the day - 30th jan

Huzzah! Managed to finish two projects today! First off I finished the second pair of ugly scrap socks.

And then I finished off Jackie, the grey cable sweater! I'm still missing the buttons cause they haven't arrived in the mail yet, and I also need to block the cowl a little, but it is fresh off the hooks with all ends weaved in! I am wearing a t-short with white print on it underneath so it's not too tight over the chest, it's just glaring through the purl stitches.

I will get better pictures of it whenever I've recieved the buttons. Which reminds me, I've never showed off the buttons before! I got them off ebay and I think they'll look good on the sweater. I'm also thinking about sewing on double the buttons needed so I can regulate the sleeves more.

It is a glorious day (night) indeed! Now, I got several new project planned and I might start some of them tomorrow...even though I should be focusing on the UFO's I got lying around the livingroom... Oh well!

Over the top cowls!

 I was inspired to make this blog entry a few days ago when Drunk Uncle June was googling for cowls and ended up with this amazing image:

And I must say...that is one fantastic...cowl... Yeah... She followed it up with this oversized one:

And I just knew that I had to do a search for oversized, over the top and all around crazy cowls and post them here! Now, I'm not posting all these to point and laugh, cause some of them are rather fantastic, so don't feel ashamed if you love some of the ones I'm posting.

 

 

And I'll just have to end with this crazy cowl sweater... Who could ever wear something like that outside of the crazy catwalk fashion?

Progress of the day - 28th jan

So, my hand is more or less back to normal again after my stabbing accident, and my speed with knitting has started to pick up again.

Over the last 4-5 days, I've been working on Jackie again, trying my best to get her done cause dang, I'm tired of her! The yoke are finished and I'm about 3/4 on the cowl neck!

Yes, I'm watching Cake Boss...

I'm also working on a second pair of ugly scrap socks and they're comming along pretty well! Used most of the good colors on the other pair so these are a bit more dull...atleast for now, might throw in a few rows of red and turquoise.