Giant ball of yarn and socks!

My parents came over for a visit yesterday. It's recently been my boyfriend's birthday and my sister-in-law's birthday is coming up, so they went over to Nord-Trøndelag for a double birthday visit. Not only did they bring Bård a birthday gift, but my mom also brought me some stuff! She gave me a giant ball of yarn!

This is Verdi from Drops, a yarn I've been looking at several times in webstores, but never really seen in real life. The price was very off-putting...but I didn't know how big it actually was and how much yarn its worth! There is actually a whole sweater in there! Believe it or not!

The details say it weights 350g (12,35oz) which equals to 1225 meters (1339 yards)! That's crazy! I've already picked out a pattern that I want to spend it on, but I need HUGE ASS needles for it!

Pretty pretty! I know it seems impossible that there's enough yarn in there for that jacket, but after looking up the yarn amount needed for it, comparing the yarn they suggest using (which is Vienna, but the pattern says that Verdi is a good replacement), it looks like it might be enough for TWO jackets in this skein! Crazy time! Might not actually happend though... We'll see. Need to get the needles first!

She also brought a book filled with patterns of iconic "barne-TV" characters, both old and new...mostly new... Barne-TV is a TV-show made for kids only in the evening just before bed time. It lasts for about 30 minutes (atleast so it did back in the day) and had colourful doll characters that spoke to the kids inbetween cartoons or other small shows and sketches. While I couldn't care less for the first 3/4 of this book, seeing that they are mostly current characters, the last quarter makes me very nostalgic and I've GOTTA make some of these, even though they're mostly crochet...and all norwegian patterns... I'm most familiar with 'Murican crochet therms.

For dere norske. Boka heter Lag favorittfigurene fra Barne-TV og er skrevet av Lise Nymark. Utgitt av Cappelen Damm med ISBN nummer: 978-82-02-43118-1.

Over to something different. I finished up the ugly scrap socks last night. Weaving in the ends was a nightmare though! That's always the worst thing. And as I said yesterday, there was 20 ends on each sock! That's 40 in total! If I use 1 minute on each end, that's 40 minutes! For gods sake!

Stupid flash washed out the colours... I tried to use the short row heel instead of the one I usually use. Figured it would feel better for this type of sock. I also tried to make the leg longer than I usually do on these...which ended up in using more scraps...and then more ends to weave in... *sigh* But they're done now! Gonna probably make more of these! My 'Murican friends love them!

And while we're still on socks... I've started making Christmas stockings! Another one of my 'Murican friends have commissioned two Christmas stockings from me! I'm so excited cause Christmas Stockings aren't usually a thing over here. And the ones she asked me to make are so pretty!

 I'm gonna enjoy making these so much!

Purple fair-isle sweater finished!

It's finished, it's packed and it's on its way to the post office in a few hours! Can I get a hellz yeah?

This sweater has been so much fun, but at the same time a pain in my ass. It's knit on 5mm needles, which is a bit larger than I enjoy working with. And with the yarn being heavy as well, it took a lot of (wo)man power to get it done.

As you probably remember from me ranting over a week ago, I managed to balls it up around the yoke. I totally skipped the heart row and started right on the rose pattern. How did I manage to do that? I've got no friggin clue! It just happened! And I didn't notice it until I was about halfway into the roses, so I had to frog down over a day's worth of work! My god, I could have killed someone at that point.

But with all that to the side, I do love the fair-isle on this one. It's different from what I normally work up, but it's still classy and fun. I love the hearts cause they look so fantastic from far away. I'm not saying that as in "god, don't look at my horrible knitting", but because the hearts looks fuller from a far. Close up they look like a clusterfuck of pixels.

The colour is impossible to picture right, which is the case with most purple colours. It just ain't gonna happend! The bottom right is probably the closest of all of these. It's still not 100% accurate though.

My friend whom commissioned this sweater from me, was very specific about the colour she wanted, and as it happened, the one we originally looked at wasn't avilable anymore when we were ready to order the yarn. So we ended up deciding on a thinner yarn which had the perfect colour, so it's knit double stranded...which the pattern tells you to do...but they want you to use a different brand of yarn... But it worked anyway! Now let's just hope that it'll fit her! That's always the worst part about doing a commission; will the piece fit? I followed the measurements as well as the pattern would allow me. Only one way to find out! I'll be sending it out today, so hopefully, she'll have it before the weekend!

Pattern can be found here, and it's © Drops Design.

WIP: Lupo and...Lupo?

I've been working on Lupo ONLY for the last couple of days, and really, it takes forever! Crocheting is generally extra slow with me, but with such a small hook that's all kinds of crap, it really slows everything down further... But I've got his body done now! Finished up his head in the early mornings today. I'm not 100% happy with the result, but it looks good, I guess. I still feel that his head is way too big, but then again, Fibi's head turned out way too small. I've done a little comparison in the pattern between the two of them, and there's 24 stitches more in the round of Lupo's head!

  

I am however in love with the bobble stitch! I hated it's guts to begin with and it took forever and it killed my arm during the first few rounds, but I just love the texture and the feel of it... Call it Stockholm syndrome! All he's missing right now is the arms, hood, ears and the pompoms. All of that shouldn't be a problem at all! I am a bit scared that I might run out of the grey yarn though... Haven't confirmed with my stash if I got more leftovers (cause that it actually what this is, leftovers and scraps, call it a scrap project). 

Right now, I'm taking a little break from Lupo anyway, the head was just a bit too tedious for me, and I know the arms are boring and tedious too.

So I started a new project! Lupo! Wait wuuuut?

Yes! I decided to start another Lupo! As I've said before, Lupo is the reason why I fell in love with Lalylala. It was the first amigurumi I saw and if you remember a blog entry from january, I showed off a picture of Lopu, saying how much I adored the Lalylala dolls. Shortly after, my good friend Pickle threw me the pattern for Fibi and offered to help me through it. And it didn't take long before I bought the pattern for Lupo. I love Lupo so much! I can't express it enough! And after working up little Lupo, I got the great idea of making a giant Lupo! A snuggle buddy! This idea has been in my head for several days now, and I've been so close to ordering yarn for it, but I just couldn't get myself to do it. I'm trying to save the little money I have, so when I'm buying yarn, I'd like to get bigger lots so the shipping won't be so hurtfull. In most cases, shipping is free when you reach a certain spending amount, and I am trying my best to hit that if I can...so buying yarn (even though it's on sale right now) doesn't feel right when I'll be spending the same amount on shipping...
Little did I know that the answer was right behind me...litterally! In the shelf behind me, there was two skeins of green bamboo yarn that Sarah sent me some time ago. It's thicker than what I usually work with and it's soft to the touch without feeling like icky acryllic. Patons Silk Bamboo, 70% bamboo and 30% Silk! Genious! I rushed to my yarn storage and pulled out two other skeins of bamboo... Sirdar Juicy DK, 80% bamboo, 20% cotton. They were of the same lenght and same thickness, just about the same silky texture as well.

Wow... Pepsi is photobombing me! But yeah! These skeins shall become a giant Lupo! OMG I'm so excited! The skin will be green while the wool will be striped light mint green/beige. A bit crazy, but who cares? He'll be super soft and so cuddly!

But as I pondered this giant Lupo plushie... I got the feeling that I'd most likely run out of yarn... I dug through my stash once more and pulled out one and a half skein of a weird cotton mix. These are Cotton Light from Drops,  60% cotton, 40% acryllic, the remainder of four full skeins I recieved in a giveaway two years ago. Cotton Light doesn't excist anymore from what I've come to understand, so I really don't know what to do with these skeins. Why not include them in the giant Lupo? It's body will be striped anyway, so I can plot some of this inbetween the other two colours.

GENIOUS! But I shouldn't get too caught up in all of this... I need to start another sweater commission soon! And by the look of things, another commission might pop up after that!

Autumn blog header!

It's that time of...season...again! The blog just got a facelift! Summer has been over and done for a long time now over here and the autumn oficially started on the 1st of september, so 'bout taim to change that blog yo!

So, let's put summer behind us...

And enjoy the autumn for a while!

I am enjoying the colder weather and I'm hoping for a bliztering cold and snowy winter. Yes, I'm one of those crazy people that enjoys winter so so much. Being born and raised in Norway does things to you. For all you 'Murican readers (and probably the rest of the world too), Norway doesn't have snow days in school. Nope! As a kid, I rode my bike in -30'C (-22'F) and several meters of snow! GAH! Please! Let it be a crazy snowy winter!

But I digress... It's still only autumn... I decided to sneak out in the early hours of the day to snap some pictures of this pretty yarn in the bright, fresh daylight before anybody else has awoken. We don't have much green outside of our appartment, so to get pretty pictures, I've have to sneak into the garden of our landlords and neighbours...like a creepy person. Our landlords have some huge trees on their property and they've now finally started to drop their pretty coloured leafs, so it's a perfect time to get autumn pictures done. And I must admit, this header is probably my favorite of them all so far!

I love autumn, I love autumn colours and just about everything else! The only thing I can't stand about the autumn is the friggin' spiders that have decided to grow huge over summer and then move INSIDE of our appartment since it's so cold outside. Blasted araknids! GO AWAAAAAY!

I'm such a n00b!

Ugh! It seems that I can never finish a sweater without doing some kind of major mistake. This purple commissioned sweater is no exception.

Here I was, minding my own business, getting happy that I was reaching the halfway point in the yoke fair-isle when I realised something horrible...

I've forgotten to add the boarder of hearts before starting the roses! Holy crap! That killed my motivation. I lost about a day's work and I just ended up putting it to the side for the rest of the night

I've now managed to get back on track and I've finished up the heart row! Gonna work some rows in single colour now before starting again on the rose, this time we're crossing our fingers (I hope you as my reader will be crossing your fingers with me) and hope that it'll go smootly without any more problems!

Purple sweater WIP!

It's about time I post another WIP! Started the second sleeve the other day and I recently finished it up and put both sleeves in the round with the body. I've currenly worked a couple of rounds and will pretty soon start the yoke fair-isle! Can't wait cause it's so pretty looking!

As always, it looks like crap when layd out like this, but all the measurements are right compared to the numbers I've gotten from the commissioner. My mind goes crazy when I work on sweaters... "What if the sweater doesn't fit? This looks so wrong!" But it always fits in the end.

I really need to hurry up with this sweater though, cause Knitting-and-Crochet on dA recently announced this months contest and I know EXACTLY what I'm going to do for it, but it will take a lot of time. It's crochet (for once) so I will be needing all the time I can get!

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!

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...

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.

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...

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...

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!