Kid sweaters and mysterious scarfs!

Dang, it's in the middle of November already, and I haven't even started on Christmas presents yet! What is happening??? Worst thing is that I'm gonna have a hard time fitting much Christmas present knitting in there too... You see, the danged Advent mystery knit is taking a lot of time, and they release a new piece of the pattern every 2-3 day. I manage to finish that piece of the pattern before bedtime, so it's not that bad... I actually had to dig through my storage and fush out a couple of single skeins cause I didn't trust my scraps to hold. Had a few skeins with a weird dyelot too, so I took those as well.

But then there's this kids sweater that I've recently been commissioned. I've had to frog pieces of it twice now. Usually I would have been done with it long time ago by now, but everything keeps interrupting my work on it...

*sigh* I guess I'll get to Christmas presents soon enough... If I hurry up, I might actually manage to finish off the sweater today...before the next scarf piece gets published.

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 raglan Marius sweater!

Time for another WIP update! I've now almost finished the first sleeve.

 

This is really boring in the long run... Nothing really interesting happends and there's not much to update until I finish a bigger piece...if you understand... Posting WIP's for every 5cm isn't really worth it... But while we're at it, here's a snapshot of the finished body as well!

 

 After my last blogentry, I decided to give my sewing machine a try... It didn't go too well... The underthread kept messing up and tangeling... So I don't trust my own abilities, nor my sewing machine to be able to work a knitted sweater. Bye bye pretty traditional Marius sweater, hello raglan Marius sweater!

Grey Marius sweater WIP!

So, since Lupo (John Rambo) is done and over with now, I'm using all my time on the grey Marius sweater commission for a person my aunt knows. I've shown this off a couple of times already if I'm not mistaken. Currently, I'm working on the body, which is just mindless knitting...

Fun and interesting update, right?

The last couple of days

Sorry for no update people, but my internet has been gone for the last day and a half without any warning, so my planned blogging was suddently put on hold.
I got to admit that I'm addicted to internet, most of my inspiration and entertainment can be found online, so when I'm suddenly left without it for a longer period of time, it's almost claustrophobic. I haven't been the best crafter without my daily intake of Youtube, instead I've been replacing it with VHS Disney movies and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
When that's said, I can live without internet access just fine, I'd just prefer a bit of a warning/preperation time in advance. One of my favorite places on earth is my mother's mountain cabin where there's no water, no plumbing, no electricity, no phone signal or internet.

BUT! I digress... Let's do a crafting recap from the last blogentry I did!

Big Lupo got her body in one piece, I am however running out of yarn, so the hood will most likely end up being all pink and not multicoloured like the body. The body also turned out a bit loopsided, the decreasing got screwed up somehow... She's so soft and huggable though!

In the meanwhile, little Lupo has grown ears! Yeah! I ran out of grey yarn so I had to actually go and buy more. And after the hood, I ran out of white too! I do however got a few scraps of white that I'm trying to match up. The arms I did last night, but of course, I managed to do something wrong on the second one, so I had to frog it down, which then again made me lose interest in working on it.

So, I started the next sweater commission. During The Lion King and a few episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, this is what I've got to show for before I fell asleep in my chair, not bad in my opinion. Bring on 20 more Disney movies and I'm done!

I'm doing this sweater in a yarn I've never worked with before; Smart from Sandnesgarn. Now,  I tend to choose the cheaper brands because I'm a greedy bastard and my economy is pretty dang low, but really, I can't feel too much difference in this yarn from brands I usually work with, even though it costs up to 3 times as much per skein. I've seen people swear to Sandnesgarn, which is all good, I'm not the one to judge that stuff, expecially since I've never really worked much with the brands they carry. So it'll be fun to see how I feel about this yarn when I'm done with this sweater. I'm planning on doing a Marius for myself later in a brand that's pretty much the same as this (same specs, feel and everything), so we'll see how they do against each other when worked up. I am hoping that there'll be some scraps left over so I can try and stress test it against my prefered "cheap" brands.

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.

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.

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...

New projects!

No idea how I managed it, but my yarn storage has actually shrinked since the start of this year! Just did another round up of my used yarn (I keep a list on my laptop of each new skein I break open, and when this list is long enough, I add it up and update the yarn count widget on my blog here and on dA), and I am currently at 16900 grams of yarn. That's 16,9kg (37,2 pounds) and translates to 338 skeins! Of course, there's a huge amount of scrap yarn and some skeins that's both smaller and bigger, so my yarn storage has a lot more yarn in reality, but it still feels good! For your information, I'm only counting whole 50gram skeins which is pretty much the standar size over here.

But what I was originally going to blog about is my two newest projects! I finished up Sips and Sjin the other day and washed the blue hoodie yesterday...which I now realise I haven't shown off yet (I've become lazy with this blogging, yo)... I'm still waiting for the buttons for it, so I'll talk more about it on a later time, but here's a sneak peak on my baked bean sweater! 10 points if you get the reference!

Yes! Two new projects! That's what I was supposed to blog about! Since I finished up Sips and Sjin, and the hoodie is on hiatus until the buttons arrive, I've been at a loss for what to do next. I eventually got started on the little matching jacket for the baby rompers I finished not too long ago. I'm using this pattern from Drops for it. It's pretty simple, but it matches the rompers better than the jacket that's supposed to go with. Using the same colours of course. Hopefully I'll have enough green to go around, but I might just have to do the sleeves solid yellow. The yoke will be solid blue and it will have buttons going all the way up in the front. So much fun working with thin needles again! 7mm is a hassle while 2,5mm feels so tidier!

 

But that's not the only new project I've got! I've also started a pair of fingerless mittens! Crazy you'd say, it's the middle of summer and the sun are blazing hot, burning my skin as if it were crispy bacon! Calm down, I'm not planning on using these during summer. It was a rather impulse project and I started it based off the colours only!

For a while now, I've been looking for the perfect pattern and colours for a pair of fingerless mittens for myself, but I'm a picky bastard and nothing's good enough! I do however enjoy this pretty pattern called Susie's Reading Mitts on Ravelry. I've made these once before for the Jane Austen contest on dA last year. They're simple, yet decorative and I've been wanting to make another pair of these that fits more my style. I'm not saying that the ones I'm making now will be more my style, but I am serriously making these based of the colours ONLY!

As you've probably already figured out, I've turned into a crazy Yognau(gh)t with Lewis as my favorite. It has gone so far that I am currently using his skin in Minecraft and I've drawn up a similar one in Animal Crossing New Leaf (sorry Nostalgia Critic, but I'm replacing you). I just love his burgundy coat with gold details.

While roaming though my yarn storage earlier today, searching for yarn for the amigurumi Lewis, I rediscovered this beautiful burgundy merino skein I got ages ago, from England none the less! It was too thick to use for the amigurumi doll, but perfect for the fingerless mittens pattern! It also hit me that I had some scraps leftover from the retro Marius sweater I made earlier this year, so BAM! I had a new project and I had to start it right away!

Merino also regulates heat more easily than normal wool, so it wouldn't kill me if I started using them as soon as they're finished. MUCH FUN! SO GREAT!