Sunday, February 24, 2008

In love!

I'm totally in love with my newest FO! It was on my to-do list for the longest time, but never got around to it. I even dyed the yarn for it ages ago. But, my bike ride to the train station last week made me motivated again to pick it up! I always have cold ears when I ride my bike and somehow I never manage to knit my hats long enough. Due to the cold ears I get a major headache and honestly, that's not a nice way to start the day. So here you go :



IMG_Calorimetry03

Pattern : Calorimetry

Yarn: Annell St Vith, handdyed by me

Needles : 4mm

Started : Februari 22, 2008

Finished : Februari 24, 2008

When I first dyed the yarn the idea was to hold it together with a black yarn to get a thicker yarn. So I started on 5mm needles, adding black sock yarn. I soon saw it was going to be huge. So on Friday evening I ripped, and started over. With the handdyed yarn only, and on 4mm needles. Really scared I wouldn't make it with the yardage. I hardly knit on it on Saturday, so most of the knitting was done today. I cast off with my regular method, but didn't like it at all. So, ripped back and did a sewn bind of. Perfect! Only had about a meter to spare!

I found a vintage button, sewed it on and went out into the sunshine to take some pictures. I love it! I love the colour, I love how the fabric turned out on 4mm needles, I love the fit! I'm also planning a few more of these ! :D I'm so sure I'll use it a lot. And well, I might knit a few as gifts. They are so easy and fun!

And unfortunately, that's all I have to show. It's going to be a rather dissapointing month. I didn't make my goals for the Stash Knit down 2008 and there's no time left to get there. But hey, I just keep knitting!



PS. : My hair was cut and coloured last Thursday and it looks so neat with the band!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Valentine Red

I'm not doing much about the Valentine thing. I used to do it when we first started dating, but now not anymore. Doesn't matter all that much. But I accidentally have some red to post here! More in the thought of Project Spectrum, but hey!

One of the things Project Spectrum stimulates for me is looking for the colours around me. February and March are Fire themed and thus I'm looking constantly for red, orange and pink. I'm not big into red and not at all into orange. I do like deep reds and pink (not bright), but again, little of that colour around me. Plus it's grey and dark here, especially today. But here ya go :






PS3 Fire - Cranberries

Cooked Cranberries

PS3 Fire - Red Tulip 02

Red Tulips

At the end of January I had no socks on the needles (except for some hibernating ones) and I needed an easy pair to take with my on the train. I wanted to use up some of my self striping yarn and I wanted a ripple pattern. I took me ages to decide, and lots of time on Ravelry, and in the end went with the Broadripple socks from Knitty. They went quite fast and I finished them yesterday, and totally by coincidence they also match the PS3 colours!

Broadripple socks 02

Pattern : Broadripple

Yarn : Regia Canada Colours

Needles : 2mm KnitPicks circular

Started/Finished : January 29th till February 14th 2008

Modifications : I did an afterthought heel which I modified a bit to look more like a regular short row heel then a toe! And I did my regular Dutch toe. That's it! :D Oh, and I did the small gauge size, which means you cast on 70 stitches.

Then there's some yarn in the perfect PS3 colours just waiting to be knit into a scarf. When I have the time for it ...

PS3 Fire - Yarnball




And last I leave you with my dears. Last week and weekend was great and I took the dogs for a walk on Friday as I was home from work. I tried taking some pictures of them together but I couldn't, so I have one of each! Aife will be turning one on March 1st. She's huge, way bigger then her mom. She's also a sweety, though still very full of energy! Esna on the other hand is starting to be a very cuddly dog who prefers a quiet night on the couch above running outside and digging for rats!





Esna 8/02/2008 Aife 8/02/2008

Monday, February 04, 2008

Project Spectrum

I participated last year in project Spectrum, or at least I wanted to participate but didn't get as much done as I wanted. So trying again this year, with big plans. We'll see how far I get.

Lolly has come with the brilliant idea to make Project Spectrum all about the elements this year.


Project Spectrum 2008 - Elements

I joined the ATC swap she is hosting. I haven't done much paper/collage stuff the last few months (years?) but I miss it and keep planning to get started again. I'm sure I'll make it one day. So more about that when I get my ass in gear! :D

Then I was thinking what I would do about the knitting this year. Last year I tried designing a pair of socks - fair isle - for every batch of colours. Though I got them all planned I only managed to knit one pair of socks, or well, finish (though I'm doubting now, I should have done something with purple as well and I don't remember?). I hope to still finish the other socks one day, but I don't know when. There are faults in every one of them and I don't know if I really want to finish them.

Anyway, this year. I was thinking it over, maybe fair isle design this year would be nice as well. But then I got this idea that's a bit different. I'm planning on giving it a try! :D

The plan is to knit a pair of knee highs for every element. I will most likely knit them black, though they might be white as well. For sure the first pair will be black. Then I will embroider according to the elements on them, a bit in the idea of the famous vogue socks (in my someday queue to make, but as I say, someday!). The problem? I don't know how to do embroidered socks, or anything at all! So it's quite a challenge here!

As my thoughts went to not knowing how to embroider the idea grew to try embroidery on something else first. I have been wanting to do it for ages (on felted hats and bags) but never got around to it. So, something small that wouldn't take to much time to knit. Well, fingerless mitts! I girl can never have enough of those, right? Quick knit, small thing and a try-out for embroidering.

Then my thoughts went on, and well, what about a pair of embroidered socks and mitts every element? And maybe a pair of gloves to wair with the fingerless mitts? I will have a lot of bike time in my future and even during Summer the mornings can be quite cold out here!

So that's the plan. A pair of stockings in black or white with embroidery. A pair of mitts (black) with embroidery. A pair of gloves (in the colours of the element, preferable variegated).

Now first I thought about dyeing the yarn for the gloves, but over the weekend I started putting some yarn in Ravelry. The outcome was very scary. I started with the sock yarn, and got about 1/3 in there. It's a total of more then 56000 yards! That's quite a bit if you ask me. And knowing my sock yarn is about 1/4th of my total yarn stash, and then there's still the fiber stash, I'm quite depressed right now (don't worry, this passes quite soon! :D).

Anyway, there is some sock yarn in my stash that'll do for the gloves, or even heavier yarn (DK weight or so). So no new yarn to dye or buy. And there's plenty of black and white sock yarn. Only the embroidery thread I'll have to buy.

Whish me luck! :D

Friday, February 01, 2008

Taking pictures

I think I mentionned here before that I'm not good at taking pictures. My knowledge of the art of photography is nihil and I just don't have the time to take classes or anything. My camera is very basic but I do believe - like many people told me - that even with a cheap camera you can take nice pictures. I would love to take more time to try better picture taking, but there's already so much I want to do.

I've been reading Scouts blog from time to time, and I like browsing her Flickr page. She's great with fiber, but I love her pictures a lot! And the stories behind them. Makes me jealous of her environment, though I would never want to live in the climate she's in.

On her Flickr page I came across a picture of her "100 strangers" project. The Flickr page of this project is great. Just to browse all the people on the page. I love watching strangers, observing them. But I would never ask them if I could take a picture of them. Don't have the guts. I'm a loner by heart.

The only one picture I once took of strangers (might be more, but this one was intented and is about the only one I remember) was back in Turkey :



Turkish women crocheting

Not the best picture, but I like it for all it represents. Maybe I'll try to take more pictures of strangers. And maybe I will get a better camera. Who knows.