Garn Boet - The Yarn Nest

Almost there! Modelled pictures of the mittens as soon as I get the ends woven in and the mittens blocked. Soon!

Posted by Maud at 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Loong time and no postings! And to be honest, no knitting either. Since we bought our first Afghan hound in 2007 has my life been so filled with new things that it has been a bit difficult to squeeze in knitting time. An additional difficulty has been that that lovely elegant and in almost all aspects perfect Afghan was as a puppy totally addicted to yarn. As soon as I took out a knitting he was there, watching my movements ready to snatch the ball from my hands.

And that was also the end of Ribby card. One day when I came home had Ludde, the Afghan, had a ball with Ribby cardi. One sleeve was thorn in pieces, and the house was decorated with yarn. No chance to get the yarn to be enough for a new sleeve, and it had to be rewound anyway. So I ripped everything, wound it up in new balls and let it sit for a while. A couple of months ago I felt a small knitting urge lifting it's head, and after a lot of Ravelry search I found the pattern for Sassymetrical by Gay Schiff. Sassymetrical is knitted from the top down, and this is in fact my very first top down sweater! So, her we go, Pictures and info:

Project info:
Pattern: Sassymetrical by Gay Schiff

Yarn: Rowan RYC Cashsoft Aran SH014 (grey)

Needles: Addi 4,5 mm circular needles.

Posted by Maud at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate! I hope your festivities went well. We had a lovely Christmas Eve, with good food, nice company and enough presents. No yarn nor needles among mine, but a beautiful Japanese Donabe pot for cooking.

Almost off the needles already are the Urban Necessity mittens by Colleen Michele Meagher. My daughter wanted a pair of mittens that enables her to handle the bus ticket without problems, but are still warm. The Urban necessity mittens have a cap over the fingers, and fingers without tops. Handy! The yarn is Schoeller + Stahl Ronda, and I'm using 3,5 mm dpns in bamboo. Both mittens are knitted, and I have today started to knit the first cap.

The second pair I have on the needles are the Vinterblomster mittens by Heidi Mork. I'm using Vuorelma's Satakieli yarn for these mittens, in deep brick and ochre colours, on 2,5 mm dpns. This are intended for my younger daughter, but I'm not sure about the size, might be that they end up in my mitten basket. I'm just about to start the thumb gusset on the first mitten.

Here is a close up of the pattern. The observant knitter familiar with the pattern might observe that there is one flower less than intended in the second border. I forgot to increase stitches after the first border, but didn't realize it until I didn't get the main pattern to work out. So I ripped only a couple of rows and increased instead after the second border. The missing stitches were just the amount the last flower would have needed.

Posted by Maud at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

My Deep in the Forest mittens have been finished for about a week already, and my son has even taken them into daily use, as you can see from the picture below. I should have taken pictures before I gave them to him, but the weather has been lousy, and my possibilities to get any good outside pictures close to zero. And he needed them. This picture is taken inside, without any sun or anything that could brighten them up. I'll take new pictures as soon as the weather clears up!

Summary of this mitten project: My gauge was totally off, but otherwise a very nice outcome. The pattern is very clear and well written, and I made few alterations. The major one was that I picked up thumb stitches from the contrast colour yarn in the previous row, not MC, and then I attached the cuff lining at the same time as I knitted the first grey row off the braid (simply pick up the cast-on row on a spare needle, and knit the cast-on stitch together with the live stitch you have on your ordinary needle). I like how the mittens look.

Project details:
Pattern: Deep in the Forest mittens by Tuulia Salmela.
Yarn: Vuorelmas Satakieli, 2ply 100 % wool in off white and grey (957).
Needles: 2,5 mm dpns.

Modelled pictures as soon as the weather clear up!

And P.S.: I have cast on two new pairs of mittens, and the first thing I will do next year is to make an order for yarns to several bigger projects ! Yes! But this year I try to finish the mittens and the Ribby cardi.

Posted by Maud at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

The Marina piccola socks have been finished for about a week, and in fact also washed and blocked for a couple of days. The problem has mostly been the weather*, with our small compact camera is quite a nice natural light required in order to get decent pictures. And today finally, during a split second when the sun decided to shine, I managed to get modeled pictures of the socks. The flash did flat out the pattern terrible, and these pictures are taken with only the natural light. And that did of course create some blur, since a young teenager is incompetent of keeping even the toes still for the time it takes to take a few pictures.

In the end, I liked the pattern by Kate Gilbert very much, and I can't understand why it was so difficult in the beginning. The socks knitted up beautifully on 2,5 mm dpns, and the pattern shows a clear stitch definition. The pattern is well written and very clear. I like the start toe a lot, and since I'm a big fan of flap heel socks, I liked the heel too. The only alteration I made was to decrease a bit sharper for the toe, but that was only because I had knitted the patterned part too long, and I didn't want to have the sock too long. And I was too lazy to frog. The pattern didn't need this alteration.

Project details:
Pattern: Marina piccola socks by Kate Gilbert.
Yarn: VillaSukka by VillaMokka.
Needles: 2,5 mm dpns.

Oh no, she moved her toes again!

* We have had rain and clouds for weeks, really almost a rainy reason. Haven't felt like winter at all.

Posted by Maud at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Last winter I did only knit two pairs of mittens, my younger son took my Anemois, and the second pair, the Rosebud mittens, went to my daughter. My intention was to start knit a pair of mittens for myself, but receiving the Deep in the Forest mittens pattern (by Tuulia Salmela), I realized my yarn would never stand 2,75 mm needles, and resigned to knit the mittens for my older daughter.

I started to knit as soon as the Piccola marina socks were finished (they are now blocking), and realized very soon that mu gauge of some reason is totally off. I have knitted with this yarn and these needles a lot, but obviously the straight lines and my afraidness of stranding too tight on the backside led to a much looser knit than I usually do. Result: these mittens will be suitable for my older son, whose hands are just a tad smaller than my husband's. Good part: he needed new mittens too. Bad part: still no mittens for me.

The mittens look very uneven on these pictures, but it comes from the straight lines, the colour change is on exactly same place row after row. They will even out when blocking. The braid was fun to knit, as always, and Tuulias description on how to do it is very straight forward and clear. I'm using Vuorelma's Satakieli yarn and 2,5 mm dpns. The only alteration I so far has done was to pick up the stitches for the thumb gusset from the grey, or contrast colour, yarn on the backside, not from the main colour yarn. I got visible stitches on the right side when using the mc, but that can of course have come from making some other mistake when picking up the stitches. Anyway, it's very neat now.

And finally an update on the Ribby cardi: I have located two balls of grey in the right dye lot, and I'm waiting for them to be shipped to me. I have knitted the body and almost the entire first sleeve. As soon as the yarns arrive I'll continue.

Posted by Maud at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

The Wabi Sabi scarf is a project I in fact started and finished back in April. Of some reason I haven't got around to take pictures of the scarf until now, perhaps because it's a very hot scarf. The Wabi Sabi scarf is knitted in lovely Noro Kochoran, shade 47 on 6 mm needles. The yarn is a 10 ply aran weight of Wool, Silk and Angora.

The pattern for the Wabi Sabi scarf is by Kamicha, and Kamicha is kind enough to give it out as a free pattern. Thank you Kamicha! The pattern repeat is only for rows, and very easy. An absolute extra is the beautiful knotted fringe. The scarf is knitted lengthwise, and you need a long, about 100 cm circular needle to manage the amount of stitches. The fringed is created at the end/beginning of the row every time you turn the work around. The scarf is long, about two meters, and I used about one and a half skein of Kochoran.

It's a bit cloudy outside, so I talked Hanna into modeling the scarf inside instead, and she agreed, but was not overly enthusiastic in showing her modeling skills. Anyway, some kind of pictures of the finished scarf got taken. But what is not showing of very well is how the colours work in the scarf. The idea is that there is not supposed to be any pooling, the scarf is about as long as one colour repeat of the yarn. I must have started a bit into the first colour, since I managed to get a small pooling effect in both ends of the scarf. It doesn't disturb me since it's symmetrically, and is quite beautiful. Still, it would have been nice to get the colour sequences right, but I had knitted quite a lot before I realized about the pooling. And Kochoran is pretty hairy, so I decided against ripping up it all.

Here is a close up of the end and the fringe. Kamicha's pattern has instructions for both a shawl and a throw, or to be more exact, yarn amounts for those, since they are made by just knitting more repeats.

I was a bit afraid the yarn would be itchy, but it turned out being very nice against the skin, and I have already have use for the scarf several times. We have got some kind of first feeling of the winter here in south Finland, with a couple of millimeters of snow on the ground and a couple of minus degrees. Lovely!

Posted by Maud at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)