April FO #6: Nissen / The Elf

I've reached my April WIP Wrestling goal! The 6 WIPs are done and I've blogged about the 3 I finished in March.

The sixth and last FO this month is a baby suit. I've known it for long, it's an almost classic Danish baby garment: Nissen (The Elf) by Marianne Isager. I started it back in January during my 'streamline the stash' mood. I'm not much into greens, and wanted to use up these few greens in my stash together. Nissen seemed like the perfect project. I didn't have enough yarn for the hood, but think it will work well without it. I also had to use some contrasting red/orange colours on the back to have enough yarn, but I think it works well since the contrast on the edges is also orange-red. For a few months, all it needed was the zipper. A few weeks ago I finally went and bought the zipper when I also went to get the red buttons for the Twenty Ten Cardigan, and carefully following the advice from Britt not to stretch the knitted fabric when sewing on the zipper I finished it this morning. The zipper gave it a truly complete look and I'm very pleased with it! All I need now is somebody to wear it, but I'm quite confident that I will - in time - find a happy little recepient. Until then it will be placed in my finished-baby-knits-ready-for-whenever-friends-and-family-pop-out-babies stash.

Pattern: Nissen (The Elf) by Marianne Isager (Isager | Ravelry)

Yarn: Various leftovers - see my Ravelry project page for more info

Needles: 3.0 mm and 3.5 mm

So I reached my April goal with 2 days to go. Having decided to leave Arietta as a pretty swatch for now, I am down to 4 WIPs only!!!

• Amimono's Granite (started June 2009), which I've taken up again after a long break and now have almost 2 sleeves done. For a while I was contemplating frogging it because I wasn't sure about the boxy shape and I don't tend to use woolen sweaters with very open necklines like this one. Then it occured to me that all these problems would be solved if I turn it into a cardigan - so that's what I plan to do.
• Helga Isager's Sweater fra 1960'erne (started December 2009). It's resting in my knitting basket since it is a very wintery knit and I don't want to finish it and then be unable to use it right away.
• Norah Gaughan's Kingscot (started August 2009). I have 2 sleeves done; I've used the sleeves as something I would knit on when I needed a very simple TV/reading/etc. knit and didn't have any other straightforward knits to turn to, so they've been taking a while to knit. This week I finished the second sleeve, and then started to worry that the fabric was too dense (very unlike the usual case I had to go down from 4.00 mm to 3.25 mm to get gauge) and that the sleeves were too tight. I decided to wash, block, and sew up one sleeve, and all my worries were blown away: the yarn relaxed giving a fabric with a nice drape, and the sleeve fits perfectly. Yay!
• The scrap yarn blanket. The never-ending project, which I enjoy knitting on occasionally when I've collected sufficient amounts of odds and ends to knit a few squares.

So what's next? Other than continuing to knit on the above now that I've refound the joy in knitting Granite and Kingscot? Cast on, obviously! Earlier this week I planned, (swatched), cast on, and knitted 3 rows on 2 new projects - both from the same book: Strikketøj by my favourite knitwear designer Helga Isager (yes, that will by my 9th and 10th Amimono knitting project...):

• Bluse i hulmønster (1980'erne) in a teal blue Isager Alpaca 2.
• Pigecardigan (1940'erne) - scaled up to my size - in Supersoft from Holst Garn with a lovely dark colour (a black-purple-pink mix) called Sloe as the main colour.

Mmmmm.... :)

April FOs #4 and #5: Cardigans: Daffodil and Twenty Ten

Sunday brought me some time to sit outside in the sun and sew in 20 buttons and some side seams. After having excitedly watched Peter complete his first half-marathon (he did a full one last year) in a time much better than expected - 1h 31min :) - that was. That gave me another 2 FOs!

Pattern: Daffodil by Amimono (Rav link | knitkit shop link)
Yarn: Alpaca 2 (50% wool/50% alpaca), colourway 016 which is a greenish yellow, approx. 3.8 skeins. And a bit of the same yarn in 402 (dark grey) and 2105 (light grey) for the edges.
Needles: 3.5 mm Addi Turbo
A link to my Ravelry project page: here.

The cardigan pattern is great and the result very pretty and versatile - and it doesn't look too homemade (that's a general thing with Helga's designs, I think). An example of this is that the sleeves are different in front and back - a feature also found in tailored - and industrially produced - clothes.
I didn't find any errors in the version I have (Amimono Knit Collection Spring/Summer 2009). I feel tempted to knit another one in another colour.

The colour is outside my comfort zone (I like yellows, but mostly lemon, daffodil, and warm yellows - not really greenish yellows like this one that are also heathered), but I think it goes well with a black shirt and especially with my light denim skirt.

I think this must be the first time where I've blocked the pieces (back+fronts knit together with 3-needle-BO (and the front edge knit on) as one piece - and then the two sleeves) before sewing them together. Usually, I'm not very fond of sewing end set-in sleeves and I don't do it very well. Now I'm convinced that blocking pre-seaming is the key to get rid of this problem! So much easier and a much better result, too. In fact, I'm no longer afraid of these set-in sleeves!

And then there's FO #5:

Pattern: Twenty Ten Cardigan by Veera Välimäki
Yarn: New Lanark Aran, colourway Blueberry, 3.5 skeins!
Needles: 5.5 mm
Link to my Ravelry project page: here.

The design is clever and interesting, the yarn is - as always - great and in a gorgeous colourway. And oh how I love those shiny red buttons! All 12 of them :)

That's another two sweaters for my IntKniSweMoDo - I've now created 4 this year.

April FO #3: Fire Monkey Socks - and a little extra FO

The 3rd FO of the month is a pair of Monkey Socks (an all-time favourite) in a gorgeously coloured yarn. It's the sock yarn Kaffe Fassett designed for Regia, and this is the colourway Landscape Fire. Alas, the colours aren't captured that well by my camera (at least not in this picture - it's better at the bottom right corner in the last photo of this post), but I'll direct you to Mooncalf's photos of the same colourway here and here. Much more true to the actual colours.

Pattern: Monkey Socks by Cookie A. (Rav link | free Knitty pattern)

Yarn: Regia Design Line Kaffe Fassett, colourway Landscape Fire, 1.5 skeins

Needles: 2.25 mm Knitpicks dpns

The socks only used 1.5 skeins, but I wanted to use up the rest of it right away. Thus this little baby hat, that doesn't count in the April WIP Wrestling because it was no WIP when April started. The last bit of yarn was sent to the scrap yarn blanket pile. 

Pattern: Gro's Djevellue

Yarn: Regia Design Line Kaffe Fassett, colourway Landscape Fire, approx. 0.4 skeins

Needles: 2.25 mm Knitpicks dpns

So - that's a total of 100 g sock yarn used, i.e. 12.5% added to the SockYarn O-Meter!

So will I reach my goal of 6 finished WIPs in April? Well, apart from this little baby hat that only took me a few hours to make, I've been veeery good and knitted on my WIPs only. So much that the remaining 3 I plan to finish only need some seaming:

The yellow thing on top (or should we call it golden, since it was my Ravelympics project that I would have finished during the Olympics, had I not gone skiing the last weekend of the Games) is Amimono's Daffodil. I've blocked it today pre-seaming (I think that's the first time I've ever done that). It needs sleeves sewn in, side and sleeve seams sewn, and 8 buttons.

The red and green thing on the left with the red zipper is Marianne Isager's Nissen. It's blocked and only needs the zipper sewn in, but I'm quite sure that should be challenging enough, especially since I have to do it by hand, not being the happy owner of a sewing machine.

The blue-ish thing you can see on the right is the Twenty Ten Cardigan. It's blocked and only needs 12 shiny red buttons sewn on before it'll be a great little cardigan - with shiny red buttons :)

That should be doable seeing as there is still a week left of April. 

A Year in Socks now available as individual patterns!

I've decided to make all the sock patterns in the A Year in Socks collection available as individual patterns for $6.50 each! This may be good news for you if you've had your eye on one of the patterns only and did want to buy the entire collection just to get that single pattern you wanted.

They are all available in my Etsy shop, and you can see more about them on the collection's Ravelry page.

I've also decided to let the November Socks remain a free pattern as it has been so far (anything else would be unfair methinks), but I have updated the layout to match the other collection patterns.

So - here's hoping you'll want to knit one of these 12 pairs! My own favourites are September and October:

April FO #2: Red & stripy baby vest

This was quite an easy WIP to wrestle, as all it needed was a single button sewn on. Nevertheless, it seemed to take me forever to do so - but now it's done!

Pattern: My own
Yarn: 20 g Hifa 2, red; 26 g of some sportweight mohair of unknown origin.
Needles: 4.0 mm
Ravelry project page: here.

I initially started it to use up two stash oddballs - and succeeded (with some help from the scrap yarn blanket). I think the result is really cute! And the fact that it's red only makes it better, right? ;)

April FO #1: Tilia Shawl

Here comes my first FO of the month - it finished blocking yesterday, the Tilia Shawl:  

Pattern: Tilia by Laura Patterson. I bought it as a Posh Yarn kit with the lovely yarn:

Yarn: Posh Yarn Diana 2 ply (80% merino, 20% silk; 800 yds/100g); I used 76 g.

Needles: 3.75 mm Addi Lace circs

Mods: I added 4 knitted rows between the edge section and the next section as I didn't like them directly attached seing as the pattern repeats of the two sections do not match (17 sts and 12 sts). After finishing the knitting I also unraveled the CO edge (yes, that did take some time) because it was too tight, purled one row and BO on the next RS row. 

I cast on on January 5th, knit 10 rows, then left it sitting in my WIP pile for 3 months a bit exhausted by the thought of all those nupps. I then picked it up again and like some other Ravelers I discovered that the nupps weren't that bad at all - and then I finished it in approx. 2 weeks.

The colour is gorgeous! I love reds and this one is a favourite. I'm also very fond of the yarn - I feared that a cobweb/lace shawl would be too floppy, but the yarn holds up really well, probably thanks to its merino content and twist. 

See many more photos on my Ravelry project page. 

FOs in March

I finished 3 knits in March, and I guess now is the time to blog about them - I finally managed to get photos yesterday.

1) Cubed Necklace:
This one is featured in the new book (also available as pdf) Ori Ami Knits by Olga Buraya-Kefelian & Vanessa Yap-Einbund. The book uses Habu Textiles yarns only, and is thus a very interesting book. I fell in love with this funny cubed necklace (in the book it looks more like a real necklace as you can see here on the pattern's Ravelry page), but wanted to make it from stash instead. And so I did.
Here's a link to my Ravelry project page, should you be interested in learning more about it and seeing how I constructed mine (more photos).

2) Woodland Scarf: 
It's a loooong one. More than 2 metres I think. It took me 19 months to finish - mainly because it spent a long time sleeping in my knitting basket. But here it is - finally finished after I decided to do so back in March. It's knitted in 2 strands of Posh Yarn Eva 2 ply, using every bit of 4 skeins. The silk/cashmere blend pills, but it's also very soft and nice for a scarf and has a good drape.
Here's a link to my Ravelry project page, where you can also see the stitch pattern up close and find a link to the (free) pattern.

3) Stash-busting Socks:
Not much to say about these other than they worked brilliantly in using up every single yarn of 5 different sock yarn leftover odd balls - and a bit of a 6th. To ensure this, I unwound the skeins, folded the yarn in half to get two strands of equal length, and then rewound these two strands into two balls. And knitted. This technique is only advisable if your yarn comes in adequately tiny balls :)
Here's a link to my Ravelry project page, should you be interested in seeing which yarns I used. Most of it is left over from all the sock knitting I did for the A Year in Socks collection. There's some January, February, September, October, and November in there.

Let's see if I succeed in finishing twice as many projects in April...

ETA: The socks added 94 g = 11.75% = 12% to the Sock Yarn O-Meter!

New weekend plans

(Photo from Meteosat lifted off www.berlingske.dk)

This one - yes, that's the giant volcanic cloud currently closing down the air space above Northern Europe - is likely to prevent dear boyfriend, who is currently stationed in Stavanger, Norway, during the week, from coming home over the weekend. Having recovered from the disappointment, I'm now thinking that I should catch this opportunity to get some WIP knitting and blogging done. I washed and pinned out my latest FO this morning (I have been very monogamous with this one lately - more on that later), and I'm looking forward to showing it to you. Who knows, but it seems likely that I can get another 2 - or maybe 3? - WIPs done over the weekend, and I'll be well on my way to 6, which is my April WIP goal. I would however have preferred to spend the weekend with dear Peter - 12 days apart is a long time when your mind was only set for 5... Hopefully, he'll have a good time in Stavanger and the opportunity to actually explore the town. I suggested the Norwegian Oil Museum :)

April is WIP Wrestling Month

Inspired by Karen - who has quite a lot more WIPs than I do ;) - I hereby announce April to be WIP Wrestling Month.

Status as of April 1st: 11 WIPs.
Goal: As some of them are quite far off, my goal is to finish 6 WIPs - and to blog about these 6 and the 3 finished projects also lingering as WIPs at my Ravelry project page because I have not yet blogged about them nor photographed them.

Quarterly report - 1st quarter

Three months of 2010 have passed and it's time for a quarterly report. How am I doing with the New Year's resolutions?

1. Knit down (some of) my stash.
Well, this one is actually going really really well! I've trimmed my stash for a lot of odds and ends by knitting on my stash-busting blanket, some baby gear (two of these they still need the final sewing/button/zipper before they can be presented here, but you can see the progress here on Ravelry), and then a stashbusting pair of socks I've just finished in 10 days, using up every yard of 5 sock yarn leftover oddballs - and a bit of a 6th.
I've also sold some of my stash in my recent destash - the blue Rowanspun DK is still available, should you be interested.
Thus, my stash is actually looking quite nice and inviting at the moment. Now I just need to figure out what to knit... The thing is, I've grown a bit tired of some of the projects on the needles as well as the projects in my queue. I think I want to knit a shawl, and I also had an idea about something modular... Any suggestion is welcome!

2. Be less spend-y and save money for more important things.
At least I'm trying :) I haven't spend much money on yarn. In fact, I've only bought 5 skeins of yarn this year!

3. Improve my Italian.
I've been listening to Linguaphone and Michel Thomas (not all the time, but some), and I've signed up for a 7-weeks course starting late April. I'm looking forward! :)

4. Keep flossing.
I'm good at this one! :D

5. Less Facebook, more reading. 
Facebook has definitely lost its importance in my network of friends, so that's a good thing. I've become better at leaving the computer when there are no more blogs to be read or Raveling to be done. I also think a read the paper more often. Not so many books, though.

6. Learn how to do tubular cast-on and use it.
Nope, I haven't even looked at it yet. Haven't found the right project either.

7. Keep running regularly.
This must be the one where I've had the most success! I've completed today's 14 km run and I seem to have fought off a minor injury threatening to ruin it all by tying my shoelaces properly. I'm keeping the speed with which I want to run the 21.1 km to Sweden at these long runs, too, so that's great. By now, I'm running distances so long that I can run home from work - it's actually much more pleasing than it might sound :)

8. Keep doing Pilates regularly. 
Well, erm, there's definitely something to work on here! Maybe after Easter, when dear boyfriend is going to be in Stavanger, Norway during the week, I'll assign a certain evening to working on this one :P

9. Knit 12 sweaters.
Well, I've finished 2 so far, so I'm not exactly up to speed, but at least I have 4 (or more?) on the needles, so there is still hope. For some reason - maybe it's the strong urge for spring this year - I'm not really that attracted to sweater knitting at the moment.

10. Knit 10 shawls. 
Remember the 20-month-old scarf/shawl I was trying to make myself finish in my previous post? Well, I actually finished it in something like a week and have been wearing it a lot since then. It does not count in the 10 shawls in 2010 Ravelry group because it was a WIP, but maybe it'll count in my book! Other than that, no news on this one.

Conclusion? Not brilliant, but definitely not bad either!

I finished 11 projects in these 3 months. Not all have photos yet, but the rest are here: