Compliment

I am one of those who find it incredibly interesting to see my country and us voluntarily living up here through the eyes of people from the outside world. Some new collegues have given me a couple of eye-openers and the usual ‘it is cold but really nice nature up here’ comments during the last weeks but I did not see this one coming:

You Norwegians are really skilled in using toothpicks. 

 

 

She is a knitter so I’ll give her the benefits of doubt for that one. Apparently we all have our hidden talents waiting to be discovered…

Little ghost

Actually I think of other things than ghosts when I see these pictures, but I like ghosts better… Besides, I was unable to produce anything but very “schematic” pics from this one and that was also the point here I guess, so you’ll have to come back for the arty shots another day.

I’m back home again and can’t longer blame it on the waves when I’m not able to walk in a straight line. I’ve also finished the knitting for the baby wrap body, but not without being a little bit confused.

You start with the back (the top part in the photo), knit upwards, and then knit down each front separately before the sleeve stitches are picked up. Simple and clever construction I think. What was not clear to me in the pattern (and a friend of mine did the same mistake) was that the fronts are not supposed to be similar like in the first photo, and it made us confused about how the seaming should be done and the baby put into the thing. So after some correspondence with the designer I managed to understand how the whole piece is meant to be sewn up and I decided to rip back. I think the garment is a wonderful and very practical thing that probably will see a lot of wear so I wanted to get things right.

I just love the light warm fabric this yarn makes…so much that I am thinking about knitting a kind of granddadstyle shirt for myself from it at some point!

5 simple things that are complicated by the movements of a ship in rough sea

5. Counting rows and stitches.

4. Lying on a sunbed, especially when it starts to get hot and you are sweating.

3. Pouring a cup of coffee and carry it across the room (you quickly learn to not fill them all the way up).

2. Landing said cup of coffee as well as your own behind in a safe position and graceful manner while continuing the conversation.

1. And the one I struggle with the most…standing butt naked on a slippery surface with eyes closed and arms held above my head, also known as “washing hair”.

 

yardage

The high season for travel knitting is upon us, and I am already two weeks into it. Although I’m travelling for business and not for pleasure I made sure to bring plenty of yarn with me, mainly because where I am there is absolutety no way to get hold of whatever you didn’t bring with you.

So. Planning what I would like to knit the next 4 weeks was quite scary, as I tend to cast on stuff, put it aside, browse the web, get bright new ideas, cast on new things and… From reading your blogs I know I am not the only one. So this time I decided to bring yarn for things that had been on my “to knit” list for a long time, hoping that they will be finished when I return. And I hope to finish some things that have a “deadline”, meaning birthday and baby knits.

For me, travel knitting needs to be simple, but interesting patterns knit with thin yarns and something that I can put away and pick up again without loosing my place in a chart. Did I hear baby items, socks and maybe a little bit of lace?

I don’t ever yarn diet, but I occasionally stop buying yarn for a while cause I have so much good stuff that I think deserves being knit first. During those periods I always end up buying lots of knitting books instead. And I am ashamed to admit thet I haven’t yet knit a single pattern from my stack of books, until now.

This is Fuglemammas omslagsbody (wrap body) from the book Myk start (Soft start) which is filled with simple, cute and very wearable and useful baby items, all made for warmth and comfort. The patterns are great for adding some personal touch and the book includes several ideas for variation and decoration, so I see many knits from this in the future. Also, I got a bit tired of all the blankets I usually make and with the rate of new arrivals something smaller will have to do. The ribbing in this body and the soft springy merino (510 m/100 g, now that is yardage!) should make it grow with the baby so it can be worn for many months. It also makes a great project when working from a veeery slow internet connection!

You know you’re a yarn addict when..

…your heart jumps when you see someone entangle something on the bus, and you are just as disappointed every time it turns out to be their I-pod headphones.

Never out of season

Pattern: From a book on the history of mittens that I found at the library and can’t remember the name of..

Yarn: Peer Gynt colour 242 red and some grey with a lost ballband, 2 balls each.

Needles: 3.5 mm babmoo dpns

When I go to the library I often end up in the hobby section browsing books thinking “why on earth will people spend time and money on flowerbinding? Fly fishing? Model trains? Stamps? Or even crochet?” And then I load up on books with knitting patterns, knitting techniques and knitting history, confident that I am very smart, clever and wise to spend lots and lots of time and money to play with two sticks and a string.

In one of those books I found this pattern for a man size Norwegian mitten and liked it so much that I immediately made a copy. In fact, I like it so much that I am considering knitting it for myself with thinner yarn. And because I lost my last pair of favourite mittens on the bus this winter and the bus company had given them to Salvation Army before I had a chance to pick them up. Hope someone appreciates them.

These mittens were made as a birthday present for my Grandfather, who in spite of being closer to 90 than 80 needs something to keep his hands warm on his daily mile-long walks. ( Metric miles that is.. I took the bike to work today. Yay. ) I found some other patterns that I used as a base to get started with the cuffs and thumb increases, and kept the inside of the hand in a 1×1 checkerboard pattern, not just because it is the easiest of all and uses the same amount of both colours so you avoid too much yarn tangling, but also because it creates the warmest and most wearable fabric. I had to make up a little pattern for the thumbs but it came out OK.

The best of all is that I can see how much better and more even my stranded knitting has become after the dominant yarn exercises with the Zebra hat. I really think I will knit a pair of Norwegian Mittens for myself for next winter.

If you , like me, don’t understand the point of crochet, maybe this will make you change your mind:

My mother made this to organize all her earrings and I think it turned out like a little piece of art in the bathroom. It is just a piece of painted wood covered with a crocheted mesh and you can make it any size you need to accommodate your bling-bling. Actually I’m sure you could use a knitted mesh as well…maybe a lace panel or a cable along one side?

Central Park Hoodie

Central Park Hoodie visiting the new Opera House in Oslo. Go take a walk on the roof if you’re there.

Pattern: Central Park Hoodie from Knitscene Fall 2006

Yarn: Takhi Donegal Tweed colour 803 (as in the original pattern), seven and a half skein

Needles: 3.75mm for ribbing, 4mm for body. I had to go down a whole size to get gauge.

Modifications: Added length to body and sleeves, added waist shaping, buttonband knit vertically and sewn in, added heart cable to hood and altered hood shaping.

This has already seen lots of wear since the last buttons were sewn in very late one evening, by a very tired knitter determined to get this thing finished. I made the 40′ size which is enough to accommodate my 37′ bust and a layer or two underneath. It fits pretty great, but came out longer than I intended and have grown a little with wear I think. The heart cable for the hood had me change the hood shaping and finishing completely, using a Rogue-like design. I don’t know if my solution came out great, perhaps one could use a short-row heel approach or something similar. What I wanted was to avoid the pointy shape of the original hood, as that wouldn’t have worked with the new cable. Most of the time I wear the sweater open with the hood down, it is perfect to just throw on now when the weather is getting warmer. Warm is a very relative term around these latitudes. The jacket sure does its job though!

I love the cables flowing upwards, and didn’t want horizontal ribbing to interfere with the lines. So I knit the buttonband separately, in 1×1 rib, and sew it in as I went along instead of following the pattern. It sounds like lots of extra work, but it is much safer than picking up 300+ stitches along the edge which almost always (for me at least) gives a band that either puckers or flares.

I made 5 buttonholes and hope my LYS will get more of those buttons soon! And the waist-shaping calculator worked like a charm and clearly knew lots more about curves than I did cause the numbers I scribbled down first were not at all the same so I had some doubts when I started. For the back I did some of the waist shaping along the side seams and some in the middle stockinette panels to give them a very slight hourglass shape and a more tailored look instead of just being rectangles.

All in all this was a good knit. It was quick, easy and gives lots of room for personal modifications, besides being a good first cable sweater project, or even first jacket. No problems with rowing out this time either. I have now overcome my fear of set-in sleeves and garments knit flat, at least when the yarns are thick and forgiving! My only fear is that the loosely spun one-ply will pill. It softened up a lot after washing and is not at all scratchy.

Just follow the lines. Left, right, right, right, hey, haven’t I been here before? Can you go in circles when everything is square?

Almost there

Remember how I couldn’t find that I’d done any mistakes on the Central Park Hoodie? That was only because I hadn’t looked closely enough. I had forgotten the neck decreases, so the fronts had to be ripped back before seaming. Well. Now the shoulders are grafted and the hood is done.

Aahh, the hood. There was just too much plain stockinette there, like a blank canvas begging for a cable. I’ve seen several versions at Ravelry where the back cable have been continued up the hood, and wanted to do something along the line of that. And then I thought, what if I split the two cables and let them run to the front, or meet again, or something? And was that even possible? I did lots of unsuccessful googling searching for a curving cable chart, and then decided there was only one way to find out if it could be done. It can.

It worked on the first go, the size came out perfect and when I was done it was time to shape the hood. I tried to chart out something before I started, but then switched to the opposite approach and charted out every row as I went along. I found it much easier to see where everything should go when I had the work in progress in front of me. The chart is a mess like nothing else and probably full of errors but it was a great excercise. How do real designers do create their lace and cable designs when the proportions of the knit are so different from those on paper, draw first or knit first?

“All” that remains is to sew in the last sleeve, finish the buttonband and sew in buttons. Yeah, and hunt down a last button, cause my LYS only had four left of the ones I wanted and I really hope they are not discontinued..

Like these tulips, the worst part is over and I’m almost there!

Where wool comes from

Nothing saves a crappy monday like an MMS from a farming friend, picturing lamb no 6 and 7 this year, only one hour old. May they jump happily around in green meadows all summer, growing lots of yummy wool to be spun into beautiful yarn that knitters will drool over!

(I drool when thinking about lamb meat too but this may not be the right time to talk about that).

No catchy title here

I’m back from my trip long ago. One thing that never made it back after behaving weirdly for a long time though is my camera, which finally died on me and has now been replaced with a new one. I’m sticking to the Canon Ixus series, being very happy with them. And also was I amazed to see how much more I got for less than half the price of my last camera…

I have been knitting though, and lots of it too. I’m really glad I brought some emergency sock yarn for my flight. When you find yourself in a squeeze between a business man and a mother with a very sweet and well-behaving but wiggly nonetheless baby, that does not allow for anything but small pieces of one-strand stockinette. One sock completed.

I haven’t started the other one yet, cause the Central Park Hoodie turned out to be such a breeeze in the knitting department that it substituted all my TV stockinette needs. The pieces are now blocking, the measurements look right on spot and I can’t find anything that I have managed to screw up yet. I’ve added some waist shaping and will graft the shoulders instead of binding off before the seaming, but no major modifications. Just waiting for the thing to dry.

Can I just say how much I love my measure tape for having centimetres on one side and inches on the other? So helpful when knitting non-metric patterns. I also found a needle measure thingy with both metric, US and a third measure that I have yet not encountered in patterns on it, it saves me from looking up the conversions online every time I look on a foreign pattern. And saves lots of frogging too.

The hardest part of the CPH so far has been deciding on a closure. Initially I thought of a two-way zipper but I think I’ll go with buttons. I have an image in my head of what kind of buttons I want, but a long and intense button-search with a fellow knitter yesterday did not yield any results, although the very helpful owner of a LYS in town offered to order in a selection of the sizes and shapes I had in mind so I’ll go back there in a while. I couldn’t resist these babies though. The button stash is growing. Don’t see anything wrong with that.

The obligatory weather report..if you think I’m crazy knitting a thick woolen jacket in the end of April I can assure you that the winter is not over yet, it has been snowing like crazy for a week and I’m a bit worried about the brave tulip buds I saw poking up a few days ago. But not so worried about not getting to wear the woolen jacket.