mama-of-purl

I'm in a weird space, folks... I'm trying to figure out if I can realistically finish my University degree. I need money and I have a possible opportunity for a job I'd really like to do. Had an interview there 10 days ago, it went really well, so I'm going to have a trial day on Wednesday, keep your fingers crossed it's working out. No matter how I'm going to decide on the University thing, I sure can use some new input/perspective/silver lining.

Anyhow, I've had some serious finishitis lately! There's so much to talk about, I've been making notes;-)

First of all, I had finished the cabled sweater for Johanna, which tuned out really cute, but getting it over her head was close to a second birth experience for her. Man, that collar turned out so tight! Here's her posing proudly and then there's the 'after' picture of her complaining about the collar.Okay, the hood has to be taken off again and I need to rip back the collar a few rows to make it wider. Good thing I decided on knitting the hood separately and doing a bottom-up raglan this time.

The next finished item on the other hand is so stretchy, it even fits ME! Wow, me and my toddler can share some of our clothes!;-)

Here's the hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-knit sweater in action

Finished item Nr. 3 deserves a drumroll... the Pretty Petals socks are DONE!!! 

These were actually supposed to get finished during the Trek-Along, but I've been terribly frustrated with them and had too much welcome distraction.

Some stats:

Pattern: Pretty Petals by Jeanie Townsend 

Yarn: Trekking XXL 110

Needles: US 1/ 2.25mm Pony Pearl DPNs. What an annoyance. Those needles are so wiggly and wobbly and constantly snagged on the fiber. Terrible.

Pattern modifications: Since I used smaller needles, I ended up having to add one panel of the pretty petals pattern in order to get the right circumference. Therefore I have two panels going down the foot, which I really like. I could have just used 2.5 mm needles and stuck with the pattern but I liked the texture of the yarn being knit with the US1s.  

After alreading wanting to throw out those crappy plastic Pony Pearl needles, I was up for an extra special surprise in the mail:

MY DYE-O-RAMA PACKAGE! It finally got here! THANK YOU SO MUCH, Katherine!

In it not only my luscious soft 100% superwash merino yarn in beautiful blues and greens, but also a set of wonderfully smooth bamboo US1 DPNs. Weeheee! But wait, there was a lot more.

I actually rummaged through the box extensively and wound the yarn into a ball before I realized I'd forgotten to take a picture of everything unopened. The chocolate was missing some chunks already;-) And, uh, there's almost half a Mata Hari sock there already that I've knitted Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning while waiting in line to get a spot at the local fleamarket next Sunday.

My wonderful, talented Dye-o-rama pal Katherine also sent me one of her awesome handprinted T-Shirt for which she carved the wooden block herself. Isn't it cool? She's planning on selling those on ebay some time soon.

Oh, and something curious about the tea filters Katherine included in the package to go along with the excellent Earl Grey tea- they're available here, too, so I was wondering where they were produced. Check this out: these are some crazy travellin' tea filters! Hamburg-Salt Lake City-Hamburg-Salt Lake City-Hamburg. What a trip:-) 

Hey everyone,

yes, I'm still here, just quiet. Unfortunately not because I'm having too much fun. I feel like such a fool. Some things really are too good to be true. 

So there you have it, the knitting world has me back. And I guess it's time to fess up what's on the needles. The sidebar with all the WIPs was way too short-  I've been camouflaging my cast-on addiction. It's pathetic. That's when you know you're addicted- you're hiding new projects from others! 

I secretly cast on for another Wavy in Noro Silk Garden. Those three balls in amazing fall colors(colorway 230) that I got on sale were just calling me...

Alright, I'm going to post a true account of what's on my needles, go and check out the sidebar (in case you're reading this in Bloglines...) Oh NO! I've just counted- EIGHT WIPs. How many do you have?

I'm pretty pleased with the name for those reddish Meilenweit Mega Boots Stretch socks that I've started as a mindless stockinette project when I first started *mumble* falling in love. "The Thrill Is Gone Socks". Great song.  

In other news, I'm such a loser knitalonger- both the Trek-Along as well as the Bitchin' Mittens just ended and I haven't finished either of my projects. At least I've been working on the Pretty 'Spring' (haha) Petals socks, so I can at least finish those for the Sock-A-Month KAL. 

One item I've continuously been working on this month was the cabled sweater for Johanna. I'm in love with that yarn, it's wonderfully soft and those colors are just beautiful. I've picked up the stitches for the hood a little too tightly, so I'm going to have to frog back. I could've just done a crew neck, but Johanna insists on the hood:-D 

...but Johanna could only wear it for the pictures! The weather was gorgeous for our friends' wedding, and the place they had the party at was an incredible turn-of-the-century villa out in the countryside. We had a great time! 

I was pretty nervous before the wedding as the bride and groom had asked me to perform the Monty Python Song "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life" at the end of the combined wedding and christening ceremony.

Is it safe to assume I'm one of only a handful of people who got to sing the words 'life's a piece of shit' and 'forget about your sin, give the audience a grin' in a Lutheran church? I'm sure a Catholic priest wouldn't have allowed that;-)

Hey everyone,

sorry, I had to disappear for a while to get some university stuff done. I tend to get sucked into blogland too easily and I really need to get a lot of work done.

Anyhow, there has been a lot going on over here, I don't even know where to start!  Knitting? Dyeing? SPINNING?

First of all, I think I need to confess new and not-so-new projects I've been working on.

There's this sock I kind of got tricked into starting when my knitting friend Elsa wanted to learn how to do fair-isle. It's the Peasant Sock from Knitting Marvelous Mittens (I HEART CHarlene Schurch!!) that I'm using Trekking XXL 110 and a skein of solid campari-orange red Opal yarn for. I love how these two yarns compliment each other. there's varying contrast in the pattern this way, but it has kind of a trippy effect;-)

I've also wanted to figure out how to properly weave in the ends while knitting and watched the video at Philosopher's Wool (unfortunately, the video only seems to play using Internet Explorer) a few times and took NOTES (!). In my previous fair-isle projects, I always dropped the needles, actually twisted the balls of yarn (how silly!), and ended up with a tangly mess. Not mentioning the inconvenience. But now I'm delighted with this technique! After a few attempts, I quickly learned the different hand movement when intertwining the yarns and I feel extremely accomplished now, LOL!

Check out the back of the fabric now- in the part right after the ribbing I was still carrying the yarn in the back, at the bottom I wove the yarn every 2 or 3 stitches. Lovely. 

If there are any experienced fair-isle knitters out there, I'd love to get tips on how to improve the regularity of the stitches when weaving. As you can see in the picture above, the stitches come out a little bumpy.

Then here's a shot of the Blueberry Waffle Sock which is my mindless knitting object du jour, ready to turn heel No.1.

And this is what I've continuously been knitting on for the last 10 days or so, I cannot believe how freakin long it's taking me to finish this. It's a the Girlfriend Shrug (Knit and Tonic pdf) for Johanna. We're going to our friends' wedding this Saturday (yeah, the day of WWKIP day) and since it's incredibly cold in Germany this summer (okay, it warmed up a little today), she needs something to go with her beautiful white sleeveless dress. I'm using the compensatory Regia Crazy Colors for it with 2.75 mm needles. Ya think that's why it's taking so long?;-)  Anyway, I still have more than half of the 2nd sleeve and the ribbing around the opening to knit, I gotta hurry!!

Okay, this was the knitting update, I'll chop up the entries for the other categories:-) 

I finished the little Kool-Aid dyed raglan v-neck sweater for Johanna last night- wove the ends in at midnight:-)

This knit up so quick, it didn't even make it into the sidebar...

Some specs:

• allegedly 100% wool yarn, but it has a compact acrylic feel to it. I suspect it to be a wool blend, but would it have taken on the dye as well if it were?
• dyed with Kool-Aid
• Super easy child's raglan pattern from 'The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns' by Ann Budd. The fit is good, but in proportion to the sleeves, the body seems a bit too short. Could be a problem with Johanna's little potbelly, though;-)
  

Hey there,

I've been a little quiet because I've had some extremely unpleasant family issues lately, essentially escalated silly arguments...

Anyhow, I've been distressed about some of the conversations I've had and knitting helped me focus and figure things out in my head. Picked up the Kool-Aid yarn again and loved seeing how the colors pooled on the body, but also enjoyed sniffing the yarn which still faintly smells of fruity drinks:-) More than half of a new sweater for Johanna is done, it's going to be a v-neck raglan sweater according to The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns.

The first 'Fun' Nation sock is finished, I'm happy with the length as it is now, so the knot was not that big of a problem, although it really bothered me. No news from the people at Regia, I'm somehow hoping to receive some kind of compensation, but Carola said she'd sent a complaint to Opal before and not even got a reply, so I'm afraid it's not exactly German companies' practice to just send you some free yarn in return...

I met with Elsa, the other member of our mini-S'nB this morning, and she totally caught the sock bug now and is almost finished with her first pair. I'd brought my sock books and she loved the 2-color knitting stuff in the Simply Socks book, which I've been wanting to start a project of for a while now. Looks like we're having a little fair-isle workshop next week!:-) Another fair-isle project that is really striking my fancy is the Squirrely Mittens pattern over at http://www.elliphantom.com/ - I just saw another pair of them at helloyarn.com and I LOVE them!!

The real pick-me-up today was the package I received from Natalie: a copy of IK Knits spring 2004 with the amazing Waving Lace Socks that she hunted down for me, along with a cool knitters' card, the cutest little nail files in a matchbook and some extra goodies. Thanks, Natalie, I really enjoyed this mini-swap!

I've been making some great mileage lately:-)

The striped raglan sweater got finished Sunday night, just in time for the weather to warm up... I'm quite happy with how it turned out, although the sleeves are not as long as I'd thought.

Anyhow, they may be long enough to fit Johanna in the fall. I also realized she didn't have any pants to go with the sweater, so I gotta pick up some jeans for her now- great excuse to go clothes shopping, hooray!

Last night I also turned the heel on the 2nd Alberta sock and it's almost identical to the 1st, maybe 3/4 of a row off, but who's counting?

Here's a new shot of the 'Fun' (haha) Nation Socks. They're going to be plenty long if I bind off after the yellow stripe, but that knot incident really bugged me. I sent an e-mail with evidence pix to the Regia customer service, I'll keep you posted on what's going to become of that...

Did you see I signed up for the dye-o-rama swap? I've actually done quite a bit of secret dyeing that I have not yet blogged about, and I'm lovin' it! I got my swap partner's address today, and I actually know her:-) Well, not personally, but I've read her blog before and she's cool! What a nice change being able to check out my swapee's blog!

The sockapaloooza socks will be off to the US today, and I feel comfortable about sending them after all the lovely comments I've gotten on them. THANKS!

Waah! I already got an e-mail from Alison yesterday giving me my sockpal's mailing info! She's sending out the addresses for international sock exchanges a little earlier in case they're expected to travel longer. But boy, that really put some pressure on me dealing with the Mata Haris that have been spending some down time at the bottom of my socks in progress basket. So I finally drew them out again last night to see what was the problem with the different-length feet. It really wasn't a big deal at all. I think I remember doing something different on one of the places where one of the YO, k2tog spiral lines stopped on one side of the foot and I hadn't realized that left me one 4-row repeat short. Ripped the toe, put in another repeat, that's all there was to it. *sigh of relief*! And look: matching feet!

Then I steamed the picot edge and got the Mata Haris all set to be mailed. I think I'm going to send them off on May 2nd as everybody else, though- mail to the US usually takes only 4 days. What do you other international pals think?

Today I also sent off the squares for Warming Grace and I'm so looking forward to seeing what'll become of all those squares. Cynthia got such a great response for this project and I hope she can put together lots of blankies for the children. Those blankets are going to be so cool- squares coming from all over the place from all different kinds of knitters hoping to provide some sort of consolation during trips to the hospital.

Oh, and it's gotten a tad warmer here and I finished this little hat for Johanna. Looks great with her new spring coat. I actually knit this hat this time of year in 2004 when I was pregnant. Unfortunately, the hem was waaay too tight and so the hat was just lying around until now. I fiddled around and kind of undid the cast-on, picked up the stitches, knit a few more rows of ribbing and did a loose bind-off. The hem doesn't look too great now and I think I used smaller needles when I first knit the hat, but it doesn't bother me much. The colors are just great for Johanna and the yarn has some cotton in it, so it's perfect for spring.

Sorry for my absence, but I've been in kind of a bad mood because I'm not getting enough university stuff done and it's really bugging me. On top of that, my stomach has been bothering me and that makes it even easier to procrastinate some serious hard-core typing. WHINE, WHINE.

Nevertheless, I've had an amazing pick-me-up on Thursday when a completely unexpected package from Steph of craftoholic arrived: KOOL-AID! YAY!! How sweet of her, eh? And check out the awesome hand-SEWN card with some incense-scented Indian silk on it- such a great idea! THANK YOU SO MUCH, STEPH!!

I'd won some Kool-Aid on ebay lately as well (not realizing it came with some 'invisible' varieties;-)) and I did my first experiments with it. Wowza, is that stuff ever so potent. The SMELL! And how incredibly bright those colors come out! I used some odd balls of wool my mother gave me which actually amounted to about 400g, so I can make a sweater for Johanna with it. I was going for longer strawberry red stripes with some turquoise/green variegation and it turned out quite well. At least there are no weird white spots. The yarn soaked up more dye than I'd expected so I had to dye the red part twice. This time I dipped the yarn in a big pot with the prepared dye, then threw it in a bowl which I put on a baking tray and painted the greenish tones. Off it went into the oven on 95ish degrees for an hour.

I started knitting this cardigan for Johanna with it because I happened to stumble across this pattern and really liked it. After about 15 cm into the pattern I realized that making a cardigan with this yarn I dyed somewhat stripey and using a variegated and quite bright yarn with a structured pattern is not a great idea. Frogged it. Loved the pattern, though, I'm going to make one of those cardigans in the future...

Then I cast on again for a sweater knit in the round and it just occured to me at midnight last night that I'd forgotten to add extra stitches to get a similar width as the cardigan's which would've had a button band. Ripped it. Now the yarn and I need some space;-)

hey there,

my head is a little empty right now, so I can't even produce a decent title...

Johanna's been sick again and stayed home for most of the week and I've been completely busy dealing with her and I didn't even feel like hanging in front of the screen at night reading blogs. There's a lot to catch up to!

Nevertheless, I've done my share of knitting, first of all trying to make some progress on the little striped raglan sweater. And once again, I was too eager to bind off the body in order to get to the collar and sleeves. When I had Miss J. try on the sweater, it fit her well, but I really need to add 3 more stripes at the bottom so she can wear it more than just a couple of months. (Sorry for all the crappy flash pix in this post!)

Oh, something cool happened last Friday when I took my once-monthly trip to the university library and went to get some coffee afterwards- I ran into this professor Christoph who'd ordered a knitted hat a while ago and who never got back to me. I'd already come up with a design, made a swatch and started the ribbed hem until I decided it'd all just been hot air and ripped it. Well, he said he'd had a major harddrive crash and had lost my e-mail address but still wanted the hat and gave me a little advance payment;-)

So I need some opinions on a little dilemma with my sockapaloooza socks: the second one is quite a bit smaller!
I'm sure I stuck with the notes I took for the first sock and technically, they must be the same size...at least they should be! It's probably because I freakin' stretched the first one in an attempt to squeeze my foot in it. AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGG!!!!!! I've washed them and dried them flat trying to get them both the same size, but they just went back into the old shape.

Maybe I did a few less rows on the toe... I haven't even counted them yet, as the socks are out of sight in my knitting basket- I need some 'space' before I can get into the problem again. But there's still so much time until we have to send them to our pals, I'm sure I'll figure out a way to make them proper twin socks;-)