Thursday, May 31, 2012

Green

I found this yarn on one of the turkish sites on sale. I fell in love with the color (my mom loved green, I never did that much, still...). I bought it at once (and even when I was searching for it never found it again).
I hardly closed the door after the delivery man, I was already tearing the package up, and knitting a swatch.
For the style I got the basic idea from a sweater (coming from a second hand shop) a uni classmate of mine has, but at the end, I designed something totally different.
Leaving the leading role for the color and shine of the narrow tape-like yarn, I made a simple top-down raglan, with a little bit of decoration at the increases out of yarnovers and tiny cables, and a bit more on the sleeves combining lace diamonds and cables. The sleeves are ever so slightly trumpet shaped.
The yarn didn't seemed too thin, I used 3.5 mm needles, still I only used about 300 gramms of the package.
Now, I have to figure out what to do with the leftover, 2 balls, about 200 meters each. Would it be enough for a sleevless wrap thingy? Shoud I crochet a very loose shawl? Any suggestion? 

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Weekly spinning- dying wool

I am up to here with work and uni- exam period just started, so I have no finished spinning to show only some wool I died.
Rainbow... ahh rainbow. What is it about this particular colorcombination that makes me swoon again and again. I just can't seem to have enough.
Some blue and purple on grey merino base...
And green, with green and more green with a bit of rust.
Even though i died all of them to spin myself a friend who just got her brand new spinning wheel fell in love with the ainbow one, and othe spindle spinner couldn't put down the blue/purple one... the green stil waits for its faith to fin it.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Crochet flowers

I was asked to make some broches of crocheted flowers...
Here is a few of them...

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Easy as a pie

In one of my more recent forray at the second hand shops, among other things I found almost two balls of Regia, sock yarn thickness, but it was not as bouncy as sockyarns regularly are (even if they contain some cotton). It was one full ball with the band on it and the other had some of it missing, but had no idea just how much.
For years now, I wanted to have a white lace shawl, that is not as warm as the wool ones, so I thought this would work pretty well. The only problem was that just about 400 meters wouldn't make a big shawl, and I do love my shawls big. So, I out to search ravelry, and at the same time, shot a short note for Angela, my living search engine :-)
The criteria I gave her was: fingering yarn, about 400 meters, lace, triangular, it should have a LOT of holes to be able to block it out pretty big. It shouldn't have long repeats as I don't exactly know just how much yarn I have.
Interestingly enough both of us came up with the same thing. The easy as a pie shawl. And let me tell you, it was just that.
Looking pretty spectacular, but really easy and fast. There isn't anything more complicated than a k2TOG and k3TOG and yarnovers in it, and the lot of k2tog makes it fast as well. The only modification was, that because I love scallopy edges and had a bit of yarn after finishing a repeat I added a few rowa of "standard" lace enging (yo, k, yo, k1psso).And (of course...its ME here :-) ) added white beads.
Just as I hoped, I managed to block it really hard, and fairly sizeable (no, thats not big yet..at least for me).
It goes well with all my white summer clothes. With clothes that are not white but summery, with jeans jacket...Here, Gabi trying it on in the Waldof fair.
And Chris shot this one, and was adamant I put it in here...

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Bea's yarn

This was made for a friend of mine. There were long discussions in the background about the color...(It should be blue, no, rather green, or even better, purple...)
And the thickness of the yran (oh, would it be possible to make it not as thin as you usually spin? something a little thicher would be great)
100% merino, about 100 grams, 350 meters.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

I was told by the old...

I was told by the old Kiss you should crochet, not just knit... This is a rough translation of the idiotic little rhyme that took up residence in my brain for weeks, making me totally go gaga.
Then I thought what if I actually crochet something, would it go away?
Then came the stash diving, and coming up for air with a few balls of yarn-art denim cotton/polyester yarn.
I bumped into the pattern in one of the current crochet magazines.
As usual I had gauge problems, but I solved it by crocheting a couple of rounds of those chain loops (or whatever they called in english... My Knitting english is pretty good by now, but I think I have some making up to do in the crochet department...And there came the idea of making a spiraly tie.
Thats it. Not a big deal. But pretty and kinda romantic.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Leyfi

Hello everyone! Long time no see... I am so sorry I had great plans, for april, but life, as in university, work and other stuff stepped in. I did knit and done other crafts though, and I have a bunch of stuff to show you.

Lets start with a sweater I finished back in march. Or was that early april? Anyway, for a long time I wanted to knit the Leyfi sweater, in fact I bought some green tweed for it, but its gauge was so much off I thought better of it.
Then, when I bunped into this gorgeous yarn from one of my very favourite place, I knew I was lost.
Its not often that as soon as a package arrives I start knitting with the yarn, but this is exactly what happened in this case.The gauge was still a bit off but I compensated by knitting a larger  size and playing around with the increases at the yoke.
The pattern is great, well written. The changes I've done to the it is due to my personal preferences and style. These were instead of rolled edges, toward which I feel a very strong dislike, I used garther stitch at the neck as well as at the end of the sleeves and waist. And added a few decreases and increases at the sides for additional waist shaping.
That was it.. Fast and beautiful. What more would I want from a sweater?
And if you find yourself wondering about that green tweed? Don't worry, it met with its faith, but more on that later.