keep waiting

For spring that is... The forecast says colder air and snow is coming to our way... Went to the market and bought a pot of daffodils and some primulas.

And keep knitting stuff to finish off my spring outfits.

Yarn is NORO silk garden light. Which is everything they say and more :-) Colors are absolutely gorgeous, the yarn feels sooooo lovely. BUT. Big buts. There was at least two knots in each ball, and one ball (out of three) had knots so that it totally messed up the color sequence. I had to cut and tie different parts of it together to get some sequence. Thank god now it looks more or less symmetrical (I started the first ball from the inside, and the last ball from the outside so the two ends are mirroring each other) and managed to put a bit of the orange in the middle, so the way I am wearing it (much like in this picture) the dark part doesn't show that much (but goes very well with my brown coat).

Now what else do I need??? Gloves!!! I already figured out the knucks pattern which I love. And I had an almost full skein of sock yarn I bought in the second hand store. I was absolutely in love with the colors. I think it must be some Regia, but there was no ball band.

Waiting for spring

From a couple of earlier posts it must be evident I don't like winter... I spend my time from October to wait for spring. Come to think of it I should be a bear, who gets to sleep through the dark and cold months (and don't have to shave).
Over the years I realized that even though I do have very certain preference in colors, the colors I use and the actual season have strong connection. In summer it is all white, with a bit of colors thrown in. Fall is all orange and brown. Winter is dark red and purple.
Then comes spring...
Green is not my "usual" color. It is not like black, or yellow (which I just cannot stand). I don't hate it, I just rarely use it. But... in every year, sometime between late January, and early February I get the urge to wear green. Lots of green. Light green. Grass green. Kelly green. Kivi green. And some light blue.
It all started with the second hand shop I already mentioned. In one of the bags I bought from them I found a ball of light kiwi or lime green yarn and some dark olive.
It quickly became this:

Slightly thicker than the average sock yarn, almost worsted weight, but it is warm. Toe up, 3mm short bamboo DPNs.
Then I thought a green cardi could light up my winter spirit. I looked at a lot of patterns, especially the february lady sweater and the Juliet but I had misgivings about both patterns, first and most importantly the wast amount of garter stitch simply didn't appealed to me, and I also saw some troubles with the underarm part, the I thought the line separating the garter and the lace is just at the wrong place, and many others. I knitted a small swatch, I calculated some, looked up some lace pattern, and made up this:

yarn therapy

Some years ago, I've met a girl on Spark People. Her name is Teal. I knew she lives in Alaska, and she knits. When she came over to Ravelry, and the twists and turns of my life took for the worst we exchanged a few letters. Even if they were few and between I felt we understand each other's feelings. We shared some bits of our life's, but not all that much. I know she reads this blog. Not long after the big break off in my life happened I received an e-mail from her telling me that her aunt is traveling (from Alaska, to -from all places- to Budapest, and she was willing to bring me a package. Teal asked me if I'd like some "yarn therapy".

Was that really a question? Yes, of course! LOL. I am always happy to meet people, especially if I know them through the net, even more if we can knit together :-))).

Would I like some yarn? Come on, I am knitter, a yarn snob at that.What a lovely thought.

We did meet up with her aunt, when I opened the package... I couldn't speak. I cried.

From the very first skein I saw I knew. I felt. I knew that she not only looks at my blog but she reads it. Really reads it. Not only she reads, but she knows and feels what I don't write down.

She knows my favourite colors, she knows my favourite yarns. And I felt her love coming through halfway around the world.

Then I read her note:

Anett,

In choosing this yarn I thought about what I know of your life and what I would like speak into it. Here is what this yarn said to me:

The handspun yarn is one of a kind. Dyed and spun by hand, it is a reminder that there is only one like you. While feeling blue, or fiery your individuality is precious and should be celebrated.

The cashmere reveals that you are deserving luxury. The color purple represents royalty. You are the queen of your home and life, your shoulders should be draped in luxury.

The ever changing colors of jojoland mirror the changes in our lives. We may not like one of the individual colors, but like life, the big picture is full of depth and always beautifully changing.

You have earned the freedom to walk on silk.Whether or not you choose to knit socks out of the silk-know that you have the freedom to use the finest of fibers anyway you choose.Knit with courage and freedom. Make items that bring smile to your heart when you see them. And hopefully living life will mirror your knitting.

Take Care Friend,

Teal Sky

Teal, this is the most beautiful letter I ever received. This is poetry. Balm to my soul. When I was a child, my family knew if I was happy about some present, if they found it the next day under my pillow (no matter if it was a pair of socks, a book, a doll, or even a pair of shoes. If I was happy about it, under my pillow it went). I will put your letter under my pillow, and the yarns already are on my night table.

In the package there was even something for my son:

Thank you!!! And thank you Mary-Lee for bringing to me!

P.S.:There was some more shots (some of them are by my Christopher, who -again- did very well with the camera.) They are on the Knitting Club's blog .

I.Can't.Believe.This.

What a yarn day!
My friend, Jenny came home after a month in England, and she brought me this two skeins of gorgeous yarn... How well she knows me... I am a sucker for Rowan yarn and everything tweed, or tweedy. The Cocoon is ahhh so soft, and the Debbie Bliss is just absolutely gorgeous...

And something else happened. As I was going to our knitting club I stopped in the second hand shop which sells some yarn...Up until now I was lucky once, when I managed to get like 600 grams light lavanderish blue chunky yarn, and usually get bits of sock yarn which I combine and make socks like these ...
But what I found yesterday... Oh. My.God.
Look:

Now, just take a closer look:

All lovely sock yarn, whole balls! And this:

Do you see the tag??? Rowan's Kafe Fassett KIDSILK...I though I am going to swoon there.

And then the best part... there was in the bottom of a basket a bunch of tweedy wool. Naturally as much as I love tweed I grabbed the whole thing with the bag it was in...

Then I took a closer look at the label... I had to hold on something...Look:

From the look I thought it is about 7 skeins 350 grams. Had no idea just what would it be enough, but I HAD. TO. HAVE. IT.

There was also a whole 100 grams skein of heathery dark charcoal grey (almost black).

Guess how much I paid??? About 9 dollars worth of forints. That is less than ONE skein would cost from the rowan.

Of course it took me a lot of self control not to put them all out in the cafe where our meeting was held, and caress them all. Imagine my surprise when getting at home and finally able to take a good look of my treasures I found out that... there is 9 skeins of the rowan tweed!!! That is enough for a WHOLE sweater!!! Now I just have to figure out what sweater to make... heading right over to ravelry now.

February sweater for a little lady

my best real life friend Timea, asked me if I could make a cardigan for her daughter, she would pay... But since the girl didn't got a birthday present from me, I decided that I will get the yarn andknit it for her as a present. I was trying out several things, but at the end I decided to modify the february lady sweater for a kid size...It started out like this:

And ended up like this (being blocked)

And just a bit of details:

The yarn is King Cole's DK anti tickle merino blend, knitted with 3mm addi circulars, the sleeves with DPNs.

The new Knitty

It might have been up for a while, but today I just bumped into it...
And it is GREAT!!! I always found som nice stuff in knitty , I even knitted some from it (the Dahlia, the knucks-a couple of times- my hey teach is waiting for finaly assembly) but this issue is especially full of good stuff! I just want to run out and buy some yarn for Amelia or get amused or make a new beret ...

Addicted

To knitting lace. When I started my adamas shawl I thought, OK, every knitter has to knit one lace shawl. By the time I finished it I knew it is only the beginning... that more lace would follow...
OK, they are not the thing you can churn out in a couple of days, also there are limited need in a person's wardrobe for them. But with the dark red stuff that appeared in my wardrobe this fall, I just had to had a Red Lace Shawl.
This is how it begann:

This is how it looked before blocking:

(The hand is my son's).This is how it looked when I started to pull it out for blocking:

Pinned out on my bed:

A close up on the pattern:

Instead of hanging it over a back of a chair my boy offered to hold it up for me:

And finally me, holding it:

Pattern is Lehmus Huivi, knitted on this yarn, with 3 mm straight needles.

Some scarfs

These were also knitted earlier. The striped scarf was Chris's present to go along with his elephant tam. One ball of dark blue yarn, and an other ball of blue shaded self striping yarn (Yarn Art). One by one rib, yarn is changed every two row. Knitted with my favourite short, straight 3,5 mm bamboo needles.

Sometimes in october I saw my friend Jenny knitting a scarf from Noro Silk Garden. I instantly fell in love with the pattern. So much, even I ordered Noro right away I couldn't wait until it arrives. I had to try it with the self striping yarn that is available here.

Shades of Grey, the pattern is called Short Row Rib, you can find it here. I used the same needles as above. 9 inch long, 3.5 mm bamboo.

The picture was shot by Chris.Much better than what I managed:

I love berets

I think you could guess by now. I love berets. That is one of the few types of hats I think suit me.
Add to this the fact that they don't need too much yarn, and most of them knits up fast.
And my mania about colors and matching things up...
This season I knitted four of them for me...
Two of them you saw, the red Urchin, and the fair isle one.
Then I though I need some hat to match when I am wearing browns and rusty oranges.
I bought the yarn in the Burda shop. It is OnLine Aspento, and 5 mm straight but short bamboo needles. The pattern is a very heavily modified slouchy version of the Urchin.

A very important note on the pictures. They were shot by Christopher. The first time I let him use my camera on the WWKIP day turned out pretty well. Then I asked him to shot some of my FO's here and I think I have a budding photographer in my hands... He has it in his genes, my grandfathers on both sides did lot of photos and they were good, and his paternal grandma was a portrait photographer...

Back to the berets... I needed a purple one.

Wooly Wormhead's Meret (mystery beret). Done in one Sunday.

Random dislikes

There is a couple of things I don't like... it is only my personal taste, nothing against those who like them.I've been meaning to write a blog post about this for some time...
These are my random dislikes, some of them has to do with knitting, some of them more general...

1. I don't like winter. OK, today I won't go in there. I will not spend the time on snow and cold and being cold...

2. I don't like three quarter length sleeves. Interestingly enough I have nothing against cropped pants or shirt sleeves turned up to that length, but I don't like if they are done that way. Again, no particular reason.

3. I don't like the color black. So much that if I dress in all black, or black and grey people ask me who died. I do have a couple pieces of black clothing, but they are usually just the base for something more colorful.

4. Nor do I like yellow. In fact even more than I don't like black. Black sometimes does have it's uses. I have no clothes or anything else around the house in yellow. The only way I can stand the color is in flowers. Even then I would choose something in a different color, but if someone comes with a bunch of narcissi, I wouldn't chase them away...

4. Circular needles. OK, the ADDI needles I bought lately slightly changed that. But I would still much rather knit something with straight needles, or DPNs.

5.-I don't like garter stitch. If I use it I try to limit it to a couple/few rows of it, usually to prevent rolling. I don't really know why, it might have something to do with my peculiar knitting style, my after I turn a purl row I have the leading leg of a stitch on the back. Which makes my knitting very comfortable for some stuff, like stockinette and ribbing, not as much for garter or seed stitch. And for some reason I don't like the look of a bigger surface of garter. For a long time I am wondering the Baby Surprise Jacket, but since it is all grater I might never knit it.

Of course there are more things, like artificial Xmas trees, or lying, but that will be for some other post.
As for knitting I've been wondering about the February lady sweater. I knitted it for the daughter of my beast RL friend, and I am still not convinced. Beside the large area of garter stitch and three quarter sleeves (now that is a feature that can be remedied), most probably it is the line that separates the garter and the lace. I've looked a lot of FOs on Ravelry, and if you look closely it falls falls right across the breast...
If I would make an a-line, or empire sweater (or blouse) I would make sure if there is a line across, it would fall *below* the breast...In fact I am making a sleeveless cardi now, that is mostly based on the idea of the February and the Juliet sweater .Top down, empire, but the bodice is stockinette and longer, the "skirt" or peplum, or whatever it is called is lace patterned. There is a few rows of garter around the neck, and arm opening, and before cast off to prevent rolling. I will see how it turns out.

Some more of the knitterly stuff

When I was making my fair Isle beret my son was complaining that I never knit anything for him. He kept trying on the beret, and asking for one. Since he is a boy, i wouldn't really make a red one with hearts but then I found this pattern with elephants:

And when I started to use my Knucks it was such a success, especially with young friends I though they would make nice present for my half sis:

What did I do what I wouldn't if P. would be here???

Take a bath and after I finished I let the water all run our, down... I know it sound stupid, but P was going on forever about water and conserving water, and he always wanted to keep the used water in the tub for... soaking if something gets dirty? I always hated it. No matter how many times I cleaned the tub, if I wanted to have a bath I had to start with bleach... and the tub wouldn't get clean no matter what. I JUST HATED IT. (BTW the cleaning stuff I used and the water I used to rinse the tub off most probably cost more (money-wise and saving earth-wise) If he would just use fresh water to rinse it...

The basic idea came from when we had the house in the country and I wanted to use the bath and shower-water to water plants (in the greenhouse). We hardly use soap (and a little soap doesn't hurt the plants)... But as with most thing, he was overdoing it, as far as it became one of his manias...

More holiday knitting

These socks were started for P. There is this small second hand shop that sometimes has yarns. There was some bits of sock yarn in the bag, that seemed they would combine well.
I started the socks for a Xmas present, and when he left I just couldn't frog it, nor would I give it to someone else, so at the end they did went to P. Not that he said thanks, he didn't even acknowledged them. But I don't really care.

Anyone who ever saw these were surprised how well those yarn went together. It was really nice and squishy...

Of course Chris started complaining right away "mama you never knit anything for ME!!! Knit me something!!! Knit me some socks!" So I dived in the bag of sock-yarn bits and came up with this:

Both pair toe up, short row toes, short row heels, at the foot ribbed on the top, on the leg, all around.

In today's what did I do what I wouldn't have if P. was here...
Nothing much....BUT... I DIDN'T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT :-))))
Actually there are some superstitions of what you should or should not do at the first day of the year, like no cleaning, no taking out the garbage, no sewing, you shouldn't eat chicken, or other poultry, etc...
Of course there are "do"-s too, like eating hot dog, pork, lentils, and do what you want to do all year...
For years and years I did all of those, but things just got worst instead of getting better, so I stopped "doing" the right thing. Usually I took some sleeping pill and were fast asleep long before midnight rung in.
This year wasn't much different, I refused to eat and do the "right" stuff, but I tried not to do what I shouldn't, so I just pottered about mostly.
The main feeling of the day was... almost nothing. I mean no guilt because I got up late, no one to make me feel like I am poisoning my kid, because once in a while I do give him hot dogs (he loves them), I could bath in as much water, and for as long as I wanted, and on, and on...

Baking Bread

In today's what did I do what I wouldn't have if P. was here...

I baked bread. I used to bake a lot of bread, but it was increasingly a source of frustration. When we first bought our house in the country I hoped of a lovely country life with homegrown, homemade stuff, freshly baked cakes and bread and such. Later due to P.'s tendency to avoid company I found out that it will not happen. P. loves all those things, homemade, home baked stuff. He keeps telling how commercial bread is bad for you, and most of all how much cheaper it is to bake your own. Also I think he is a kind of "purist" (I would rather call it masochist), as he refused to compliment even the best bread unless it was hard as a brick and full of rye and oat.
I on the other hand think that there are middle ways. I mean you can make a bread that has rye and such and still soft and fluffy, but P. always dismissed my efforts as worthless. Also he increasingly acted if I committed a crime when I bought bread. I kept trying to tell him, that he is getting a maniac, that once in a while store bought bread can be nice, and a nice change...

Then I started working in the bank and my time became much limited, and since all the joys were taken out of my home-baking there came a point when I just refused to do it anymore. Since P. was home, and he just loves those "made" tasks (so he can complain how much he has to do), he took it up on himself. I could never decide if I should be angry that he took this thing away from me, or I should just be glad... Actually I was neither. His breads became darker, and heavier, and harder. Almost impossible to enjoy. Whenever he was away I bought the lightest, whitest fluffiest breads... and secretly wished I could enjoy the book called "French Bread" again...
Yesterday evening I made a bread. First time in years. It had rye, hard wheat, and oat in it, also bran, beside the white flour. The dough felt wonderful in my hand. The yeasty smell was lovely. And this morning when we cut it, the taste just melted in my mouth...