What's up?

Hmm, its been so long I did one of these types of post...
At the moment I do have some FO, to show, but no pictures yet... So just tide me over...

What's with work? Things are OK, I am doing more and more translations. Even though there were organizational changes, and some of them are quite unsettling, it seems, that translations are needed very much...Even at home I had a fair amount of extra (translation work). Once again I went through the net to see if there is a way to get some official "paper" about my abilities... I mean I always loved translation. My father always told me that my work is good. But you know, he IS my father. But lately I get soo good feed backs in the bank, so once again I was thinking that if I am really this good at it, I might as make it official, like get a diploma... But it seems translation could only be taken up as a postgraduate course, one need a FIRST diploma...which I don't have. And at the moment I don't have the time, the money, or even the energy, to go and spend three four years jut to get "a" diploma so I could go to translation courses...

What is on TV? Nothing much lately, though I still have a few episodes of the fifth(??) season of 24 to see and the same station started to rerun all of The X files, right from the very beginning. Back when they first were on TV we lived in Miami. So much happened since, both of them grew to be really outstanding actors. As cute as David Duchovny is, I think Gilian Anderson has the really great talent. On the other hand one of out TV station was playing Star Wars. Not the "original" (as we call it with my boy "the old-old" series), but the ones with Ewan Mc Gregor and Natalie Portman in it. Since they are rather long episodes we watched half of the third one with Christopher. I finished it alone, and I told the kid "Honey, you know I am not sure you want to see how it ends"... Because... You know, the original movies were my absolute favourites in my teens, and by now I am past my 40th year. I KNOW this is ONLY a movie... and I still cried at the end. Two days later when I was working at night and I told my son that if he wants he can watch it... he turned the thing on... then after like five minutes into it (when they started to kill off the jedis) he promptly turned off and came to me... "Mama, you know, what?? I believe what you said. I think I really don't want to watch how this ends."

What's reading? Actually not much, between work, the kid, working at home, knitting AND spinning...not much time. I do have Lord Of The Ring in English around, to pick up when I feel the gnawing need for LETTERS, and WORDS.

What's knitting? I finished the A line sweater I was working on since the spring. I almost finished the knitting of the orange wrap cardi, but ten rows from casting off I found some mistake again, and I have to frog it back...AGAIN. So it will go back to time out. AGAIN. Some bits and pieces OTN, socks, and fingerless gloves, and I am in the process of deciding what to knit next. I have a few things in mind, like the far afield west, the tweedy aran cardigan, the cardigan for Arwen, a pattern from last winter's Strickentrends magazine. Last night I went stash diving. Umm, at the end my bedroom (where I keep my yarn) looked like a bomb hit the bins... Bags of yarns everywhere...

What's cooking? Not much really, except for some Biscotti and Newtons cookie baking. But those recipes are my "secret" ones... the ones that will be the special stuff in the "tea house with home baked cookies and a craft/knitting corner" of my dreams.

gathered pullover

About two years ago when I discovered the wonders of ordering yarn from online, it was like the world has opened up... I mean back when I was in my teens and knitted a lot, but yarn was scarce and expensive (for me at least- still back then it was actually cheaper to knit something than to buy a ready made knitted item), and good yarn was even more elusive than it is now. (At least these days there is like one type of DK pure wool (merino blend at that) in the only yarn wholesaler, and there is one or two three types of pure wool in the BURDA shop.) Anyway back then I was dreaming... and I dreamt that when I will be grown up and rich, I will have a house, and in that one I will have a craft room with sewing machines and supplies, and I will have a shelf, the type they have in yarn stores with little niches for yarn, and in each of those niches I will have different, sweater's worth of yarns. I grew up-kind of , but I am no way rich, but now I have a sewing room. It is way too small to store all my fabric and yarn stash, therefore the yarns reside in my bedroom now. BUT the stash is big enough and diverse enough so when some fancy hits me I can knit almost any type of knitting... I have thick yarn, lace yarn, sock yarn... I have yarns I know exactly what I want to do with, but there is some I got because it was a nice color, it was some nice wool, or it had a good price.

So was the case of a pack that has been lying in the bottom of one of the bins. It was medium heathery purple, sock/sport weight... I liked it very much, but I had absolutely no idea what to make from it... Until one time flipping through IK the gathered pullover got caught in my mind... Then looked through the FOs in Ravelry and I knew this is it. Also looking through the FOs in Ravelry helped me to decide on a couple of modifications.These were:

I don't like rolled edges... I know I don't like garter stitch either, but a few rows edging is an exception. I did six rows of garter stitch at the edge of the body and the sleeves and the band for the neckline.I made the body longer. Eliminated the decrease-increase across the boobs, but added waist shaping.

Added half of the motif on the back.

Due to rowing in my teenage years I have wide back and thicker than average upper arms. To accommodate them I did bigger armholes, and wider sleeves.

I also do not like three quarter sleeves, or sleeves that look grown out. Therefore I lengthened the sleeves, and made them slightly trumpet shaped (cast on six stitches more than necessary and decrease the, before starting to increase). Because of the different stitch count I fudged the sleeve cap a bit.

While on the stockinette part this was my "take out" knitting. I absolutely love the cable motif.

I knitted the sleeves two at the same time in two circulars... Now that was no fun. As much finishing the two sleeves at once intrigues me (there is no second sleeve syndrome, and I don't have to try and figure out where did I what), the constant changing of balls, needles, rearranging them, pulling them annoyed the heck out of me.But all in all I absolutely LOVE the finished sweater.

The water and the blood

As we say in hungarian... blood will not turn into water... in other words the apple will not fall far from its tree...
Both phrase means that one just cannot deny his/her genes...
As I am getting older I find out that I am more and more like my ancestors... there were dressmakers, and not long after I stopped sewing for money I found that those women worked the same style I did. Of course I cannot deny my mother or my paternal grandmother either, I only have to look in the mirror, not to mention how close I feel to them when I knit...
And then I found out something else... only after bought my first spindle, learned the basics of how to spin and showing to my father "look dad, what can I do" did he told me, that my grandmother not only sewed, embroidered, crocheted and knitted, but...
...
...
...
...
She also was a SPINNER... in fact she had angora bunnies, and she spun angora, which at the time was the poor man's wool...
No wonder I am so enchanted by spinning, and also no wonder I became so much better at spinning in a relatively short time... Of course I am still a beginner... but look:

I did this in august, and looks like this plied:

And with the help of my father (who instead of saying I am a total idiot taking up an other time, and space and money consuming hobby,for some reason was enchanted by the fact that I am interested in spinning) I got this beauty:

A spinning wheel from Tirol... It needs the hooks replaced on the flyer and some of the joints strengthen, but it is pretty nonetheless...

And then I found this one for next to nothing... less pretty, more sturdy, a wheel from northern Hungary.

And guess what... maybe because of the lack of time for trying and learn how to use the wheels, or maybe just because I like the spindles, I am still spinning with them...

Here is some lace-weight spinned from merino-silk... as a single:

And the thicknes after pyling:

(yes, that is an american cent... leftover from my time in Miami)

the firts 50 gramms became 300 meters of 2 ply:

queen of second hand

That is what I am... at least 80 percent of my wardrobe comes from those stores (and a big őart of my yarn stash as well... as you know :-)... (The rest is handmade, and only a tiny percentage is bought new).
Here is one of y favourite finds from late summer. A skirt from embroidered fabric... green and turqoise. Yumm.