shoes and screwdrivers

Back in january when I bought my lovely bed and asked a friend to help with the shipping I also bought two shoe cabinets...which we (with the active help of Christopher) finally put toogether.

And the cabinet fits the space I was planning to put just perfectly :-)

Now... the fact that the 8-9 pair of shoes I can fit into it doesn't do all that much for the chaos at the floor of my gardrobe is a totally different matter...

Spinning update

We had a nice long weekend and some fun over it, but I will post about it when I manage download pictures from my camera. Until then here is some update on spinning.

I've been spinning some alpacca I bought a while ago. It was an "impulse" purchase with no particular project in mind, but when I came across of the Helm's deep pattern things just clicked.

I love the Lord of the Ring books/movies, and I also love white, I just had to make it... And, as it happens more often lately, instead of ordering some yarn, i go to my fiber stash to see what can I spin up for it... The natural cream/white alpacca seemed perfect. The only trouble was that I thought I have 200 grams of fiber, when I only had 100...hmmm. Go and order more, right? I did just that, only to find out the seller decided not to ship to eastern Europe anymore, because she had so many lost packages lately it is just not worth it...I had many rection to this, first of them is sadness as I loved this seller, she has nice selection and good prices and she ships from England, which makes the shipping cost less, and a lot faster. I ordered quite a few items from them and never had any problem, everything arriving within a week. Admittedly I had a few items lost way back when I started ordering things online years ago, but not in ages..I discussed this with her, and she said she suspects the packages got here fine, but the buyer complained to get a second parcel as a replacement. If it is really so...the country has bad enough reputation as it is why add to it? It is costly/difficult to get good supplies for knitting/spinning why make our task even harder? If someone stole it in the post office what the heck would she/he do with spinning fiber? (I mean I can-kind of- understand stealing of books, or kid's clothes, they would know what to do with it, but with fiber???)

As you can see I only have questions, not answers.

My problem did got solved, I could buy an other bunch of the alpacca, and we have an agreement, but the whole story still bothers me.

Here is the spinning in progress.

Also here is some merino in shades of red. I bought this one with the desdemona shawl in mind. My friend Angela sent me the pattern. At the moment I can spin about 6-700 meters of two ply out of 3.8-4 oz fibers. I also like my shawls generously sized, so if a braid is more than that (this was five oz) my eyes get sparkly...

In the meantime I also got some new spindles, like this tiny turkish spindle.

It is really tiny, look in my hand. I still have to figure out how to use it.

And a lightweight pine from Steven Kundert. Great e-shopping experience. I told him what I would like, and he told me what would be the best then made it... and it arrived here in less than a week..I love spinning with it, that is some extremely soft yak and silk mix I tried it with.

I leave you with a shot comparing the two spindles.

Summit

The day the pattern was published in Knitty I fell in love with it and still on the same day I ordered some pure silk yarn on e-bay.

It is a really fun pattern, all those drop stitches remind me of the Clapotis, but this is more..."sophisticated"... . I worked 15 columns and about 15 repeats (one repeat being one left and one right curve). About halfway I've run out of yarn and had to wait about two weeks for the other two hank.
As I already mentioned it is really useful if one can knit backwards, save some of the flipping over.Otherwise it is not difficult at all, in fact about 2/3 of the way it got rather boring. But then it made it to the perfect cafe/TV/etc knitting.

I ended up with a very generous size of 200x 80 centimeters blocked. BTW I used 3.25 mm short Brittany needles.

Here is a close up...The yarn bleeded badly while being soaked, I hope it will not cause further problems.

Sorry for the not too good picture below. If I would shot it I would call it crappy, but I can't call my son's shot that. I only put it here to give you an idea of the size:

I love wrapping myself in it.And despite of the holes and being silk, it does warm you.

Mother's day

It was a bit late (as in Hungary Mother's day is the FIRST Sunday of May). In bigger classes they don't even try to find a date which would be good for everyone, but in a class as small as ours they do... The price was two weeks of delay, but it was worth it. I didn't think I would be, but I was moved.

Their present was a small flower they planted and cared for and a card they made from dried flowers. They also colored their own headress too.

The "real" mother's day was put off for me, as Chris was with his father, who "forgot" to remind the kid, or even stuck some flowers or a bunch of lilacs from the garden of his lakehouse... But as he said some years ago, I didn't deserve it, so I didn't really expect it, but still felt sad...

Black Bunny

I got kind of lost in the big/long projects and needed a quick fix, in other words instant gratification...and something black to wear with my red skirt and black lacy thights...There was a small box of black angora yarn in my stash. I got it in my favouritr second hand shop. I had my doubts as it was black and hairy, but it was so soft I bought it at the end. BAD decision. The yarn sheds like crazy. It actually ruined the white Tshirt I wore underneath...I doubt if I will ever wear it again... too bad.

Top dow construction, wrap style, pattern made up in my head

The yarn label says USCHI angora silber 70% angora, 25% lambs wool, 5% poliamid. I used 5 mm Addi circular needles.

WWKIP DAY

It is finally decided and I've put in on the blog. WWKIP day in Budapest will be held on june 12th 3PM at the California Cafe by the Bazilika.
Details in the club's blog!
We even have a sponsor, so we can raffle some yarn there!
I can't wait...

The first time

Since my mother died in december 2002 I dreamt of her... There was a story too, of which I cannot remember only that I was hugging her, crying saying "anyukám, anyukám" (my mommy, my mommy)...
Which is kinda strange, because I never adressed her than way. I called her "anyu (mom)...

Back then she died rather suddenly, within four weeks from the poing she fallen ill, to her actual death.The last time I've met her I had no idea there was something wrong, from the point she wat taken to the hospital, she was not in a shaoe when she could be communicated with...so I simply had no chance to say goodby.
I inherited part of my creative genes from her (the other half from my paternal granma), and I often think what would she think of me now... what would she think of the new tools, the new techniques we use in modern knitting, what would she think of the internet, of Ravelry for that matter. What would she think of my fair isle knitting? The lace shawls? The spinning? the knitting klub? Would she come?

New logo...

My sister drawn it for me. I love it :-)))
How about you???

Small bit

There was not much knitting in the last couple of weeks... Christopher was ill, more than once, I caught it from him, more than once, and the last illness included puke and cleaning it up, and no sleep for nights.

Plus I had a translation work to be done, which for the above reaons didn't got done either. But it weighed on my consience.... so much it actually curbed my creativity. I mean even when I was sitting down to "knit", the best I could do is roll up some balls of yarns...

The only knitting I managed was the small lacy scarf I started a while ago as the take-out knitting. I worked on it while waiting at doctors, at knitting club, etc.

The yarn is 50 gramms of malabrigo lace. I wanted to do the Rose trellis from it, but the color contrast of the yarn and the pattern killed each other, so I had to look for something simpler. Something MUCH simpler

.

The reason why I was taking this out of the deep stash was the attack of the Queen of The Secon Hand, who being fed up with all the dark colors of the winter wanted something bright and found a red canvas jacket. Which was great, but....umm..RED. Very red. So I thought the scarf from this yarn would be tone it down a little bit.

Yes, I think it does, don't you?

Me wearing it doubled up... (Pic is by Christopher)

And leaving it open.

Needles, 10 inch long, 3.25 mm Brittany