Fall berries

This is something that was also a love at first sight. The moment I saw the pattern I knew I wanted to make it, and I knew I wanted to make it from this rusty colored scottish wool.

However, unlike the military jacket, this dream took a long time to become fulfilled. Oh, I did bought the pattern at once and I had the yarn in my stash, I even cast on promptly... But then it started so slow, and then the knitting olimpics came and I decided in the last minute to go for it and cast on for something else.... then the bomb hit and I did not knit at all... for the longest time. It was only a couple of weeks, but it seemed like an ethernity. By the time I started again, it was way into summer, and I knitted lighter, cottony stuff and lace shawls (don't ask me why, lace knitting comes over me at summer time-go figure).

But at finishing the Military jacke I had great momentum, and it was fall again, need for warm sweaters, so I took this out of the basket and finished it in two weeks.

The pattern is Blackberry cabled cardigan, Well worth the money. Great pattern, wery straighforward instructions. The changes I made are not because I thought the original not god enough, but only accomondate my body, and particular likes. They were more decrease and increase for waist-shaping, slightly wider sleeves, and a really wide ribbing at the cuffs.

The yarn once again came from Kingraig's fabric, the scottish wool. And once again I go all gaga and mushy when I try to write about it. i already mentioned how great these sellers are, so I am not going into that. I also talked about their wool/silk tweedy yarn.

This one is lamb'swool aran, and the color... the color. It is so gorgeous, and not only because the rusty orange is so perfectly me, goes well even with my hair. But because it is so gorgeously heathery, and so deep, as there is several shades of orange spun toogether with a tiny bit of ochre and some dark red thrown into it. The different colors can only be seen if one looks at it very closely.

Since this is not the first time I knit with this yarn, I was prepared to see it changed, to "bloom", but the way this did just blew my mind. Let me show what I mean, OK?

As I told you it was gorgeous when I knitted it, and was enchanted with the colors. Look, it looked like this when I finished the sweater.

But then I washed it, and it changed for even better. The fibers that were smoothed down by the spinning process loosened, "fluffed up", and they softened. Even the color has changed, deepened even more. (The photos were taken in different light conditions, but you get the idea).

Take a closer look, before:

And after:

OK, I admit, since I know this quality of the yarn I did put in the washing machine and gave it a few turn in the gentle cycle, to enhance the blooming process even more, but that is something I DO NOT suggest for the faint of heart, especially because this is not superwash. I only dared to do it, because the sweater came out ever so slightly big, and it could only benefit from shrinking, and it was really only a few turns, and I rolled in into several layers of towels before slightly spinning it (I know, this is bordering on blasphemy, but otherwise it would have rot before it dried).

But it would have bloomed if i just give it a bath a few gentle tuck in the bathtub. All in one lovely yarn, which comes in gorgeous colors and at a good price.

And I love the sweater as well.

And so do I love my photographer :-) You know who that was.

and so it was

that in one of my forrays to the second hand shop I bumped into a bunch of tiny balls of leftover sockyarn. they were all self-striping, self patterning ones in orange/yellow colors, but all different. But they were all lovely, and I just could not leave them there, right?
Then I kept wondering what should I do with them, up until I bumped into some brown tweedy sockyarn from Lana Grossa, when it clicked. Ever sinc I knitted a Selbu beret for my sister a year agi I wanted one for myself... and I wanted in in orange/brown colors... so I just combined the tweedy but solid colored brown and used the colorful one as teh contrast color.
here is the result as it was blocking.

This pattern is so beautiful... the only thing I changed is to do a folded hem, and a three row orange picot edging.

It even goes well with my new shawl :-)

Went spinning

Look....These pictures are not from an american blog-post about a spinning retreat...No, this is here in Hungary. Yes, about a dozen women and a couple of girls with spinning wheels, spindles and lotsa wool...(and some angora and alpacca, even a bit of lama)

Would you thought that one can find this many spinning wheels in working in the whole country, let alone in one room?

There was something new for everyone. For some it was the spindle. For others it was the wheels, or carding.

There were all kinds of wheels. From the tiny wheeled antique one to the new ashford Traveller.

Me, the spindle spinner trying the wheel, and the drumcarder, and get my hand into dyeing as well.

All the girls were just LOVELY and I am so glad to meet each and every one of them. Rita was a cool teacher, Adrien a lovely hostess, and I could just go on and add something for each name.

I can't wait to do this again.

Rusty coin

My friend Regula, asked me to water her flowers through the summers. She lives pretty close by, only a tramtop away, so I said yes, and NOT because she promised to bring some yarn from Vienna :-) LOL... but I am a knitter, and I can't have too much yarn, right?
and what she did brought me was so totally gorgeous, so absolutely me...
Lana Grossa sockyarn in gorgeous rusty fall colors. It was just too beautiful to hide away as socks and the two skein was enough for a generous sized stole...
I only had to find the right pattern, in which my friend Angela came to my rescue. She is so great finding just the right thing... Just like now I told her I want to utilize teh self striping effect, i want something diagonal, something light, something much like the clapotis, but not the clapotis. She came up with three suggestions, all of the perrfect.
I ended up choosing the Coin Lace from Elann, which was the perfect choice.

One of the very few advantages of my current job, that I can take my knitting with me, and kniting in the free times, between calls...for a while this was the knitting I took, but often i could only knit a row or two, so there came a point when it felt i was knitting this FOREVER and put it aside.

Then at my recent visit to my dad's I took nothing else with me, and knitted a LOT on it which pushed it over deadlock point and I managed to finish it.

Regula helped out to pin it out for blocking.Since I do not have blocking wires I had to consent with some pointy edges...

The pattern is easy and looks lovely in self striping yarn.

And guess what. A few after I put it up on ravelry a request came from the pattern's page that they would like to use my picture.... My photographer will be proud :-)

Szolnok

Is the name of the city where I grew up. No I did not like living there, but lots of memories are still tying me to it. Not to mention the fact that my mom is buried there. So last week when we visited my father I asked him to drive us there, which he did.
We started by stopping in the cemetery put a small wreat on my mom's grave and light a candle. Even my dad joined us, though they were divorced decade ago and it was not a "friendly" divorce

Then we walked along the banks of the river Tisza, and stopped at the boathouse where I was rowing as a tenager.

At a point it was heartbreaking to see that the public pool where I (and a ton of people) learned to swimm dissapeared without a trace. Literally. No children's pool, no 50 m pool, no covered pool, no dressing rooms. No statue of the famous waterpolo player who thaught generations to swimm there. Nothing just a park. I could've cried.

But the old anchor is there

At that age, I used it as a swing just like Chris did

All in all, it was a lovely day... we even stopped at Müller's which is a drugstore chain which also sells toys and.... some craft supplies including YARN... and not only bad acrylic ones at that. I did went a little crazy there, but that is a story for an other post.

I should be working

Because about a hundred and some pages of translation is watching me from the edge of my desk... But for some reason my brain feels like scarmbled eggs and I have to think half an hour on words like Mean Aerodynamic Chord (Which BTW I do know from the top of my head---under normal circumstances).

Anyway here is a little beanie I knit for a collegaue of mine. The guy is pretty smart (when it comes to computers at least) and was a great help to me when I started to work in my current job. For some reason he ALWAYS wear a hat. I have no idea why, because he does have hair (I am one of the few who did see, that he indeed has a hair and look pretty cute without a hat). Anyway he is leaving out team and this was kind of my goodby/thank you for all the help present for him.

When I finished the knitting I put it on Chris's head, to see how teh shaping worked. He inmediatly claimed as his, I could only took it to the original recepient with the promise of an other one just for my boy.

But I did save it at the end and it was a succes...

Coming, coming

I didn't dissapear, not really, or if I did not too much...

Work is busy, and I also have a plan to go back to shcool which requires taking some exams...

Also have been on a very short vacation...

But I am still knitting (where would the world go if I stopped?), and I have this much FO to show you.

I only have to find the time, the light, the modell, the photographer and the opportunity to take pictures.