The queen of second hand

I really liked the red, and grey striped sock I showed in the previous post... So much I kept thinking how can I adapt it to a sweater. The simplest would've been to run to the yarnshop and get some yarn, but once again I decided to use some of my gigantic stash... after a bit of pottering around I came up with some patons tweeds...

There was a couple of balls of dark grey, a few balls of light grey, both of them with an interesting composition, as beside wool, they contained linen...

Very simple top-dpwn construction, with a contrasted colored, red ribbing.

A bunch of socks

I used to say about myself that I am "not a sock knitter"... right. Then why is when I count what I've knitted in a while there is always a bunch of socks, I haven't even shot a picture or blogged about?

I still don't think myself as a sock knitter in a sense that I don't think that sock-knitting is the be all and end all of knitting and fancy-smancy sock patterns do not excite me. Yeah, I wear socks, and if you know me at all, you know that my socks have to "go" with the rest of what I am wearing...But most of the socks I knit are knitted from bits of leftover sock-yarns I collect in second hand shops.Except...

And since in winters I tend to wear a lot of red, I needed some red socks. Lana Grossa sockyarns, may own toe up, ribbed pattern in knee high length... most of them were knitted on the train to and back and in teh time of university lectures.

Then reading the Yarn Harlot's blog I came across these socks.I very much liked them, so I dived into my stash, digged out some bits of greys and orange, and knitted these...

And then decided, that this would work with red toes and heels just as well...

I just couldn't leave Christopher out of the sock party I seemed to have

Then my phone was ringing and on the line was the lady from the second hand shop...We all know what this means...more yarn gets fed into the hungry beast that is my stash...

But a half skein of unicolored and an other half skein of multicolored was taken out before the rest dissapeared...

And now as I look at these pictures I realize that there isn't one from the green and the purple one... maybe next time then.

It is good to give

And so it happened, that one of our knitting circle (in the city where most of my family lives), was left by her very first lace shawl...she kept looking for it, she was sad...so much that we had the same idea just about the same time...and we had a little private discussion... I dyed some wool..

Then spun it...

Took it to Kecskemét in secret, shot a picture of it in very bright sunshine, and handed it over to Vera.
(grey merino dyed over with acidic dye, 85 gramms, 660 meter of two ply, lace weight)

Vera knitted this beautiful shetland. triangle out of it... We gave it to Kinga in our january meeting... she writes about it here.
Then came February, and brought some birthdays... one of them was our own Vera's.... What can you give to a knitter???

Vera, is a readhead as well, but unlike me, she really loves greens and browns.

So I dyed the wool in shades of greens and browns.

Spun it into thin singles.

Plyed them...

made the whole thing into a hank...and sneaked it between her other presents...

From her reaction I think sshe likes it, but I let her write about that and about what kind of plans she has for it.

Whales

Sometimes I am asked what so I do with that crazy amount of sockyarn I keep around here...

This is what:

The pattern is coming from the book "Nrew England knits". The girls at the Barkayarn loaned to me.
It can be found on Ravelry as "Whale watch".

Stripey orange

A couple of weeks ago (or was that a couple of months already?) I promised you lots of mittens...and then I didn't posted all that much mittens...until now.
I knitted this pair from the leftovers of the Selbu modern hat I made last year (which was itself made out of leftovers I found in a second hand shop).

As usual, they were started at the fingers. The cuff is intentionally long to keep wind and cold out...

They are rather fraternal than maternal twins, but I love them to pieces.

Xmas in January

Months ago in the knitting club of teh city ma father lives (and I was born in... I go there as I go home... and now it is halway between where I live and where the university is...so I go there even more often) we decided to hold our own knitter's Xmas.
It was a week ago, and I am sorry for being late with pictures, but my computers act like two moody kilnaxing lady...It is cause for celebration if they would start up, run, and do what I want hem to do...
Anyway the meeting was written about many times in different blogs, how lovely it was, how moving at points... so let me just put here some of the pictures.

I had it easy by drawing Kinga...she loved my beaded mitts and we share our love for all things oranges....

Kató drew my name... I had no idea it could eb scary for someone to draw me, as I think I am easy to give present for... Especially if it is knitted and orange :-)