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.

Military campaign

Which took me two weeks to the hour to complete from casting on... And that is with considerable time spent on the fall set and the knitting lessons.

It was love at first sight, as I opened the fall issue of the Rebecca magazine I knew I had to have this, soon, no matter what. Was it the cables? The fitted shape? The peplum? All traits I would go for, and together they almost made me swoon. As soon as I got home, didn't even took my coat off, but I got on the net and ordered the yarn...

The original in the magazine was made from GGH Camello which I didn't think I could get fast enough and an affordable price. (Later it turned out I was wrong, one of the two yarn stores that sells good yarn in Hungary 1001 fonal does have it, but that is an other story.)

Anyway I wanted it from something tweedy, and I was on a blue phase at the moment I turned to my trusted source for tweedy, heather pure wool or wool/silk yarn. Kingcraigs fabric. I have so many of their yarn it is a surprise that this is the first actual item I finished from all of those... Oh, I've knitted with them all right, I many more swatches than I care to count. I still have to finish my Venezia, and block the cabled rusty orange cardigan... But I know by now that I love this yarn. Coming directly from the factory on scones (most of the time) it feels a little scartchy, maybe even rough, not to mention it smells. But it already starts ro softens while knitting, and after washing... oh, after washing it blooms gorgeously, it softens up greatly, and the smell (which comes from the natural oils in the wool itself) goes away. Of course it will never be as soft as, let say Malabrigo, but I bet because of the tighter spin, it will hold up much better in the long run. It definetly does not relax as many of the other, softer yarns does.

Every time I shop with these guys is a great experience... Just like this time, I incidently clicked on the wrong item and bought the smaller, 500 gramm cone (instead of the 800 I would needed). Since I have a bit of history with Shaun and Jamie, I didn't panic, but shot out a note that please, please send the bill for and ship the bigger one. Instead of the invoice there came a note... oh we already shipped the cone, but we are sending you the extra 300 gramms free of charge for being such a good customer. All came in good time. Thank you so much.

We've been exchanging a few letters on how to introduce their yarn in here, if there is a bigger quantity they would give a considerable discount. If anyone interested let me know, I would gladly organize it.

When it came I was a bit disappointed, which was completely my fault, as I knew this yarn (though in different color) because it was thinner than I expected, and since it is a Jacket, would do well to readjust the pattern for a much smaller gauge... But then the idea hit and I doubled the yarn, and the gauge was just slightly smaller than in the pattern itself (which was in one size, size 40, that would be a bit too big anyway).

With the pattern I also run into a bit of trouble as it was written in German. A language I used to learn in highschool, but forgot a great deal ever since. Regula came to my rescue and went through the pattern with me one saturday afternoon. At that day I got home cast on, and it was blocking within two weeks to the hour.

I only modified a couple of things. lengtened the peplum by one inch, the sleeves a bit. The cables on the back belt, the shoulder stripes and at the wrist are mirrored. And added a crocheted buttonhole and buttonband, because I didn't like how the knitted fabric did not had enough hold for the buttons and buttonholes. Not to mention with the additional inch it fits me better.

Because of the big gauge the knitting went really fast.

The yarn: Kingcraigs fabrics wool/silk aran, Navy blue fleck.

Needles: 5.00 mm addi circulars. 5 mm bamboo DPNs for the sleeves.

Buttons from the Röltex chain.

Pattern: Rebecca, 2010 fall

Pictures are shot by my personal photographer, my son. Thanks Chris.

BTW. I have a new haircut, did you notice?

Designing... knitting...pattern...writing...

The cooperation with Barkafonal and my knitting"carreer" arrived to a new point...

I have knitted before without using a pattern, or modifying it until it was not recognizable, or looking at a picture, knitting something and the result somehow looked pretty much like the picture, even though I could not read the pattern (my German is nonexistent)...

Now, for Barkafonal I had to design something brand new I , from total scratch, and such a way that could be written down and shown how to do it for others (who would be able to understand it...)

It gave me a biggertask, because I had to use one particular yarn, a handdyed one from a thicker variety. As we all know it is not easy to work with handdyed yarns, especially with the ones that have strong contrast between the colors, because it can "break up" the pattern. So I had to think up something that would not clash with the colors, but they would enhance each other. After several swatch I came to the conclusion that my original idea, the 1x1 cables (and their variation) would indeed work well.

There were also othe requirements such as no more than two hanks for all three pieces, not too experienced knitters should be able to do them but it shouldn't be to boring for the more experienced ones, all three pieces should be useable separatly and knitted from less than one hank...

So the fall set of neckwarmer, fingerless gloves and beret was knitted and written up very detailed way with lots of pictures. Doing a beret was the obvious choice as it is the only type of hat that suits me (or so I think). I love fingerless gloves, as they stilll warm my hands, but still enable me to handle money, or keys, or my public transport pass withouth taking them off. As for the neckwarmer I long wanted to do something romantic, tudor style, ruffled something, but kept putting it off... there is no better opportunity, right?

So, here they are. The detailed instructions with ton of pictures are on the Barkafonal's page, at the moment only in Hungarian though. I hope I will have enough time soon to do the translations for English...

More stashbusting

Just a quick note with an Fo that was finished about two or three weeks ago.
Made from the yarn I had leftover from my coachella . It was not a full all, and I have still enough left maybe for a kid sized pair.

Top (fingers) down construction, and cabled ribbing.