Liesl cardigan

Don't ask me why, this pattern never interested me much... until Barka came out with some yarn with long colorchanges, and I thought the wavy pattern would enchance it pretty nicely... But the yarn was much smaller than the pattern called for and though I did recalculate the whole stuff and knitted it until under the armpits teh small gauge was so slow progress I put it aside. By then I got the hang of th epattern and started to search for something thicker to knit it.

There was a bag of cotton tape from King Cole. I bought it a few years ago. when I opened the bag, I was surprised to find that it is not a simple cotton tape, but within the tape there are small bobbles in regular distances from each other. Knitting a swatch showed me, that the gauge is more or less fine, if I knit a bigger size, and the bobbles does not hurt the pattern... in fact the thing looks even more structured.

I've put buttonholes though the whole front edges, so I can decide just how many I want to button up.

Since the final fabric is quite loose, I used mother of  pearl buttons for backing.The hold the buttons so much better, than if I would try to sew them on the kitting itself.

The above pictures by Christopher. Below a couple of them the cardigan in action. I wore it at the knitting meeting in Kecskemet at the end of august. The pics were shot by Kato. Thanks :-)

And while we are at the topic of Kató... look into her blog ;-) I infected her....

Left overs

A few months ago I dyed some wool with long colorchanges, from yellow through orange and red to brown, but at the bottom of the jars I mixed the colors there were some dye solutions left. Not all the colors, only a few of them.

So I dived into my fiber stash, pulled a bit of unidentifiable wool (might be BFL from the feeling of it... it came as a present with one of the spindles I bought on etsy), soaked it put it into an owen-safe glass bowl, pored the leftover dyes over it haphazardly, and gave it a go in the microwave.

Spun and plyed on the wheel... it was surprisingly easy and fast to spin it.

And started to wonder what to knit from 280 meters of sport weight.

Then one of the emails coming from interweave had a little booklet from the Helix scarf knitted from a bunch of different handspun.

Of course I like ma shawls big, my scarfs wide so I modified the pattern starting with more stitch and recalculating the short row part for the ruffled edge (turning at the 10th, 8th, 6th, 4th 2nd stitches at the end of every third row), and knitted while my yarn lasted.

In the August heat the only willing modell I found... was this little bronse girl, sitting on the rails by the river Duna.



Every year

Every year I can hardly wait for it. Every year I go religiously. Every year I wonder if I should write about it. Every year I wonder if it is getting boring...

But I do it all the same. Every year I go to the Festival of folk arts, every year I walk around and take pictures.

At the beginning it looked like it is going to be a dissapointment because there wasn't much "new" stuff. Of course the things that are out there are so beautiful it is worth to look at them every year, still...I didn't much wanted to bring pictures of the same stuff...as it happened looking through the pictures I found I made them of the same pottery I did last year...

Of course there were clothes reminding us times gone by...

In rustic style:

Romanic style:

Mixing folklore style with modern clothing items:

The usual beauties at the lace stand...with the usual two question in my head...how can they ask so little for it, as I bet it took more than 20 hours to make that pair of gloves... the other is that though I love all crafts, fiber and needle crafts especially, why I never felt the urge to make traditional lace or tatting???

Oftentimes it was worth to take a look at the visitors clothing as well. Looking at this skirt I feel like bringing back the "handknit/crochet sightings" column of my blog. Do you know that while there are knitting machines, and it is possible to knit lace with machine, there is no such a thing as a crocheting machine? There is no machine that could even mimic crocheting? Think of this when at places like Promod, or H and M (Old Navy, for americans for example, or even cheaper places) you see/buy crocheted stuff for a few box. How much could the one who actually crocheted it for hours got for her (his?) work?

There were bags from fabric:

Leather:

Felted ones:

And while we are at the felts, there were hats:

And, of course, My favourite felted dragon. It is a tradition by now for us to look for and shoot a pic or two of the dragon.

These dolls reminded me of my knitting frien Andi, who makes much better ones.

Colored candles:

And teh flowery ones for Jenny:

I fell in love with these silver jewlery.:

I have no picture, but we run into Adrienn, who managed to get in there to sho how the spinning wheel works...I envied her so much.

Christopher also find stuff to look at:

And of course he got tired , and goofy "Mama, I am not going one step futher...beeeheeeheee"

Up until we reached teh booth where he tried this hat on:

I was looking at some card weaving done with so many cards I lost counting, and we started to talk to the crafter/artist.(Dora Varga).. Christopher of course was in his usual talking mood (if one is not careful in five minutes can know EVERYTING about us, not only what we ate, how big shoes we use, but even the color of my underwear...) It took him less than three minutes to tell that his mom is a knitter and a spinner, and in fact she has a spindle in her bag... Dora wanted t o see at once how it is working, asked me to show...we got "stuck" there until the evening :-)

Christopher made friends with a boy of the same age from two booths away, thes were running around the castle... once in a while he run by and yelled, "mama, I am still alive"... We talked so much we could hardly stop it when the fireworks started... so much so, we agreed we go back the next day,  and i should take some larning spindles and wool and teach her to spin...

I fitted in a bit of technical translation the next day (just to make teh weekend whole :-), once that was done, I thaught Dora to spin, while had a long discussiona bout crafts, history, teaching crafts, is it worth it, and such...In the meanwhile Lotti arived, so there formed a triumvirate and we had a really great time. At the background Dora's gorgeous felted covers.

Dora done her first ball of yarn...as I looked how fast she picks up the movements I could see she will be a good spinner in no time.

After all, we had a great time. And it might be tacky to say so, but I will not forget it for a very loong time.

Secondhand prettyness

With some project the story is simple. See a pattern, buy the yarn and knit. Some others the road is a lot more winding.

For some reason I will never be able to explain I am drawn to these unevenly spun cotton/linen yarns. Really don't know why, because though I have nothing against knitting cotton (and I love linen), I never liked those artsy, thick and thin, yarns. But whenever a ball or two finds its way into my hands, I take them home, even if they are too little to make anything more than tops for a Barbi doll...

Over the years (among others) these found their way to my stash:

For years I've been putting them from one place to an other with no idea what to do with them, until one of my recent stashdiving they ended up in the same heap.

And again, I don't know how, but the images of this cardigan popped into my mind. I do have the magazine, and let me tell you this particular piece never interested me. Until I had that heap or yarn. But the more I looked/read the pattern, the more I knew I am going to change it so much, it can be hardly said it is the same pattern.

First of all, who knits raglans from the bottom up and in pieces these days? Especially short sleeved ones, where you don't have to drag around a whole sweater waiting for the second sleeve to be finished.

So I started at the neck and went knitting in the "classic top-down fashion, using yarnovers for incresases.

I knew I wouldn't like a cardigan that has no closure, nor would I like those flopping collar like things...
Therefore I decided on a V neck and a few buttons.

I used a feather and fan kinda zig-zagging pattern, and knitted up some I-cord for the drawstring. I crocheted two rows of single crochet around the neck and the fronts to give them (and the button holes) more... strength (would be the right expression I guess...)

Photos: Christopher Laurent Deli

Keeping the dress-code

In my new job the rules for dressing are much more stricter than anywhere else I worked before...

Spaghetti straps and showing tattoos are a big no-no...

This itself would be enough to spark a bolero knitting craze, but add the fact that I have a bunch of yarns I found in second hand shops that are really not enough for anything more serious, but way too god to be left there... This was made from less than 2.5 skeins of Patons 100 wool, sock/sport weight.

It is a very simple rectangle starting and ending with about an inch of ribbing. Then sewed toogether for the arms, stitches picked up and an inch of ribbing knittend around the "sleeves" for a finished look.

The lace pattern looks more complicated than it actually is. Found it one of the german knitting magazines.

Fotos, of course by Christopher Laurent Deli :-)

A rainy sunday afternoon...

Its summer, but the weather is cold and rainy around here for weeks now... There was nothing much to do...  I wanted to drag Christopher away from the computer, so I dug out the only pair of knitting needles I have from my mom...

Here is, what he achieved (picture by the knitting boy himself :-)...gonna be a scarf for his stuffed Piglet :-) Just a bit more practive and he is going to knit his own first scarf.

BTW as I was picking up stuff around the flat, I found this much knitting on the go... I mean these are (by far) not all my projects on teh needles, these are the ones lying around that I am actually working on...

And believe it or not, I also have this much finished items to show you... Just wait for the sun come out enough to make some halfway decent photos...