secret pal 11 package!

It came, it came! From my angel in germany :D THANKYOU!

My MAC has crashed thoroughly - pictures will have to come later.

A little bit of progress

Christmas socks and a scarfs are all done and away, luckily.
Well, I still have one Monkey-sock to go to someone who´s gone until after christmas anyhow, so I´m working my way slowly on that. It´s in Claudia\s Handpainted yarn, the colorway is Twilight, and it´s turning out kind of weird and stripy. I´ll put in a picture once they´re done.

The picture shows the slight progress for my autumn rose - this has been resting since the beginning of december.

On the road...

I´ve been in the US for vacation-work and what a superproductive trip it has been, knittingwise!
I bought some beautiful yarns - cherry tree hill superwash merino in gorgeous greens and pinks, and some wonderfully bright colinette jitterbug colourways summerberry and raspberry - I think. And some brown alpakka wool on super cheap sale, perfect for wintery gifts such as mittens and scarfs.
I´m even halfway into monkey sock#2 in the cherry tree hill yarn, 20cm into my autumn rose sweater and finished sock#2 for both the schaefer anne simple-socks and the bright green wavy patterned socks!
And although I´ve been through umpteen security controls at airports, no one ever attempted to take my knitting needles from me.

Pictures to come once I get them uploaded.

solved one problem, got myself another...

I solved the problem with the bright green socks! Frogged back to the heel, changed to thinner needles, and knitted back down again with additional decreases. Now I only have to remember what I did on the second sock, which is coming along nicely.

But... the Autumn Rose sweater... Somehow I misread the instructions and used needles 3.5 to knit about the first 12cm or so. The sweater was HUGE! Then I discovered the mistake, it should have been needles 3. But the sweater was approximately 20cm too wide, and just downsizing the needles by .5 wont do.
So I ripped the whole thing, restarted on needles 2.5 which is .5 less than called for and perfect according to my swatching (which I didn´t do last time). And, changed to one size smaller.

Problem solved? Don´t know yet, but at least I´m on it again. Don´t like the 3stockinette - 1purl edge at the bottom, and I definitely don´t like to redo it. But hopefully, this time the sweater will fit me.

Autumn Rose has arrived!

wheheee!!!
The yarn + pattern for Autumn Rose arrived in the mail today!
It even somehow escaped the import customs +vat radar and made it through unscathed.

It looks wonderful! And with 3.25mm needles, it´s a nice change for the 2mm needles I´ve been using for socks + some other stuff lately.
I´m starting it right away! Picture will come...

gaahh!!! How irritating is this?!

It´s obviously the week of difficult socks! How else to explain this...reluctance to turn into something beautiful and nice?

First, the gorgeous Claudia Handpainted sockyarn I bought at loopy ewe. Wonderful stuff, even had a nice scent. I knitted it up into the japanese feather socks. The gauge was right on spot! My gut feeling was telling me to go for 2mm needles rather than 2.5mm as called for in the pattern for the main lace knitting, the socked seemed to turn out kind of big. But oh well, I settled on the "I don´t frog, besides, I will fix it when blocking"-approach. Duh!
Not enough yarn!!! Bummer, now I´m going to have to frog anyhow or find someone with really short yet stubby feet. (the picture shows the "finished" sock, and what´s left of the yarn, top right in the picture)


Secondly, I tried the Schaefer Anne yarn on a third sock pattern, with some small faux braids. I´ve tried this yarn on several socks before, but it always turns out too loose and stretchy, just like it did this time as well. Finally, I caved in! I´m knitting it into completely normal, simple and easy socks. This yarn will NOT be bothering me anymore!!
That being said, theyre turning into rather nice, normal, simple and easy socks :-)

Part of my irritation with this yarn is probalby what happened with it when I went to wind it from the skein- the picture says it all. My method ALWAYS works, so this really annoys me. I open up the skein and put it so that the yarn is wrapped around both my underarms. I then wind up the yarn into a ball, keeping my underarms apart, so that the yarn stays wrapped that way while I wind it. Much easier than using backs of chairs, knees, hubbies arms, and all other strange things I see people using.

Oh, I also sent a couple of packages to my Secret Pal 11. She liked the yarn and stuff I sent so much, it was really touching! Makes me want to send more :D

New yarn, finished projects

Some new yarn arrived in the mail today! Yummy!
I got some K.Knits Superwash Me sockyarn, colourway Alaska, and Claudia Hand Painted Yarn fingering weight yarn colours limeade and twilight. Gorgeous stuff and so, so soft.

I also finished some mittens that I really like. They´re made from the Camel Wool yarn I received from my secret pal 10. The pattern is from My Life´s Work Free Patterns. I´ll definitely make more of these mittens for xmas presents or something, they´re so quick and easy yet look like quite complex.

Finally, a really bad picture of a sock for one of my nieces. It has a little pattern from Socks Socks Socks that I quite like with the stripey yarn. Spices it up a little bit.

My pomatomus are done!

My lovely Pomatomus, from a Knitty pattern.
The yarn is Sock yarn from Silkwood, in a very rich ruby color called Garnet. They also have some striking green and blue colours and the yarn is easy to work with and makes a nice result, so I´m planning more Pomatomus socks in Silkwood yarn. The yarn is bought at Woolly Workshop.
The picture is a bad one from my mobile...

I tried ordering yarn for the autumn rose sweater, but unfortunately several shops seem to be out of the main gold color of the pattern. I´m waiting eagerly!

Finally back on the knitting track

I started the day by ordering, or at least sending some questions regarding purchase, of the Eunny Yang Autmn Rose fair isle sweater! I also signed up for the KAL at iloveautumnrose.blogspot.com so I´m getting there.
The picture is of the shawl from the Maskerader magazine by norwegian "Du Store Alpakka" - an alpacca yarn factory. I knitted the shawl from some lovely mohair++ yarn from Fleece Artist and I love it to bits. It´s so soft and wonderful, the colors are much prettier in real lfe, more muted and burgundy-like! It´s rather big - 40cmx185cm, and I think I will wear it a lot this winter!

Back!

I´m back from my travel :)
While away, I finished my pomatomous socks - lovely of course, and a shawl from Maskerader that I love. I´ll get a picture in tonight.

Now for looking at other peoples blogs and finding out how to put Hannes button on my page (her blog is http://vivikala.net/vakerrellen/ - don´t know what happened to my insert link-button here...?)