Yeees! Finishied!

My love/hate project as of late is done! The Kiri shawl that I've been knitting since the end of November, gave a rest for a while, and recently picked up again is finally done!

It's knitted in Italian Mondial Prestigio Super Kid Mohair yarn on 2.5mm needles. At 245m/25g this yarn is slightly thinner than the pattern calls for.
Since I "cleverly" choose much thinner needles than the 4mm suggested in the pattern (yarn is thinner, I knit loosely, etc what on earth was I thinking!) I had to do way more repetions than the pattern called for to get to a reasonably sized shawl.
But it's lovely! Also, when blocking the shawl, I made the "tips" as described in the pattern, but they simply vanished when I took the yarn of the blocking needles. Strange...

Anyhow - the pattern is feather light and airy! So I'm very happy with it! Except for one major mistake I realised way after the fact, which is very obvious to me but hopefully not to all. But there is no doubt - I will use this a lot!
I think I will start another one soon, in the same yarn but with thicker needles. It should be a wonderful, and hopefully somewhat faster, result!

I love this yarn!

I got my package with Japanese NORO Kureyon yarn, colour 163, for a sweater for my son. The garn is absolutely divine! It´s 100% wool, the thickness varies a little, to be knitted on 4.5mm needles.

I´m following a simple pattern by a Norwegian designer, bought along with the yarn at Pinnsvindesign. There are two smaller balls of alpacca wool from Bolivia, brand name Fotrama. These are an emerald green and a dark purple and will be knitted together for a warming turtle-neck for the sweater. I cannot wait to see how this turns out, I never knitted with this yarn before and the green/purple mix for the neck was suggested by the shop and I´m excited to see what purple and green makes together!

Only have to finish a "few" other things first!

Sweet things

Yesterday I sent off the neckwarmers for my nieces, to go with the cute hats I found a pattern for here. I completely and totally forgot to take a picture of the cute hats, complete with little crocheted flowers before I sent them off for xmas. But the neckwarmers are the same colours and same style and adorable and cute. My youngest niece (6) said the hat was the bestest xmas present she ever had!

The pink one is knitted in an amazingly, wonderfully soft thin Alpacca wool from Du Store Alpakka, with two threads. The other one in a thin Alpacac wool called Inca from Rauma Ull, also with two threads.

Finished socks for Six Sox KAL

I´ve finished the December sock for the Six Sox KAL, a good fun knit with a slip-stitch chainlink pattern, knitted in Opal yarn on 2.5mm needles.
I´m very new to knitting socks, especially to non-norwegian patterns and methods of doing things. My first sock was a toe-up, this was a top-down heel-flap sock that I knitted on magic loop. And it turned out to be really easy! The socks fits my husband perfectly, especially after I took it in a few stitches in the foot, and I´ve learned the slip-stitch method which was easy but I just haven´t done it before. The colours were chosen on a somewhat moody day, haha, but my husband said he´ll happily wear it. I actually kind of like it too...The observant will see (a bit hidden, on purpose, didn´t want the proof out in the open) that sock number two actually is finished with a different yarn! There was no more Opal Hundertwasser yarn in the right colour left at the store, so I replaced it with Opal Tucan which was close but not quite there...


I was certain I would get enough yarn out of one huge ball of Opal, but since I took out all the dark grey and white bits, the yarn just didn´t go as long as I hoped. The lack of yarn is also the reason there´s a few dark grey stripes on sock #2 (the hidden one). The heel on the second one is blue and white because I just forgot to cut it out and I DO NOT rip up my work unless there are very serious implications! Just to show what extra work I gave myself cutting out the darker bits from the variegated yarn, here´s what the backside of the sock looked like pre-getting to work on it!

Coming along!

Ignoring my arguesome Kiri-shawl for a while, I´m happily knitting along on the Hanne Falkenberg Ludo-jacket for my son. It´s actually starting to look like something! Somewhat... Anyhow, the yarn has a much lovelier color in real life than on the picture on the website, it´s kind of meleed and beatuiful.
But thin and easy to snap, as I found out when DH accidentally stood (!) on it while I was merrily knitting along. Ok, maybe any yarn would snap then, but this certainly did.


I also found myself gasping a bit after doing the first pattern round, knitting some more and looking back at what I´d done. It didn´t look at all like it should according to the tiny picture that came along with the package of yarn.
Some intense reading of the yarn, counting, and wondering whether I could have somehow misunderstood the Danish instructions (seeing how I don´t actually speak Danish but Norwegian, which is somewhat close but not necessarily the same), and a slight panic later...

I found out that I was looking on the backside of the pattern, silly cow, and that the front side looked amazingly, surprisingly just like it should. And very nice at that.
A quick count of the stitches after all the SSL and K2tog on even rounds, and my shoulders were back where they belonged since it seems everything is perfect.

And I can´t say how pleased I am about that, I do not want to frog this again!

Why 96+2 is not 100

This really, really irritates me!
I just started the Hanne Falkenberg Ludo jacket for my son, and idiot that I am, I can`t add and got off with a wrong stitch-count!
AGH!

The pattern says to knit two together, then 96 straight on, then two together. Makes 98 right? WRONG!

Stupid, stupid mistake and I had to frog the whole thing and start again. Oh well. The cast-on turned out prettier this time, so I`m happy :) Somewhat :)