Handmaiden and Fleece Artist - have to have it!

I´ve fallen totally in love with the Handmaiden and Fleece Artist yarns.
I mean, look at this picture and tell me how one could avoid loving it!
Handmaiden and Fleece Artist are basically the same thing, Handmaiden being the more luxury label of finer yarns from Fleece Artist.

I´m knitting a shawl in Handmaiden Minimaiden in the pale green peridot, a mix of wool and silk and softer than soft. Absolutely wonderful.
And since the yarn was screaming my name in the basket here, I also started a little project with the on-sale Fleeceartist Goldiehair, colour Renaissance (discontinued - therefore on sale). Goldiehair is a mohair, silk and nylon brush mix. Gorgeous colours and wonderful yarn.

I am sure this will be a very, very expensive love affair...

Finished a whole bunch of projects!

I haven´t written in a while as I´ve been sick.
But being sick also has the advantage that one gets to finish some projects!
I´ve finished the Noro Rainbow Scarf, which I made twice as wide as the pattern calls for and with 2x the yarn. It could have been a little bit longer, but I love it to bits anyhow and will use it lots come winter! It will be perfect to brighten up my black winter coat. It was a very quick and easy knit.

Also finished are a pair of socks for my brother. They started life as bayerische socks from Eunny´s blog, but I found the yarn a bit to colourful and a little bit to fuzzy for the rather crisp pattern. Since I don´t frog, I restarted them from the cuff and made these simple socks. They´re knitted with 76 stitches on 2mm needles, magic loop. The yarn is Regia 4-ply wool and nylon sock yarn.

And I´ve finished this frilly scarf by Tove B. It´s for my grandmother because she loves this colour and wanted something to wear for spring and fall. The yarn is silk tweed from a secret pal. And the scarf is missing one frilly edge, which is coming up but right now I lost a little bit of motivation for it as the edge takes forever to knit...

And finally, I started the Sarcelle shawl in the beautiful Hand Maiden Mini Maiden 50/50 wool and silk blend that recently arrived in the mail at an extortionate (and now forgotten) price, from knitty-noddy. The colour is peridot. It is a bit thicker than the yarn call for in the pattern, but it´s so beautiful, so so soft, so wonderful that I think it will make a great result anyhow!

Knitty-noddy gave very good, personal and quick service and I will most definitely shop there again!

I´ve spoiled myself...

Yesterday and today, two packages arrived in the mail.
I´ve gone ahead and spoiled myself, and bought some lovely almost-not-there greenish-gray Handmaiden Mini Maiden rom Knitty-Noddy. The colour is peridot and the yarn is 50% wool and 50% silk. It´s so lovely it almost makes me drool, and I have to think up a really lovely project for this yarn to showcase it!
From Get Knitted, I bought myself some Fleece Artist Goldiehair on sale (the burgundyish mohair-yarn), which is so lovely now I have to find a perfect project for it. There, I also bought some Noro Kureyon for a Rainbow Scarf, two each of #52 and #159. The pattern calls for mixing up the two colours, and now I almost regret it because they´re both so beautiful by themselves. But I´ll try! I have several more ideas for Noro-yarn anyhow, and this is a nice way of testing the colours.

Finished!

Finally, finally I finished the LUDO jacket from Hanne Falkenberg.
This has been painstakingly slow, because it´s just boring enough to be well, boring. And at the same time it needs just enough concentration that I kept making mistakes.
I guess no one can tell one arm started off 4 stitches wider than the other, and I certainly won´t tell :)

I am very happy with the result though! I only need to get to my mom to help figure out a clever way for buttons. Since this is originally a sweater and sort of became a jacket on the way I was completely unable to figure out how to do buttonholes in a clever way.

Package from my secret pal

Yesterday I got a nice package in the mail from my secret pal!
I had just started to worry that I was possibly forgotten when this wonderful surprise arrived. I got british knitting- and garden magazines, and I´ve already started one of the projects in one of the magazines as well as browsed many of the websites features within. I must admit I even bought some new yarn at one of these websites...

Thank you very much to my secret pal 10!

New inspiration!

I´ve found some lovely new patterns! Norwegian Du Store Alpakka both produces the most lovely Alpacca wool, and patterns to go with. In their newest pattern magasine Maskerader, I found this lovely dress. I´ll buy the magasine and see if it can be made to fit me. It´s a gorgeous thing!
There were some other nice patterns too, worthy a good look.

It reminds me that I also want to knit the Victoria dress from Rowan, pictured here. But I think before I think this will be a christmas-next-year project. The rowan dress should look gorgeous in a dark, shiny gray, I think. And before I get there, I want to browse the summer patterns and make a nice summer top for myself!

I´ve seen some lovely tops in the Garnstudio Drops free patterns, and there are some really cute ones from Rowan. Also, there´s a vest from eunny that´s really nice (although wintery), and knitty.com should soon come out with new patterns.
Then there´s the Argosy scarf, the Butterfly Noro jacket, the Noro rainbow scarf, the cabled socks and bayerisches socks. Ah, so many projects and so little time :)

Nordic Secret Pal package

I received a beautifully wrapped present in the mail today from my Nordic Secret Pal. My husband, in his helpfulness, threw away the envelope + card with her name. I think it was Toril or Torunn, so Secret Pal - please let me know who you are so I can thank you properly!!

The package contained yarn in gorgeous colours! Both silk tweed yarn and a soft mohair yarn. And a home-made pouch, which will be perfect for the several small containers of pearls I have lying around in the bottom of my knitting basket.
I will most definitely want to try this yarn for a shawl. Silk yarn is new to me and I´m looking forward to trying it.

Finishing up some projects

The joy of finishing projects!
I´ve knitted another Flora scarf from knitty.com for a Secret Pal, same yarn as last time but this time bluey-green whereas last time it was pink. I use two threads of Idena Mohair Lux, which is a variegated yarn, and one thread single-colour kitten Mohair, on 5.5mm needles. The result is fantastic and I love the way the colours changes just a little bit along the scarf.

I also blocked the dress for my little niece in the states, so it´s ready to go in the mail tomorrow. I hope they´ll find some use for it, it´s a lovely little thing.

Sweet little dress

I´ve made this sweet little thing for my niece in the US and I love it! It´s made in cotton, which I normally don´t like. It´s a free pattern from Drops Design. I just hope it will fit the sweet little thing, and that her mother will listen to me when I tell her handwash in luke warm water...

It´s still wet after the wash in the picture. I´ll post a nicer picture later...

Gauge-fright

Gaah! How irritating is this?!
I´m knitting a summer dress in cotton for one of my nieces abroad, and it needs to be finished on Monday. And yes, I did start a bit late.
Even though I have a total fear of measuring gauge, I knitted a test-swap before I started. It was perfect! Now after 10cm of the dress, it is 4 cm to wide! Rip, smaller needles.
Cotton sucks.