Halloween!

On Saturday we where invited to a Halloween-party. It is nice when we adults get the chance of dressing up in costumes from time to time. So I bought some simple costumes on a toyshop. I was amazed at how much there is to buy in stores now. It has not been very common to celebrate Halloween in Norway, but during the last years there has been a growing interest for it. So I was trying to look a bit scary.

But that is not so easy to do. And it does not come naturally for this man behind me :-)

He tends to smile...I guess that is a good thing! Not very scary are we?
We had a very fun night and came home late. Sunday was less fun, but I managed....

On Thursday we had a knitting-get-together in Trondheim. And where? At a quilt-shop!
We had a good time, and some even left the place with some new fabrics.

At the Firestarter socks was finished Friday night. So I tried to take some nice pictures of my feet, but that is not easy....
And you can't really see the pattern very well either. But they fit perfectly and I am very happy with the result.
I also finished two other small projects, but I will have to show pictures of them sometime later when the new owner gets it. But I have started on a blanket. I will be my first. It is the pattern form Mason Dixon Knitting. Not really a fun project, so we will see how this ends up.

October sock kit!

Little spiders on my yarn -iiiik! Puh...they are not alive. This is really the yarn of darkness. I really don't know what I think just yet! It is very much black.

Bad, bad ear - you better start behaving!

Yes, about that ear of mine. I had to go back to the hospital because the pain was getting worse during the last weeks. It was a reason for that off course. I have an infection in there, so now I am using some ear drops. Hopefully that will help. I do not want another bad infection that will need to be removed by surgery! So, I am telling you my right ear - behave yourself!

I have been doing some cleaning and tidying my home. The old kitchen is full junk I need to get rid of, so that we can start making the room into a useful space. During this process I found a bag with Kool-Aid....yam yam....I want to dye some wool soon. Maybe next week.

Outside my window it is getting rather crowded today. We have hired a company to change our roof. So for the next 2-3 weeks there will be very little privacy around here with people looking inside our windows. So now I was making sure a took pictures of my knitting whitout them seeing it. What would they think? "Why is that woman taking pictures of her feet?"

So the other night as I eagerly was getting closer to finishing my socks something very bad happened. For the first time I had bamboo needles that snapped. These where brand new, too. It is so frustrating....
But soon after it was time to change to larger needles, and then I did not thing much more about it.
I have now finished the pattern and only have a few inches left to knit before casting off. I don't have a lot yarn left either, but enough to finish.


I have done some swatching for another project to.....These colors are supposed to be green, but they look more like grey in the picture.

Weekwnd progress!

So this weekend has been very good, I think. I have to start this post by showing a picture of my son in a crown he made (with a little help). On Saturday afternoon grandma and grandpa came for a visit too. The kids love to have there grandparents around. Grandma thinks this little one is getting more and more charming for each time they see him. And I will have to agree. He has these amazing face-expressions, so I am thinking he could go into comedy when he grows up! On Saturday I did some more sock-knitting - The Firestarter. And last night I finished the heel-shaping. I am very pleased with how the heel lookes, and it sits very nicely on my feet.

I must admit that I struggled a bit with the cables, and the gusset was going on for a boring long time, when knitting both socks at the same time. The result is awful nice though, so I might do it again.
I have had some more books arriving in my mailbox lately. Creative spinning and Creative weaving has very pretty colorful pictures. Inspiring, but you can't expect to learn so much from these books. I did not expect so either, I have other books for that purpose.

One last none-knitting weekend project to add: Cleaning our house! So what is the big deal about that. Well, I have not been able to do it in a month because of the operation. Our home was a dirty mess. It feels so good having it done, and now I might be able to move a step forward and finding room for all the things that have no place to be. And then next I might be able to organize my knitting stash in a better way.

Foliage in Wollmeise Uluru!

Finished my Foliage number two. This yarn worked out very well for this!

Some more pictures was taken with a nice happy smile, but the tired red eyes is not so flattering so this one it will be. Since I finished this I have had it on my head. It is very comfortable to wear.

Thank you, Rhonna, for clearing up the confusion about the California Variated Mutant. I should have remembered, it is an awful silly name for a sheep. It makes me think about those Ninja Turtles...

Spinning yarn

On Friday I went to Kate for a nice social knitting night. I brought my camera but forgot to use it. We had a very nice time. Some progress on my socks, but I have struggled a bit. For some reason I do mistakes all the time. Now I have started on the gussets, so then there will be no cables for a while.

To have something easy to knit while talking I started on a scarf in green Kyoto. I did start on a different pattern very long ago, but no started on another one. This is the third scarf pattern I am trying for this yarn. I think I will just stick with this one.

Saturday I went to Rhonna spinning and talking about spinning. That was so much fun. I had some issues with my spinning wheel, and when trying Rhonna's Majacraft Rose, I felt like I was in spinning-wheel heaven. When I came home I realized there was a piece missing. But it is NOT a Majacraft! I will consider buying a new wheel. Maybe HE can give me one for Christmas?
Rhonna has really gotten into the art of spinning yarn, and had a very large selection of different fibers. She was so kind to make a sample-pack for me, so that I could try some of the fibers I have never tried before.

So here it is: alpaca-corridale, merino-mohair, adult mohair, Shetland, Gotland, New Zealand Lamb merino, Bambyx silk, cvm (don't remember what this was), Blue Faced Leicester, silk caps and Angora. Yes, that is 11 fibers to try out :-) Thank you, very much, Rhonna!

Today I spun the first one. It is a very pretty blue merino-mohair. I used a light-weight spindle. Later I will make a 2 or 3 ply. The wool was fine to spin when I did a little pre-drafting. This was my first time spinning on a spindle in a very long time. It was fun! I am very happy that I can manage to spin both on a spindle and a wheel.

I had another Wollmeise delivered yesterday. The sock yarn in the pretty Poison nr. 5 and the worsted weight in the brown-read Uluru color. I new right away that the last had to be knit up as my second Foliage Hat.

And today I have done some progress. Not far from finished. I am guessing the Ravelry really makes me want to knit. I have done some update on my Ravelry-notebook, too!

Wollmeise yarn, Oktoberrosa and snow!

What a surprise - I am building up my stash - for the winter maybe?
This is my first Wollmeise yarn. And there is some more coming

These Selbu mittens was made by Kicki for the Oktoberrosa auction 2007. I ended up winning them - lucky me! The money from the auction will go to supporting Breast Cancer research.

The pattern can be found in the same book as for the girl mittens I am making. They have been knit in Rauma 2 tr. gammelserie strikkegarn.

I guess we need warm mittens these days. We had a small amount of snow coming yesterday.


Some of us was more happy about it than others. She wanted to make a snowman.
A bit early for that, but I can really feel the need for warm socks, mittens and hats.

So I have finished the first mitten (except the thumb) . I am not really happy with it. The pattern says it is a size 5-7 years, but it is very close fit for my daughter. She likes it like this, but I am worried for what will happen when they get wet. Pattern call for 2 mm, I used 2.5 mm but my gauge is still a bit tight. Maybe I will need to try 3 mm. Yes, I know I should have made a swatch.

I have also done some sock-knitting, but I have really been messing up the thing doing one mistake after the other. Finally I had to rip it two pattern repeats. That is not so fun when you are doing two socks at the same time! But now at least I am on the right track.

Knitting and ravelry!

Finlay I got the invitation I have been waiting for. I am now a member of Ravelry.
I have the same name there as well.


So I finished the hat. I tread Gjestal Silja and 1 tread Du store alpakka Babysilk worked out pretty well. It is a good idea to use solid an multicolored yarn together. In this hat I used a solid dark blue Babysilk that matched the darkest blue in Silja. This gave me a darker color than if I had just used the multi yarn alone. I also could have made it lighter by mixing with the lightest blue. I will try this again for sure.


When I saw the Firestarter pattern, I realized that I had to cast on a pair of socks. I did not think I would like my last Rocking sock club yarn. But now I have changed my mind. The colors looks great. In the free pattern over at Loopy Ewe there is a picture of these colors, too. This time I definitely wanted to knit both socks at the same time. I really do not like to start on sock number two.
I had just started on the socks when my daughter came to me and asked if I could knit her mittens. Since I had just bought the Selbustrikk- magazine I was not too hard to convince. I found some pink alpaca from Du store alpakka and casted on. Selbuvotter is very pretty, but I am struggling with color-patterns. It is so hard not to pull the tread to tight.


I have done some progress on my Kidsilk project this weekend. Am I looking forward to wearing this? You bet I do! I love the colors and the yarn.
I have started spinning again. Have been thinking about it for a long time now. Rhonna over at Trenchwork was asking if someone would like to start up a spin-group here in Trondheim. Then spinning all of a sudden got very tempting. I thought I was the only one around here spinning yarn. I started out with some silk/merino fiber, but soon realized it was a bit too hard to start with. So I found some Ashland Bay Corindale in purple, blue, read and white. The colors was not very nice in the wool-tops, but it sure looked nice when spun and plied. It is most certainly not a balanced yarn, but it was not too bad. It has been a while since last time, and I feel like I got better pretty fast.


So today I did a bit more. This time I grabbed the silk/merino again. It sure is harder, but I think I managed pretty well. Will need to spin another bobbin before I make a 2 ply.

Removing stitches gives me the right to buy more yarn!

Okey, so it was not really that bad, but it is a pretty good excuse for shopping!
The doctor lost track of how many stitches she removed. Something around 12. For the most part I did not feel a thing, that is...there was 2 or three stitches that was kind of hard to remove. But even then it was a small amount of pain. What I did not like very much was the part where they was "vacuuming" inside my ear. It did not hurt, but it makes me very uncomfortable dizzy and the sound inside my ear is uncomfortable. I will have to go back in two days to do some more of this, unfortunately. Oh, well....I can look at the bright side - then I have another good reason for some more shopping :-) I will need more Calorimetries or something similar in the far future to cover up the part that is shaved. It looks very strange, and I don't feel like shaving off the rest!

And here is a picture from my very short shopping-trip today. I was rather dizzy, so I just did the fast yarn purchase and then some ear drops at the pharmacy.

To skeins of 100% baby Llama - Miski from Mirasol. Two different purple shades. Quite expensive, but lovely. It is 75 grams/82 yards on 50 grams and knits on 5 mm (US 8) that will give 18 sts and 24 rows. At least that is what the label says. Then there was 1 skein of Fabel sock yarn from Drops design in blue, green and purple. And I am thinking of mixing this with the one skein of Alpaca silk in purple.

I also bought some more knitting needles in size 4.5 mm. That is a size I use a lot and because I have multiple projects going on I need more than one....I think I have 4 circular now. But the double pointed sock needles are actually my first in this size. I have 4 mm and 5 mm, but not 4.5 mm.

The sock needles will be needed soon, for my latest cast-on. My dear one has told me that he would like to have a new hat for the winter. So he has kind of told me how he want it to be. So this is a pretty simple design. 2x2-ribbing. I finaly desided to give up my Clapotis and ripped it. So now I am using this yarn together with Alpaca silk. The solid blue together with the variegated blue looks very nice.