A Latvian Inspired Cowl

After my Fair Isle workshop on the 15th of January, I couldn't just put it aside and I had to start a project straight away, so I choose some Lopo Xavier yarn I had lying around in a petrol blue and light grey and having found a baby blanket that inspired me to design this cowl. I used the charts used in the blanket, but modified them to fit the cowl and changed this a bit. This is the result so far. I've used 100g of the petrol blue yarn already and almost through 100g of the light grey, and I still haven't finished yet. I'll be starting a new ball of petrol blue, but I think I can manage with the remaining light grey yarn I have left over.

Christmas Knitting

I've been busy doing Christmas Knitting. That's to say I've been busy knitting present to give at Christmas. These are all the same pattern, but using a variegated yarn (Carina bought at Wibra in Den Haag and Leidschendam, Holland), they get a different look. The two above were from one ball of Carina, leaving me with about 10g left over, these two are currently blocking. The one below is the first one of two as well, the second one is about halfway done. These mini shawls/kerchiefs are super easy to make and you can find the pattern here, it's a free Ravelry download. I manage to average about 4 hours per kerchief. I hope the recipients will like them.

Toe-Up Socks

This is the first ever toe-up sock pattern I tried (freebie from internet - http://wendyjohnson.net/blog - generic toe-up pattern). I knit the first up in an afternoon and the matching pair in two evenings. I made them from some wool I'd bought in a flea market/yard sale years ago in Holland (I believe it was at a old people's home in Leiden), and it was a whole box full of this yarn in several colours. Each "ball" is approximately 100g and it was enough for me to make 1 pair of socks and still have some left over. I used Pony size 3mm Bamboo needles which were lovely to use. My mum was the lucky recipient of these socks as she had a hysterectomy at the beginning of March and was stuck at the hospital for 4 days. She didn't use them in the hospital though because she didn't want to get them dirty, however, she's been using them ever since she's been home, and now of course I need to make a lot more. I offered to make some for my gran, but she said she had so many socks still to be used at home that it really wasn't worth it. My aunt, however, didn't have any such problems in saying that yes she definitely wants a pair also. However much I loved knitting these though, I really wanted to try knitting a sock that didn't come out looking deformed like my Kuogi sock, and so I decided to go to a workshop at a LNS (but more on that in another post). Well I'll be at the farm again this weekend and I'll be bringing some more of this yarn home with me to start on knitting some more socks.

Kuogi Socks - Finished

I've heard all sorts of comments about how disproportionate this sock looks, but I guarantee you, it fits perfectly. I'm just finishing off the second sock, just the toe decreases to go and then I'll try take a photo of the socks on my feet so you can see that they do really fit perfectly well.

Actually despite the looks, I've already had requests from my aunt and mum to make them some, although they think that it's a lot of work, actually I averaged 1 week for the first sock, and am doing the same for the second sock. So for a pair of socks, I guess it's just two weeks total.

Well I'm off for a long weekend (4 whole days) at my parents farm. It's carnaval on Tuesday next week, and we've closed the office on monday, so no getting up early for 4 days, woohooo. Also I get a lot of time to finish off the second sock, project 128 and I've already started knitting the Bernat Mystery Afghan KAL (freebie on the bernat blog - www.bernat.com/blog), so I'll be working on that and I'll have some progress shots for you next week.

Have a great weekend everyone

Sock Knitting

I really should be focusing on finishing my cross stitch project no. 128 (shown in my previous post), but when browsing the web yesterday I came across a simple sock pattern on Andrea Wong's blog (www.andreawongknits.com then follow the link to the blog at the bottom of the page). Seeing as I've been meaning to try knitting socks for some time now, I decides that this was as good a time as any. While in Australia I bought Patons Big Baby 4ply yarn (60% acrylic, 40% nylon 100g/420m) in this variegated color (picture above) which according to the label is Color 3910 dye lot 763786. It's really thin yarn and even though the label says to use 3.25mm needles I don't have any double pointed needles in that size, so I decided to go for 2mm needles instead. I'm still on the ribbing, but I've decided to only do 3 inches of ribbing as I prefer short socks, but if these work out fine, I might just make another pair where the leg part is longer all the way up to my knees. Anyway, the photo below shows the ribbing at about 1.75 inches which is where I got to yesterday. During my lunch hours I managed to add another inch or so of knitting in between beeing interrupted every now and then. So tonight I'm going to finish the ribbing part and carry on with the pattern. Will show updates shortly.

Ribbit by Spud and Chloe

This is RIBBIT designed by Susan from Spud and Chloe (http://www.spudandchloe.com/). I came across this website while I was vacationing in Australia, but at the time I didn't have the patience to sit behind the computer for too long as it was such nice weather outside. Well this past weekend after doing some regular housework which really needed to be done, I decided to visit the blog and start at the beginning. Well there's plenty of patterns I've added to my knitting list and having just finished the two Best Friends Cats for the two little boys, and not wanting to start on my cross stitch project (I'm starting that as soon as I finish writing here), I decided to try this little fellow out. Of course I didn't have the suggested yarn, but I went through my stash and found some left over green, black and red from a jacket I knit for my cousin two years ago (he wanted a Jamaican flag on it), I just started it. I wasn't sure I had enough, but low and behold I had plenty, because I still have plenty left over. So anyway,the only things I changed were that I didn't add the tennis ball for the body (didn't have one at hand), and I didn't cast off where I was supposed to for the body, but just continued on with the head which worked out quite nicely. The hands and feet were a bit trickier, but after I got the hang of the first one, it was clear sailing the rest of the way. The arms and legs are done in I-Cord, but I'd never done that, but I liked it so much that I even made Ribbit a little red I-Cord scarf. I'm not sure which Spud and Chloe project I'm going to make next, it could be the turkey, rabbit, elf, hats one of the many other projects. They're regularly adding new posts and patterns, so if you're a knitting fan and liked Ribbit here, definitely go check out their site. Actually I'm thinking I'm going to get a request as soon as a friend of mine sees this little guy, because she loves frogs.