Vorsichtige Wiederbelebung

10.000 Jahre später ...

Ich möchte wieder über mein Gestricktes schreiben. In letzter Zeit habe ich so viel entwickelt und ausprobiert und es steht noch so vieles auf dem Programm und manchmal habe ich das Bedürfnis es aufzuschreiben. Besonders nachdem ich das komplette Blog nochmals gelesen habe - es macht schon Spaß. meine eigene Strickgeschichte zu verfolgen.

Allerdings werde ich von heute an auf Deutsch schreiben - nicht, weil ich nicht mehr Englisch schreiben mag, aber die Zusammensetzung meiner Strickblase hat sich verändert und ich mag mehr Menschen den Zugang zu meinen Texten ermöglichen.

In letzter Zeit habe ich wieder ein paar Kinderdinge gestrickt, denn Besuch bei den Niblingen steht auf dem Programm und ich stricke auch gerne Kinderkleidung auf Vorrat. In einem anderen Post möchte ich über meine Lieblingskonstruktionen schreiben, heute soll es um ein besonderes Muster gehen.

Rechts seht ihr ein Bild von Glühwürmchen, einem der Pullunder, aus schwarzer und sehr bunter Wolle mit vielen verschiedenen Farben gestrickt. In der Mitte des Ausschnitts sind drei Knöpfe. Die Träger und der untere Rand sind bunt, in der Mitte wechseln sich dicke schwarze Streifen mit dünnen bunten Streifen ab. Die bunten Streifen sind kraus gestrickt, die schwarzen glatt.

Ich finde den Pullunder so sehr nett, aber als ich das Strickstück umdrehte, um die Enden zu vernähen, fluchte ich ein wenig, weil die Innenseite noch schöner war als die Außenseite! Sie sah nämlich so aus:

Auf der verkehrt gestrickten Seite ergibt sich durch die bunten Maschen auf den schwarzen ein interessantes Muster, wie kleine Bögen oder Reißverschlusszacken, die ineinander greifen. Genau dieser Reißverschlusseffekt interessierte mich. Ich habe ihn nämlich bereits in einem anderen Strickstück erfolgreich angewendet.

Nachdem ich aber den Pullunder nicht umkehren konnte und nicht neu stricken wollte, bleibt die schöne Innenseite erst mal innen. Dafür wollte ich dieses Muster auf ein Jäckchen anwenden.

Als Vorlage verwendete ich den Cubes Pullover aus der Deep Fall Knitty 2014 und nannte mein Jäckchen Gentle cuddle.

Die graubraune Wolle dafür habe ich schon ewig. Ich kann nicht mehr genau sagen, wann sie in meinen Wollvorrat (bzw. Stash) kam, aber definitiv vor 2009. Der Eintrag des Garns, Lana Grossa Cashtweed, wurde 2007 erstellt. Manche Garne liegen bei mir so lange, sie werden ja nicht schlecht. Manche warten auf das perfekte Projekt, manche auf eine Kontrastfarbe. Und für dieses Garn fand sich endlich den perfekten Kontrast in Form von Lana Grossa Royal Tweed in einem rötlichen Hellviolett.

Also habe ich gleich das neue Muster ausprobiert und musste traurig feststellen, dass die Farbkombination dafür absolut ungeeignet war. Bzw. wenn ich geplant hätte, einen subtilen, verschwommenen Farbeffekt zu erzeugen, wäre es perfekt gewesen. Aber ich wollte doch, dass der schöne Reißverschlusseffekt sichtbar wurde.

Tat er aber nicht. Stattdessen gefiel mir die glatte Seite viel, viel besser und das Kontrastgarn leuchtete viel mehr aus der graubraunen Wolle hervor. Nur musste ich jetzt alles bis auf den Halsansatz auftrennen, denn mein Perfektionismus verlangte, dass die Vorderseite des Anschlags zu sehen war und nicht die Rückseite, die bei den glatten Maschen so kleine Knubbel macht, wie ihr links sehen könnt.

Das Reißverschlussmuster eignet sich also am Besten für Garne mit hohem Kontrast, wie ihr rechts bei meiner Katzenfamilie - also der vordersten Katze - sehen könnt. Es entsteht, wenn ihr mit zwei Farben strickt und die Farbe in jeder Reihe abwechselt. Die vorderste Katze ist komplett in der Technik gestrickt, aus dunkelbrauner und wollweißer Wolle.

Zwar habe ich für die Katze diese Technik nicht angewendet, aber für rundgestrickte Projekte im Reißverschlussmuster eignet sich die Helix-Stricktechnik ausgezeichnet. Ich möchte das demnächst in einer Mütze ausprobieren.

the end of waiting

Oh jubilation! The time of lounging around on my couch and knitting baby clothes is at an end. *sniff* Goodbye anime! I guess I'll spend a little less time with you now, but I'll be so much happier.

Today I signed my contract to work at the Chamber of Worker's library for a year, starting this Thursday. I interned there last summer and loved it, so I am extremely happy to be back and to be able to mix things up there. I'll be partly responsible for their facebook feed, so it will get really interesting, I'm sure. And since I love bringing cakes to work, I'll be baking a lot more ... lucky colleagues!

But I said baby clothes in my last post, didn't I? Yes, sometimes I knit clothes for a non-specified child. No, not to give away. Or maybe yes, after I have stopped being capable of bearing children. But for now, some of the baby clothes I knit are for my own still non-existant children. (Note to self: good first step in that direction? Get a boyfriend.)

Most baby clothes for the Child of the Future happen like this: I go to my favorite yarn shop, see some yarn, note that the color combination is gorgeous and I'll have an idea of what to make. Sometimes I won't have an exact idea, but often I will. .And then I either start knitting right away or the yarn waits. And waits. And waits. Until I am struck with the need to knit something small but not too involved ...

Something not too involved? This little baby kimono? Oh ... whatever. I had the pink and black Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 for a while and wanted to do something with it ... something cool. What's cooler than a kimono? I looked up some of my favorite flowers and a fun fairisle pattern in my hand-drawn book of patterns where I keep everything I copy from somewhere else (occasionally, I design my own patterns, too).

For the actual kimono pattern, I used the Latte Macchiato pattern I found on Ravelry. I called mine Pink Punk but maybe Fluorescent Sakura would have been good, too. My camera can't handle this shade of pink ...

The back features this lovely rose you can hardly see and on each shoulder there's a little flower as well. It is very punky, but now there's thousands of ends to weave in, blocking and all that to do. I guess I'll institute a knitting morning in my work week. I can do this because I'll be working from noon to 8pm.

This is another creation for the Child of the Future. This time I thought up my own pattern and constructed this very randomly. I used a provisional cast-on and knit the fairisle band. Then I undid the cast-on and knit the orange part at the bottom.

After that, I started on the top part but unraveled it about four times to get the neck placement right, I wasn't sure whether to have more buttons on one shoulder to have more space for the head, I noticed I had enough yarn to make the sleeves a little longer and so I kept knitting and unraveling until I was quite annoyed with myself. In the end, I decided to only allow one button in the neck band and made the whole neck opening larger than before.

This one is called Arrow, knit in Lana Grossa Bingo and I must say, I am very happy with it. I just wish I could try it on an actual human child to see how it fits.

I do have a lot of Lana Grossa Bingo slotted for children's clothing. There's some purple and green waiting for something stripey, some pea green waiting for a pea jacket ... but this dark blue and light blue combination (inspired, I must add, by my Classic Baby Shirt, which I also knit for the Child of the Future) made it to the knitting process this time. It's actually pretty big, 80 stitches, if I recall correctly, maybe even 88. And I still have a bit of yarn left over, so I could have made it bigger.

But then I couldn't have added this incredibly twee collar. Yes, this piece of knitwear is called Sailor. Sue me for crimes against ... commonsense taste (or whatever the opposite of twee is called - the internets suggest unrefined, but that isn't correct, really), but I had to make this when I noticed that I really had lots of yarn left over.

A few more details: the front straps will be buttoned to the back as soon as I have proper buttons (must find something nautical). On the left, you can see some of the traveling jogless stripes in the round as taken from the excellent TECHknitting blog (link goes directly to the post on jogless stripes).

 

Finally I made this little number for the baby girl of an ex-boyfriend, but I'm starting to fear that she won't be able to fit in it anymore.

The Spirit of Lutin - the yarn was supposed to be a fairy doll - was made to fit a number of sizes, but I probably didn't make it wide enough.

After all, the main thing that makes all my baby knitting a somewhat risky investment is that I have no access to a real live child I could force to dress in the things I make. I bet if I ever have children they'll hate me for making them wear handknits all the time. Or they will always be the right size for all these pieces when it's summer ...



And with this the baby clothing streak is over for now. I've started two scarves for myself ... but the camera is still broken, because while I did buy superglue, I lost the piece of plastic I was supposed to reattach to the camera. Maybe I'll find it. Until then, a piece of tape will have to suffice. Let's see if they'll let me knit during work - maybe in the evening hours!

oh september

Summer is over here in Austria, fall is beginning. The sky is a different blue, the air has a different quality, the tree leaves are already changing and the delicious fall foods and drinks are making their appearance: grape juice that is just starting to ferment (sweet and alcoholic) and certain flavors of icecream you don't get in summer like toffee and peanut. Although I will be missing the grapefruit icecream only available in summer, I definitely welcome the arrival of cooler weather.

Why no posts? Aw, the old up up down down game. I'm still looking for a job, which depresses me. And I broke the hook that closes the battery door on my camera by being stupid (although, who makes such an important hook out of plastic?) and need some superglue to fix it or at least attempt to fix it. It's still occasionally too hot to knit and it's definitely too hot to work on anything big, which is why I've been knitting baby clothes.

Yes, it is deliberately cutesy. Twee, even. Just wait until I add the flowers.

I only have a picture of Striped Gelato, though, the other ones need to wait for the superglue. Once again I was inspired by the random combination of colors in the sales bin at my favorite yarn shop. The yarn is Gedifra Mayra, which is soft and washable.

As for the construction, Striped Gelato is a top-down dress that should also work as a top later on. The straps are buttoned at the back, with lots of button holes to adjust for growth. The sides will be taken in to form pleats, but can be let out later. It's just waiting for a few more crochet flowers, but for that I'd have to clean up my couch to find the yarn leftovers ... so it will take a while. I also haven't quite decided whether I want to give it away or not.

The legwarmer trend is also continuing. The first two pairs of legwarmers I made from rather scratchy sock yarn (not that I mind), so I made this pair out of a ball of Lana Grossa Pashmina that was leading a rather sad neglected life on my couch (which, as can be seen above, is a treasure trove of yarn, paper and allllll kinds of things). I don't care how unflattering they are on my ankles, I just love how cute they are, all light blue and flower-patterned. Of course they're called Forgetmenot.

But I wanted to use up all of that nice light blue yarn. I don't like wearing light blue shirts anymore, because they make me look like such a good girl, but I love this shade of light blue. So, inspired by a crafty site and the prevalence of bows in fashion lately, I came up with an idea.

That would be the Forgetmeknot. I want to try a broader version in different yarn, too, but this had to suffice because I was running out of yarn and had to knit it a couple of times to get it right. So far, it's too warm to wear it, but I quite like it.

So I guess I better get some superglue next week ... there are so many things I've made that I'd like to show you, after all.

not as much fun as I wanted it to be

So, my exam is over. I am a bona fide historian with an MA degree (actually the direct translation would be Master of Philosophy). The exam itself wasn't very spectacular, which is why it's strange that the university is keeping the actual details of what happens in the exam a secret. Or so it seems. They finally have webpages where they tell you what forms to use and what formats your thesis should have and a hundred other things, but nothing about the actual exam. Anyway, it was even fun and afterwards I felt extremely happy.

Everything seemed to be going well. My room was clean and things were stored away better than when I first moved in. My guests arrived and helped me carry my 10 000 bags over to my mother's flat where I'll be staying until next Thursday or so while they're using my little shoebox as a base. We had sparkling wine and roasted vegetables and all kinds of delicious things and I went to sleep happy about my new status.

The next morning, I wondered whether my thesis had been entered into the university library catalogue yet. And it has! It's even findable in two of the important meta-catalogues. I took a screenshot as a souvenir.

Then I read the news that there had been a huge earthquake and tsunami in Japan and started following the news updates. I only watched one live report and had to turn it off after a couple of minutes. It was terrible and terrifying and I'm still watching the developments around the Fukushima nuclear plant and hope they'll be able to get the situation under control.

Why care about Japan? I'm an absolute nerd about anime (Japanese animated films and television series) and manga (Japanese comics) and I admire and appreciate many aspects of Japanese culture, even if I can't understand or empathize with all of them. And now that country that I am so interested in is in terrible trouble and I can't do very much except watch in horror.

So, not the best day. Then this morning I finally read the book that has been waiting for me for a month or so, about the last days of the Second World War in Berlin and the time immediately afterwards from the perspective of a twelve-year-old girl and that has also contributed to a rather depressive mood.

Then I fled. Outside, the sun was shining, the wind was warm and I had to buy catfood anyway. I went by my favorite silversmith's to see if she was already working and to see if maybe she had her baby son with her - three and a half months old now. I had dropped off a pair of knitted socks in February and wanted to see if she had received them. She had! And he was wearing them and she was really happy with them, since knitted socks were an item on one of the "must have" lists and she knew noone who could knit socks!

The yarn is Lang Jawoll Cotton Jacquard.

Anyway, that cheered me up immensively and a little detour through the Museumsquartier cheered me up even more. I've also found a new song to learn that has consoled me a little - a German folk song from the 16th century that Johannes Brahms did a litte work on. It's an incredibly gentle and romantic song from the perspective of a man waking his beloved in the morning and the melody is lovely as well.

So it's been ups and downs. Maybe the best time to finish my Herzblut shawl, which is eating yarn like a very hungry moth! But I'm getting closer and closer to the final row and can't wait to see it blocked and in all its glory. So much for now - the next post will be about my crazy camera settings featuring psychedelic pictures of knitted fabric.

sneaky March - musings on baby shirts

The sun is shining right in my window, so I can't watch anime - right now I'm on the Deathnote bandwagon and it's a little disappointing. I guess if you haven't seen much anime, this might strike you as the awesomest anime ever, but it's rather plotholey, shark-jumpey and too shounen (male-targeted) by half. Interesting that they've made the evil guy so good-looking and the good guy so strangely bird-like. Also, the one smart female character is treated like shit by her fiance and is killed off in one episode right at the beginning, while the annoying fanservice female character stays on and on and on ... gah. It is still an interesting thought experiment, though, which is always the best thing about anime.

Ok, enough of that. On to knitting. Lately, I've kind of been inspired to knit a few more baby things. I think the intended recipient must have been born already, I'm just waiting for the email. I wanted to use up some of the cotton yarn I had bought and so at first, I thought about making a knitted dress with large block stripes in turquoise and red, but it didn't look so hot (different yarns) and it would have fit a five-year-old.

I've actually already made a baby shirt a while ago, in summer 2008, as part of a set of playclothes, to try and use up cotton yarn leftovers (Lana Grossa Toccata, to be precise). I never got around to the pants, though. I had to reknit this because I wasn't careful enough about carrying the yarn between the stripes and there were large gaps and it looked awful. So, reknitting. And reknitting. And reknitting. I hate reknitting with cotton yarn. But I really love these colors together:

This was knit from the top down, following the construction I had put to use on an unfinished project that needs a lot of rethinking. I decided to end it with a rolled brim, because nothing else looked good. Consequently, I've been using the rolled brim in all my other baby shirts, too.

Leftovers can provide a lot of inspiration. As I repeatedly mentioned when writing about the Snow Bunny, I love the Lana Grossa Latte yarn - they also make rather a nice blue. So when I ended up with over half (too lazy to measure) a ball of the white Latte, I decided to buy a ball of blue latte and give in to this year's fashion. Yes, the French blue and white stripes have returned in force (from doing a turn in the 80s and again in the mid-90s). I love that look. Can't wear it, but I love it. So, why not make small children wear it, they can't defend themselves and look cute in it. (Muahahaha). I give you the Classic Baby Shirt. Done bottom-up, because ... no reason. I love it, it's soft and beautiful.

After this, I was on a roll. Having decided to abandon the block stripes, I thought about how little texture I had been using for the baby clothes I had made so far (with a few exceptions, but still) and how little lace! That had to be remedied. I wanted some sort of smocking effect, but not too much. And something lacy and textured. Well, one of those stitches that is really, really easy and never leaves my brain is the Trinity Stitch. Makes little cluster balls that look like berries.

I gave it the rather stark name of One Texture, I guess a cuter name would be Summer Raspberry, but let's not get too twee here. The yarn is Lana Grossa Bingo and it has been in my stash for a long time, so yay! More space for new yarn. I wanted to do a different top construction and ended up with this kimono-like thing - I just hope it actually fits. As usual, worries about arm and head size abounded, since I don't actually have a real life baby to put this on.

From One Texture to Texture Two (aka Pie Crust Shirt or something). This time, I chose the Classic Baby Shirt construction again, but decided to do a twisted stitch rib on the straps so they wouldn't grow so much. The yarn is Lana Grossa Linea Pura Organico, which has plenty of beautiful colors. Originally it should have been a summer hat - yeah, just what a baby needs, a heavy cotton summer hat. Design fail.

I think I could go on and on knitting baby shirts. But actually, I've gone back to hats, since I decided to make a few more things that can be used immediately. It's rather boring having to wait to use all the handknitted stuff, no? A bit of instant gratification never hurt. So, because there must be some cutesy things, here's a cutesy Litte Flower Hat, knit using Lana Grossa Linea Pura Flora.

And that's it. Knitting a slightly larger hat with a bit of a lace pattern in the pink Flora and watching Deathnote. Maybe to get in the mood for the next baby thing (not for the same baby), which involves hot pink and black yarn and skulls ...

spring has sprung

Only a day after complaining about the lousy weather it turned awesomely sunny. And even with a few grey days in between, it has stayed sunny. Spring is in the air and I'm torn between wanting to knit more mittens and abandoning all winter projects. Looking at my Ravelry projects, I thought I had more projects that had to do with spring - apparently not! And not all of them are in spring colors either. But I'll introduce them here, anyway.

The oldest project is the Spring Hat for little girls, a pattern of my own design.The yarn is Jaeger Matchmaker, a mercerized cotton yarn. Sometimes I just get the urge to knit something girly, even if I do favour gender-neutral children's clothing (or actually boy clothing because I like the colors better). I do love adding just a bit of ornamentation to an otherwise plain item so that the yarn can really shine, but is accentuated by the pattern. So that's what I did here.

 

Next up is a favorite pair of fingerless gloves, the Spring Flirt gloves, also my own design, the cable pattern is from the Vogue Stitionary 2 book. These werde done in Lana Grossa Furetto and I love their color combination. Sadly, the yarn has been discontinued. I love these especially because compared to other mittens and fingerless gloves I have made, they're pretty short, so they're useful if I wear a jacket or shirt with especially long sleeves.

Then there's the little Spring Bracelet from when I was doing a spot of beaded knitting. It's a modification of Knitty's Maryella design. I've since given up knitting beaded bracelets, because there is too much sewing involved - those snaps are a pain! However, I do want to do more beaded knitting and explore its possibilities ... some day.

The penultimate project (yes! I've finally used this word!) is the Spring Blanket - also my own design. It doesn't have a dedicated owner yet (more about that when I run out of material again) and so I use it to keep my legs warm on my couch in the morning. I used Lana Grossa New Cotton for this and recycled the white and green from a scarf I knit back in ... who knows when, at the beginning of the knitting obsession. I do love it very much, but it isn't blocked yet, though, so the squares still are as sloppy as they look her.

Waiting for Spring is the last project with "spring" in the name - these gloves are currently undergoing a redesign. I wanted stripes and zigzag, but the zigzag thing is seriously messing up my thumb construction and I don't want to bother anymore. Plain stripes it will be! which involves unravelling everything I've done so far, which does kinda suck. But if the finished product isn't nice, then what's the point.

Here you can see the inspiration from the baby cap put to use! And there's sunlight as proof. Dang zigzags ... I'm not completely convinced that I should undo everything yet.

falling in love with short rows

For a long time, I've successfully managed to avoid short rows. If they were in a pattern, I clung tightly to that pattern and hated how they looked. I understood the principle of the short rows and had used them in freeform crochet without problems, but in knitting, I didn't really know what to do with them.

Looking for a way to make short rows look nicer, I read about Japanese short rows done with pins, but found that to be kind of material intensive, a big minus for me, since I like to knit with as few accessories as possible. Using accessories like cable needles, pins or stitch markers, and doing things like knitting stuff in pieces and seaming them up later takes a lot longer than making stitch markers out of left-over yarn on the fly, cabling without cable needles and knitting seamlessly whenever possible.

Still, I wanted to learn how to deal with short rows since I hated being afraid of them. With all this baby knitting, I found the perfect opportunity to get over my fears: the Aviatrix baby hat by Justine Turner. I love the look of it and just had to make it for my friend's baby. But how? How could I get over the short rows?

Solution: the internets. TECHknitting is an excellent blog with lots of how-tos, tricks and tips and really clear explanations and pictures and there I came across the method that cured me. At the end of this article on short row methods is my new method of choice: Japanese short rows done with yarnovers and slipped stitches, no pins, no wraps, just knitting. Once you get used to slipping the first stitch, everything becomes a cinch!

Now I can proudly present my two Aviatrix baby hats. The first one was modded a little, according to the instructions of a fellow Raveler, but with the second one, I stuck to the pattern. Funnily, the hats turned out roughly the same size. I just hope the straps aren't too short or too long. They were both made using Lana Grossa Superlana, which is rougher and not as tightly plied as the Cool Wool 2000, but soft and durable all the same (also, cheaper and the right weight for these hats).

Yes, I had gotten over my short row anxiety. Now how to put the new knowledge into practice? Why, by modifying a pattern, of course! Enter my love of pixie caps. I bought the first Knitty book only because there was a pixie cap in it. It turned out to be not very cute, even though I travelled to the US to get the exact yarn specified (ok, there were other reasons for travelling there, as well). But if I can't wear them, I know who can - babies.

 
Yes, babies can wear pixie caps. And I found the perfect pattern: the Vintage Pixie Cap by Hadley Fierlinger. To make the pointy end more pointy, stitches are bound off at the beginning of rows, which always leads to ugly stepped edges and ugly seams. I used Japanese short rows and could do a comfortable three-needle-bind off in the end, saving myself from having to do a seam. Jubilation! I used Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 yet again, since it's superwash, supersoft and superdurable.

The last baby hat I knit doesn't have short rows. But the Norwegian Sweet Baby Hat by Gro is cute all the same. I picked up a ball of dark blue-green Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 (what else, by now), but when the time came to cast on, I was a little split. It's lovely yarn, slightly heathered, but the color was maybe somewhat austere for a baby that wasn't mine. After much wrangling with how many stitches to cast on (gosh, is it ever hard to settle on a size when there aren't any babies around you that you can test things on), I decided to add a little more color.

I had recently finished a headband for my mother (no picture yet), because the first one I made for her got stolen. Looking at the leftovers, I discovered that the color suited my dark green-blue perfectly - and since the pattern called for stripes, I put the yarns together and got something much more beautiful than if I had used either yarn on its own.

In fact, I love this color combination so much that I'm going to make myself some fingerless gloves with the same yarn and a zigzag pattern. At first I thought about making the same baby hat and saving it for my own future babies (yes, I am a little crazy), but in this case, rational thought (and selfishness) won.

So that's it on baby hats. I have a few more baby items in my queue, but my baby knitting elan is petering out. After all, I have to weave in all the ends on all the things I already made, there are seams to sew, there's blocking and finally sending everything off. In the meantime I'll be working on the 200th project I recorded on Ravelry - and it will benefit heavily from my short row craze.

there's no end in sight

I have amazing projects in my (Ravelry) queue.

There's these, this, this one, this, and finally, this. I have the yarn and needles and pattern for every project. I have had the yarn for some of those projects for a long time. I've even swatched for some of those projects. But am I making any of these? No.

My main projects (those I'm supposed to be working on ... besides the thesis) are all for other people. There's the Tachikoma for my brother that requires undivided attention (as crochet always does)((Rav link), there's the headband for my mother (now finished), because the other one I knit got stolen - also needs almost undivided attention or at least a movie I know by heart and then there's the second one of the Aviatrix baby hats, just in case the first one doesn't fit. There are fifteen more baby things on my queue. Some of those won't be knit, others will be knit multiple times.

But I just want to knit this one again:

This is the Little Luxury Kimono, Rav link here. I love it. It can be made completely seamlessly, if you don't count kitchenering the shoulder seams (and I don't). You start at the bottom and oh, how many patterns I want to try out to make the bottom look all obi-like. For this one, I used one of my favorites, double moss stich aka broken rib stitch. Then you could use a cable or other cast-on for the ties, but I didn't because ... well, next time. Don't forget to make a hole for one tie to go through. Then separate the whole thing for the armholes, finish it, kitchener the shoulders and pick up stitches for the sleeves. Reverse the sleeve directions and ta-daa! Seamless kimono!

The yarn for this sweater is Lana Grossa Bingo, 100% merino and my favorite bulky workhorse yarn. This yarn has also been in my possession for ages. When I bought it, I had just come across Knitty, so it was 2005 and in Knitty's 2005 spring edition there was this pattern: Cleaves. I wanted it. I coveted it. But I didn't knit it, because I was busy knitting other things. I still wanted it. Then Ravelry came around and convinced me not to knit it. So what to do with the lovely yarn? I made a Springtime Bandit, which looked like nice enough, but ... I didn't like it all that much (Rav link). So, I decided to frog it and reuse the yarn for my vicarious my friend's baby. And am I ever glad I did.

meandering through picture quality, knitting potato chips and a brief history of my stash

Today it's finally sunny here in Vienna after days and days of grey fog. I quickly whipped out my camera and took some pictures of my almost and recently finished objects on my window sill. Not the most charming background, at least compared to the balcony I used to have at my disposal, but it's the only place in my room that has enough light for my camera to not need flash - comparable to Turtlegirl's top of the washing machine. Except the sill only works when it's sunny.

Two projects belong in the "knitting potato chips" category. I had to stop myself after the second one (which still isn't done, because the jumble on my couch has swallowed the green yarn I need for the bottom edging), otherwise I think I'd knit about three, four, five ... six, seven, eight ... nine ten?

The potato chip pattern is the Telemark Pullover by Erika Flory. Top-down raglan, very easy, infinitely customizable, done in a flash and gender-neutral. The pattern is very clearly written, but as mentioned in many other project descriptions on Ravelry, once you're switching to knitting in the round, cut your yarn and add it or a new ball at the left underarm, otherwise the end of the garter stitch placket will not add up in the middle. If you don't care to finish the placket, no need to switch.

Here's the first one I made:

Made with my favorite workhorse yarn, Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000. There's a lot of history in this little sweater. The wine red yarn is from my first and to date last pair of real gloves with fingers, the apricot is a lonely ball of yarn I rescued from the sales pile a while (years) back and couldn't find a project for and the coral ... oh the coral.

The coral used to be piggy pink. Yes, really. I used it to make gloves for my mother (shown at right). I had lots of piggy pink yarn left over and it lived in my stash for many years until my friend told me of her pregnancy. I looked through the whole stash and picked out all the yarn I could use for baby knits. But this yarn was too piggy pink. Overdyeing it seemed like the best option, so I bought wine red dye and went to work. The yarn looked lovely coming out of the dye, a muted wine red. Then I put it in the fixing bath and it turned coral. I just hope it doesn't turn back into piggy pink in the first wash. It also lost weight - it's significantly thinner than the apricot and wine red yarn, which is the reason the sweater looks uneven.


The Telemark Pullover can also look like this:

More Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 leftovers, this time the green from my mother's gloves and some of the insanely bright variegated Cool Wool that I used for her wrist- and legwarmers eons ago when I got back into knitting (so, 2005). It is quite alright for kids, though, since it will make the child easy to spot. I intentionally left the arms short - this pullover turned out bigger than the other one, so it will fit longer, probably even into spring 2011, when it can be worn over a long-sleeved shirt.
And that's the end of the Telemark pullovers for me. No more! No more Telemark pullovers until all the rest of the baby knitting is done! Otherwise I'll never get to the baby socks.

what happens when Capricorns knit

Capricorns supposedly love to make plans far ahead of the actual event. At least I do. I like to plan ahead. I like to have a plan. Once I have a plan, I can deviate from that plan (although sometimes someone has to make me see that possibility first), but without a plan I feel very uncomfortable.

Now one of my closer friends is expecting her first baby. I love this friend dearly and she is also the first of all my friends to have a baby. So naturally, I have already produced a number of baby items and there are more on my list.

The baby is due at the beginning of March, so as soon as she's ready to actually be outside, it will be April and soon it will be too warm for knitted hats and cardigans. What's a Capricorn to do? Easy. Knit for the next winter.

I've knit exactly one cardigan for her to wear during the first three months, the ever-popular February Baby Sweater (pictured above). I didn't plan for it to be newborn size. It is a newborn size because I used sock yarn and followed the directions, except I made the neck bigger.  For every other cardigan or sweater I have knit I used the 12-month if not the 18-month size, because babies grow at different speeds and come in different sizes, so (for Capricorns) it's best to be prepared.

And yes, I am knitting all the hats in at least the 12-month size. But I am only knitting three of those to minimize the risk that they won't fit.