eight hands and four brains would be nice

Don't look at me like that. I've been sick with a horrible cold that refused to leave for two weeks. I've been busy working. Not only am I responsible for daily tasks at the library, I also am a crucial part of thinking up strategies and composing posts for their facebook page, so much of my urge to express myself has found a new channel (oh those poor people).

Yes, I'm at work here. It's a picture from one of my facebook campaigns.

And when I'm not at work, I go and play. Sometimes at the movies. Sometimes I just stay at home and have fun talks with my flatmates. Sometimes I go to other people's libraries.

Reading comics at an early Halloween night at a friend's library in another part of Austria.

And when I'm not playing at other people's libraries, I enjoy the return of my cooking and baking mojo (yes, there might be a recipe post coming up). I've acquired some essential ingredients for making Japanese food and have been successful in making not only edible, but actually pretty delicious lunchboxes (or bento) when I can be bothered to get up early.

Onigiri!

My first proper bento - isn't it awesome?

And after all that, there's still my PhD (got my first book for that), my broken camera, the grey weather resulting in lack of light and I had to wait for an opportunity to go yarn shopping to continue my projects.

Raspberry Broadside is one of those projects. I started out not knowing whether I'd add a second skein, but since the yardage of the Zitron Unisono is about a hundred meters shorter than your average sock yarn, I came to the conclusion that I simply had to add another skein. So I had to wait until I could go yarn shopping. But the wait was well worth it, since now I can use this as my commuting knitting again. It's not like I have a very long commute, but every minute I can spend on knitting counts!

Another project that needed a second skein of yarn is my Stripester. I haven't even started it properly yet, because the blue yarn gave me such a tough time and I didn't know what it wanted to be. I had been bitten by the long stretchy sideways triangle scarf bug and I couldn't stop. But Lace wasn't the answer for this one.

Then I thought it could be a Destroyed Cowl, but I just wasn't feeling it. For the Destroyed Cowl, I had to do a provisional cast-on, which I did in some black merino yarn that I had left lying around and looking at it, I noticed what a striking combination the black and blue made. So - a long, stretchy, striped sideways triangle scarf it would be. And yet I had to wait to go buy the black yarn and now that I have it, I need to finish my other scarves first.

But I couldn't *not* knit while waiting for yarn. And while playing around with the yarn that would become Raspberry Broadside, I hit upon a pattern I had always dreamed of. I think you might have noticed my great love of flowers, particularly roses. And maybe you've also picked up on my obsession with dark (or dusky) pink. And then, I really like lace.

I've had a beautiful dark, dusky pink lace yarn since last summer, but other than knowing I wanted to do something with lace and roses with it, I had no clue. I had collected a couple of rose-inspired lace patterns, among them the Travelling Roses scarf and so I simply started knitting a shallow sideways triangle scarf with that lace pattern. The Zitron Unisono wanted to be Raspberry broadside, but the pattern would be perfect for my pink lace yarn. I started knitting and currently it looks like this:

Of course it's called Rose Brocade. Once the main body is done, I will add a gentle ruffle. It will be gorgeous, I'm sure.

I've done something else as well. I started blocking some things. Like ... this:

My Cool Copycat shawlette from last winter - apparently many of my knitted things need at least a year to mature before they get blocked and worn. I've been wearing it a lot recently and even got a compliment on it yesterday. Maybe that will motivate me to block some more of my things ... but recently I've been wondering how many more cowls, scarves, shawlettes and shawls I really need. Maybe I should give away those I never wear or unravel them if I still want to use the yarn ...


Something else that got blocked was my beautiful bunny dragon scarf. Now I just need some backing and then some time to sew it together ... (and you can catch a glimpse of my terrible chaos here).


















Finally as an end to this incredibly long post a little teaser. After all the lovely lace and ruffles, this project will go into a much punkier direction:

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!

a true friend

The spring + summer knitty of 2011 had not one, not two, but actually three patterns for cardigans that I actually want to knit! When I see great patterns I usually put them in my ravelry queue and then they stay there and wait, sometimes for years. But when I saw Amiga, Corinne and Daedalus, I just knew I had to have all three. Especially since I have lots of yarn for Amiga, given to me by a friend of my mother's.

I started my Amiga in basic black. I cast on the numbers for the mediums size and it knit up rather quickly. Soon I came to the row where the arms are split from the body. And that is when I realized that as wonderful as that cardigan is, the original garment was knit in a "small" size. Then the numbers were scaled up mathematically and suddenly my medium cardigan had huge armholes. Now in retrospect, it might have been my gauge. I hardly ever check gauge because I dislike knitting gauge swatches (yeah, yeah, I know) and I probably knit a little loosely with this yarn.

So I grew very, very annoyed. It's always easier to blame someone else - like oh say, the designer (well, I'm still annoyed with the giant sleeves, I gotta tell you that). I ripped back a few rows to get back to the numbers for a small size, put the arms on hold and increased a few stitches under the arms to make space for my boobs. At that moment I still hated the whole garment. Of course, since I didn't rip back to the beginning, the back was much broader than intended (yes, I could have probably omitted those increases under the arms) and anyway, it was somehow loose and frumpy and annoying!

But my mother thought it was great. And since my mother likes her jackets on the looser side and has a birthday in July, well ... hello birthday present (plus a mug - my mother doesn't read this blog so I can say this). So I knit on. And on and on and after a very short while - it really knits up quickly - the thing was long enough. I picked up the stitches for the collar and once that was done, I started liking the jacket more. And more ... and more! I mean, apart from the loose fit, it is a great jacket. I did not, however, use Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind-off, because a) too much of a bother and b) a loose normal bind-off is better for this jacket, *I* think. (I always know better, check out the first panel in the third row.)

So I will be knitting this again - with the right numbers (small size) and a few adjustments. After all, I have the yarn for three more jackets. But since I don't need three Amiga jackets, I'm giving one of those yarn collections to a dear friend of mine who is just getting into knitting (she's an absolute crocheter), because Amiga is quick, simple and satisfying.

Right now I'm still on the arms. At first I knit them both at the same time might because that saves row-counting, but it's not as quick and convenient as knitting them one at a time. And my mother likes long sleeves, so I'm switching.

In other news: guess who got a haircut!

In the ongoing process of turning myself into the adult I always wanted to be which started last spring, this is a huge step forward. For the second time in my life I went to a professional hairdresser and now I have hair that is about 10 times more daring than I am. 

Lifelong learning. It's a bit scary, but fun!

Those two pictures were taken almost right after the cut, when I had about 20 5 different styling products in there. Today I washed my hair and only used a bit of curling spritz (tee-hee) and while it is still adorable, I can totally see why styling products are necessary now, since my soft curls will grow fuzzier and frizzier the longer the day is. So tomorrow - new wash, new experiment (styling foam).

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.