Knitting-intense week!

This is a very intense knitting week! Yesterday Anna showed up for lunch, and we ended up hanging out from noon until 19.30 in the evening, just chattering away and knitting all day long. It was so much fun, and so relaxed to just hang out and actually get to know one another a bit better. We only met this september, I think, so we really haven't known each other for long. But it's funny how close we've gotten in this short time, we just have so much in common! Oh, and while she was here the mailman came by and handed me two package notes, so we took a walk to the post office to collect my two yarn packages. I got a small one from The Scandinavian Knitting Desigh shop in England, containing two more skeins of the Symfoni yarn from Lövegarn (100 % Merino wool), that I'm using for my top-down bolero/cardigan that has been hibernating for a while, waiting for the yarn to arrive.

I actually frogged the whole cardi last night, as I found several little things about it I didn't really like. The arm holes were too wide, the button holes were ugly, it was a bit too wide and so on. Iäm definitely going to remake it though, as I loved the design, and since the yarn is so chunky it knits up really fast.

The second package I got was from a woman I met on Ravelry, pixie-knitter, who sold me 18 skeins of Ivory-coloured KnitPicks's Main Line yarn (75 % cotton/25 % merino wool)! It was such a fun package, and I love the yarn. I'm going to use some of it to contrast my green Main Line that I got from Ulrika a while ago, and make some scandinavian-patterned knee-high stockings, a hat and gloves for myself. I just have to finish some of the projects I'm currently working on first... The best part is that this yarn was one of the few exceptions I was allowed to make from my yarn diet, as I thought it might be a bit hard to get as Knitpick's has discontinued this particular brand.

This afternoon there was a knitting café at Garnverket, and I tell you we were so many that we filled up the whole store! It was so much fun, and so cozy! The two hours we were there just flew by! I bought five more skeins of the Sarek yarn from Marks & Kattens, the yarn I'm using for the lettuce coat (as I've run out after finishing both arms, and it still hardly reaches my waist... And this doesn't count as breaking the diet either, as it was bought to finish an on-going project. The same goes for the Symfoni yarn!), and another GORGEOUS lace skein managed to follow me home. I present to you: Pälsblend yarn from Färgkraft:

It's a single-ply 100 % nordic wool that is hand-dyed in Sweden as well. The colour is called Trollskog (Troll forest), and it was just so gorgeous that I couldn't resist, yarn diet be damned! Eventually it will become a gorgeous shawl for me (I've heard that a girl can't have too many shawls, and seeing as I never wore a shawl until this summer I think I have some catching-up to do in the shawl department :)!

Oh, and this last Monday I cast on for my very gorgeous Candle Flame shawl that I told you about last time. I LOVE the Garnpaletten yarn, the subtle colour variation is so gorgeous, and the pattern is perfect for the yarn as well. I managed to find some tiny beads in my bead stash (yes I have a bead stash too) that were a perfect colour match, and although you can hardly see the beads in the photo, I'm telling you that they just hit the spot. As they are very tiny and perfectly colour-matched they are actually hardly visible at all, but just show up as sparkles. It looks so beautiful, if I say so myself.

And tomorrow we're going to have a sort of crafts-day with all the PhD students at our department, so I'll get to knit socially tomorrow too. We have had some evenings like this before, but it was a while ago now and it will be a lot of fun (especially as I'm now considered the expert knitter among us :), and probably a lot of eating as well. We're going to make scones and there will be lots of goody cheese and marmalades, which is perfect for a knitting evening! And on Friday there is a knitting café as well, so as I said: A lot of knitting this week. Maybe I'll even finish some projects this week (knock on wood)!

/ Jenny