Win tickets to the Sewing festival!

Just a short interruption: If you go look at Tant Koftas blog, you can win two tickets to the Sewing Festival in Borås next weekend. Good luck!

/ Jenny

Ok knitters, I need your help!

I've been home from work for two days now with a really nasty cold, and my plan was that I at least would be able to knit. I've been almost too tired to do so though, and now that I've finally begun the first sleeve on my Austin Hoodie, I find myself in a conundrum. The pattern tells me to pick up stitches in the arm holes to make set-in sleeves, which is usually fine. This time however, it looks really bad! The picked up stitches look really wonky, and I think my edge stitches on the arm hole were way too loose. Tell me, doesn't this look weird?

So now I'm thinking that I might be wasting this amazing yarn on a cardigan that I won't be using due to wonky sleeves! Or do you think I can fix it afterwards, by blocking and doing some creative stitching on the inside? The yarn is 100 % alpaca from Chili Gredelin, so it is hand dyed and one of a kind. I just don't want it to go to waste! Tell me what you think I should do: Should I frog the whole thing and make something else with the yarn? Or should I keep trucking on?

This past weekend I went home to see my parents for a couple of days, which was nice and relaxing. My mother has bought a very yellow winter jacket, so she asked me if I could make her a yellow cowl to match it. My stash is sadly lacking in yellow yarn, so I had to do some yarn shopping. I settled on a skein of Malabrigo Worsted, in the colourway Cadmium:

It's 100 % Merino wool, and soft as butter, just like all other Malabrigo yarns I've felt so far. I'm going to make her a Garland Cowl, which I hope will look good. I'm also going to make her a pair of mittens, and for them to match I had to buy a skein of fingering yarn in yellow. I chose Cascade 220 Fingering, which is 100 % wool, in the colourway Goldenrod:

I think I'll pair it with some KnitPicks Palette yarn in black, and make some colourwork gloves. I'll have to ask her though if she prefers mittens or gloves!

I also got myself a skein of white sock yarn, Cascade Heritage (75 % wool/25 % nylon), in colourway Snow, that I'll use for colourwork socks eventually:

Not much to see with a skein of white yarn, but this yarn has perfect stitch definition!

Ok, now I think I'm going to go lie down for a bit, before it's actually time for bed. Please let    me know what you think I should do with the cardigan!

/ Jenny

I'm back baby!

Sometimes I love my husband just a little bit more than usual. Especially when he fixes my computer, so now I've got access to blogger again! Yay! So now you can comment again, if you want to.

Since I finished the huge Urdr shawl for my mother-in-law I've mostly knit on the Austin hoodie. It's coming along very nicely, I'm already done with all of the body and half-way through the first sleeve. Then it's just the second sleeve and the hood left, so I think this one might be finished pretty soon. I'm really looking forward to wearing it!

A while ago I got a very nice message on Ravelry from stitchdiva studio. They were asking if they could use my photo of my Silken Scabbard sweater on their pattern site! I feel very honoured, so I had to go take some new, outdoors photos (well, Thomas took the photos, I just posed).

They are now on the pattern website as well :)

/ Jenny

I'm having problems with blogger!

Right now, I can't access blogger from my computer, all I get is an "error 126" code. Apparently this has affected more people, but not enough to make the people at blogger do anything to help. I seem to be able to write from my iPad, but I can't see my reading list, and I can't see any comments. So if you want to reach me, please send me an email at jenny(.)m(.)clifford(@)gmail(.)com instead!

/Jenny


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

This time, I've got an excuse!

I've been postponing this post for more than a week, but I have a reason this time. My mother-in-law turned 60 this Monday, and I decided I wanted to give her the Urdr shawl as a present. So I wanted to wait with posting it here until she got it, so as not to spoil the surprise. All of the family, that is Thomas and his five brothers, plus me and two other girlfriends, went to the family cottage on Tjörn, a small island off the west coast of Sweden, on Saturday to celebrate. We had lots of cake, ate at a lovely seafood restaurant, and played some board games and just generally hung out. I think Annika (my MIL) was very pleased, and she seemed very happy with the shawl.

I haven't got very many photos of it, so this will have to do. I really, really like it, and I could barely part with it, but I love my MIL like a second mother so I know it will be loved and used! It is made with Drops Lace yarn, which is 30 % silk and 70 % alpaca, and it turned out very soft after blocking. I have 1.3 skeins left, which is about 800 m I think, so I'll definitely make another shawl for me from it. Eventually.

I finished Urdr on Monday the 20th, and on the 23d Annika and my brother-in-law Adam came here to visit. Adam has just gotten accepted to the university in Linköping, so he's staying with us until he can find his own place, and  Annika just drove him here to help him get a bit more stuff here. So I didn't get to block the shawl until last weekend, but that was plenty of time for it to dry. Adam has put his TV up right next to ours, so now him and Thomas are playing their xboxes in tandem! It's lucky I like video games, and I get a lot of knitting time this way too :)

Once the shawl was done I made a little headway on the Faramir socks as well, and I've finally gotten around to taking a photo of them! I really like this pattern, and the yarn isn't too bad either.

It's Opal sock yarn, which is a very generic, 25 % nylon/75 % wool sock yarn that I enjoy a lot. It really softens once washed, and now it comes in a lot of solid colours too, as well as all the crazy patterned colours that has been around for a while.

I got a bit tired of trying to make these insanely complicated cables at work though, especially since the heel involves cables on the purl side as well, so I decided to start something a bit easier. I chose the Austin Hoodie, and I'm making it it Chili Gredelin Anastasia yarn (100 % alpaca), in colourway Chartreuse.

I'm also using a little bit of KnitPicks Stroll yarn in Forest Heather to make it a little bit more interesting. I think it looks really good so far, I'd say I'm almost halfway done already! It has been a lot of plain stockinette, which suits me just fine right now.

Last weekend was spent mostly on the couch though, so then I wanted something a bit more challenging to knit on. I cast on for a new shawl, as I am in a lace period right now, and I chose the Omelet shawl. I'm making it in Färgkraft Softblend, a swedish yarn that is 100 % wool, in colourway Warm Green (or Varmgrön as it is really named as it is a swedish yarn). Apparently, I'm also in a green phase right now!

I really like this one too, and I definitely like the yarn! It isn't wondrously soft, but it feels like it will become so once it is washed. I like the stitch definition, and I can't wait to wear it! Although I have mostly knit on the cardigan lately, as it is so simple.

This past March I got a really bad case of the flu, and I was home sick for almost two weeks. I broke a muscle in my ribcage coughing, which meant I walked like an old lady for about a week after too. This meant that I couldn't get any exercise, and then at the end of March we moved to the new house and everything suddenly got very busy. My fitness studio where I work out just started their Autumn schedule, so I've finally taken up the exercise again! It feels really good to start that up again, hopefully it will give me a bit more energy too.

Oh, we also got Toki neutered a week ago, and it seems to have slowed him down a little bit. Hobbe is slowly, slowly starting to accept him, which we have been a bit worried about, but now they're playing together and washing each other. Yesterday they were even napping together! Hoppe still hisses at Toki when he gets to be a bit too much, but it happens less frequently. 

Ok, now I think you know what I've been up to. Now it's time for some dinner, and then I'm going to enjyoy a bit of alone-time as both Thomas and Adam are in Linköping tonight!

/ Jenny