Lots of random musings

Hi all! I hope you're having a great weekend! I've had a really relaxing weekend, with lots of fiber-related stuff happening. On Friday afternoon I first went to the post office to pick up my last Christmas book. I present to you: The Enchanted Sole, by Janel Laidman.

This is of course a sock book, and all the patterns are based on different fairytales and stories. I love it, and the socks are all so beautiful! I'll have to finish my Cookie A. socks soon, so I can cast on for another pair from this book :)

Then on Friday night I went to a knitting café, and although I didn't have time to stay very long, it was so nice to meet all the knitters and just chat for a while. I love having a knitting café on Fridays, it just feels like you get to wind down a bit after a whole work week.

And yesterday me, Ulrika and Lovisa went to Anna for a wine, cheese and knit-night. We had so much fun, and we ate so much cheese it was practically coming out of our ears :) And our Fairy Godmother Ulrika had brought some yarns that she was never going to use, and gave it to us other three to split. So I went home with two wonderful sock skeins:

Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock

Aren't they lovely! I'm thinking I should at least be able to make a small pair of socks from the Lorna's Laces skein, and the Cherry Tree Hill skein is 100 g so that should be enough for a bigger pair. Ulrika is just the sweetest thing, she very often bring us gifts like these :) We are just so grateful!

We've had a real cold spell here for a few days, but amazingly the sun has actually shown itself for a short time every day. So yesterday I went outside and got some photos of the Aeolian shawl in natural daylight! Finally! I just love this shawl so much, and I've almost finished the fingerless gloves as well. So next week I'll get to wear the set together.

On a more boring note: I'm not all that happy with the green cardigan after all. First of all I've made the collar a bit too wide, but if this waqs the only probem I think I could have lived with it. But it's just so soft that it's sort of shape-less, so when I wear it without buttoning it, it just flops around. And I think I've added too few buttons, as there are huge gaps between them when I close it. I got a tip that you can make a single chain of crochet on the inside of the button bands, to add some strenght to it, so I think I'll try that. Otherwise I think I might have to frog it. Again. Maybe I should just work from a pattern instead ? Here it is during blocking:

I'll get back to you and tell you what I decide, ok?

And finally: Tonight I close the competition, so tomorrow I'll draw a winner and tell you about it. Very exciting!

/ Jenny

New FO for you!

Yup, I FINALLY finished my green bolero last night! I started this one in October, and then ran out of yarn. I've been using Symfoni from Lövegarn, and it turned out that the colourway I was using was kind of hard to find (I had bought my four skeins at the Sewing festival real cheap, and couldn't find the store online). At last I found a british site, and ordered two more skeins. This was during the postal strike in Britain last fall, so it took about three weeks to arrive! And when I finally got it, I noticed that the bolero was looking a bit big. So I frogged it, and started over. And then Christmas got closer, and I found lots of other projects that were much more fun to work on. But now I've picked it up again, and yesterday I finished it!

As you can see, it turned out a cardigan instead of a bolero. I had enough yarn, and I like this longer version better. And I LOVE the buttons from KnitPick's! I think they work great with all the green. I'm really happy with this, as I haven't used any real pattern. I followed some of the directions from Tant Kofta's blog, but most of it is from my own head. I started by making a swatch, and counting st/inch. Then I measured around my neck to determine how many st to cast on, and then it was just a matter of kntting and increasing as I went. When I came down past the shoulders, I just put the st for the arms on waste yarn, and knitted the body as one piece. It turned out pretty good, if I may say so myself!

It isn't blocked yet, and the colour is very yellow-ish due to the crappy flash photo, but I'm going to block it tonight, and hopefully I can show you some daylight photos this weekend. It really sucks to be at work during all the light hours of the day, it's just impossible to get good photos! Not to mention the constant snow fall we've had for two days now, the sky is completely grey :(

I also started a new mini-project last night. Since I absolutely love the Chili Gredelin yarn that I used for my Aeolian, I absolutely didn't want to waste the 16 grams or so I have left. So I've decided to make another pair of fingerless mittens of this yarn too. So far I've done about 1 cm on the first, but I'm getting there! It should be quite a fast knit, even though I'm knitting on 2 mm needles :)

And can I tell you that I love all of you readers! It's so much fun to get so many comments, and I get so many great project ideas from all of your favourite finished objects. So much fun!

Oh, and the Adventures in Lace KAL now has an official Ravelry group! Kate set it up yesterday (I think), and we already have 35 members! This is going to be so much fun, I can't wait til February 1st! Maybe I should try to finish my Echo Flower shawl til then?

FInally I just want to say something about all the comments I've gotten on my decision to not see Avatar at the cinema (great comments, thank you so much for taking an interest!). I should have added that this little tiny town I live in (we have about 120 000 residents) only have one cinema, and it's not equipped for 3D. So even if I see Avatar there, I won't get the 3D version. Which SUCKS! So we're going to wait for it to come out on DVD. Thomas subscribes to a gamer magazine, and they had reviewed the Avatar game this month. It only got 4/10! So hopefully the movie is better!

Now I'll get back to work, I really have to finish these articles soon!

/ Jenny

100th post celebration!

Yes, you read right: This is my 100th post! It's taken me almost 7 months to reach this number, which I don't think is too long. And to celebrate this, we're of course going to have a competition! To enter the competition, you can go about it in three ways.

1) Write me a comment and tell me what your favourite finished object you made is, and why.

2) Become a follower to this blog (all of you who are already followers will get this entry for free :).

3) Write about this competition on your own blog, and then write in my comments, telling me that you've done so.

Those are the entry ways, and you can get three entries in total. On January 31st I will draw a random name from all of those who have entered, and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter. And now I bet you're all wondering what you can win, right? Well, I've been raving for a while now about a recent favourite sock-yarn of mine, Kunstgarn from Hjertegarn. So naturally I went out and bought a skein for you! Here it is, the grand prize:

The yarn is 75 % superwash wool/25 % nylon, and the skein is 100 g, which is 420 m. It should be enough for a reasonalby sized pair of socks, I used about half a skein to make my Ishbel shawl a while ago. I love the colouring of this yarn, and it's very nice to work with. So go ahead, bombard me with comments!

On my own knitting front, I've actually picked up the green bolero, and I'm trying to finish it soon. It's a pretty bulky yarn, and I'm working on 7 mm needles, so it's a pretty fast work. I finished the second sleeve yesterday, so now I'm working on the last stretch of the body. I decided to make it into more of a cardigan, so I added the last skein I had of this yarn too. It will probably reach my waist, or around there. I really like it so far, it's very soft and cuddly. And once I finish this one, I can cast on for something else!

On a more somber note, I guess you all know about the horrible situtation in Haiti, right? A lot of knitters around the globe have really stepped up, and are donating lots of stuff, both money and more material stuff. I chose to give money, I've donated some to Doctors without borders. And I also took the opportunity to buy some patterns that I've had my eye on for a while, where the designers are donating 50 - 100 % of the proceedings to different Haiti charities. On Ravelry, when you browse for patterns, there is now a button you can click, and then you get a full list of all the designers who are giving away their proceeds to charity. It's a great function, and it seems like it's in good use. I read on Ysolda Teague's blog that she just sent away a donation of over $6000, made from sales of her patterns. Aren't we great?!

And for those of you who want to know, these are the patterns I bought:

Guinevere gloves

The Betta Loves Shetland shawlette

The Faro-Easy shawl

The Butterfly Forest shawl

The Baby Cables and Big Ones Too sweater

The Coraline cardigan (and yes, that' Ysolda herself in the photo :)

I don't really know when I'll have time to knit all of these, but in this case it doesn't really matter. It feels good to know that you actually give something to charity while purchasing what you want for yourself :)

As you might notice, I've today updated my blog lists a bit. There are a lot of blogs that I've recently discovered, but forgotten to add to my blog roll. Now I think they're all there! Some are only listed under the Lace KAL, but once that's over I'll just add all of those blogs to the other blog list.

And can you believe that we're now up to 19 participants in our little KAL?! It's going to start on February 1st, and it's going to be so much fun! If you want to join, just tell me in the comments, or you can click on the button in the right column, that takes you directly to Kate's original post about the KAL. There are practically no rules: We start on February 1st, there is no deadline, you can knit anything lace-y you want, and you must have fun :) We have a Flickr group set up too, where we can chat and exchange photos.

I've surfed around these past few days and had a closer look at all the participants, and as usual, all the knitters seem really nice. We seem to be chosing a lot of different stuff to knit too, so that should be fun. If my KnitPick's order gets here in time, I'm going to make myself a Haruni shawl of the pink Shadow yarn I orderd. If it doesn't arrive, I'm thinking of starting a Percy shawl, in my Kermit green Simone yarn from Chili Gredelin. I'll just have to wait and see :)

Haruni shawl

Percy shawl

All photos of the patterns are borrowed from Ravelry. My sister pointed out to me a while ago that all my Ravelry links are not working for all of my readers who aren't Ravelry members. I guess most of my readers ARE members, but I know that my mother and sister aren't, so these photos are for them :) I noticed when I put them up that some of them are too wide for my blog format, but it's just too much of a hassle to fix it, so I'll just leave it. You'll have to cope...

Now I'd better continue reading, I got a lot of new reading tips from my co-superviser yesterday so I have a lot to do today. I find that I have a hard time concentrating on what I read when I'm at the office, so I ususally stay home to do that. And today we have a huge snow storm, so it's extra nice to curl up in the sofa with my bathrobe and PJ's, with Hobbe in my lap. Too bad I can't just surf around the net the whole day ;)

/ Jenny

TGIF

Yes, it's certainly a blessing that it's finally Friday! This week has been really hectic for me, but I've actually managed to get all the stuff I had planned done. I've bought all Christmas gifts, I just have to wrap them, and I finally remembered to send out this month's RAK package to UK. I doubt that it will arrive before Christmas, but that doesn't matter. Now we just have to clean the apartment thoroughly before we leave for the holidays...

On Monday my sister and I made some Christmas candy that some of our relatives are going to get for Christmas. We made chocolate toffees, raspberry toffees, Mozart balls (which are nougat surrounded by marzipan and dipped in chocolate) and apple marmalade sweets. Everything turned out absolutely yummy, although not all of it was very pretty :) I think the recipients will probably appreciate them anyway!

Then on Tuesday I went and had my car checked out for the yearly inspection, and it passed! This passed April I got to buy my grandmother's old Toyota Starlet when she bought a new car, and even though it's 11 years old it hasn't been driven muc at all. So the inspection guy's only comment was that even the underside of the car looked like new! I also finally got a Christmas present for my sister, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, as she reads the blog! I'll show you after Christmas, because one of the gifts is pretty neat.

Then on Wednesday there was a knitting café, the last before Christmas, which was fun as always. I've met such a sweet lady there, Sophiphi137 on Ravelry, and on Wednesday she had brought little presents for me and Anna as a RAK (both Anna and Sophiphi137 are members of the RAK in Europe group on Ravelry)! Look what she brought me:

The top two are notions bags, the small I will use to transport beads and such when I take projects with me, and the white one I will use to store my bead stash, as it is currently residing in a plastic bag. The three little things in the bottom photo are magnets, two of them with clamps on them to hold paper and such. They are just so cute, and I'm so happy! Thank you so much, Sophiphi137!

And yesterday Anna had a Christmas get-together for her friends, so we were eight girls who gathered at Anna's place and had glögg, christmas porridge and ham sandwishes. We also played a Christmas gift game, and I ended up taking home a wheat-filled fabric heart that you can put in the microwave and then hold against you for warmth. It is beautiful and hand-made by one of Anna's friends, Elin, and I was very happy with it. I've already used it twice, and I'm thinking of going to the kitchen to heat it up once again. Because yes, the winter has finally arrived here. So far it seems like we will actually have a white Christmas this year, as it is about 15 cm of snow and -10 Centigrades. It is SO COLD! It's very beautiful outside, when you're inside looking out at it, but it's no fun to have to bundle up in oodles of layers just to go buy some groceries!

So today I'm just going to sit on the couch and knit for the rest of the evening! I'm just about to start the decreases for the fingers on the second Moose mitten, so I'll probably going to finish it tonight. Then they will be blocked tomorrow, while I hang out with my friends Jenny and Klara. We have an anual tradition of making Christmas candy together that we've done for at least four years now, and I'm so happy that we get to do it this year even if Klara has moved to Liverpool in the UK this fall. She gets back to Sweden tonight for Christmas, and I also get to spend New Year's Eve with her and her boyfriend, so it should be lots and lots of fun. Our Christmas candy-making often entails lots and lots of champagne drinking, but this year I have to be sober as my anti-depressants don't work with alcohol (I fall asleep if I have both the same day...). So I've promised to be the one who tells them on Sunday what they actually did on Saturday :)

I think I'll probably cast on for some socks when I'm done with the mittens, to keep me busy during the holidays. I have to have something to knit while I visit my parents, and we're staying there for a few days (we're leaving for Borås on Wednesday, and I think we'll stay until at least the 28:th) so I have to have a few projects planned for then. I've almost finished the body of the green bolero as well, so only two arms left. Which means I'll probably have to start something else besides the socks to keep me busy. Maybe it's time I started the St James top that I've planned to make from my pink/orange KnitPicks Palette?

I wish I could cast on for some lace shawl too! My fingers are practically itching! I told Thomas this a couple of days ago, and he sighed and said: "Why don't you just start one now? No-one will know if you start it before January 1st, will they?" But I don't want to do that, I want all my shawls to count for the 10 shawls in 2010 challenge, and I certainly don't want to cheat! So as soon as I wake up on January 1st I'll probably throw myself at the yarns and cast on for the Aeolian. I think I'll probably start two shawls in January, so I get some variation. I think it will be good to have a shawl on the neeldes that doesn't require beading. I haven't decided finally, but I think my second January project will be the Echo Flowers shawl, that I'll make in my red KnitPicks Shadow Kettledyed (I think the colourway is called Wine).

I'll try to make at least one more post here before we leave for Borås, because my parents have the slowest internet in the world so I'll probably not have the patience to post while we are away. And next time I think we'll continue with the Jenny Trivia, and talk abit about what kind of music I like. As that could be quite and extensive post, I'll save it for now.

/ Jenny

One mitten down, one to go!

Yes, that's right: I've finished the first mitten that my grandfather is going to get for Christmas! It turned out quite nice, even though it's a bit wonky-looking as I haven't blocked it yet. I think I mentioned that I want to block both mittens at the same time, so they turn out similar.

The second mitten will also probably look a bit better, as I now know about yarn dominance (as I told you before, the yarn held furthest to the left is the one that will be most prominent). But I think the two mittens will look like a pair anyway.

I've also knitted a bit on the green bolero, and I'm now down to the point where I'll put the arms on waste yarn (well, I use the cables from my KnitPicks cable needles, but you get the drift), and I'm really excited to see if it fits better this time! I'm sort of putting this project on hold for a bit though, to make sure that I finish the mittens before Christmas.

I'm thinking of starting a sock when I've finished the mittens. I think I'll pick a pattern from my Sock Innovation book, by Cookie A. I love her sock patterns, and I've got a lot of sock yarns to use up too. I'm guessing that next year will be the year of shawls and socks! I think I'll start with my Jitterbug yarn from Colinette, I love the hysterical colours!

I've spent a LOT of time on Ravelry the past days, favouriting a LOT of shawls! I think the hard part of knitting 10 shawls in 2010 will actually be to decide which shawls to knit! I think I'll try to make mostly free patterns, as there are a lot of beautiful free ones out there, but I might cave in and buy some later in the year as well. I'll also try to knit mostly from my stash, and I know that right now I have the yarn to make 6 shawls allready. I had planned to use the Drops Delight yarn for shawls as well, but Anna told me that it is very unevenly spun, so that might be visible in a delicate shawl pattern. I think I'll probably make some gloves for myself out of that yarn instead. I could really need some fingerless gloves right about now, as it is very cold here today. It's snowing outside, and it's a bit cold to just sit still and knit. I'm always cold about my hands, so fingerless gloves, or gloves with half fingers, will be perfect for me to wear when I knit!

And today is the third of Advent, as well as Lucia day here in Sweden. On Lucia day we celebrate with a sort of singing festivity: A Lucia procession. A woman dressed in white with a crown of burning candles goes first, followed by any number of other singing, white-dressed girls (and sometimes boys) carrying candles in their hands. They sing Christmas and Lucia songs. It's a fiest of lights, designed to light up the darkness outside. I used to sing in one of the University Choirs here in Linköping, and we always did a lot of Lucia performances. I even got to be Lucia one time, and it is so much fun. Very traditional and solemn. This is a photo I got off the swedish Wikipedia of a traditional Lusia procession.

Now Hobbe has calmed down after running wildly through the apartment for some time, so I think I'll light some candles while he sleep. After all, it is the third of Advent!

/ Jenny

Slow day at work

I apologise in advance for a photo-less post, but I'm at work and don't have a camera with me. Or anything interesting to photograph either :)

A couple of months ago my work-computer started acting up and sometimes refused to start at all. I've since then mostly used my small, pink computer instead, which is fine most of the time. I haven't invested in an Office package, but work a lot with OpenOffice instead. The only problem is that the reference management program I use, EndNote, doesn't work with OpenOffice. SO now that I'm going to do a lot of revisions to my second article (we've decided to turn it into two publications instead, as it is so large), so now I'm really going to need EndNote. So this past Tuesday the office computer guys were here to install Word on my pink computer, which of course didn't work. The program just won't start, and no-one seems to know why. So the whole thing ended up with me now working on my VERY SLOW, old work computer. I should really be getting a new one, but my work situation is a bit complicated. First of all, my main supervisor had a stroke this spring, and we don't know when he'll be back, so it's hard to get the large purchases through. And second, I'm not sure that I will be here longer than the end of March (which also more or less depends on what happens with my supervisor), so it might be stupid to actually buy a new computer that I won't use for more than a couple of months. But this computer is SO SLOW!

On a much happier note, I was a t a knitting café at Garnverket yesterday, and it was very nice and cozy. It's so nice to sit in the yarn store, surrounded by all that lovely yarn and all those lovely knitters, and just talk (and knit) the night away! I'm almost up to the finger decrease on the first Moose mitten, and now that I'm not knitting any lace I can focus more wholeheartedly on these. I've learned a lot about yarn dominance since I began these, because it was very obvious this time. I'm a continental knitter (a picker), and I hold my yarn in the left hand. And when you knit like this with more than one colour, the yarn you hold the farthest to the left will dominate over the other colour(s). Unfortunately it took me more than half of the first mitten to realize this, so the second half looks a lot better. I hope I can fix this at least a little bit with blocking. On the other hand, the second mitten will look terrific! I really should knit them the same way, but it also feels stupid to do it "wrong" now that I know how to do it right.

I'm also knitting away on my green bolero, and this is such a fast knit! I'm almost down to the end of the arm holes, so I'll son put it together. I'm basically only knitting on this in public when I need to not concentrate on a pattern, or when I'm very tired. I doubt that it will be done before Christmas, but I'm ok with that. I hadn't planned on wearing it on Christmas eve, or on New Year's either, so it can take as long as it likes.

I haven't had much time to spin either, only a little bit. I think I'm spinning the yarn way too tightly, as the yarn almost curls up on itself, but I'm not sure yet how to fix this. I need to find a balance between the too tight spin and the too loose (where the yarn comes apart). I think I'll go on YouTube tonight and see if I can't find some good tips. And Ilsefin had commented on my last post, so now I know which wool is which! I'm so happy that I had actually guessed right: The brown and white fiber is the Shetland Humbug, the white is Coriedale, and the grey is the Gotland wool. So now I don't have to wonder any longer.

Oh, and yesterday at Garnverket, Ulrika was working, which was so great. I haven't seen her for a very long time, and it was fun to get to talk to her a little bit, even though she had customers almost the whole night. Which of course is great for Garnverket, I think it's going well for that store! But she had read my last post here (and she apologised for commenting in swedish, apparently it was early in the morning and she was in a hurry), and offered me and Anna some undyed yarn that she had gotten a while ago and never used. So now we have four or five hanks of undyed Lion Brand Wool (I think it was worsted weight) that we can play around with! She is just so supernice, and always thinking of others! Anna and I are so grateful, and we will have so much fun dyeing these! I think that we'll probably not use as many colours on each skein this time, but that will be just as fun!

Ok, now my lunch break is officially over, so I guess I have to get back to work. I'll see you this weekend!

/ Jenny

Slow night

Hi all! I'm having a relly slow Saturday night, which suits me just fine. I cleaned a bit during the week, so I don't even have any of that to do this weekend! I've done this weeks laundry today, but as we have both a cleaner and a dryer in the apartment, that's not a very heavy job. So now I get to knit for the rest of the evening! Thomas is hanging out with a friend, and I think they're going to play x-box soon, so I will get completely uniterupted knitting time!

I don't have any new photos to show you, but I've made some progress on the Moose mittens. I've knit about half the first mitten, and so far I think it looks ok at least. It's hard to be sure before blocking, and I really don't want to block the first one alone as I'm sure that I would block the two mittens differently.

I've also made some progress on the Aeolian shawl. I've knit three repeats of the first chart, so I'll soon go on to the next chart. The yarn is heavenly, and I'm sure it will look fabulous when finished. I can't wait to wear it! I love to knit lace, and usually I'm in no hurry to finish as I like the knitting process, but this project is one I can't wait to finish!

I also finally decided which sweater to cast on for, and you'll be surprised to know that I actually chose the green bolero that I started in the middle of October, but frogged as there were some details that I wasn't completely satisfied with. So today I've finally started over, and I've knit almost a whole skein of the yarn (Symfoni from Lövegarn, 100 % chunky merino). I think I'll need five skeins to finish, and I now have six so I think I'll be fine.

So now I only have to decide which socks to cast on for! But I think I might have to start with the knee-high ones that I've been talking about for so long, the ones that match my beret. They will also be knitted in KnitPicks Main Line yarn, which I really love! It is such a great combination of wool and cotton, and just feels so soft. The socks will be super warm, but they will suit me just fine now that winter seems to start showing it's claws here in Sweden. But I don't think I'll start them today, maybe tomorrow?

Oh, and by the way, Kate of Lazy Kate Creates is having a great give-away on her blog, to celebrate her 50th blog post! Be sure to drop by and say hi, it's a great blog that is well worth reading!

And for those of you who like to knit lace: I have a pattern tip for you! The swedish site Slöjd och Hantverk is having an advent calendar lace pattern on their website for free. It will be like a mystery shawl, and you get one clue each day in December until Christmas! The pattern is available in both swedish and english, just scroll down the site until you get to the right sidebar where it says dag 1/day 1, dag 2/day 2 and so on. When you click on the links you get the swedish pattern, but if you just scroll past that the english version is written underneath. It will only be available until December 25th, but if you can't keep up, or if you just don't want to knit it right now, you can copy all the pattern pieces into a word document or similar. After christmas the whole pattern will be available to buy, but only as a kit toghether with their very expensive yarn, and I think that shipping outside of Sweden will probably be very expensive. So make sure to check it out before it's too late!

And now I think I'm out of stuff to rant about. I'll try to get some photos til next time, I know it's not as fun to read an entire post without photos...

/ Jenny

Time for some photos, I think

I've finally managed to take some photos of the projects I'm working on. I'll start with the oldest. I don't know if I've shown you this mini-scarf I made a while ago? I got a single skein of Noro Silk Garden from Ulrika a couple of weeks ago, and just knitted it up as a triangle scarf as big as it would get. I wear it with a circular scarf needle, and I think it looks pretty good for being my very first knit without a pattern!

I thought I would ask Thomas to take a photo of me wearing the green bolero cardigan I'm knitting from the top down, but he went over to my sister's boyfriend to play x-box before I had a chance. So you'll have to be satisfied with a picture of it sitting on the sofa. This is it:

Isn't Hobbe cute helping me modelling it?! The bottom photo just shows the neato increases I made for the arms. Don't they look like raglan decreases? I think I told you that I ran out of the yarn before I finished it, so it's still lacking an arm. But I've ordered two more skeins that should arrive here this week, I hope. And I really LOVE the buttons, they look great with the green yarn I think.

I've also felted the main part of the needle storage unit I've knitted in Drops Eskimo yarn. I felted it a little bit too long, so it's a bit stiff, but I can live with that. I think it looks rather good anyhow. I'm going to knit tow cabled stripes and sew them on to hold the needles later on, I just have to decide which yarn to use for this. I actually have some Eskimo yarn leftovers, maybe I'll just use that.

I've also begun a winter scarf for myself in the absolutely lovely Eco Alpaca from Viking of Norway yarns. I LOVE this yarn, I sort of wish I could afford to make all my bulky projects in this. Although it only comes in natural colours so far, and maybe that would be a bit dull in the long run. But the scarf is turning out great though, it's just stockinette stitch with borders in horisontal ribbing so it won't curl up too much. I love the off-white and nougat colours together, and I think it will look great with my dark brown winter coat. I'm thinking of adding some fringes to it when I've finished as well, I'll see if I have enough yarn though.

And finally I'm knitting a pair of burgundy cabled gloves for myself. These are the ones I told you about that I actually began in an alpaca yarn but ripped up because they looked horrible. I wish I had taken photos of them in the pink yarn for you to see, but I forgot. But in this yanr, which has wool and silk in it (I don't remember the percentages, and I can't be bothered to find the lable just now...), which makes the cables pop a lot better. It's a little bit hard to see in the photos, but they look pretty good now.

Palm side:

Back of hand:

I also promised to show you photos of the finished Ishbel scarf, so here it is:

It is one of my absolute favourite finished objects, although I think that the blocking is coming a bit undone as the yarn has 25 % nylon in it... I don't mind though, I guess I'll just have to block it again some time. I love the yarn, as I guess I've told you several times before. I'm thinking I might make another scarf from the other two skeins I have, but a larger one. I have the pattern for a Pacific Island scarf that might do it. I'll think about it.

I'm also itching to start the Lettuce Coat that is in the Custom Knit book by Wendy Bernard. I LOVE that book, there are just so many patterns in it that I want to make, but I think I like this the most. I bougth 10 skeins of a 100 % wool yarn called Sarek, from Marks & Kattens, that will look great in this coat. I've made a swatch and made sure that the weight will work too, so I just have to finish something else first. I really don't like to have too many projects going at a time, as I can't seem to chose which to work on! But I think I'll finish the striped scarf soon, as the yarn is very chunky and knits up very fast, and then I'll cast on for something lace-y I think. I bougth the pattern for the Heere Be Dragons sjawl a while ago, and I have the perfect yarn for it too, so maybe I'll give that one a go. It looks crazy difficult though, so maybe I'll practice some first on some easier project...

Oh, and I have to tell you about this past weekend! We had a game night here, where we and some friends of ours played boardgames (well, the boys played some tv-games too) for the whole evening. We began with a game called Ticket to Ride, where you build railroads all over USA. It was so much fun! We played in pairs, because it would have been too messy with 6 different players, and my sister and I came in second, right after Anna and Sandra. The boys, Thomas and Mattias, finished last :) Then Alan and Marcus showed up, and the boys migrated to the TV to play Brütal Legend, the new Heavy Metal game with Jack Black (which is actually a really good game, even though I'm not exactly as metal as my husband...), and us girls proceeded to play several rounds of Once Upon a Time, a card game where you make up fairy tales as you go along. It was such a great night, I really needed some fun! And I think that maybe my anti-depressants are starting to work too. Hopefully.

Now I'm going to clean the kitchen, and then sleep.

/ Jenny