Work in progress

Hi again!

I managed to get some photos of my shawl in progress. I read a discussion on Ravelry about different tips and resources related to knitting and crocheting, and someone suggested using bits of cut drinking-straws as very inexpensive stitch-markers. I tried it yesterday, and I found it worked fairly well. The one drawback is that the stitches have a slight tendency to slipping over the markers, so I think I might need somewhat larger markers after all. But the pieces of straw work for now.

I also started reading my two books on crocheting today (I picked the indroduction one up from my sister's earlier today), and made my first attempt at knitting a ball-like thingy (it was actually the "how-to" description in the Crochet amigurumi-book) in a very cheap acrylic yarn I had in my stach. And it was a complete success, I couldn't be more satisfied with it! So now I'll have to find some more, similar yarn that is not minty green, to make all of the little animals in the book! And this fall there will be a swedish translation of this book, which tells you how to crochet zombies, robots, ninjas and other similar stuff! Talk about picture perfect for me! So I guess those will be my winter crochet projects.

I'll leave you with a photo of the finished potpuri bag I embroidered a while ago. I bought a tube of nice-smelling foot-cream and put in it, and gave it as a gift for my grandmother. She loved it and said she would put the bag up on the wall, so I'm pleased. I don't know that I will make any more embroidery-only projects, but now I know how to make the cross-stitches if I want to embroider something onto a knitted project. A friend of mine embroidered space invaders on a pair of dish towels, and a similar TV-game related project might suit me as well. That is the major advantage with the old-school TV-games: All the characters and stuff are very pixelated, which translates well into both embroidery and knitting. Here is the photo of the finished bag.

/ Jenny

Finally!

Today I've finally started the shawl! I've only made about 10 cm yet, but so far I haven't found any mistakes. And I think I have placed the beads rather nicely too (I'm improvising those, they aren't in the pattern). Since it's made of alpaca wool, its a little fuzzy, and the pattern is barely discernable before I've blocked it, but it's looking very nice! Maybe I can wear it to a wedding I'm invited to in august? We'll see if I finish it in time.

On thursday evening I finished my embroidered potpuri bag as well, and it looks very nice as well! I think I began the stitches a little high on the bag, but it's ok. I'm thinking of buying some kind of rose-smelling potpuri and maybe put it in my underwear closet? Or maybe I will give it away to someone. I haven't decided yet. I think I will wait posting any pictures of it here, until I know if it will be a gift or not.

My sister asked me the other day what blocking meant (we are both kind of knitting novices, and I wouldn't have known about it if I haden't just read about it on Ravelry), so I thought I would explain it a bil. When you knit a pattern, very often when you take your finished project off the needles, it sort of rolls together, and lace pattern can be very hard to see. If you then wet your piece and place it on a flat surface, where you can use pins to stretch and shape your piece, then you can make the patterns more visible. When the knit has dried in that position, it will retain that shape until wet again. There is a very nice description of blocking on Dulcinea's Windmill blog.

Now, I'm going to continue knitting my shawl. I love being on vacation!

/ Jenny

My first attempt at embroidering

Hello again!

I have kick-started our camera, so now I've taken a few photos. The first is of my own set of KnitPicks, and even though they look almost as the picture at KnitPicks own store, I wanted to take one of my own. I'm just that much in love with them.

Last evening I made my first attempt at embroidery. I think it went rather well, but I'm not even half-finished yet. I included the picture of the finished potpuri bag, that I'm working from.

Also, last night I tried my blocking experiment, and it was a complete success! I made the test patch for the shawl I'm about to make, and as you can see in the before-picture, it was a frumpy little thing, but I nailed it to my new blocking-board and it went very flat. The figure shows before on the left, during in the middle, and after on the right. Next time I will try to include a ruler of some kind, so you can see the difference in size. These photos are taken with my phone, so the quality is not great, but I think you get the picture (no pun intended).

A couple of years ago I knitted a cardigan with cabeling on, in the same kind of alpaca yarn that I'm going to use for the shawl. I thought that I knitted very tight, becouse the cardigan actually came out a bolero... Bu now I realise that I just need to block it! So I think I will try that tonight, and see if I can remember to take before-pictures as well, so You'll have something to laugh about.

I started on my drops shawl yeasterday as well, but I only got about 4 cm (it starts at the bottom, at the tip of the tirangle), before I had to frog it. I'd read the pattern all wrong, but since I realised what I'd done wrong, I started again. The second time I got about 5 cm done when I saw that I had made something else wrong, as well as frogotten some beads, so I frogged it again. So I think I will start again tonight, when it cools down a bit.

Since my thesis is actually done, I think I will go outside in the sunshine for a while!

/ Jenny

Just a quickie

Ok, so I just had to show off my bargain I found at Biltema (a swedish store selling tools, car-parts and hobby items, among other things): Now I can block everything I knit!

They are made in some foam-like material, and will be perfect for putting pins in.

Another summer project of mine (no rest for me during the vacation!) is to learn how to crochet. I think it looks like fun, and you can make such cute soft toys from crocheting. Also I bought my first embroidery kit today. It's a potpuri bag, and the pattern looked quite easy, some kind of lavender flower I think it was. It was a very cheap kit, which included the potpuri bag, a grid and all the thread needed. So my summer is really packed!

Now, for continued writing. And also, Anne of Green Gables is on TV...

/ Jenny