Our US trip, part II: Washington DC

I doubt this has happened before, but I figured I might just cram one more blog post in today! I still have so much to tell about our trip, and I can't begin to tell you how much fun we've had. It has been one of the best trips in our lives, probably just as nice as our honeymoon to Santorini, Greece three years ago!

Ok, when I left you yesterday we had just arrived in Arlington, just outside of DC. Me and Thomas arrived on Friday evening, and on Saturday morning the lovely Sarah arrived at about nine o'clock. I just can't describe the feeling I had when I opened the hotel room door and saw her for the first time! LIVE! It was just so cool! We've been skyping together for about a year and a half, and it was just amazing to see her live! She is so sweet and nice and pretty!

Anyway, we had a quick breakfast and headed off inte the center of DC, to go see the Smithsonian museums and the Mall. We started with a quick photo session in the Mall:

And then headed to the Native American Museum (which we've now named the Naked American Museum - that's what Thomas heard when we were first talking about it...), which was a very nice museum! It's a living history museum, so it kind of focuses more on the living native American tribes of today, which was really nice. The restaurant was also completely awesome, since you could get lots of Native American foods from different parts of the country. 

After this we headed to the American History Museum (and joked about how small it would be, since the US has a pretty short history compared to Europe ;), which turned out to be reallu fun! We aren't that well versed in american history, to tell you the truth, so it was very interesting. A lot of the later history focuses a lot on the different wars that the US has taken part in during the 20th century, and that part of history I guess we knew most about. One funny detail is that in the US, the second world war started in 1941. In Europe I've only seen the starting year as 1939, as that was when Germany invaded Poland. But I guess to most US citizens, the war started with the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

After this not so short museum, we sort of had a museum overload, so we went outside to look at all the memorials and the White house. We started with the white house, and I was a bit disappointed that you couldn't get very close at all. We had to use the zoom function on the camera to get a good photo! In Sweden there are actual tours of parts of the royal castle where our royal family actually live, so this kind of security is still a little strange to me (and let's not even discuss airport security in the US...).

Anyway, we walked on and had a look at the WWII memorial, the Vietnam Memorial (which was completely mind-boggling, with all the names of the soldiers who died on a loooong wall), and finally to the Lincoln Memorial (I kept expecting to see a great big ape on the chair, as in Planet of the Apes!). We're now referring to this memorial as "the dude in the chair" as we at first couldn't remember which president was actually sitting on the chair (I told you we're not that in to american history!).

After walking past the Washington Monument on our way back to the car we were completely beat, so we went back to the hotel to grab some dinner. We ended up at a pub called Capitol City Brewing company, and I got the largest order of ribs I've ever seen!

Everything is bigger in the US! I didn't manage to finish more than a third, I think, but we took the rest of it with us to have a snack later. The evening ended in the hotel hot-tub, which felt absolutely amazing after all that museum walking!

On Sunday morning we headed back to DC for the Natural History Museum, and this time we made it in. Both me and Thomas are sort of animal enthusiasts, so this was a real treat. I think we spent about two hours here before it got too crowded, and then we left to head on down to Clifton Forge (where Sarah and Chris lives). 

The part about our stay in Clifton Forge and Douthat State Park will be the last installment in this trilogy of vacation stories! I'll be back another day (I don't want to promise that it'll be tomorrow, in case I'm too tired as we're still pretty jet-lagged) to tell you about our compltetely awesome stay with Chris and Sarah! Oh, and there will be some yarn in that post too :)

/ Jenny

A tale of two yarns

Today is the first day of the Second Annual Knitting and Crochet Blog Week! It's a week that makes knitters and crocheters all over the world come together and blog about the same topics, which I think is a great idea! After having spent the last two weeks on holiday in the States and meeting up with knitting bloggers live, I know what an awesome breed we are!

Today's topic is called "A tale of two yarns": Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

Ok, this is a tough one! I love so many yarns! I think I'll start with the easier one though, and tell you about a yarn that I surprisingly didn't really enjoy working with. I recently completed my Evenstar shawl that I made with Wollmeise lace yarn (colourway Sabrina, 100 % Superwash Merino, 1700 m/300 g) and I found myself not really liking this yarn at all! I thought I would love it, as everyone else seem to think this is the best yarn in the world, but I found it a bit rough on my hands and very splitty. Although the finished shawl is the prettiest one I have, and it feels really nice against my skin when I wear it. I just didn't enjoy working with it! The colour saturation is amazing though, and as I said it is a very beautiful yarn. Just not soft enough for my taste.

As you will see in the near future, I took home A LOT of yarn from the States this weekend, and a lot of that was very nice sock yarn. I'm really looking forward to knitting with a lot of it, but I think the yarn that I have in my stash that I mostly look forward to knitting with is my Hand Maiden Fine yarn Lace Silk (colourway Copper, 100 % silk, 900 m/100 g).

This yarn is just the most beautiful colour, and the shine to it is pretty unreal! It is also very soft, and I can't wait to get to knit with it! I think the reason I haven't started anything with it yet is that I've prioritized other colours. Right now I'm in need of a purple shawl, so that's what I'm knitting (or really not knitting, as it is languishing in its bag since a couple of weeks!).  But maybe this will be my next shawl project? I'm planning on using it for a Lirio shawl.

Ok, I guess that's it about the two yarns. I don't want you to think that I hate the Wollmeise yarn, because I really don't. I think I'm just surprised that I didn't like it more than I did, as it seems to be insanely popular. Oh well, I guess it saves me a bunch of money!

See you all tomorrow for the second installment of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week!

/ jenny

Back in cold Sweden again!

I hardly know where to begin. We came home yesterday night after two weeks in the States, and they have been two of the most amazing weeks in my life! I think I'll split the trip up in three parts, since this blog post would go on forever otherwise. I'll start today with the New Yark part, then get back later with a post about Washington DC, and do a final one on our stay in Clifton Forge and Douthat State Park!

We left last Sunday, on the thirteenth, which turned out to be a pretty long day! We arrived in New York, on JFK airport, around five in the afternoon local time, which for us was actually ten in the evening. When we arrived at the hotel (We stayed at the Pearl Hotel on 49th west) it was closer to midnight our time (which was local time 19.00), and we were just beat! Ten hours of flight is kind of draining! But the hotel was sooo nice! The room was really pretty:

And the service was excellent (although they couldn't get me a glutenfree breakfast, but that was ok since we had a refridgerator in the room and the supermarket on the corner sold glutenfree bagels). This was one of the better hotels we've ever stayed in. Anyway, we decided that we had to try and stay awake until at least nine pm, so we went out to look at the supermarket and the closest surroundings. I don't really remember what we saw that night, but we fell asleep pretty fast once nine o'clock rolled around!

The next day we first went to the Apple store, since Thomas wanted to buy and Ipad 2 (they are apparently sold out all over the world, so he didn't find one). There was a line of people at least 200 m long outside of the store, just waiting until the store got a new shipment of Ipads! Luckily for us, they were waiting outside the store, so we could at least go in and have a look around. Apple have some cool stuff! We didn't buy anything, and went on to have coffee at a Starbucks (we don't have Starbucks in Sweden, so this is a novelty for us :) We also had lunch at TGI Friday's, which we also don't get in Sweden), which we really enjoyed. We also went to the Disney Store on Broadway (which contained way too much Micky Mouse and Tinkerbell and way too little Donald Duck for my taste), Toys 'R Us on Broadway (which had a five storey Ferris Wheel inside! 

And a whole section dedicated to Willy Wonka candy which I bought for my sister), 

and ended the shopping day with Midtown Comics on Times Square. My oh my how much we loved that store! We ended up spending lots of money in there, but the comics were really cheap compared to the imported ones back home, so we got lots for our money. Plus, the dollar is very cheap right now!

The comics we ended up buying were the following (starting at upper left in the photo): 100 Bullets (issue 2), Constantine Hellblazer (issues 1 and 2), Freak Angels (issue 1), Fables (issues 1, 2 and 3), Lucifer (issue 1), Northlanders (issue 1), Transmetropolitan (issues 5 and 6), Chew (issue 1), Y - The last man (issue 1), Locke & Key (issue 3), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (no issue), and Little Adventures in Oz (issue 1 and 2).

Quite the haul! Both me and Thomas LOVE comics (or graphic novels, as they should be called), and it was so much fun just browsing in this store. One of the employees came up to me almost as soon as I came in and asked if he could help me, and ended up giving me great tips about new comics after I told him I was looking for the Locke & Key one (that is the best comic there is!). I think he was probably pleased that a girl came in and actually knew something about comics! He was very nice though, and as it turned out a huge fan of swedish death metal, so he got along with Thomas too.

The next day was spent doing a bit more shopping, most of the stores that we didn't have time for on Monday. We started the day by going to the top of Rockefeller Center to look at the view, which was really pretty. We managed to get most of the photos just before the sun disappeared too.

We then went to Nintendo World store, which was really awesome. I got to try the new Nintendo Wii game Kirby's world of yarn (great name, don't you think?), which was very cute and kind of fun (although I really suck with the wii remote!). We also bought a small plush toy for my sister from the Pickmin games (which we have both played and loved). 

We also visited the Gap, where Thomas bought a shirt (we don't get the Gap in Sweden), and Victoria's Secret (which we also don't get in Sweden), where I got free reins! Boy did I enjoy this store! I ended up buying a brah and matching panties (they're green with white dots on, they look like a princess cake!) which are probably the best fitting underwear I've ever had, a pair of lace panties and a small nightgown/negligé. I wish I had been able to go here before I got married, so I could have bought my wedding underwear here!

Our last stop for the day was Babycakes bakery in Chinatown, a small glutenfree bakery that Virginia had scouted out for me. I went sort of wild in here as well, as I wanted to try pretty much everything they had!

The best one was definitely the chocolate doughnut in he right bottom corner. I haven't had a doughnut in fifteen years, I've never seen a glutenfree one before! Great stuff!

Tuesday night ended at a small Japanese restaurant called Yakitori Totto, which was completely awesome! It was one of those restaurants where you sit at the counter and the chefs are on the other side making your food. We had lots of skewers with different stuff on them, my favorite was the one with grilled Shitake mushrooms. I think I could live on these alone! This restaurant was actually so good that we went back on Thursday night for another filling :)

On Wednesday I got to meet up with Virginia (who writes the blog Virginia is for...), which was absolutely fabulous! We had planned to go to the Natural History museum, but it was completely packed (there was even a line outside to get in!), but we went and had lunch at the Stack Shack, and then Virginia and me went yarn crawling. Can you believe I didn't get any photos of any of the yarn stores?!!! I guess I was too busy looking around! First we went to Annie & Co, which was a really nice store. The following skeins ended up following me home:

Madelinetosh Lace (100 % merino, 868 m/113 g) in colourway Ms Taylor

Madelinetosh Merino Light (100 % Merino, 384 m/100 g) in colourway Norway Spruce

Madelinetosh Prairie (100 % merino, 768 m/114 g) in colourway Oxblood

Then we took a bus to Knitty City, which was also a really nice store! There were several people sitting around in the store knitting, and they were really helpful. The following skeins went with me back to the hotel (which sounded a lot dirtier than it was meant to...):

Madelinetosh Merino Light (100 % Merino, 384 m/100 g) in colourway Mulled Wine

Malabrigo Sock yarn (100 % merino, 402 m/100 g) in colourway Lettuce

Then we took the subway (yay! I got to go on the NY subway!) to School Products yarns, which was a really weird store. It was located in a sky scraper of some kind, so you had to know it was there. Then we took the elevator up to get to the actual store, where we had to ring the bell to be let in! I guess that might be typical of NY? Anyway, the store was a bit different too, they only carried Karabella yarns and a lot of unbranded yarn on cones. I ended up just buying these two skeins of this:

Karabella Yarns Lacampo (60 % Llama/40 % Cotton, 124 m/50 g) in a teal tweed colour (10901)

The yarn crawl was really awesome, and it was so much fun to get to meet Virginia in real life! Most of my blog friends seem to be so far away in different countries, so it's kind of unreal to actually meet any live!

Then me and Virgina parted, and I went back to the hotel to meet up with Thomas again. This night we got to go see Phantom of the Opera on Broadway! I'm a huge Andrew Lloyd Webber-fan, and Thomas loves this particular musical as well, so this was really a high point of our trip.

On Thursday it was St Patrick's Day, which we totally didn't know about when we booked the trip, so we went to see the parade on 5th Avenue in the morning. It was a lot of military and police men, and after a while we sort of grew tired of the (very drunken) crowds, so we went to the Museum of Modern Art ( MoMA) instead. This was a very beautiful museum, and we got to see some Warhol:

Lichtenstein:

And my personal favourite, Vincent Van Gogh:

I don't really know why, but I love Van Gogh, and the Starry Night painting is one of my favourites. I got goose bumps just by looking at it! We're not that big art fans, or at least we don't know that much about art, but we liked a lot of the stuff at MoMA. 

For the evening we went back to Yakitori Totto (it was just that good), and had our last night in NY. It was kind of nice to go to this small, kind of quiet restaurant on St Patrick's Day to avoid the crowds, and a perfect ending to the NY stay.

Friday was mostly spent on a bus to Washington DC, where we took a cab to Arlington for our stay at the Hilton Garden Inn hotel. We were really tired from travelling, so we just had dinner at a nearby libanese restaurant (they had awesome hummus), had a quick drink at the hotel bar and went to bed.

Ok, I'll have to get back to you with the rest of the stuff! We're still very jet-lagged, and I have to go to bed as I have to work tomorrow too. And we have lots of cuddling to do with Hobbe, as he's stayed with my parents for the past two weeks :)

/ Jenny

Spring!

Well, it might not be full spring yet, but the weekend has been incredibly beautiful, with lots of sunshine and temperatures slightly above freezing (which means the snow is FINALLY melting a bit!!!).  Yesterday I took a walk to enjoy it, and I think there will probably be another walk later today too. Since I sit cooped up in a lab all day, it's nice to be able to enjoy the sun during the weekend at least.

This weekend has otherwise been spent knitting and cleaning up the apartment, as I don't want to leave it too dirty when we leave for the States next Sunday. Can you believe we're leaving so soon?! I'm so excited and happy, we're going to have a blast! All the tickets and hotels are booked, yesterday we booked musical tickets (we're going to see The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, which is just so amazingly awesome I'm almost crying about it!), and all my pre-ordered yarn has arrived at Sarah's. I might have gone a bit overboard with the yarn, but if it really doesn't fit in our bags I'll just have to buy a box and ship it home the regular way. 

I've also been doing some knitting this past week, although not a lot of it I admit. Work has been a bit more busy than usual (which is actually a good thing, it's more fun when there's actually stuff to do as opposed to just sitting around knitting while waiting for patients to show up), but I've managed to finish the Asteria Cardigan too. Which is awesome, as I now have two new cardis to bring with me on the trip! Here's the Asteria:

I haven't decided what buttons to put on it yet, there will only be two of them just at the top where it is fastened with two safety pins in the photo. I'm thinking a couple of small, wooden buttons, or possibly just two hidden clasps. I think I'll go button shopping tomorrow after work!

I also promised to show you a photo of the Coraline Cardigan on me, so here it is:

As I mentioned, the sleeves are a bit short, but I'm not sure if I'll just leave them at 3/4 lenght and call it a design feature. My sister said she thought it looked fine this way, and maybe I'll take the lazy path and take her advise. I haven't gotten a button for this one either yet, but I've decided I'll put it where it is fastened in the photos. The pattern has the buttons at the top, where the smocking pattern is, but since it is just a tad on the small side this looked weird on me. So I'll just close it over my bosom, and call it a day. It will probably be something small and discreet I think.

I unpinned the Evenstar shawl some day in the week as well, and here it is in all its glory, lying on the floor upstairs:

I noticed after I took this photo that the place where I kitchenered the last stitches of the edging together was pulled way too tight, you can see it at the bottom of the photo. I've fixed that since then, so now it looks perfect. I'm definitely bringing this baby on the trip! Artholine asked me in the comments on the last post what I thought about the pattern, and I liked it a lot! It was very easy to understand, and I didn't even use one lifeline in all the project. I definitely recommend it, even though it took me forever to make! Mine used about 1300 m of yarn, but I knit it on size 3 mm needles. I bet if you use smaller needles you can get the yardage down if you want to. I like mine just the way it is!

After I finished the Asteria cardigan, I decided I needed something else to knit on at work, since both the socks I'm working on (Devon socks by Cookie A., and they're mostly resting right now) and the shawl (Panama shawl by Monika Eckert) are a bit too difficult to knit on at work (I haven't made much progress on either, so no new photos). So I cast on for the St James top, in a very interesting colourway of KnitPicks Palette yarn, called Conch. The knitting is very simple so far, it's knitted top down with raglan increases for the sleeves. The top of the collar rolls something hideously in the photo, but at the end of the project I'll pick up stitches here and make the actual collar.

The colour is actually fairly accurate in this photo, it's a kind of weird pink/apricot/orange/salmon colour. I've had it in my stash for about a year, and I still haven't decided whether I like it or not. I guess I'll have to try it on once it's finished, and see if it looks good on me or not. If it doesn't I can always over-dye it. I'm also thinking of making the collar and hems in black instead, to make it a little bit more interesting. Oh, and I'm holding the yarn double, in case you were wondering :)

The last week of March will see another Knitting and Crochet Blog Week! I participated last year (if you want to read the posts from that week, just go to the left column on the blog, find my Labels cloud, and knit on the labels KnitCroBlo1-7), and it was so much fun! I'm definitely going to try to make it this year as well. The topics are well thought out, and it's so much fun to read all the other bloggers' posts too.

Now I think I'm going to make myself some breakfast. Since we're leaving next weekend, I'm not sure if I'll have time to post again before we leave. I don't know how our internet access will look on the actual trip, but we're bringing one of our laptops, so I'll be sure to document everything so I can tell you about it later!

/ Jenny

What a week!

This past week has been winter break in Swedish schools (at least in our county), which means that some of my co-workers have been on ski holidays. Which meant that the rest of us who were still working had a lot more to do! So I've barely had time to pick up my knitting at all this week, I've just been so beat when I've gotten home that I've more or less fallen asleep on the couch each evening. But next week should be better.

Last weekend I was supposed to go to a kit-night at Alexandra's, but I only got half-way there when my stomach started grumbling, so I turned around and went back home again. I got to knit a lot at my Evenstar shawl all alone at home instead, but somehow it wasn't the same. The stomach is actually behaving a lot better during the weeks now, I've started taking some new medications which seem to work, but it still spazzes out when I get stressed. Funnily enough, my stomach seems to think it stressfull just to get out of the house on the weekends, as the same thing happened today. We were supposed to have two friends over for dinner tonight, but as usual we had to cancel at the last minute. It means a lot more knitting time for me, but it was definitely not what I wanted. I haven't seen Klara since Christmas, so I was really looking forward to tonight. Oh well, we'll do it another time.

Knit-wise I've worn the Coraline cardigan a couple of times, but I've made the sleeves a bit too short. I think I need to undo the cast-on and make them a bit longer, I just haven't had the energy. Otherwise it fits me very well, and I really like it. I haven't gotten around to taking any photos of me wearing it yet though.

And today I FINALLY finished the Evenstar shawl! I've been working on it since October, so it was about time. I'm really, really pleased with it!

It's still drying upstairs, and it's very tempting to go up there and unpin it, but I think I need to let it rest until tomorrow. It took me about forever to block it out, it was my first time blocking something circular, and I didn't have enough foam blocks to make a square big enough! They're just laid out in a circle, which means that the center foam mat holding the middle of the shawl isn't attached to any of the other blocks. That made it very hard to hold the center still while I stretched it out! But I think I finally managed to get it looking ok.

It's made with almost a whole skein of lace yarn from Wollmeise, and I have to admit that this yarn hasn't won me over. The shawl looks awesome, and the colour is to die for, but it just isn't very soft. I hope it will get softer once it's dry. It was also splitty to work with, and had almost no give, it almost felt like it has cotton in it. So I won't be buying any more Wollmeise yarn any time soon, sorry.

I've also made a lot of progress on the Asteria Cardigan, I'm almost done with the second sleeve. It is looking very good, and I hope I can finish it before we leave for the States 8in twoo weeks (yikes!). I haven't taken any photos of it yet either, but it isn't much to see yet. I'll show it to you once it's finished!

Today I cast on for a new shawl as well, as I can't seem to go without lace knitting for very long. I chose the Panama shawl pattern, and I'm making it in my Chopped Tomatoes Heavenly Infusion yarn in colourway Sister Sister. This yarn is wool and cashmere, and softer than a cloud! It's very thin though, and I think it's a little fragile (it broke twice when I skeined it), but I'll just have to treat it delicately. It feels great to finally get to work with a yarn I like though!

Now I'm going to lay down and rest my stomach for a while. I'll try to get back to you next weekend again!

/ Jenny

Lazy days

We're having a really lazy weekend this weekend, doing a little bit of cleaning and a lot of just lounging around the house. The week has been kind of busy, with lots of work for both of us, plus Thomas had his birthday on Thursday. We ordered some food and watched a movie on Thursday evening after work, so nothing fancy. We're talking about eventually going out to a restaurant for dinner tonight, but I actually doubt that we'll have the energy for it. I think we'll just make some easy food and hang around on the couch instead :)

I also have another finished object for you! Yesterday I finished my Coraline cardigan, and I think it turned out great! It's blocking right now, so you won't get to see any pictures of it on me yet.

Stupid blogger turning my picture around

I've knitted it in Drops Alpaca yarn (100 % alpaca, 180 m/50 g) held double, and in total I used 1693 m(which means the length was actually half, 846.5 m). It is very thick, and a bit dense to tell you the truth, but I think it will be better after the blocking is finished. I used a new (to me) technique on this one, namely smocking. It's where you wrap some of your stitches with your working yarn, and is described very well here. It turned out better than I hoped!

 I love the colour, and I hope to wear it a lot. I'm so glad I finished it before our upcoming trip!

And speaking of the trip, everything is booked! We're flying in to New York where we'll be staying for five nights and doing all sorts of lovely things, then we're taking the train down to Washington DC to meet up with Sarah and Chris. We're staying two nights in DC, visiting museums and stuff like that, then we're driving down south first to Staunton for one night, then onwards to Clifton Forge where Sarah and Chris live. We'll stay there for four nights, then go back up to Washington for our flight back to Sweden. It's only a couple of weeks left until we leave, and it's started to feel very real. I can hardly wait!

Of course, since we're actually going to the States, I had to make a KnitPicks order! It's already been delivered to Sarah, and I think I'll have to buy a whole extra suitcase to fit all of it! When we were Skyping last night (yes, skyping is a verb), Sarah opened the bag and started showing me all of it. And boy do I want to get over there NOW!

Next week Thomas is going away with work for a few days, which means I'll have the weekend to myself. Lucky for me, my friend Alexandra suggested Saturday night for a knit-night, which will be very nice! I work so much right now, and including all my commute time, I rarely have time to go to the knitting cafés any more, so it's great to get to meet up with the girls on the weekend.

Now I think I'll go clean the kitchen, so I get that done. Then I'll have the rest of the day free for knitting, and I've actually picked up my Evenstar shawl again! I grew a bit tired of the knitting bag sitting on the couch staring at me accusingly, so now I really want to finish it. It will have to be my weekend knitting though, as it's a bit too complicated to bring to work. But it feels great to work some lace again, after finishing the cardigan with all that stockinette.

I have to brag a bit about work too. A week ago or so I finally got to learn the last of the machines at the lab, which means I'm now fully trained! So starting next week I'll actually get to be alone at the lab for a whole day each week. It's of course much more fun when there are two of us there, so you have someone to talk to when there are no patients, but I'm still pretty proud to get the responsibility. I love my job!

Finally, I have to tell you about a give-away that Heather is hosting on her blog, Implausible Yarn. She's giving away three prizes in total, of course it's yarn, and since the blog is completely awesome I think you should go there and enter. Or maybe I think you shouldn't, which would increase my chances to win :)

See you next weekend or so!

/ Jenny

TWO finished objects!

Yep, I finally got something to put up on my Knitting 2011 tab! On Monday I finished one of the pairs of socks I've been working on. I proudly present the Mirabelles Socks:

They are made with handpainted sock yarn from Marias garn in Stockholm (75 % superwash wool/25 % bamboo), and really really comfortable! I've worn them once already. Right now they're resting in the laundry pile. I hand wash all my socks, since I see a weak tendency towards loosing the colour when I wash them in the machine, and seeing as I'm lazy I tend to pile the hand wash pile high before I get around to doing something about it. Anyway, I love the socks!

I also finished my Paper Dolls T-shirt a while ago, but haven't gotten around to blocking it until a couple of days ago. Now it's finally done! I started this one the first time some time this spring, but it turned out way too big, so I frogged it and knitted it again. This time it fits me much better! 

The arms look a bit wonky, but that's only because it's dried flat, and I'm guessing that will flatten with wear. I'm really really pleased with it! I think I'll wear it tomorrow :)

This weekend me and Thomas went to Stockholm to attend a friend's dissertation party. Unfortunately my stomach spazzed out on me, so I ended up being stuck in our hotel room the entire evening. Thomas went to the party (he asked if he should stay with me, but I figured that at least one of us should go, that way we hadn't made the trip for nothing), and I lay in bed knitting and watching really very bad TV (Into the blue, with Jessica Alba...). It was nice to be in a hotel though, and the breakfast on Sunday morning was awesome. 

We also had a little time to visit the Sci-Fi book store and Comics Heaven, so we came home with four new graphic novels. My favourite is by far the comic adaptation of Stephen King's short story "N". The story is from the book Just After Sunset, and by now it should come as no surprise to you that I love anything Stephen King. Actually, that's not entirely true. I didn't really enjoy Tommyknockers, and I'm not a huge fan of Christine either. But I think I've loved every other book of his, so I guess I could be called a die-hard fan anyway.

Thomas told me earlier today that he'll probably going out with friends both Friday night and Saturday night, so I'm going to have the apartment to myself. I think I'll watch some Harry Potter movies and just have a knitting weekend and just enjoy it!

/ Jenny

Trying to stay awake...

...Long enough to post! I've been working all day, and I'm just exhausted, bu since I didn't get around to posting this weekend I'll try to get it done today instead.

Last week was spent mostly at work, but I got a lot of knitting done on my Coraline cardigan. However, when I tried it on for size, I realized that it was WAY too big. Apparently I can't swatch correctly if my life depended on it. Or, rather, I can't measure correctly. I decided to frog the whole thing and start over, so I'm using smaller needles and making a smaller size too. It's going to look great, and the yarn seems to work really well with the pattern. I haven't got any new photos to show you though, since I've only knitted about 5 cm or so yet, in plain stockinette.

I also knitted almost half a pair of socks at work on Friday (two of the resident doctors were away at a conference, which ment lots of less patients for us at the lab, which ment long periods of nothing to do but knit). This is the almost completed first sock of the Mirabelles socks!

I'm using my wool/bamboo yarn from Marias garn in Stockholm (the store has switched owners and is now called Litet Nystan), and I LOVE this yarn! It's so shiny and easy to work with, and the socks are going to look great. However, the yarn is a little bit stiff (probably due to the bamboo), and the second skein that I have of this yarn I had actually planned on using for a shawl. I think that the yarn might be a bit uncomfortable to wear next to the skin on my neck though, so I'm thinking I should probably make another pair of socks from it instead. 

I also had a moment of clarity this weekend. Do you remember this cardigan that I made a year ago?

It's made using a generic top-down pattern where you calculate number of stitches based on your gauge. It turned out a bit too small, but now that I've lost all my extra weight I decided to try it on again (as I still haven't worn it once). Turns out, it still doesn't fit me, so I actually decided to frog it to salvage the yarn (Lövegarn Symfoni, 100 % merino, chunky yarn that has been discontinued). And yesterday I cast on for another cardigan in this yarn, the Asteria Cardigan.

I haven't gotten very far yet, and since it isn't blocked you can't really see the lace border very well, but I think this might work. I really like working on it, since it is in chunky yarn that seems to fly off the needle, but boy do my hand hurt after knitting on it! I'm just not used to knitting with such big needles (6 mm)!

The Evenstar Shawl and the Devon Socks are resting a bit for now. I just haven't had time to work on any more projects, and since these are a bit too complicated to work on at work, they have just been put aside for a little while. I'll get to them though, eventually.

Oh, and last weekend I finished my Paper Dolls sweater! Yay! I was so happy to get to try it on finished, and it fits me this time! Well, actually it would probably have fitted me better if I hadn't just lost all those kilos, since it was measured to fit my somewhat larger body, but it's still good enough to wear. I haven't gotten around to blocking it yet though, so I have no photos to show you. I promise I'll get them for you next time!

And do you know what I did today? I bought myself some yarn! A couple of months ago I gave away my Candle Flame shawl to my grandmother, because she loved it so much. 

It was knitted in Garnpalettens one-ply lace wool yarn, and it was really beautiful. However, my grandmother (who takes care of my uncle with Down's syndrome, and is a bit stressed out about this) accidentally put the shawl in the washer, and it felted. So I've promised to make her another one, and this time I thought I'd make life simpler for her and just knit it in 100 % acrylic. So I bought four skeins of Piggelen yarn from Marks & Kattens (100 % acrylic, 120 m/25 g). Did I mention that my grandmother likes pink? I haven't decided on a pattern yet.

And did you know that Drops has a new line of yarn out? It's called BabyAlpaca Silk, and it's 70 % baby Alpaca/30 % Mulberry silk, 167 m/50 g. This is probably the softest yarn Drops makes, and I just couldn't resist. Especially since it was on introduction sale! Four black skeins got to follow me home!

I don't really know what I'll make from them, but I' hoping I can find a shawl pattern that will suit me, since it's so soft that I really want to wear it araound my neck :)

Oh, and I did one more thing when I was in town today: I finally got a haricut! I can't even remember the last time I cut my hair, it was definitely more than a year ago, and the tips were so brittle it looked like a broomstick! So I took off about 15 cm, and it looks pretty good, if I say so myself.

The hair person put a flat-iron to the hair, and she's also styled it a bit, so I probably won't look this fancy when I fix it in the mornings. But I'm just happy it looks healthy again! I'll never go that long between haircuts again!

Ok, now I should really go to bed, so I can get to work in the morning!

/ Jenny