Organisational skills galore

Don't you just love the word "galore"? I think it's one of my favourites in the english language :)

Anyway, onwards with Knitting and Crochet Blog week!

Today's topic is the following: "Tidy mind, tidy stitches: How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry."

Ok, I guess I'm a bit anal in my organisation of knitting stuff. Sorting stuff has always been something that I've been into, and keeping my knitting in order takes priority for me. I hate having stuff all over the place! Next to the couch, where I usually sit and knit, I keep a bag that my sister sewed for me last Christmas:

This one is filled with my knitting stuff. All my needles and accessories, and some yarn that will be used in my current projects. I keep my needles pretty organized in here too. Here's where I keep all my KnitPicks Harmony interchangable needles (and my glove needles too):

It's a fabric roll that my sister has also made for me (I have the knitterly skills, she has the sewing skills). It just holds the needle ends, and not the cables, but that's ok. I love the fabric with the little faces on! The cables, and other stuff that I regularly use, I keep in this plastic bag:

It holds some of the cables, my cabeling needles, my stitch holders, measuring tape, and all my fixed circular Harmony needles from KnitPicks (can you tell I'm a bit of a fan of these needles?). It also usually holds my tiny bag for stitch markers:

And my tiny bag for buttons (This one I got from a knitter friend, Margot, who has now moved to the States):

I took both of the tiny bags out of the plastic bag to better show you the contents. The bag also holds scissors, pens, darning needles and needle threaders and point protectors.

The big bag next to the couch also holds my fabric roll that I store my bigger sized Harmony DPN's in:

This one is made of silk, and I got it from wonderful Ulrika for my 30th birthday this past spring. I LOVE this one, the needles fit right in, and I have the exact right number of sizes to fit in the roll. Perfect!

My smaller Harmony DPN's are still stored in the plastic holder they came in, but I think I will ask my sister if she can't sew a new holder for me for these as well. I like having the needles in pretty packages!

Finally, I have a pencil case that my sister also got me for my birthday last year, that I use for my KnitPicks Zephyr interchangable needles, and some other stuff:

This case is so cute! It also holds all of my crochet hooks and all of my shawl needles. Do you see the two wooden ones next to the black with mother-of-pearl head? The two who look kind of similar? I bought both of those in Roanoke, Virginia, on our trip last week, for $6.50 total! More on that in my next travel post!

I also try to keep my knitting fairly organized as well. Each project has it's own knitting bag. Right now I seem to have five projects on the needles. First up are the Terrebonne socks from the collection of 10 patterns, living in a striped Ikea bag:

Then there's the Devon socks, residing in a Roseknits Knitting bag:

And then there's the St James sweater, also living in a Roseknits bag:

My Panama shawl, taking up space in a triangular bag that my sister sewed for me:

And finally, a pair of mittens that I'm making for Thomas, in a bag I bought at a crafts fair here in Linköping last year. 

The little figure on the front is a swedish comics character called Bamse. He eats Dunderhonung (which I guess ca translate inte super-honey) to become the strongest person in the world. His best friends are the inventor turtle Skalman (Shellman) and the nervous rabbit Lille Skutt (Little hop). And I seem to have veered off the subject...


Anyway, I usually bring two different projects to work with me (right now usually the Terebonne socks and the St James sweater), and the rest of the project bags get to rest in a bigger bag that my sister also sewed for me.

This bag also sits next to the couch, right next to the other bag holding my knitterly stuff.


I also love to keep my yarn organized! During last autumn I sorted all of it into these boxes that I keep in the bookshelf behind the couch:

I have a total of 14 boxes, each labelled with a number. And on Ravelry (yes, I have ALL my yarn on Ravelry) I have made a note on all my skeins which box they live in! This makes it very easy to find them, and I love it. The boxes are roughly sorted by weight of yarn, but sometimes it was also a question of space. I wish I had the space for all of the new yarn I bought on the trip in these boxes too, but they are all full! Right now I have no idea where to put all of it, but I'll figure it out! 


Ok, now you see how obsessed with sorting stuff I am! This turned out to be a really long post, I hope you made it through all of it! See you tomorrow for a new topic :)


/ Jenny

What have I learned the past year?

Ok, let me just begin by telling you that my jet-lag is horrible! I'm just so incredibly tired,, and it doesn't help that Hobbe has spent the last two weeks with my parents and is now on "their time". Which means he wakes up at 4.30 in the morning, and wants to hang out. This morning he wanted to snuggle, but as soon as I started drifting off to sleep again and stopped petting him, he got off the bed, sat on the floor and cried until I got up and picked him up again (this is a thing he does frequently, I guess he can't just jump onto the bed himself, he needs us to show him we love him by bothering to pick him up...). Guess how tired I've been at work today?

Anyway, today is the second day of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week!

Today's topic is this: "Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?"

My knitting skills have really taken off during the last year! I only learned how to knit around Christmas 2007, so I haven't been at it for very long. Then in September 2008 my sweet kitty Gizmo died, and knitting was to me very connected to him, as he usually lay on my lap while I knitted. So I think I didn't touch my needles at all until maybe late spring 2009 again. The first couple of times I just cried and cried, but I got past the worst of it eventually, and now I thoroughly enjoy knitting again. It helped me through a lot of my depression during 2009 as well, which I'm very grateful for.

Anyway, I decided to mention three things that I think I've really improved at this past year. The first one is pretty obvious to most of my readers, I think. I took part in the "10 shawls in 2010" challenge during 2010, and my lace knitting has really gotten quite good. I've tried both the kind with resting rows and patterning on both sides, and with the Evenstar shawl I also got to try knitting one in the round with a knitted-on edging. I LOVE lace, even though I'm in a bit of a slump right now (I'm mostly knitting socks right now).

The second thing I've learned is the Kitchener stitch, which is pretty awesome when it comes to socks. I made this lilac dress during the summer/autumn, and instead of sewing all the pieces together I knitted it in the round, and instead of sewing the necl-band together with the back, I simply picked up stitches along the neck line and kitchenered the whole thing together. That was A LOT of stitches! So I think I've sort of mastered the Kitchener stitch after that one :)

Lastly, the last thing I think I've gotten good at is frogging. I know this might sound weird, but what I mean is that I've gotten better at looking at my knitting and deciding that it just isn't wearable. And as I get better and better, I find I don't mind so much any more if I have to rip it out and do it over again. I've gotten to the point where I'd rather be satisfied with a project than just get it done as soon as possible. To me, that's progress!

The thing I want to learn most this year, I think, is probably steeking. I'm deadly afraid of actually cutting my knitting up with a pair of scissors, but I see so many lovely sweaters and cardigan with colourwork that are steeked, and I think I just need to get over it and try it. Of course I'll try it on a swatch first!

I'll try to get some more sleep tonight, so I can get back to you tomorrow with the last part of our trip too!

/ Jenny

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