Merry Christmas!

Yes, this will be my last post until Christmas. Tomorrow morning me, Thomas and Hobbe are going down to Borås to spend the weekend at our parents' homes over the holidays. My parents only have sucky internet, so I won't be posting anything until I get home to Linköping again. So I thought I would take some time today to wish you all a very merry Christmas (or any other holiday you might be celebrating)! I hope you all get to have a fun and relaxing weekend, filled wtih family and good food!

I managed to finish all (actually it was only two) my Christmas knitting too, I blocked the last one on Sunday. I can't wait to get to show them to you, as I'm really pleased with both of them. I have to admit that I really don't like working under a deadline though! Even though I enjoyed making both of these projects, some of the joy went out of it as I felt I had to work on ONLY those two projects until they were done. I like to alternate between different projects, so I'm really happy that I get to go back to knitting on my ordinary projects now!

I'm working on three things right now, that have been WIP's for a while. The Evenstar shawl has been sadly neglected for quite some time, but I'm really looking forward to have some quality time with it over the weekend.

I'm also working away on my Paper Dolls sweater, and I've almost finished the body. Which reminds me, I have to bring my dpn's with me to Borås, so I can start the sleeves! This has mainly been worked on at work, as it's been more or less mindless stockinette knitting so far. But after the sleeves are attached, the colourwork will begin, which will be fun. Can't wait to get this finished, as this is the second time I'm trying it!

And finally, I cast on for a pair of socks on Sunday night, and yesterday we had a really slow hour at work, right before lunch, so I've almost finished the leg! This is one of the patterns from the 10 models for €15 that I bought a while ago. The pattern is called Pink Ribbon socks, and I'm using my Limmo Design Handpainted sock yarn in colourway Rosebud, that I bought at the sewing festival this past September. It's great to work woth, and it looks really pink and pretty in real life!

And if you're wondering why I'm writing today in the middle of the day (it's noon here), it's because my stomach is acting up again. It started on Sunday morning (which made me miss Anna's Christmas evening party!), and has been a bit on the fritz since then. Not too much, I've been to work Monday and Tuesday, but today it was worse again. If things don't look better tomorrow I think I'll have to cave in and take an Immodium, because I want to be able to enjoy all the Christmas food on Friday. I really don't like taking those pills, as they sort of stop up everything for a couple of days, which tends to hurt a bit, but for this once it might be worth it.

Oh, and on Saturday me and my sister went to the movies to see the new Harry Potter movie! I was a bit hesitant about it, as I found the last book to be a bit slow (good anyway, but there was a lot of just travelling back and forth). So I didn't know how that would work in the movie, especially since they've divided the last book into two films. But it was surprisingly good, and apparently it's been too long since I read the book because I didn't remeber much. It has a lot of sad parts in it, and now that I'm off my antidepressants and back to my normal, sappy self, I cried a lot. Thank God it's dark in the theatre! I'm glad I don'thave to wait longer than the summer for the last one though, as it's really close to the end now.

And can you believe it's been snowing more and more?! We have about a meter of snow right now, and yesterday it was almost -15 Centigrades outside! Brrrrrr! I'm so over the winter already, and ready for spring, but sadly I think I have to wait a while. Last "spring" the snow stayed until the beginning of April, and I bet it will be the same next year. Ugh! They're saying that there will come a huge snow storm on Christmas eve, bigger than in the pst 40 years or so, so we'll probably be trapped inside for the whole day!

Now I'm going upstairs to see if I can't wake my husband up. He has the day off today, and he likes to sleep in, but now it's noon and I think he should get up and spend some time with me instead. I've been up since 6, so I'm getting a bit bored!

Have a wonderful holiday everybody, and I'll be back next week!

/ 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

First shawl - check!

Yes, it's true! I'm done witht he first of my 10 shawls in 2010. Anna was here the whole day, and just before dinner I finished it. It's blocking now, and hopefully it will be dry tomorrow so I can wear it to work.

Jenny's September Shawl

I LOVE it, the yarn was a dream to work with. It looks very dark in the photo because it's wet, but the colours really pop. I'll try to get a better photo of me wearing it tomorrow! I used exactly 78 g (thank you, new kitchen scales!) and I decided to knit some super-fast, stockinette half-mittens with the rest of it. I'm almost done with the first one, but it's so dark here right now that it's hard to get a decent photo of it. I'll try to show them to you tomorrow too.

I went to my first knitting café this year this Friday, and it was SO much FUN! I've missed it during the holidays, and I could tell I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of us, and we were all very excited to be there. I knit a lot on the September shawl there, and I have to say that the pattern is great. It's both written and charted directions, for those of you who don't like either one (I'm a chart girl myself, I don't think I could follow the written instructions without loosing my place), and it's easy at the same time as it's beautiful. I'm super-pleased that I bought this pattern!

And this past Thursday one of my books arrived in the mail as well! I got my copy of Selbuvotter, by Terry Shea. This book is so cool, with lots and lots of gloves and mittens. Can you tell that I love these Norse designs?! Once my KnitPick's order arrives I'll get cracking on some mittens and gloves!

And as I mentioned, Anna has been here practically the whole day today. We've knitted and chatted a lot, and we watched Amelie from Montmartre, which I hadn't seen before. It was a super cute movie, although it was a bit challenging to knit while I was watching, as I had to read the subtitles the whole time. I don't know any french, so I could hardly take my eyes off the TV screen even for a second! But I worked on the stockinette half-mitts, and they're not very demanding, concentration-wise. It's always fun to hang out with Anna, we always have so much fun. She had gotten some KoolAid in a swap a while ago, so we'e now planning some more yarn-dyeing.

This past Thursday I also went with my sister to one of the local yarn stores (LYS) in town, to buy yarn for a hat she had planned to knit. And I didn't buy any yarn! Yay me! I did manage to pcik up some new pins though, for blocking, but I actually needed those. Of course I couldn't resist when the pins were extra lovely either, one box is filled with metallic-coloured ones, and the other one is filled with white pearl-coloured, tear-shaped ones. They are currently working hard in keeping the September shawl in place :)

And of course I haven't found the time to look at the spinning wheel this weekend! Yesterday me and Thomas went grocery-shopping, and we also went around a lot of other stores picking up different supplies. I bought some plastic zip-lock bags to keep my yarn in, and I've now sealed all of it away in about 50 bags, I think... I keep the small bags in my big, patterned, plastic ones I bought a while ago. But this took up a lot of my day, and then we had to cook and clean a bit too, so then Saturday was gone. And today has been a real knitting day, which was just what I needed, but alas - no spinning. Maybe next weekend?

Now that I'm done with the September shawl I need to cast on for something else. I think I've decided on the Echo Flower shawl, and I'm going to make it in the lovely KnitPicks Shadow Kettle Dyed, in colourway Wine. It's hard to choose from the queue though, as I have SO many gorgeous patterns lined up! But right now, I thin I'll choose from the ones I've paired up with a yarn. I'm trying to knit from my stash as much as I can (and I'm betting Nalamienea is killing herself laughing right now - she's seen the order I've placed at KnitPicks...), and I really need to get going on my sock yarn stash soon! There are just too many lovely sock patterns out there!

And finally: I think this is my ninety-first post, which means I'll soon be up to a hundred. And then it will be competition time! There will of course be some scrumptious fiber prizes, so stay tuned!

/ Jenny

And now, for something completely different

I thought I would do something completely different today, and talk a bit about movies. I'm bored at work, and I don't have any knitting progress to show you since yesterday (although I've finished the cuff on the second Moose Mitten, and here's the Ravelry pattern link, Nalamienea). I don't mind admitting that I'm a horror junkie, but I'm sort of particulate about what I like. I don't like hach-and slash movies with serial killers, and I'm not fond of the "gross the audience out"-genre either. I think I like the moies with something a bit supernatural best, and I especially love zombie flicks.

But before I tell you about all the horror movies I like, I'll start with mentioning the best film I ever saw as a child: The Neverending Story.This is one of the few cases where I actually love both the book and the movie, maybe because I saw the movie long before I read the book. This must be one of the best children's stories out there, it's just so beautiful! This is the first movie I remember crying to (I cry when I watch cartoons sometimes, I'm so soppy I can hardly stand on my own :), and I actually have a tattoo from this movie, of the Auryn (the pendant that Artreyu gets, and that saves Fantasia in the end) between my shoulder blades. If you haven't seen this one, go do it right now. I'll wait.

Moving on to the horror flicks. I think my favourite Zombie movie is actually "28 weeks later", even though this is a sequel. I just loved a movie with fast zombies, and Robert Carlyle is SOOO good in this one. I could definitely watch "Dawn of the Dead" again, preferably the new one, and I actually liked "Land of the Dead" as well (Thomas won't agree with you on that one though). There is a new Zombie flick coming up sometime next year, based on the book "World War Z" by max Brooks, and as this is one of the best books I've ever read, regardless of genre, I'm very excited about this. Hopefully it will do the book justice.

We watched "District Nine" a while ago, and that was a really good Sci-Fi/Horror. I think I'll probably buy this one some time next year, and I can really recommend it! The best part of this is that it is set in South Africa, and there were so many different levels to the movie, the most obvious one being the racial aspect. Just watch it, ok?

Another terrific Sci-Fi/Horror is "Event Horizon", starring Sam Neil and Lawrence Fishburn. This movie is seriously creepy, and the first time I watched it I actually had to watch something non-horror afterwards to calm down before I dared go to bed. So not for the faint of heart, but if you're a horror fan and haven't seen this, I warmly recommend it.

One of my alltime favourites, that isn't really horror at all, is "Nightmare Before Christmas" by Tim Burton. Mr Burton is my favourite director, I've so far loved all his movies, but I still think this is the best. I must have seen it a hundred times by now, but it's still as good!

And if we're leaving the horror genre, I might as well tell you that I love "Stand by Me" as well. In my mind it is almost classified as a horror anyway, as the novel is written by Stephen King, but this is actually one of his books that doesn't really fit the horror label. That's one thing I love about mr King as well, he's very versatile. Many of his books can't really be peg-holed into a single genre. And this movie is just so great, even though it's not about anything more than four boys and their friendship.

And the final movie I'm going to recommend is the Dracula movie that Coppola made in 1992. It's not very scary, but VERY romantic! I guess that if this movie had come out today, it would be classified as an EMO movie, but way back then we didn't have such things as emo kids, so I don't care! It's so dark and romantic, and Gary Oldman is SOOO sexy in his long, dark hair!

Hm, I think we'll make this into a series of posts: Next time I'll tell you about my favourite actors. And I think I also want to rant a bit about TV-series as well. And I guess I could make a full post about music as well... So stay tuned if you want to hear my opinion on stuff you don't care about :)

Oh, and just so you know: All film poster photos are borrowed from Wikipedia!

/ Jenny

Quick post

I'm actually at work right now, so this will be a rather short update. I haven't got a lot to do right now at work, as I'm sort of between lab projects right now, so I'm doing a lot of reading. It is nice in one way, but it's very hard to stay motivated. Especially since I'm struggling with the damned depression simultaneously, which sort of makes it hard to get out of bed some days. Today was just one of those days, I really had to push myself to get up and have breakfast, and I didn't even manage that until 9.30... But at least I'm at work now, and I'm going to work out with my sister his afternoon too, so I at least get to do something today.

Well, enough whining! Time to tell you about my knitting instead! As I'm at work, I have no new photos today, so I'll just brief you a little about what I've been doing the last week. I told you about the cabled gloves I'm working on, right? I had to frog them down to the cuff the other day, as I noticed that the thumb gusset was way too low. But now I've knitted 2.5 fingers on the first one again, and it actually looks pretty neat. The cables are really crazy, but that was sort of why I chose this pattern in the first place, and I think I'll get a lot of use from them. Hopefully it won't be too cold for them too soon!

The green cardigan/bolero I'm making is hibernating for a while longer. I'm still waiting for the yarn to arrive in the mail, and as there is a postal strike going on i the UK, I'm guessing this could take a while. I'm actually waiting for a lot of yarns in the mail! I've ordered the green one for the cardi from a shop in UK, and I managed to find a woman on Ravelry who was willing to sell me some white KnitPicks Main Line yarn to go with my green skeins! I'm so thrilled about this, as I've been planning to make some coloured items with this. And as KnitPicks seems to have discontinued this yarn, I'm so glad I found some elsewhere!

I also got a chance to order directly from KnitPicks for the first time last week! This company is great, but they don't ship to Europe at all so you sort of have to know someone in the US who can order for you. And a while ago one of my fellow bloggers, Nalamienea who writes the blog The Student Knitter offered to do just that, as she was going to order from them anyway. So me and Anna jumped at this offer, and ordered SO MUCH! And I heard from Nalamienea this weekend that the package had arrived at her place, so she was going to post it for us this week. I'm so excited, and I'll show you lots of pictures of the loot as soon as it gets here! For someone who's on a yarn diet, I'm buying a lot....

I've also finally started the Lettuce coat from the Custom Knits book by Wendy Bernard. I'm knitting it in my gorgeous Sarek yarn from Marks & Kattens, and I've only made the shoulders so far, but I think it will look very good! I love the yarn, it's just perfectly balanced between soft and scratchy wool, and I think I'll wear it a lot. And as I'm planning on using all 10 skeins I have in my stash, this will turn out to be a great stash-buster as well.

This Saturday I went to Anna and saw her apartment and boyfriend for the first time, which was a lot of fun. We ordered pizza and watched the movie Big Fish, and of course did a lot of knitting and talking as well. I managed to pursuade my sister to drive me there and pick me up as well, so I actually got to drink a little wine as well. It was just a super nice evening, and I love the movie. Tim Burton is my all-time favourite director, I love all his movies. I can't wait til Alice in Wonderland comes out next year!

And speaking of movies: I hope you haven't missed the fact that Where the Wild Things Are is coming out as a movie this fall as well?! This is my absolute favourite children's book (It's called Till Vildingarnas Land in Swedish), and I'm dying to see this movie! I've seen the trailer, and it looks fantastic. It's coming to Sweden in late November, so I only have to wait a month now.

Oh, and while I was at Anna's I started yet another knitting project. My mother asked me for brown, ribbed leg-warmers a while ago, and as we were going to watch the movie I figured this would be a perfect TV project. The leg warmers are just 2x2 ribbing, and I could almost make them in my sleep. I'm just worried I don't have enough yarn for them, I'm using an old yarn from my stash from Red Heart, which is 50 % superwash wool and 50 % acrylic. It's the same brand that I used for the cabled, green-blue socks I made a while ago, only this is a solid brown colour. On the other hand I'm going to visit my parents this coming weekend, as we are going to the christening of my best friend's youngest boy (me and Thomas are going to become god-parents!), and I've bought the yarn in Borås super-cheap so I guess I can buy another skein then if I have to.

And this Thursday one of my favourite online yarn stores, Chili Gredelin, had a huge sales on one of their lace yarns! This yarn had been voted on to the top 10 list in the Swedish knitting group Sticka!, and she lowered the prices for just one night to celebrate. I bought 2 skeins of a gorgeous green lace yarn, and I'm hoping it will arrive this week. I'm so excited I've been looking at lace patterns the whole weekend. I'll show you pictures when I get it, I promise. And I know I'm supposed to be on a yarn diet, but I convinced my parents that this would be a great early christmas gift for me, and my mother agreed. So it doesn't count! It's like calories: they don't count if you're cooking for someone else too (or if you eat from someone else's plate...).

I'll leave you with this super-cute photo of Hobbe as a baby, so you have something to enjoy while reading!

/ Jenny