experimental

Poor sweater, what have I done to you?

This is a sad story about a top-down raglan sweater, which had an "accident" and has now become a bottom-up raglan sweater. Let me start from the beginning...

A while back I finally started on my husband's sweater. I decided on bulky yarn and a top-down raglan recepie for calculating my own gauge. So I measured my tall and skinny husband, I measured my gauge swatch and started knittting. I made him try the sweater on again and again, and everything seemed just fine. Until the sweater body and one sleeve were finished. That's when I noticed I had made way too many raglan increases - the armpit of the sweater was at least two inches too low, giving the sweater a batwing-kind of sleeve look and loads of extra fabric at the armpit.

I've had these ready for a good while now, and finally I get to blogging about them!

The first knit is the Puro-tube. The original pattern is from Novita, but I modified it like SatuH did, meaning I didn't double the yarn and cast on 110 stitches. It was knit during a week of illness in bed, with 5mm circular needles. I used a bit less that three balls of Novita Puro (what a lovely yarn!), that is ca. 130 grams.

The second knit is the smaller Ishbel shawl. I made the bigger one for myself for my wedding and had almost one ball of Malabrigo lace left after it. So I knit the smaller Ishbel for my mother's 66th birthday. She loved it!

Greetings from the Mouse Factory!

Well, not quite, but I have been making lots of mice lately, as I was trying to get as many as possible done for Ompelukerho (a Finnish women's action group I am a member of) stand at the Christmas market. The market is today, and I hope they sell well! They did last year, anyway, and because these mice are smaller than the ones last year, they might even sell better (as last year's mice were more like rats...)

Ok, it's the middle of November, so not really growth season. But tell that to our chili plant, which just grew and grew in size during the summer, and started growing chilis in the autumn! I've harvested one chili already, and five more are still growing! I guess it'll be a spicy hot winter for us (at least the one I already harvested was h-o-t!)

I've knit some small things last month and I thought I'd show them to you, as they came out nicely, I think!

First we have the Grown-up bootees. The pattern is by Ysolda Teague, and it's a part of the Whimsical Little Knits 1 collection. I've knit them with vintage superwash wool held double on 5mm needles. This pair fits me, so the size is ca. European 39. They took approximately 100 grams of yarn. I'll be making more as Christmas presents!

Next I have two more pairs of preemie socks for the Sukkasato-KAL. Again 28 stitches around, made on 2,5mm dpns. The yarn is of unknown quality, but I did dye it myself (except for the toe of one sock, as I ran out of the self-dyed yarn). The KAL is finished now, my total: five pairs of preemie socks, and the grown-up bootees. Not bad!

I'm still working on the Finland pictures, but currently I've just been so busy! The bureaucracy and the thank you cards after the wedding, my acting hobby at the local theatre (premiere next month!) as well as work just seem to take up all my time at the moment. So I'll just need to show you something that's been finished for some weeks already... sorry! But I'm sure you'll like this one too.

Here are the actual specs:

Pattern: until lace egding my own calculation of a basic pinwheel pattern, the lace pattern from Cinnamon Bay (Ravelry link, a pattern from book "Knitting in the Sun")
Needles: 4mm dpns and circular
Yarn: Plaetzsch Nadja cotton 4-ply got got as a present, at least five 50 gram balls.

Remember the banana silk yarn I received as gift a while back? I finally cast it on, ancdvery quickly cast it off too, as it knits up really quick!

I made the Juicy banana silk scarf (Ravelry link) and even though it calls for two hanks of the yarn, I managed very well with just one, I just left the tassels off and made the scarf a bit shorter - I reckon it measures two meters. I made it with 8mm needles.

Two weeks back me and a few friends from the Essen kniting group went to one member's place to have fun and dye.

She had set up everything at the back yard, so we won't mess up the house. There was also bread and salad to eat, plus chocolate of course. How lovely!

So we got started and everything went fine, before it started drizzling and the weather got quite chilly. We persistantly kept on dyeing, and the rain pesistantly kept on coming down, so at the end we were almost as wet as the yarn! Just take a look at the sun parasole in the microwave picture! (press Read more if you can't see it)

In the end, the results were gorgeous, as you can see. Everything got dyed, and after three pots of tea we started to feel dry too, and sat around talking for several hours more.

I've been requesting and getting Kool Aid as "Random acts of Kindness" from many lovely people lately, and decided now's the time to try how they work.

I've dyed with Kool Aid before, but only in a microwave, a machine I don't have at the moment. So stovetop here's looking at you!

I followed the advice on Knitty and first dyed some white sock yarn with three bags of Orange and two bags of Tropical Punch (that's red). I think they came our really nice and happy looking!

I did use a pattern for this, I just can't remember which one! Anyway, meet my glorious ruffle boa! I knit it on 6mm long, long circular. I started out with 90 stitches, then increased every stitch every other row. The yarn is appropriately Bernat Boa (which was terrible to knit with I must say!)

I had 150 grams of yarn, and ran a bit short. I had to do some tricks at the end of the scarf (I basically just pulled the remaining yarn through the stitches rather than really casting them off) and one can see the end is much less ruffled than the starting end. But I thought, I don't mind, so no-one else should either!

I like it a lot, it's really long and in dramatic colours. I don't know how much wear it will get, but I did wear in on my birthday to Rocky Horror Show musical. I loved wearing it, plus the musical was just fantastic!