FOs

I'm so excited! My Ravelympics shawl is done! In case you're not familiar with the term, it's basically a knitalong where you do a challenging project during the Olympic games. Mine was the Tulppaani shawl (this pattern is originally in Finnish, but can be found in English at Villapallo's blog)

I'll post more about it once it's been blocked and my darling husband is back from his conference Drupaletics and available to take some photos of me modeling the gorgeous shawl! Sorry for the quality of these - I tried my best standing on the bed, but it just didn't seem to work better than this!

This is the second year when I'm knitting from my stash (not exclusively though!) with the Ravelry Stash knit down group, in particular the Personal Small Items "club". The idea is simply to (before the year) starts pack one small project per month -yarn from stash plus pattern- and work these projects month by month.

The idea is that by packing the yarn and patterns beforehand you quite quickly forget what you packed and are happily surprised with what lovely yarn and a nice pattern you get to reveal from its bag monthly! Well, that's what happens me most of the time. These here are the two fun projects I've made this year.

So, I'm feeling better so I can finelly get back to blogging! This is what I have to show you first - the Damson shawl.

First the stats:
Pattern: Damson by Ysolda Teague
Needles: 4mm circular
Yarn: 1 skein of Zitron undyed sock yarn, self-dyed with Kool aid - and ca. 20 grams of Zitron bamboo sock yarn, also self dyed. More about this later..!
Modifications: I did the lace bit in garter stitch instead of stockinette. It looks good!

So this thing... it's not quite as pretty as I hoped, and it's not very flattering on me, but hey, I knit it so I will show it here as well.

Pattern: Cloud Bolero by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Marengo by G-B (a local German brand, the yarn is wool and acrylic)
Needles: 7mm KnitPicks circular
Modifications: none

I knit the size M, and it fits me well. However this type of garment doesn't look too good on me I have noticed. Not sure how much use this will get... it does warm my shoulders nicely! We'll see, maybe I'll even end up giving it to someone.

This is my 2009 tally für preemies. You might know that I support the German knit for preemies charity Frühchenstricken, who collect preemie knits and distribute them to the hospitals who request them. I usually send one packet a year, and this is the one for 2009 (they asked me to wait over Christmas to send it, so I only sent it last week).

What I made:
2 cotton blankets, ca 55x60 cm big
5 pairs of preemie socks
5 preemie hats

OK, it's not so much, but hey, every little helps and I know these items will beused by those who need them. Plus preemie knits are so great for quick stashbusting projects!

PS. What do you think about the new background Nick made for me?

I did it! I've knit Owls! Not that that makes me so special - it is currently the most knit sweater pattern on Ravelry , but if you read my blog, you will know that I'm not the big sweater knitter. So every sweater feels like an accomplishment, like having climbed a mountain. In this case, rather small mountain, as this sweater was really quick to knit! And I love it!

Pattern: Owls
Needles: 5,5mm circular, must have been 80 cm long
Yarn: Marks & Kattens Eko Ull, 100% organic wool from New Zealand. I used 380 grams, that's a little less than 8 balls.

I admit to being a kind of a Twilight fan. There, now I've said it! I love the storytelling in the books; somehow the story just hits the right note in me. I liked the film too. I haven't seen New Moon yet, as I insist on watching in in English, and all the cinemas here are showing it dubbed to German. So I'll propably need to wait for the DVD.

Anyhow, I also liked the knits in the film. In a few scenes Bella is wearing really long, thick cabled mittens. Of course some of the Twilight fans wrote out patterns for them, and of course I had to make a pair as well.

Why endless? Let's just say these were my September small item!

I've been wanting to make these mittens for a long time, ever since I saw Lien working on them some years ago when we both lived in Dublin. So I packed them as one of my 2008 "small items club from stash" and started working on them last September. Boy were they slow to knit! It felt like I knit and knit and knit and have finished a few rows only. I even took them to work one day and knit through a telephone conference! Somehow I did manage to finish them in the end, and I do like them a lot. But I doubt I'll be taking on small gauge colourwork projects on in the near future!

I'm back! I hope you all had a great Christmas?

I'll see if I'll post some pictures from Paris, but first I'll just show you some of the Christmas presents and a pair of funny socks I made.

The green adult booties are for my sister and her husband. The pattern is by Ysolda, and they're so quick and easy I decided to make them as presents this year. I already had one pair ready from October so I had good choice trying to figure out which booties had the best size for the gift receivers!

The booties are knit with vintage superwash wool held double on 5mm needles. The smaller pair is European size 39-40, and the bigger one should fit a foot quite a lot bigger! They took approximately 100 grams of yarn per pair, and that's held double! Really nice.

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!