knits

I always surprise myself when I finish a pair of socks. I'm currently not very into socks, so every pair feels like a big accomplishment. I finished these in July but as it happens, the blog sometimes has hard time keeping up.

Anyway, here are the specs:
Yarn: Lana Grossa Meilenweit Mega Boots, one 100 gram ball; plenty of yarn was left over
Pattern: Fawkesby Monkey Toes (Rav link)
Needles: 2,5 mm dpns
Modifications: I did five repeats of the pattern on the cuff and not four as suggested in the pattern. Other than that I followed the pattern.

I did it! I finished all my KYH (the Finnish KAL where you cast on 26 items in June and finish them all by the end oh July) knits!

Here's what I knit:

Don't you just love it when you dare to try something new, and it works out just perfect? That's what happened with this shrug. I had quite a lot of this yarn left from Nick's Eccentric Sweater so I decided to make myself this shrug, on which I've had my eye on for a good while now. I originally planned to do the cuffs and ribbing in black, but I didn't really have enough yarn to give it a try, so I sticked with the orange.

Now, orange and turqoise is not the kind of combination I'd wear every day, so I was a bit suspicious, but then I thought that something really eccentric in my closet is not so bad, either! So I cast on, knit, cast off and was very happy with the results.

First of all sorry for not posting last week - I've been ill! I catched a very nasty cold that forced me to bed for several days, and it's still not quite gone, but I'm trying to take it easy and get well soon.

Anyway, I do have some news for you! First of all, you may notice that the site is now conciderably quicker to browse. I mean, it's really quick! That's because my DH Nick moved the site to a new server with more capacity yesterday. Thanks honey!

And second: I've decided to go "cold sheep" for the rest of 2010, meaning I won't be buying any yarn for my personal use this year anymore! I've done yarn diets before, but not for so long, so I'm quite excited to see how it goes! But fact is, my stash is getting too big so this is a very needed step.

Have you ever gone cold sheep for a longer period of time? How did it go?

Last Sunday I took part in Kreativflohmarkt / Creative Flea Market in our local art centre & creative space Unperfekthaus. It was organised by Charly from Natron & Soda who also comes to our knitting group. It was so much fun!

I had stitch markers, self dyed wool and shirts from Marvellous for sale. I didn't sell much, but did manage to end up on the plus side!

This flea market will happen first Sunday of each month from now on, and I will certainly be attending! It was nice to sell your handmades, and just as nice to sit with the other sellers, knit and chat.

What a great way to spend a Sunday!

Special offer! Special offer! Limited time only! Get yours now! And what other sales pitch sentences there are!

No, seriously, my Knitting Princess t-shirts have been marked down 25% off until 29th July at shirtsofberlin.de.

The shirts come in limited series of 25 shirts per design, they're numbered, hand printed by my husband, climate neutral and organic. The shirts are soft and look good. The price for such a unique product is just more than fair, and now with 25% off it's just amazing. I love these, so I urge you to just take a look at shirtsofberlin.de and see for yourself!

My shawl love is not showing any signs of dying, and that's just fine. As long as I like making them and find people who want to wear them (although I do keep most myself...) I'll keep making them. They're so quick! They're so pretty! There's interesting lace! They're made out of sock yarn but aren't tiny gauge! What's not to love. This is my latest FO, the Clothilde (Rav pattern link) shawl.

There's one annoying thing about Novita, the largest Finnish yarn brand: they change their selection very often! I read about the lovely new yarns on Ravelry or get a few balls from my sister to try them out. I plan to buy (more) of this yarn the next time I visit Finland. By the time I get to visit Finland, they've discontinued the yarn! The bad thing is that I then can't get the yarns or colourways I want. But the good thing is that if I do find the yarns, they'll be in the marked down bin!

This summer seems to be bad for my knitting content - I just can't knit when it's over 30 degrees, not even cotton or bamboo. So it was in Finland, too, where I spent last week (I came back today) on holiday visiting my family with my DH. It was so hot I spent my days swimming and drinking juice in the garden. I'll post a few photos of the Finnish summer soon (courtesy of Nick), plus my new yarn goodies and a recycled sweater bag I finally lined on my Mum's sewing machine! Watch this space.

I can't seem to get enough of shawls! I love knitting them, love wearing them, and I love how I can use sock yarn to make them and don't have to knit the yarn with tiny 2mm needles!

This is my newest shawl FO - the Twilight Gloaming shawl (Rav link), already shortly shown at my KYH posting a few days back. As I've mentioned earlier, I am sort of a Twilight fan, or at least I really enjoyed the books and have also knit Twilight fanwear previously (like Bella's Mittens), so it's no wonder this shawl pattern insipred by Twilight immediately caught my eye. After being so lucky and have the pattern gifted to me this spring I wanted to start knitting right away. Well...