Oh dear...

How did this happen? One minute it's Christmas and the next it's March!?! What have I been doing, you might ask. I've moved all of my things from my student flat into my old room at my dad's (where did all that stuff come from???) and then moved myself and 23kg of my favorite things to Diemen, which is just outside Amsterdam. I'm currently studying Fashion and Management at Amsterdam Fashion Institute. It's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun... there's nothing quite like the Erasmus lifestyle :-)

Here is a cavalcade of my FO's, in no particular order. I'm sorry for the lack of descriptions, I hate putting together posts with many photos. It took all I have to just arrange them and the text in some semblance of aesthetic order.

Jaywalkers for my flatmate Sanna

Jaywalker cellphone cozy for me

Doll clothes for a school project, my own 'design.'

Ursus arm warmers for Sonja (then my brother's girlfriend, now his fiance!)

Cabled dress for myself

Tiny mittens for flatmate

Never anger the knitting gods

I fear I may have angered the almighty gods of knitting, how you may ask. I'm not sure. Perhaps it was my hubris, I was certain that I would be able to finish my Christmas projects long before Christmas. I have cast on the Branching out scarf for my father's girlfriend (eh, ladyfriend?) three times in the last three days. I keep messing up, if I wouldn't have frogged it I would almost be finished.

But, never fear. There is also some good news! I have figured out what was troubling my camera. Apparently it could not stand the cheap batteries I was using. I have since bought re-chargeable batteries and they are working like a charm.

Above you can see the, soon to be frogged, third incarnation of my Branching out scarf. It's like a "find five faults" picture, but with knitting! The yarn is Novita Olivia (70% bamboo, 30% Polyester) and was on sale for 1.50e/skein (~2.20$). It's very soft and doesn't look worse for wear, even though it's been frogged a few times!

Stupid camera

My camera is dead. Which sucks. Obviously! I'm going to look for the receipt and the box it came in and hope it has a 12month warranty (I bought it 11 months ago).

I finished the Halloween capelet ages ago and started knitting two different sock patterns, both x-mas gifts. I've also bought a new knitting book called "Knitting Classic Style: 35 Modern Designs Inspired by Fashion's Archives", by Veronik Avery. It is really brilliant and I've added a few of the projects to my list (which keeps growing and growing and growing)

Purple

Annaonthemoon received her birthday surprise, so here are the photos of what I sent.
The socks are somewhat more 'purplish' than the photo would have you believe, but I couldn't get the right shade for some reason. Didn't follow any pattern, made up the pattern as I went along.





I'm quite proud of the Rose's Wrist Warmers, they came out quite nicely. I've still got enough yarn to make another pair, yay! Purple isn't my colour though, so I 'll probably give them to my friend Susku (We both love Dr.Who!) I wish I could have gotten a better photo of the wrist warmers but it 's really difficult to take photos of your own arms (go figure)

Sock wars II

Sock wars is back and this time I found out about it early enough to participate! Yes! I can't wait for it to start, incidentally it starts two days before my birthday. Which happens to coincide with a week long vacation! Meaning I have all the time in the world to knit!!!

I sent out the suprise birthday present to Annaonthemoon last thursday, nearly a week ago. I hope it get's there safe and sound! I'll post the photos once she has received, I'm quite pleased with what I knit and I hope she will be to!

Kool-Aid rules!

I dyed some yarn yesterday, I love playing with Kool-Aid. You never know exactly what the end result will be.
I started out with two skeins of natural white Novita Bambino yarn (100% wool), which I dyed with Grape Kool-Aid. After the dyeing I realized there where a lot of white bits, so I dyed it again with a mixture of Grape and Cherry Kool-Aid. The end reault is not really anything like what I'd imagined, it's better! I'm going to knit a birthday surprise for Annaonthemoon over at Craftster. I can't say what in case she reads this! Her favorite color is purple, hence the color of the yarn.

Edited to add a picture of the yarn wound up in two center-pull balls, I can finally start knitting! Yay!

Pink FBB finished

It's far from perfect, but I don't think I'm going to frog it. I don't remember what the yarn is called, but it was kind of difficult to work with since it has so many ´thick and thin´ bits. I used double strands and I used more or less three skeins. I still have four or five skeins left and I have no idea what to do with it.

In other news, Novita has released their new yarns! Yay! I saw a lot of yarns that just called out to me. I want to knit a bag out of the green Mambo (which looks much better in real life) and crochet an FBB out of the gold Paola (I know, another one?!) und so weiter...

I've already started putting together a Christmas knitting list and for once it's actually organized (thanks to Ravelry!) I wonder if I'll be able to finish everything on time this year, last year was a bit of a disaster because I started so late :)

Knitting adventurer

I took a quiz today called What kind of knitter are you? Apparently I am an knitting adventurer, which I think it describes me pretty well, I love trying new things. Today I decided that I should learn entrelac and I saw this really cute stitch pattern called "feather and fan," that I might just have to make a scarf out of. I would have posted the result of the quiz but blogger wouldn't let me (sometimes I hate HTML!)

I've finished two items since I last posted, the socks for my friend and a Calorimetry out of the leftover yarn.










Sorry about the expression, I'd just gotten home from an 11h school day... (need I say more?)










I only cast on 100sts and it came out the perfect size!

Socks for susku (or second January socks)

I found some blue yarn in my stash this week, that I bought ages ago and I decided to knit a pair of socks for my friend Susku out of it. They have to be finished by the 26th when I'll be visiting her in Helsinki (wish me luck.)

Finished socks

I finished the socks for my grandmother a few days back but I forgot to post photos of them. I still have some yarn left, no idea what to do with it or any of the other left over yarn that is currently floating around my room ;)

I started doing the decreases on Piggle yesterday and I must say I've messed up in more ways than I thought possible, but since I'm too stubborn to frog it I'll just have to live with the fact that it looks a bit wonky... I'm beani-challanged apparently, when ever I try to make one it just ends up looking awful.


PS: let's pretend you can't see my long johns, ok?

Christmas crafts

I took the opportunity to do quite a lot of crafting over the holidays, but I didn't have any internet access so I'm posting it all in one.

This is the ginger bread house my friend Susanna and I made, it ended up a bit wonky so we had to improvise... a lot. It's sort of unintentionally "Nightmare before Christmas"-themed.

These socks were a Christmas gift for my mother, the pattern is from the latest issue of knitty and is called monkey.

This is my sister's dog Wagner and he is wearing a Santa outfit I made for him. It was supposed to be a jacket but since I'm an idiot I messed up and ended up having to make a cape instead. Click here to see a video of him wearing it.

This is my first try using the shrinky dinks I got ages ago in the MCDHT6 swap. I glued them onto magnets with erikeeper, managed to lose them though :( The sewing machine in the background used to be my grandmother's, pretty isn't it? No one uses it at my dad's, which is a bit of a shame since it works perfectly.

I knit this bag out of the yarn I got from Superhooker, which I dyed with koolaid. I probably didn't use enough colour because the yarn came out quite pale but I still like it. It's basically the same as the other garnstudio bag I knitted but it's slightly smaller and the handle is different. The handle is just two icords, I considered adding a third but then I got the idea to crochet myself a headband thingy out of the left over yarn.

There are still four projects that I haven't posted, two are UFOs and one is going to be sent to Superhooker and she might still lurk around and get a look at it... wouldn't want that now would we? I thought her package had gotten lost in the mail so I started a new one and then she received her package. But I had allready finished one item, so I have decided to send it since they're too small for me and I don't know anyone else who'd appriciate them.

Comments? Questions?

socks

Here are the long awaited pictures of the socks I knitted (knit?) for my dad... not that anyone reads this :)

Father's day

So it's father's day in Finland today.

I made some fudge for my dad on friday, which we ate on saturday :) I also spent most of friday and saturday knitting a pair of socks for him. They came out really well, I'll post some pics of it once the roll of film in my camera is full and I have chance to get it developed. I used Novita 7 veljestä Raita (7 Brothers Stripe), it has three different shades of blue. They look fairly similar to these found on the novita website... except the toepart is not as neat on the ones I made.