Weekendtrip to Helsinki and the handicrafts fair

Last weekend I visited a friend who lives in Helsinki. The weather was pretty good on Saturday and we spent the day shopping at thrift-stores. I found a nice jacket at 50% at one of the UFF shops we visited, it looks brand new yet I only paid 12,50e for it! After the shopping we went to Virgin Oil and haf the Menu Americano, the service was fairly quick and the food was pretty good. We asked for medium rare steaks and got what I would call rare, but it was still good (I was wavering on whether I wanted the steak rare or medium rare anyway). Dessert was really good, but took an awfully long time to get to the table. After dinner we were going to see Gravity in 3D, but came to the conclusion that 15e was just too much money to spend on seeing a movie no matter how good it might be. We ended up renting Don Jon instead, which was a very interesting movie. I just wish it had been a little bit longer.

On Sunday we went to Helsingin Kädentaitomessut (Helsinki Handicrafts fair). Oh, there was so much to see! There were people selling handmade items and all sorts of crafting supplies. We were of course mostly interested in the booths which had something to do with yarn but we did peruse the scrap booking stuff and jewelry making stuff too.

I bought some yarn (Hjertegarn Blend Bamboo) for my mom to knit a hitchhiker scarf out of and a copy of the Winter 2013 edition of pompom quarterly for myself from the Titityy booth. I was sorely tempted to buy some yellow silk and wool blend lace, but since I don't have a lot of time to knit I decided not to buy anything that would just end up sitting in my stash for months on end. I also bought two shawl pins from the Pitsi& palmikko booth. One for me and the other for my mom. My friend also bought a shawlpin but I think it was a different design. I wish I had bought some of the Puffala yarn they had at that booth... I bought a book with no pages inside of it and some gold coloured buttons and some blue closures from a booth that was selling thrifted items. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the book cover, but it was just so pretty I had to have it! I suppose I could try to glue in some pages and use it as a notebook.

The main reason I bought the copy of pompom was because it had a rather nice pattern for a crocheted cardigan in it called Anzen. It has a interesting yoke and it looks like a great piece for a crochet noob to start with. I've long since come to the conclusion that granny squares are not my thing (I just can't get them to look right), but I think this is simple enough that I won't screw it up too badly.

Sock Wars III

I have signed up to do Sock Wars III, I liked doing SWII and I think this time will be even better! SWIII has it's own site, having to wade through the Yahoo-group to find out what was going on was not particularly fun. I didn't mind paying the 2$ membership fee, because if someone is jilted then the sock Valkyries can knit a pair for them.

I was thinking of using Tofutsies since SWTC is the official sponsor, but I couldn't find any local vendors. For all I know there's one down the street, but since I don't speak Dutch... I found some skeins on Ebay, but since none of them called out to me I ended up buying two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepard Sock from a1lorraine. I love the purple and the socks should not be too girly if I should happen to be assigned a male target. The colours are a little bit darker in real life.

My newest knitting project is an adaption of Sesame from Magknits. I'm knitting it as a bottom up raglan and I'll add a hood, because I have a new found love of hoodies. I'm using a very cheap acrylic yarn, in silver and petrol. I've knit 1.5 sleeves so far, not so much because I love knitting sleeves but because I'm avoiding schoolwork. The next two weeks of school will be very busy though, so I probably won't get around to knitting the body of the sweater in a while.

I'm dead, but what a way to go!

I can't believe it, it's been 21 days since I posted last... crap, not much of an excuse but I've been ridiculously busy. As the title says, I'm dead. Mamiecaisse's socks got here today, there was a small spelling 'oopsie' in the address so it got held up for a bit. Not that it matters since I only got one kill :( But I will not be sad, because I was so spoiled. I got the prettiest socks ever, that fit and the leftover yarn (*drool* so pretty!) and a zip pouch (which will really come in handy!)

I guess I should post photos of the socks I knit for Bridget'smom. Too bad I only have one decent photo, the batteries died ~2sec. after I took it! I feel a bit bad that I didn't send any extras... But I guess there's always next year!

My first time...

I have ordered my first skein of yarn on-line and I think I'm hooked. I just wish I'd ordered a set of needles while I was at it!

I ordered my sock wars weaponry on Monday and received it today, they are work very quickly over at Vuorelma! I hope my target will like the color, but I won't worry about it. A lot of people on the yahoo group seem to think that they can't send pink socks to a male target, I think it's silly. If he is secure enough in his masculinity to knit, he is surely man enough to wear pink socks.

In other news: I'm officially a Facebook addict... not good!

Edited to add: didn't get gauge on the Veto yarn, so I used a very masculine, dark green Gjestal Maija instead (which was supposed to become socks for either my brother or my dad)

Halloween capelet

I'm going to dress up as the Green Faerie for Halloween and since my costume will be a little... skimpy, I decided to knit myself something to keep me warm. I stumbled across the Anthropologie-Inspired Capelet pattern and fell in love! It's a very simple pattern, with almost no seaming! And I finally got to try Novita's new Mambo yarn, it's a bit itchy against my skin but still quite nice and fun to knit with.








I'm going to knit full length sleeves, so I can use it in school as well. Didn't buy enough yarn, so I have to wait until tomorrow until I can get some more... :( I hope I can find a nice brooch to go with it!

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 :)

Should I study? No I think I'll make some stitch markers instead...

I should have spent the last few hours studying, but I got distracted and decided to make stitch markers instead!

I've started knitting myself a clapotis out of some variegated pink sock yarn and these will come in handy, I'm getting tired of using bits of yarn for stitch markers. I still need to make 7 more, the pattern calls for 18!

I've finished one of my March socks, they're Harry Potter themed. I used the Finnish toe up pattern I mentioned in an earlier post. I'll post pics of both at some point when I get around to it, the only reason I'm posting now is to keep the blog going... if I don't post every so often I'll stop alltogether.

I bought some yarn to make a Fat Bottom Bag, from Debbie Stoller's crochet book. The yarn was on sale, I was looking for something completely different but it called to me... and it was on sale :)

My "stash"

I don't have any new knitting to showcase, I've been very busy (the kind where you can't believe it's only Tuesday.) So I did something I've been meaning to do for a while, I took photos of my "stash" and uploaded them to blogger. It's quite meagre, I did some stash busting in January and I've only been to a LYS once this year to buy yarn for the panta swap (and I didn't buy anything else, even though I was tempted.) It sucks to be on a tight knitting budget.

I've been thinking of trying my hand at spinning my own yarn and there's even this spinning class I'd love to go to on Mondays but alas I have school 'til 18.40 so I can't go :(

I've even saved all the little leftover bits from previous projects, just in case! (I'm such a pack rat...)