I'm not dead!, and an FO

Here I would like to insert my best impression of that one scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Now, knitting. I've been hindered by my wrist being a bitch, and by NaNoWriMo. This is my fourth year, and fourth win, in a row. Yay! As a reward for writing those 50 000 words, I bought myself the knew IK and Yarn Harlot's new book. Or, well, not that new, but still. My parents completely failed to grasp why anyone would pay money to read knitting humour. :D

Sad news first: You remember my Snakes on a Sock? Yeah, well, there is now a big honking hole in the heel on one of them. Sad face. I should see if I can darn it, but it's a really huge hole and I didn't have that much leftovers. And also I'm a bit too lazy to bother, probably.

I have been knitting, but not a lot. I've been working on the Pink Sweater or whatever I called it the last time I talked about it. The body is done, all it needs is a sleeve and a half.

Also, Christmas. Sorry, no, you can't deny it anymore. Me, I'm knitting all my family and friends sweaters for Christmas. I just started a few days ago. No, I'm not clinically insane, nor am I terribly delusional. I hope.

The sweaters are going to look like this:



Can you find? This brings back memories from my childhood; I had one of those books and I loved it to bits. Anyway, I didn't have the heart to cut all my stuff out of the picture. Plus you can sort of see the scale better this way.

The yarn is Garnstudio Silke Tweed, knit on some random aluminium DPNs I had lying around, maybe 2 or 2,5 mm. Pattern, if you can call it that, is my own. Basically it's just a simplified top-down seamless raglan. Might write the pattern up if I feel like it later.

Now, for the FO. This should have been one of those things that should take maybe an evening to complete. For me, maybe three weeks. (I have to admit that I only knit a row every now and again, and this is attempt number 3.)



The pattern: My own. I'm calling it Spark, mostly because of the ridiculously wonderful bright colourway.
The yarn: Apparently it's called Naturwolle Multicolor. One of my local yarn stores carries it, it's 100% wool handspun in Germany. The colourways are amazing. This one's called Magma. Used up the whole 100 g hank.
The needles: 6 mm wood straights



(I know the first photo doesn't really show the hat. I just got excited when I saw a photo of me that didn't make me look like an unwashed idiot.)

Spark is a simple cabled hat, knit flat from the top down. The second photo is supposed to show the increases, but the colourway sort of obstructs everything. I love it anyway. Certainly cheers me up when the sun is below the horizon when I leave for school at 8 am or come back at 3 pm. :D



A better view of the stitch pattern. It's a fairly basic six-stitch six-row cable, with some slipped stitches tossed in for good measure, finished off with a 1x1 twisted rib.

I might write this pattern up, too, but I don't know if it'd make any sense to anyone who isn't me.

WIP follow-ups

I got my Ravelry invite a week or so back! I only now had time to play with it, and wow. Ravelry = more fun than a barrel of monkeys. It also spurred me to dig up all the pretties in my stash and take new photos of my old WIPs. If you've already got Ravelry, I'm Prologi. Come say hi!

Now. Projects. You might remember the pink sweater I was working on a while back. I'm now halfway through the waist increases. I'm loving the cable and all that pink. I'll probably do double-knit hems on the sleeves and the body, using a contrasting chocolate brown yarn inside the hem. I already have the other yarn in my stash.



I've started another sock to fill the void left by the Sockpal Sock. I decided to try a toe-up this time. I'm working with Wendy's generic toe-up sock pattern, the version with so much detail it probably makes some people twitch.



This is a sock of many firts. It's my first time knitting from the toe up, with self patterning yarn and with short-row toes and heels. The Regia 4-fädig Jacquard Color I'm using is incredibly blah, somehow, and the sock's all stockinette, so I'm calling 'em the Boring Socks, despite there being nothing boring about the knitting.

Why yes, I am a stockinette-in-the-round sort of knitter. I like simple. So, understandably, I become verrry very slow when knitting something more involved. Like this Branching Out scarf.



It's knit out of some delightfully lime Sandnes Garn Kitten Mohair, on wood 6mm straights.



(One more photo of that and a ton of yarn photos on the Flickr and on Ravelry.)

The Adventures of the Sockpal Socks

I lose at updating! \o/

I spent a week in Greece in the beginning of June. Athens=total geekgasm. We only spent a day there, and then went to this wee island. We were apparently just about the only tourists there. :D (Island's called Agistri, and is apparently fairly popular with the Greek.) Sidenote: though we only spent a week there, I took over a thousand pictures.



Then I spent three weeks working. It was supremely boring but hey, yarn money! (Mostly I crawled under desks and wrote down the serial number of every computer. That was the fun part.)

Then there was Midsummer. I took the Sockpal Sock to see the midnight sun on the longest day of the year. (Actually this is sort of the one-o´clock-in-the-morning sun, but still.)



The photo's from our summer place. We have this tiny cottage two hours away from our house by a little lake, surrounded by cows.

The sock also got to see a traditional Finnish Midsummer bonfire, naturally from a safe distance. We skipped the traditional getting obscenely drunk part, though.



Before returning to the urban environment, the Sock and I took a moment to smell the flowers. (For some reason, I think the Sock looks amazingly good in this one.)



I've finished the first sock, and cast on for the second one after serious procrastination. I'll only manage to mail them on August 6th, so they might be a little late. I hope the Sockpal doesn't mind.

I'm also re-knitting a seamless top-down raglan I was working on a while back. I had finished the body and most of a sleeve, but then I realised that I despised the sweater's guts and ripped it all out.



(The sweater's the pink lump in the background. In front of it there's a cup of tea, because I love tea. Happens to be my favourite kind of tea, too, just like Earl Grey but with lemon.)

I'm going to spend the next three weeks at the summer place, with minimal to no internet access. I'm taking the pink sweater, the Sockpal Socks, the yarn for a cardigan and a lace scarf with me. And an insane amount of books.