Garn Boet - The Yarn Nest

... do not go hand in hand. For almost four weeks has my life been mostly filled with moving boxes, packing and unpacking things, and trying to find places for things to be in a house with yet too little storing space. Huh, it takes it's toll, and in my case, not only in the form of many hours spent on non-knitting issues, also a very tender right arm. Nothing serious I think, only a small muscle having enough, and I only should rest it more than I do. But, because of this I haven't advanced as much as I would have liked to on the new mitten project. But here it is: the Gotland island mittens by Toshiyuki Shimada (嶋田俊之) from Northern European Knit Accessories 北欧のニットこものたち. The yarn I'm using is Rauma Finull, and 2 mm needles. The first mitten is finished, and I'm pondering how to incorporate a couple of stitches more in the pattern (the thumb feels a little bit too small). But here two first views of the mittens:

Posted by Maud at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hanna's Bunny mittens are finally finished, blocked, and, in the early morning hours, modeled and pictured. I would have liked to take the pictures in daylight, but Hanna insisted on wearing them to school, and, when your child insist on wearing your hand knitted items, then you capitulate. The pictures are taken with flash, and looks like that too.

Project details: Hanna's Bunny mittens
Pattern: Loosely based on the red mittens in Red Mittens by Toshiyuki Shimada in the book Northern European Knit Accessories 北欧のニットこものたち (loosely based because I simply don't read Japanese well enough to understand the directions completely).
Yarn: Sirdar Sublime 75% merino, 20% silk and 5% cashmere (Can it get any better? The yarn is lovely and I'll use it again).
Needles: Inox bamboo 3,5 mm dpn
Modifications: The ears are made loosely according to the directions from craftzine.com. I did cast on 7 stitches, and increased until I had 12 stitches.

Look, she is wearing Chuck's cabled socks, still going strong!

About Stockholm: I, the girls and the dogs moved to Stockholm in July last year. We have been living in Bromma, which is a part of Stockholm, and more exactly, in lovely Södra Ängby. The area consists of over 500 houses, build in the 1930's in pure functionalism. They are like sugar pieces dropped in the woody landscape. It's fascinating walking in the area, and incredibly beautiful (if you, like me, see beauty in the style).

An old pine near close to our house did break in the storm during Christmas

The house in Södra Ängby is rented. We wanted to explore the area more before we decide where we will settle down, and in the end of last year we found "our" house. It's a small house, not far from where we are living now, in an area also buit in the 1930's. The houses are like the Finnish "Rintamamiestalo", but were built ten years before the Finns started with the same concept, based on the Swedish model. The idea was enable people to build their home by them self, based on a standardized model. The houses in Norra Ängby are of twelve different models, and of them are seven common. A street was always designed with the same model of houses, and the area is thus very common in style. The yards are extremely well kept and the houses neat. It's a little bit like walking in one of the children book author Astrid Lindgrens's books.

Our new surrondings.

Posted by Maud at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Happy New Year!

It has been a long time since last, and to be honest, I had to look up my password to Movable Type, in order to type this post. A lot of time has passed by, and almost non knitting has been done. I have started a couple of cowls, miserable, half inspired projects, abandoned them and put the needles to rest again. A lot of thing have happened, more about that later.

I think it started in the beginning of December this year. My mother mailed me an article from Helsingin Sanomat, the big Finnish newspaper, featuring Arne and Carlos and their Christmas balls. I did in fact knit two, but I have not yet come around to fill them up (have no real wool) and lightly felt them. Well perhaps for next Christmas ;) Then we had my husbands lovely nice visiting later in December. She mentioned that she would very much have a pair of handknitted mittens for Christmas. Nice idea I thought , but didn't do anything more about it. But after Christmas I suddenly found myself flipping through knitting books and webpages... In the search for the perfect pattern for Jenny I decided to test if I still like knitting mittens, and so I started a pair with stash yarn and a pattern from Anna Zilboorg's book Magnificent mittens. My gauge was, as it always has been with Anna's pattern, way off and I had to improvise somewhat. But the good thing is, the old knitting love was there, it felt good figuring out what to do and how. And knitting is like bicycling, the fingers new exactly what to do, how to keep tension and so on even though it has been three years since I made something more complicated.

This first pair goes to my daughter Sofia. The girls were immediately thrilled when they found out there's once again a possibility to get handknitted mittens, and Hanna ordered a pair with bunny ears. I have decided on colours, yarn and pattern for Jenny's mittens, the yarn is already ordered from Strikk, and I have started knitting the bunny mittens. But I didn't dare to post about the first pair until I knew they were done and all right, in fear of posting once again a “Hey, I'm knitting again” and then letting the blog once again die.

Here are some pictures and project info. The weather here in Stockholm, Sweden*, is right now very grey, and it makes it difficult to get good pictures. But here we go:

Project info: Sofia's mittens
Pattern: 5-1 from Anna Zilboorgs's book Magnificent Mittens
Needles: Addi 2,5 mm metal
Yarn: Dark grey Rauma Röros 100 % wool
Light grey and green: Isager Tvinni held doubled, 10 % wool
Modifications: The mitten is knitted from the top down, but the thumb from the bottom up. My gauge was so off the I didn't dare to start the thumb from the top. Instead I moved the thumb stitches to a thread, and casted on with the same amount of live stitches. Result: an invisible start for the thumb. The dark grey edge at the sides of the mittens should have been striped, I realized this too late, and decided to not rip up what I had knitted (afraid the fragile knitting love could have got hurt in the process, casting on with Anna's method is somewhat tricky).

Unblocked.

Silly close up complete with bonsai and Afghanhound to the left.

Modeled on my way too big hand. And yes, it's Autumn Rose I'm wearing.

The beginning of the bunny mitten. Merino, cashmere and silk, can it get better?

* Since my last post has a lot of things happened. My husband got a job offer he just couldn't refuse, and moved in the summer of 2010 to Stockholm in Sweden. I remained in Finland with our children for one more year due to the education of the children, and then in the summer of 2011 I and the girls moved to Stockholm. Our sons are grown up, and decided to stay in Finland, at least for now. Stockholm is a lovely city, and it's absolutely fantastic to live in a country where your mother tongue is the main spoken language (in Finland are only about 4% of the Finns speaking Swedish, so the difference is huge). I do miss my sons, my parents and in-laws, and a handful of friends very much, but the distance to Finland is short, and I have had the possibility to visit them several times already. My parents and the sons did also spend Christmas in Stockholm, which was lovely. Out dog pack has also grown with one, and the Afghans are now three. Olivia the canary did remain in Finland, and moved to my parents house, much to my niece Maya's joy.

More on Stockholm in next post! Stay tuned!

Posted by Maud at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Almost there! Modelled pictures of the mittens as soon as I get the ends woven in and the mittens blocked. Soon!

Edit per 2012: No modeled pictures, but finally pictures of the finished mittens:

Close up of the flowers

Posted by Maud at 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Loong time and no postings! And to be honest, no knitting either. Since we bought our first Afghan hound in 2007 has my life been so filled with new things that it has been a bit difficult to squeeze in knitting time. An additional difficulty has been that that lovely elegant and in almost all aspects perfect Afghan was as a puppy totally addicted to yarn. As soon as I took out a knitting he was there, watching my movements ready to snatch the ball from my hands.

And that was also the end of Ribby card. One day when I came home had Ludde, the Afghan, had a ball with Ribby cardi. One sleeve was thorn in pieces, and the house was decorated with yarn. No chance to get the yarn to be enough for a new sleeve, and it had to be rewound anyway. So I ripped everything, wound it up in new balls and let it sit for a while. A couple of months ago I felt a small knitting urge lifting it's head, and after a lot of Ravelry search I found the pattern for Sassymetrical by Gay Schiff. Sassymetrical is knitted from the top down, and this is in fact my very first top down sweater! So, her we go, Pictures and info:

Project info:
Pattern: Sassymetrical by Gay Schiff

Yarn: Rowan RYC Cashsoft Aran SH014 (grey)

Needles: Addi 4,5 mm circular needles.

Posted by Maud at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate! I hope your festivities went well. We had a lovely Christmas Eve, with good food, nice company and enough presents. No yarn nor needles among mine, but a beautiful Japanese Donabe pot for cooking.

Almost off the needles already are the Urban Necessity mittens by Colleen Michele Meagher. My daughter wanted a pair of mittens that enables her to handle the bus ticket without problems, but are still warm. The Urban necessity mittens have a cap over the fingers, and fingers without tops. Handy! The yarn is Schoeller + Stahl Ronda, and I'm using 3,5 mm dpns in bamboo. Both mittens are knitted, and I have today started to knit the first cap.

The second pair I have on the needles are the Vinterblomster mittens by Heidi Mork. I'm using Vuorelma's Satakieli yarn for these mittens, in deep brick and ochre colours, on 2,5 mm dpns. This are intended for my younger daughter, but I'm not sure about the size, might be that they end up in my mitten basket. I'm just about to start the thumb gusset on the first mitten.

Here is a close up of the pattern. The observant knitter familiar with the pattern might observe that there is one flower less than intended in the second border. I forgot to increase stitches after the first border, but didn't realize it until I didn't get the main pattern to work out. So I ripped only a couple of rows and increased instead after the second border. The missing stitches were just the amount the last flower would have needed.

Posted by Maud at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

My Deep in the Forest mittens have been finished for about a week already, and my son has even taken them into daily use, as you can see from the picture below. I should have taken pictures before I gave them to him, but the weather has been lousy, and my possibilities to get any good outside pictures close to zero. And he needed them. This picture is taken inside, without any sun or anything that could brighten them up. I'll take new pictures as soon as the weather clears up!

Summary of this mitten project: My gauge was totally off, but otherwise a very nice outcome. The pattern is very clear and well written, and I made few alterations. The major one was that I picked up thumb stitches from the contrast colour yarn in the previous row, not MC, and then I attached the cuff lining at the same time as I knitted the first grey row off the braid (simply pick up the cast-on row on a spare needle, and knit the cast-on stitch together with the live stitch you have on your ordinary needle). I like how the mittens look.

Project details:
Pattern: Deep in the Forest mittens by Tuulia Salmela.
Yarn: Vuorelmas Satakieli, 2ply 100 % wool in off white and grey (957).
Needles: 2,5 mm dpns.

Modelled pictures as soon as the weather clear up!

And P.S.: I have cast on two new pairs of mittens, and the first thing I will do next year is to make an order for yarns to several bigger projects ! Yes! But this year I try to finish the mittens and the Ribby cardi.

Posted by Maud at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)