Garn Boet - The Yarn Nest

Warning! Picture heavy post ahead!

My father has many talents, but one he's practicing every December is to think out and build a ginger bread house for my children. This year we got a small cottage, complete with Afghan hound in the front yard. The horse must be a borrowed one, since such one doesn’t belong to our household (at least not yet ;-). There are five Tomten in the front yard, and one watching out in the back yard. The house is filled with chocolate truffles, and has a window with Jugend glass imitation and light.

Look at the watching Tomte! Must be the Father in the family, always covering the back of his family.

Knitting progress to be reported: The first Endpaper mitt is finished, complete with ends woven in, but not yet blocked. The second is started, and is in fact at the thumb gusset right now. I took these pictures yesterday, and got some knitting time in the evening while we were playing Monopoly and eating Christmas candy. My daughter got very interested in them, and is asking for a smaller version. Endpaper mitts number two might be on the needles in the beginning of next year.

The friendship shawl has advanced to bud row number fifteen, but you know, unblocked lace isn’t that photogenic, so you have to trust me. No picture evidence will follow.

And some new yarn arrived in the mail: Rowan Felted Tweed in the colour Watery. Eight balls, to be transformed into the Tangled Yoke Cardigan.

Ludde, five months old, sends his greetings! *
And to all friends out there in the world that celebrates: Merry Christmas!

*The "hat" Ludde is wearing is for protecting his ear hairs from being gnawed on when he's eating.

Posted by Maud at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)

My office can be a little bit cold, and in order to find an easy remedy for my cold hands I cast on for the Endpaper mitts by Eunny Jang. I think most are familiar with Eunny’s pattern, but if you aren’t, it’s a freebie from Eunny’s old blog, to be found here. The mitts start with a beautiful elastic Italian cast on. Fabulous instructions on the Italian cast on can be found on Francesca’s blog, complete with video showing how to really do it (I didn’t get the written instructions and pictures at all when I cast on for the Anemoi mittens, but the video, it made finally everything clear for me).

The mitts are knitted on 3 mm dpns, and the yarn is my usual favourite, Vuorelma’s Satakieli.

It has been a bit colder again here in the Helsinki area of Finland, but, alas, no snow. And today has the temperature been on plus side again. December? No, feels more like early November to me. The children have started to worry about the snow, or more precisely, the lack of snow. What if there will be no snow for Christmas? Horrible thought according to them!

Look at the tubular cast on!

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This autumn has in many ways been a demanding one. The puppy has brought lot of happiness into what otherwise would have been a quite grey and though period, but he of course did bring with him a lot of work. As a result, the knitting love has been quite absent all autumn long, a fact you sure have seen in my very infrequent posts. They have been infrequent because there has been no knitting going on. But last week, I don’t know why, but I could feel it return, first as just a small tickle, and then in bigger force. Yesterday after our older daughter’s birthday party I picked up my needles and continued knitting on my second Swallowtail shawl. I had cast on almost right after finishing Ene, but never got very far. Now I have finished twelve rows of the bud pattern, wow!

The weather is still greyer than grey, and it's raining

The yarn for this Swallowtail (remember, I knitted one back in February) is Wetterhoff’s Sivilla, a lovely merino-silk yarn, and I'm using 3,5 mm Addi circs. I have three skeins and my plan is to make this Swallowtail a bit bigger than the first. I have from several sources heard that five more repeats of the bud pattern are what are needed in order to make the second pattern work out even. That will of course bring me many, many more nupps to finish, but on the other hand, I’m in no hurry.

The yarn for this shawl was bought back in October together with the same friend who received the first Swallowtail. I've decided to call the shawl the Friendship shawl, as a reminder for myself of what friendship can be.

" A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away."
- Arabian Proverb

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