Garn Boet - The Yarn Nest

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)

The Marina piccola socks have been finished for about a week, and in fact also washed and blocked for a couple of days. The problem has mostly been the weather*, with our small compact camera is quite a nice natural light required in order to get decent pictures. And today finally, during a split second when the sun decided to shine, I managed to get modeled pictures of the socks. The flash did flat out the pattern terrible, and these pictures are taken with only the natural light. And that did of course create some blur, since a young teenager is incompetent of keeping even the toes still for the time it takes to take a few pictures.

In the end, I liked the pattern by Kate Gilbert very much, and I can't understand why it was so difficult in the beginning. The socks knitted up beautifully on 2,5 mm dpns, and the pattern shows a clear stitch definition. The pattern is well written and very clear. I like the start toe a lot, and since I'm a big fan of flap heel socks, I liked the heel too. The only alteration I made was to decrease a bit sharper for the toe, but that was only because I had knitted the patterned part too long, and I didn't want to have the sock too long. And I was too lazy to frog. The pattern didn't need this alteration.

Project details:
Pattern: Marina piccola socks by Kate Gilbert.
Yarn: VillaSukka by VillaMokka.
Needles: 2,5 mm dpns.

Oh no, she moved her toes again!

* We have had rain and clouds for weeks, really almost a rainy reason. Haven't felt like winter at all.

Posted by Maud at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)