First Finished Object of 2007: Korknisse

My first finished object of 2007 is this small, cute and adorable Korknisse. I was spying on Saartje's website and found this easy pattern here. I made this little man.. whom I've christened Harris - he is wearing some sort of tweed -.. in less than an hour last night. It was so easy! Anyone who knows how to knit with DPN's can make this :)
My plan is to make one every week, in all kinds of different colours, as Christmas tree decorations like Elliphantom. I think it would look super cute, all those little men hanging in a Christmas tree...
-Gracie-

Pictures at last!

Finally some pictures of all my knitting projects! My mum's digital camera finally has some reliable batteries in it, and I have finally realized it's a better idea to take pictures of everything without using the flash or lamplight.


Anyway, in the first picture you can see all my deep red Alpaca Soft stuff: my bamboo needles, a scarf, a hat and a tiny little MP3 player cosy.

Then the second picture! My Fair Isle stuff I am so proud of! (Sorry, but I made all this while I was ill, and I had never done Fair Isle before, so I was suddenly rather surprised at my own knitting skills.) In the picture are my Fair Isle baby hat, my first bit of Fair Isle baby scarf, a fresh ball of Rowan Pure Wool DK (Marine) and the beady stitch markers (red ones!) that Gracie made for me :) The hat looks a bit narrow, but that's because of the brim which has a lot of stretch in it... I also love how the top of the hat looks...a bit like a tuft of whipped cream :)

Then a few close-ups of the Fair Isle bits... The third picture is the pattern on the baby hat, and the fourth is the baby scarf...on which I'm using the same pattern, only with the colours the other way round :)

Molly

Elementary :)

Deary me! I have been knitting all day again! Thank heavens I have something useful to do while I sit on the couch all day, trying to recover from my sudden flu attack :S My Fair Isle Baby Hat is finished and looks absolutely adorable (if I may say so), and I like the Fair Isle-ing so much that I have decided to try the same I pattern I used for the hat on the scarf :)

And...I'm planning another project: a knitting bag! I need a nice bag to put all my needles and yarn in, and preferably a bag I have knitted myself... Also, I want to try and make my own patterns, so the knitting bag would be a great opportunity to try that... I am going to use acrylic yarn for the bag, as it is MUCH cheaper and I'm going to need a lot of it...

And...as you can see in the picture: I'm going to do a Holmesy pattern! (I love Sherlock Holmes. I really do.) I made a sort of grid, then placed a sort of vague Holmes silhouette over it and then put little dots in the squares so I got a pattern... (I may seem like a terrible amateur, but then again...I am.) If you squint at the picture, you can really see what it'll look like :) Anyway, I'm probably going to get yarn for that this week! But first, the scarf needs finishing :D

Molly

Edinburgh --> Home

A few pictures from my week in Edinburgh and on coming home:









I was staying with friends, visited many museums, and hope to return again soon. I've also had an application interview for a teacher training course, for which I've been accepted. A very good week indeed
- Gracie -

Fair Isle Fun :D

Just a tiny post to tell you how well my Fair Isle baby hat project is going! I got the flu (or something similar) yesterday, but I'm feeling a lot better today (though still slightly wobbly) and I've been Fair Isle-ing all morning! The colours go very well together, and working with different colours is definately easier and more fun than I thought it would be :) Oh, Gracie...about the baby perhaps being allergic to wool...I asked the yarn shop lady and she didn't say anything about the wool not being suitable for babies...and my mum also thinks it'll be okay...so I'll just have to go with that :) In case the baby does turn out to be allergic, I'll knit my cousin another hat and scarf and give these to Julia to use on her dolls ;)

Molly :)

New Stuff!

I have just been to the yarn shop and bought stuff for my new projects. My cousin is having a baby next month, so I've been planning to knit a baby hat and scarf as a present. I am going to make them now, but I want the baby to be able to wear them next autumn/winter, as I don't know whether the weather is going to be as cold as this in a month from now...and if it isn't, the baby won't be able to wear his presents. I bought three balls of Rowan Pure Wool DK: one ball of Glacier (005) and two balls of Marine (008). I also bought new circular needles and DPNs (both 4mm). The hat is going to be a variation on the Madison pattern I used for my own hat. For my own hat, I left out the Fair Isle bit, but I'm going to give that a try now. As the baby hat is for a boy, I'm not going to make it with the curly brim my own hat has, but with a less girly, folded brim. I'm not going to use Fair Isle on the scarf, because I'm not experienced enough to do woven Fair Isle (and the stranded Fair Isle I'm going to use on the hat will not work for the scarf). So for the scarf, I think I'm going for broad, horizontal stripes. Let's get started!

Molly :)

Wot!

I'm busy working on my leg warmers, inspired by this: http://theknittinggarden.com/gallery-march/mar-free-1.htm, although I've made some adjustments in the pattern, and am using a lovely Rowan Chunky Print (which is called Deep End: see picture), instead of the different colours. I've finished the first one and am now working on the second. It was a bit tricky to stitch the leg warmer together into a leg-like shape, but I got it to fit in the end. It looks quite bulky, but it keeps my feet really warm and that's what matters :)

And... since all that remains of this project is to repeat what I've already done, I'm already starting a new one. Inspired by Gracie's Endpaper Mitts I've decided to try and make a pair of my own. That is, as soon as I master the Fair Isle and the new needles.

-Pippa-

Eunny's Endpaper Mitts #3

As you can see.. I'm busy with my Eunny's Endpaper Mitts, and I'm loving it. It is my first serious Fair Isle project and while I'm knitting I keep looking at the work and think.. 'WOW... how is ever possible that I do this?!' And that's no false modesty, it's just that I had never imagined I could do something like that. I love how the two colours contrast, and I think it is interesting how the blue around the big white thingy looks darker than between the white lines.. optical illusion.. ha!
-Gracie-

I'm on a roll!

Wow, I bought the yarn and needles for my hat only three days ago, and it's already finished! I finished it yesterday, and I was SO surprised at how easy it was to knit with five needles and the decreasing of the stitches also went very well... Yay! I'm very happy with it, and tomorrow afternoon I'll actually be able to wear it, because then my hair will be short and I won't have a lump on the back of my head anymore (the bun I always wear my hair in).

Also: a picture of my scarf! It's not actually that colour, but it came out that way because of the flash, and when we didn't use the flash, the lamplight made it look slightly orange :S So I guess we'll have to take a picture outdoors to catch the real colour, and we'll take pictures of the whole outfit: scarf, hat and...MP3 cosy!

Yes, that's right... I'm making an MP3 cosy with the leftover yarn from the hat! I got the idea from Licketyknit, and it was easy to make, except for...the buttonhole. Yarrrgh! I definately have to practice knitting buttonholes...I had never tried before, and it ended up as a complete mess. Now I'm just going to attach a little loop to the flap that closes it and use that as a buttonhole :D (Never despair, my friends...)

Anyway, I'm finishing the cosy tonight and I'll get Gracie to take pictures of my wonderful, new and incredibly red outfit :P

Molly

Eunny's Endpaper Mitts #2

Well, I've started knitting Eunny's Endpaper Mitts with really nice yarn... Rowan 4ply soft #387 and Rowan 4ply soft #376. [I think the pictures on the Rowan site give the wrong impression of both yarns. #387 is not half as dark in reality as it is in the picture. The colour is very cooled, and actually reminds me of winter in a northern country, like Norway or Sweden.. or a misy morning in Scotland. It's almost an icy blue. #376 is much whiter in reality and in the picture. The picture looks like the collor of vanilla ice cream, but it is much closer to the colour of flour.. Anyway, I've made a start and I'm enjoying it.. can't wait to be done really :)
I also, as you can see, made a collage: top left/bottom right, shows the birthday gift I made, there are also some pictures of my nalbinding project that ended up being called a kippah!! There is also a pictures of a bigpipe player.. I ran into him on the way to the yarn store, and I really had a hard time not bursting out in hight step and dance :) The picture in the very middle shows the yarn for our new projects...
-Gracie-

A new challenge!

Well, as I'm the only dog-owning knitting person on this blog (Pippa and Gracie are both cat-owners), I have to defend my faith by posting a picture of my dog here, who is completely insane, by the way.

So this is my dog (well, mainly his nose). He is a Drentsche Patrijshond (better known in English as Dutch Patridge Dog), almost two years old, and his name is Willem. He loves sniffing and licking my balls of yarn when I'm knitting, and what he even loves more is steal the yarn when you're not looking (or when you are looking). So in case anyone thought only cats did that sort of thing: nope. Dogs, or at least mine, love it just as much as their feline colleagues do. Yup, my dog chases pretty much every single thing that moves, and every single thing that doesn't. (His motto seems to be: If it doesn't move, I will move it myself!)

Anyway, today all of us Yarn Owl Bloggers went to our favourite yarn shop again to get new stuff for new projects. I bought circular needles, a set of double-pointed needles (all bamboo), and two more balls of deep red alpaca yarn to knit a nice hat to go with my scarf! Gracie and Pippa also bought new stuff, and Gracie took pictures of everything, including a few finished things! Yay!

Molly

Eunny's Endpaper Mitts #1

After a long struggle with my self designed January Scarf, which "sadly" ended on the UFO list, I came to the conclusion that it's important to challenge myself, if I want to become a better knitter. So, this morning I made a start with Eunny's Endpaper Mitts, which are the most adorable fingerless mitts I ever beheld. Last night I got some help from friendly folk over at the Knitty-boards, who explained some technicalities [Thank you, thank you], and I feel I can do it. It may take me forever to finish this project, but I'm sure it wont end up on the UFO pile.
We as blog have also joined some knitting rings.. Euroknit.. Academics Knit.. KnittingKitty... Purling Puppy... and .. The Stranded Colorwork Challenge. Yay!
Because I don't have any new knitting pictures, I thought I'd end this entry with a picture of my cat, who isn't the least bit interested in knitting, or yarn.. she is obessed with chewing knitting needles though...

- Gracie -

Knitty Secret Pal

Shame shame, what a shame.. I've joined the Knitty-boards, but can't join in the fun until I have a 100 posts on my name, which basically means, I'll have to wait another round.. at least to the end of the current one which end in April.. :( How sad is that?!
To make us, because Pippa and Molly are in the same fix, feel a little better about this sadness, we decided to fill out the funny questionnaire anyway.. And that was great fun indeed... it took us until far past mid-night, and we're still modifying the answers. It might be fun to post them on our blog :) We actually enjoyed filling out the questionnaire so much that we Molly is making us another questionnaire.. just for fun. We're all looking forward to it very much!!
We are looking forward to join in the next Knitty SP, but there's one thing we three are a bit concerned about, and that is the minimum of 50 dollars... Though it's spread over three months, we students have a tight budget, and 50 dollars would be our maximum rather than our minimum., especially since we live overseas, so we have shipping costs to think of as well, on the other hand you get something in return, so it's as if we'd be yarn-shopping for ourselves, but then send the goods somewhere around the globe :) Ow.. I really can't wait until the next Knitty SP!
- Gracie -

Happy New Year

The Yarn Owl wishes you
a happy and healthy new year
with lots of love, knitting and peace!

Gracie, Pippa and Molly