Yarnlove

oder "if this ain't love then why does it feel so good?".

I've got my first real Secret Pal Package! Mein Gott, mein Gott, mein Gott... This is how it went:








And then like this:









And then this: (I seem to have opened it from the right end)










And finally like this:

(As I've mentioned before, the camera is in China with my sweetheart, so I've had to take these pics with my mobile. Not too bad for a mobile, but not excellent for blogging.)

On topic: In this extremely longed-for package consisted of the following: 1) A skein of no less than 425 metres of hot pink sockyarn, 2) with 15 cm 2.5 mm dpn's to go with it. It's so perfect! I could really use the needles for my current project, the Norwegian Stockings, and I really want to knit more socks later on. I might go for lace with this yarn, it's very thin, smooth and even... 3) bonbons! 4) chocolate, from the same brand as last time, 5) apple teabags, the ones I really liked last time as well (clever girl, this secret pal of mine), 6) a cherry scented candle (because I said I like them fruity), 7) München-Mischung coffee that smells just lovely! There might be a bit of divine intervention with this, because I passed by the coffee shelf today at the grocery store, but didn't think I could afford it right now... and what do you know! 8) A book! "At knit's end: meditations for women who knit too much", packed with smart quotations and reflections upon the habit of knitting. Seriously, it's so funny, both getting it and reading it. Fi, this one's for you: "The secret to storing lots of yarn is expanded thinking. There is really no reason why yarn cannot be occupy any space not occupied by anything else. Take a fresh look at your home, closets, cupboards, and furniture, and ask yourself, 'Can I fit a ball of yarn in here?' The world is suddenly full of possibilities. The liquor cabinet? Above books on the bookshelf? The freezer?" I can assure you all that I will give more examples from this witty book further on. Last in this lovely package was 9) two flowers with an unclear, possibly only decorative, use, and 10) a card with a couple of thoughtful lines from this amazing Mädchen.

My dear Secret Pal: I'm knocked off my feet! Thank you so much! I feel very blessed to have such a sweet, caring girl as my secret pal, especially now when I'm left here in Europe and my boyfriend will be in freakin' China for the next month. Thank you for taking the time to think of things I'd like. I'm so grateful. Thank you!

I frogged the beautiful stocking down to nothing and started over again. Since perfection takes time and mistakes don't I'm actually quite happy to cast on afresh and make even better, this time with larger needles (thanks Fi!) and with an elastic thread in the ribbing, to keep the stocking snug and up. I read on a blog somewhere that the sliding down was a problem for this particular garment, and I like learning from mistakes, preferably the ones made by others.

Thursday, my baby and his camera are going to China for a month. Not only will I be alone, but I will also only be able to take bad photos with my mobile. I apologize in advance for my bad documentation, but since I'll be on vacation I might be able to photograph in daylight, thus somewhat improving the quality of the photos.

Thursday I stopped by my LYS just to see if they had something previously unseen, and even though they didn't, they had some stuff on sale. I bought 2+2 skeins of a baby- & hosegarn, and "hose" apparently means sock in Norwegian, and the "baby" part means its very thin, perfect for the Norwegian Stockings everybody seem to have knit. Yeah, I've said it before: anything Eunny knits I can knit too (only six months later), and frankly, that ain't too bad.

The yarn is, I'm ashamed to admit, of 80% wool and 20 % polyester. There's a whole new squeeky sound to my needles, but on the bright side my future stockings-to-be will last forever.

I called Fi to retrieve my 2,5 mm dpn's, but they had decreased in quantity (or increased, depending on how you see it) due to their fragile composition (wood). I tried 3 mm, but it was too big. I tried 2 mm and even though things tend to be true if you just believe they are and I really really want it to be, these stockings will never flatter or warm my ankles. Yesterday was a terribly hung over Midsummer day, so while the dishes grew in the sink I knit this much, before I finally caved in for the fact that they are too tight. Tomorrow I will have new needles, 2,5, and until then I will knit on the guernsey for Frode.

Tomorrow is the birthday of my friend Johanna, and inspired by a whole lot of Japanese craft blogs like this one, I made her a summery bag. For once, I hope she doesn't read my blog. The fabric is a flower print corduroy and the lining is pink, with a little green flower print pocket, all crowned by a lilac pearl button.

Happy birthday honey!

Gosh ladies! Thanks for your nice comments on the cardigan. Don't stop! The pattern is free and online. I'd say it requires patience and gauge consistency. If you knit one, do let me know! I'd love to see it in other colours.

Reading this blog it's obvious I do finish things, and yet I feel slow and improductive. I think being a knit blog addicted gives you so much input and inspiration, there's always so much more to knit and create you always feel that whatever you do you fall short compared to everyone else. I know of at least ten things I'd like to knit before the end of this year, and they just keep coming! I only have so much time... This said, maybe I should try and see knitting from a less productive and more reproductive point of view.

But it's true, I just finished the Drops Alpaca cardigan for my cousin's daughter who arrived yesterday. I do think you can tell if a baby will be a boy or a girl; I'm seldom surprised. This one seems to have been an obvious case for many: my mum, my grandmother and the newborn's other grandmother (not my aunt) have all knitted in pink despite not being certain on what sex the baby was. (The whole knitting-in-pink-for-girls is a different discussion, though.)

This is how it came out:

It won't be the family heirloom I was aiming for, due to a wide range of inconsistencies on my part. I bound off too tightly, and I changed the gauge during progress, which makes the right frontpiece an inch longer than the left. It's so stupid I can only laugh about it and think it makes it look a bit more childish/Pippi Långstrump/cute/weird. The sleeves also take part in this gauge issue, even though I think I managed to block the major differences away. I also didn't think too much while binding off and casting on for the sleeves, so I couldn't sew them together the same way. Stupid, stupid. Anyway, I don't think it will show too much. And apart from the right front piece, all the measurements are correct according to the pattern.

Here's a closeup of the buttons, but the colour is more like in the pic above.

Yesterday, I did what every actually but not technically (or the other way around) bankrupt girl would do: buy her first knitting magazine, in this case Simply Knitting. (Yes, it's true I've never bought one before.) My dear friend Sofie bought the last issue, and I saw their preview of coming patterns and maybe didn't quite fall in love but at least got my eyes opened for a little retro jacket. (I thought I'd find a pic online to post here, but it might be true what they say about the UK, that they're a bit behind in some areas.) Anyway, it's a kind of sixties honeycomb patterned jacket, straight lines, raglan sleeves and knitted buttons (nope, I won't go there).

When my mum was here a couple of weeks ago she brought all the pieces for a knitted jacket I ordered from a machine-knitter four years ago (before I knitted stuff bigger than scarves), but was too diasappointed with to ever put together. It's taupe with details in offwhite, and I think it'd be great for this little retro jacket, but obviously, selbstverständlich, bien entendu, säkert som amen i kyrkan: I don't think I have quite enough yarn. The yardage of the yarns (the one called for and the one I have) are the same, but I have 17 skeins knitted into the jacket i have, of which one is white which makes it 16, and the pattern calls for 18. What to do? I measured around a bit last night, and the retro jacket measures 42 cm from armhole to hem, which is quite long. I might shorten it a bit? Amazons like myself should never shorten jackets, but I think it'll be more Jackie O if I do. In the magazine there is no pic that shows the entire garment, so it's hard to tell if it's long or not. And I do have a jacket knitted in this yarn; why shouldn't it be enough for a different one? Also, the retro jacket has 3/4 sleeves, and the sleeves I have are full length.

Please, can somebody just tell me I have enough yarn!?

The strangest thing happened this morning. When I opened my mailbox Mia had sent me a link to another knitblog, tipping me on a yarnwinder on sale. I immediately called the shop in question and asked them to put it aside for me. At the end of the working day I took a trip to the outskirts of Stockholm (seriously - where is Täby exactly?), sweating my pants off in the unswedish heat that's been confusing the Swedes during the last couple of days. After a long subway ride I took a bus to an odd neighbourhood with lots of trees, a gas station and seven very very tall buildings. After a surreal stroll around the block - very hot, no people except for two very very old, wrinkly and tanned ladies (think "There's something about Mary") in white bikinis sunbathing five metres apart on a huge lawn, I found the right building, and even the shop in question, where the new love of my life awaited me. I paid the SEK 45, went back to the bus stop and had then to wait for half an hour for a bus to take me out of this nowhere place (and not to another nowhere, to where many buses appeared to be headed) and back to civilization.

To make a long story short - I have a yarnwinder, thanks to two great knitblogging women out there!
I here give you evidence of our first yarnlovemaking:

On the actual knitting front, I'm working parallelly (?) on two tiny things: a guernsey for my sweet 2-year old godson Frode, which currently looks like this:








And also the cardigan for my cousin's yet unborn daughter (I hope it's a girl, since my stash - as usual - contained of pink when I cast on). It's quite boring. And I think the sleeve (the finished one) looks kind of tight. But I've found little mother of pearl buttons that goes perfectly with the yarn, so that's a good thing. And I'm knitting in it size 6/9 months, so I don't have to finish it very soon...