That's All Folks!

I went to the Noordermarkt this morning with my friend Danny.
We needed some linen and wool for new Viking-outfits, for both Kees and me.

When I got home this afternoon, Donna was at the front door to great me as always but... no Ayla. So I was scared to death her heart had given out. The not-so-nice-neighbourhood-kids have been harrassing the surroundings of my home with fireworks since 8 AM this morning and Ayla has a heart-disease so I feared the worst.

But when I walked in my bathroom there she was:

All the way up in my towel-basket. She's on my lap now and purring, I believe all is going to be ok, as always. I'm going out tonight. That's new for both my cats and me, as I'm scared to death of fireworks. But I want to go to Mulligans and celebrate the new year with my friends.

Like I said, Donna is not impressed by all the loud noices and was opening my bags for me. Remember last time when D. and me went fabric-shopping? Danny found an awesome sweater for only 10 euro's. I found one for me today! And Donna likes it too :D



We also found fabric. For Kees a natural and dark brown (it looks a bit grey, but it's a beautyful dark brown) for a new pair of viking pants and a top:


For me the same dark brown and and a lighter natural linen for an over- and underdress and a nice brown woolen fishbone pattern for a coat (on the left)


As for the knitting:
The hoody is going slowly but steadily, My second mirror sock is not going to be finished in this year, but will be soon. Also The Felted Foursome, which is hibernating a bit at the moment and the Kaffe Fasset duo will be done somewhere in January. My friend Ingrid is expecting a baby girl in March and the poor kid is going to get a pink-Disney-princess babyroom.. I will knit her a "tough cookie" outfit.. with maybe a skully or something *lol*

Well... that's all folks!
Have a safe and happy party tonight and I wish you all a Book- & Fibertastic 2008!

Midwinter message

I read Danny's blog today. She has posted an email which was sent to her, and she writes:
"I wanted to send it on, but Kees said there were bugs attached. So I decided to blog it instead. My readership may not be as big as my mailbox, but I think this is important stuff. I worry about the direction things are taking in my neck of the woods nowadays, and I find that if there’s one lesson to learn from history it’s that people don’t seem to be learning from history."

I so totally agree with her and decided to add my readership to hers: Go visit her blog, and read her message! I too worry, and so should you ;-)

Happy Holidays from me too!

Mirror sock 01

Done:

Hoody!!!

Tadaaa!!!

Thanks to my friend Danny, who explained to me the art of chart-reading. She's a true hero and I'm glad she knits so much faster than I do, because now she can explain to me what to do. That's why KAL's and friends are for! :D

Lets not talk about the Hoody...

Because I did not understand the chart and did it al wrong.. I had to frog it, yet again..


And it's not going very wel....


So.. lets not talk about the Hoody...

Remember that sentence?

"Be careful not to twist when joined in the round."
I'm afraid I wasn't careful enough...

It was twisted.. So I frogged it and casted on again, knitted 1 row and a half. No twisting this time :D

Speechless

Look what my Secret Pall sent me:

Her name is Hanna and she's from Finland
Thank you so much Hanna, I love what you sent me, especially the hat :D

To knit or not to knit...

My Kaffe Fasset duo is going solo for the moment.

In the pattern row of sock 1 is a stitch missing and I cand find where it's hiding. So I'll be tinking the whole part back to the beginning and start the pattern part over. 5 rounds has to be re-knit. So I placed the sock on 5 dpns and I'm going on a rescue mission to find the missing stitch.

Meanwhile in the Mirror Socks department, sock 1 has reached the heel and all is going well.


And Danny and I casted on the Rogue Hoody yesterday at our SnB-Meeting:


But I should not be knitting at all today, I really need to get some work done on my Journal/workbook I have to keep for my Creative Hand Crafts course.

But for now I'm on a mission.. a rescue mission..
Tadadatadaaaaaaaa! Marretje to the rescuteeeee!!! :D

Twinkle toes...

and a little bit of the Herringbone pattern visible... :D

Believe it or not...

But this unidentified 'something' will become socks.. some day :D

My new friend

Isn't he pretty?


What, you don't know? Well look at him!
:D I love my new loom:

Now all I need is to figure out how he works. Shouldn't be all to difficult, I've found lots of info on the Net and in books.

You see, that's why I know it's a he, men never come with directions for use, but they are too pretty easy to figure out :D

See??

Much better :D

Circs vs dpns

Knitting cuff down on 2 cirs is tricky. I keep getting the inside on the ouside or the outside on the inside or ...


Well its like this:

The needles kept dangling inside out too, my yarn got tangled inside under over whatever..


So I sent it to the frogpond:


And casted on 64 new stitches on my loyal dpns:

19 more rows for the cuff..

I'm off.. knitting :D

Gifts and Mirror Socks

Look what the mailman brought me yesterday:

Thanx Metal and knit! I love the goodies! You rock grrl :D

We started a new KAL in my Dutch sock knitting group. "Spiegelsokken" or Mirror Socks. I want to knit mine in the wollmeise colourway Frosch and I've been winding my yarn:

As you can see I'm great in winding rugby balls :D
I wonder if a ball winder winds nicer, more round balls of yarn..


Anyway. I started the cable cast on on 2 circs, knitted the first round, pulling the first stitch realy tight and look:

A large "mind the gap" -hole between my needles....

I'm going to frog this and do my regular cast on, so I can knit the first 3 stitches with working yarn and tail yarn together. That should give me a nice close fit and no hole.

I hope... :D

Rogue Hoody Yarn

Danny and me went to "De Breihoek" this afternoon. De Breihoek ( The knitting corner) is a LYS (for the muggle-knitters: LYS= local yarn shop) and there I found the yarn I want for my Rogue hoody.

It's Phildar Castel in the colourway Loden. I stole a picture from a website:


Th lady from the yarn shop told me she had only 9 balls and I need at least 10, but 11 is better. So she has placed an order (after calling every shop in The Netherlands that sells this brand asking for one more ball but no luck) So in a week or so I can cast on the Rogue Hoody.

After our visit to De Breihoek Danny and me went also to De Afstap, another LYS. There I got me some addi's 2 circs 40 cm, 2.5 mm for my next 1 sock on 2 circs project; and 1 circ 100 cm, 2,5 mm for my 2 socks on 1 circ project. I would love to learn that..

Monkey socks done!

The SnB day

I went to Rotterdam very early. I wanted to have enough time to shop. And shopping I did :D

Look here:

The Opal wool is only to show the size of my large (almost 500 grams) of wool. I don't know how many meters, but I think it's enough for a scarf or a bag. It's 100% wool.

I bought another big skein:

Again the Opal for sizing. This is 280 gramms of 100% wool. 100 gram is aprox. 400 meter...

My last yarn buy is this handspun goat:

Ca. 160 gramms, greasy, nice smelling wool. What to do with it besides fondeling? :D

I also bought some beautiful autumn-coloured roving:

Rather bold for a green-blue-purple-kinda- girl like I am, but I love this and I can't wait to spin it. But first I wil practise some more on some cheaper stuff, so I won't be too sad when I mess up ;-))

After my shift at the info booth where I was answering questions for 2 hours I went to the workshop Twinned Knitting by Kerstin Jöhnson. It was very complicated at first, but once you get the rithm of altering the 2 yarns and twisting them around each other ever other stitch, it went very nice.

Casting on is rather complicated, but that too went wel once you've got the hang of it. I bought her book, its in Swedish, but the pictures show you step by step how it is done. Here's a picture from the book and my first little steps of twinned knitting.

I'll put some mittens in my queue. I do have to finish some WIP's first but next year I'l be wearing very warm mitts.

I had a great day, a very late night afterwards. It was museumnight and Artis was open until 1:30 AM. I was giving guided tours that night, also very great, but tiring :-))

So.. lets count down for next years National Stitch 'n Bitch day ;-)

Moebius knitting

I will tell you all about by great day yesterday on the 2nd annual National Stitch 'n Bitch day at the Van Nelle fabriek in Rotterdam tomorrow or Tuesday. And I will make pictures from my buys, promise.

But she stayed at my house this weekend and she taught me how to do the moebius. And look:

it's working!!

So now I can knit this Felted Foursome from Cat Bordhís book A Second Treasury of magical Knitting. It's on page 76-77 for those who have the book too. :)

Thnks Jet! You're a true moebius expert. :)

Samhein / Hallowe'en

To all pagans, heathens, wiccans and witches in the world:

Have a great Samhein and I wish you all a happy new year ;-)

Blessed be.

But I also wish you all a happy Halloween. Google is in Halloween-mood already:

I love those themed google pictures, don't you? :D

Monkey sock

That's one! :-)

Look! No holes in my toe.

Firestarter continued

The patters for the Firestarter tells me to do a provisional cast on, and make short rows with the wrap & turn method. The cast on went pretty wel, but the first wrap & turn did not go very well. I had holes in my toe:

I sent this toe toe the frog pond, did another cast on and started over, wrapping and turning and all went well. So I thought...
Until this happened:

BUT.. I really, really, really want those socks, so I went looking for another method of casting on toe up socks and I found a 'magic cast on' in Knitty. And look:

So far so good ;-) I've never done a sock on 2 circs, so I'm very curious if I can do this without any holes ;-))

If it works, I'm going to be so proud of myself :D

speaking about socks

I've finished sock 1 from the Katja s0cks and I've started the Monkey sock from Cookie A.
I cannot upload pictures right now - Blogger has some probblems they are aware of and working very hard to fix it - but you can see them in MyFlickr

Firestarter started!

My first provisional cast-on without help. This is the second time I do this, my first time I had help (read: it was done by, while I was watching) from Robert, one of my SnB-knitsibs ;-)

UPDATE:

This is going to the frogpond... I don't like holes in my sock. Lets try again ok? ;-)

Blog Action Day

Secret Pall 11 goodies

All I can say is Thank you!

I love the yarn, the tea smells interesting and the chocolate is yummie! :-)

I did not get the nice necklace properly on the picture, but it is purple as well.

Wildlife

He was talking about his wildlife in his house.
This afternoon my brother-in-law discovered this on my balcony:

Actually, it's my upstairs neighbours balcony. But I'm looking at it. He -the handsome guy on the picture - is still there. Sitting on the boult for 5 hours straight. I wonder if he's still there in the morning :D

Fibre craft fair and gifts

Danny and I went to the fibre craft fair in Den Bosch yesterday. We had a great time, bought some nice things and spent some time knitting at the Stitch 'n Bitch table.


I bought a yarn rack, something I wanted for a long time.

The cones with the yarn on it is linen thread and I bought that in Oerlinghausen. I'm planning to tablet weave or card weave with that.

I also bought a fabric cutter, some knitting needle protectors and a book:

Oh, and uhm... yes that _is_ Noro on the top left. Danny and I are going to knit some arm warmers from that. Danny bought also 2 balls; same colour as mine are. :D


When I got home I found 2 packages. One from my Fat Quarter swap partner:

Thank you so much Eve!


And one from my Punk Rock Gift Exchange semi-secret partner:

Thank you Metal and Knit!


As I have a week off from work I have enough to do and enjoy.
So here are my plans for tomorrow:

First I will go to my school (info from link is in Dutch only) for my arts and crafts lessons. We are working with clay at the moment and I made a vase.. some sort of.. Anyway, it looks like a vase, lets put it that way. ;-))

After my lessons I go to visit my mum and dad, finally giving them their socks I knit them and in the evening you will find me at Café De Jaren, to meet my knitsibs (I love that word, Brenda Dayne uses it in her podcast) from my Stitch and Bitch group.


so, I write:
TTFN, CUsoon
:D

Wollmeisse mess

Somewhere, something went wrong.

I'm afraid my "Firesterter" will have to wait untill I made 2 nice balls out of this mess...