Sunday, December 25, 2005

White Christmas - The last projects of this year

Finally the christmas planning and arranging is done. This year we stayed home and we even forgot to watch the traditional "Kalle Ankas Jul"(Donald Ducks Christmas). We decided to stay home this year to avoid the long trip to Gothenburg. And we were blessed with snow, actually it is still falling outside.

Well so what has happened here since my last post you might have asked yourself. I have got some worried mails but all has been fine. There has just been so much to do and the winter tiredness has not allowed me to sit up so many nights.

Have I done any knitting? Oh, yes of course, alot! A pair of gloves to the little one:

Two pair of socks in Opal:
The first sock is a variation of the feather and fan sock from Socks, socks, socks. I have used Opal Creme with 2mm needles.
The second pair is knitted in Opal Musica with 2,5mm needles from the toe up. Pattern from my own head.
2,5mm needles seems to be the perfect needles for me to use when knitting socks in Opal 4-ply.

A neckwarmer in some yarn that has been a stockwarmer since the 80's( I left with 30cm after this project):
--- Picture coming ---

I have also one lonely sock made in Opal that awaits his mate: The pattern is again one from Socks, socks, socks. This time the ripple socks I have though made the leg shorter that in the original bacause this suits my legs better. The yarn is once again Opal. Uni and Mosaic and knitted on 2mm needles. I like the pattern but not the color mix so these will be a gift to my mother in law when finnished.


And then: I have bougth a knitting mashine! I send out an add on the swedish speaking radio here and I got a lot of answers. The mashine I bought was a Brother KX-395 and I love it! It is a simple mashine, not hard to learn, and you can knit with both thin, I have knitted with Opal, and bulky, I have tried some swathes with a yarn called Budget that are no more to be bought, 100m/100g.

To learn the mashine and fing the correct settings for different yarns there has been a lot of testing but there has been one cardigan and one sweater done. Both for the little one.

The sweater is knitted in Novita's the 7-brother's yarn after my own head. The gauge became to loose but the little one is using it and it is warm. I had some problem with the neck cause the beatifull neck I first made would not go over the head of the little one so I made another one and it is floppy but easy to get over the head...


The Cardigan is knitted in Opal Uni and Opal Brasil after pattern in knitty: http://knitty.com/ISSUEspring04/PATTdevan.html . All that know me would also understand that I have not followed the pattern, ;) , I have knitted the sweater from up to down, that meant some recalculattion but I think it was worth it. The front and neck edge was knitted by hand since there are not enough needles on the mashine.
The little refused to put it on for a long time but finally I convinced hit yesterday.

I used One ball of Opal Brazil and almost one ball of Opal Uni. If you watch carefully you can see that the stripes are not the same on the belly. There was something wrong in the color report so I was not able to fix the differences because I just had yar enough as it was, actually I had a little less as you can see I used more yellow at the bottom edge of the sleeves.

And soon there will be some sweaters for me made on the mashine too. I am making patterns in excel all the time. Since I am adding shortrows for the bust and shoulder and try to make a sweater follow my full figure in a flatering way it takes a lot of planning.