« December 2006 | Main | February 2007 »
January 28, 2007
On the move
Just a quick note to let you all know I'm still here and I'm still knitting. Here's the shaped cardigan from Poetry in Stitches:
I really enjoy knitting with the Rowan Wool Cotton. The color is lovely too, although difficult to take pictures of.
The reason I've been this quite is the fact that we're in the middle of a move. We're moving to the north of the Netherlands, to the city T and I both were born: Groningen. We're happy about it, but moving is a lot of work! Wallpapering, painting, laying a floor, packing etc, you get the picture. Thankfully, we get a lot of help from our family. It will be a week or two before I get some real time to myself again. So blogging (and responding to emails) will be slow for a while.
I leave you with a link I keep forgetting to post here: some extremely adorable korknisser by Elliphantom Knits. Just look at those colors! So inspiring. I got an email some time ago from someone who made korknisser in different colors to use as pieces in a children's board game. I thought that was such a great idea!
Posted by saartje at 10:31 PM | Comments (14)
January 15, 2007
Alright, I get the point!
The blue is what makes the mitten so nice. I guess I have no choice but to make another one just to keep you people happy! Sara asked to see the thumb side of the mitten. Here it is:
Not much different from the palm side. Ineke asked what yarn I'm using. It's mostly Shetland wool from Klaziens Kreatie. The blue is a left over from my Mermaid cardigan. By the way, Ineke is making (and selling) some lovely knits, I especially like her mittens. Check out her website.
Thanks for clearing up the sweater/cardigan/pullover confusion. There appear to be more differences between American English and British English than I thought. And I don't even know what some kinds of garments are properly called in Dutch... Anyway, it feels odd to me to call a cardigan a sweater, so from now on, I'll try to use the terms cardigan and pullover, so everyone knows what I'm talking about!
I finished T's brown socks. I least I thought I did. When I finished weaving in all the ends I was going to present them to him, and right before that I held the socks together to take a satisfied look at my work. That's when I noticed one sock leg was longer than the other. Bummer.
So I took a deep breath and cut a thread in the leg of the shortest sock. I seperated it in two pieces, put them back on the needles and knit another 10 rows to one of the parts. Then I grafted them together again. And here are the results on the feet of the happy recipient (and a better representation of the color):
Tijm asked about the tag I had attached to my sock in progress. For lots of the sock I have knit for various people in the past years, I keep tags like these:
On them, I write the details of the sock, like the yarn I used, needle size, shoe size of the recipient etc, and the numbers I used with the basic sock pattern I keep in my head. I attach the tag to the sock in progress using a piece of the yarn and a safety pin. When the socks are done, I keep the tag, so I can always go back to it when I want to make more socks like it. If I change something the second time around, I write it on the tag as well. As you can see from the different pieces of yarn tied to his tag, I have made T a number of pairs already! This system works very well for me.
To congratulate myself with finishing these socks, I started not one, but two new projects. One is small:
It will be a baby hat, like this. Cute, no?
And one is big:
The cardigan from Poetry in Stitches, for which I got the yarn from Santa a couple of weeks ago.
Both projects are knit from Rowan Wool Cotton. It's a pleasure to work with! I hope it will wear well.
Posted by saartje at 9:39 PM | Comments (19)
January 7, 2007
A good start
Happy New Year to all! Lots of knitting in progress here at Saartje knits. First, there are the socks for T in a tweedy brown Regia 6-ply.
I'm well into the leg of the second sock. Yesterday, I took the sock with me when I was visiting a friend. She lives a 2 hour train ride from me, so I sat and knitted, while listening to some podcasts. I love podcasts! There are many of them about knitting (here's a list). The one I listen to most is Cast On, it's just great and has a very good sound quality. Yesterday, I tried a new-to-me one: Pixie Purls Podcast. I only listened to one episode, but so far, I like it.
As far as I know, there aren't any knitting podcasts in Dutch. If you want to listen to some interesting radio shows in Dutch while you're knitting, I can recommend Hoe? Zo!, which is a daily radio show about science, and OVT, a weekly program about history. At Radiocast.nl you can find all the podcasts of Dutch radio shows.
Okay, back to knitting. I started the cardigan from the Pea Pod Baby Set by Kate Gilbert.
It's a free pattern (pdf) from Interweave Knits. I'm using Silk Wool (52% silk, 48% wool, 100 g/550 m) from Klazien's Kreatie, two strands held together. I'm really pleased with the way it is turning out. Problem is I don't have enough yarn to finish it right now. I only got one skein, because I wasn't sure what I was going to use it for. I'll have just to order another one.
Oh, and I have a question for you English speaking people. The pattern calls this garment a 'sweater', where I would call it a 'cardigan', because it has an opening in the front. At least in Dutch, there are two words to distinguish these different types of garments (a 'trui' and a 'vest'). Is this not the case in English? Just wondering!
And last but not least, I made a mitten.
Yes, that's right, just one mitten. I made it up myself, using some motifs from sweaters in Poetry in Stitches. I'm not sure about the colors I picked though. Especially the blue is bugging me.... so I haven't decided yet if I want to make a mate. I'll wait and see how I feel about it later.
Posted by saartje at 12:18 AM | Comments (65)
