Bubbles, bubbles, BUBBLES!

What better way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon than blowing bubbles? The 4yo started the whole thing.
Whee, there they go!
More, I want more!
Baby sis loved them too.
Even big bro joined in.
Oh, the joy of bubbles!

I finished the toe-ups, aka my Stoopid Socks

Well, they're finished. That's about all I can say. Oh, I can also say, with quite a bit of tenacity, that I will neverEVER again do a wrap&turn heel. If I ever end up doing another pair of toe-ups. Another thing I have to say is: I have to make another pair of Noro-striped socks, because these kinda suck. The sock on the left is fine, but the one on the right.. Well, there's not so much striping on the right, more just orange. I did rip back a few rows to get different shades of orange, but it still looks boring. Here's a close-up of the right sock:
Blah, right? But I decided against ripping all of the orange out of the skein, because I was a bit worried about running out of yarn. I wouldn't have, but didn't want to frog the entire sock just because the I didn't like the beginning. Hey, at least the socks are warm, so I'm sure I'll wear them even if I'm not too happy with how they look.

I must also say that I could very well have lived without the baby-poo colored stripes at the heel, not a very attractive color.
But hey, at least they're warm. Wait, did I say that already? I'm just trying to find something nice to say about these socks.. Next I'm definitely using two different skeins, so that I don't get big blocks of the same color somewhere on the sock!

A small shop update

I have had these yarns dyed and reskeined for a long time now, but for some reason I haven't gotten round to photographing them and uploading them to Etsy. Today I finally got the pics taken and updated the shop. I have only two yarns for now, but there are four more waiting to be reskeined and photographed. These are both lace weight, although the pink is very, very thin and the blue is lots thicker. Both lovely in their own ways. :)

My first award!

I got my first award, yay! Thank you so much Alexandra! I read so many wonderful blogs that I couldn't possibly choose just 15 of them, I love all of you. <3 So I would like to give this award to all the lovely blogs out there, and especially to all my readers, who all have wonderful blogs of their own.

I've been knitting too, but don't have anything finished to show off. I still need to attach the sleeves to the hoodie and fasten all the loose ends. The rest of the seaming is done and I even grafted the hood yesterday! So basically it would take me less than an hour to finish the thing.. Maybe I'll get it done today. And I have about 30 rows or so left to knit on my socks, so I'm hoping to finish them today, shouldn't take too long to knit. So next time, I should have something finished to show you. :)

There's something fishy going on.

I've been sewing. (no, that's not the fishy part.) I wanted to make the babe a pair of capri-length pants, you know, since it's Summer and all. So I looked up a cute pattern in a magazine I had, did everything I needed to do and started sewing. (still nothing fishy..) I had sewed all the pieces together when I needed to iron the capri's, after which I showed them to the husband. (now we're getting to the fishy part) He took one look at the pants and said: They look kinda big. Huh, what? Big? But I made them to be a size 80cm (the babe is about 71cm, so I expected the pants to be a bit big on her), they can't be big.

At this point I stopped and took a better look at what I was making. And yes, I realized that the pants I was holding looked a bit big. Actually, they looked very big, much too big to fit the babe. And as you can see, they are big, so big in fact that they fit my almost-five-year-old just fine. Actually, they're even a bit big on her.

What I still don't get is how they can be so huge. I'm sure I have the right size and the right seam allowance, I really have no idea what went wrong. Oh well, you can't get it right every time. :) And at least DD#1 can wear the capri's.

Pattern: Ottobre 1/2008
Fabric: an old pair of jeans

First toe-ups

I finally decided to grab the bull by the horns and try knitting socks toe-up. I didn't want a complicated pattern, so I'm making these in plain stocking stitch, but I'm making then striped, just to keep it from getting boring. :) The toe was quite easy to do, altho I did rip it back three times before I was happy with how it looked. But that was really more due to my own stupidity, it's not like the beginning was actually difficult or anything. Now it's smooth sailing until I come to the gusset, but the heel it what really scares me.. Maybe I have to dig up a pattern from somewhere to see how to do the heel, that might help. Otherwise I'll have no idea what to do next when I eventually get that far.

Finishing Fairy Wanted!

It took me well over a year, but I finally finished knitting my hoodie. Phew. Ok, ok, it did lay around for several months waiting for me to continue knitting on it, and a little over a month ago I finally did. Now I just need to sew up the seams and graft the hood. I did finish one sleeve, but there's still the second sleeve and the side seams to go. Blech. I really need to do this now, otherwise it'll lay around for another six months before I get it done.

Oh, and did you ever hear the saying Always make sure you have enough yarn from the same dye lot to finish your project? Apparently I hadn't heard it back when I got the yarn for this hoodie, as I had yarn from two different dye lots that are so different that it looks like it's not even the same color. I couldn't get a decent picture of just how different the shades are, I'll try to get one later. Anyhow, I decided to not let it bother me, because I really didn't feel like frogging the whole thing..

Now if I could only find that finishing fairy to help me with the sewing of the seams, because this lil helper isn't really helping that much.

Pearshaped pincushion vol.3

This is definitely not the best possible picture, but it's the only one I have. This is the third pincushion I made and it's just perfect. :) I'm so happy with it! The other two have been too "fat", but this is perfectly pearshaped. And I even managed to get the embellishments done, so this one has got a leaf and stem too. It has got plastic pellets at the bottom to keep it from falling over and I used stuffing from an old pillow for the soft part. :) I couldn't be happier with it, and I hope the recipient of it likes it too.

Glynis! Finally!

Well it took me long enough, but I finally finished my Glynis socks, yay! I'm so happy now. :) And what's even better, they fit like a dream! Altho I do confess that I didn't read the instructions properly, so my toe is lots shorter than in the pattern, but if I'd made more toe decreases then the sock would have been too big. Now they're just the perfect size for my feet.

I was amazed at how little yarn I needed for these, I had a 100g skein and I have loads left. I'm thinking I'll knit a pair of baby socks with the leftovers.

By the way, it's very difficult trying to take pics of your new socks when you have a baby around.. When I want to take pics of her, she's totally uncooperative, and when I don't want to take pics of her, she's in front of the camera all the time. So most of the pics I got ended up looking like the following, blurry close-ups of a grinning baby.


Oh, I almost forgot, the specs:
Pattern: Glynis by CookieA (ravel it)
Yarn: Standard Sock by Knot Another Knitter
Needles: 3mm

And one last sock pic. :)

Pincushion, pearshaped pincushion

Melissa from The Speckled Pear mentioned this pattern from retromama's Etsy-shop on Twitter yesterday, and I just had to buy the PDF! I just made my first pincushion today, and I think it turned out kinda cute. :) Ok, so it's still missing the stem and leaf, but I didn't have any materials t home so that I could have made those. Maybe it is a bit too fat and not quite pear-shaped enough, but I don't think it looks too bad, not for being a first try. More to come! :)

I love making baby-stuff!

Altho, technically, my babe isn't a baby anymore, since she already turned one.. Anyways, tiny kiddie clothes are just so incredibly fast to make, that's why I just love making them. I started making this tunic (it's oficially a babydoll, but I kinda prefer the word tunic) last Friday and finished it yesterday, and I think it turned out really cute. :) I still have to get a ribbon to put thru the eyelet row at the waist, altho I don't think it looks bad the way it is now.

It could have been just a bit longer, but I decided to knit until I ran out of yarn, and this is how far I got. And I have a feeling that it will stretch a bit in the wash, at least the "skirt-part" felt really stretchy. I think this is something the babe will be able to wear for a long time. :)

Pattern: Kaia Babydoll by Rachel Evans
Size: 12mo
Yarn: Mandarin Naturel (the pink) and the other is of unknown origin, I've had it in my stash for years
Needles: 6mm & 4,5mm

And just because I have the cutest baby ever (teeheehee, don't all moms think that?), here are two more pics for you. :)

It's been a year? Can't be..

One year ago at this time I was at the hospital, waiting for our little one to finally make her arrival. (I was two weeks overdue, so I was really, very ready to finally get to hold her in my arms.) I had spent the whole day there, hoping that the meds they gave me would finally induce labor. At around six the husband and I went out for a walk and that's when the contractions started. And since this is not a blog about child-birth, I will make a short story even shorter and just say that at 7.48 p.m. a beautiful, dark-haired baby-girl was born. :) And today that beautiful, dark-haired baby turns one.

At this point I can only be amazed at the fact that it's been a whole year since she was born. Time has gone by so quickly, I must have lost track at some point. It feels like she was born just yesterday! And now she's a one-year-old, a very strongwilled one, I might add. The cutest one-year-old there ever was, in my very unbiased opinion. :)

Confection shrug and a very uncooperative model

Sheesh, just how difficult can it be to take a decent photo of a one-year-old? Not as easy as you might think.. This is the best pic I got, she just would not cooperate with me, kept crawling around and refused to sit still for a second. Which, actually is quite unusual for her, usually she loves to have her picture taken. But no, not this time. Oh well..

Anyways, the specs:
Pattern: Confection Baby Shrug by The Shizknit
Yarn: Novita Cannes
Size: 12mo
Needles: 5mm

This was such a quick knit, I cast on on Wednesday and cast off today. I had to make some mods, as I realized that I would run out of yarn. The back is two rows shorter that it's supposed to be, and the ribbing is just one row when it should be four rows. But since I really didn't want to have to buy yet another skein, I decided to make it a bit shorter, I figured that the babe wouldn't know the difference. :)

And here we have two examples of how most of my photos looked..

I finished something!

I'm so happy with how this turned out, as I used a much thinner yarn than the pattern calls for. I thought I would try to make a child-sized bolero just by using thinner yarn, and it worked, it fits perfectly! The one thing that annoyed me was that I thought one skein would be enough, but it wasn't. So I had to buy a second skein and only needed a few meters of it. Oh well, I think I'll make the baby a Confection-shrug with the left-overs. :)

Pattern: Cloud-bolero by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Novita Cannes
Needles: 4mm

I'm not completely convinced that I liked working with the yarn, as I thought it was quite slippery and a bit splitty, but the end result was worth it. :) And the girl seems to be happy with her new bolero too, and that's the most important thing. I decided to not knit the picot edge, I planned on crocheting one but the I just got lazy.. Anyway, I think it's pretty just the way it is. :)

I think I might have to make one of these for myself too at some point (altho I would make a longer version for me) as it was really easy to do, not to mention very quick. I was afraid that I might have problems with it, as the instructions were written and I really prefer charts, but, luckily, that wasn't an issue. I did get a bit confused a couple times, but that I blame on the heatwave we had over the weekend, it had nothing to do with the pattern. But I do still prefer working with charts..

ps. Please excuse the mess in the background..

Wheeee!

Finally! It's been way too long, but now I have some new yarns to show! Yay, I must admit that I'm quite pleased. :)

I actually didn't think that using the acid dyes would be so easy, but it really wasn't any more complicated than the Wilton dyes that I've been using until now. And see, I've got grey! I'm so happy about that, because I couldn't get a decent grey with my Wilton's. But now I do, a pretty, silvery grey. That in itself deserves a big WHEE! These, and all of my older items are listed in my Etsy-shop.

In other news.. Well, there are no other news, because there hasn't happened much on the knitting front. The Cloud-bolero is coming along, I'm over half-way, but I ran out of yarn, so I won't be able to finish it until I get some more. The hoodie I'm working on needs some grafting, and I have to knit the hood. And my Glynis-socks need one more repeat on the cuff until I can start working on the heel and finally move on to the foot. But I expect to get some more knitting done, now that I finished dyeing that batch of yarn. :)