Let me introduce

the first items of clothing I've made for the school store. I absolutely love how these turned out, but good grief all the pain and anguish we've gone thru this week to actually get these finished in time. This was a group project, there were four of us in my group, we all made the same clothes, just in different sizes. And I do believe that we were just a wee bit too ambitious when designing these, because they really took a long time to make. We got to start the sewing on Monday, and the clothes should have been finished by Wednesday, and we had to spend two extra days at school in order to get our clothes done. And we're talking abou two items of clothing, a sleeveless hoodie and a pair of jeans. I kinda wish our teacher had told us to rethink our designs and make simpler versions of them, but, like I said, they look great now that they're done, so I can't really complain. Well, I can, because we really did have a way too tight schedule in making these, and that's really not our own fault. (oh, by the way, I've had a wee bit of wine before writing this, so please excuse me for maybe being incoherent in places..)

Annnywaaay, where was I.. Oh yes, the clothes I've made, here's a photo of the set we made (I didn't really have much to do with the designing of the items, I was at home with a sick kid when they had made the designs.)
I'm soso happy with how these turned out, even if sewing them was a pain in the, you know, butt. Here's a photo of what the big table in our classroom looked like today when we were starting to draw up the "product cards". Luckily we were the only ones there, because we were kind of spread out . :D
And to finish off for today, some close-ups of the clothes

Just wanted to let you all know..

that I got my biopsy results today, and I can now say that I do not have breast cancer! Yay, weee, wahoo, and all that! :D I would like to thank everybody for your support and prayers and warm thoughts, it has meant a lot to me. Big hugs all around!

Yay for instant gratification projects!

If there's something I love in this world, it's knitting projects that just about knit themselves and get done in notime. Like this hat, I cast on for it on Sunday, knit about twenty rows or so, tried it on the tiny one and realized that it was way too small. So I frogged it and cast on a few more stitches. I didn't have time to knit for more than a few rows, so I had to continue the next day, and yesterday I was done. And now the tiny one has a new hat. It's still a bit too chilly for her to wear it, as the yarn is a cotton blend.

Peekaboo!
The yarn is Cotton Kapok DK, by Sublime Yarns. It's wonderfully soft, altho quite splitty. Knitting this honeycomb stitch pattern was a bit annoying, because the yarn kept splitting. But the result is nice. :) You know, I could make myself a hat with the same stitch pattern.. Hmm..

I didn't realize that my decreases at the top ended up looking like a flower, until I saw the tiny one wearing the hat. But it kinda does, see
And finally a couple more photos, just because the tiny one is so very cute. :)

And one more from the side, here you can see the stitch pattern a bit better

I finished the kneehighs, wahoo!

Ok, so it took me almost two months (!!!) to finish them, but now they're done. Done, I say, DONE! And I love them, I do, I really, really do. I have no idea when and where I'll wear them, but at least I now have a pair to wear when the mood strikes me. :) Actually, now I need to finish the skirt I'm making, so that I can wear the kneehighs paired with the skirt. (And then I need to make the second skirt too, so that I'll have two skirts to chose from.) And after all this blabber, here are the socks
See, aren't they cute? :) Let's pretend that nobody notices that my calves are very thick, and that I really should have added a few more stitches at the top. But at least now they stay up. And I've noticed with my other Noro socks that the yarn stretches out a bit, so it's just as well that they're a bit tight now.

I used 145 grams to make these, so I have a little over half a skein left. So I could easily make a pair of kiddie socks with the leftovers. Altho I was kinda thinking about making a hat.. We'll see what I end up using the leftovers for. But see, aren't my kneehighs cute? ;)
I realized the other day that I've forgotten to show you the finished pair of striped sockies I made for the tiny one, and they've been finished for weeks now. I really should have made them a bit bigger, both wider and longer, but they'll do. I can always make another pair. :)
Maybe now I need to knit something else than Noro striped socks?

I've been contemplating this for days..

Should I talk about this here or not.. But I figured that it's not exactly a secret anymore anyway, so I might as well mention it here too. Since I apparently need to talk about this. Don't know why. (No, I'm still not pregnant. Oh how I wish that was the case..)

This all started a couple months ago, when I found a small lump in my right breast. At first I thought it was just because I was about to have my period, it's normal for the boobage to get a bit more lumpy and bumpy a week or so earlier. So I tried not to think about it, and decided to consider going to the doctor if the lump was still there when my period was over. Which it was. So I went. And I had a mammogram and an ultrasound. And the doctor didn't find anything. So I was relieved. For a while. Until I noticed that the lump had gotten bigger. Lots bigger. And it started aching. So I went to the doctor again. She was dumbfounded. Hah, doctors.

So I got called to an appointment with a surgeon at the hospital. Oddly enough, she couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, just by giving me an exam. Strange, huh? And here I thought all doctors are supposed to come with x-ray vision these days. Aaanyway, I went to another ultrasound this Tuesday. The lump, the huge lump at this point, is harmless. Apparently it's just breast tissue, no problem there. The problem, however, is in a spot just a couple inches above the lump. There is some kind of abnormal tissue there, that this doctor wanted to biopsy. Well great. I go in there still kinda hoping that the lump might turn out to be a cyst after all, and come out of there hoping that I don't have breast cancer. So that kinda sucks.

Stupid thing is, I've been having these strange pains in the very spot that they now biopsied, I just hadn't paid any attention to it, because I was so worried about the ever growing lump. What sucks even more is the fact that even if I don't have cancer now, I have a very large risk of getting it at some point. Because the tissue in that area is abnormal, so it might develop into cancer sooner or later. But hey, at least they caught it early, in case it turns out to be cancer. That's good, right?

And now that I've totally gotten myself all depressed I'm going to go have dinner and try not to think about this at all. Yeah, like that's gonna happen..

Hand embroidery in not my thing

Oh no, I'm so not enjoying the hand embroidery I have to do for school, no no no. But even if I'm not liking it, it's still cool to learn something new. It's just going too slow for me, aagh. I've been working on this little piece of practice embroidery for hours already, and I haven't gotten more than this done.
But hey, at least now I can do the kind of cute embellishments on my knitted items that I've seen on many blogs, and always keep thinking "that's cute, I wish I could do that." And now I can, wahoo! See, learning new skills is a good thing. :)

Anyway, I still much prefer the embroidery machine at school. I know I promised to show you a picture of the embroidery I did on the bag I made in school, and just haven't gotten around to it yet. So, at long last, here's a picture.
It has gotten all wrinkled from use, and I put the embroidery too far down, so the pocket comes over the picture-thingies, but other than that I'm very happy with it. :)

There has been very little knitting going on here, but I'm almost done with the new socks for the tiny one and then I'm going to continue working on my kneehighs. I've had problems concentrating on much of anything lately (those of you who know about the health thing might understand why..), so I've just been sitting on the couch in the evening with my knitting on my lap and not actually getting anything done. Annywaaay, I'll try to better my ways and have some actual knitting to show you next time. :)

Not a whole lot going on here

I have no idea where all my energy has gone, I just feel like sleeping all the time. Ok, so I'm just getting over a stupid cold which has drained some of my energy, and I've got a sick kid at home, but still, this tiredness is insane. So, I haven't gotten a whole lot done lately, but I thought I'd show you a couple WIPs.

Let's start with a small sock. The tiny one is amazingly good at misplacing all her wooly socks, and she's lost yet another sock. So now she has to wear socks that are either too small or too big, so I just had to start making her a new pair. And as I happen to have lots of the Noro sock yarn left over from my own socks, I decided to make the tiny one her very own pair of Noro striped socks. :) I have the first one finished. I know it looks very, very small, but the kid isn't that big either. :)
And this pile of fabric here will become a skirt for me one of these days. Oh, the color is so much off, that it's not even funny.
Oh, I do have an FO too, this is the first thing I've sewn for school. The very first days we just practiced sewing different seams, but then we finally got to sew some actual fabric, whee! :) The first thing we made was a bag for ourself, that we had to design and draw up the pattern for. The only thing was that we had to use all the different seams we had practiced when making the bag. Here's mine
I kinda love it. :) The back of the back looks basically the same, there's just no pocket on the back. Now we're back to practicing different techniques, tomorrow we get to use the school's embroidery machine again. It's really cool, I want one for myself. :D I'll show you later on what I embroidered, I'm going to embroider a text on that bag.

And in case anybody is interested, here are a few pictures of what we've been doing at school. We've practiced making technical drawings and such. I'm really crap at drawing, altho I've been told that my drawings aren't that bad. :) And I'm sure the drawings will get better as I get more practice, right now I'm not too impressed with how my drawings look.