I almost made it to my deadline - I wanted Asrai finished by the end of May. It could have happened. I had all the pieces knitted and ready for seaming early this week. Then I - again - measured the sleeves -pinned them to the body and tryed on. The sleeves were too short. No matter how I looked at it. Too short. So I had to rip both sleeves'  tops, add another 2-3 cm and shape the tops again. I seem to have aquired this fear about knitting too long sleeves, so I end up knitting them too short, did it on my last sweater, too. Anyhow, here she is done, done, done!:



I didn't do the hood, but picked up the stitches around the neckline as for the hood and knit a 2x2 rib collar, straight up:

Asrai was really a fun and easy knit - although the pattern looks a bit frightening, covering 4 pages. But it's so accurate - the instructions are very clear and detailed - and following them closely I had no problems - everything happened just the way it was supposed to! - except for the sleeves - but that was my own fault - my own fear of making them to long. The sweater is so comfortable to wear directly to the skin - being cotton/rayon. And it's actually quite warm, too - which is ok because summer has really not hit our country yet - hope it will, soon! 

Speaking of summer, my husband spotted this:

and said, laughing: What's this? The beginning of a bikini?? No it's not! It's the beginning of my daughters shawl, the one made from the yarn we dyed. She knit a few stitches herself, but I also helped her a bit. She got quite impatient trying to do the increases. So I guess this one is going to be a cooperation!

details:

yarn: Colinette Giotto, colorway Frangipani, 100g, 5 1/2 skeins, size medium
needles: 5mm, circular
pattern source: "Akashya" , Colinette
model: Asrai
modifications: left out the holes in  front and on the sleeves, substituted with purl st., also omited the hood, and made a collar straight up for about 12 cm, 2 by 2 rib

Some very majestetic animals were on the news today. They live in the wilderness -up in the mountains far away from people. The reason for being on the news is that they have invaded some areas in eastern Norway, -were people travel by car and by train.They are in danger of being hit by trains in their attempt of finding food. Evidently there is too much snow up in the mountains. And people travelling by car create dangerous situations both on the road by stopping randomly once having spotted an ox or several - and also for themselves by walking too close to the animals. THEY ARE DANGEROUS! But impressive and beautiful. Take a look.

My first thought was - I hope these animals somehow will find the way back to their habitat without too much harm done to them. My second thought - (and I have to admit that this one came into my head extremely rapidly after the first one! ) - GREAT FIBER!!!! So I started speculating - would that wool of theirs be spinable, knitable, wearable, useable?? I did not invent the wheel. I was also not the first person thinking, wondering about this. For those who read norwegian - take a look here.  I am indeed ignorant. I didn't know this: This wool is absolutely usable. It's more than that. According to this web site, it's considered THE most exclusive animal fiber on earth. 8 times as warm as sheep wool. Softer than cashmere. Doesn't felt, doesn't shrink. But - how to shave a musk ox?!! No, that is of course not done - and would - it goes without saying - be impossible without the animal being dead or heavily sedated. And these are wild animals - to steal their wool would be cruel. No - the wool are sheddings - gathered from stones and bushes where the animal has walked. So it's not cheap. According to the page linked above 2 oz of ready spinned yarn (how many grams would that be? 50 ?) cost 80 USD. So I guess the musk ox could be cosidered KING OF FIBER!

After a little more searching  I found the Qiviut -page, in english. Maybe well-known to fiber-freaks around the world- but new to me! If I am to go on a mountain trip in the musk ox area of Norway I know for sure what to look for in the bushes and on the ground! Not to mention behind my back! Help. RUN!

There is not much to tell about my knitting today, I'm afraid. Asrai's second sleeve is growing -but a bit slowly.  I'll have pictures in a couple of days, when I (hopefully) have started the seaming. I DID get to dye the third skein. It turned out much more yellow than I intended -but I guess yellow is ok! Here it is:



It will have to wait a while until it gets knitted, though. Wonder into what....

No. I was not going to start another knitting project. There are so many I need to finish first! But my very first handpainted skein had to be wound up and started on it's way to something or another. It said so. So what could I do but obey? I wonder if it's going to be happy when transformed into this?
Before I wound it up I washed it again to see how much bleeding of color I would get. There was none! The color was indeed fixated on the yarn. So here it is all wound up:



And knitted some rows:





I did not forget Asrai. First sleeve is done and the second one is growing. Whithin a couple of days it should be ready for seaming and knitting of a collar OR the hood - depending on wether I have enough yarn or not. Time will show.





I really like how the Giotto looks when knitted up:



So I think I have a little knitting to do! And I am also trying to find some time to turn a white skein of wool into an orange/pink/yellow/red skein of wool. With a little help from my new friend KONDITORFARGE, of course!

I love variegated yarn. Handpainted yarn. Lots of colors.
How do "they" ("they"? noro, colinette, koigu, manos, lorna's laces, morehouse and lots more) do it? Did they at some point start fumbling around in their kitchens with whatever stuff available that could add some color to a skein of yarn? Did they get green fingers and brown yarn - not as in brown-color , -but as in too-much-heat-in-the-oven-burnt-brown? Did they sneak into grocery stores buying the left-over colors that were not used to paint cookies last christmas? Did they get strange looks when they bought 10 bottles at the same time - wondering if the lady behind the counter suspected you of having found an until now un-known way of getting high on this stuff that normal people only buy like 1 or 2 bottles of every other year?

Maybe they did, maybe they didn't.
I sure did. And had a lot of fun. I doubt that my dyed yarn ever will be such a world-wide success as the ones mentioned above. But as long as I (and the kids!) loved doing it and we in fact ended up with two handpainted skeins so far! - it was well worth it.

This is the yarn I used:



It's 100 g of fingering weight 100 % wool. It has a high lanoline content and I wondered if that would prevent the color of getting into the yarn. So I soaked it in some mild detergent for wool (Milo).

Then I placed the damp skein on a plastic bag:



Kool-Aid - which indeed should be a yarn's best friend (if not the thirst's) - is not available here in Norway. It's considered too hazardeous to one's health - when ingested that is. 
So one takes what one has - KONDITORFARGE -  fluid confectionery colors:

 If they are less hazardeous by ingestion I trust the authorities to know. My big and only question now is: Will they - or will they not be hazardeous to my yarn??!

So:

About 5-6 dl of heated water. 5-6 glasses. Vinegar, about 1 tbs in each glass. Then somewhere between 1/2 and 1 bottle, or a bit more of KONDITORFARGE in each glass, depending of how dark/intense color I want. I mixed the colors. Yellow/green. Blue/green. Blue/red. Most success I think is achieved when I stay within one range of colors in one skein. As: green/yellow/blue OR red/blue OR yellow/read. Beware of red/green! Could be fun, but could also be very muddy...

One spoon in each glass. Rubber gloves. Here we go. First try. I love green. I LOVE GREEN:




Making my way around the skein, spooning and pouring two repeats of the different colors:

So far so good. Then I make the first big -BIG- mistake. I lift the skein up and into a baking pan. (Yes,confectionery colors, remember, supposed to be eatable..)

Ooops why didn't the color fluids follow?:



Hah!- when did fluids learn to fly? There they are - having a ball on my kitchen table!
But did I lose courage? No. On we go. Into the baking pan, cover, into the oven. 225 degrees (celcius). 1hour. My dear friend, me. Too long, too hot! The yarn got some (really - very few) -slightly brown spots-burnt! And the whole skein got a slightly felted touch. Still - it should be knitable. It's fun, here is my first hand-painted skein of yarn:





So,of course I had to try another one, this time trying to correct my mistakes. This time I stayed within the yellow/blue/green range. And I put the damp skein directly into a large baking pan BEFORE adding the colors - in order to keep the fluids right there in the middle of the yarn. If the yarn gets dry it will also get burnt. Learned my lesson. Covered with foil. This time I set the oven to 150 degrees (celcius) and even turned it down to 125 after 1/2 an hour. 45 min "cooking"-time. And I checked several times that the yarn indeed was surrounded by fluid. Here my second little friend is fresh out of the oven:

And I remember from dying textiles earlier that salt would help fixating the colors. So I rinsed this one in salt-water (2 liters and 2-3 handfuls of sea-salt):



And then hanging to dry after a gentle squeeze.This skein was not at all burnt or felted - it even still smelled of lanoline after the whole process, still soft!

Here it is, pictures were taken late in the evening so it's not optimal, but possible to get an idea:

This was fun! The next one I make will be in the yellow/orange/red scale.
So due to this little adventure of mine there will be some days until I can post some progress on my knitting, I guess...:)

Today is my son's birthday! 13 years! Happy-happy birthday!! He's born at the time of the year when it's possible to get juicy-yummy fresh strawberries...



So - did he and the rest of the family get a treat today? YESS!:



Three goooood friends...chocholatecrrreeeaamstrawberrrrrriesmmmmmmm...

Is this a knit blog?? I guess it is. But also knitters need food -don't they? I did a little knitting over the weekend. Asrai's first sleeve is about to get it's top shaped:




I left out the holes in the pattern. Both in the sleeves and the front. There were supposed to be holes on each side of the two knitted stitches in the middle of the sleeves. Why? To put in a leather band that is supposed to hang down from the sleeves, take look here. Hm. Funny idea. A bit too funny for an old girl like me... I like knitting this sleeve, though. The ribbing was a fun knit with increases and decreases, so I hope my stay on sleeve island will be just perfectly long enough.

However, as always I am working on severeal projects at the same time. Mohair. Mohair. Lace mohair.
The green shawl/wrap:



And same kind of yarn - laceweight 70 % mohair and 30% silk - another shawl:

Mmmmm. Add a little of this:



And the evening is perfect. Or?

No pictures today. Asrai does now have almost 2/3 of a sleeve. And my blog has a new color. I like it better. I am not used to blogging. This is very new to me. How fun !- I get to chose my own color! It's my own space!
I think I will stick with the blue. Today I fell in love. With this. It's hopefully on it's way to me. One skein. Only one.

I tried to fix the pink matter further down on this page. My pre-weekend brain was not up to it. What does it matter anyhow. There are bigger problems in this world.

It's been a very long weekend here in Norway, pentecost followed by the 17th of May which is the Constitution Day of Norway. Big celebration. So today was the first working day since last week! For any non-norwegians interrested - go and google "17.mai" and you will be well informed!

Did I do some knitting too? A little. Asrai is slowly moving ahead. The back and front are done:

Hm. I am quite pleased, but after finishing the sleeves I will have to deal with a neckline problem; I thought I should not knit the hood -but in that case I need to make some sort of a collar. I haven't figured out yet exactly how I will do that. Maybe - if I after all have enough yarn- I'm not quite sure yet- I might end up knitting the hood if no better solution falls into my head...I mean, I don't really want a hood but I really like the way the hood makes the neckline show in the front....hm

The knitting of sleeves has commenced. Starting with the "flared cuffs" - it's a fun knit where I also get my first chance to use our home made stitchmarkers!:



It's hard to capture the true beauty of Giotto with a camera, here is another try, maybe a better angle:

I think I have some knitting to do! I also have some work to do on this blog when I get around to it. I want to add links to the wonderful blogs I read regularly. There are some!

...Copenhagen, friendly old girl of a town"...
I went to Copenhagen last month. I love Copenhagen. For many reasons, but not the least because of the great yarn shops to be found there. I went to Strikkeboden, Uldstedet and Sommerfuglen. There is yet another shop I read about some weeks before I went; Handlergarn (look at the fabulous 123strik's entry at jan. 24th). It's a big mystery to me, but somehow I missed this shop, I totally forgot! Next time I go to Copenhagen I will for sure pay it a visit! However - there were plenty of yarns and books to look at, crave and maybe buy in the other shops. I bought this new book, (btw,I learned from 123 strik's blog that the writer - Jytte Slente - is also the manager of Handlergarn):

The designs are really simple with a wonderfully creative and humorous (in a very positive way!) twist to them. There are several tops and sweaters in this book I would love to knit. Yes, of course I already started knitting this one:

It's a wrap cardigan/shawl knit in laceweight mohair. I use this yarn i got at Strikkeboden:  

It's a 70 % mohair/30 % silk blend,very similar to Rowan's Kidsilk Haze. It's so soft and the finished cobweb-like fabric made this little fellow jump right into it:

This weekend is now soon in the past and I am glad to say that the frilled edge showed up right on time and just where it was supposed to! The jacket is finished, and I am very pleased with it, I just hope it will fit my niece! I am sure it will not be too little, maybe rather on the bigger side...

Hopefully I will have it finished this month so I get to wear it during summer! That's a great thing about having a blog - now I have to finish it during May because I said so. Did I say so? Yes you did. So off you go, Asrai,direction foreward! Or upwards or whatever. Nam-nam-yum-yum-giotto...