It's 2008 already, it really is! I wish everyone out there all the best for this brand new year! My knitting and me are going steady - and hopefully I will manage to pick up blogging again too, but I won't make any new-year's resolutions - because i know too well that I never keep them! 

I am currently working on Flicca and Ofelia, pictures later. And some socks. And. And. And I will absolutely start Autumn Rose some day soon.

And the biggest news? I mean - knit-wise?:

I am seriously considering knitting a dress or a skirt!!

Maybe not for myself - but my plan is to run a start-wearing-knitted-dresses- campaign for my 10 and 12 1/2 year old girls. Unfortunately I think the older is lost to jeans and sweaters (and by no means knitted-by-mum-sweaters) - but my younger's attitude seems prosperous! She is the one digging into old boxes in my parents house, finding vests and sweaters I used at her age - bringing them home and wearing them to school!

So might she like one of these?:

Justina by Norah Gauhan

Or this one below. There is no way I cannot make this one!:

Klukka - icelandic design using Lett Lopi. Pattern and yarn available here.

I am sure that 2008 will be a great year for knitting dresses!

The road of life may sometimes be a bit bumpy. At times like that I find great comfort in my loved ones and also in my knitting. I realize I must have been needing a lot of comfort lately, looking at this little gathering here:

The big pink matter in the middle is going to be my safe haven. The yarn is softer than heaven, it's malabrigo worsted, colorway Damask. It seems that 2 skeins are going to give me about 2 meters of scarf.

The brown in front is going to be my tangled yoke cardigan.

The yellow stuff:

is one foot worth of Opal Hundertwasser warmth.

And we have some Trekking tweed:

The white one was originally destined for the Mock wave cable socks from Favorite Socks. However, they did not work for me, - so now there are some Diagonal cross-rib socks from the same book in the making.

We also have one ripped an re-started Enid cardigan. My first try turned out to be too wide in the neckline, and also I wanted to make some color-changes, adding this yellow up in the right corner here:

OK, what more??!; -The other day I read somewhere that all middle-aged scandinavian women were craving this sweater:

It's the sweater of the danish crime-series Forbrydelsen-heroine. I have to admit, I am stuck to the TV every thursday night when a new episode is aired. The sweater is designed by Gudrun&Gudrun and is sold ready-made (handmade) for an according price. I might commit a Forbrydelse (crime) trying to copy it - but I promise not to put it up for sale or for reproduction.

So being scandinavian, middle-aged and woman I felt obliged to play around with some yarn and start a swatch:

Where this may lead me I don't yet know. By the way, tonight is thursday night!

I have a new favorite cardigan. I love it to pieces (hope not) and can hardly part with it when I go to bed at night.

details:

pattern: very modified version of Cobblestone pullover from IK fall 07. I used garter st. all over exept from the edgings where I made one repeat of the Annefødder (birdsfeet) pattern:

yarn: Navia 2 ply. 350 meters pr. 50 grams. The mixture of loosely spun faroese, shetland- and australian wool makes up for an extremely light and airy yarn. I used less than 4 skeins so the whole cardi is lighter than 200 grams! F-l-u-f-f!

needles: 3,5 mm circular. body knitted back and forth, sleeves in the round. Joined at yoke and further back and forth. no seams! just some under-arm grafting..

I added a simple line of half treble crochet stitches along the front edges for definition and firmness.

I omitted the shortrow shaping in the yoke - for the sake of simplicity - both in the knitting and in the appearance. For the sweater, however, I would absolutely have stuck to the original shortrows because they make the sweater very handsome and well fitted around the shoulders and neck.

Really. That fluff is unbelievable. I want me a sheep. 

I really had no idea what ravelry was all about when I signed up in august. I sort of got the feeling being late to the party and just found myslef heading in the direction  everyone else was running. And all of a sudden I am in! How am I ever going to get the time to sleep, eat, work again??? I am totally fascinated. And so totally fiberspaced. Over there. 

Anyway. Somehow I finished a little something.

A crochet scarf.

details:

pattern: ok. I crochet without really knowing or remembering the the terms, neither in norwegian nor english. i think this might be halvstav, half treble? keep going for as long as you wish. mine is a bit less than 2 meters.

yarn: garnstudio's angora tweed, 2 skeins.

hook: 4mm (or maybe 5? -I forget..)

see you at ravelry...

Of course I had to wind the yarn. And of course I couldn't stand the constant begging-to-be-made of my swatch-to-be...

I had never dreamed I would enjoy knitting fair isle again as much as I actually find myself doing! I think it is Eunny Yang's fantastic design and sense of color that did the trick for me. I am using almost the same colors as in the original. However, since this is not Jamieson's Spindrift, albeit still shetland wool - there are just a few slight changes. The dark blue I use is slightly heathered with hints of green which makes it a wonderful dark indigo shade. The Pistachio is substituted with a beige/sand shade and the Scotsh broom with a sand/green/yellow heathery shade. Also, my Old gold shade is heathered and my Bracken-equivalent is a bit brighter than the original.  I kept to the origninal's distribution of colors and I am really amazed of how wonderfully they blend in together! I made my swatch using 2,5 mm needles and not 3 mm as called for, thinking I am a loose knitter. However, my gauge here came out a bit too tight so the 3 mm will hopefully be just perfect.

So then I need one 3 mm circular. I think I have at least 2. Maybe more. But they are busy. I am really puzzeled now, how do I solve this??!

The yarn appeared.

The reds:

The golden greens:

And the rest:

The rose. The swatch is begging to be made.

Look at this blog with the coolest blogname ever. I am getting seriously and helplessly drawn into dreams of fair isle. Not this fair isle, well maybe too. But this fair isle. Maybe it started here. Maybe I won't be cured until I knit this. In my dreams. For the time being.

In the meantime I just had to start a long-time-planned project...Enid cardigan from IK winter 06:

I'm using Rauma finull which seems to be spot-on gauge. I really had forgotten what a pleasure it is to knit with plain wool yarn on 3 mm addi turbos - the knitting from my youth revisited... After seeing this fantastic sweater-version I decided to flip around too, and knit it from the neckline and down. It's much easier to adjust the size and length that way. I am so far planning on making the cardigan version. I just need to retrieve my steeking-mojo, from way back in time...

Modified Cobbelstone, cardi-version is getting ready for the yoke..

And I am getting ready for the rest of the evening wich involves some serious knitting and some serious gangsters...

Attacked by some kind of virus that doesn't keep me in bed with a fever - but bad enough to keep me on the couch with my knitting.... - I find myself obsessed with natural coloured yarn and the different kind of textures they make, depending on stitches used. My yarnstash has undergone thourogh scrutiny in order to dig out the most textural and natural looking yarn I could think of. Strange virus - makes your brain go all fibery...

First, I remembered 2 skeins of discontinued angora tweed I bought on sale last winter - just because I love the feel of it and I loved the shade still available at the time. (This yarn was discontinued only to be relaunched last winter with less available shades than before..) My texture-urge made me cast on for "Annefødder", the fabulous Anne's version of a birdsfeet pattern. The yarn might very well be perfect for this, but very soon I discovered that I would not have enough yarn to make the scarf so wide and long as I wished.

Then why not...crochet?

I'm amazed by the texture this yarn is capable of making. Before prosessed through needles of any kind it looks a bit flat and more like a 100 % wool yarn. After knitting or crocheting it gets a wonderful halo due to the angora content without shedding much at all. This might show the difference better:

Almost at the end of 2nd skein now..

But still, I'm not quite done with the birdsfeet...

My mind continued playing with this texture-thing and kept searching through the mind-version of my stash - and pling - I remembered this fibertreasure found in Copenhagen last year:

Navia, 2 ply:

It's so light and full of air! 350 m pr 50 g!

I tried different stitches and I really think this yarn looks best in simple garter st:

Here are some birdsfeet in the making - but not as a scarf. I will make a humble attempt on knitting a modified cardigan version of the Cobblestone pullover from IK 2007. I have done some math and who knows, - it might work! I really also want to make the real sweater-version - pling! - I just realized I might have the perfect textured, tweedy yarn in my stash for it.....! (Maybe I should go to bed after all..)

Once upon a time there was this wannabesummertop. Somehow it didn't seem to work for me - maybe it was the brick illusion, maybe it was the density of the fabric, I really don't know - but I never found motivation to finish it.

But I like the yarn. It's actually two yarns, this (50 % linen, 50% viscose) and this /75 % cotton, 25 % linen) Knit together in simple st st it comes out like this:

Which transformed into Coachella, (first funny name..):

details:

pattern: Coachella, Knitty summer 07

yarn: Marianne Isager viscolin and bomulin - a little bit more than 100 g each.

needles: 4,5 and 5 mm circulars

It's a great pattern, fun and easy to knit. The fit is perfect - although it looks like a shapeless cylinder before you put it on. Really clever design!

There might still be a summer WIP or two in progress... but with temperatures now dropping to 13 centigrades they will have to rest for a while...

So next up is a warm woolly coat that just has to come alive. That's second funny name - Flicca! I am knitting it in one piece and plan on making it a raglan - like this fabulous version. I use two strands of Marianne Isager Tvinni tweed and one strand of Jaggerspun zephyr- which results in a quite interesting fabric:

Lovely lovely wool and silk - I don't mind the days getting colder and the evenings getting darker...

I found a great deal of it in Italy this summer. How could you not, staying in a place like this?!:

Sweet, sweet Tuscany, I miss you a lot!

Anyway, I am back, still happy and happily knitting! I might even get around to show off some of it any day soon!