New book arrived!

T was nice and collected my parcel with books yesterday.
I'm looking forward for smiles and laughs reading "Things I learned from Knitting...." .

Rare meeting through Ravelry

I wanted to know what yarn to look for so I took help by Ravelry and asked the knitters in Thailand for suggestions. Among the answers I got, Riki in Bangkok suggested a meeting. This is a rare occasion to meet fellow knitters and after some trouble we managed to meet on my last day in Bangkok. She took me to a department store (where I got my yarn) and we had a coffee to talk about knitting and life in general. We had a great time. In the picture we are comparing knitting techniques. We also compared knitting gadgets like bags, needles, stitchmarkers and more. Riki had the coolest headsfree lamp to clip to the ear.

Thank you Riki for taking time to meet me together with T&N!

Icarus on the beach

Here I am with the start of Icarus.

I knitted when & where possible. Here in a minivan between resorts.

It was of course nicer to knit on the beach, in the sun. I ended up making the Icarus shawl 2 reports bigger than the decription. That's what I got for asking T if he thought I should make it bigger. (I only asked twice!).

Now only blocking remains and then I can start using it.

Thank you so much Christine for the nice yarn gift and Marianne for helping me with the pattern.

Back home from Thailand

I took the knitting goodie bag, T&N and went for 2 months to Thailand! We had a great time - N learned to walk, how to eat sand and how to flirt with the kitchen staff to get bananas.

I wanted to find some local yarn, natural fiber if possible but all I found was acrylic heaven. Here is one picture from a top end department store in Bangkok - all acrylic & expensive.

I found some very typical (and very acrylic) Thai yarn for 3.60 SEK (18 Bath) a skein. It contains 19 grams, no info about the number of meters. It is a bad picture, the pink is VERY bright.

Knitting Lite

I have put all projects aside and have a new bag of "knitting goodies".

I've started on Icarus, using a wool-silk blend in a beautiful coral color, that was a gift from Christine.

I've some eco cotton for a baby cardi and some Spelsau (wool) to start the HV project - mittens. Still not started!

And - I must say I havn't examined my head yet, some kid mohair to make a second Chantel. Maybe I should complete the first one first one might think. To my defence, sometimes you are allowed to crochet but not to knit and the Chantel pattern is the only pattern I know.

Pictures to come!

Story of Chantel (part 1)

Years ago when I first saw the Chantel Shawl I fell in love. Nice lace pattern using Kid Silk Haze. The pattern is in Vintage Style, Rowan Magazine. The only drawback is that it wasn't knitted but crocheted. I haven't done that since 6th grade, and then it was a pair of Lovikka mittens.

Then Warp & Weft had a spring sale and I "had to invest" in there kid mohair (less expensive than KSH but then without the silk). I like the colors - makes me happy.

I took the project with me as a vacation project to an island in the Stockholm archipelago.

So first I had to make a test square, using cotton since it much easier to "redo" when making errors. This is the second one, the first one was not completed and didn't end up as a square. It wasn't that eay to understand the pattern and acronymns.

First sqaure completed and then I managed to complete 70 squares before going back to the city last August. I think I had all 100 made in early October and then put them in a "safe place" to start with other knitting projects. I hade a small panic attack when I couldn't find tham and for a moment (a very long moment) thought theat I had trown them away before I found them neatly stacked in size order in my bookshelf.

100 squares in order to be crocheted together....

....and here is the other end of the shawl.

I have a big girl now

Yesterday was N's first birthday. Cake, candle and ballons. Happy daughter and very pround parents. Grattis på födelsedagen!