Granite is grey, trellis is pink

My sister knitted Granite by Helga Isager a while ago, and it came out really nice. She washed it and put it outside to dry. And a disaster happended! It was made out of silk/alpaca, and there is a reason they always tell you not to dry silk in direct sunlight. Instead of a lovely white sweater, a strange, yellowish garment came back in. She had it sitting in the closet for while, until we dyed it the other day. It is now considered saved!
We had lots of little helpers, one of them helped simply by sleeping through the whole thing:

others were more vocal in their assistance:

3-year old Iris wanted to "color something too", and after some negotiation settled for a lone sock

It turns black!

The Granite sweater didn't actually turn out black, more of a dark grey, similar to what it looks like here


In other news, I've also finished the Trellis cardigan for Dagmar, here she is sporting it

It's the 12 month size, a little big still on 8-month Dagmar, so it will fit through the winter. It's less than 3 skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted on 5 mm needles. Modifications: I knitted the body in one piece and picked up the sleeve stitches and knitted them both at the same time (with 2-at-a-time sock technique). Voila! Almost seamless.

Fiona tunika

A cute and quick project, the Fiona tunic by Sanne Bjerregaard. I love the result, but feel compelled to warn you about the pattern. It really really sucks. And it costs $9. Don't knit this if you have high blood pressure.

Et hurtigt lille projekt er færdigt, en Fiona tunika i Tvinni alpaca efter Sanne Bjerregaards mønster, og jeg er meget tilfreds med resultatet. Luftigt og kært:


Så nu kan jeg godt sige hvad alle problemerne var:

Mønster
Mønsteret er ganske forfærdeligt, så det passer jo perfekt at man også kan købe det hos Isager. Det er skrevet ud i tal hele vejen igennem, og man ved jo ikke om de passer (det gør de ikke alle sammen, på den sidste side skulle der i række 5 have stået k4 i stedet for k5). Så er der ingenting at holde sig til når man kommer i tvivl, og det gør man! Det hjalp heller ikke at jeg brugte det engelske mønster, det er nemlig direkte oversat fra dansk, og fyldt med sproglige og stavefejl. Men så hjælper det selvfølgelig at være dansk selv, så man kan udlede hvad der skulle have stået.

Poor you if you try to follow the English pattern and you are not a native Danish speaker (in which case you can reverse engineer the wording). It was clearly directly translated from Danish, word by word. Many terms are incorrect - e.g. the buttonhole instructions tell you to "k1 twisted in the next yo" - but English speakers would expect this instruction to say something like "knit the next yo tbl". Just a small example.
Also, I found the first number on the last page to be wrong. For the 1 year size, it starts with k5, but it should have been k4. Of course most knitters can figure this kind out, but it's just not good enough in a $9 pattern.

Konstruktion
Det er meningen at tunikaens for og bag skal strikkes for sig. Det betyder at hver anden pind er vrang og at der kommer TO sømme ned langs siderne. Helt tåbeligt, så jeg strikkede den selvfølgelig rundt, men det betyder at man skal sidde og bladre frem og tilbage i mønsteret konstant. Hvorfor er det ikke bare skrevet til at strikke rundt?

Why wasn't the pattern written for knitting in the round? Really, two seams in a garment for a small child... But it's easy to modify.

Garnmængde
Jeg strikkede størrelse 1 år, og mønsteret påstår man skal bruge 100 g tvinni - men den færdige top vejer kun 46 g. Det er selvfølgelig bedre at have lidt garn tilovers end at komme til at mangle... men at ramme SÅ langt forbi er godt nok irriterende. Især når man tager så mange penge for mønsteret.

The 1 year size was supposed to require 100 g of Tvinni, but I used just 46 g. That's way off...

Triinu

Last year some time, I tried knitting a Triinu scarf, but had to give up because the slipped stitch on the edge was just never going to block to the correct measurement. The rest of the scarf was fine, beautiful actually. So I've cast on again, this time knitting all edge stitches, and it seems to be working out this time.

Sidste år engang prøvede jeg at strikke Triinu fra Nancy Bushs lækre (men meget fejlbefængte) bog Knitted Lace of Estonia, men projektet strandede. I opskriften, og hele bogen for den sags skyld, står der at man skal tage kantmasken løs af hver anden gang. Den kant blev bare alt for stram, og efterhånden som jeg havde strikket 7 mønstergentagelser blev jeg også noget stram i betrækket og trevlede til sidst op.
Men nu er jeg i gang igen, denne gang med alle kantmasker strikket ret, og det ser ud til at skride fint fremad:

Garn: et nøgle Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Lace, strikket på 3,5 mm Addi Lace

Hentesæt

SÅ! Nu er mit fine hentesæt af silke/alpaca endelig færdigt, og der er over en måned til jeg skal føde!



Kysen var en katastrofe, som har ligget og ventet på redning i nogle måneder:



men det tog ikke lang tid at redde den da jeg indså hvad der egentligt stod i mønsteret på et vist tidspunkt "fortsæt i retstrik". Hmm. Man skal altså kunne læse for at følge et mønster...
Da det først var fikset blev sokkerne også færdige på et par dage.

En babycardigan fra helvede

Så er den endelig færdig, cardiganen til det lille hentesæt af silke/alpaca. Det har taget sin tid. Mange overspringshandlinger, senest blev ærmernes glatstrikning oversprunget af anden glatstrikning i form af et Kusha Kusha tørklæde. Det kom jeg så til at sidde fast i da mønsteret gik over til delen med ren silke/rustfrit stål, for det er ret levende og irriterende at strikke med. Men det er vel egentligt også meningen med en overspringshandling, at den skal tvinge en tilbage til det man egentligt var i gang med??

Men nu er den altså færdig. Den er 5 cm kortere end mønsterets vanvittigt lange rør, men jeg fandt selvfølglig først ud af at den var alt for lang da hele kroppen var strikket og skuldrene lukket af. Jeg er nu godt tilfreds med, at jeg fandt selvdisciplinen til at lave det om. Eneste anden modifikation er kraven, som jeg lukkede af før ombukket, for jeg kan ikke se hvad en baby, der kun kan ligge ned, skal med sådan en bukket krave.
Og her er den så:

Swallowtail

After a long battle, interrupted by so many other projects, I've now finished by swallowtail shawl.
It's a very easy pattern, but two things made this difficult. First, the 14 repeats of identical simplicity in the beginning was boring me out of my mind. Now that it's finished, I can see that it really works well with the edge, but... too boring.
The other problem was the yarn, Cherry Hill Suri Alpaca. I don't know if this is characteristic of this type of alpaca, but it is a very stiff yarn. Very difficult to manage. If the stitches slip off the needle, they don't stay in shape. They just immediately unravel. Not to talk about knitting nupps. They can be bad enough as it is, but become disastrous with this yarn. All the stitches and yo's just fly apart.
But enough complaining. The process was a little hard, but I think the result speaks for itself:

Jumpsuit

The jumpsuit I started in August is now finished. It came out very nice, the transitions from knitting with dpn's almost went away when I washed it.



Of course I couldn't help but modify a bit... so the top part, which was supposed to be knitted back and forth and sewn together, is just knitted in the round. I know, I had to purl every other round to get garter stitch, but it meant no sewing :) To hide the transition, I did a fake seam in each side, knitting that stitch every other round and slipping it every other. Finally, added some cute, asian-looking buttons from Fandango:

Warm Set for Tadpole

I've started knitting a set of clothing to keep the little Tadpole warm when it comes out i February. I was allowed to use some gorgeous yarn from my sister's stash, Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca & Silk. I know, the Tadpole will probably puke on it immediately and it's handwash only. But it's so soft. A entirely decent thing to wear when you have never been encumbered with clothing before.

The pattern is from Drops, here it is in English og her er det på dansk. The Danish version actually says it will look good on a little girl, but I think it is unisex enough when knitted in green:


The legs are knitted separately in the round, which probably makes good sense, I'm sure the pattern would look bad sewn together. But it is quite problematic to put the legs together. OK, the pattern says to knit 2 cm back and forth to make it easier, but it doesn't make it easy. Also, a circular needle that would be small enough for this number of stitches would be annoyingly short to knit with, so I had to continue with dpn's after putting the legs together. But because the legs were pulling in each opposite directions, there are some ugly transitions although I pulled all stitches really tight. Oh well, here's to hoping it goes away when washed.

Aeolian

I've been working on Aeolian for a while... for some reason I got really bored in the middle, and put it away for a while. But then it came back with a vengeance, and I finished it in no time. Here it is:



For some reason I can't capture the beauty of this shawl in a photo at all, but I guess everybody knows what it looks like.

But the result is what I hoped for, soft and with good stitch definition. It is the shawlette size, but big enough by far - i used a 4 mm needle, so that gave some size too. I hated working the pearls, and they don't even show that much. So this may be my last beaded project as well as my first.