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.

Hello again, blog

I haven't blogged for ages. Dagmar is now almost 8 months old. Here she is, all covered in my mother's knitted pieces:



I guess I've been busy. In other news, we're just back from a trip to Boston, and more importantly, a trip to WEBS in Northampton. This is what my sister, my mother and I got for ourselves:



and my sister wasn't even there. Don't tell our husbands!!

I've been knitting Trellis for Dagmar. After almost completing (save one sleeve), I decided to start over....



almost finished sweater on the left, beginning of new sweater on the right. I am using Lamb's pride, but it just wasn't knitting up as soft as it should on 4.5 mm needles. I decided to knit it on 5 mm's instead, and the drape is wonderful, and the fabric is soft. I still used 4.5 mm for the lower seed stitch border, which now fits better in size relative to the cabled section.

Also, I have just started my experiments with avocado pits and shells, for dyeing red colors. I ate a lot of avocados when I was pregnant. They also make good baby food. So in the end, I had almost 3 kg of pits and shells in the freezer. I give them a simmer almost every day to extract the color. Let's see how long I can keep it up. Here they are just out of the freezer

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...

Farvning med løgskaller

Hvem der bare havde vidst at der gemmer sig sådan en farve i ganske almindelige løgskaller:

Jeg farvede mit første eksperimentelle, spundne garn med løgskaller, og det er pludselig blevet noget jeg gerne vil strikke noget af!

Fremgangsmåden for 100 g garn:
- bejdsning i 10 g alun fra Matas. Opløste alunen i lidt kogende vand, tyndede op med koldt vand, kom garnet i og lod det varme op, simre ca. en time, og køle ned til næste dag
- kogte 75 g løgskaller i ca. en time, lod det køle ned, fiskede løgskallerne ud, kom garnet i, simrede det ca. en time, og kølede ned i farvebadet til næste dag
- fiskede garnet ud, håndvaskede til der næsten ikke kom mere farve ud, centrifugerede, lod det hænge og tørre.

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

Et par tvangsvanter - og mit første garn

Endnu et færdigt projekt her i januar - et par bittesmå vanter af moskusuld til babyen, der snart ankommer:

Der var simpelthen ingen vej udenom, for min kære moder helmede bare ikke:
- "Hvordan skal den holde hænderne varme på vej hjem fra hospitalet???"

I finally succumbed to my dear mother's unrelenting pressure and knit a pair of tiny mittens out of quiviut, so the baby, due very soon, can keep its hands warm on the way home from the hospital.

Og så er jeg blevet færdig med mit allerførste håndspundne garn, her i helt ubarmhjertigt nærbillede, så man virkelig kan se hvad der foregår:

Det lider noget under at fremskridtet faktisk var enormt fra spindingen af den første til den anden enkelttråd. Den første var alt for snoet, og man kan faktisk se flere steder, hvor den bare sidder i en stor snoet kage uden at være tvundet sammen med anden tråd. Nå, men det næste jeg er i gang med at spinde ser faktisk allerede meget bedre ud.

My first handspun suffers from all kinds of... imperfections. It's only going to improve from here!

Elephants Baby Blanket

The elephants baby blanket is finally finished, after months of effort :) I'm very happy with the result, and it will suit my Danish/Indian baby perfectly, I think. The yarn is Danish, from the island of Læsø, and the motif looks Indian (although Alice Starmore is actually a Scottish designer, but let's forget about that for the time being).

The finished measurement is 50 x 58 cm, to fit the pram.

I don't have the pattern, it's out of print, so I can't really say what my modifications are, but here's what I did:
In Starmore's design (which I just copied down from a photo), the background is 4 colors and the elephants 3 colors. Læsø Uldstue Klitgarn doesn't come in that many colors, so I couldn't find just that combination. Instead, I have 4 elephant colors and 3 background colors.

So then, I just knit a tube with 8 steek stitches, seamed through the steek a few times with the sewing machine, and cut it. Sounds easy. Then, a back-of-the-envelope calculation to find out how many edge stitches I should pick up with my gauge where 31 stitches x 33 rounds is 10 x 10 cm. My edge is different from the one in the pictures of the original Starmore design. I used the same pattern as in the main section, then just did some diamonds to make it a bit wider. Then, a k2tog, yo picot row, and then, knit the same pattern on the back. The front corners have m1, k1, m1 increases on every other row, the back corners have corresponding decreases on every other row. If I was to do this again (ha!), I would decrease a little more, as there was some surplus knitting in the corners on the back side.

Now came the difficult part. Or at least the part where I procrastinated for a good couple of months. The lining is corduroy, just cut to fit approximately, the edges closed on the sewing machine, and put between the layers of knitting. I seamed the knitting on to the corduroy rather loosely once, then permanently in every bind off stitch. An involved process, but really worth it in the end. Here's what the back looks like in the end: