Recent stuff

It's a cardigan. Of course. Made with létt-lopi. I love it and wear it all the time, even though I've not yet had a chance to go to the button store and get me some buttons.



This I also wear all the time. I believe it's called the Lotus blossom shawl, or something like that. I found the free pattern on elann.com. I made it with slightly scratchy norwegian wool. I am a big believer in scratchy wool.



This is what I've got on the needles right now. It's another cardigan. Of course. Made with létt-lopi.

March knitting

My knitting is actually crochet.



Hopefully, one day in the near future, this will look like a cardigan(!) rather than something from a swamp. I stumbled upon a crochet pattern book called Sensual Crochet, and while I'm not so fond of the books title, it's probably the best collection of crochet patterns I've ever seen. I like almost all the patterns in this book and will probably end up making a whole bunch of them.
Crochet has a downside: it uses up a lot of yarn. But it has an upside as well: it goes really fast, which is a nice change of pace when you've been working on the same stupid knitted sweater for ever and ever.
So, onwards and upwards.

A sleeve for Mom

Look!




I love the pattern, but working with cotton (in this case, Dalegarn Svale) is irksome.

Finished object

Just to show you that I have been knitting during September, even though I haven't been posting about it. It's foliage from the latest knitty. I loved this pattern. Here's another view:



This is the less bulky version of this pattern, made with one skein and just a little bit of a second of Létt-lopi. I enjoyed this pattern so much that I think I want to try to knit the bulkier version too. We'll see.

I recently got a very helpful email from an unnamed fellow blogger who encouraged me to get over my obsession with knitting the same damn cardigan (in this case, my beloved Callie. I've known forever that my cardigan obsession borders on the ridiculous, but somehow, I've always managed to convince myself that I really do need to knit one more. My boyfriend has occasionally asked: "Do you really need another cardigan?" but I've never really listened to him. He's not a knitter, and so, in my warped mind, he simply doesn't understand the urge to knit cardigan after cardigan after cardigan.
But having a fellow knitter sweetly point out to me that perhaps it's time for me to move on really got to me. Probably because I know that she understands the urge one has to knit a certain project. But it's also important coming from her because she knows that there's a whole world of wonderful patterns that I'm missing out on if I just keep knitting the same one over and over again.
So. I'm going to try to cut down on the cardigans. Even though I find this one rather enticing. But I'm really going to try, very hard, to do other stuff. I'm thinking mittens.
Oh, I probably should tell you, though, that I do have a cardigan on the needles at present. Well, make that two. But they are neither of them Callie. And one isn't even for me. But more on that later.
I don't think I've ever said this, and maybe it doesn't really need saying, but thank you for your comments. I really suck at getting back to you guys, but I appreciate every single one. So thanks, and keep'em coming!

Working girl

Ah, jeeez, no sooner had I recovered from the flu than another occurrance put a huge dent in my plans to be the most prolific knitter, ever.
I was offered a job. A real job, with good pay, nice colleagues my own desk and direct line and everything. A grown-up job. Not only that, this job combines two of my biggest interests (apart from the whole yarn thing, obviously): culture and the media. People, I tell you, I am now a fully employed cultural journalist. Writing articles about literature, ballet, theatre and opera is now what I do all day, from 9 to 5.
I´ve only been working for little over a week, but it so far it seems like the perfect job for me. It's just thoroughly interesting beginning to end. But I think it says something about my priorities that when I was offered the job the first thought that popped into my head was "Darn! Now I won't have as much time to knit!" Then the second thing I thought was "But this means I'll have more money, which means I'll finally be able to try out some yarns other than only the cheapest ones!" So clearly, this situation has its pros and cons.
However, I have managed to finish a knit recently, believe it or not. I proclaim the following:
Callie by Cosmicpluto is the fastest knit and the nicest fit I've knit in a long time. Look!



(I realize I´m reverting to my old and wicked photobooth ways, but to get a picture of the sweater on my camera I'd first have to stand up and get the camera. Then I'd have to get someone to photograph me or try to do it myself with the timer and fail miserably. Then I'd have to find the cable to attatch the camera to the computer and...you know, photobooth may be inferior when it comes to picture quality but it's a godsend for people like me who don't like it when they have to get up).
Well, as you see I've made a few modifications. For one thing, I tried the three-quarter length sleeve and didn't like it, so I just went for a full length sleeve which I like. I also tried out the picot trim, but I felt it made the bottom of the cardigan kind of bulky, so I just went with seed stitch. Lastly, I totally hate picking up large numbers of stitches, like buttonbands, so in patterns that require this of me I usually just crochet a buttonband instead. I did that here. It kind of looks like seedstitch anyways, so it doesn't bother me.
All in all, I heartily recommend this pattern. It 's simple but still has a few interesting features, so it never gets boring. It's a quick knit and, best of all, it's a really flattering sweater.
I liked it so much that as soon as I'd bound off the final stitches I used the same needles to cast on for this:



It's another Callie. I need help.

Arise from the muck

Yuk. Not a very pleasant headline, but kind of accurate, as arising from muck is pretty much what I've been doing for the past couple of days. Just as I had handed in my thesis and was excited about all the knitting and relaxing I was about to embark on, I was struck down with a very nasty flu bug. So for the past week or so I've just lain around like a slug, watching DVDs, blowing my nose and feeling like a small fire was burning inside my head. I was too sick to knit, if anyone can fathom that level of sickness. The mere idea of knitting repulsed me, so weakened and delusional was my state.
Yesterday, however, I knew that the flu was receding because the urge to knit had returned. I knit a few rows on the sleeve of the treeline striped cardigan as I watched The Bourne Identity (refreshing my memory of Bourne's previous adventures before I go see The Bourne Ultimatum). Then last night I finished the cardigan's sleeve and began to work on the body. This morning I woke up and, although my nose was still runny, I had an unrelenting urge to keep knitting. Clearly I'm recovering at a steady rate.
Anyhoo, aside from the striped cardigan, I really want to begin working on the Callie cardigan. Although I didn't have that much luck with the other cardigan pattern I've tried from Cosmicpluto, I accept that it was completely my own stupid fault. The Callie pattern is top-down, and so it should be easier for me to see early on if something catastrophic is going on with the sizing or fit. Mostly I want to knit Callie because I love V-neck cardigans. I think they make the wearer look smart. I imagine myself sauntering about Downtown Reykjavik in my Callie, and everyone I meet will assume I have read the entire works of Proust because of my cardigan's fetching V-neck. So, in fact, I imagine that knitting this cardigan will save me the trouble of reading all kinds of books. Hooray for that!

Sweet Freedom!

Well, well, well. It's been a while.
I apologize for the monstorously long absence, but I've been writing my thesis for the past month and a half. I mailed it off yesterday and experienced a rush of freedom like you wouldn't believe. The weather was beautiful, the sun was shining and to celebrate the end of my toils I spent all of yesterday hanging around downtown Reykjavík, going to bookstores and cafes with my knitting, my brother and my boyfriend. All without my camera, of course (I took it to a repair shop, and it works! I can finally post decent pictures! If I can be bothered to take them, that is.)
It is amazing how time-consuming something like thesis-writing can be. For me at least. I couldn't bring myself to blog because I spent 10 hours a day at the computer working on my paper. Spending additional time writing something that isn't mandatory somehow lost its appeal. But I did manage to get some knitting done, although I mainly worked on small projects. Such as these:



These are Thuja socks, knit in Sandnesgarn Smart for my brother's birthday. He liked them alot.
Then there are these:



These are the Dashing armwarmers, knit in Trysil Garn Arctic for my boyfriend's grandfather. I haven't given them to him yet, so I can't tell you if he likes them or not. But I sure hope he does.
I did some more knitting that I haven't photographed yet, but I'll get around to it soon. As is to be expected, a lot of knitting features in my immediate future since I now have until the end of August to just hang around and relax. Two whole weeks of just knitting, reading whatever I want to, watching movies, spending time with friends and family. I think I may be in heaven! The bad news is that all the project I want to work on in the immediate future are cardigans. And I think I want to try my hand at that Clapotis that everyone was knitting back in the days. I didn't catch the fever then, but am becoming more and more interested in the pattern. And it will be really cold here in Iceland in just a month or so. So clearly I need more cardigans and shawls...

Procrastinating...

It's noon here on the calm little island we call Iceland. I've been up since early this morning, busily picking at my computer's keyboard and mousepad. The closest I've come to doing any actual work on my thesis, though, is opening the Word program. Then I instantly went back to Ravelry!
Oh, Ravelry, what a delightfully useful tool for procrastinators who want to look and sound as if they're working, but are really just salivating over pictures of knitted goods produced by othersI It's addictive and inspiring and fun, and I'm really going to have to summon all my willpower and stay away from it if I want to finish my thesis by August 15, as planned. If I'm good I'm going to allow myself all of August 16 to knit and lounge around the internet. Oh, but the pull of Ravelry is strong when faced with the prospect of writing about television history all day.
Despite all this working and pretending to work, I've managed to get some knitting and finishing done. Does anyone remember a gray Létt Lopi cardigan I began back in March? Well, I finished the actual knitting and end-weaving back then, but then I had to go to Denmark for a month, and I sensibly left the cardigan in Iceland. Upon my return to my native land, all I had left to do was blocking and sewing on some buttons. I've done that now, and so I give you:



The great thing about Iceland is that it's totally cold enough to wear this in June. All knitters should live here, wool is useful year round.
I've also finished a shawl called Hálfskák from the book Þríhyrnur og Langsjöl. Here it is:



It's unblocked so it will become much nicer. I'm a little worried about the blocking, because the shawl has a very nice frilly edging at the moment that I don't want to lose. How can I stretch out the shawl without killing the frill? Any ideas?
I apologize for the bad photo lighting, the Icelandic midday sun is blaring into the room. But look at my nifty new haircut. No more tangled, messy, felted clumps of hair for me.

Do I look fat in this?

Do you know that feeling when you're just sprinting along on a project, the end is in sight, you're closing in on your goal of a finished object, and then Whammo!, you hit the wall of sorrow? This happened to me last night. There I was, happily knitting away on the yoke of my resident cardigan-in-progress (this one if anyone's interested), watching TV, generally having a nice relaxed time. The pattern suggests trying on the sweater while you work on it so you can determine how deep you want the yoke to be, and me, being the obedient type, did just that. And terror ensued.



There is a definite problem here. The body of the sweater fits me just fine, but the arms! Do you see the sausage effect? What did I do to deserve this (my love for dansih pastries hopefully has little to do with this problem). Apparently I have disproportionately chunky arms compared to my torso. This is a theory I have considered before, but am now completely and utterly convinced is true. This is the third time I have to adjust a cardigan pattern to fit my overinflated appendages, a fact that indicates to me that there's nothing wrong with the world and it's pattern writers, but rather that there's something wrong with me.
Given that this has happened to me before, more than once, you might ask yourself how this could happen to me once again? Do I not have the good sense to try sleeves on as I knit them, adjusting them to the girth of my expansive arms? Do I not try on one sleeve before I knit the other one, just to save myself some time and heartache? Sadly, the answer is no. I just kind of assume, time and again, that patterns will work for me because they have worked for other people in the past. This assumption is stupid at best; I am well aware that we are not all created alike and that we bulge out in different places on our bodies. I even accept this when I'm shopping for jeans. But when it comes to knitting I just dive blindly in and hope things will turn out okay. Most of the time they do. Last night they didn't. I am now, to quote Elizabeth Zimmerman, eating the porridge of regret with the spoon of sorrow. Or something like that.
What to do next? Frankly, I'm too crushed right now to keep working on this project. I was really looking forward to wearing it, but since my dreams have been cruelly dashed, I think I need to move on to something else to get over the worst of the heartbreak. My red shawl-in-progress seems like a good option, it's a fun pattern done in a life-affirming color, I'm sure having some carefree fun with it will help me get through this. And then when I'm strong enough, which will hopefully be soon, I'll return to this sad little cardigan, unravel the sleeves from the bottom up and reknit them with some more stitches than dictated in the pattern.
Don't worry cardigan, I may be casting you aside in dismay right now, but I will return to you.

Shhh, it's a secret!

A blog is maybe not the best entity to confide a secret in, but look at these:



This is the first cuff of the first of a pair of socks. I'm afraid that's all I can divulge at the moment, cause, you know, they're a secret special occasion present. I'm pretty sure the intended recipient doesn't read the blog, but just in case, let's all just keep them on the hush-hush, okay? I can probably also tell you, without spoiling the surprise, that the pattern is superfun to knit and the yarn, which is called strømpe- og jumpergarn (that's all the information the ball band provides, no manufacturer or anything), is unbelievably soft. It's just normal sockyarn made from wool and nylon, but it's nicer and softer than what I've worked with up til now. Hopefully I'll have these knitted up soon, so I can continue working on a certain lovely cardigan. Yes, a cardigan, big surprise. I tried taking pictures of the cardigan in progress with the photobooth, but they all turned out to be too crappy for public consumption. I will try to find a way to bring you visual proof of the cardigan, but you'll have to bear with me.
In other news, things may just be looking up on the camera vs. computer front. These pieces of equipment still resolutely refuse to have any kind of dialogue, and I've tried everything I could think of. I was practically on the verge of just buying a new camera (desperate measures on a student's budget). Well, I finally went to see this professional computer guy, and at first he was stumped, just like everyone else I've brought this problem up with. But then he helpfully suggested that I may simply need to reformat my camera's memory stick, since I used to work on a PC but now have a Mac. I really hope that this will solve the problem for me and that I will be able to offer a properly illustrated blog in the future, with pictures of my FO's draped artistically over tree branches, on location at the lake behind my house. And I could show you the lake! And my house! Wooo, just the thought gets me all excited. Wish me luck.

Blog Down

I haven't blogged in quite a while, mostly because being a stealth blogger is really tough when you spend all your computer time in a one-roomed apartment with another person. And that person is persistently curious about everything you do while online. My apartment is very small, and my mom and I couldn't help getting in each other's way all the time while we were in Copenhagen. I made a decision when I started this blog that I would keep it a secret from my friends and family, at least for a period of time while I properly find my blogging voice, if that makes any sense. I feel like I'm more constrained if I personally know the audience that reads my blog, and therefore I haven't really told anyone about it yet. I want to get comfortable first, and get over being self-conscious about writing in English before I allow any of my real-world knowns to look at the blog. So over the past couple of weeks I've attempted to blog a couple of times, but have been thwarted by my mom asking a few to many questions for my liking.
But I'm in Iceland now, and am able to lock myself up in my old room and blog away in complete privacy, so here goes: I've been here for 24 hours, and have not yet purchased any wool. I have a feeling, however, that it's only a matter of time. I have my heart set on a midnight-blue turtleneck sweater knit out of Létt Lopi, some more Einband for some more wristwarmers, and wool to make socks out of because it's cold here! Today it's raining and the wind is blowing hard, and I'm extremely happy to be inside and wearing wooly garments. However, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to fulfil these wooly fantasies because I didn't use my time with mom in Copenhagen in the most productive manner. We had fun, sure, there was lots of fun, but I didn't get much work done because of all the fun. So I really have to get my act together and spend the next couple of weeks researching the Icelandic news media like crazy. And blogging a little bit in between.
I did manage to get in touch with a friend of mine this morning, and we scheduled a knitting session for thursday night. She is just as obsessed with wool as I am, so I'm fully expecting a night of fun discussions about the merits of various kinds of wool and projects. I can't wait.
But did I knit at all during the last two weeks? Do I have any progress to report? The answer is, sadly, not really. I did manage to finish the lacy socks from hell, and immediately cast on for another pair of toe-up socks, because I so enjoyed the short-rowing. The first of those socks is still in progress, even though it doesn't have far to go, but my concentration has been shattered by a certain dream project that I just might cast on for tonight. It's a cardigan (I feel shame) that I'm kind of going to design myself, although it's based on a whole bunch of patterns that I've knit before, and a cardigan I saw in a shop in Copenhagen and really liked. But I didn't buy it because that would mean that I'd be depriving myself of the pleasure of knitting it. Does anyone else think this way when they see clothes in stores?
Oh, and my copy of Stefanie Japel's Fitted Knits finally arrived a few days ago. I cannot compliment this book enough. I want to make everything in it, including, of course, a bunch of cardigans (the shame). I left the book behind in Copenhagen, but I definitely see it being involved in my immediate future. I think Stefanie Japel is the coolest.
Right now, I gotta hit the books.