Knitting for others

I've taken up knitting for the Handknitting association of Iceland. It's probably the most rewarding job I've ever had (not that it's a full time job or anything, although that would be sweet). Mostly because it gives me the freedom to knit stuff I never would knit for myself, and so I get to try out these new techniques and materials and stuff.
Also, I can receive my payment in yarn. Which is clearly the best idea ever.
I've always hated knitting for others, but it turns out that I just hate to knit for people I know. I appear to be fine with knitting for complete strangers and never seeing my knitted artifacts ever again. Odd.

On the needles

This has been a summer of starting a lot of stuff, but less of finishing. I have so many projects on the needles right now, I've lost count. What kind of unites them all is that they are mostly lace projects; with lace, I like both the process and the outcome, so it's clearly my favorite kind of knitting. With cables and fair isle knitting, I like the outcome just fine, but usually I'm not so excited about the actual process of knitting using those techniques.
I just recently got back from Berlin where I had a tremendous vacation. It was in no way knitting related; I just went with my family and saw the sights. I had, however, decided before I got there that I was going to buy some german sock yarn. I ended up buying the yarn in a department store, since I didn't stumble upon any yarnshops when walking around and I certainly didn't want to drag my family on some kind of demented yarnshop search, especially since I didn't know if it would yield any worthwhile results. Anyways, I bought two huge skeins of Opal sock yarn that were quite a bit cheaper than what they go for here in Iceland. One is a cotton/wool blend and the other is just regular sock wool, but what charmed me about it is that its colors are based on a painting by Hundertwasser. Excellent cultural reference.
I expect that such nice sock yarn will help me with my ever-unsuccessful quest to stop knitting all these damn cardigans and start working on some other projects for a change. Like socks.

Knitting covered butt

I knit a dress. I wear it all the time; it´s perfect for the Icelandic weather. Finally my butt is covered in wool!

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.

Beer and knitting

I'd just like to say this. A can of beer and knitting needles should never be kept in a handbag at one and the same time. I learned this the hard way.
The smell of beer is surprisingly difficult to get out of knitwear.

A sleeve for Mom

Look!




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