Headless or I really should get a hair cut soon

I finally managed to take pics of the Scoop du Jour, but they are headless. Really, my hair looks horrible right now and I'm so not going to make that public!
Scoop du Jour

Pattern: Scoop du Jour from Chick knits
Yarn: "Miro 5fach" from Schoppel; 50% cotton and 50% polyacryl
Needles: can't remember
Size: the smallest
Modifications + notes:
-I swear, I got gauge for this one perfectly, but somehow my gauge must have changed while knitting, cause it's a lot bigger than I wanted it to be. It's ok, I wear it anyway, but if I should knit this one again, I will recalculate stitches.
-The arms were much too wide too, so I had to frog one sleeve after knitting half of it. That may just be a problem I have because I have the skinniest arms in the world. Even when I weighted much more, my arms were always small, now they are even smaller.
I only casted on less stitches for the arms and then had to increase many for the sleeve cap, which resulted in a lot of bulkyness at my upper arm...
-Oh, and there's a mistake I made too, but I'm not going to tell you what it is ;-) You can see it if you make the photos bigger though.

Apart from taking those photos I also plied some yarn:

I love the color combo!

Currently listening to: http://www.kexp.org better than any radio station you can get around here and the best is that when there's the morning show it is afternoon here!

busy bee

As you probably already guessed, I was quite busy lately trying to finish all my WIPs. Not only did I finished the cotton candy, but also a scarf/shawl and the camisole.
First the scarf: The pattern is a simplification of eunny's print o'the wave stole. Fewer repeats and a simple garter stitch edge instead of the fancy one. It's knit out of Kauni yarn 100% wool, my mum thinks it's too scratchy for a scarf, I think it's perfect! It even smells a faint bit wooly plus it matches my coat!
Unfortunately the picture is not very good, but I hope you get the idea. There's also my fab shawl pin from scottsmountaincrafts, love it! (Have you seen her new bracelets? Wish my arms weren't that skinny and I could wear bracelets, see pictures below for what I mean)


The camisole has been blocked too. I blocked the hell out of it since it ended up beeing much too wide due to my gauge changing while knitting. Well, it definately isn't too wide anymore, but now it's quite lengthy flowing over my hips. I don't mind though, it's rather hip now, isn't it?

(I really, really need to get my hair cut, but I can't decide how...)

I also dyed some roving for a swap and since I couldn't decide what kind of colors I wanted to send I dyed a bunch more and decided afterwards. The rest is going into my fiber stash.

I already spun up one that isn't in the above picture and plied it with some undyed fiber

I love how it turned out! It's light blue with light blue-green. I'm thinking about knitting socks out of this though I probably have to spin the rest of it for that too.

Well, with almost all my projects finished I felt lost. What to knit next? I opted against another pair of socks(though I just brought some more sock yarn...) and tried out Domino knitting instead. I had brought this book recently and it is really nice. The instructions are pretty clear and take you every step. I'm not so fond of the patterns especially the yarn choices made. I think Domino knitting just screams for multicolored yarn.
Anyway I made this potholder for my mum within two hours.


Ok, there also was a lot of shopping lately, but I will only show you this gigantic fabric stash enhancement. These are over 18m of Ikea fabric! Ikea had a special last Tuesday: 2 for 1! Yes, you got two yards for the price of 1! I went there early in the morning to be there when they open cause I knew the chaos it would be. Of course that was the day a truck lightly hit a car and though nobody seems to have been injured the 15 minutes trip to Ikea took me 1.5 hours!!!
The fabric section had turned into hell by the time I finally arrived! Nevertheless I got everything I had wanted to buy.


You might not believe it, but I'm a pretty stubborn person. Once I set my mind on something there's not much that can distract me from it. I'm very much like my father in that characteristic, though he denies beeing stubborn ;-)
There was a contest on Dawanda , which is kind of like a german etsy. It was a valentines contest where you had to mark your favorits and then you randomly got kissed by valentin, valentina or a frog. For every valentin or valentins you got a point and the three persons with the most points would get something of their favorits list.
That's where my stubbornness set in and I kept on adding to my favorits, must have been hundreds and hundreds of things I marked( you could see the top 8 persons I think). Well, in the end I was indeed number three!
To my surprise I was allowed to make 3 suggestions for the price which I did. And then even more surprising, I did not just get one item, but two!!!
First this really cool felt pillow arrived. It matches my room and is just fab. I'm really thinking about buying a second one. http://dawanda.com/user/berlinerfilz

And today this amazing brooch was in the mail! I'm a sucker for pretty brooches! http://dawanda.com/user/filani

gifts, gifts and spinning

The christmas presents have been a success apart from one. Yes, you might have guessed it, the sweater for my older cousin is too small!(and she said it's scratchy, really kids these days etc...) But since she loved the scarf I'm not going to knit another scratchy sweater for her. But next time I decide to knit her something I'm going to measure her up. Kids are just too different to just pick a size according to age. She's not that tall, but rather roundish. Not fat at all, just the kind of roundishness common for kids.
What did I get for my brother in the end? A sweater. It was just too claustrophobic shopping a day before christmas eve that I decided against searching every shop for something.

I did get spoiled quite much this year too. Take a look:

There's:

~ 1kg of beautifull I guess you call it pencil roving(???)
~four Terry Pratchett books

~Spin to knit; which is a great book, but more later

~a wool winder; actually got that before christmas

~a cigarette etui from my mum cause it's pink, has bling-bling and "you have a very special place in my heart" written on it

~a brooch for the brooch-obsessed

~tons of choclate and other sweets; only one pictured here as example

mising in the pic:

~a little calendar from my brother which is pink too

~Gilmore Girls DVD second season

~an itunes card

I began flipping through the "Spin to knit" book on christmas eve before leaving for the concert and it's really well written. The first part tells you a lot about spinning, fiber etc and the second part are patterns. I haven't really read through the patterns yet, but the first part is nice.

Since I've been spinning quite much these past days I also had to ply some again. I had spun all of the blue-purple roving and after plying it had a bunch left over on one bobbin, so I spun up the red roving I brought from a fellow knit blogger and plyed them together. I rather like the effect.

And again I had left-overs, now from the red wool. I tried to Navajo ply it and it's ok, though not perfect either. It took some time to get a feeling about what exactly I should do in what order to get it to neatly ply and not produce wobbly yarn-though that would have made some nice designer yarn, if I were into that kind of yarn.

And this is the christmas roving spun. I like it, but it looks a lot different then the roving. The colors are less saturated and a bit greyish.

I guess this post is long enough already, so projects will be posted another time.

Thanks for the laugh dad!

That was just what I needed on this grey morning! An hour ago my mum called my name in a high-pitched-come-immediately voice. When I came into the living room I found my dad wearing a dress shirt and boxer shorts mumbling to himself while twiddling with a tie! It was purely comical and my mum and I couldn't stop laughing...hey, I asked and he didn't wanted any help, cause he CAN tie his own tie... it only took half an hour :-)
So, why was he dressing up the day before his flight? Because he has to go to the indonesian consulate. Why does he have to go there 24+ hours before take-off? Because he notices yesterday that his passport is only valid for another three months!!! Which means he needs a new one, now! Since he's a foreigner, he will also need to visit the aliens department(btw. alien is really the right word, isn't? Sounds weird to me, but the dictionary sais so) which is closed on wednesdays! He'll have to go there tomorrow morning before the flight!
This is so typical for both my parents! Reminds me of the time my mum and I flew to London and at the airport they noticed that her id had expired months ago...since it was EU, she could fly with a temporary id though.

But back to crafting. As I said in the last post, I've been spinning alot. I loved spinning this fiber and will surely get more of it(actually it has been added to the christmas wish list already). I decided to ply just a bit of it and keep the rest(a whole bobbin) single:

Knitwise, the sweater for my cousin will need some frogging. After searching my entire stash, here's what I came up with:

I absolutely hate the combo, so I'll go shop for some contrasting yarn. It's unbelievable, but there's just nothing in my stash that fits and is machine washable!
I already went to the store I brought the pink yarn from ages ago to see if they still had that yarn in other colors, but they don't stock it anymore. While I was browsing I saw some knitted kneesocks on display and well, brought sock yarn...

I'm knitting them toe-up to better adjust the width and length of it.

And here's a photo of my patchwork blanket before I sewed the stripes together, which I did over a week ago. At the moment it's resting in a box waiting for next month's money to arrive so I can buy the batting.

Time flies...

and so does my wheel! Yes, I finally have been spinning again after months of abandoning it due to very hot weather and ... well, I just never found the time for it.
This time I put the curly and somehow oily-sticky roving(my guess is that it just has much natural oil or what ever that's called in it) away and spun the fancy pencil roving I got. It's wonderfull! I should have done that months ago! It's much more easier to spin and my yarn is incredible even and thinner.
In addition to spinning I've been knitting the first christmas gift and it's almost complete too! When I saw Drive-Thru sweater I just knew it was it and after a little test swatch with the abandoned pink yarn I brought the pattern on friday. I just began knitting the yoke, but now I need to find contrasting yarn in a similare gauge that is not 100% wool. It will be for my cousin and I might knit a second one for her sister. These are really quick knits which involve minimal thinking. Just the right knit while you're watching the whole first season of Gilmore Girls! My mum brought the first season yesterday morning and I'm at episode 16 now...wow, that's a lot of tv watching if you think about it!
The important question is do I watch episode 16 now or should I take a bath?

Pictures will follow, tomorrow or the day after, promise!

P.S.: Sorry, too much caffeine today for me, it's the gilmore factor ;-)