never thought it was this easy!

I got the Stitch-it-kit from sublimestitching this week in a swap and had to begin embroidering right away. It's soooo much easier than the last time I tried. Not sure if it's because of the material, instructions or because my handsewing skills got better too.

I already finished one towel and the second is in the making. I will need more fabric to embroider soon, but will check my fabric stash first. I think I have somewhere some handdyed linnen fabric that I got for cross stitching in a swap some time ago.


I also finished crocheting another fat bottom bag also from swap yarn. Yes, I've been swapping quite much lately, it's just too much fun!

And I started knitting a shrug loosely following the instructions from the One-Skein-Wonder, but mine will have long arms.

The Mystery stole? Well, the Paypal mess was even more of a mess and without going into too much detail, I don't think it was Paypals fault at all and once I have some more time I will have a look at what other banks offer for student accounts. I'm avoiding the MS group and all blogs of knitters I know that are participating, because I want it to be a true mystery! If all goes well(*knocks on wood..ouch*) the new payment should be on their account on tuesday and hopefully it won't take longer than a week for the yarn to arrive here...

Still knitting

and spinning and dyeing and crafting in general.

I also still haven't decided which exams to take, but am almost sure on the field of study(either "distributed and information systems"* or "softwaredeveloping methods"*). But I made a list of things I have to read that will hopefully narrow it down soon :-)

I recently got my first ever batt in a swap and since it cooled down the last couple of days spun it:

The photos don't really do it justice. It kind of reminds me of washed out jeans, but it also has sparkly bits. Spinning it was really fun!

I also dyed some roving for the above mentioned swap, all but the bottom one are gone already(that is mine ;-) ):


And I finished knitting the Somewhat Cowl, but since it isn't blocked yet, I will post about it some other time. Now the question is what to knit next. The Mystery Stole KAL begins on friday, but there's a major f*** up with my Paypal payment for the yarn. Totally the fault of my stupid bank, which apparently can't distinguish a Z from a 2! Grrr, I already contacted Paypal once when I saw the mistake first and they said it shouldn't be a problem, but the money didn't arrive, so I gues it is a problem!
That means I won't get the yarn in time and need another project in between. I can't decide what to knit though...

*pretty sure that both translations are not a 100% correct, but am much to lazy to look that up now ;-)

Quick hi

Just wanted to let you know that blogging will probably slim down for the next few days/weeks. There are a lot of crafty projects and university stuff I have to finish/do. This semester I'm aiming at taken 3-4 exams and deciding which route of study/field I want to take. This not only takes a lot thinking, but also a lot of work. I will first have to decide on the exact field of study before I can take any exams and to do that I will have to review my options and lectures to see what I like and am most interested in. I put that off several times because it's rather hard for me to make a decision.

Till then, happy knitting!

Nichtmituns!

Nichtmituns!
Originally uploaded by javede

I just couldn't believe it when I read about this on another blog, but it's true! Flickr is censoring every photo for people with a German yahoo id that is not flagged safe!
And with no notice at all and no reason whatsoever is given, just some lame empty words in response to a forum post!
I know a bit about internet regulations and laws in Germany(heck, I study computer science!) and there are indeed some reasons flickr might have had, but this certainly is not the only way to deal with the situation. Actually it's one of the worst I could think of, but probably also the "cheapest" atleast if you forget how people might react to it and what consequences they will take. I certainly won't refresh my pro account once it expires(can't anyway, see belowe!) if it stay the way it is now.
And to top it all of, you can't pay with paypal either anymore which is the only way for me to pay for this "service".
Now I wish I hadn't upgraded to pro. Had I known this would happen I would have searched for another place to store my photos.

I could swear I had one

I was so upper sure that by now I had all the knitting needles accumulated that I would ever need. Ok, maybe not every length(I only use circular needle or DPNS), but every width...
Well turns out I don't or atleast I can't find it. I'm missing a 8mm needle now, which I desperately need, like right now. I wanted to start knitting a project today that already got delayed too much! And best of all? I was a 100% sure I had this 8mm needle!
Honestly, I could swear that a few months ago I needed a 8mm needle and therefore must have brought one. But maybe I ended up using a 7mm or 9mm needle instead? Anyway, really thinking about going out once more and buying one, but the nearest shop only has a small selection and you never know which they are "currently" out of...
Argh!!!

EDIT: 10 minutes after writing this I went to the LYS and brought the needles! Surprisingly they had a selection of 8mm needles, but why do they always offer the expensive needles first? Hello, me student, me not much money!
In contrast my favorit LYS 2 owner told me that a few colors of the yarn I needed for the project where destined to go into the sale bin when I asked for the yarn. She knows I don't have much to spend so volunteers this info! Actually she also suggested a different cheaper yarn!

fashion victim

You know how it is, don't you? When the season changes and all the magazines, stores and "celebrities"(using that word in its widest sense) showcast the newest, hippest and oh-so-hot trends, you will soon see a lot of people on the street wearing exactly that no matter how ridiculous it looks. And sometimes trends even take 1 or 2 years untill they hit the big masses. Nevertheless, you're a grown up and long ago realised that not every trend has to be followed in order to look good(actually quite often following every trend leads to the exact opposit result).

And then one day you go shopping and...you fall in love with one pair of pants, that is just perfect and fits great and...well, is quite trendy and probably a knock-off of something Paris Hilton once wore!

Yes, I brought a pair of hip pants. It has a knit waistband and a drawstring closure and the cotton fabric is a navy blue and white stripes pattern, need I say more? And to top it of, I brought some black ballerinas with a white polkadot pattern. They are darn uncomfortable as I found out today(let's just say that the only shoes I will be able to wear for the next three days are my sport shoes), but oh sooooo cute together with the pants...

In knitting news, I started knitting cotton socks, cause the cowl yarn is too warm to knit right now. I also joined the mystery shawl 3 group, but will have to order the yarn first(I want to use Zephyr in white).

I also sewed a bit this weekend instead of knitting. I wish I had more time for sewing, but it always takes me so much time to set everything up and trace patterns etc.
First I sewed a pair of sleeping shorts.

Pattern: traced from a old pair of shorts
Fabric: Star Wars knit fabric from the fabric market
Notes: I love to wear big shorts for sleeping especially when it's as warm as it's now. Therefore the circumference for these shorts is 40+inch and an elastic is sewn in into the top part.
And today I sewed another skirt.

Pattern: Easy fashion, H/W 2005/2006
Fabric: embroidered linnen
Notes: The fabric was pretty cheap because the embroidery is loose in some areas, I don't mind that because first you can't really see this and second I will probably only wear it a few times anyway. The color is totally off in the picture, it's actually a dark brown!
And then I went a bit silly and did what you just have to do when you wear a skirt like this :-)

atishoo!

Yepp, that I did do a lot today. In order to change that I will have to remember to take my medicine every day and not just every other, actually wash my hair in the evening not in the morning and only open my window in the morning and late evening.
Furthermore I managed to clean my room today which took a long time and many more atishoos, but atleast it's clean and almost free of pollen!
I've got a picture to prove it:

The cleanest it has been for over a month(yes, I know that is kind of urghhs, but I hate to clean my room). And I got rid of a couple of dust catchers, they are pretty to look at, but impossible to clean so they had to go.

In knitting news not much has happened today as it's incredible warm, but I started knitting the somewhat cowl from knit and tonic awhile ago. I changed the increases a lot because of the skinny arms mentioned in the last post and am now knitting the sleeves. This is my second try at the pattern. My first got frogged cause the yarn I used was a very slippery cotton yarn and I was only able to knit two rows before my wrists started to hurt.


Now all I have to find is something to knit while it's so warm outside, maybe some cotton socks since I need another pair anyway?

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!

flickr+mum's bag

Yepp, I broke down and got myself a flickr pro account. It's only like 20€ per year and I reached the 200 photo limit for the free account a couple of days/weeks ago. You might have noticed that I posted a bunch of old photos now as I'm cleaning up my computer to make some room. My hard drive is nearly full again, though admittedly the photos just use a small portion of that space. Music and various programms I need(or better to say needed) for studying use the most space right now. They will get sorted too, once I've got some free time. Which I have less and less of now that the middle of the semester is here.

I will take that for an excuse of not posting about the Scoop cardigan today ;-)

But I finished my mum's mothersday bag yesterday after finally finding the brown webbing locally. All the other stores only had blue, white or black webbing and I needed brown or fawn.

I really like this bag and would have loved to keep it for myself, but then it's still in the same apartement, so I could theoratically just grab it ;-)

Unfortunately I forgot that the applique shouldn't be centered on the flap, but a little more to the bottom to make up for the bag depth...my mum doesn't mind though.

I rediscovered it

Ah, my Bloglust has returned to me, only I have little time to blog! I have so many crafty projects and ideas I want to finish this weekend so I will begin this post now and every spare second inbetween waiting for things to cool of, heat up etc I will add something. Let's see how that goes...
...I have a bunch of finished projects to show you, but since they are so many, I thought I would just show you one sample and than let you discover the rest on flickr. If you have any questions about those or want me to write more about a project here, tell me and I will answer...

...OH MY GOD!!!! I didn't realized how many projects I had finished since my last substantial crafty blog post. Ok, I will show you one project that I'm pretty proud of, because it took the longest from idea to FO.

Yes, it's a cross stitch. You might now about subversive cross stitch. I always liked the designs but from the first time I saw them I knew I would want to make my own. Besides all you need is an alphabet, right? Well, yes and a text. Which is half of the problem, cause I didn't wanted anything too vulgare, just something a bit fun and quirky. Finally one day, I had this idea(among others that are not yet stitched): "Angsthase". Which means coward in german, but it's composed of the words Angst=fear and Hase=Bunny. Kind of cute, isn't it?...

...The Scoop de Jour is finished and has already been worn. I'm shocked I haven't posted a pic yet, I was a 100% sure I already did!...

...Just wanted to post the pic and write the info, but there's no pic in my folder! Seems like I didn't take one!?? Too dark to take one now, but I will post about it tomorrow as I did some minor changes to the pattern etc...

...to be continued...