076knits: Kille

If you've been reading the blog, you might have seen the pictures. I can't get enough of Bubs running around and doing anything but standing still to have his picture taken.

It all started when Bubs had only just joined us. I wanted to knit something for me, instead of the pile of baby knits that had gone before. I had a really (really) nice skein of Ripples Crafts Assynt Storms, a circular needle, and a naptime to gather my sanity before the next round of nursing, nappies and cramps. A new mom needs a bit of pampering, and that hank of yarn was just the trick.

One thing led to another (ever so slowly) and with help from two lovely professionals (hello Dutch Wool Diva and Yarn and Pointy Sticks) I can now present you my first ever pattern, Kille

Kille is a cowl with lots of nice and easy stitches, not a lot of counting and lots of pretty colours if you pick your yarn carefully. The sample shown is a new colourway by Dutch Wool Diva, Strolling through the Woods, and it's perfect for matching the Autumn colours out there right now. The sturdy Sock Star is perfect for sharing the cowl with your little one, especially when they like chewing on your knitwear, and soft enough to be worn against the skin. If you don't have a little one or like to live dangerously, go wild with your yarn choices! Be careful though, changing the gauge means changing your yardage! The pattern is carefully tech edited, but if you find a problem, please let me know!

You can wear Kille inside out and upside down, but not twice around your head.*
You can even try it on your other person, but I would keep it. It's a selfish treat, remember?

You have to knit it first, and you can do so after going right here: buy now (you don't have to be a member)


Love,
J



*definitely not twice around a little head so that pulling on it doesn't pull it tight

RSVP: Otherwise Engaged

You might be confused about what I've been doing for the past two years, if all you had to go by were my most recent purchases....

As a matter of fact, I've not touched dear neglected Bea in two years. I've spindled a whopping 50 grams of adorable fluff since the beginning of the year.

There's no rational reason to purchase these, or is there? Well, Juno Fibre Arts appears to end business soon, if not already. Catch it while you can, that's what I say.

This one contains camel. Camel fluff. You heard it. Camel in this fluff. It's for research and learning purposes. 

There'll be no irrational spending here!

PS. Exciting times ahead. Soon, soon!

On getting things done (with Little Spare Time)

So I finished another thing, this time including buttons! Lovely quiet day of nothing and a bit of knitting. As you can see, Bubs was in a hurry to get things done though! 

The pattern is Little Spare Time by Terry Kruse (link to Ravelry) and the yarn is Cascade Elysian which I purchased in a Tardis slash home-away-from-home and not-quite-Local Yarn Shop called Fibre Circle in Farmersville, Texas. Buttons, a shawl collar and pockets, this pattern has it all. It was a quick knit, a lovely pattern and I really recommend it. Bubs decided he needed to wear it and wouldn't stand still for a picture just in case I'd take it from him...

Nanowrimo, Nanoswemo, Movember, Wovember, Whateverember you wanna call it

It's all about the challenges, isn't it? Getting things done, without looking back or forwards too much. I sent a thingy to my wonderful tech editor. I'm working on being proud of that. Gimme a minute ;)

In the mean time, I knit a hat! It just needs buttons, and I have those ready to be put on. Just, you know, need to do it. Pattern is Lexie by Woolly Wormhead, Yarn is Warm Hearted Aran by  Helen of Ripplescrafts, colourway Carnations. 

Sneaky sneaky... on how to get to where you want to be taking baby steps in secret

I never imagined that writing would be the most difficult thing to get back to after the fog of sleep deprivation lifted. Mind you, that fog lingered like nobody's business and it doesn't need much encouraging to return.

It's not wonder that the Big Plan was put into hibernation for a while, at least that's how it would seem. In the very early hours of sleep deprivation (otherwise known as the beginning of motherhood) I was in desperate need of some comfort knitting.

Fortunately, I had some one-of-a-kind hand dyed sock yarn on hand and no idea what to do with it.

You can always knit a pair of socks. You can, but no new mom should be forced to make 2 of a thing, not unless she really wants to. It can be a struggle to juggle a tiny little babe, no less than 4 tiny little dpns or a tiny little circular needle for magic looping, a ball of yarn as well as keeping track of where your sanity disappeared to. And then have to repeat the process because not many people only need one sock. Trust me on this.

There isn't a bag hidden away with two different socks and 2 balls of yarn in it. (It's in plain sight, mocking me and my cold feet)

So what to knit?

It had to be a luxury item compatible with grabby hands and unfortunate spillage. Luckily, I had some gorgeous yarn at hand that's also easy to wash.

And that, as they say, was only the beginning. The Big Plan?

Baby, it's on...

Scottish Sundays: of ripples and refocussing

If nothing else, the past year has led me to learn that life will probably never be completely without ripples.

So, this glass lake does not represent life. Bummer, because wouldn't it be nice if it were like that even for just a little while? Sometimes smaller ripples would make things a lot easier, but I guess the point to it all is to build in such a way that any ripple can be easily absorbed.
Last week was a bit of a struggle, what with too short sleep, hormonal challenges, job sillyness and a lovely DH reaching point of explosion all at the same time. I let myself be led down the path of the unwanted career-thing, while I'm not even *that* worried about there being something, or being able to get by on benefits for a while if we had to.
With life twisting and turning and not settling on any direction at all, some things seem like better plans than others, but none of them seem to gel with the Big Plan, whatever it may be in the end. Not a full time job being scared out of my mind before even starting it. I'm fairly certain that is not the plan. Part time, maybe. I need to send an application tonight, and instead I'm blogging. It'll be all right, I can do this, you see? It's all for practise anyway. Apparently, it doesn't have to be perfect in one go. Someone should tell my head about that.

Dear head, please take this advise from the people who write on Scotland's roads, and SLOW DOWN. Thanks.

Scottish Sundays, a 4-horse race

I was told this week that I didn't have to have everything solved before visiting the one person there to help me solve the problems.

For once, you do your homework thoroughly and still it's no good. Uhuh. I'll take it as a compliment anyway.

This Scottish Sundays thing was started a little while back to help me focus on an achievable goal. Something to work towards for the time that the main goal, share continents with the hubby (or even states, county, dare I say address?), is held back beyond my influence. This secondary goal, being where I love to be, is something that I have influence on, something that isn't quite unimaginable as much as you would think.

Right.
Now that we've got that clear, let me explain what my head does with that information.

*insert Munch-like scream*

That's it, no really. And then it runs around like a headless chicken, bumping into all kinds of useful ideas that could help sustain me during this new adventure.

I ask you, what would a headless chicken do when it runs into a splendid idea?

Really think about it.

A bit harder.

Exactly, that's what I thought (and know, this is MY head after all). There isn't much a headless chicken can do, is there?
This head of mine ran into a few decent ideas, but rather than acting upon them, it would run right on into the next one, only to stumble on to the one after that.

The hubby goal seems to be on the move much like tectonic plates move. You need expensive and complicated instruments to measure movement, and once in a while it makes a big hoohah and upsets everything. Only when tectonic plates do it, it's not just my little bubble that gets shaken.*
So whenever this tedious work-thing finally moves into place (maybe in 2 weeks, maybe in 2 years, who knows?) we get to see what happened to the visa application. I don't even want to think about what that means.

Anyway, the Scottish thing got a strange reaction earlier this week. A Welsh girl in my book club said (and I try to quote here):

"What do you want to go to Scotland for, no one's happy there, it's miserable!"

So ehm, yeah. I'll happily stay in my tent for a few months, the thing is, I need to be able to afford that. Queue Plan 2a, 2b and 2c. As I haven't assigned them yet, I've been working on one of them this weekend. The secret knitting got sent of to its little recipient, after I figured out what I did with the cast-on. A pattern has been started, Illustrator has been beaten into submission (for now), and my little baby (the knitting, not a real one, obv.) is now gone, never to return... *sob*

Something to cheer you up

Spring is here, you can tell by the blossom (not only in Japan, ha!). This happens to be our neighbours' plum tree, but tress are doing their flower thing all over the place now. Not the big tree that lived at our other neighbour's house. It got the chop last week. the light, oh the light! It burns, even though the sunscreen lotion.

As this is still Scottish Sundays until further notice, here is a picture of me, taken a few years back on Skye.



Some of you might recognize the backpack, only it's being used properly here. These days it only comes out when oodles of fibre-goodness needs to be carried around (ahem). But, this picture might help to explain the blue-green obsession I've had going in crafting these past few months.


The latest thing on the bobbins is much like that. Blue, green, and yellow for the backpack. Cunning, isn't it? I'll have to get my maps out to name this one...



*have you done your bit for Japan yet?

Scottish Sundays, and a Glorious Day of Knitting

I'll start you off with a Glorious Day of Knitting, which could also have been named "Day of Frantic Driving, Intensive Estonian Knitting and Utter Exhaustion" but that doesn't really get people to buy tickets. So they went with Brei- en Haakdag instead. This being a Dutch event an'all.

After some well placed advise and misplaced sense of direction, we reached the event with 5 minutes to spare before the course started. Our frantic re-routing by way of a 80km road didn't leave us much time to breathe, let alone stop for coffee or a bathroom break. You get the picture as we reached the venue. I should add at this point that we were not the last ones to get to class. Minor triumph, but only that.

We took the Estonian Colour and Lace Knitting Course from the Dutch Knitters. They started out by telling us that this is normally a 3-day course, crammed into 3 hours, and to be honest, it did show. At the end we were rushed to finish the Lace instructions because the next class was waiting, while at the start we were shown a large collection of books we might be interested in. I'd think they might want to turn the order of events around, as they kindly provide a list of interesting books with the written instructions. That aside, I learned a lot.

Lace practise

Since I've already made the Laminaria, Aeolean and the Echo Flowers Shawl in the past, I'd met the lace techniques that were in the course already. This came in handy when my neighbours had a question, and at least I got my knitted cast on corrected, as I knew I was doing something wrong with that. We started with the colourwork, and this is what I came for!

Estonian braids

Don't you just love the different braids? Not all of it is great looking, I got the tension and the order of the tails wrong a bit at the start, but wow, I love it! the best thing is that I caught most of it from the instructions, so I'll be able to reproduce them all.

After the class ended we went down to the fair part of our day, and spent some time oggling and coo-ing some lush yarns, but I managed to keep to my wish list and only get spinning fibres. Obviously, the Belgians had some nice things so I scored a 500gr hank of yarn that is to be dyed, and two cones of merino, one black, one magenta.
It was lovely to find some new yarns and a shop I knew of but hadn't seen before, Penelope Crafts.They stock Cascade which I love for a 'simple' yarn. Mom got a cardigan's worth of blue and matching sock yarn so she can make a set ;)

As far as the Scottish Big Plan goes, boy is it ever so hard to keep going. When the rug got pulled it didn't just take away my ooomph, but also quite a large chunk of the base I was working from. With the buffer gone, this is turning into a very different sort of game. Wrong decisions start looking attractive all of a sudden, which is to say that one should be content with what one has, and not aspire to have what one needs. I've got my job until the end of May and quite likely beyond. It feels wrong to not want to have it, but..... oh go on, I need to stop myself from moaning about it. Now, if only I could find that little bit of Oooomph back, that would be nice.

Secret Knitting

One part of the Grand Scottish Plan (it goes by many names) was to find something to do that could be exported along with me. Something to do regardless of my position on the globe. The Secret Knitting is to be sent off this week, so I better get on with writing down the pattern, the instructions, and teach myself how to do layouts etc.



Meanwhile, I'm spending quite some time rehearsing for the Queen Symphony that we'll be performing on the 28th with Harmonie Cecilia Princenhage for their jubilee. Today was the first rehearsal with orchestra, and I've decided that the director is DH's long lost older twin brother from another mother. Makes it a lot easier and pleasing to the eye to keep focus on his directions. Ha! It's not even close to what we usually sing as this is a project (with 140 singers), and I hate to say I love this so much more. Next time there's a classical project and I'm in town, I'm definitely joining in.
During breaks, I'm making lists for the other big huge plan of bringing dyeing, spinning and knitting to the not-yet-yarnies. Oh boy.

PS. I don't know what happened to last week's pictures, or which they were or I'd put them back. Ehm, sorry 'bout that.

WIP Wednesday, onwards and upwards

I don't know what to tell you about the missing Scottish Sunday. I had ideas to write about, but then they made my head 'splode and now they scare me a bit. Don't worry, I'll tame them soon enough, one way or another.
In the mean time, lists are being tackled, jobs are not lost (yet) and old projects are picked up again.

I've been spinning one of the Dutch Wool Diva batts, but it wanted to be a lace single, so I've been going for weeks now and the end isn't near yet.

Through no fault of its own I'm not too happy spinning it, as it's slow going and the colour doesn't quite meet my lust for greens and blues. It is very nice, so I'm trying to rush it so I can put something green on the bobbins instead and come back to it when I feel better about it. As a single, it has a tweedy feel to it, adding shades of pink, magenta and pale blue to the charcoal base. I actually have some Harris tweed waiting to be sewn in the same shade of magenta. Next winter will be colourful!

Manu, sleeve 2

As you can tell, more Magenta-ish for next winter. It's rather nice these days, so I don't foresee a return to woollen cardigans any time soon. Or maybe for those chilly mornings. Anyway, I returned some attention back to Manu, which is at least halfway done, with one sleeve already attached to the body. It requires a lot of finishing so as far as time goes, I might not be on the home stretch yet. At least it'll be more interesting than the large stretches of stockinette I've already finished.

It'll be so worth it in the end...

In short term knitting, I'm working on this scarf-ish creature. It has an unexpectedly nice cast on which needs some re-doing to make it perfect, but for now I'm hurrying along so I might wear it to the Breidag in Nieuwegein next week. It also needs a name...

I also need to attend to working out the pattern for the secret knitting. It's been getting s few oooh's and aaah's from the few people who've seen it. Unfortunately, they all love me, so their judgement might be tainted ;)

First, I have to clear some space on this computer before I can install the software. I'm sure I've said that before...

** as the camera is out with its rightful owner, pictures are taken on my phone. Not bad, but not great either, I know **