Back to knitting

I haven't done much knitting during November since writing took up most of my free time, but now that the Nanowrimo challenge is over I went back to it. I've started a lace shawl (again) with the twig pattern (again) from the book Knitted lace of Estonia using a 4ply yarn by Posh Yarns (again - good recipes don't need changing :) ) in early November and I've finished it in a week . It's already  blocked and only needs the ends sewn in.
Then I've cast on for a green sock for my brother I've had in mind for years now, but somehow didn't felt like doing it. So started a hat for myself, since now my hair is so long that if i put it up, which i usually do when going outside, the bun is so big a normal size hat is just too small. I have a beret I've made some time ago but don't really like the dark purple colour so don't wear it really, but that one is perfect in size. So now i'm trying to make one like that in size and shape, but with a lovely merino-silk Posh Yarn (surprise, surprise...)
Actually I've spent the most of yesterday afternoon trying to write up a really really nice pattern with celtic style cables then this morning gave it all up so now I'm doing a basic 6-stitch cable pattern. I need a hat.

And now, some knitting

I have started a new knitting project today. Bought a nice skein from Posh Yarn a couple of weeks ago but was a bit disappointed by the colour – the result of that „all computer screens are different” thing. It is a nice colour, of course, just different from what I expected. Initially I choose a different pattern: Madli's shawl but without the nupps, and even cast on for that, but then changed my mind and did a tweak on the pattern, putting in cables. Drew up the chart this afternoon and cast on, originally for 3 cable columns which meant 88 stitches. Got till the sixth row on the first repeat when realized that it will be too wide, so I probably wouldn't have enough yarn for a proper length. Ripped back and started again with 2 columns and 68 stitches. I'm still not sure about it since the cables look a bit weird, so might have to spend tomorrow's knitting time with ripping back and doing it again. And again.

Or maybe I will get fed up with that and will finally get over with sewing up that blanket.

Still alive

Still alive... knitting, working, the usual stuff.

Painted my nails on friday - first time in years :)

Current knitting project: a striped jumper. Bought the yarn at Hobbycraft last weekend for half price. There were about a dozens colours of this yarn (bamboo-nylon blend) and i couldn't choose so my cousins wife did it for me - she picked out pale pink, magenta and yellow. I do like this combination actually but couldn't imagine it on myself - so it's good someone else deciced on them for me :)

I'm using the Incredible Custom-Fit Raglan pattern again. Did a swatch beforehand, then washed it - and it grew to twice as wide as soon as i put it under water. It went from 24 stitches on 10 cm to 19! I was a bit surprised as i'm used to yarns grow lengthwise but not sideways, but then remembered this is a bamboo-nylon blend, not the usual wool.  

Bye bye October

How come it's this time of the year already? I've had to look up my shawls as it is getting quite chilly in the evenings when i come home from work. I've knitted quite a lot of stuff lately but none of them for myself, except a fingerless glove i just can't get right.

The christmas jumper is progressing well, so far. I'm nearing the end of the first skein so this evening i wound up the second skein, using the cone-shaped part of my yarn winder (the one which fell apart last time i've used it :P) Better then doing it all by hand but P is adamant about me neading a proper winder. I agree. The problem is their price tag. Holy. Cow.

This weekend

I've finished one shawl; started, nearly finished and discarded a fingerless glove; made pictures of the aforementioned items and of dome more; watched telly; felt cheated out of time. Why is it already monday lunchtime?! Last time i checked i just got up sunday 9 o'clock. Bah.

...and monday

Failure is always an option. Ballwinder fall apart halfway through, which was a bit of a relief tbh as it wasn't working well. I need a new one. A less cheap one which actually works.

Another sunday

I have all these

to wound into balls using these. Wish me luck.

Knitting

This is how my knitting corner looks like.

Or would look like if i wouldn't shove them down the floor between the sofa and the window so i can actually sit down. Tho i've spent today on the floor, in that "contorted crazy Buddha-pose" P. just cant comprehend and means simply sitting with my legs pulled close and not slouching like him.

Oh and i'm going back to work tomorrow after two weeks off. Can't tell how thrilled i am. Not.

Monday - Hétfő

I'm on my new place for three weeks now and the chaos is starting to wanish. We still dont have a sofa, or curtains on the bedroom window for that matter, and the second wardrobe is still flatpacked, so we living in the lounge and in the kitchen, which is almost useless as the washing machine is broken and had to pull it out in the middle of the room to let the wall dry. Also have a few bills to sort out, and... thats it :) We have heating, and is so much coier here then at my old place where i was always cold!

No much money hough so my first package in Secret Pal 16 i'm sending ou today will be wool-less. I will hopefully make it up on the second package especially as my spoilee has her birthday at the end of february.

After the move for nearly two weeks i couldnt even look at yarn - my final tally was 7 bags by the way... P promised to throw out a few on the way here but he didn't dare :D I spent a couple evenings since then on the Central Park Hoodie and is coimng together very nicely, button-bands and sewing left only.
Here's P modeling it for me - hopefully it will be just a bit too small for him otherwise he will steal it from me :D

Left in the cold - Hidegen hagyva

Without heating or hot water for two weeks, including a week of snow and freezing temperatures. My boiler started to break down about a month ago and gradually got worse. Took a while to chase down the plumber and then convince him that yes, the booiler really does what it does - apparently, this type aither works, or breaks down completely, while mine does turn on sometimes, but mostly not. So showers are totally out of question, and the flat cooled down to about 12 °C too :P Good thing i have fond memories in having to wash using a basin from summer holidays spent at my godparents house, before they built a bathroom for they house and had only a bedroom, a kitchen and an outhouse. Otherwise i would feel really angry for spending the majority of my wages on rent and bills and feeling miserable in a cold flat.
I have a small fan heater which warms up my bedroom nicely, tho the lounge never gets really cozy being bigger and with horrible insulation, and of course it eats up electricity at 2 pounds a day rate. 3 if i'm home and need it during the daylight hours.
Plumber spent quite a lot of time on it on thursday, and couldnt fix it, so now he has to talk with the manufacturer, and hopefully he will fix it on monday. I can't have more time off for plumbing - in fact i'm facing a disciplinary on monday for missing too much time, had a warning from earlier, and as i stayed home to get my broken boiler fixed, now i'm on the official stage. Great. Hopefully i'll have to face only my manager who already gave me a tell-off but if the the other boss is there it will be harsh. Had the last three days off and as the prospect of this kept popping up my had i couldn't really enjoy my holiday. And it also annoys me that they couldn't just wrote off that day as holiday - i guess because my boss is sure we were off for house-hunting on that day :P

Luckily there are some things that can keep me happy despite the antarctical conditions and bitchy bosses, amongst them is having a coffee at starbucks and knitting :) I actually got an order, from my cousin's wife. She said "make me a shawl like yours " :) She has a black and white checkered coat so tought black would be nice with that. Finally i had an excuse to try a twinkle yarn, and even tho it turned out lighter (not black with sparkly flecks but light and dark grey) she liked the yarn so hopefully she will like the finished shawl too.

Soaking the frog - Békaáztatás

Soaking the hat i made for P using Squashed Frog (Easyknits (what else...) merino/cashmere yarn). Of course it came out bigger then should be so i dumped it into hot water, in hope of some shrinkage, but being a superwash yarn, it had no effect.
So i throw it into the washing machine. Fringers crossed it comes out ok.

Wrap up - Öltözködjünk rétegesen

I've finished 3 projects in the last couple of days which made me sit down and just grin to the outside world and feeling contented. Ok so the third is still not totally finished but only coz i'm picky. So i had to start something new :) Gloves for boyfriend :)

Friday off - Szabadpéntek

Two days of holiday and actually done some knitting... first off, i finished this scarf yesterday. A bit short but run out of yarn, but the recipient liked it a lot :) (yeayy, knitting for someone else is goood :D)
The usual after-finish dilemma kicked in today: i picked up some long-going projects, some new yarn, had a cup of tea, then after a bit of an argument with myself i decided to do two things side-by-side. So i will rip back the "Lush and lacy" cardi i started in last december and was laying around for months, in a half-sewed half-screwed state, excuse my french. It was too big as i discovered, plus i messed up not just the sewing but the neck-band too. :P Plus there were 3 more balls left, (hopefully) enough for the hoodie and full-lenght sleeves of the Central Park Hoodie i really wanted to do for ages. Couldn't visualize it from this yarn but i'm giving it a go anyways, better then leave the yarn laying around.The paralell project will be another Swallowtail, with the same yarn - Easyknits skinny semi-solid - just different colour, this time Plum Jam. Just to be true to myself i messed this one up too, even before getting out any needles. I've wound up the yarn onto the yarn winder's base so i couldnt pull the ball of. Had to undo it by hand and wind back to the swift. Well done :P

Ahh and as i had a birthday couple days ago, i was thinking on baking a cake for myself... better skip that right now, dont want to burn down the kitchen :D

30 blocks and counting - 30 négyzet, egyelőre

Még tavaly elkezdtem egy patchwork-szerű ágytakarót, hogy felhasználjam valamire az akril/műszálas fonalaimat. 25 és 30 között vagyok valahol, és valami ritka béna gombolyagból kötök, ez a harmadik négyzetem és még mindig van belőle egy csomó - sose lesz vége! Alig várom, hogy meglegyen a minimum 60 négyzet, ami egy kisebb takaróhoz kell, és köthessek valami tényleg szépet valami tényleg szép fonalból...

I'm currently knittting a patchwork bedcover, to use up all my acrilic yarns - i started this last year. Right now i'm using the most crappy ball ever, this is the third square i'm on and there's still plenty of yarn left. Brrr. Can't wait to have 60 square finished (i have between 25 and 30 right now) so i can make a smaller throw and move on to knit something really pretty from some really pretty yarn...

Why i don't blog - Amiért nem írok

I was working on this. Used up a 150g/475 m big roll of BFL yarn with about two meters left over. Its 212 cm long and 30 wide. Biiiggg. I wish i've made it wider though, and could've used some wires when blocked as the edges should be loopy - well i didn't had the amount of pins nor the patience to pin them in place at every row. As there's a loop at the beginning of each row. Next payday, maybe.

Ezen dolgoztam. 150 grammnyi / 475 méternyi kékpofájú gyapjút evett föl, talán két méternyi ha maradt. 212 centi hosszú és 30 széles avagy túlnagy. Szélesebbre kellett volna kötnöm, és nem ártott volna néhány blokkolótű sem, mert így nem látszanak a hurkok a két hosszanti oldalon. Minden sor elején van egy hurok, csak épp nem volt se elég gombostűm, se elég türelmem egyesével kipöckölni őket. Majd következő fizuból veszek drótokat.

I was also working on these - top row middle and right plus bottom row left were done last saturday. Took about two hours each plus a few breaks (like lunch, brewing tea and stuff) and watched a stupid amount of documentaries on youtube. I run out of the interesting ones and also my head still spins a bit from the amount of information so now i'm off to snowboard videos. Much less brainy but the occasional rap and hip-hop as background music is annoying.

Ezekkel is haladtam - felső sor középső és jobboldali plusz az alsó sor baloldalija mind a múlt hét szombati kötő-maratonom eredménye. Kb két óra kellett mindegyikre, nem számolva a szüneteket (úgymint étkezés, teaivás és hasonlók). Ó és egy rakás doku-film a jutúbon. Kifogytam az üsszes érdekesből mostanra, meg a fejem iszsong egy kicsit - még mindig - a sok infótól, úgyhogy most snowboard-ot nézek. Sokkal kevesebb agymunka kell hozzá, csak az időnkénti rap/hip-hop kísérőzene idegesít.

Yesterday i found an interview in german and was totally surprised how much i understood. The only word i had absolutely no clue of was Schulter. Looked up - it means shoulder. The etimology enthusiast in me was seriously dissappointed for not figuring this out :D But it's good to know that i still understand german and 10 years of learning wasn't entirely in vain :)

Tegnap találtam egy cikket, németül volt, és teljesen meglepődtem, hogy mennyire jól megértettem. A "shulter" volt az egyetlen szó, aminek a jelentéséről halvány gőzöm sem volt, megnéztem a szótárban, és vállat jelent. Ami angolul ugye shoulder, vagyis majdnem ugyanaz. Azt hittem lefejelem az asztalt, én a nagy etimológus, ilyet bakizni :D De azért jó tudni, hogy nem felejtettem el mégse németül és nem volt hiábavaló a 10 év tanulás :)

Let's knit... - Akkor kössünk...

I was knitting a shawl last week (up until i lost track of what row i'm on and put the thing aside) that had an interesting feature: every row started with a yarn over wich made a nice loopy edging on both sides. Today, i'm working on a simple square and didn't undertsood why do i keep having more and more stitches and funny loops all around. Well because i automaticaly started every row with a yarn over!! Bad habits :)

Múlt héten egy olyan sálat kötöttem (amíg el nem felejtettem, melyik sorban járok, és félreraktam az egészet későbbi kibogozásra) amin minden sor egy ráhajtással kezdődött, így szép csipkés széle lett. Ma nekiálltam egy sima négyszögnek, és nem értettem honnan került a sorok szélére az a sok lyuk meg fölösleges szem. Mert még mindig ráhajtással kezdtem a sorokat :)

Like it / Like it not - Szeretem / nem szeretem

Like it: my Symphony interchangable needle tips, size 3.25mm. I bought these only because i wanted to try wooden needles. Originally didn't liked them, i was constatly afraid that the tips will get chipped off, the needle will broke in the middle, i didn't liked the colours, they were much slower then the metal needles... But in the course of the last year, i ended up using these a lots of times even when i started with different sizes or on plastic needles. I just keep ending up working with these and now i'm fairly sure they wont broke just buy holding them. I made some of my biggest knitting accomplishments with these, an Aeolian and a Swallowtail lace shawl, among other projects.
Good old tools which slowly but surely worked themselves into being one of my core knitting necessities.

Like it not: garter stitch. I'm all right with them as edging as they stop the fabric from rolling but as an all-around stitch, row after row, i just can't stand it. Soooo slow, and i have to fight to get the tip of the needle under the loop at every stitch... Guess would be less bad with a looser tension but i'm a tight knitter. So, for now, no garter stitch blankies and squares. I'll stick to lace :)

Like it: AC/DC. A couple of years back my brother and me asked our mum what kind of music did she listened to when she was our age. We both are no-mainstream, me liking heavy metal and world music and my bro liking punk, and we knew our dad liked pop-rock and she was in high school '72-76, in the height of abba and boney-m, so we wondered if it just us gone astray... Her answer: "Well, i liked stuff like ac/dc, led zeppelin and such". Both our jaws dropped. She grew like 4 inches in the eyes of my brother and we went "Ahaa!!! So it's a genetic thing. Not our fault!" Something genetic must be in it as our closest cousin - who is first cousin on both sides, yeah crazy family we are - is also into hard rock. Blame the parents :D

Like it not: i spent way too much money on yarn in the last two months. I barely bought anything in january and february, and now i'm falling over the other side of the horse (or what's the expression.) I think i spent between a hundred and hundred and fifty pounds. I dont wast to count it 'coz i'm afraid i'd end up something even closer to two hundred. At least i love all of them, everything i bought :)

Utolsó előtti nap - Next to last day

One more day to go in Vancouver... i don't like closing ceremonies, they are beautiful of course but watching the olympic light go out and being left with the bleak weekdays, so melancholy. Same as getting the decorations off the christmas tree. Or the start of term in school. Apart of seeing everyone back :)
I've just cast off the traveling jitterbug - i have 5 g of yarn left. I've played a bit at the last 10 rows on the stocking stitch section as i wanted to make 12 repeats instead of 11, and needed 173 stitches or 14 more than the pattern stated, but in the same amount of rows - so i had to squeese that plus 14 stitches in somewhere. I made some m1's on all sides - middle of the right and left parts of both sides, so increased 10 stiches every 2 rows instead of six. Of course i've messed up big time. On the rs row, right part had 5 more stitches then needed, while the left part had 3 st's missing. Holy cow. I don't know what went wrong, i was counting and paying attention. Luckily after that i didn't had any major problems, no rip-backs, no skipped rows, not even hand-ache.
All is well if the end is well, this was a quick knit, yarn was enough, i've got to know again a new type of triangular shawl(ette)s and i'm getting more and more insight of their construction - so far without having to buy any expensive books. Time to donate to ravelry :)

Angol időjárás, megint - English weather, again

This time living up to the reputation regarding the quantity and frequency of rain. Today was the first day of the week when i did not get soaked either in the morning or at the evening (or both). Today we had big wind only :P

I had three days totally off of knitting. I didn't had anything on the needles to just carry on, and was too knocked off after the swallowtail to start anything new. I wanted to do two little scarves/shawls plus the big lacey one during the olympics time, i had one small and the big one down, olympics still going, so after a remarkably short time of pondering ( a mere 2 hours...) i grabbed one of the jitterbugs and cast on for a Traveling woman. I had a bit of a sway towards the Multnomah with stocking stitch instead of garter st as the colours are on the rustic side and would have looked well with those big calm waves, but it also would've made it too rustic. So i stuck with the traveling eoman and it goes quite nice, i'm on the middle of the second repeat of chart a. The probably will be too short for three repeats as the edge chart quite big. I have time until sunday evening, so even with the planned pub visit i'll finish it easily.
Next olympics i'll have to do something really big. Like a Herbert Niebling lace with 2000 (two thousand) sticthes in one round or some norwegian colourwork jumper on 3mm needles.

I ordered some yarn and other stuff off the internet including a 2,5 mm circular addi needle i needed in order to start a project. Except when the needles arrived and i held them i just couldn't remember what project was that. Maybe some gloves. Now i have to go back to my ravelry page and dug up my Favourites pile... like i don't do this enough times already (about once a week, takes hours :D )

Medálosztás - Medal ceremony

"Please accept this Ravatar bouquet from the beautiful Bobettes, wearing gorgeous lacy scarves, cowls and shawls of many colors:

and this medal from the head of the International Ravelympic Committee, Adonis Dionysius Bobicus Maximus:

Now please rise for the Ravelry International Anthem.

dum…dedumdum..de…dummmdedumdidoh…..(crescendo)…Dah!!!

And the crowd runs off in search of blocking wires and T-Pins… because they’re all I.L.L."

Ezért kaptam.
I earned it with this.

:)

(I.L.L. = I Love Lace ;)