On my needles: Winding Way and Conic

Last year Christmas surprised me when it came around the corner, so I started earlier this year with Christmas knitting. Yesterday I started this beautiful sock, designed by Emily Wessel of Tin Can Knits. I mixed her pattern up a bit, because the socks are for my dad and he doesn’t like patterns on top of his foot.
sock_front

Yarn is Wollmeise Twin in Mont Blanc. Although I very recently didn’t have any nice words for the thinner Wollmeise qualities, this yarn totally changed my mind. It has less yardage on a skein than the 100% Merino yarn, but is so much more comfortable to knit with! Twin is very tightly wound and has a nice spring, so you hardly notice that you knit something – it’s wonderful. Definitely not my last Twin project!
sock_sideview

The other project I started during the conference week is my Conic, design by Cookie A, who is better known for her sock designs. Last year she released a clothing collection, and this cardigan has been in my knitting queue ever since.
conic_full

I had a few differences with this pattern. When I first tried it, sometime last winter, I couldn’t get the right stitch count for the second(!) row, no matter what I did. Turned out I had knit pfb instead of pfbf (increased just one instead of two). Obviously I needed to write Cookie herself an email to realise that. *cough*
Plus, it had been the wrong yarn. I had used Wollmeise Pure on my first try, which was way too slippery. Now I bought Holst Garn Coast for this in the colour-way Blackcurrant. conic_detail

Today Plucktember starts and although I probably won’t have time to knit a second Monomania, I will certainly knit the Westknits MKAL in Plucky Feet. Totally looking forward to this, September will be – wait for it — awesome!

Being frustrated

Recently I’m highly frustrated. All around people celebrate their birthdays or want to marry, or even worse: people want me to marry. Next week, there’s a conference I co-organized together with other volunteers and that’s also very relaxing keeping me frustrated.
On top of that, I can’t seem to get any knitting done. Or rather, anything finished. That doesn’t really lower the frustration level, I tell you.

For example, in January I started this sweater in light fingering weight yarn (!) that turned out to be too small at the waist and too big at the shoulder part.
Then I knit a Toujours sweater that has rolling edges and is also too wide in the upper area.
My latest failure is a Monomania cardigan that I knit from stash yarn, where I decently swatched and blocked, but when I tried to join the shoulders it was all waaaay too small because my gauge had changed!

All I could finish knitting this year is four pairs of socks! Honestly?!

Well, what does one do when one gets frustrated? Exactly, shopping!

I got myself this yarn and pattern kit. They are fingerless mitts in lace weight yarn by Bombella on Etsy.

What could go wrong in sizing, they are fingerless mitts.

A beauuuuutiful geometric brooch by Parker and Lou-Lou which arrived in no time at all but I didn’t get to take a picture, yet.

And most recently a knitted necklace by Amy Lawrence

It’s a necklace and it’s knitted and has a chevron pattern! How could I resist? (All pictures are shop pictures!)

Let’s not talk about the yarn purchases. I plan to knit until the end of my lifetime, apparently.

Meanwhile, I spent my time knitting my first lace shawl. It took me three false attempts to get really started, but now I’m happily ploughing along.
It’s Rappaccini’s Garden Shawl by Anne Podlesak:

This was shot shortly before publishing this post, but the colour is pretty accurate and exactly matches the sofa I'm sitting on while typing this!
This was shot shortly before publishing this post, but the colour is pretty accurate and exactly matches the sofa I’m sitting on while typing this!

I can happily announce that I’m midway through the last repeat and then there’s only a lace edging keeping me from completing my first all-over lace project. So perhaps it’s not the knitting I fail at but the measuring. I swear I will properly have myself measured by the boyfriend when all this craziness is over! *shakes fist*

Recently…

… out of my oven:

Starry fondant Chocolate Cake Pops (with more than your average amount of cinnamon)
Vanilla Cupcakes with Nutella frosting. Though I have Nutella almost on a daily basis I never enjoyed it as much as in this form!

A friend asked me for “an easy recipe for simple cupcakes” today. I got so frustrated searching the Internet for hours that I had to make myself one of the recipes that I sent her. People constantly nag me for recipes, but the truth is I simply follow other exciting recipes I find through foody sites.

Good for her that today was the first day since Friday that I felt somewhat better. I came down with a bad cold exactly when my holiday started, thinking that I was the only one in my family to survive this half-winter without any sicknesses. :(

…off my needles

Children’s jacket with yellow accents
Owl mittens
Owl mittens that were a present

My boyfriend ‘got’ me this awesome SLR camera lately. It’s like Christmas came early (or belatedly?), because I wanted an SLR since I was allowed to drive a car (which has been quite some time now). I say ‘got me’ with quotation marks because it is the exact same camera he owns, but brand new that he bought second-hand from one of his friends. I totally don’t mind not having guarantee or anything, because I’m sure that the boyfriend will look out for my camera as well as he did for his own up until now.

Oh, and we’re still re-decorating our apartment. Last week I took a short trip to IKEA and got us a Billy bookshelf, which weighs 40 kilos! Crazy me was too stubborn and couldn’t wait for it to be in our flat and carried it all by myself. You cannot imagine the pain I had in my arms for three more days!

Christmas presents

This year I will certainly receive many presents for Christmas, but this is something I’ll give to my boyfriend.

image

A leather-clad felt Kindle case for his new e-reader as soon as it arrives. It won’t be finished for Christmas because I don’t have the true sizing of the reader itself. (Amazon has different measurements on its product pages.) What did I want to say? Oh yes, of course! Merry Christmas everyone!

My friend’s wedding

So on Saturday (as I panicked on Twitter) was the big wedding of my school friend. She’s one year younger than me but her husband and she are in their tenth year of relationship. What an achievement!

Because they got married last year already, they wanted their church ceremony to be big and nice. And that’s what they really got. The reception was held in a four star-hotel with excellent service, the buffet had almost 15 courses and there was a cake stand with dessert (nomnom).

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散歩中

Took a little snapshot with my SX-70 today while we were taking a walk in the park.

Just had to show you because I think it looks very nice.

Taken on Impossible PX 680 Color Shade film, no modifications – just scanned it in.

Roses are red

Uh, hai there! Long time no see!

Last Friday, the boyfriend and me have been to the Impossible Project Factory Outlet. Admittedly, it is as small as it looks in the pictures. But the shop manager was really nice and surprisingly spoke German really well! We ended up buying 6 packages of film, ND-filters and the Impossible frog tongue. Everything was even cheaper than I thought, but I will continue using all my films preciously.

Of course, to my mild irritation the day after Impossible announced an Open House Day in a newsletter! I would’ve loved to visit the factory after driving about 250 kms… Anyway, we had a really enjoyable yet slow ride to and fro and even went a little bit shopping in the city centre of Enschede. There will be more pictures when my film is developed!