Brioche stitching and cotton(?)yarn

I bought weird yarn this time, which in my defence seemed less funky when I bought it. I just got lured in by the fact that it was on sale and I do mean LURED, because I’ve spent many hours afterwards wondering what this should be:

It’s cotton yarn, made by Lammy, which is a Dutch yarn company. They make many types of yarn, of varying fibres and weights, however there seems to be an issue with this one. The label clearly says that it’s 100% cotton and iron-able. The web-page of this particular type of yarn, called flame, says that it’s in fact some sort of acrylic cotton blend. I’m not quite sure what to think except for the fact that it certainly feels cotton-y, so at there must be some of it in it.

I’ve managed to acquire 5 balls of these, of about 125m per ball. I tried to make a Juno Regina stole out of it, because I am enamoured with said stole (Anybody remember my knit-o-lutions? I’ve veered off drastically, or rather keep on adding more and more in my ravelry queue) , but it didn’t work. The fluffy bits distracted from the general loveliness that is the Regina stole and it just looked, well, fugly. So I decided to skip the lace and work it into a Springtime bandit shawl. Said shawl is lacy, to a degree, but is more solid than lacy and the yarn thus far looks very well in it.

As for the second type of yarn I bought:

This is some sort of wool/acrylic combo, half and half actually. Now this I did buy with a pattern in mind, which has some sort of a back-story to it.  You see, I quite like the brioche stitch, or how it looks, especially in the fourteen pattern. And despite becoming very confused about how it works I still wanted to do it. Eventually I did figure out how to do it, or at the very least make it look like brioche stitch.

Just to help out anybody who is still getting horrendously lost: Follow the instructions on this page, except for row 1 where you do YO, Sl 1, Knit one, instead of Yo, Sl 1, K2tog.

After that it’s simply a matter of repeating row 2 ad infinitum. For binding off I’d advise this site, since it seems to be dedicated to the brioche stitch.

Back to the story: After figuring out how to do it, I bought this yarn to make me a fourteen neck warmer and the rest is history. Or well, the rest actually involves making said neck warmer for I haven’t made any real headway yet. Oh dear.


Besides knitting

Besides knitting I’ve been doing this:

reading like a maniac.

These are, or rather were, most of the books on my “to read” shelf of my bookcase. I had misplaced Wuthering heights (Emily Brönte), False Memory (Dean koontz) and The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul (Douglas Adams), before I took this picture and they’re therefore not on it. They’re still on the list though.

The top three are a series I’ve been collecting for a while now. They’re called Chancellor’s classics and I got them at my local bookshop at about 5 euros a book. They also look absolutely lovely. These are the only three that I have though and now it appears they’re no longer being published. The other name under which I’ve found these books are Miniature Gramercy Classics at Barnes & Noble, but I believe these are also out of commission since the sellers all claim to have no new editions.

They are Far from the Maddening Crowd (Thomas Hardy), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) and Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brönte).  I’ve read the first few chapters of all three, but never got any further due to homework or falling asleep ;). (Although I do remember reading more of Dorian Gray, but I can’t remember finishing it)

The problem is that though I want to read all these books I know that I’ll eventually buy more before I’ve worked my way through these. I’ve got about 12 books on my to buy list, not to mention all the school, or rather university, books I have to read as well.

It’s going to be a book year, I can tell. Thank the heavens I got new bookcases.

Works in progress

It’s been a while since I’ve updated on any knitting. It’s not that there hasn’t been any knitting, it’s just that I’ve continuously forgotten to take pictures of the works in progress.

I’ve finished the Solis socks and the Spring Time Beret, and have started on the toe of the second Vinnland sock, but haven’t made any progress with the whisker pattern yet. Save for experimenting with it and beaded knitting.

I did manage to take a shot of my solis sock in progress. As you can see I made them upside down, but there’ll be more info on them once I’m done doing the photo shoot.

After making the Beret for my gran I noticed that I had a fair amount of worsted yarn left. So I decided to make a pair of palm warmers, or hand warmers if you will. I used the vinnland stitch pattern for the top.

I’ve got the left one finished, but the right one still needs some work. This is because when I first made them I decided to make a pair of cuffs instead of gloves. So I sort of omitted the thumb. While it fitted quite nicely, I like gloves more, so I had to frog the thing again, or rather I still have to frog the right hand cuff before I can make a right hand glove. Making sense yet?

I’m hoping to round up the second vinnland sock and glove-y this week so I can start my last pair of summer socks next week.

But first I’ll have to give the beret to my gran. I hope it fits!

Holiday, it can be so nice!

So my parents went on a camping trip, a not so rugged one, it had decent showers and toilet paper and an entertainment team, but there was a tent involved, as well as a caravan (mobile home? I’m not sure what you lot call it), so it qualifies.

And them going away on a camping trip meant that they had to take my little brothers and leave me home alone. Which meant all sorts of things for me, doing the dishes(machine, THANK GOD), laundry (dear god, never knew that I had so much laundry, I pity my step dad now), vacuuming, cooking (with help from pioneerwoman) and taking care of the cat. Also known as the big hairy thing on legs that drools.

He’s a sweetie, but also senile and old and in general behaves like he needs food 24/7 even though he sleeps most of the time. It’s odd, he’s odd, but we all love him and cope with his needs. This is him trying to assault my legs in order to climb up to my lap, but getting fascinated by the lens instead. There’s also cat food on his nose. He’s not so big on the whole cleaning thing.

Luckily I didn’t have to spend the two weeks that my parents would be gone all by myself. Because I went to visit them. I suppose that rather defeats the purpose of being home alone, but I like camping. It has this sort of novelty feel to it, and it also helps me wake up early due to noisy neighbours.

The camping site was very lovely and right next to a lake which had a harbour on the other side of it. If you got bored you could simply pick a spot on the beach and watch people going bonkers with their little boats or with water-skiing.

Here are my parents being all lovey dovey. Or so I thought. What they were actually doing was checking out 4 guys making sand genitalia on the beach down below.

After successfully making the male parts they tried to make female parts. They even asked their mothers for tips, but quickly gave up. They simply didn’t know how to do it. So, logically, they went on to make a pair of knockers instead. Which is when my mom suggested they should make pierced nipples and it all went downhill from there.

Did I say novelty? I meant insanity.

Malabrigo (Plus one)

I’m planning on making socks this summer, mainly because I never wear normal ones. They just don’t fit right and don’t look pretty. Very superficial of me, but clothing these days is superficial. If I wanted to be warm I’d wear woolly blankets. Actually I should do that sometimes, toga party in a fleece.

But to make socks you need yarn. To make pretty socks you need pretty yarn. (And a lovely pattern). So meet the first step of the plan and a peek at the second stage, starting at the plus one.

This is Lana Grossa sock yarn. Of the non-cotton meilenweit variety.

I don’t know what colour way this is, because I picked it up in some Dutch store and forgot to look at the label. I by now have also lost the label. I just call it olive, which is rather self-explanatory.

The meilenweit olive is going to become a pair of Whiskers and Pawprints socks. The yarn, well it reminds me of my cat. Meaning that my cat is actually green. Or rather, has olive-y bits in it’s fur. His fur is a bit of a mix n’ match sort of affair, lots of black, spots of white and grey and olive streaked through it.I don’t have proof right now, the old one doesn’t really lie still to take pictures.

This is Malabrigo sock yarn, in the colourway Solis. I ordered this online, actually I order all my mal online. I rewound the skein into two more or less equal parts so that I could be sure my socks were more or less equal.

This yarn is going to become a pair of Nutkin socks. I do believe this yarn is rather scrumptious, the colourway is truly beautiful and the yarn itself is deliciously soft.

And more Mal sock yarn. This time in Violetta Africana, which is also pretty. I might be slightly in love with Malabrigo colourways.

These will become Vinnland socks. Which is a lovely pattern in and of itself and though it could be done in a very heavily variegated yarn I wanted to do it justice and keep things sedate. Sedate and pretty in this case.

And this is Mal worsted, in the colourway Cabernet. This is actually not going to become a pair of socks, but a gift to my grandmother. She’s turning 75 in August and has requested a beret/hat thing to keep her head warm this winter. As making hats is really not all that difficult and doesn’t take all that long I acquiesced. And she’s my gran, so really the decision was really easy.

So I let her pick out the yarn, this one, and a pattern. Turns out my gran has good taste and she wishes for me to make her a Spring time beret. (Ravelry link!)

I hope she likes it.

Shipwrecked

Derelict: property abandoned at sea by the owners, with no hope of recollecting it.

Meet my Derelict De la Cote D’azur, other wise known as the Shipwreck shawl from knitty. When knitty spring 09 came out, with this as its feature pattern my heart sort of skipped a beat and started longing. When my grandma then consequently kindly gifted me with a little bit of cash I set out to buying the ideal blue yarn for it. My choice soon landed on Malabrigo sock yarn, due to it being close to the recommended yarn, and because it had a Cote d’azur colourway that looked smashing.

I slaved away at this for quite some months, whilst also working on my gma’s heartland lace shawl. I started late February and arrived 20 rows into the netting at about halfway through may. Then I had exams and had to stop for a while, but when those were done I finished this within a week or two. It was rather brutal, all those beads, all that knitting. Especially those beads because they might look lovely and innocent, they’re really total bitches. Heartless ones at that. But I got through, thank the heavens.

As you might see I stayed true to the pattern. For those of you who are not knitting this particular pattern, it’s all in the second ring. The pattern author decided that the leaves should not look symmetrical, because real leaves are in general not symmetrical and actually can look completely different even if they’re on the same plant. So she incorporated this into her pattern. Now if you wish to make them symmetrical, mods have been written and can be found on ravelry. I however don’t really mind all that much, and also when I discovered the mods I was already doing the netting. Frogging is not something I enjoy, and while it might be part of the knitting world I try to avoid it as much as possible.

So I knitted on and the end result is that the shawl itself goes on for miles and miles and miles.

Here’s the closet to the actual colour I can come today, what with the overcast sky. Can you see the hairs in this shawl? Those little hairs that should not be there? Guess what those are! Those of you who are thinking: CAT!, are right. I tend to drop my balls of yarn, and the cat leaves hair everywhere (And also drools everywhere, it’s a big hairy drool ball on legs), so the balls of yarn tend to pick up cat hairs on occasion. My hair also tends to get stuck in the knitting, because I too shed hair. Hairy knitting, that’s what I’m doing here. Oh well, wool’s made from sheep hair anyway, so more hair won’t hurt it.

And here is a closeup of the beads. I used about 5500 in this project, though I ordered 6000 beads in total. (Meaning, I have some left) They were 8/0 seed beads, and I ordered 5 bags of smokey grey and 5 bags of dark purple.  I just dumped them in a giant bowl and pre-strung them randomly. They’re a bit see through, and blend in really well. They’re also made from glass so whenever I wear this shawl they feel really cool on my skin, whilst the shawl itself keeps me warm.

All in all I’m really happy with this project and tend to keep wanting to wear it where ever I go.

Pattern: Shipwreck shawl, by Bethany Kok

Yarn: 4 skeins of Malabrigo sock yarn in Cote D’azur (1760 yards)

Needle size(s): 3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6, 7, 8 mm (2.1/2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10.1/2, 11)

Mods: Aside from using different needles sizes I also enlarged the netting part of the pattern. I increased the original 56/57 rows to about 100 rows, and did 20 rows per needle size, starting with the 4mm. I also used excel to calculate how to divide the beads, but ended up altering it quite a lot.

Got Swagged?

The title is getting old by now, but I swear this is the last swag one you’ll see for a while.

My friends went to England a few weeks ago, months by now probably, and brought this back for me.

A FISH BAG! (It also had soap in it) Aside from the vaguely religious connotations the fish seems to have acquired these days, it’s awesome.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with being religious, I just am not all into the whole thing)

Mr. fishbags hails from brighton, to which I myself have never been but have heard stories about. The bag has convinced me I need to do some shopping there. The bag’s not very big though, but it is the perfect size for this:

SOCKS! It’s my new sock carrier. It and the socks fit nicely into my Namaste bag, so really it’s a done deal as far as I’m concerned. Also I bought new needles, because I broke my ebony’s. I cried for a bit, because those little blacks were friggin expensive and not to mention: HANDLED LIKE A DREAM. So smooth. I’m really going googly eyed here. The Addi bamboo needles work nice, but not as nice as the Suzanne ebony’s. They’re a bit too pointy and rough. But the latter might be caused by my tension whilst knitting. I like to keep things tight, in knitting that is ;).

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