Mad Hatters Tea party part I

Hats, hats and, oh yes, more hats!

Mermaid Hat

I made this when I got horrendously bored at the start of my college term. Which should not make sense since college is supposed to keep you entertained.

It’s an adaptation from the Pomatomus sock made by the wonderful, Cookie A.I wish I was smart enough to actually have done that myself, but it was actually Kristy Pederesen who did the work for me. I´d been eyeing the Pomatomus sock for some time now but never had to nerve to start on it due to my fear of top down socks. I´m glad I gave it a test whirl with this hat though because the twisted rib makes the pattern pop in a lovely way.

It´s made from non descriptive fingering weight black acrylic, which means I did block it with heat and it now doesn’t stretch either which way. Which is fine because it fits like a glove.

Though it fits very well I prefer to wear it with the brim turned up because it’s just a tad too long and I rather prefer being able to actually see where I’m going at time.

The problem really is that I can´t remember when I actually made this. I´m guessing September because my hair was that colour back then, but I´m not too sure.

Mermaid Hat

Pattern: Parrotfish

Yarn used: Fingering weight black acrylic

Needle size: 4 mm

Mods: none, probably did a repeat extra somewhere, but nothing drastic.

Spring Time Cabernet

This hat was made with love for the mother of my step-dad, who I just call Gran because it’s easier. Sadly, it looks horrendous on her, so I’m expecting it will be given away to my niece. I’m not too happy about it, but at least the hat will be worn.

I really love the pattern though so I might just make one for myself one day.

Gma’s Cabernet

Pattern: Spring time Beret (Ravelry link!)

Yarn: Malbrigo worsted

colourway: Caberet

Needle size: 5 and 5.5 mm

Size: 57 cm head circumference

Mods: None, the first time I have actually made something completely according to pattern.

Clown Vomit, nom nom nom

A while ago I posted about having bought about six balls of Muskat yarn and turning them into washcloths. Which failed rather spectacularly due to a variety of reasons, the main one being stitch distortion. So I said I’d make a so-called scarf instead. Which I then did and never posted about due to exams and general laziness. And then I procrastinated even more by simply forgetting to post this post. Very silly of me.

But here it is in all it’s glory. I envisioned this as a rainbow, but I didn’t have any red, which I didn’t realise after casting off. So I rather failed at that. After that I could only think of it as clown vomit, which is technically also rainbow coloured, but I decided to ignore that.

Ah knitting landscapes. How I love seeing rows upon rows of perfect stitches

Well not completely perfect, I messed up here and there but mostly it just looks like this. Tightly spun cotton in a delicious stitch pattern.

If you hadn’t noticed yet I made this one sideways, and it’s length isn’t all that. I don’t think it’s longer than 130 centimetres.

It does however has massive tassels, some braided some combed out. It’s a rather stiff scarf, but that just means that it mostly stays up on it’s own. All in all I really like it. And I really don’t wear it enough so thank the heavens it’s getting cold outside :D.

Clown Vomit

Pattern: My So called Scarf

Yarn used: 6 balls of Muskat yarn in (vanilla)yellow, turquoise, pink, apple green, lilac and warm yellow. Numbers 30, 32, 34, 53 14, 51 respectively.

Yardage: 545, though I used a lot for tassels as well.

Modifications: I simply went sideways instead of…well whichever way you’re supposed to go and did about 8 rows for each colour and kept the rest of the ball for tassel-ing

Boatloads of books

It’s been a while. Again. I’m rather infrequent with my posting, but I’m hoping to change that. I enrolled myself at uni this year, which is the main reason of my absence. I enrolled at the University of Utrecht as a matter of fact (Utrecht is more or less in the middle of our fine country) to study English Language and Culture.

I just finished my first semester. We operate on a 4 semester system (some unis do 4, some do 2, it depends which city you choose) or rather 4 blocks. The results of my finals haven’t come back yet though so I still don’t know if I’ve passed.

These things to the right are actually my books for the first two semesters. Norton Anthologies, which are those two big English Literature things you see, are a nightmare, though amazingly useful. They contain a collection of poetry, short stories, essays and chapters of important literature of Great Britain since Beowulf up until…the 60s or 70s. It’s also because of that, that they’re about 3000 pages each and weigh 4 pounds each as well. The rest of the books are informative but as dull as you’d expect study books to be.

The actual novels/plays we need to read are somewhat entertaining, or well more entertaining than our grammar book. The only book I really disliked was Tess D’Ubervilles. I just can’t get behind the whole flowery language, though I still think the plot’s amazing. Hemingway was doable. I was expecting to love it to bits due to people telling me he’s amazing, but it just didn’t make me fall in love with his writing. Just not my style I guess. Romeo and Juliet was amazing as always. I don’t know why but Shakespeare’s always done well with me and my brain.

All those books were actually for one course, which amazed me as well. We did about 12/9 poems per week for that class, or 2-4 short stories+poems. It was all rather hurried and the exam was a nightmare. I’m hoping I’ve passed but I really can’t tell.

I also managed to get a job, which certainly shocked me. Though I’ve already quit. I really hated working at a till for 4 to 8 hours a day, standing up, in the busiest store in the country. I just couldn’t deal with the never ending stream of customers, having to manage your till (you have to put 50 euro notes and all other excess euro notes into a little vault behind you, which is a nightmare because you have to do it individually per note -_-), also helping out with restocking, cleaning up etc. At the same time might I mention. You were required to restock and help the customers at your till at the same time. No problem you might say, and you would’ve been right if it weren’t for the fact that this store is tiny and has about 13000 customers a day (it’s located in the hall of our busiest railway station, and we’re a train traveling nation). Suffice to say I went mad, my feet hurt which is when I decided that they could stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine I wasn’t coming back.


And I didn’t. Which means I need a new job. Though uni here is certainly cheaper than British or USA equivalents, it still costs money.

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.

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Themed by: Hunson
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