Estonian lace, Peacock Tail and Leaf scarf

From the book Knitted Lace of Estonia I made this Peacock Tail and Leaf scarf. I used some left-overs from the Wide Bordered Shawl. I e 2/28nm merino. I added two pattern repeats on the width and made 44 repeats of the peacock centre. The size is about 33cm times 160cm. Instead of casting on and off with two strands of yarn I crocheted loops (wide picots?).



It was an excellent travelling knit. Though, I have to say, plain even rows aren't much fun and 44 repeats of the same 10 rows was a bit boring. It's a nice scarf though and I'll use it a lot I think.

MollyBaby

Until they start making Odd Molly for kids, I have to manage on my own. She liked it!

Finished objects, les Boleros!

Finished boleros!


This one is knitted in an estonian "lilly of the valley pattern" at the centre and framed by old shell pattern and a lacy edging all the way round. I knitted it in Rowan Kid Silk Haze, colour Cream. Nice, soft, snug fit, and above all it's my own design.



Dear friend, the russian earrings work very well as stitch markers. Lovely n'est ce pas? Thanks a lot for the effort going all the way to Izmailova to get them for me.


This is my daughter's bolero.


My 5-year old and I were blocking the shawl collar bolero/cardigan together. A UFO I started some time ago which got too small for me but will fit her.

Blocking such a cardigan is difficult, but I invented a bespoke blocker by using my daughters Duplo LEGO container. It is tubular and perfect for the arms. The rest is blocked circular by pins on a matress. It looks very funny!



I got the fantastic yarn as a present from a friend in Norway. It is Malabrigo lace in colour Holly Hock 148. It is a 1-ply baby merino wool from Uruguay. Lovely soft, I'd say it is as soft as cashmere. Handspun and hand dyed too which gives an interesting texture and a variegated appearance, but subtle enough not to mess up the lace pattern. First time 1 ply knitting for me, but this yarn is probably heavily steam set because it has no resudual bias, nor has it much elasticity which is very rare for merino yarn (my experience of 2-ply lace weight yarns).

60g is all the cardigan took, and the rest will be a chunkier shawl (than I usually make).


The edging is from A Gathering of Lace. It is perfect for a circular shape because it can be blocked to spread at the outer rim.

Christmas cards

A Facebook request on Christmas card ideas. These are made by me for my customers in structural engineering. Here we go. But remember, it's a secret...

Lace, a lot

Orchids in bloom always cheer me up. These are Miltoniposis looking like the hybrid named 'Herralexandre'. They are difficult ones, though.

This is the beautifully beaded Aeolian shoulderette, www.knitty.com. But, I normally do not stick to a pattern, so this Aeolian will be a garter stitch version. Looks OK so far. I knit it in a "heavy" weigtht Merino 7500 (2/14nm) from Filati Angoramerino bought from www.staketshantverk.com. It gets nicely soft after washing an blooms a lot as baby merinos should, which almost looks like its felting a bit. The halo will give a nice and warm sholderette. The yarn will require thorough washing to get rid of the spinning oil.

What happened? How many UFOs are there at the moment? At least four new projects. If I dig deeper into the yarn boxes there are probably many more I have forgotten completely.

Princess, finished!

My dear Princess, finally you are mine. You have been such good company all spring and summer. I'm gonna miss you!

Yarn Zegna Baruffa "Diamante" 196g 2/28nm from Colourmart.com. Knitted with 2.5mm Addi Lace circulars (60cm and 80cm, but the 80cm is too long for this project, even if it is enormous). Pattern Sharon Miller, Heirloom Knitting. Original pattern shawl has two more border repeats (feathers). Mine has nine feathers because my yarn is a 2-ply Measures: top width 2.7m! Top to tip about 1.4m. I seems like my spare time maths is quite accurate too. I got my Princess exactly the way I wanted it.

I feel a bit empty. What am I to do now? Start a new project? Well, yes, I will :-)

Patisserie!

Patisserie ordered by my five year old daughter. I hope she will be pleased when she finds the cake tomorrow morning :-)

Princess, aiming at the edge

Closer and closer to the edge. About 11 edging points left (18 on the picture shown below).

Estonian lace, Peacock tail and leaf scarf

Again. I have started another project while knitting the Princess. I have longed to make this scarf, and as a travelling piece it is perfect (but a bit boring). I am using the left overs from the Wide bordered shawl I knitted last summer. I started with a pure cashmere yarn, but it was too fragile. I got tired of fixing the beakage points and started all over again. I added two repeats to the width. This merino is so soft and blocking really makes a difference!

Getting around the corner

Two edging points with double joins before the corner and the same after the corner is enough to get a flat corner. I prefer not having too many increased joins at corners otherwise the lacy effect disappears. A knitted lace shawl shall be transparent, not opaque :-)

Matruschka

Some souvenirs from my trip to Russia in September. I love the handmade and handembroidered mittens from the Izmailova market. The Matroushkas in the box are aimed for a Christmas tree.

Princess centre

The Princess after soft blocking. It was not easily performed because of the size. Can you see the error? I have decided I can't ;-) I was right about the centre, this was the way to go otherwise the suggested No of rows of the border (= pick-up stitches) would have been too many compared to the border length. I think that following the pattern would have given it wrong proportions. What would I have done without maths? At the last centre joins (about 10?) I increased pick-up speed to try to force the first and the last feather to gather a little at the contact points to the centre. I have seen this has been a problem to other Princesses. I am though not sure I succeeded, but I hope final blocking will help on this problem. 43 edging points is all that remains and a few quick fixes of small errors. I wonder if that hotel I used last time I was blocking a Shetland shawl still has the big carpet...?

Princess progress

Finally the border (about 160 000 stitches) is finished and about 5000 stitches (100 rows) are done on the centre. Meaning there are about 55 000 stitches more to go before the last tedious edging can be started. I couldn't just stick to the pattern, because when you get to the centre it is getting less detailed which is a pity. I think many knitters will make mistakes there. Sharon does not say how many pattern repeats to knit. She knitted her centre separetely and sew it in place. Thereby she probably could make a bespoke centre just big enough to gather the border neatly. If you follow the pattern, though, the centre would be about 650 rows (because you pick up one stitch at the end of every row. Estimating 3mm per row would give about 2m half diagonal length and about 2.8m total length from top to tip... :-). Therefore, at the laurel leaf insert I omitted the last row where many of the recently reduced stitches would be back on the needle. Meaning I decreased the total number of stitches into 357 from 709 (I have 9 feathers instead of 11). That will, if my approximative calculation is about right, give just above 1m length of the centre (half diagonal measure, tip to toe). Together with 70cm border and edging and another 10cm top edging it will be about 1.7m (pattern says 1.6m) from top to tip. The shawl looks as a lovely little mess. It's hard to see it will be a planar triangle... but I tried some partial blocking, and Sharon might be right "It gets alright in the end". Ihope.

Lykkeligt brudepar

Selbuvotter for a friend. I wonder whom that might be...

Summer in the garden

This summer my partner and I expanded the terrace. I got more space to breed plants on and took the opportunity to grow tomatoes and my favourite flowers. The chair is a Grythyttan original from about 1950 which I found in an inspection pit at a farm outside Arvika last summer. I asked if I could buy it and actually there were four of them. All rusty and all there was a steel skeleton whith huge potential. They are fixed! I love 'em!

Cupcakes

A couple of knitted cupcakes. Kids seem to love them!

Princess status May 2009

The princess border is some slow knitting. A row can take about half an hour. I have finished the first chart of the border, but there are two more to go. No problem, I am not in a hurry with this object. I realized, when knitting the edging, that rushing this item kills the enthusiasm (frogging a row of 700+ stitches is not fun). Maybe I'll skip the upper 20 rows to decrease the height slightly. Maybe I'll change the centre pattern too. I am not very fond of the Princess shawl centre, but I'll probably use the pattern anyway. Maybe I'll change my mind about it?

Doritis pulcherima keiki

Not knitting this time :-). My Doritis pulcherima has got its first keiki. The plant is still in bloom and the keiki seems to have started at the base of a previous flower.
The background is my partner's Ford Cortina... which has gone through engine shift, a lot of remedial work and hopefully it will be registered as a vehicle again in june. Good luck!

Malabrigo lace

The Malabrigo lace yarn is wonderful. Though a surprise is the inelasticity, even tough blocking won't increase the size. I was planning on knitting a bolero to myself, but it seems like the size will fit my daughter :-D. No worries, it's about time she gets a knitted item from me.

Yarn present!

Look what I got in the mail today. What a surprise! The most fantastic lace yarn I have ever seen, and softer than the softest of merino wool. The color is so me :-) Thank you very much Katrine, it really arrived when I needed a friend out there...

Princess progress

Princess shawl status:

Pink Esto-Shetland hybrid shawl

I started knitting this hybrid shawl at the beginning of March and it was finished before April started. It has a mixture of Estonian patterns knitted in garter stitch, the Shetland lace way (Lingonberry pattern from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush and traditional Fan and Feather). The edging is, as usual, the Clematis edging from Sharon Millers Heirloom Knitting but this time I adjusted the pattern to perfect symmetry. The yarn is the pale pink Grignasco MerinoSilk. It was knitted on KnitPro 3.5mm interchangeables, so it is a bit lacier than the grey Cobweb Crepe shawl I knitted 2008 on size 3(?) Addi Lace circulars. I prefer Addi Lace, but they do not pass the airport security as easily. It was a relaxed lace knitting piece making me longing for re-starting the Princess shawl edging. The Princess status is 43 edging pattern repeats out of 66 are finished, meaning I have decided to make 9 feathers instead of 11, otherwise it'll be too large to wear for a pygmé like me :-).

Anglophile, -Me?

Last week I went to Wales for a couple of days in business. Look what I brought back home.






Substitute to clotted cream? I'll try it next wednesday!
100-150g mascarpone
2.5dl whipping cream (40% fat?)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (use good stuff)
1 or 2 tablespoons of sugar
Lemon or lime zest(optional)
Beat all ingredients in a bowl until it looks like softly whipped cream.



I did som knitting too on the plane. My new KnitPro interchangeables did pass the security check many times.

iPhone cover, the sleeping bag

A sleeping bag for my cell phone.

Wedding Bolero, the end

It is finished!






The pattern chart contains an error. The Clematis edging is not symmetric. It took 18 pattern repeats before I noticed, so I choose to move on. Its appearance is OK, but not perfect...

Niebling Lyra

Another ongoing project. This one I started this summer but did not get very far. It was... rather boring. You can not see the pattern knitting on a 60cm circular, and it is just every other row that is patterned. Seems like I got used to "worse". The yarn is a cone of 2/28 nm cashmere bought from Colourmart.com. Note the bespoke stitch markers with silver wire and beads. Useful when knitting in the round! And, I just love my Addi Lace circulars.

Princess shawl

Princess shawl edging. Zegna Baruffa 70% merino, 20% silk 10% cashmere 2/28nm in colour Sugar Pink from Colourmart. I love the yarn. This pattern does not correspond 100% to the pictured shawl. I have asked Sharon about it but she did not answer that particular question...

Wide bordered shawl

Wide bordered shawl
I modified the pattern of the Wide Bordered Shawl from Sharon Millers Heirloom knitting. It took four months to complete because its side length is more than 1.5m (that's 2.4 square metres!). Lovely soft Shetland tradition. The yarn is 2/28nm 100% merino wool bought from Stäkets Hantverk.