it's green

the yarn for my new Sylvi arrived today, yeah =) and it's lovely, have a look


it's a very warm shade of green, dark, woodlike but still friendly, and it feels good, it has a great touch. Just made a swatch


it's still sitting in the sink right now, and after the meassurements I made before it went to take a bath I think I will go up a needle size, but let's see what it behaves like after the bathtub. . .

gauge, swatching and no yarn

I've been expecting to come home today and a find a supreme packaging with the finest yarn, for the Sylvi (a dark fernlike green - 100% merino - yummi), but NO yarn package

instead I spent the day to research a little on ease, positive and negative, it's actually very simple, negative ease = tight fitting, positive ease = loose fitting. You can read some more on knitting daily or TECHknitter. I also found out that measuring your clothes is a good idea to find out about your true size. (please also read on TECHknitter)

and coming back to swatches I started a forum post on ravelry asking how to treat your swatch to have a nice fitting garment. I wonder on blocking in particular, not IF to block but HOW block it, I'll keep you informed.

sketch for sylvi

instead of sitting down and start crying now that I frogged my Sylvi I decided to distract myself, but what to do? no yarn to start Sylvi again, enough yarn to start another wip, but another wip means to have one more wip and one more wip is having less time for the other wips, and I really plan on finishing Sylvi as soon as possible. So I sat down and was thinking a little more on the cardigan idea, read some rav entries on it and made a sketch on what I plan my cardigan to look like.



I changed the sleeves again to be more airy (I remembered on the beautiful sleeves of my cleaves) and also made some sketches on the neck, high victorian collar.


I also have some custom orders to finish so maybe this whole thing of not being "able" to knit is sort of good, enough time to crochet turtle legs and shells.

frogged

not yet . . . but I'm about to frog my Sylvi, the yarn is just not working for seed stitch. I choose a 100% acrylic yarn and I learned it will never ever "learn" to stretch/hold the stitches like wool would.
There are a few other things that I would like to change about me sleeves so I would have frogged anyway, like the increases look weird and could have been positionend a little more centered, so that they would have been directly under the arms, now they lean to the back but that's just a minor issue. The other big thing is I wouldn't know if the yarn would have been enough.
So now I can just order new yummi yarn, 100% wool/merino, and enjoy it. But before enjoying the new yarn there's the hard question of choosing a color. I want to order from the "Hamburger Wollfabrik". They offer to put together your yarn exactly as you want it, how many plies, how much and all onto one skein, so there will be no yarn ends to weave in (happy face) but they also offer about 100 thousand different colors.

sylvi sleeves

Sleeves half done =) and one ball (the gauge ball) used.

I started with a tubular cast on even though I wasn't sure on my gauge. I still am a little concerned about it I just counted rows again. The main spectrum of differences is within the rows (21 to 28). The stitches seem stuck between 14 and 16 so I went for 15 and casted on 32 sts for a 2*2 ribbing. I made the ribbing for nearly 7", since I like long and tight sleeves for a cardigan. After that I changed to seed stitch and increased 8 stitches in the first row to have 40sts. I added one panel of the back pattern, a leave, which I mirrored to be equal on both sleeves and due to the first increase of the stem of the leave and the fact that I didn't decreased sts at the top of the leave but made cable work here I now have 42 sts (this was irritating for me at first, I was sure I had only 40sts).

The yarn is very soft and feels good to the hand. I love this dark red color, very warm. But my main concern is to run out of yarn, I already make plans on "minimized" fronts to save yarn. I have 10 balls, 500g total and a yardage of about XXmeters and I really, really hope it will be enough but still fright it won't. I calculated to use 2 balls on each sleeve, 3 more on the back and tha last 3 on the front, but it still feels unsure :/

FO and a swatch

another Chubby Fish is finished, I added a little star, I think it looks cute =)
You can find the pattern at the sidebar.

Also I finished a swatch for my new Sylvi, I look at it and like the color and also like the stitches (it's off gauge but that doesn't matter, need to change it anyway) but I can't figure out how to count with the seed stitch. It stretches enormously, in both directions. I measured when it was still wet and pinned to the couch and I had 14 sts and 21 rows, when it was dry it had 15 sts and 25 rows now that I played with it the whole day it has 15.5 sts and 28 rows, but when I stretch it I can give it whatever sts and rows I want.

I think this is what is called "ease". I happen to read it alot lately. Alot of patterns have positive or negative ease. I haven't made a little research on it so I'm not sure what this knitting term really relates to but I think I don't like patterns to stretch or shrink, what do you think?

And to confuse me even more I'm starting with the sleeves. Over at ravelry Tikru the designer of Sylvi made the great suggestion to begin with the sleeves to see if your gauge is correct (not as much to frog and you have the sleeve cuffs done!)

selfish knitting

I just read this article in the new issue of twist collective. It's about how some knitters (I don't say knitters in general, although the article does, cause I never did) only seem to knit for their relatives and friends and never for themselves. Well I never did, don't know why cause I wanted to, I often see a pattern and think it would be perfect for my friend Anne or this is the most gorgious mittens, perfect for my mom, but I never happened to actually start knitting for others. Maybe I'm selfish and early realized my time schedule doesn't have enough hours to knit and crochet for me and for others, so I never did or maybe I'm just selfish and think people will not appreciate my hard work, I dunno. But this year is sorta different: I already made bookmarks as xmas gifts.
And to not get tooo non-selfish and generous I will start this beautiful coat of the winter issue of tc: Sylvi


Isn't it just a masterpiece of knitting? Yesterday I spent the afternoon in re-designing the back so I can wear it as a cardigan. I only need a swatch and therefore I'm buying new needles this afternoon.

dressing up!

It's winter, outsides getting colder and everybody needs warm clothes, my fairies as well!


I'm just putting together a pattern for my fairies and since the dress I made is knitted and I can't "force" everybody who will buy the pattern to (probably learn to) knit I'm designing a crocheted dress. Not as easy as pie, actually pretty difficult. I was sure on leaves! the pattern should have leaves as well (just like the knitted piece) but to put them together was hard. I started out with pearl yarn because I like that it's thin and the fabric will be as well, but seemed like I couldn't find a proper way HOW. I tried flowers with leaves, pur leaves, just not right. And suddenly I had the idea of using a larger hook. This way the leaves will be bigger and hide more of the dolls body. Well the result is pictured below.

FO bath mat

I never thought I ever would show my bathroom to the world, but this post is about my new bath mat so here we go

pattern: my own, different flowers and leaves
yarn: no real yarn, but ~0,5 mm in diamter and has the texture of an i-cord
hook: 10 mm

this mat was pretty easy and also worked up pretty fast, the huge hook was a good help at this - all in all it took me about 4 or 5 days to finish this, the worst part of course was hiding all the yarn ends. And call it luck or not, but this mat would have been a bit bigger if I hadn't ran out of yarn. Also I think it's a great idea to use yarn left overs and turn them into loooong i-cords to crochet one of these. I can imagine one in lots of different colors lying in my living room and replacing my carpet. Another good reasons to knit more stockings to have the left overs turned into flowers to decorate my floor. =^_^=

Chubby Fish PATTERN

finally Charly will get a friend, the pattern for Chubby is finished and ready to download, it's a free pattern so you may wish to give some more friends to Charly ^__^


press DOWNLOAD to download (it's a ravelry link but should work for everybody else as well - please leave me a message or comment if otherwise)


please respect my copyright and don't sell any Chubbys you made.

_________

ERRATA:
backfin:
when I write "turn" in the second row please don't really turn but continue to crochet on the other side of the chain. This way you create a round that you can build the next rows onto. I will update the pdf as well.

FO fan bookmark

pattern: fan bookmark by crochetroo
yarn: pearl yarn, coats
hook: 1.5 mm
notes: didn't made the 1sc at the beginning of every turning row

when reading the forums at ravelry yesterday I came across the beautiful fan bookmark again, again because I had this in my queue for a while.
and yesterday I finally started because I needed (well I wanted) one for myself plus I thought it will make great christmas gifts.
I started right away (my bath mat needs assembling and when you're reading here you know I don't like finishing, means I don't like weaving in the ends and putting a project away)
Anyhow the bookmark pattern works very smooth and quick. I finished one bookmark in about one and a half hour. That's what I'd call a last minute gift. It crochets really fast I only needed to take care of the spaces where to join with the formerly made fan. somehow I wanted to join everywhere, which is a mistake and I frogged a few times.

but they turned out very well and I think I'm about to make at least two more.