I´m a calender girl

If you are interested in knitting a sampler lace scarf go to Färila http://www.kalender2008.slojdohantverk.se/index.html . They let you get a pattern each day until dec 24. and it´s in both swedish and english. I´m knitting mine in a shetlandic wool and suggest that you skip day 2. If you don´t feel that you have time to knit it right now print them out they are free until dec 26

Tagged!

I was tagged by Karina to pic out the sixth picture in my sixth folder and tell the details about it.
This folder is pics from a tour to three farms arranged by the farmers assosiation in Sweden. We later brought students to a farm to look at how food is beeing produced. This pic is from an organic apple orchard. I have to show pictures of the other farms visited; one dairyfarm and one pigfarm




So! Who is the cutest?

Moonlight sonata shawl is ready

Ready!

And now I´m knitting a Icarus shawl from the book " Best of Interweave knits" It´s favourite designs from the first ten years. I´m using the same yarn as in the circular feather and fan shawl but this one´s mine!

I bought a bag, I liked it!!

I saw this bag the other week in the window of Bitte Kai Rand, a danish designer, very nice clothes and quite expensive. I have a coat of hers bought at fleamarket. This bag was only 69 crowns about 7 euro and parts of it is donated to the danish red cross.

Moonlight sonata shawl

This is my current knitting; the shawl for my niece. I found the pattern at elann.com and even though it´s not a difficult pattern to knit I refer to it as "the shawl of many mistakes".
Knitting shawls are so amazing...there´s a lot of knitting and the "WOW" doesn´t occur until after blocking

Feather and fan shawl

The feather and fan shawl has been ready for a while but since it was a birthday present for my mum it´s been a secret for this blog.

It´s two balls; 200 grams of Isager alpacka and I had some problems blocking it or at least figuring out how to block it due to size. The solution was to use the sides of my mattress and 366 needles


Of course the cat helped me!

Americana

I use this placemat every 4:th of July and also last week due to election. Done years ago during my quilt haze.

Life in uniform

I´ve adapted to life in uniform, no I did not join the army! I drive a taxi!
The clothing rules are really quite simple.
Where are clothes with company logo that should be visible. The logo clothes are a winter jacket, summer jacket, shirts ( both long and short sleeves an in both cotton and cotton/polyester ), pullover and sleeveless pullover. There´s also a tie for men and a scarf for women. The scarf is nicely made out of silk! The shirts are white and the other clothes are navy.
All this comes in mens sizes, I got an special jacket since the sleeves of the mens jacket where; well a bit too long. I also bought a sleeveless pullover and two short sleeved shirts that I´m resewing into female size. one is ready and one more to go. This is not the most inspiring sewing...
If I wear the sleeveless pullover ( wool/acrylic ) I can wear any blouse as long as it´s white, so I bought five white blouses at Good will...Since I can´t wear them without the sleeveless pullover I only iron the sleeves and the collar. ( my mother think this is horrible....)
With this I can wear uniform style skirts or pants of choise. I bought two skirts at Good will.
I can wear simple style shoes as long as they are black. I bought 3 pairs at of course Good will. In summer I can wear black sandals as long as they have a slingback and I have to wear neutral stocking.
My niece and nephew thought the clothes where "cute"
Navy is not a big thing in fashion this season and finding pants is difficult so yesterday I bought 3 meters of a 80/20 cotton/polyester and I´m thinking of making it quick and simple and use the oneseam pattern for the first pair and then do something more tailored.

Acrylic heaven

I did a search for yarnshopping in Istanbul before leaving and came to Polly at "All tangeled up" I got an adress from her an we went looking...and we looked...and we looked and then we gave up and then there it was. On a inner courtyard where a lot of yarn stores and other textile merchants. I found two wool yarns but nothing that I liked.

Fur yarn was very popular as was a kind of balls in a thin string, when knitting with it it looked like a net with this balls in squares, of course this was 100% acrylic and of course I missed taking photos!

Here are some other shots too. Spice bazaar, carpet of the blue mosque ( I will never complain about vacuuming again!) and spices

Istanbul

I´m off to Istanbul tomorrow for a three day trip. After googling on fabric and yarnshopping I found a post on " all tangled up" and went to the attic for a larger suitcase....

Baby cardigan

This baby cardigan is basically the same pattern that I knitted a beige version of before, but here I used a drops design but changed it so I knitted a cuff by not knitting the white stripes all the way and omitting the first white row in the pattern, that way the upper part became black for a look I liked more. The yarn is Safran, 100% cotton.

Feather and fan shawl

The knitting part of my "Feather and fan shawl" from "A gathering of lace" is done

Now I only have to find somewhere to block it, my carpet is to small!
I ended up adding two more rows of pattern and used 2 balls of Isager alpacka about 1600 meter

Currently I work on my "Ballet" sweather and the bodice that are knit in strips I knit in the taxi while waiting for custumers and I just started the sleeves at home. The pattern is called "vulkor" or something simular and I don´t have any idea what that means but they are fun to knit. The original arms are made entirely with this pattern. I did about 15 cm of them and continued in strait stitches.

You knit "vulkor" by every 4:th row randomly 2-3 times/row pick up 2 stitches 8 rows down and knit them with next two stitches on your current row.

Green blouse

This blouse is made from the same pattern as the green corduroi jacket but longer.

this is the back view and a design detail from the ties that I saw on an Odd Molly blouse. You sew a buttonhole rather close to the side seam and insert the tie through it and attach it in the side seam

I can imagine this will look good on thicker fabrics if you make a bound buttonhole

The fabric is a embroidered cotton popline from stoff och stil from there in store collection. Ít has scalloped border on both sides.

Odd Molly Yes! and it´s in my closet!

I bought this beautiful dress on 70 % sale and they say that money can´t buy you happiness....

Mini wardrobe contest

Minimum four different outfits:

Wrap blouse

This is my second blouse from this Onion pattern:

and it looks like this:

I used vintage lace for the ties

and added a little embellishment on one of the sleeves, to match the plaid skirt

This pattern is so easy to sew and the little shaping in the neck makes wonders for people like me who is not interested in showing cleavage. Onion have shorter back lenght than most pattern so I had to make it longer. I also made the entire blouse a little longer.

Plaid skirt

My plaid skirt is ready. It´s a BWF pattern from the plus section, designed by Adam Dzielak who must have done his best work for Burda becourse when I look at "Hammer" that´s what he usually does It´s not as nice things.

Here´s a little detail from the front vent. The coins are from stoff och stil and the little bow is inspired from a welknown swedish label who recently won the "Gold button" award....

and here´s the drawing of the skirt

You win some...

...you loose some
You finish some and you start some. Thats every sewer and knitters motto!

Feather and fan lace shawl from "A gathering of lace" The yarn is Isager Alpacka a pure joy to knit ! and there´s a lot to knit...I´m using thinner needles and have to add a lot of rows and the shawl is circular! On the other hand there´s no purl stitches and there are 3 rows of only knit and one row for the pattern.
This is going to become finger gloves. From a book called "Knitting new mittens and gloves" I´m using a superwash wool and a variagated mohair for the ruffles and a magic loop instead of 5 needles
Here´s an almost finished arm on a shrug in modular knit in Drop´s alpacka, nice and soft to knit and wear
and this is a sweather by a danish designer team called Design club.

This sweater is called "ballet". I´ve been looking at this sweater for some time and bought yarn at the knitting trip to Copenhagen. This is a really easy project that has instructions for doing it on a knitting machine too.

Emma finished

I finished "Emma" and blocked her on my bed using 328 needles. The black outline is yarn that I used to know how to stretch her properly. On Anna Elisabeth. I used only 100 grams of yarn so she is really light as a feather
and a close up

Next mini wardrobe!

The mini wardrobe rules are fun here´s what I might do next Petrol blue, beige and brown

Mini wardrobe update, full skirt

I did some sewing on the skirt too! I cut it at least a week ago and pinned it to my curtain. That was very wise of me! The front skirt is cut so one side edge is on straight grain and one is on bias. That means the hung piece don´t have the same lenght to the sides and if you sew first one side will hang and wrinkle. This way the hemline is not the same at one end but the skirt is so long that it dusts the floor when I´m wearing it and I cut the short version! It doesn´t really matter but it takes more yardage. Here´s a closeup on the front yoke, outside
and inside with the organza showing. Planning to spend part of the evening handpicking the zipper and maybee cut the lining. Even though there´s quite a lot of fabric in the skirt it feels lite and easy to wear
Yes! It´s the same picture!

Mini wardrobe update; jacket

This is a full picture of the jacket and the skirt I made the arms full lenght, but didn´t really measure so I had to add a strip for the hem. consider it a design feature!
and here´s the button I´m using
3 of them. I have to do buttonholes, sew the buttons and do some staystitching on the inside of the jacket. I omitted the bands on the arms, but used grosgrain in the back.