some things that made me happy in the last few days:

- harvesting lettuce to make room for other jummy vegetables to grow in our garden!! 

grow, vegetables, growww!!

 

- succesfully turning the heel of my sock all by myself, without any help of my grandma- third time's the charm!!! i'm really liking this sock so far, the vertical ribbing goes quite well with the horizontal striping of the yarn, if i may say so myself. :)

- setting up the easter tree with the cutest birdie decorations i've ever seen!

- seeing swatch no.12 grow and grow! this stitch was like magic! it's called the"tweed stitch", and it's so different from any stitches i ever knitted... it's quite intensive to knit and it creates a very tight fabric, but it's very, very pretty! the pictures don't do it justice at all, but here they are anyway...

no.12: structure/color #3

 oh and the back looks great too! :)

after my colleague saw the owl i knitted for my other colleague, he asked me if i could make something for his friend (who's expecting a baby in april) too. we chose a pattern out of "the knitted odd-bunch", a book by donna wilson. then we went to the yarn shop together, picked out yarn and i started knitting! today i finished all the pieces... i really love seeing it come together, that's the best part of knitting toys. :)

and here's my swatch for week 11. this one is called the "double seed stitch" and it's one of my favorites, really. the swatch stays nice and flat and both sides look the same, so this is really a great stitch for a simple scarf or cowl.

no.11: knit/purl #3

that's all for now, my cup of ginger-orange-vanilla-tea is calling... :) have a lovely week!!

it's kinda funny; just a couple of weeks ago i was saying how much i love snow (and i do!), now it has been extremely warm and sunny for this time of the year and i enjoyed it so much! sitting in our garden with my knitting or a good book... just perfect. :)

here's my swatch for week 10, time for cables again! i just can't get over how easy they are to knit. :) this swatch is actually a double cable, it looks less twisted than the previous one but i do like it a lot!

no.10: cables#2

and, like i promised, here are all the ten swatches i made so far! 

as you can see they vary in size, which will make it harder to put them together. i think it will be interesting to put all these textures, sizes and colors together.  i've always loved these "random" knitted or crocheted blankets, you know, like those your grandma would make using every inch of scrap yarn she had lying around. when i plan a project i always want to coordinate the colors and think the whole thing trough and it feels really nice to do something more "random" for a change. :)

 

inspired by the randomness that was lying on my table, i did a little "yarn scrap experiment"; i always save the loose ends after i cut them off. i suddenly thought it might be fun to tie the longest ends all together and make something very colourful and scrappy... so here's a tiny crocheted piece of scraps.

it would literally take me ages to actually end up with a decent ball of yarn, especially if i want to knit or crochet something with it, but somehow these long-term projects always attract me... and i just love messing around anyway. :)

i love sundays! getting up early* to do all the necessary things (laundry, cleaning up,...).... which gives me a whole afternoon to do the things i love! i made orange-cinnamon jam and spicy cookies... which i ate with a nice cup of coffee! i was finishing my swatch for week 9, weaving the ends in and adding the label.

 

 so here it is again!!

no.9: ajour #2

 this ajour swatch came out much better than the previous one. i like the technique! it is actually quite easy to do... :) i took a picture of the swatch against the light so you can see the holes better. oh and look how nice swatch no.9 looks together with swatches 8 and 6. :)

 have a nice sunday evening! i'm off to do the necessary things like cooking dinner and eating it, too!

*getting up early = being poked out of bed by my boyfriend who's always awake early :)