before i begin my last blogpost of the year, i want to wish all of you happy holidays and a wonderful 2014! :) may it be wonderful, woolly and crafty!

the last weeks of the year are always so busy! first my birthday (25 already, everybody hates me for saying it but i really feel like i'm getting old), then christmas eve and christmas... days filled with parties, family, lots of food and christmas shopping. and i try to find some time for knitting, maybe some sewing or cleaning up the house... (priorities first, right?)

and ofcourse all is well with paulie! i'm now halfway the second sleeve, and it's looking more and more like a cardigan with every stitch i make. i'm also really curious how my stitches gonna look after blocking the whole thing!

 

ahh, notice my new coffee cup? it's from pip studio, a birthday present from my sister. so cute with the gold trim and the little birdie! :) my new knitting companion.

my boyfriend gave me the interchangeable circular needle set from knitpro for my birthday! i couldn't be happier with my new knitting equipment, no more wasting time and money searching for the perfect circular needle, now i have them all!! 

in 2014 i will knit like a PRO! ;)

ohh dear, has it really been more than a month since my last blogpost? oops! ;) 

i wish i could give you a big update but unfortunately not much happened; i resisted the urge to start new projects and my mind is now set on finishing things... you know i've got a lot of W.I.P.'s, so this is actually a really good thing!

and ofcourse, i've been working on paulie! i finished the first sleeve yesterday and started on the second sleeve today. i had quite some trouble with the sleeves... i didn't measure my arm size and thought the S that i'm knitting would be fine. i already knit 1/3rd of the sleeve when i decided to try it on and it was so tight, i just couldn't believe it. turns out i have to knit the L size for my arms to fit... so i ripped back all of it and started over, picking up way more stitches than i was supposed to for the S size.

long story short, one sleeve is now finished and it fits perfectly. lesson learned: measuring is important! here is a photo of the sleeve a couple of days before i finished it.

i've also been knitting and crocheting little hats for the innocent smoothies campaign. they collect small hats to sell with the smoothies, and the profits go to charity. i made 25 hats, which is not so much but every little bit counts, right? i had a lot of fun making these and finishing them with different pom-poms and crochet flowers. :)

 

that's all for now! :)

i'm back with another blogpost about paulie! :)

  today, i finished the body and started knitting on the sleeves. i love how it looks already, the fit is great and i love those bright stripes. i only hope blocking will even out some of my wonky stitches.  

 

 

 

sorry, picture overload.. :) 

it's not finished yet, but so far, i can recommend this pattern to anyone who's new to knitting sweaters/cardigans. it's well written, easy to follow and a good tv-knit once you're knitting the stripes. those stripes also make a bit more interesting. :)

finally some pictures of paulie and the progress i made so far:

now it's really starting to look like a cardigan! 

i also tried it on one day and... it fits!!! yay!!

 

 

it's so magical to see how some stitches, increases and decreases start to form a shape to something wearable and pretty. :) happy happy!

my scrappy socks are coming along quite nicely! one is finished (except for weaving in all the ends, i'm not looking forward to that part...) and the other is about 1/3rd done. knitting stripes is really motivational for me, i can't wait to see what it will look like with the next stripe, and the next, and the next... :)

i also received my yarn for paulie, and made a swatch (my first swatch EVER) to check gauge. my gauge is a bit off (the swatch is a tiny bit too big), but i'm knitting size S which is a bit too small for me (but i'm definitely more a size S than a size M according to the size chart...) so i'm hoping this problem will solve itsself. as for the colours: i shamelessly copied the colours from the original design, but i'm using a lighter shade of gray and a bright, almost neon kind of yellow.

i already cast on and started knitting, but no pictures yet. :) i'm soooo excited though, and i'm having the hardest time putting it away!

lately, all i seem to be doing is knitting socks... casting on a new pair... ripping it out again... trying something else... and then ending up knitting just my regular sock pattern. :)

 

the socks i have on the needles now, are meant to be a pretty, mismatched pair of socks, using all my sock scraps! (i'm also really into working with scraps lately) and they are becoming soooo pretty! i'm just knitting stripes (5 rows) and grabbing a random colour from a bag, making sure not to look, because once i start thinking about all the possible colour combinations, the socks would never have that random, scrappy look.

last summer i also cast on this one, by a pattern called "Giles Wavy socks". while i really loved knitting the chevrons, i hated the result. blegh!! i think a pattern like this would come out so much better with yarn with softer colour changes.

 this one was the exact opposite; the Vanilla Latte socks. again, a lovely (more simple) pattern, but i felt like there wasn't enough "going on"...  :)

 so i decided to rip these out and store the yarn for a better purpose. meanwhile i'm really enjoying knitting my scrappy socks (stripes are sooo addictive) and waiting for my new yarn to arrive... because this autumn, i'll be knitting myself a Paulie! ♥

somewhere in july, i started yet another blanket. a picnic blanket this time. but it's going to be an easy one, to use up my huge stash of dust-collecting acrylic yarns. 

 the plan is to knit 6 or 7 long garter stitch scarves with yarn held double (always a colour + white yarn to tone down the colours a bit, since i will be using a lot of colours. i also have a lot of white yarn), and to make these into a picnic blanket with, perhaps, a fabric back. (i'm thinking of a quilt with squares that are the same size... we'll see)

 i made a colour scheme to make sure all the colours i want to use are divided equally... so i don't even have to think about the colours while i'm knitting, i just knit away!

my niece is expecting her second child, i think her due date is the end of august, so the baby should be here any moment... so i thought it would be about time i made her a gift!

 

i ran out of the baby booties i made a while ago and i decided to make something else this time. i have a lot of brightly coloured cotton yarn laying around, so i thought a toy would be a good idea. after some searching on ravelry i found some nice patterns for security blankets or "loveys".

we don't know if it will be a boy or a girl, so i made a boy and a girl-version. i personally prefer the boy-version because of the bold colours. :) i generally tend to like baby-boy-stuff more because i'm not a big fan of really girly things (especially not pink).

 

i mixed 2 patterns to make these: for the head and blanket i followed this tutorial and for the owl face and wings i used this blogpost as inspiration (because the pattern wasn't quite right, i just made everything up with the pictures as an example)

 what do you like giving a newborn? always something handmade or do you pick something from the birth list? or both?

i finally finished and photographed my newest pairs of socks today! i made "duo socks", made to wear in pairs but they look so much better when mixed together! 

 

 

 

the blue pair traveled with me to switzerland (in march) and i took the yellow pair to croatia and germany in july. i love how my knitting projects travel with me and absorb memories.. :)

more details on ravelry: here and here. 

 PS: after more than 3 years, i got tired of my old blog layout...
sooooo... hello new logo and layout! what do you think? 

hello everybody! i'm back from a month of blogging vacation! i never meant to be "away" for so long, but it just happened and to be honest, it felt really good! i have loads of things to share with you guys and i really found new energy and motivation to start/finish some new projects! july was a great month; my boyfriend and i celebrated our 7-year anniversary and we spent two weeks camping in croatia and germany, which was great!

last year when we went camping, we borrowed everything from friends, because we weren't quite sure we were into camping at all. but it turned out we both loved it, and so we decided to buy our own equipment this year. we bought a cheap cutlery set and my boyfriend said he would like me to make a cutlery roll. so, the obedient and grateful housewife that i am (note the sarcasm), 4 or 5 hours later there was this: a camping cutlery roll; one of the best-looking things in our whole camping set! (why is everything they design for camping coloured khaki or beige???)

it rolls up just like a pencil roll or crochet hooks roll would do, and it has a fold-over flap so nothing will fall out.

 

 i also went a little overboard with the patchwork on the outside. the reason for this was that i didn't have enough canvas fabric lying around, only some small leftover fabric from our pillows and some other small pieces. so, heavely inspired by Kelly's patchwork leftover blanket that she showed some time before, i decided to do a little patchwork. (which took me waaaay longer than i had planned, but i'm loving the end-result)

 

 and, after two weeks of outdoor cooking, it proved to be a very handy and usefull object. no spoons or knives getting lost, and everything always in the right place. yay! success!

so after turning all those scraps into a magic ball, it was time to start thinking about a project. i first started a granny square blanket (the one where you crochet a huge square) because i liked the idea of hours of mindless crochet. but i didn't like the result. it was okay, but i didn't love it, you know?

so i did a lot of browsing and searching for magic ball projects on ravelry and now i think i found a way to make it work and turn it into something pretty! 

i knit a log cabin with the magic ball, which is basicly a square in garter stitch that is created by picking up stitches on the other side. (for a tutorial, check out this link)... and i think it looks quite nice! a bit messy and scrappy, maybe, but that's the look we're going for, right?

 

 

 now that i have quite a big square, i was wondering what to do next. i think these squares will look best on a neutral background, to tone down all these colors... probably grey, or black. i made a little sketch to see what works best, but it is so hard to judge. so i think, once i have enough squares, i will just try and see what looks best... but i think it will make a lovely scrap blanket either way!

 i'm already collecting scraps for my next magic ball, i'm almost finished with this one. :)

talking about scraps: i'm also saving my sock yarn scraps... too pretty to throw away and i reaaaaally want to knit a pair of mismatched socks someday. :)

what about you? do you keep your yarn scraps?

last year i started collecting all my yarn scraps (literally anything that is long enough to tie together, everything else is collected in a plastic bag and will be repurposed as toy stuffing)... 

i tied all scraps together using a russian join... (have you heard about a russian join? it's brilliant, every knitter or crocheter should know how to do this)

... and i ended up with this... probably the ugliest ball of yarn i've ever seen. 

and i LOOOVE it!!

(apparently this is what you call a "magic ball" because you never know which colour comes next)

and now i'm trying to figure out a way to turn this "pretty ugly" magic ball into a "ugly pretty" project! :)

so, the baby cardigan is ready! i never knit this fast, i was so curious about the construction and lace parts on the yoke)...  i just couldn't put it away. :)

 

i finished it with fuchsia buttons, sticking to the "pink" theme. (picking buttons was so hard, i tried yellow, blue and green to tone down all the pink, but nothing worked.)

the lace parts were fun to knit, i really had to focus and count stitches, but only for some time, and then i could knit a lot of stockinette again. the perfect mix of easy and challenging. :)

 

 

i was actually planning on giving it away, but i don't think i can do it. :)

some weeks ago i received the nicest package ever. a big box stuffed with yarn! Himiko sent it to me, she cleaned out her yarn stash and sent all her leftovers to me! just because! after 3 years of blogging i'm still amazed of all the friendship and generosity in blogland. :)

but, just look at all this yarn! lots of pastel colours (which is great, cause pastels are not colours i would pick myself) and some good quality yarns like Phildar!

 

there was quite some baby pink Phildar yarn, so i decided to knit a cute baby cardigan!

 here's one sleeve...

 and here's the other...

and some lace details on the body.

i'm loving this knit, it's going incredibly fast because i'm so eager to finish it and to see how it turns out. verrrry girly and pink, that's for sure! :)

(pattern: Maile sweater by What to knit when you're expecting)