5/25/2008

CO - waterfall


I'm thinking of calling these bloody waterfalls, just because of the color (this oh sooo beautiful dark red color, somehow like cherries but so much deeper, love it), but I guess this is a little too morbid for me, so they're just 'normal' waterfalls, nevertheless, casted on yesterday and almost made it about 10 cm / 4" into the patern. Love how the color works on this pattern, and am curious what they will wear like.
Also it's my first attempt on magic loop, at first I had some serious difficulties with handling the two balls of yarn and the needles, everything seemed to get entangled all the time, but it's getting better and also my worries of having ladders (which I don't have with DPNs) now seem all forgotten: they're just not there! =) even without any extra tugs and stuff, actually I figure it's pretty helpful to give a little less tension on the first two stitches.


btw when searching google and ravelry for tips and tricks on magic loop I came across ML, which soooo much more reminds me of Mona Lisa, instead of Magic Loop

5/23/2008

swatching out of town

No big news, just a new swatch. This time for a new pair of stockings. Going for the waterfall and want to make it knee-high. I finished this swatch this morning just before I headed for Bremen to see a session on a congress full of eye doctors. It was intereting but the nearly eight hours in the car for the journey I guess I could have spent better (didn't have ma knitting r even crochet with me).

Nevertheless the swatch, love the color of the yarn, don't you?


and this is something very nice close to the venue: a huge elephant (I've expected donkeys, dogs, cats and roosters, but elephants are cool)


5/20/2008

flower pot - nine: nearly FO

it's nearly done! The flower pot grew and it's the first post this month on flower potti - can't really believe it. Well knitting is tempting and can really consume so much time without me realizing it (it just doesn't need as much looks onto the pattern)

What I've done in the meantime: I've made the earthball, that will hold the flowers to the pottery.


and the ball of 'earth' put into the pot:


it's supposed to fit into th pot, you might need to change the pattern, that I give here, since the pattern I made is for bulbous flower pots.

what I did:

the Ball of Earth

1 -- make 6 sc into dr
2 -- (m2) x6
3 -- (m2, sc1) x6
4 -- (m2, sc2) x6
5 -- (m2, sc3) x6
6 -- sc2, (m2, sc4) x5, m2, sc2
7 -- (m2, sc5) x6
8 -- sc3, (m2, sc6) x5, m2, sc3
9 -- (m2, sc7) x6
make 6 rows = sc 54
16 -- (sc2tog, sc7) x6
17 -- sc3, (sc2tog, sc6) x5, sc2tog, sc3
make 5 rows = sc 42
23 -- (sc2tog, sc5) x6
24 -- (sc2tog, sc4) x6
25 -- (sc2tog, sc3) x6
26 -- (sc2tog, sc2) x6
27 -- (sc2tog, sc1) x6
stuff
28 -- sc2tog x6
BO

what you might change:

if your flower pot has a bigger circumference at the bottom, you might need to increase one or two more rows. the circle made should be almost as big as the bottom of your flower pot, but not equally big or even bigger. It will stretch when stuffed. Then just make several rows until the hight of your crochet will be as high as the pot you use. If your flower pot has a tapering form you also should increase one row in the midde of your crochet (six increases evenly spread) or one row every third part of your flower pot. When reached the desired hight just decrease six stitches every row (see row 16 and following).
You're done!

=)

Now you need florists wire, I've used something that's already cut into pieces:


wind the wire around a pencil and bend it just like in the picture. This bended part will be positioned in the pistil of the flower heads.


Before finally sticking the wire into the flower stems fix the lawn onto the earth ball and sew both together. When done "screw" the wire into the flowers, start at the pistil and carefully screw the bended wire into the flower heads, this bending will keep the wire from sticking out accidently.

I guess you're done, the flower pot is ready to use.

5/17/2008

Me can see - yeah!!!


Mommy finally made eyes for me, I am the happiest hermit crab around the whole baltic sea, yeah!, can you see me jump for joy, juppidoodaa.
aren't they beautiful? my cute eyes?, I love them plus I can see clearly now (couldn't resist the pun ^_^)


Also mommy send out the pattern for me to test crochet, so pretty soon you can make me too, or make me friends, or . . . or just play with me.




Also let me say a few words about my petrol colored razor vest thing: I'm stuck. I would like to start the collar shaping but have no idea how to do this. The collar would start in the middle of a row, so I would bind off a few stitches and continue the row as usual BUT since the row marker is under the arm it means that when turning my work to continue flat I would have to purl my lace pattern and I don't have a clue how to make this work. Also I don't like the idea of placing the stitches of the back on holders so I would make the collar shaping for both sides before starting on shaping for armholes. I guess I need to try this on other yarn before going back to my vest, but if any of you has an idea for better solution, let me know.
desperate Me

5/12/2008

on sweethearts and nesting vests

Hope everybody had such a fantastic whitsun as I had.
My sweethearts has been here this last weekend and we spend some great time at the beach and with each other (we only come to see each other once a month and so it's been more than fantasitic this time we had sunny weather, last time we met there was a deep depression)

some beach impressions (well one impression, just realizing pics of the beach all look the same somehow, and I am not sure if I can post pics of the other bathers)



a lonely dandelion



and my knitting, which obviously didn't grow much, but it slowly transforms into a vest, already nearly two skeins knitted again.

5/05/2008

17.940 sts gone with the wind

that's all that's left from my cami


it's three balls of yarn again -- for some reason I wanted to know how much effort was put into this: 115 rows of nice knit work frogged, that is about eighteenthousand stitches frogged and wound into balls again, sigh

but there's always a rainbow at the end of every rain, this cami will turn into a vest, changed ribbing and shortend main stitch, it's gonna be beautiful (I hope)


uuuuh, and you can see my new interweave knits has arrived =) - it's in the right upper corner

5/04/2008

little bunny pattern

lil bunny parade

USD 5.00
add to cart --- show cart
finally I finished the pattern for the little bunny, that is so cute you just wanna eat it all up. It would be great for your Easter decoration as it looks like chocolate.
The pattern comes with full instructions and is written in english. It comes as immediate download in .pdf format.
If you find to have any difficulties crocheting little bunny don't hesitate to contact me, I'll do my best to help you out.

14" of Razor



my cami grows, yesterday I spent a whole lotta time knitting this thing and making the decreases and figuring out where to increase again and finally I just made the increases where I 'felt' they would be good positioned. Well I need to try this on again, it looks so damn small, and I think it will be small, I just hope it won't be too small.


EDIT: aaaaaaaaarrrrrgh -- I will need to frog this, I just tried it on and it IS too small, I mean it fits perfectly well when worn, it supports my shape of the body, the waist shaping looks good, but unfortunatly the waist shaping is what makes it too small: it just took me about ten (!!!) minutes to put it off again - TEN LOST MINUTES.
Sigh, I don't like to frog it, although it might be just the right thing to do, I never enjoyed the ease of the ribbing, this overstretching isn't mine and therefore I can alter this as well, but if I feel like doing this today I don't know
btw: this would make a beautiful corset or a caridgan, it only needs to be openable.

EDIT 2: I'm this close to frog this lovely piece of smallness. I tried the russian bind off (never made this before, normally just use a bigger needle than the piece itself, but the russian one looks pretty cute and is flexible enough to be great for this project.) Also I figure I could knit this up into a pullunder (is this english?) to wear over my blouses. I would like a cabled ribbing too.

5/01/2008

Petrol, a Razor Cami


the last two evenings I made swatches for the Razor Cami, I like this shirt alot and the fact that it needs no shaping made me tempt to start on this one. Also I figure it's a good start to get back into my knitting tension since I didn't made a knitting stitch since last august and I really want to finish my green fishnet stocking soon (but don't dare to start on a difficult pattern without my normal knitting feeling).
Sooooo, after making my swatches and realizing I will need a 3mm needle to get gauge and thinking alot about the no-shaping thing and my hips I decided to use different needle sizes to have shaping without actually really shaping.
So I started on the ribbing with a 3.5mm needle and wanted to continue for a few inches of the lace pattern as well. It looked very small and so I tried it on and even though the ribbing stretches enormously the lace pattern looks really fine. And so I decided that I will do shaping, the pattern itself actually screams for some shaping, it won't be very hard to do only a few decreases before and after the YOs and increasing again when shaping the bust section.
Also I need to mention that I altered the lace stitch in this pattern. It calls for a sl-k2tog-psso and I didn't like the right leaning of the loops with my yarn so I changed it to a sl2-k1-p2sso (slip 2 at a time and also passing the 2sts over together), this way I have a loop that is in the middle and on top of the decreases. Love it