Brioche Hat Madness and Plans for 2016

Brioche Hat Madness

The last couple of weeks I was rather productivly knitting! Hats are great projects for gifts, they are finished in a reasonable time and give this feeling of accomplishment :)

I discovered the pattern Liguria by Katrin Schubert on ravelry, and immediately had to try this. It was my first time knitting two-color brioche and I fell completely in love. If you have never tried this, you really really should!
What came afterwards was that my family  asked for getting hats like that one too, but in their favorite color.... so all in all I knit three Ligurias!

My second Liguria in "The Grateful Dead" colors for my dad (Madelinetosh DK Baltic and a leftover red yarn from my stash)

the first Liguria I made in Madelinetosh DK Baltic & Grasshopper

my third Liguria made for my mum in Madelinetosh DK Lepidoptra

After that I wanted to have new hat for myself as well, and I dyed some DK weight yarn in two beautiful browns for it. I also used 2color brioche, but this time without a pattern, just started knitting:

dunkel dk in "old leather book"

dunkel dk in "my boyfriends guitar"

improvised 2color brioche hat in my favorite browns

 In between all those hats, I even managed to knit a pair of socks, which I really love! I used the very popular free pattern Hermione's Everyday Socks from ravelry and my own plant dyed sock yarn:

plant dyed sock yarn (birch leaves and indigo) photographed in summer 2015

plant dyed socks photographed in winter 2015 (the summer colors are more accurate for sure!)

"Dunkel yarns"

Recently I also got much more into yarn dyeing with acid dyes. I am having so much fun with it, and I love the layered semisolid look of the yarns.
Not so much spinning, as spinning only white fibers can be quite boring. And I want to dye yarns this time around, not rovings :)
Maybe soon there will be some handdyed yarns in my etsy shop, it's long overdue that I revive that shop again!

dunkel dk in "rainy day", "my green sofa" and "hay bale"

my absolute favorite: "rainy day"

"rainy day" photographed in the sun

Plans for 2016

I will spend the beginning of the upcoming year once more in the hot summer of Brazil! Nevertheless I have plans for knitting, especially during the 12 hour flight. I am planning to make a stripey cardigan out of my handdyed dunkel dk yarns. Just top down, raglan increases, a bit  of bust shaping and color changes, similar to the paulie cardigan on ravelry.

Other than that, I have the goal to make more garments in the next year. I just love knitted cardigans, and hardly ever make any, because I am afraid it would take too long. So that should change!

A beautiful pattern on my radar is the hooded cardigan Kerrera by Gudrun Johnston. Such an amazing design! I am planning to knit it out of Madelinetosh Vintage.

Other plans? Be happy and enjoy what I am doing. And to finish my PhD :-P

Wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Time is flying... or standing still?

The last few weeks my life was a high speed train, buzzing from one topic to the next.
Somehow we have arrived in November now and it feels like I did a non-stop trip from summer to autumn... Now let me write a blog post to summarize what happened in the last couple of weeks (or better months?).

 Time is flying...

In August I was busy searching a new appartment. My renting contract was running out by end of September due to a planned demolition of the building. Luckily, I found a new place in a nice calm area, well connected to public transport. Finding affordable appartments to rent in the city of Zurich is a really hard and tiring thing.


By the beginning of September my boyfriend arrived. We haven't seen each other for eight months (long distance relationship), so this was quite a change (a good one though!)

Right after he arrived, we had to start packing boxes and getting ready for the move. Luckily it went all very smoothly, thanks to my great dad, brothers and friends!

One secret truth was revealed to everybody who helped though: I own more wool than shoes, clothes and bags all together...

my life in boxes (half of them contain wool).

Soon after the move we travelled for a weekend to Stresa, Italy to attend a wedding. This place was just amazing!!

Borromean islands in Stresa, Italy.

The weekend after that I had to leave for a conference to Rio de Janeiro to give a talk about my research project, and all the weeks before this trip were already filled with a loooot of work, "last" experiments, more last experiments, confusing results, burning fuses in my brain, ....until I was ready for the talk.
The trip itself was also quite exhausting... 15hours of flying, commuting from hotel to the conference and searching food in a bustling city....

View from the roof top of my hotel in Rio.

I was glad to be back home in the end!
And then October was here... no crazy travels anymore this month, but still a lot of work while starting to set up the new home and enjoying times together with my boyfriend :)
This is how we finally arrived in November.

(photo taken by my adorable boyfriend)

Time was standing still 

... when it came to my crafting activities.
I am so sorry for everybody who is waiting for something they ordered from me :(

Somehow I just couldn't move on even with the most simple projects, and I was too exhausted in my free time to pick up spinning or knitting. I think every crafter knows these phases, don't you?

There was this short-sleeve raglan jacket I finished already in August. It is technically finished, but I should secure all the ends of the stripes with sewing thread, because unfortunately i cut the threads too short :(
Promise to myself: leave enough thread for darning ends in the future!!!

The yarn I died myself with indigo, and the jacket will be for my mum:

indigo cardigan

Then there is this "birch tree" shawl I am designing, using yarn died with birch leaves and indigo. I made quite fast progress in the beginning, but the last weeks it was just lying around. It travelled to Italy and to Brazil with me, but I didn't even pick it up once!!!

birch tree shawl

birch tree details

Then there was an old friend of mine asking me to make a hat for him and one for his daughter. He wanted simple, stockinette stitch hats, in greens or browns. Simple and fast, you think? It took me weeks to get it done, I really don't know why... But finally I managed to finish the second one and then I shipped them so quickly that I even forgot to take a picture :D

hat knitting

Spinning projects.... My wheel was just turning just a veeeeery little bit.
There were these gradient rolags I handcarded myself out of a kettle dyed Merino roving. In July I spun more than 3/4 of the rolags on one weekend, but since then I could never do more than one rolag a day (about 1-2g). So it moved on veeeeery very slowly.
It is the bobbin on the right, and I hope to get to ply it soon (I honestly forgot which colors are hiding under the purple):

spinning

(The bobbin on the left shows the single spun from a handcarded tweedy batt back in July. I didn't get to ply it yet.)


I don't want my crafting timeline to stand still anymore, and hope to be able to put more work into my wooly projects in the next couple of weeks!

Happy autumn to everyone!

** Epona **

By the end of 2014 I took the Craftsy online class "Shawlscapes" which is taught by Stephen West.  I really enjoyed this class, Stephen is such a funny instructor and I had to watch all the lessons at once!

In the class you learn how to design your own top-down shawl with Stephen West's techniques. He talks about how to use increases (yo, m1r/m1l, ktbl etc.) and distribute them in order to achieve certain shawl shapes (triangle, long wingspan, semi-circular, shawls with more than one "point", etc.). How to play with color, how to go crazy and improvise a bit. And finally there are a lot of helpful tricks that you can use also in other projects than shawls.

Well, after watching this, of course I wanted to design a shawl. And I wanted to make it for my sister!
I took notes of it too, but I'm not sure I could write a pattern out of them :-P
I'm not even sure if I could knit it again to be exactly the same... :- S


Here it is:

The yarn is  Merino 150 from Lang Yarns (Sport weight) and I used 4.0 mm needles.

I did "double increases" at the beginning and end of the row to get a wider wingspan. In the beginning I used yarn-overs and decreases to create this wavy "peacock" pattern. Afterwards there are some garter stitch sections, along with intuitive color changes to create the stripes. The shawl was finished by a section of seed stitch followed by two ribs of garter stitch in contrasting colors, and finally a pretty i-cord bindoff (was my first time, and I loved it!)

The finished scarf got the name "Epona".

I like to generate random names using this website here: *click* 

When it came up with the name "Epona", I thought it couldn't be more perfect. My sister is the biggest horse lover I know :)

I also made some fingerless gloves for my sister, to match the shawl, but forgot to take pictures of them...

They are in the lavender purple shade and are finished with a dark brown i-cord like the shawl.

 

Here's the link to the shawl in my ravelry projects. If you also watched "Shawlscapes" and got inspired, I would be happy to hear from you and see the shawl that you produced :)

Wave after Wave - Swap/KAL in the chantimanou ravelry group

Quite some time has passed without a blog post. I had the pleasure to spend my Christmas/ New Year holidays in Brazil where my boyfriend lives and where it is summer right now.

During the 12 hour flight from Zurich to Sao Paulo I cast on the "Wave after Wave". I could use the flight very efficiently and finished about 3/4 of the scarf :)
I did 11 repeats using 5.5 mm needles. The pattern is super easy and perfect for knitting "out of home", but at the same time, knitting the waves using short rows is a lot of fun, so that I didn't even use the on-board entertainment system on the plane :-P

Here are the pictures of my finished scarf! After blocking, it became a lot longer than I originally intended... it measures 206 cm x 20 cm. Perfect to wrap twice around the neck!

I have written a post about the yarns that I spun for that project here. The thread about this swap on ravelry (where you can admire the projects of all the other participants) is here.

Bulky Mini Poncho

And another update today :)

This is what I made from my first handcarded batts using my new drum carder...

 100% fine Merino wool, dyed in a rainbow gradient by myself

then carded, first each color separately, then blended to get a striped batt

These are the batts, which were spun into thick slubby singles

The bobbins before plying

And the yarrrrrrn, 2ply colors a bit random... 

And this is what I knit out of it: a cute mini poncho with strings for size adjustment.

Below are two pictures of me showing to different ways to wear it:

The wonderful texture of the knitted fabric

Soo this was a quite fast project compared to others, as it was spun very thick (100g, 216 m) and then knit with 10 mm knitting needles. I cast on 66 stitches and knit in the round until I almost ran out of yarn. Then I added one row of purl, on row of *k4, yo, k2tog* and another row of purl stitches. Afterwards I bound off loosely. Through the holes created in the yarn over round, I put a string with two wooden beads. Finished!

Hope you like it and it inspires you. Knitting bulky is so much fun!

Robin Hoodie finished!

After many months of knitting I finally managed to finish the Robin Hoodie.
On a beautiful walk through the botanical garden of Zurich last weekend, I took some pictures of Gabriel wearing it :)

The yarn used for this was Lang Yarns Cashmere Tweed (35% cashmere, 65% merino extrafine). It took me 1170 meters, and I made the size "Robin Hood" (described in the pattern). It really pays off to knit (and wash) a gauge before starting this sweater :)

Cabling Without Cable Needle

About 6 months ago I began to knit this fabulous sweater from Audry Nicklin. It looks rather complex but the pattern is written so well that I would say it is easy to make for knitters who have just a bit of cabling experience.

Up to this project I always did cable patterns with the help of a cable needle.
In this sweater you need to cross stitches almost in every round, so I thought it would be helpful to find a way of speeding this up - cabling without the help of a cable needle!

There are several ways to do that. Here are some good videos that show different techniques:

From the DROPS tutorial library:

Or this one by elizzza which I liked most (sorry, it's in German):

 I used a mix of different techniques for the different kinds of stitch crossings in this pattern. I hope you will find this useful :)