Hitofude in Curry!

Happy Birthday to me!!!*

 *my b-day was yesterday, but I did finish all the knitting before midnight!

Holidays made me too lazy to write a long post, so let me do a quick list:

• Yarn:  Mirella by Włóczki Warmii. 100% virgin merino, hand painted. I cannot describe how gorgeous, soft and overall wonderful this yarn is! I'd say I prefer it over the Malabrigo Sock!
• Colourway: Curry. Mirella is made in small dye lots, there's no telling if there will ever be a "curry" batch again.

• Needles: 3,5mm - all the way.
• Pattern:  Hitofude Cardigan by Hiroko Fukatsu. Very well written!
• Size made: M
• Changes to pattern: I did 10 repeats for sleeves (less than in pattern), because I was afraid to run out of yarn...

• ...which did not happen and I squeezed in 32 extra rows.
• I used 274grams in total.
• Additional rows were added by continuing increases in the same fashion as in charts B-E.
• It took me 37 days to complete :)

As always - thanks to my husband, who accompanied me into the garden, despite the dreadful weather. Easter was quite beautiful, but so cold, and unpredictable this year!

Now I can wait for warmer days, to show my best-looking-cardi-so-far to the world!

And while I wait I have 1500 metres to wind...

It is scratchy and smells of oil, but it will turn into an amazing... something. I'm not sure yet, but I'm definitely going for narrow stripes!

Happy Easter to y'all!

And have a nice afternoon!

Gosia.

The Sunniest Sunday!

Of course I am referring to April the 2nd, which was the sunniest, warmest Sunday you can dream of in April. We spiced up our short spring trips tradition, and went not only to visit our favourite park (as we did countless  times  before), but also...

We went to Narrow-gauge Railway Museum!!! And we managed to buy tickets for a short ride through forest! This place is extremely popular among families, especially on Sundays, so tickets are sold out quickly.

We had to wait for our turn for a while, so we had time to peek into every corner of the station.

We also had the opportunity to meet the dog who lives there. He greets every returning train with his wiggling  tail, and he is not at all bothered by hundreds of people going in and out.

"Why should I be? I OWN the place"

So we finally squeezed into  a tiny carriage, and went for a short, VERY LOUD trip.

It was worth all the waiting, and so so much fun! 

The train part did not take us long, and we continued this lovely afternoon in our favourite park..
We were lucky to find the last parking spot on the parking lot (yay to me for squeezing in!).

This time of the year sunlight reaches the bottom of the forest, so it is full of white and yellow flowers. And it smells of garlic because of the Bear's garlic (or wood garlic) that grows almost all around.

Last week we completed all of our new apartment paperwork, and now we just have to move in.

Unfortunately I will have to leave Korek at my parent's place. He is a 9-years-old doggo, and it would be cruel to take him away from his very own garden. I will visit him often though! It is less than a kilometer away.

I did make him a sorts of a parting gift:

A Blanket of Shame! I started a while ago, and it was meant to be a sweet vengeance for all yarn balls he stole and drooled upon. I used all pinkish acrylics I could find, and combined them in simple C2C crochet blankie. I used the Corner to Corner C2C Corner Start Tutorial by Lauri Bolland.  And I am very pleased with the result.

So is the new owner! :) He took it away while I tried to get a decent picture.

He surely looks great in pink!

Have a nice afternoon!

Gosia.

PS.: Guess who's getting a set of interchangeables for birthday next week? Aaand who got himself a complementary skein of hand painted artistic yarn? :3

The Annual First Bee Day 2017... was three weeks ago!

I knew it! Apparently First Bee of 2017 was waiting for my previous post release... and showed up just one day later - on March 5th.

Ok, this may be considered cheating, because hyacinths were bought in a flower shop. But we have other flowers as well:

I mentioned buying fancy yarn in my previous post. As a 100th post celebration, or simply because I deserve some squishy goodness after this horrible winter! After hours of picking, calculating, terrorizing my husband with countless links I finally found what I was looking for - Mirella by Włóczki Warmii. Fingering weight 100% virgin merino wool, hand painted in Poland. Colorway "Curry". Yummy!

Shipping was really fast. I ordered on Saturday night, and the parcel was delivered on Tuesday afternoon. Luckily  I had a day off after a night shift, when I came back home to this:

Since skeins were a bit too long for traditional one-chair winding I had to create a Wind@tron 2.0. I swear one day I'll try winding my skeins with hand mixer!

It took me about two hours to wind all 1200meters into three neat balls.

Being done with all that I was finally able to start working on the Hitofude Cardigan by Hiroko Fukatsu. I decided not to slip any stitches at the beginning of each row, and I consider it to be a good decision so far.

 

I'm working simultaneously with all three skeins - that forced me to cut thread twice after joining sleeves. No regrets though - yarn is an absolute pleasure to work with, and result is just gorgeous! It has tiny specks of red and green - just like real curry! 

So far I manager to finish sleeves (did 10 instead of 12 repeats), and start body increases. I still have 160g of yarn left, which should be enough to complete the cardi as intended.

I hope that my next post will be one of those "ta-daaaah" posts! Also, my birthday is getting closer, and I might get myself something... nice :)

I'm running back my to knitting! Stupid daylight savings time took away a precious hour of my free weekend!

Have a nice afternoon!

Gosia.

100th post! And one less WIP!

Yay! Here's my 100th blog post!
I promised something special for today, haven't I?
And what can be more special and appropriate for celebration than...
A FINISHED ADULT-SIZED GARMENT? For me?!

Pattern is called  Ahelad (Chains) by Anna Kuduja. It's available for purchase on Ravelry. Very well written, easy to follow. After one repeat I just tossed the chart in my project bag and worked on my own. It is also easy to modify.

I wanted to make size M at first but ended up with S (both sizes start with the same no. of stitches - lucky me!). It's a wise decision since cotton is quite heavy and it grew faster than I knitted! :)

For this project I used  FibraNatura Cottonwood  in bottle green - 100% organic cotton, DK. Ravelry marked this one as "discontinued" but in Polish yarn shops there's still plenty left! I fell in love with this dark, rich green.
It's very pleasant to work with, splits a bit but nowhere close to what I expected.

What surprised me was the needle size. When I started my knitting adventure I was a tight-knitter. Now I worked DK weight yarn with 3,5mm (flat) and 4mm (in round) needles... and fabric is soft and drapey!

Also.. the stitch definition is just amazing!

I used almost 7 skeins - 350grams. I'm keeping the last one in case I would like to add some length to it after washing.

As always thanks to my husband who took all the pics! This time Korek seemed eager to help...

But it turned out he was just in it for cuddles!

Oh, you!

Now that I completed 2 WIP's over just two weeks I can finally buy more yarn!

Have a nice afternoon!

Gosia.

PS.: Spring is nigh, I tell ya! I'm already on lookout for The First Bee of 2017!

I'm still alive... and the Giant Owl Blanket is DONE!

Oooh... so it's February now?
Last two months have been crazy. Many things changed. Some for good - we're getting our own apartment in three months, and some for worse - we lost our little friend - Tiny Tina.

Farewell my fuzzball :(

All this made me a bit to busy to blog. Sorry!

In this post from October 2nd I wrote that "I secretly hope this winter will be colder than the last one, so I will be able to use my shawl often, without risking overheating."
I hereby want to sincerely apologize! I have had it with this winter!!!
It's either this:

Or this...

By "this" I mean that grey haze over my lovely town. Smog is a serious issue this year.

Ok, enough whining!
I promised myself to not reveal my Giant Owl Blanket before it's new owners see it first... but I just can't help myself.

I joined the Sunshine Owl CAL a bit too late and in the end I followed instructions up to week 5. Then the blanket got a bit too big for a newborn blankie.

Here you can clearly see when I  started improvising, and lost stitch count. Oh flaring... I wanted to frog it at first, but then I thought - no one is going to lay it this flat!

For some reason my owl turned too big for the center so I did some shortcuts here and there:

And here's one more look at edges:

For this project I used 100% acrylic yarn  Ince by Bonbon in DK weight. It's not a top-notch yarn but colors are vibrant and pure, it also is very even and works up quickly. It went great with a 4mm hook (4,5 mm for two green sections - lacy ones). The whole thing is HUGE - 120x120cm. And that is not the entire pattern!

It took 510g of yarn - I purchased one skein of each color - 10 skeins in total. Looks like someone will make another blankie!

My next post will also be the 100th post! That calls for some celebration. Of course I'll do my best not to write it in April!

Have a nice afternoon!

Gosia.

PS.: Korek says "hello" :)

Great Bear Makeover.

Since I started working over a month ago, my free time is reduced to few hours a day. The fact that it gets dark before I even finish my dinner doesn't help either.

But enough whining! I did something very special today.
Mom asked me if I still had my pillows that I bought for stuffing amigurumi. "Sure, what do you need stuffed?"
And she gave me this:

That is my dearly beloved teddy bear! I can't even estimate his age. I'm 100% sure I had him already in 1995 when I went to preschool. And he wasn't in much better shape back then :)
Over years he lost the nose, along with most of his volume. My grandma did her best to rescue him on multiple occasions. But let's make it clear - there was no fiberfill back in 1990s!

I didn't even had to cut him open, because he was already torn on the side, and partially decapitated.

[warning: graphic image]

Inside I found multiple hard chunks of old stuffing, some cloths and even piece of a sleeve(?).

Here's a picture of my flattened bear - as you can see he wasn't much better before:

I used two types of filling: older low quality one I got from an old pillow - I put it in limbs, because it is thicker and holds shape better. Head and belly were filled with the best fiberfill I could find. I did some stitching and to my surprise...

...I discovered that my bear was designed to sit on his own. He NEVER did!

In case you wonder why is he nameless - as a kid I rarely named my toys.

He wasn't just a bear though, he was the Bear!

Good to have you back, pal!

Have a nice afternoon.

Gosia.

PS.: In my town there's a saying that when sky is red in December - Santa bakes cookies. He's clearly busy this year :))