Vacation time

I haven't been online for quite a while. Not much knitting either. Here come some pictures of the places where I have spent my time.

Sea breeze summer cardigan

Small summer short sleeved cardigan. I knitted it sideways in short rows with organic cotton.

Cranberry red cabled vest

I just love this pattern. I like to knit it and I like the fabric it creates. Star stitch pattern itself is my recent times favourite and cables are always nice to knit and look at.

I still plan to make pattern notes and put together charts for cables. Haven't got anywhere further than some chart designing at the moment. I won't have time to deal with it for another couple of weeks but I really hope to make .pdf then and put it available here.

Hair bow in pink

By request I made this hair bow. Did crocheted square and tied with crochet chain and joined at the back on three strands of crocheted chains. Pink and girly is all that matters to a 2 year old.

Obsession with details and re-knitting

I hate details and love them at the same time. It's unbelievable how much time I am able to spend on such simple things as sewing in zipper or choosing, selecting, arranging and sewing buttons. I like to do that but I wish I could take those things easier.

Another issue is re-knitting. While knitting I continuously improve the piece in my head. Often those thoughts about ways how this or that could have been done better become impossible to ignore. The only option then is to frog back and knit from the start (or middle if I'm lucky).

I ripped back about 15cm of the dress knitted in the round (5 yr size) only because I thought ssk would look nicer than k2tog tbl. That part looks as this now instead of zig zag k2tog tbl would create.

I often knit and sort of design as I go along. Sometimes (if not always) I have knitted pretty large piece until I realized I had to do something different (usually at the very beginning). For this top I knitted, ripped back and re-knitted again cabled yoke part several times until got cable allocation and proportions as I wanted.

I knitted hood for this cardigan once and was not satisfied how increases in side parts turned out. At first I had done them symmetrically and in the centre of hood side sections. Ripped back and started again with increase lines allocated closer to the outer part on the each side of the hood. Then to finish hood with sideways knitted edge I had to do it three times until it looked smooth enough. Too many slipped and knitted together stitches and too many techniques to choose from. I guess I could have knitted another cardigan in the time I devoted to hood improvements :)

Featured on MadeIt

Today my fingerless mittens have been included in featured front page picks in MadeIt, Australian handmade online market. First time I've ever been on front page other than my blog :)

Knitted pug dog

This week I knitted small stuffed pug dog for a little girl. Pattern is from the book Knit Your Own Dog and I should say it involved a lot of sewing. Knitting was the easiest part :)

Cinnamon cardigan

I have finished Cinnamon jacket, a test knit for Elena Nodel. I used the yarn I dyed and showed in this post. It was rather quick knit and I had two main distractions to post it here earlier. I couldn't find nice buttons (still hope to come over nicer ones and replace these temporary ones) and I couldn't make little girl to agree to do photos. Modelled shots are running as always.

I feel sorry that yarn was just enough to finish garment and I couldn't make pockets as pattern suggests.

Design is pretty and simple yet very eye catching and with beautiful clear lines. The pattern will be released some time in the next months. Check designer's website for updates :)

Here are the pictures:

Evolution of the Butterfly Cardigan

I just realized I hadn't shared the history of butterfly cardigans here. As I have some kind of creative crisis right now I might as well put the pictures of butterflies way back then and now. Nevertheless I hope soon my mojo returns and I will have some new ideas to share.

2008. First cardigan with butterflies. Obviously I was not into taking good photo shots then.

2010. Butterfly cardigan #2 meant to replace #1. My daughter didn't like it for whatever reasons. It is made from really nice organic cotton in lovely blue colour with a touch of purple. I am looking for loving new owner or if noone claims it I shall keep it for couple of years until my youngest has grown up to the size.

2011. Another #2 which is really loved by my daughter. It is almost her uniform to preschool in these chilly days :)

 2011. #3 or #4 :) Tested how it looked with no hood and with short sleeves. More pictures and info in this post.

My first attempt to dye yarn

This is definitely not a tutorial how to dye yarn. Rather notes about what not to do :)

Skein before dyeing. I actually had 4 skeins and I dyed them all at once. That is one thing you definitely should not do! My skeining skills are almost non-existant and I somehow failed to read and follow info on Google, how to do that properly. There is an excellent information about dyeing and also skeining.

This is yarn pot heating and first portion of yarn already taken out. I was aiming to make semi-solid browns, so idea was to take bit by bit gradually out of colouring and get one end of skein light and the other one much darker with all kinds of shades in middle.

Rinsing. No bleeding at all. Maybe I did not use enough colouring.

Today we had windy and cold day. Not good for outdoor activities but magical for skeins to dry. It took just about 1h and yarn was ready to be wounded into balls.

My 4yo arrived home this afternoon. My already far from neat skeins suffered even more.

Ball wounded. Surprising that skeins were not that tangled as one could think judging by looks and wounding was rather easy.

Sample knitted. Instead of semi solid I have got self striping yarn. Eh.