tini's world of crafts

Jetzt auch auf Deutsch!

2012-01-21T18:29:00.000+01:00

Huhu,

ich podcaste jetzt auch auf deutsch! Bitte hier entlang zum Zwillingsnadelpodcast!

Podcast: Folge 8: Resolutions

2012-01-06T13:23:00.004+01:00

So, here it is, episode 8 of Twinneedle :)

My crafting:

Knitting
Finished objects

Eiki-shawl by Janel Laidman

Borough-inspired mittens by Veronica O'Neil for me

Sewing

Minikrea 20002: girls dresses (pinafore-dresses I guess)

WIPs:

Knitting

Vine-yoke cardigan by Ysolda Teague using the gray handspun I've been talking about forever

Basket check socks by Charlene Church and Beth Parrot from the little box of sox

Sewing

Nearly finished my Simplycity 2451 skirt and started sewing a secret project, that will take a while :)

My knitting stats for 2011:

I finished 16 project and knit up more than 7,5km but I purchased 13km, so I'm up 6 km stashwise...
Bookreview:

I'm reviewing "Freche Masche" by Annette Danielsen. You can find the Designer at http://www.annette.dk. I just love her designs.

My resolutions for 2012:

Finish the books I've started to read. There are 4 half read books on my nightstand....

Twinneedle: Folge 7: christmas tradition

2011-12-21T13:07:00.003+01:00

It's just before christmas, so of course it's time for a christmas special. Since I haven't finished the girls dresses for christmas, this episode will have no editing or minimal editing. Sorry in advance for that.

Here:s the link to the episode.

WIPs and FOs

I finished the little sister dress by Tora Froseth Design and I even took pictures of it.
Yarn: Duvetine by Begeré de France (discontinued)

I started and finished knitting the Borough Mittens by Veronica O'Neil from the Winter bis 2011 edition of Knitty. Yarn: Aran Merino from Das-Wollschaf dyed by me.

The Eiki shawl has seen some progress to (very little though), that means I did get some yarn from a fellow raveler.

Sewingwise I'm madly sewing away at the girls christmas dresses, using the Minikrea 20002 pattern.

Christmas traditions

I talk about Advent wraths, Advent calendars, making cookies and gingerbread houses, Stollen, Straw stars, going to church, books and traditional food for christmas as well as songs :) (no fear: I'm not singing!)

Twinneedle: Episode 6: cruise recap

2011-12-13T19:37:00.002+01:00

Episode 6 is live! You can find it here or on itunes

Knitting

I'm currently working on a Little sister dress by Tora Frøseth Design out of some very deep deep stash yarn (Duvetine from Bergeré de France long discontinued).

During the cruise I also knitted most of the Eiki shawl by Janel Laidman but ran out of yarn and had to re-buy Wollmeise (Oh Tannenbaum).

I did NOT knit Eve or Eisblume or Meisi by Julia Müller since it seems I can't get gauge (started with 2,5mm needles..) but I started them and frogged them, since they were waaay to big.

Sewing

Finished the box bag for the sew along but nothing else. Need to speed up with the dresses for the twins for christmas

Spinning

Finished spinning some handdyed organic Merino dyed by Lollipop by Filzflash

Embroidery (yes I'm multicrafty)

During the cruised I worked on the Advent-calendar I'm making for the girls for next year by Permin.dk

Made in Germany

In this episode I introduce you to Dornröschenwolle

Life in Germany

I have written a short essay about some very special people :)

Chit Chat

General chit chat all the way :)

Danke!

2011-11-16T14:01:00.003+01:00

Heute mal auf Deutsch, weil ich einer ganz lieben deutschen Blogfreundin ein großes Dankeschön schicken möchte.

Julimond-Iris hatte letztens auf ihrem Quiltblog auf diese coolen Nadelkissen verlinkt. Ich musste mir das natürlich ansehen und kann mein Hirn aber nicht dazu bringen, mir zu verraten, wie das geht.

Das musste ich natürlich auch in die Kommentare schreiben und ihr glaubt nicht, was Iris gemacht hat.

DOOOOCH :) Sie hat mir eines geschickt. Es ist traumhaft und kam zu einem total passenden Moment an, da ich derzeit ein bisschen auf dem Zahnfleisch krieche (Kinder ziemlich krank, Mann glaubte ziemlich krank zu sein, hatte 38°C Fieber :) und ich mit einer fetten Erkältung am Tun und Machen. WObei meine Ma gsd. geholfen hat, dafür jetzt aber auch erkältet ist...)

Guckt Euch das Traumteil an:

Twinnneedle Episode 4: No bunny for me

2011-11-06T16:06:00.004+01:00

First: Thank you BJ for your awesome comment on my last post. I'm always happy to learn more about life in different countries and to improve my spelling!! And thanks to all, who joined the ravelry group or left a comment here. It's much appreciated!

So, on to show Nr. 4

You can find the show here at podbean or via itunes

Knitting

I finished my Hitchhiker by Martina Behm out of some of my handspun (the roving came from Spinning Martha and was a gift from Madhatter)

The Eiki-Shawl by Janel Laidman hasn't been knit on and I think about frogging and re-starting it, just using Wollmeise.

New on the needles is a project for a swap using HipKnits Cashmere Sock yarn (discontinued) and a yarn by Phildar called Nanette. Unfortunately it seems, that I'm allergic to Angora :( and I'm going the give away the remaining yarn in the RAK in Europe group on ravelry, once I've finished the project.

I'm also swatching for an afghan...

Sewing

Very little sewing got done but I do make progress on my skirt, that I've talked about in the last 3!! episodes...

And Karrie from the KnitPurlGurl podcast and I are hosting a sew-along at the KnitPurlGurl group on ravelry. We are going to make box-bags for knitting bags. Come and join us!

Spinning

I've plied up 2 more skeins (by now 4!) of the never ending gray Merino and I've swatched again for the Vine Yoke Cardigan

Life in Germany

I talk about the difference between Northern and Southern German states when it comes to public holdidays and why there is a difference and about Northern Germany and the church in general

Made in Germany

I introduce Frau WO aus PO and her shop. I bought some Glitzie from her, that is yummy and sparkly. Mine looks like the top picture on the ravelry page ;)

ChitChat

I forgot that segment :) although I did mention something, that I want to tell you and then I don't but it was a small rant and I can rant in the next episode

Twin Talk

I blather for a couple of minutes on how to calm down babies, swaddling and pacifiers :)

Don't forget to enter the podcast contest! Just leave a comment to win two patterns from Shoponion.com!!!

Twinneedle: Episode 3: To tired to sew (CONTEST!!!)

2011-10-22T14:19:00.006+02:00

Find the episode here or via Itunes!

Work in Progress

Instead of knitting more socks for Socktoberfest I cast on

Hitchhiker by Martina Behm out of some handspun (by yt, roving by Spinning Martha a christmas gift from Madhatter)

and

Eiki by Janel Laidman (who also designed the lovely Rivendell Socks!) out of the two yarns, that I used for my Akimbo by Stephen West

Finished stuff

My Trellis is done!! And by now I had E. modelling the sweater (12 month size, E. is 15 months, can you tell she is very skinny?) I think she looks totally adorable in it :)

The waves and piers socks are also done but I need to take a picture....

Spinning

No spinning but I had problems with my swatch for the Vineyoke cardigan and my skew socks...

Sewing

Still sewing the same skirt as last episode but I'm making progress and I talk about how I made a pattern for the lining

Twintalk

We went to see the peditarian and E. is underweight. Please keep your fingers crossed, that she does not suffer from celiac disease

Made in Europe

I talk about MariaDenmark new shop and she has kindly offered to sponsor a contest. To win two patterns from ShopOnion.com just leave a message here on the blog or become a member our my new Podcast Group on Ravelry (If you read this before October 23, Maria has a coupon for her shop up as well, so you can save 15% I'm going to order Onion 2034 to take on our cruise)

ChitChat

I talk about our cruise and give a Shoutout to Carrie from Knitpurlgurl

Twinneedle Folge 2: Aliens

2011-10-06T16:42:00.006+02:00

I did it :) the second episode is recorded and uploaded!

The episode is here or you can find it via itunes!

Work in Progress

Knitting:

Still knitting on the Trellis cardigan and the waves and piers socks for my Dad but made good progess!

And I'm swatching! Next on my needles will be Skew from Knitty and maybe (if I got row-gauge) the Vine Yoke Cardigan by Ysolda Teague (Twist Collective)

I'm talking a bit about Socktoberfest and the big bad socktober ssk on the stash and burn group on ravelry

Sewing

I finished making my muslin for my Simplicity 2451 skirt and did cut out the "real" skirt

Spinning

I did no spinning at all. Shame on me.

Life in Germany

I talk a bit about Plum Butter and Laternelaufen

Made in Germany

I wax poetic about my favourite spinning supply online store: Das Wollschaf

Chit Chat

First two shout outs to
Susanne from Handgemacht (link to her English Episode)
and to
Rebecca from Work in progress

Shame on me, I forgot to mention Isabelle on the podcast. I will do that in the next episode. SORRRRY! I'm still so nervous...

And I share some exciting news :)

Twin Talk

Why my kids seem to be aliens :)

Twinneedle: Episode 1. Introduction

2011-09-24T15:04:00.009+02:00

Episode Nr. 1 Introduction

Here's the link to podbean!

Dang, the embedded player is not working. The link above should be working.

The podcast is also available via itunes! Maybe this will play directly

My first podcastepisode ever.

Shownotes:

Knitting

1. Trellis by Britta Stolfus Rueschhoff from the Spring 2005 issue of knitty. A very cute little cardigan that I'm making out of Lang Yarns Sari. I need to do a yarn review next episode.

2. Waves and Piers Socks by Charlene Church and Beth Parott from the Little Box of Socks. I'm using "Woll Butt Relax" for those.

Sewing

I'm working on a muslin for a Simplicity skirt, that I traced out of Meine Nähmode. I need to figure out which alterations I need to make and I need to get back into sewing lingo mode :)

Spinning

I'm nearly done with the yarn for the vine yoke cardigan by Isolda Teague but I need to knit a swatch before pyling more yarn. The yarn I have finished looks a bit too bulky....

Music

"Falling" by Slumberland. Used with their permission!

To podcast or to not podcast

2011-09-21T21:22:00.003+02:00

I'm sewing! The 15 minute a day thing works on most days. Not today though, since I have bad headaches.

So, after 3 pills (none of which worked...) I wrapped my head around the idea (pun intended :) ) to podcast. Question is: English or German....

I think I will try to do it in English, so that more people might understand.... What do you think?

15 minute challenge

2011-09-05T09:24:00.004+02:00

First: Thank you Valerie and Rebecca for your thoughts on my pullover. It's in the time-out corner at the moment, since I can't bring myself to work on it again. Valerie, do you have any more information on the shirring? Somehow my brain can't work it out...

And now to the title of this post. Somehow I lost my sewingmojo during pregnancy and it has not come back yet. I've been sewing a bit here and there but with very little output. I need to change that and I hope, by working on some ufos and starting a new project for 15 minutes a day for 4 weeks I will get some mojo back.

Today I will start by clearing up my sewing table and threading my serger with the yarn I need for the top that is 80% done.

I will keep you posted but I guess every 3 days or so, since I won't bore you with teeny tiny progressreports

The sweater,that grew

2011-08-29T13:47:00.004+02:00

Hi everybody,

welcome back :) (just listening to a ton of podcasts ;) )

I know, that it has been a while again but somehow the days just fly by and I seldom have energy left to blog. Mostly I do try to clean, do laundry or just knit a couple of rows when the kids are sleeping during the day and I really enjoy just beeing with DH in the evenings, so no energy left to blog but I digress.

I have FOs to show you. Yeehaaa!!

First: The kids christening jackets. Instead of trying to sew the girls matching dresses (deadlines and sewing just don't match here...) I knitted them jackets to wear over the purchased summerdresses.
Pattern: Baby Mine by Stephanie Pearl McPhee
Size: 6 months width and 12 months length since the girls are so slim :(
Yarn: Schöller & Stahl Bahia, that I got for very little money. The yarn is kind of splitty and I was happy once the second jacket was cast off :)

E. modelling the jacket

I need to see if my BIL has some decent pictures of both girls in the jackets :)
The pattern is very well written and the knitting didn't take too long. Just finding and sewing on buttons took FOREVER.

Next I finished a sweater for me. Out of stashyarn since I did participate in a Sweater KAL on the stash and burn group on ravelry. I really loved the KAL, it kept me focused on the sweater (but that wasn't too hard since I really don't feel like knitting on dads socks...)

The pattern is Sahara by Wendy Bernard. A very cool and clever design. Top Down with set-in-sleeves that you knit on. So no sewing required.

Yarn: GGH Maxima. A really nice 100% Merino superwash
Of course I made a swatch. In fact I swatched twice since my swatch grew when washed.

I tried the sweater on as I went, keeping in mind, that the swatch grew, so I made it pretty snug. After finishing I blocked it lightly. Just soaking it and putting it to dry on a pulloverrack without stretching.

And it grew. The body now fits fine (o.k. I do have a tummy, so it could have grown a bit more there ;) ) but the shoulders? I now have dropped shoulders and they are really unflattering. Man, I'm so disapointed! Gnarf.... I need to figure out how to shorten the shoulderwidth without having to rip back the whole sweater....

Woolfest 2011

2011-08-18T09:43:00.005+02:00

Back in July, I decided to go on a short trip with Sarah-Jane, Barbro and Malin to Woolfest up in Cumbria, UK since Heiko was still on parental leave and Sarah-Jane got a very good rate on a small cottage not too far from the place where Woolfest was held.

I had a blast (even despite the fact, that I again suffered from insomnia and thus beeing grumpy sometimes. I hope Malin and Barbro don't think too bad of me for beeing whiny...)

Sarah has some great pictures up on her blog of the cottage we stayed in, so check out her blog too!

Here are some pictures from Woolfest!

Cumbria hills!
Awesome stalls!
Alpaca and sheep....
Walls next to me on the very steep hills (on the other side it was going downhill). I was pretty carsick all the time...
We spend quite a bit of time in the car and Sarah is an amazing driver. Lucky me :) otherwise I would have died from a heartattack a couple of times.

Funny thing: there were 2 people interviewing Malin and Barbro at the fleece sale (I got 1 1/3 fleeces. A BFL fleece and a third of a Saxxon Merino. So soft, I have had it processed and it came out great!) The people asked if they could take a picture of us and here it is. We are in Knit Magazine (the picture is courtesy of Knitmagazine and I say thank you for allowing me to use it)

Of course I got some yarn but not very much.

Patternreview: Minikrea 20000

2011-08-03T09:43:00.005+02:00

Minikrea is a new Danish Pattern line for babies, toddler and children. I got my pattern from MariaDenmark as a birthday gift. So far I haven't found this pattern only but I bet, that Maria can get you one too if you like
Pattern Description: From the pattern (as far as I can understand it) " easy empirestyle dress with a chic pleat effect at the sleeves, the neckline and at the waist. Great fit and lots of elbowroom. This dress is cute over jeans, leggings, pantyhose or just with bare legs"

My description would me more like: Empiredress or tunic with 3 different options for sleeve length.

I made the tunic, short sleeved version.
Pattern Sizing: 6 months to 3 years (70/80 to 92/98) I made the 1 year size which is 80/86.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? Pretty much.

Were the instructions easy to follow? The instructions are o.k., not overly detailled but that was fine for me. A beginner though might have some problems esp. when it comes to sewing on the elastic at the waist. I divided mine into quarters and pinned them down, since it is a pretty short length of elastic and pretty much fabric.

Two things I found confusing: I did not quite get why there were 2 different patterns for the dress and the tunic since it is basically the same pattern and then I traced and cut out a neckline facing but as far as I could see, there were no instructions on how to use it but something like "fold over the s.a. at the neckline and stitch it down, leaving space for the elastic" but that might be just my bad Danish.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern? While I think the pattern is totally cute it does not work for us since our kids still wear onesies and the neckline is just waaaay to wide (even with the elastic in it), so the onesie does show. Not a look I'm after. I guess once the kids aren't wearing something underneath (or maybe a turtleneck in winter) it would be a very cute look.

Fabric Used: Cotton eyelet. My friend gave me this top she tried to make a while ago and it was huge, so I refashioned it into the tunic for the girls

Pattern alterations or any design changes you made:
None, except that I used the facings.
Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?
I think, I will sew it again. Maybe in a tad heavier fabric for autumn to wear over a turtleneck or I would try to raise the neckline. I gave this one to friends. I do recommend the pattern.

Conclusion: Cute pattern, just not o.k. for us NOW. When they are older I can see them wearing tons of cute dresses and tunics made from this pattern.

And here is E. modelling the tunic

to grant credit

2011-07-30T10:46:00.002+02:00

So, a couple of you know, that I work in the finance busines but that isn't what I've meant with the title.

I stumbled over this thread on Ravelry about Kiva.org. Kiva is an oranisation giving out microcredits to borrowers all over the world. You can lend from 25 USD upwards to a project you choose. It's not a donation but you are granting a credit, so you get (most likely) your money back. Yes, there's a chance of loosing the money but I figured out, I could happily live with the loss of 25 USD.

So, I helped granted a credit for a young woman on the Philipine islands helping her buying pigs. The credit runs for 5 months and I plan to lend the money to the next project if I get it back.

Feels good :)

Baking galore!

2011-07-27T09:39:00.007+02:00

Ha, blogging twice a week and I already have another blogpost planned ;)

I've been baking like a madwoman the last few weeks. The twins christening is coming up and M. Godfather is allergic to eggs, so I've been trying new eggless cake recipes. I found the site egglesscooking.com and it has great recipes.

For the twins birthday I made the whacky vegan chocolate cake and used it as the base for a chocolate-cherry cake

Everybody loved it (plus is actually has no chocolate in it but cacao, so I can have it too :) ) It's moist and spongy. Of course it does not rise as a cake, that has eggs in it but it was great. (My abilities to decorate a cake are open for improvement ;) )

Next I tried the chocolate zucchini bread and boy, that is a total winner. It's again spongy, so rich and so yummy, that I used the recipe to create another zucchini bread with chocolate too and DH and I finished it in no time (zucchinis are so cheap now)

Here's my version (plus it is metric for those in the countries actually using scales ;) )

190gr gram shredded Zucchini (you can peel it if you like but it's not necessary)
100gr all purpose flour
20gr whole wheat flour (I have a bag of whole wheat flour, that I want to finish)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon natron (baking soda)
50gr cacao powder
1 pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Peel of 1 orange (ground) or 1/2 bottle orange extract
60ml canola oil (rapsöl ;) )
60gr unsweetend applesauce (I use Apfelmark from DM for those in Germany)
100gr white sugar
110gr brown sugar
6-8 teaspoons plain yoguhrt
1 teaspoon applecider vinegar (Apfelessig)
50gr Rittersport edelherb (cut into bigger chunks) or any other dark (60+% cacao) chocolate

Preheat your oven to 160°C (ventilated) and grease a loaf pan. Also line the bottom of the loaf pan with baking paper otherwise you will have a hard time getting the bread out of the pan in one piece

Mix all the dry ingredients exept for the sugars and chocloate in a medium sized bowl.

In another bigger bow mix the liquid ingredients and the sugars.

Fold in the shredded zucchini with the wet ingredients.

Add to this the flower mixture with a big wooden spoon until just combined. Do not use a mixer. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Transfer the batter to the loaf pan and bake it between 55-65 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted to the bread.

Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.

The bread is best eaten a day after :)

As for non-eggless things I made buttermilk waffles using a recipe from an older book called "Waffeln".
The recipe just uses 3 teaspoons of sugar, so it was pretty good with my new strawberry-chocolate jam that was inspired by this recipe

The jam is really tasty but the baking chocolate I used overpowers everything, so it's not spicy at all...

For the kids birthday I also made Oreo-Cheesecake cupcakes but they were gone so fast, that I couldn't take a picture...

Next up: Cooking and sewing!

Tour de fleece 2011

2011-07-25T08:06:00.004+02:00

So, the tour de fleece (and the tour de France) is over.
This was my first year participating and I had lots of fun and managed to get more spinning done in the 21 days than I did during the last year. I mostly spun during the kids lunchtime nap or in the evenings.

(for those amongst my readers, who don't spin: the tour de fleece is a big spin-along held on ravelry. There are tons of teams starting and basically you set your own goals and you spin every day the racers of the tour the France are racing :))

My goal was to spin every day and get some work done on some gray Merino roving that I had purchased in 2009 or 2010. I had started on the kilo in January, spinning a bit here and there but I guess I started with around 850gr when the tour begann. Now 21 days of spinning later I have around 30gr left, 5 very full bobbins and 4 big skeins of 4ply yarn:

I needed a break from all that gray roving one day and spun up some samples a fellow spinner from Kiel gave me and plyed it with some left over singles from a previous spinning project. That skein is on the right side of the picture ;)

I'm so happy that I participated and will be in the race next year again (since I got a biiiiig honking ball of roving from Sarah Jane in the loveliest burgundy colour. I need to get a picture of that....)

One

2011-07-15T14:03:00.005+02:00

So, do you know what you did last year on the 15th of July?
Do you remember?
I certainly do:

It's been a rough start but as these two grew things got better and a lot easier.
Happy Birthday M & E! You two are lovely little girls and we love you so much.

a lot of cooking

2011-07-10T12:58:00.006+02:00

attention: lots of food pictures will follow ;)

So I'm still trying to make at least 1 new recipe each week. Some weeks I don't succeed some weeks I make several. It has been pretty warm here, so we mostly have light lunch (read sandwiches) and most evenings I'm just too tired to cook something new but just throw whatever is in the fridge together and improvise but I digress.

What did we have for lunch today? In fact the same thing as yesterday: pasta-salad

The recipe is very yummy. I pretty much followed it as written I only omitted the olives since I just don't like olives. I added mini mozarella-cheese balls instead. We were invited to a pot-luck and everybody thought it was a winner. I agree!

For something a bit more unusual:
Millet with cream

DH and I think, it's a winner too. As you can see I made it with cherries instead of strawberries but since I have tried the strawberry-version and it's great too. The only thing I would (and have) change is leaving the raisins off. Ours were way too hard and didn't enhance the taste at all...

I've been trying new baking recipes as well

This cake is called "Mole-cake" (no moles inside but cherries and bananas) because it's supposed to look like a molehill. The recipe came from "Dr. Oetker Freude am Backen"

The cake is very moist and spongy. Perfect.

And since I do love yeastdough. Apricotswirl-cake

Tonight I'm going to make soup using red bellpeppers and mascarpone... and next week will be baking-galore since the twins first birthday is coming up!

has it been a month?

2011-07-06T09:19:00.004+02:00

Wow, time flies by so fast at the moment. DH is on parental leave and we are doing a lot of projects around the house. Plus I've been in the UK to visit Sarah-Jane and to go to Woolfest in Cumbria with her, Malin and Barbro. (Check out their links for more pictures of our adventure :) )

So, what have I've been up to recently?

I made a doll dress for my godchild
(sorry, for the blurry picture)

It's a free pattern from the internet but I need to search the link as I don't have it on hand at the moment. It was an easy project but A. likes it very much ("my faaaavourite colour!!!")

Next I made 2 project bags for a swap on ravelry:
Again:sorry for the craptastic pictures. The twins are standing up now and reach EVERYTHING, so taking pictures is something I usually do in a hurry before they can reach the things I want to take pictures of

This bag is made from a free pattern by machwerk. (At least I could provide you with the link for that one :) )
And this one is Alma by madhatter, a great ebook. I've made a couple now and I use mine all the time!

But I've also been knitting like a madwoman:

Pattern: Sam by Cookie. A from "sock innovation" (great book)
Yarn: Lorna's laces Shepard Sock Multi

I have to admit, that is not the pattern I intended to knit with the yarn. I wanted to make Wanida (also by cookie a. from the same book!) but I had opened the book on the wrong page and just noticed my mistake when I was done knitting the first leg and was wondering why there wasn't any patterning going on on top of the foot. I was pretty sure that Wandia has patterning on top of the foot, so I checked... go figure. I do like my Sam socks :) and it was too much work to rip it ;)

Pattern: Akimbo by Stephen West
Yarn: Wollmeise 100% in "oh Tannenbaum" (main yarn) and some plantdyed BFL that was living in my stash.

The yarn also had another form before :) I had started a KAL on ravelry for some mystery socks by Yarnissima but just did not like the sock at all, so I frogged it and made Akimbo which I really really love. It's one of Stephen Wests lesser known designs but o so great and pretty easy (if you are not me and have to cast on 5 times because you can't get your head around on how to M1R and M1L because they "don't look right....!")

I've started knitting a sweater (sahara by Wendy D. Johnson) and another pair of socks but don't have pictures yet. I hope to post another post with cooking pictures soon too!

Back from vacation

2011-06-03T14:53:00.002+02:00

Hi everybody,

we've been on vacation in DK but since then spend a lot of time doing laundry and trying to sleep. The twins have a very interesting sleep schedule, so please bear with me a tad longer for pictures. I've been knitting a lot! And I got some lovely yarn, met lovely Maria in Denmark and had tons of fun but also too little sleep.

So for now, just a picture of my cute E. & M. nearly 11 months old:

Home from Denmark

2011-05-31T16:05:00.009+02:00

Hello there,

missed me? I've been on vacation with DH and the twins! Blaavand (sorry, I can't get the circle above the a, so I'm writing it with a double a. Hope that is fine with my Danish reader(s)) was our destination where we had rented a lovely summerhouse close by.

We stayed in Ho, which is the home"town" of Hostrik, a very small but very well stocked knitting store (this is, after all a knitting and sewing blog). Ho itself is otherwise pretty boring but a peaceful place that invites you to go for a walk.

But the beach in Blaavand is so beautiful, that we did not mind driving 5 minutes 8 minutes to get there :)

I especially like what they did with the old bunker from WWII
Maria Denmark visited us for the weekend and we had a blast. But we took all the pictures with HER with her camera, so no pics of us together...

We knitted a lot and chatted a lot and saw deer in our backyard:

And I finished something (which was good since I did buy stuff and got so much lovely yarn from Maria too)

Pattern: Entangled Stitches by Julia Müller/Laris Design
Yarn: Opal handpainted
made for: Saskia

Awesome pattern! I will absolutely make that for myself again :)

I'll be writing more at another time, kids want mum

Happy Easter Socks

2011-04-23T07:45:00.006+02:00

(First of all, thank you all for your comments on my last blogpost. It's great to see, that so many of you care! Hugs! I'm one happy girl here!)

So, a while ago my friend Annika and I were chatting over at facebook about how the snow was kind of getting on our nerves (and Annika loves snow). I asked Annika, if she would mind, if I was making her some socks (she got a couple of pairs (3 I think) from me and I know, that she likes them and treats them well). Her respond was something along the lines of "of course not!!!!" and we settled on a colour: spring green.

Mmmhh, spring green is one of those colours that you don't find, when you are looking at my stash. So I browsed Ravelrys "search stashes for sale" and came up with this

Since most patterns would be obscured by the pooling of the yarn, I chose Lindsay by Cookie A.. (Frau Schlamuser has a Cookie A. challenge, for those who are interested...)

That I finished the socks after the first pattern repeat is a small wonder and I managed it, just because I had the idea of using a crochet hook for the k4tog (the sssk were no problem though..). Without the crochet hook our neighbours would have witness a small fire in our garden (burning the evidence :) ).

The pattern itself is well written and totally doable (with said crochet hook). To me it looks like eggshells stacked ontop of eachother. The colour of the yarn reminds me of marbled eggs on Easter grass, thus the name Easter Socks (and they arrived in NY just in time for Easter :) ).

The only thing I found weird was the toe, which is constructed with short rows and then grafted together. I'm not sure, if I'm really fond of that. The garter stitch heel on the other hand is pretty cool.

And here are the socks in all their glory

Aren't those happy Easter socks??

I'm just happy

2011-04-20T08:10:00.004+02:00

As those of you, who follow me on facebook already know, I had a hell of a week. So around my birthday I found a strange knot in my left breast again (plus the kids had a bad cold), so I had 2 horrible days of a weekend and called the clinic on Monday to see if I could come in for an out of order check up. I could come in the next day (our neighbour took care of the twins and I'm so grateful that we have the nicest neighbours around here) and the doctors decided that they needed to make, what they call a needle-biopsy. So they got some cells out of the knot and then the waiting began.

A whole week of waiting, of thinking what would happen if the cancer would be back, what I would do if it were back. Thinking, that I'm not ready to go, that I have two tiny girls here, that need me (and I need them...). And more even more unpleasant thoughts.

So yesterday I called my Ob-gyn and she told me, that everything was just fine. That it's just scartissue and that after the pregnancy the body just changes, so that old scars feel different.

I'm just so happy and relieved.

(and I took a ton of pictures of the cutie-pies yesterday, so here are some...)

Dang!

2011-04-13T08:23:00.002+02:00

Sorry, for my absence but the twins are sick (bad cold! Coughing, fever and a snotty nose included). I'm really really sleep deprived now. Saturday morning we spend at the hospital, to get some cold meds for the wee ones. So no Whisky exhibit for us.

Add to that a funeral (and a trip to the hospital for myself...) and you can see why I haven't been blogging lately or do any crafty things. I made a very unspectacular chickpea soup (Jamie Oliver recipe but so bland, that I can't recommend it or bothered to take a pictures). I finished a gift for a friend, I'll show pictures as soon as she has it, made a sock for my MIL twice (and it is still too big but she doesn't want me to knit it again...) and started a project bag for a swap-partner...

I'll be back soon!

Yarn bombing in Kiel

2011-04-03T10:45:00.003+02:00

So, DH, the twins and I were shopping yesterday (one of the baby-clothes stores in Holtenau had a "warehouse" sale and I went there on Friday but yesterday I decided, that the kids need summer hats of the thin jersey variety. Not that I would be able to sew them myself... but I digress.

After shopping we went for a little walk since the kids needed their nap and look what I found there.

KNITTING GRAFFITI!

(Note: I managed to figure out how to transfer files from my phone to my laptop. It took a while since the files wouldn't show up in the program I installed but I managed it in the end. Plus now I have one of my favourite songs as my ringtone...)

Sewing UFO is looking for a good home

2011-03-19T08:00:00.005+01:00

O.k. This is a pre-pregnancy sewing project. A jacket from an Onion-pattern (that I don’t have at hand right at this moment) a straight 38 according to their measurements.
Fabric: A pink-wool blend
What is left to do: Hem the sleeves (started on one but messed with the bagging of the lining …) And close the seam, where I turned the right side out after attaching the lining. I also had planned to make a small belt to close the jacket. I’m going to give the remaining fabric to the person, who adopts this ufo for some kind of closure…

Why do I give this away? My body changed after the pregnancy. Even if I’m close to my pre-pregnancy weight, my body shape isn’t and I don’t think it will be soon. So this jacket just don’t fit anymore. Plus, the style is just not me esp. I have cut my hair pretty short. I just look like MOB. If you are interested, please send me an email to tini(ahead)schrott(dohot)freenet(dohot)de (you know how to change that ;) )

Edit to add: Since Rhonda asked about the size. It's a size 38 EU. I find, that the onionpatterns are similar to burda patterns, when it comes to sizes. So this would be like a size 12 burda patterns. A table of measurements (also in English) can be found here on the burdastyle site.

Knitting content

2011-03-11T16:17:00.009+01:00

and you thought, this would transform into a cooking blog :) Nope. I've been knitting quite a bit actually but some things need to get to their final destination first :)

But here's what I've been working on:

Holden 1.0

Sarah-Jane sent me an incredible Valentine-parcel (which I did not take a picture off. Bad blogger, no cookies...) that contained (beside some great Koigu-yarn) 3 skeins of Habu Textile Silk in a lovely brown colour and with a great sheen to it. I was totally in love with the yarn and set out to find a pattern for it, that wasn't tooooooo complicated since I mostly knit in the evenings, when I'm very very tired (since the twins mostly wake up around 4-5 a.m. and sometimes the night is over then. No, they don't sleep thru the night, yet). So Holden was a perfect choice. A main stockinette body with an easy lace edge to keep my interest.

Unfortunately I discovered, that the brown and my complexion just don't match. Even with the black eye (update on that below :) ), so I send it to Sarah-Jane as a thank you (in hope, that it will suit her better :) ). Luckily she likes it :)

I really enjoyed making the Holden, so I made another one :), this time from deep deep stash (Fleece Artist. I got the yarn in a destash from Bockstark Knits 2008 or so)

The green is also not my best colour but it's more blueish than yellowish.

For a friend, who got a baby daughter in January I made another Baby Yours. This time I altered it to be seamless (see my ravelry notes here) Again modeled by M. :
As you see, it's pretty wide but my kids are very slim (they just don't eat well...) and the 6 month size is waaaay to wide. I'm planning to knit them the Baby Mine cardigan for their christening and I'm going to use the 6 months width and the 1 yr lenght :)

I had a hat emergency last week. Our favourite hat (made by Maria) was getting too small! So I knit E. a Buzzbee-hat myself. The only yarn in my stash that matched the requirements was an Alpaca-blend. So I made a size large, since I so hope, that Spring will be here soon and they don't need warm hats for a longer period of time (they are going to wear cotton hats instead...). The pattern calls for a 50gr ball. I used 27 gr (but I made the ties to short. I had read the whole pattern first and somehow 11.5 cm stuck in my head not 20cm. 11.5 cm is another measurement in the pattern but for a completely different step.... Still I don't think, that I would have used 50gr...:)

And lo and behold. The hat is too big. It will fit next winter though (since it does fit ME!)
Here's E. modelling it:

Still very very cute. The yarn is GGH Cumba, which is a very lovely wool-alpaca-poly blend.

So, these are all my finished projects. I have a pair of plain vanilla socks on the needles but that will have to wait for another post.

Q/A: Katharine asked about the insulation qualities of crocheted potholders. Actually I don't like them very much. Mostly because they tend to be too small for my big hands. I usually use these sewn gigantic gloves since I tend to be a bit clumsy and they keep me from being burnt on a regular basis. What I remember though, is that they do keep the heat off quite well. But I just don't crochet...

Simple pleasures

2011-03-08T10:27:00.005+01:00

Thank you all, for your kind words regarding my black eye. It's been nearly two weeks since I fell and you can still see the bruise in my face but it's getting a lot better! I had headaches for a couple of days but nothing serious. I might have a little scar on my right eyelit but that is nothing serious. I'm so glad!

The last couple of days I indulge in simple pleasures, that I want to share with you.

Schrot und Korn, a German magazine about health food had an article on breakfast recipes in their latest issue. I have to admit, that breakfast is one of my main meals of the day. I love breakfast! And I love grains. I like muesli, I like all kinds of porridge and so on. So I had to try out their recipe for Kasha, since I'm always on the hunt for buckwheat recipes.

I can tell you, it's yummy! ( I think it is recipe 10 or so for my 40-recipe challenge) Today I made Pancakes using their recipe too (recipe 11). Also recommended!

Last weekend one of Heikos co-workers was over for breakfast. Since it was already close to lunch, I also made some soup, using Bonnies recipe for Brokkoli-noodle-soup. It was an instant success!

Easy, comfort food!

As for knitting (and sewing but I haven't sewn a stitch in ages....). I finished a couple of things but I can't show most of them just yet. Yesterday I needed a quick sucess, since I had to frog a dishcloth the second time around and I don't think, that a dishcloth should be so much work... So I made a very very very simple one instead (cast on and finished it yesterday. Stashbusting...)

blue eyes

2011-02-26T16:34:00.003+01:00

babies got blue eyes....

.... o.k. mine is PURPLE

Unfortunately I had a circulatory collapse on Thursday night on the way from E. & M.s room to ours, with E. on my arms. Luckily the rattan chest in our bedroom lessend the impact of my fall. E. is completely unhurt but I hit the chest with my head too! Now I look as if I have been in a fight! DH and I were out yesterday evening and all the people in the restaurant looked at Heiko as if he was hitting me!

Now I have a souvenir from that accident for at least a fortnight!

weird food

2011-02-19T17:03:00.003+01:00

So, I'm trying out tons of new recipes (the last one was for Börek, a deep fried dish from Turkey with Feta cheese. Yummy! I bet it has 1 million kcal :) but sometimes it has to be deep fried...) but last Thursday I just needed:

Buttermilk soup

(sorry no picture but imagine a bowl with buttermilk in it. It just looks the same like uncooked buttermilk ;) )

And then it hit me. It's kind of weird to eat warm, sweetend buttermilk that has mini-pasta in it and is slightly thickend with pudding mix. But it's something that is very typical at least with my family ( altough my mum makes it with pieces of pears and semolina dumplings...). I guess every part of the world has something as a dish, that other people think is kind of weird...

lanesplitter

2011-02-15T07:17:00.003+01:00

Wow, what a boring title! But it is 7 a.m., the night was o.k. but the kids decided, that it was time for breakfast at 5.30 a.m. and so I'm here, having had breakfast, the kids are fed, washed and into their clothes for the day and so am I :)

So I thought, I'll show you my latest FO:

Lanesplitter by Tina Whitmore from the First Fall 2010 issue of Knitty

(the lanesplitter is the skirt, not the jacket. That is a February lady sweater, since I'm a follower and have to make what everybody is making :) And yes, I also knitted a BSJ, Fetching and an Ishbel. I have yet to make a Clapotis though....)

Why did I make a knitted skirt? mmh, actually I like wearing knitted skirts. I had a long skirt waaay back, when I started my appreticeship and wore it a lot, although it was green and I don't know any other woman, who wore long green skirts out of knit fabric even in the 90s. Boy, where did I get that skirt from? But what really made me want to knit this skirt were the 3 skeins of Noro Kureyon and the 3 skeins of Boku that were sitting in my stash for years! The pattern stated, that I would need 6 skeins of yarn: Perfect!

I used a provisional cast on and cast on the number of stitches I would have after increasing like stated in the instructions, knitted until I reached the circumfence needed and grafted the stitches together, to provide a visible seam. Worked really well! For the waistband I used some MerinoSeta, that was sitting in my stash even longer than the Kureyon.

So, I was finished and I had so much yarn left! I tried to add a border to the skirt, that I found in Nicky Epsteins "Knitting over the edge" but that looked stupid, so I just added a couple of rows of knits and purlstitches. In the end I had 2.5 skeins left over (I could have knitted the skirt with the Noro alone... go figure), that is the only downside.

I like the pattern even if it makes me look like a wanna-be-hippy with all its different colours. It matches everything im my wardrobe though :)

Now I just need to make a slip to go under the skirt :)

If you are wondering: I'm still doing well with my recipe-challenge. I made some nut swirls last week, but did not take a picture. Yesterday we had Falafel for lunch. Really a winner, but since I had my in-laws over I also did not take any pictures... sorry...

Delicious

2011-02-03T10:00:00.003+01:00

I have a fellow Raveller coming over this afternoon and of course I had to bake something.
I had read about Friedas Nusszopf (it's a swirly nut cake with yeast-dough) on chefkoch.de (which is like allrecipes.com just in German) and people raved about it.

So I gave it a try, since I had all the ingredients for the dough at hand and just needed to buy nuts.

It's awesome and not even hard to make! I did not add the glazing, since I *cough* had to try it when it was still warm, since it smelled so delicious. I had a co-worker over last night and I made her try it as well. She asked for a second helping :)

This is my 5th new recipe for this year and def. a winner!
(If you want an English translation I'll ask the original poster for permission, just let me know!)

Lots to show

2011-02-01T14:28:00.008+01:00

This post has been written in my head for 20times or more. Somehow time is limited with the twins and/or I'm just too tired or not in the mood to resize my pictures.... you get the picture.

But the twins are napping at the same time (wonder!!!!) and I thought, I use the time. So I have tons to tell/show you.

First up a christmas gift, that I made (twice)

The pattern is the Margaret Sling bag, which is unfortunately no longer available for free (I'm just happy, that I downloaded it before it retired)
The fabric is from IKEA. Stupid me cut out one of the sections in the wrong direction and I had to go back to IKEA 3 days before christmas..... argh...
(I know, that the picture is crappy but I needed to take a quick picture before mailing it off...

If you have the pattern: give it a shot. It's a great bag!

Next up:
Spinning meeting. I was able to attend a spinning meeting in January. Having a day off and watching so many skilled spinners was a real treat for me. (Since I don't have permission to show faces, you just get a very cropped picture)

I'm working on a long term project. I'm a fairly unexperienced spinner and spinning for a garment is a first for me. I hope, that this will become enough yarn for a vine yoke cardigan one day. There are over 500gr of roving for me to spin up (might be a kilo, I need to check the recipt I got....) So far I filled 3 bobbins and I can't see that the huge amount of roving got less.... It ball reminds me of an add for Swiffer....

Knittingwise I finished a gift for a friend. By now I guess she has received it, so it's safe to show a picture. M. just would not lay still for the picture :) The twins are getting more mobile every day...
Pattern: Baby yours by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
The pattern is awesome. I'm working on a second cardigan right now, but converting it to having fewer seams, since I'm short on yarn (Superlana by Lana Grossa. So far nice to work with...)

And last not least: My recipe challenge. So far I have made 4 new recipes. The latest beeing rhubarb-marzipan muffins and "Kirschmichel". I have a picture of the Kirschmichel on my phone, I just need to download that, so until then you'll have to be happy with pictures of the muffins and the carrot-ginger-coconut soup

Time for the girls to get up :)

2!!

2011-01-18T08:38:00.004+01:00

So, before I don't blog because I haven't gotten the pictures onto my laptop that I took from a lot of things, I want to show you, I thought I write an entry anyway.

I'm making good progress with the 40 new recipes challenge. So far I made not 1 new recipe but two.

First I made carrot-coconut-ginger soup (not pumpkin :) ), which was a basic soup with carrots, some creme of coconut, cream and ginger in it. It was quiet good but I think I prefer pumpkin-soup.

The recipe came from the Hörzu Heimat magazine (which has an article about the Hamburg Knit Night, that's why I bought it :) ) There are a few interesting "Knödel" recipes in there, that I might try out too.

Second I made a chickpea-tomatoe-peanut casserole. Heiko liked that one but I thought it was kind of bland. I can't really tell what I did not like about it, since I really like the ingredients but I thought it was lacking something...

I will try the next recipe this week but will modify it, since I do have some "Stollen" (a sweet bread with nuts, candied oranges and raisins in it) that I want to use for that :)

Parting shot:

this time my knitting is the parting shot :) My friend Sarah-Jane got a pair of socks from me this year. The yarn was called "Rüdiger" which totally reminded me of "the little vampire", so these socks are my little-vampire-socks :)

Btw. Sarah-Jane is working on a sockyarn blanket. If you have leftover sock yarn or unwanted sockyarn, please contact me.

40 in 2011

2011-01-10T16:28:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone,

so, we are already in the middle of January (o.k. nearly) and I haven't really made up New Years resolutions except that I want to get completely healthy :)

BUT I will be home until the 15th of October and I do cook a lot more than I used to, when I was working. But (again) I'm constantly making the same things over and over again. So I want to challenge myself to try out new recipes. I won't be making a new recipe every week I guess (since you can't really plan that much in advance with two little kids) but I want to try out 40 new recipes in 2011. That includes cooking and baking. I want to make more use of my cookbooks and the gazillion recipes online.

First up will be a carrot-ginger-coconut-soup that I will be making on wednesday. My in-laws are coming over on thursday and a warm soup will be great for lunch. The weather is wet and cold, so I love a good hearty soup.

The 1st annual christmas dress

2011-01-03T09:39:00.004+01:00

Inspired by Summerset, who makes her daugther a new outfit for christmas every year, I decided, that I would do the same for the twins.

My Dad turned 60 in December and my FILs birthday is today, so I figured out, that a dress would be nice for the twins. And to be honest I did not want to spend 40 Euro on dresses, the two are going to wear 5-10 times before they grow out of them.

This December has been really really cold here, so I figured out, a pinafore dress, that can be worn over tights and trousers would be the best. SInce I do own quiet a few ottobre kids magazines, I knew, that there would be something in there plus I had some pink embroidered corduroy in my stash.

And surely I found a pattern in the winter 2003 issue of ottobre. It's a very simple pinafore dress with only 4 pattern pieces (Pattern no. 5). I've made some ottobre patterns so far and all of them did run large, so I cut a size 62 while omitted adding seam allowance to the side seams and sewed the front and back together with a 0.6 cm s.a.. For additional warmth I underlined the whole pinafore with cotton flanell.

All in all the sewing went without major problems. I didn't follow the instructions though and had to fiddle with the shoulder seams since I forgot to leave an opening at the side of the straps... Oh my... it's been some times since I last sewed something like that...

The dresses fit well and came out cute. Sorry for the crappy picture, it was taken on Christmas Day after the kids were entertained by various family members the whole time and were cranky at the end of the day...

2010 is over

2011-01-02T10:17:00.006+01:00

Happy new year everyone!

Aren't you glad it's a new year? I am! 2010 has been a very tough year for me. I had really high hopes for it to be the best year of my life, with beeing pregant and having babies after all. It did not work out that way, I'm afraid.

Actually 2010 has been the most challenging year of my life. Facing cancer was a breeze compared to how I felt last year. I've never been so devasted in my whole life. But I got thru that rough patch with the help of my beloved husband, my great family, good friends and a good therapist. Lesson learned: If you are unwell, get help, even it that means to step out of your comfort zone. I'm so grateful that you all were with me during that time.

2011 just can get better. The kids are doing fine and handling them is routine by now. Of course there will be new challenges with the two ahead but I'm more comfortable in my new role of beeing a mother (plus they are not that tiny anymore). I'm already taking a lesser dosis of my medication, so I hope, that by the end of March I will be off meds. (Which will be great. As helpful as they are/were they have the side effect of making me hungry. All.the.time! Not that great!

Christmas was really nice but a tad too much for the kids. We had our close family over for lunch/tea on the first day of Christmas. We were 15 people and somehow nearly everybody was fuzzing over the twins, not leaving them alone for 5 minutes. Of course that meant, that the two were over the top at bedtime and for the next days ( I spend the monday after christmas at mit in-laws, so that my SIL could see the twins again before heading back to southern Germany) and that was entertaining the twins all the time too, even if they did not need any entertainment. I think, that is something they need to learn. Leave the kids to themself for some time.

I got some nice crafty stuff for christmas inclunding a selfmade storage box from Ute, but I forgot to take pictures... Sorry.

Between Christmas and New Years I got a big big parcel from Sarah and I remembered to take pictures.

And that is just half of the loot :) But isn't already great? Awesome totebags (from the Shetland Islands and Knit Nation!) A book on British Sheep breeds, some cool dyed yarn from Estonia, linen lace yarn on a cool metal cone and some Regia Sock yarn.

Funny christmastree ornaments were also in the parcel (they were put on our tree immediately), a lovely smelling soap, that is already in use, a sheep pin and stitch markers (since mine are disappearing all the time).

Last not least a shawl pin and some more lovely stitch markers. I'm so spoiled :)

I hope, you will all have a great 2011. May it be a happy and healthy year for all of us. And remember: if you are not well, get help! (and you ladies out there: get your annual mammogramm/check at the ob gyn. Mine first is on January 13th :) )

FO! FO!

2010-12-14T11:32:00.005+01:00

Hi there,

finally we got around to take some pictures of my latest finished knitted garment (I also finished sewing the dresses for the twins but no pictures of them yet. They will wear the dresses on christmas, so I will take pictures then. It's just too much hassle to dress them in the dresses just for taking pictures. Plus I need DH to hold the twins then...)

So here it is (please note, that I managed to get a new hair cut and dyed my hair. I'm pretty proud of that :))

(and yes, I did gain a bit of weight. I blame it on the meds I'm taking that I crave sweets all the time.... but others gained like 15kg in 2 weeks. I gained 3 in 5 months...)

Here's also the back. My husband does obviously not notice if the collar is wonky, when he takes pictures... go figure...)

Pattern: Textured circle shrug by Stephanie Japel
It's available for free at the lion brand homepage, you just have to sign up for it. There's also an archived KAL, which helped me a lot since there were quiet a few bits in the pattern that I did not get
Yarn: Zitron Nimbus. The yarn is a single spun yarn and it already pills. It also has developed a felted look just by knitting with it. I don't think I will use this yarn again..

I lengthend the sleeves a bit but that is all I changed intentionally. I ran out of yarn after fewer rows of seed stitch but the collar is still wide enough IMHO.

Overall I really like the shrug and I can recommend the pattern, if you use the KAL archives :)

Pyroclastic

2010-12-11T21:25:00.003+01:00

Hey everybody,

how are you doing? I still have sick kids here, although little M. is getting better and weekends are usually better since I'm not home alone with the kids. Plus the snow is melting, so I can get outside again (meaning that the kids are asleep in the stroller and I can listen to audiobooks or podcasts = "me time" ).

I participated in a swap on ravelry. Inspired by Summersets socks I knitted my swap partner a pair of Pyroclastic socks from handdyed sockyarn, dyed by yours truly

Pattern: Pyroclastic from Knitty, Winter 09

My gauge was off, so I used the numbers for a small size but got socks that fit a size 39 very well.

The pattern on the leg of the sock biases quiet a bit. I'm not sure if I would use that patttern again for the leg but change it to another pattern. The fit on the foot is great! The arch shaping is really clever.

I think this pattern is really a winner!

Twin pictures

2010-12-07T09:10:00.004+01:00

M. practising keep her head up :)
E. beeing cute

Since I still don't have pictures of my finished shrug or any other crafty project, you get some twin pictures :) I hope you don't mind. The twins are still ill,we have 50 cm of snow and I'm the smaller sister of the Snot Monster, so things are abit rough here...

Tired

2010-11-26T21:06:00.002+01:00

Boy, I'm so tired.
The wee ones are ill and that is pretty exhausting for me too....

I finished something but I can't show it, since it is a gift for a swap partner. I will post a picture a soon as the swap is over. So now I can work on my shrug again.

I have cut out 2 pinafore dresses for the twins and I hope to sew them up this weekend.

Be back soon :)

weird stuff

2010-11-09T17:09:00.002+01:00

Sometimes I wonder how product designers come up with their new ideas.
A couple of days the postman brought a small parcel from the online shop where we shop for our 2 legged feline friends. I wondered if I had ordered something that was not included in the last big parcel or if I had participated in some raffle or so.

But no, it was just a gift from them

THIS

Yes, it is what you are thinking. It's an advent kalendar for our cats. HUH? I mean, we don't buy special gifts for christmas for our cats (and to be honest, our kids are not getting gifts this year too. They can't understand christmas at all and they don't even bother about opening gifts, so next year will be the first year for us to buy them gifts. I might sew them cute dresses but that is a big MAYBE) So I think, it's pretty weird to have advent calendars for cats....

Grateful

2010-10-31T11:39:00.004+01:00

Mel from Purling Plans asked what we are grateful for and since my last attempts on sewing were so uhm crooked, that I won't show it (I just added a warm layer to a bunting bag for the twins and it's more "special" than good.)

O.k. here it comes:

My husband. Without him I would not manage at the moment. He is my rock and he helps so much. I love him so dearly for just beeing like he is.
The twins, of course :) (although I would not mind a bit more sleep. But both have a cold, so sleeping is a bit hard for them at the moment...)
Family. Couldn't do without them.
Warm autumn weather. I'm outside a lot and I love the warmer autumn weather. The smell of the fallen leaves and of fresh apples. I adore the smell of fresh apples. I so wish I could be in New England during Fall again one day!
Friends. Receiving emails and comments is so nice when you are at home the whole day. I also appreciate, that my friends understand if I can't reply immediatly. I often read the messages with a sleeping baby in my arm :)
My midwife, who helps me getting better and more confident.
Knitting. I think, without my knitting I would go mad. I promise to show pictures soon (of the one project I'm working on....)

Parting shot:

The twins and me

Too fat

2010-10-27T08:48:00.003+02:00

me, that is. Apparently.
Actually I'm still less than I was before the pregnancy.
Seem that I'm still too fat...
... at least for the 3mm wooden Knitpicks/Knitpro tip, that I sat on yesterday....

it's broken

wwwaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh

I need that tip for the shrug I'm working on (I guess I'm 75% done). I used 3 shorter 3mm circulars yesterday evening since I don't have any spare 3mm tips (I just bought a set but it starts at 3.5 mm.... *whine*)

I glued the tip back onto the screw-thingy (where it broke off) and I hope it will work now, since a trip to ANY yarn store with the huge stroller is out of question and somehow I refuse to pay shipping for 2 tips....

WHAAAAAAAAAA

unorginell

2010-10-17T16:51:00.004+02:00

Hi there,

life is pretty busy around here. The twins were ill (just a cold) and ate very badly (they aren't good eaters in the first place), which totally stressed me out. Let's just say, that there was a lot of crying on my side involved.... And to be honest, I'm not thru it yet. At least the kids are back to their old level of eating, which is good I guess.

So, again no sewing at casa tini but in the two hours I have every evening, after the kids are in bed (during the day, they tend to sleep at different times and if they are both asleep I try to eat or do some chores like laundry or just taking a shower...) I manage to get a bit of knitting done.

First: Leftover socks for me

pattern: Upstream Master Pattern from Cat Bordhi's "New pathway for sockknitters" I'm in the process of knitting each of Cat's sockitechtures :) So far I made 5 different socks from the book. That makes it the book from which I knit the most patterns so far.
yarn: odds and ends from my stash
needles 2,5mm metal circs from Knitpicks/Knitpro
I really like the way the socks are constructed. They fit my fit really really well, so I guess I will knit more upstream socks

I also completed another project with my handspun.

Pattern: an Unoriginal hat by the yarn harlot (free pattern :) )

(the second picture does show the colour of the yarn better. My husband is not really fond of my camera...)

yarn: My own handspun, held double to get gauge.
needles: 7mm ciruclars but not from Knitpro or Addi turbo. They were so blunt, that it was a real pita to knit the hat. So annoying, that I ordered a big set of Knitpro needles :)

I'm currently working on a shrug but I don't have a picture to show yet.

Generousity

2010-09-29T10:06:00.011+02:00

Hi everybody,

I'm using the chance, that the twins are both asleep at the same time (does not happen often during the day and in the evening I'm just too tired to blog), to blog.

Things are getting better around here every day, might be, that I get used to the living with two twins, that need constant attention, might be my medication or the fact, that the twins have one turn at night, where they sleep between 3 and 4 hours after the last meal. So I get some more sleep too (still too little, but I take what I can get ;) )

I'm pretty overwhelmed with the generousity of you fellow knitters and sewists. THe twins have received so many lovely gifts. There are a couple I haven't shown, so I play a little catch up:

Anna made the twins lovely jackets with matching hats and socks. The socks are already too small and I manage to mess up every picture of the hats...

In the parcel were some sugar covered aniseed treats and some rusk. It seems that this is something that you eat in the Netherlands, if a child is born. I really like it but I like the tast of aniseed anyway (and it helps the baby if you are breastfeeding with the digestion...)

Isabelle send me a nice pattern book from Phildar with babypatterns (I need to finish my current WIPs before I move on to knitting for the babies though) and some lovely yarn:

I haven't taken a picture of the patternmagazine though...

Madhatter made the twins some cool hooded towels: (sorry for the lame picture...)

The twins really like them, they are used every week, when the kids take their bath :)

Asa made two lovely blankets with the cutest hippo-print on one side and some blue velour on the other side. The blankets are the perfect match to our stroller :) But somehow I managed to blur every picture again :( I will post one soon (the batteries are recharging at the moment)

Kerstin also sewed for the twins:
The bunting bags are waaaaay too big but the twins will grow into them I guess :) And better too big than too small ;)

Sarah went to Knit Nation in London, since I had the twins in July I had to cancel my trip but Sarah send me a lovely gift! I got some yarn, a signed copy of "The knitters book of wool" and some cool tote bags. Unfortunately I can't participate next year again :( It will be the twins first birthday and I guess, I should not miss that!

I have also been buying tons of yarn. I'm a little afraid to count my yardage at the beginning of October since there were 18 skeins of yarn last week alone (Sale at Aldi... I want to make a sweater for Heiko) but I will I guess anyway. I need to go cold sheep!

Parting shot:
Everything is in balance sometimes

2 months

2010-09-13T21:04:00.003+02:00

Hi everybody,

thank you for your nice comments and emails. I have seen a specialist and I have gotten mediciation, so I'm a lot better. I will have to take my pills for a couple of weeks and will need help for some time. Heiko is good help too, I don't know what I would do without him. He is getting up at night and when he is at home, he is taking care of the twins (or at least of one of them).

The twins are doing really fine. They are nearly two months old now and have put on some weight. They are around 4 kg now. I think, they will make another "jump" in their development soon. Today was a day, that you better forget soon. They were pretty cranky all day long.

The last two months taught me a lot:

I have the best family ever

You can't plan life or with small twins, you can't plan tomorrow or even the afternoon

I learned to be gratefull for small things like 10 ml mor formular drunk or a stinky diaper
64 divided by 4 is not 17 nor 18
If I'm not well, I don't knit. If I don't knit, I'm not well
If you are not well, seek help. Sometimes do need a specialist, so go see them. Everything is easier to cure, if you trat the illness early

I'm leaving you now. I hope to post again soon, as I have gotten tons of stuff in the mail (THANK YOU!) and I'm actually knitting again (plain vanilla, but still...)

Here's a picture of E & M :) Enjoy ;)

Thank you!

2010-09-02T17:22:00.002+02:00

Thank you all for your kind comments and Emails (and parcels! Thanks Isabelle).
I'm way better today. I had an appointment with the specialist yesterday and I'm in good care. I slept for 6 hrs total tonight and that was awesome. I feel like a new person (still tired ;) ) and everything will be o.k. I guess. It just needs time! Thank you for hanging in here ( I even knitted 3 rows on my plain vanilla sock yesterday evening! So, that is a good sign!)

No knitting, no sewing

2010-08-29T11:59:00.002+02:00

Hi everybody,

I just wanted to let you know, that I'm not well at the moment. Actually I'm really unwell and I will seek help soon. I have seen my ob-gyn and she and I decided, that I need to see a specialist. If you want to know more, please send me an email or contact me via ravelry/hobbyschneiderin.

I'm blessed with an awesome husband and great parents and in-laws, who help me with the kids thru this troubled time.

So, please don't be mad, if I don't post for a while. I'm just not knitting or sewing. I'm also not spinning....

Hugs
tini

1 month!

2010-08-18T17:21:00.009+02:00

Hi everybody,

the twins are over 1 month old already. Heiko will be back at work tomorrow. I hope, that the two and I will get along alone too... *sigh* We have entered the phase "crying for an hour in the evening" already. I hope, they won't do that during the day or I will be walking A LOT.
But the two are growing well and are darn cute, even if I say so myself.

BUt I promised more pictures of gift.
One really really cool gift we got, is a quilt from my sewing friends. 17 women worked on the fairytale quilt. They started in Feburary and the quilt was finished short before the delivery. Every one of them wrote a bit for a book, that came along with the quilt. you can find the story and detailled pictures here (in German but the pictures are great, even if you can't read German. The kids love the quilt:There are more gifts here, but I need to take good pictures of them too.

But I can also share an FO. The socks for my midwife are done and already with the new owner ;)

Pattern: Waving Lace socks from "Favourite Socks"
Yarn: 74gr Araucania Ranco Multi
Needles: 2mm circular needle
size 40 European

The pattern is pretty easy but not too boring. Perfect for my not up to its standard brain :)

Quick update

2010-08-13T21:34:00.002+02:00

Just a quick update :) without any pictures.
We are doing pretty well around here since Heiko still has time off from work. With 2 adults the twins are still enough work but manageable. Feeding and diaper-changing takes around 7-8 hrs per day alone, so we try to get things like washing clothes and cleaning the house done during the sleep-breaks. So far the kids sleep pretty well but I guess, that might change soon too ( I bet, as soon as Heiko starts working again next week *sigh*)... The twins now both have over 3 kg of weight, which makes me happy (the estimated day of delivery was Tuesday...) as they have gained 700gr each since we left the hospital!

There's already a lack of sleep for me, so the only project I was working on, where the socks for my midwife. These were finished tonight in our 1hr tv-break, that we try to get each day, just to get the head cleared. I hope, that I will be able to post pictures soon.

I got some more lovely handmade gifts to show and I designed a preemie-hat for a contest. I need to take pictures soon too, since the last day of the contest is August 31st (if you want to participate too, please listen to the Knitmoregirls podcast!).... So hang in here!

Gifted

2010-07-29T09:19:00.008+02:00

Good morning readers,

after a pretty short night, here a short post :) I don't have time to write emails regularly since we don't have wifi here and beeing able to sit in our office and write for some time is scarce. I try to rest when the babies rest or Heiko is taking his turn. Mostly I just want to read or knit (a tiny bit. I'm working on socks for my midwife. She is just great!).

So instead of writing 216548 emails, I'd like to show some of the gifts I got. (I got a great great great great quilt too, but I need to take pictures of it with good light and it deserves a post of it's own!)

Sushi knitted some great BSJs for the girls ( I won't use their real names here, email me for the real names :) ) Aren't they cute!

Maria made some really nice hats (traditional Danish pattern) and also send me some chick-knit-novels. Great for my sleep deprived brain! Thank you!

Yesterday a parcel from Gewändertruhe-Louise arrived. In it a cute Shawn the sheep card, a lovely letter that made me cry and two Fant-Friends for our girls. Of course E adopted "Ele"!
Thank you for your nice gifts, my dear friends and everybody else: thank you for your nice comments and emails. It's great to know, that people care!

Hugs
tini

My FO aka WIP

2010-07-21T21:17:00.003+02:00

M & E
born July 15th at 23.32 & 23.33 o'clock. In the end via c-section after a day full of "fun"....
But we are so happy. Both are still small 2700 gramm at birth, at the moment both are around 2.500 gramm but very healthy. I just hope, that the warm weather will be over soon.

I'm recovering nicely and we all left the hospital today!

Thanks to all, who send emails :) I will reply soon!

Hourglass

2010-07-11T10:47:00.004+02:00

Hi everybody,

I'm still at home and still very pregnant, "enjoying" the 30° C (86° F) :) I'm mostly lying on my bed or on the couch since I'm very massive and my back is aching like mad. The joys of a twin-pregnancy but since most of my pregnancy went so well and the 2 crumbs are doing so fine (the hospital does not expect them to be delivered until next week...), I'm not the one to complaint....

But hey, I do have something to show (no pregnancy pics ;) ) My Hourglasssocks are done! I told the twins, that they aren't allowed to come out, until these were done. My personal hourglass so to say ;)

Pattern: Hourglass from Knitty Fall 2008

Yarn: Wollmeise Twin in We're Different (Ballerina), around 106 gramms (out of my stash)

Modifications: I knitted one less pattern repeat on the leg-sections since my legs are more curvy and leaving off one pattern repeat was the easiest. They are still "high" enough. Ma gauge was a bit looser but since my feet are big"ish", that was still o.k.
The pattern is well written and I really recommend this pattern. Maybe not for people, who don't like to purl.

Also finished a while ago: Sonnenrad (sundisc), the second baby blanket

Pattern:Round Baby blanket by Genia Planck
Yarn: G-B Wolle Bamboo Touch, a superwash bamboo-wool blend (I had frayed pieces or knots in about a third of the balls, so I don't recommend the yarn), that I dyed myself. The orange colour was supposed to be red. Oh, well.... 11.5 balls, tht are 570 Gramms. (Bought for this project this year but not in my stash anymore ;) )
Modifications: Instead of just binding off I added a border from Knitting on the edge by Nicky Epstein, the first time I used that book :)

At the moment I'm swatching for another pair of socks!

Btw. if I don't reply to your emails immediately or comment on your blog: sorry, but me and the chair in front of my desk don't go along well at the moment, so computer time is limited! Sorry!

I am a rock

2010-06-27T21:53:00.003+02:00

o.k. just kidding. I am a whale at least partially....

Heiko took pictures of me today (it was warm and I was looking at the sun, so my expression is more than stupid) for our photo album. The second picture shows my latest FO :) I finally finished the last maternity shirt (burda pattern, I reviewed that on PR). I admit that in the end I simply serged the hems and I did not bother to press the seams open. The fabric is some kind of 100% petrol based stuff, that I got at some swap I think... Was in my stash forever and will now be worn for this summer :) ( I don't think, that I will fit into my old wardrobe that fast), so I don't care if it is really well made.

And please don't be astonished, the tights I'm wearing are compression hosiery. I'm not that stupid to wear thick black tights when it is 30 °C outside, if not necessary! My feet thank me for that :)

I'm at 33+5 weeks today (for those, who haven't been pregnant. The estimated day of delivery is 40+0 weeks. Meaning 40 weeks + 0 days). The latest measurement of my tummy was 109 cm and that was last week....

Countdown!

2010-06-23T08:30:00.002+02:00

So I've been to the hospital for my regular ultrasound of the twins yesterday. They guess, that the twins will be born in the next 4-5 weeks. I need to rest, rest, rest and rest and take things very easy. Putting my feet up and "enjoy" the day.

Would be easier if my back did not hurt and getting up to get some food (or do other things like getting up in the morning to take a shower) means: ouch, that hurt my belly. I'm already sleep deprived, since I wake up every 2-3 hrs, since I can't turn around without concentrating anymore. I guess, it can't be worse with the kids waking up every 2 hrs, since at least I will be able to sleep without pain....

I'm knitting a lot but I'm bad on the picture side. I hope to photograph at least the finished baby blanket and the 2 preemie jackets I made this week.

I hope, you'll all understand!

Sheepshearing at Arche Warder

2010-06-14T12:13:00.011+02:00

Good morning readers,

sorry, that I was absent again for quiet a while. I wasn't feeling very well the last few days and sleeping was the best way to cope. As DH remarked: if you don't feel like knitting, it must be bad. So nearly no knitting got done here and even less sewing. The babyblanket no. 2 is blocking and I promise to take pictures as soon as I'm able to.

But first I want to tell you about the sheepshearing at the Arche Warder. The Arche Warder is a "zoo" for old breeds of farm animals ranging from donkey to pigs, from geese to goats. Most of the breeds are near to extiction.

On May 30th was the annual sheepshearing day and since I knew, they would be selling fleeces I had to go, even though the weather was a little "unstable" and I was already looking like a whale. (the fleece per sheep was 5 Euro....)

So we got there around noonish and the shearer was already at work:

The sheep are not bred for the fleeces as you can see, so if you buy fleeces, you will get a lot of vegetable matter.

I knew I wanted a Jacob sheep fleece and this is the lady, who provided it. I was able to choose "my" sheep:

Benita, the lady I took a spinning class with, also suggested a Moorschnucke (white polled heath) So I got a fleece from one of those too. But before "my" ewes were shorn it was lunchtime and Heiko and I went for a walk in the "zoo". Unfortunately my batteries were pretty low, so here are just a few of the impressions:

Little piglets (and no, those are no boars)

A stone age settlement (no re-enactors though at the weekend of the sheepshearing...)

Finally it was the turn of my sheep to be shorn (I just took pictures of the Jacob)

I decided to process half of the Moorschnucke myself (bad idea, the jacob fleece had much less VM in it and less lanolin...) and sent the rest away to be processed.

Unfortunately I have to lay down a lot (just talked to my midwife, it seems that I have early contractions again and not false labour as I thought...) so spinning will have to wait...

On the fly... oder wie man eine Fliege stickt

2010-05-26T20:12:00.010+02:00

O.k. this post is going to be bi-lingual again, since this is a tutorial on how to stitch a fly (if that is the English term for it. Please enlighten me, so that I can change the wording if necessary)

Was ist eine Fliege? Eine Fliege (nähtechnisch gesehen) ist eine Verstärkung eines Schlitzes, z.B. bei Diorfalten oder Paspeltaschen. Sie hilft, ein Einreissen des Schlitzes zu verhindern und ist dekorativ.

What is a fly?

A fly (at least sewing wise) is a backing for a vent, for example with dioresque pleats or welt pockets. It helps to prevent a vent from tearing and is also a decorative element.

Was benötigt man? What do you need?

- Perlgarn, Knopflochseide oder wie in meinem Fall Stickgarn
- Eine spitze Nadel mit großem Kopf (wg. des dickeren Garns)
- Nähgarn in passender Farbe
- ein Geodreieck
- Kreide
- Bügeleinlage
- wenn vorhanden einen Stickrahmen

(wie man an meinen Fotos sieht, habe ich die letzten beiden Punkte nicht berücksichtigt und das sieht man jetzt leider auch)

- Buttonholesilk/thread, embroidery thread (either the shiny or the not so shiny version)
- a pointy needle with a big eye to accomodate the thicker yarn
- Sewingthread
- Chalk for marking the fabric
- a set square
- Interfacing
- if you have: an embroidery hoop

(if you look at my pictures, you can see that I learned the last two things while trying out this technique. Unfortunately it shows :( )

1. Schritt

Die Rückseite des zu "bestickenden" Stoffes mit der Bügeleinlage verstärken. Dann zeichnet man ein gleichschenkliges Dreieck auf den Stoff (na, müsst ihr auch erstmal gucken wie das geht? Mathe lohnt sich doch :) ) d.h. alle drei Seiten sind gleich lang. Am einfachsten ist das mit einem Geodreieck.

Step 1:

Interface the backside of the area, where you are going to do your "embroidery". Then draw an isosceles triangle (I had to look up, how you do that too. It pays off to pay attention in math class. An isosceles triangles has 3 sides that are the same length. It is the easiest to use a set square fot that)

2. Schritt

Mit der Nähmaschine dieses Dreieck entlangsteppen.

Step 2:

Using your sewing machine, sew along the marking of the triangle.

3. Schritt

Beachte: Arbeite immer gerade ausserhalb der Maschinennaht!
Jetzt wird es ernst:

Spanne dein Nähstück in den Stickrahmen ein, fädle Dein Stickgarn/Knopflochgarn ein und steche von der Hinterseite nach Vorne an der linken unteren Ecke ein und dann an der Spitze bringst Du die Nadel wieder auf die Rückseite des Nähprojektes. Alternativ kannst du auch die Nadel ein- und gleichzeitig wieder ausstechen, so dass die Nadel wieder vorn ist. Ich habe aber, nachdem ich das Foto gemacht hatte, gemerkt, dass es sinnvoller ist, die Nadel auf die Rückseite zu bringen, den Faden durchzuziehen (vorsicht: einigermaßen locker lassen, nicht zu straff spannen) und dann von der Rückseite die Nadel gleich wieder neben den Faden nach vorn durchzustechen.

Step 3:

Now the handwork beginns. Attention: Always work just outside the machinestitched lines!

Put your piece of work into the embroidery hoop, having the area with the triangle taught. Using the embroidery/buttonholethread already attached to the needle, bring the needle from the wrong side to the right side at the lower left corner, then, at the tip of the triangle, bring the needle to the wrong side and pull the thread to the wrong side, beeing carefull not to pull it too taught. Next bring the needle from the wrongside back to the right side, just next to the thread. Alternative: Poke the needle thru horizontally (as shown in the picture but I find, I get better results with the step by step method)

4. Schritt:

Jetzt den Nadel an der unteren rechten Ecke wieder durchstechen und den Faden durchziehen. Hierbei wieder darauf achten, den Faden nicht zu stark anzuziehen.

Step 4:

Bring the needle back to the wrong side at the lower right corner and pull the thread thru. Be carefull not to tension the thread too much.

5. Schritt

Bringe die Nadel von der Rückseite wieder nach vorne. Steche hierzu innenliegend neben den Faden in der unteren linken Ecke ein. Danach wieder zur Spitze, dort die Nadel wieder direkt neben den Faden einstechen ( nach "unten" )

Step 5:

Bring the needle back to the right side, poking it thru just right from the previous thread at the lower left corner. After that, bring the needle back to the wrong side, just outside the thread at the top of the triangle (going "down")

Wiederhole jetzt Schritt 4 & 5 bis das ganze Dreieck gefüllt ist. Vernähe den Anfang und das Ende des Fadens. Fertig!

Repeat Step 4 & 5 until the whole triangle is filled. Secure the end and the beginning of the embroidery thread. Done!

As you can see: this fly would have benefitted from using a) interfacing and b) an embroidery hoop :)

Wie man sieht, hätte ich bei diesem Stück sowohl Bügeleinlage wie auch einen Stickrahmen gut gebrauchen können.....

I hope that was somewhat usefull. Please give feedback. I'm not really good at explaining things!

A pro is a pro, is a pro!

2010-05-25T20:51:00.000+02:00

And sometimes it is good to pay the pro, don't you think?
(showing the glory of the 45cm tummy circumfence I gained! o.k. and the couple of kilos.....)

just 11 weeks to go

2010-05-22T10:23:00.003+02:00

or more likely 7 weeks :)

Life has been busy here the last few weeks and days. I had my last day of work yesterday, so I tried to get as much done as possible there and was pretty exhausted in the evenings. By law every mother is granted a period of 6 week before the estimated due date and a 8 weeks period after the delivery at full payment (the health insurance -mandatory in Germany- pays part of it and part of it is payed by the employer. And I also had 5 weeks of vacation left for this year, so I was able to leave yesterday (I'm going on a seminar for 3 days from work in June but other than that, I can relax at home)

If been to a flea-market just for baby stuff and got some more onsies and rompers as well as a uhm "chair" where you can lay the baby into and feed it and it dips up and down, so it might calm the baby too.

We (meaning Heiko) assembled a closet and a drawer for the babies room and I need to abrade the wooden changing station that my sister had in her attic before we can install that :)

I have to admit, that slowly things are getting exhausting. I gained around 15kg so far (I hope, that it is mostly twins + water ;) ) and my tummycircumfence is at 109.5 cm (so that is 45 cm more than before the pregnancy). I think, that explains, why I'm so exhausted in the evenings (and I have a couple of more cm to gain in the next few weeks, since the twins had to develop their vital parts first and now they gain weight. I'm so happy, that I made it this far without major problems!) and why my sleep is so unsteady (turning around in bed means waking up ;) )

As for fiber arts:

Knitting:
I'm still working on baby blanket no.2. I'm at skein 8 of 12 and I'm ready to poke my eyes out with my knitting needles ;) I think I will finish knitting the 8th ball and start the edging then, just to be sure, that I have enough yarn for the edging.

I haven't knitted a stitch on my socks. My feet are swollen like a ballon in the evenings and so the socks won't fit if I try them on, so discouraging. And I want to get the blanket done ;)

Sewing:

I have a finished top but it is in the laundry basket (plus I don't like the fit of it. I promise I will show it to you once it is washed and ironed!) I have another shirt (pattern like my recent review) cut out and will sew it soon, since I need short sleeved shirts for summer. I just was lucky, that the weather as so cold the last few months ;)

Spinning:

I finished spinning some space-dyed roving, that Heiko gave me for christmas. It's plyed and dry -> just need to take pictures. Will do that soon!

O.k. enough for this update :) Hope to be back soon, now that I have tons of time LOL (need to blog now, before I have 2 wee babies to care for here)

A ray of light in a dark time

2010-05-09T11:16:00.002+02:00

Hi everybody,

back at Heikos pc :) Mine is at our friends house but he is ill with bronchitis and I don't want to catch that :) and next week is full of doctors appointments (check for diabetes and checking my kidney :( but at least I'm pain free at the moment), so he will come over the week after that.

The weather is dull the last few days and that resembles my mood. Last weekend I got a call from my mum, that my uncles conditions (pancreatic cancer) got worse and that they had to take off one of his legs. Since I could not sit in the car for more than 5 minutes without getting really severe pains in my back, Heiko and I decided to visit him this sunday, hoping that my kidney would get better (it is...).

My sister and my mum visited him last sunday and he did not want to live any longer, the aches and pains where just too much. He was ready to go. Last thursday, he passed away.

On one hand, I'm sad, having lost another member of my immediate family to cancer (cancer 4: my maternal family 1 ->me) on the other hand, I'm happy that he does not have to suffer more than he had in the last year after the diagnosis. Chances where high, that he would have lost his other leg too.

I know, that pancreatic cancer is hard to detect, but most other forms of cancer aren't. My other uncle died of gullet cancer and he had detected knots in his body early. He might live today if he had visited a doctor early.

I'm alive because I went to see my ob-gyn early. I go to my regular check ups! I have my skin checked every other year. Get yourself checked regularly if you are a guy or a woman. Having fought cancer and having lost 2 of my uncles to this dreaded illness I can tell you, that both is not fun!

A ray of light is the second babyblanket I'm knitting:

and that the movements of the twins are getting more and more. This feeling is beyond words...

Patternreview: Maternity shirt, burda 08.2006 mod. 125

2010-05-09T10:59:00.002+02:00

Pattern Description:
Maternity top with gathers at the side seam, modest v-neck and 3/4 sleeves
Pattern Sizing:
European 36-44, I made a size 38 based on my pre-pregnancy measurements.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it?
Absolutley and I'm very happy with that, although now at 27 weeks pregnant with twins I already look like a whale whereas the model has a nice little bump.

Were the instructions easy to follow?
They were o.k. The shirt on the picture is my second one and I changed the way of how to attach the binding at the neckline.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?
I think, for a pregnancy shirt, this shirt is kind of stylish without beeing over the top or unwearable. It is very comofortable to wear and with some minor changes to the neckline or the sleeves you have a tnt pattern for your maternity wardrobe in no time!

Dislike: I need more space for the twins but that is not burdas fault and I should be able to modify the pattern quiet easily.

Fabric Used:
Cotton-lycra blend from my stash. I really can't remember when or where I bought this fabric:

Pattern alterations or any design changes you made:

First I cut off the added s.a. at the neckline of my pattern because somewhere in the instructions you have to cut the s.a. off anyway and why should I add s.a. and then cut it off again??

The instructions say to close one shoulder seam, add the binding and then close the second shoulder seam. This is what I did with the first version I made. Not the best look (or my best work).
So on this shirt I closed both shoulder seams, pinned my binding unstretched to the neckline and marked were the "seamline" should be. I unpinned, substracted 20% added seam allowance and cut off the extra fabric. I made a tube, folded it in half and pinned that to the neckline and again and sewed it on . Then I serged the seam, sewed the little triangle for the v-neck and topstitched everything in place.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?
I have already cut out the third version but severe pain in my back, due to a blockade of my right kidney, had me take a break from sewing or anything else, since the chairs in my sewing room just made the pain worse!

Conclusion:

Great maternity pattern! I highly recommend it!

Stuff for the wee once

2010-04-29T20:00:00.005+02:00

Hej da!

I've been off work since tuesday, since the co-worker of my co-workers girlfriend has some kind of disease, that my ob-gyn thought I should not get and she forbate me to go to work. I'm back at work tomorrow since a bloodtest showed, that I have had that illness when I was young...

So, I had some time working on baby blanket no. 1

Pattern: OpArt from Knitty
Yarn: 450gr of KnitPicks Swish DK in Eggplant and Tidepool Heather
Just needs blocking but I need help from Heiko with our old matress for that and he won't be home till 10 p.m. tonight, so it will have to wait :)

Second finished thing: another sleeping bag. I've made this one so often now, that I forgot to count. Buying this pattern (an OOP burda pattern)has def. payed off!

I'm also spinning:
This is what I'm working on (o.k. started today but my aching back -due to a not fully functioning right kidney- had me take a lot of breaks)

It's a merino roving, that Heiko gave me for christmas.

My maternity shirt is also coming along but it's not finished yet. I spend most of my time outside the last 3 days ;)

P.S.The waterpistol is for the cats of course :)

Preparing for the twins

2010-04-25T10:13:00.010+02:00

Hi everybody,

I found a way to get the pictures from my camera onto DHs PC (our friend will set up the laptop for me, since last time I installed programms I had tons of extra programms on my pc, that I don't need like the photoeditor, that came with my camera and I don't need that, since I have photoshop).

So, during our "vacation" ( I was ill, so I don't count that as having had really vacation) Heiko painted his former office:

Since I was pretty crappy, I forgot to take "after" pictures but Heiko took one of Greebo inspecting one of the new baby beds:
The colour is called "honey" but I'd say it is more of a papaya or mango, isn't it? I still like it but the colour chip at the home depot store looked waaaay different. We bought some more furniture last week but Heiko isn't at home this weekend and you need two to assamble the stuff. (Plus my back is killing me again. I still feel as if I have a biiiig bruise at my lower right ribs)

Another thing I did during our vacation was to dye some yarn for baby blanket no. 2:

This is the undyed yarn. It's a wool-bamboo blend (superwash). That I skeined and tied up midway since I wanted to dye the skein 50/50 (or around that) in two different colours.

First I let one half of the yarn soak in a water-vinegar mixture. I added a few drops of washing-liquid.

I then dyed one half yellow and totally forgot to take a picture of it (but I did with the orange :) ). After letting it cool down for a while (although superwash I did not dare to handle it earlier since I feared, it would felt!) I let the second half soak in the water-vinegar mix.

This is the second colour :) I used some never used cuttlery to drape the first half (still wet) of the yarn over it and let the second "half" hang into my dye.

The final (still wet) yarn looked like this and I promise (now, that I know, how this works with DH pc) to take pictures of the dryed yarn today!

And of my FOs and my WIPs (but those only if DH is home before my guests arrive) I hope, you liked my little tutorial

10.000 stitches

2010-04-18T18:59:00.002+02:00

to go! (Or nearly) Then I will be finished with the OpArt blanket I'm knitting for one of the babies.
I'm at the part where it says: Work 18 rounds of colour A. The first round had 552 stitches, I have knit 2 round of colour A, so 16 to go, meaning around 9.000 stitches.

Problem is: I can't sit at the moment or lay down. My back ribcage just hurts like I have bruises all over. I thought I might get sciatica-problems due do having a hollow-back (sway-back?) but no, my ribcage aches if I sit wrong and then I can't sleep, causing my back to become denser and denser.

Having my tummy expand from 70cm to 98 cm in the course of say, 4 months, is an accomplishment for my body and somehow I think, it has to make up for that. I'm going to see a masseuse tomorrow and I'm now swimming once a week.

I hope, that the pains will lessen somehow, since I need to knit another blanket for baby 2 and somehow I have a feeling, that I won't have that much knitting time, once the twins are here!

Oh, and I ordered a laptop. We got a bonus from our employer, so I have some unexpected money and I ordered an inexpensive dell! So in about 3-4 weeks I should be able to post pictures of me and the huge tummy!

The most important WIPs

2010-04-11T08:42:00.004+02:00

Hi,

today I can show you pictures!
(I will get a bargain laptop at the end of the month :) I'm getting a little birthday money and our employer gives all employées a small bonus in April (I thought June), so that will pay for the laptop. I'm not installing any programms on DH pc. I don't want him to mess with my stuff, so I don't mess with his!

But here are the promised pictures

Baby two with the foot of Baby one at it's face

Baby one beeing very tired.

Both are doing great. Each one is around 500gr which is the normal weight for a singleton, so they are on a good way!

Update: In case you haven't seen it. My sister and my brother-in-law have a little game going on, where you can bet on the delivery date (due date is 10.08.10 but I don't think, we will make it there) and the names of the twins.
Here's the blog: tini und heiko nachwuchs

The first baby blanket just need around 40 more round (but they are like 500 stitches and growing...), so that might be finished next week!

My laptop is dead

2010-04-07T08:41:00.002+02:00

So I won't be able to show any pictures any time soon, since my husband does not have the software for the camera or Photoshop on his pc.

I need to figure out when I can buy a new laptop since we first have to buy more furniture for the kids and having a laptop, when we do have a working pc at home is something I consider luxury instead of a necessity...

So bear with me, when I can't show you any of the FOs or WIPs I have going.....

Back at home

2010-03-31T14:14:00.004+02:00

Hi everybody,

we are back at home since monday but I got a bad bad bad cold during our vacation and this turned my break from work into sick leave :( At least my doc gave me the o.k. to use nose spray at night, so that I can sleep (I was at 3 hrs a night and totally overtired)

Since Monday DH is turning his room into our nursery. He moved his stuff (and some of mine) up to the attic, heaved his desk and a drawer into my room and got his PC running again. My laptop needs a new motherboard, so it will be some time before I can post pictures.

We also got our new bed yesterday. Heiko and a friend picked it, the matresses and all the stuff, up and we had the first night in our new bed yesterday. It's a lot higher than our old one. This makes getting up for me at the moment so much easier since I already gained 20 cm tummy circumfence.

Our vacation was a vacation of bargains.

First we got a stroller for our kids. It was reduced by 500 Euro (still 800 Euro but for 1.300 we wouldn't have bought it). It can be transformed, so that the kids can be in it until they are 4 yrs old (depending on the size of the twins ;) )

I bought 12 skeins of yarn (G-B Bamboo touch) in white. Each skein was just 1.50 Euro a skein and will be overdyed, once I decided which colourscheme I want for the second baby blanket
( I'm working on OpArt in eggplant/heathered green for the first twin at the moment).

Yesterday we also picked up 2 beds for the twins. They are used (a friend of my sister sold them to us) and we got them (with a lot of sheets and covers) for 100 Euro total! WhooHoo!

Kids are expensive but so far we have made faboulous deals and we couldn't be happier!

I'll try to finish my second maternity top today but there will be no pictures until my laptop is fixed!

Have a great easter weekend!

A week off

2010-03-19T10:04:00.002+01:00

Hi everybody,

I just want to let you know, that I will be away for a week, visiting Sushi and my SIL.
Might be, that I go yarn shopping with Sushi, although I need more yarn like I need more weeds in the garden ;) But the outlet from Schoppel Wolle is like 15 minutes away and might be too good to pass!

I just wanted to let you know, that everything is all right at casa tini (just my laptop needs a little tune up, so all the pictures I took of my knitting and sewing are on there...). I need to take things slowly though. After 30 minutes of walking, I need a break... And my tummy is huge! And I'm just 20 weeks pregnant!

Siegfried & Roy Part II

2010-03-10T08:34:00.004+01:00

Since I got a couple of emails and questions:

The doctors made an educated guess about the sex of the twins. They aren't 100% sure and we are not going to tell people, what we are expecting.

Siegfried & Roy are the suggestions from Heikos co-workers in case it's going to be boys. For girls it is Hanni & Nanni (Books by Enid Blyton) so far. I think, Siegfried & Roy is a lot more strange, so I'm sticking to that.

Before Siegfried & Roy we were referring to the twins as A-Hörnchen & B-Hörnchen, who are Chip & Chap in American TV ;)

So the twins might be boys or girls ;)

Since I'm at home all day, I'm making good progress on my FLS! I'm starting the second sleeve today. I put sleeve 1 on scrap yarn after 40 rows. I'm alternating 2 skeins of my handspun Romney and I don't want to run short on sleeve 2 ;)

Siegfried & Roy

2010-03-08T16:03:00.003+01:00

Did I mention, that Heikos co-workers decided, that if the twins are going to be boys, that that would be the "preferred" names? No?
I think these names are too funny and I keep referring to the twins as Siegfried & Roy.

So I had an ultrasound at the Uniklinik in Kiel today. Siegfried and Roy are well and show no signs of TTTS. Getting this information was kind of hard. I nearly passed out during the ultrasound 3 times. After the third time we took a 20 minute brake and let some fresh air in. I felt awefull and somehow ashamed. I so wanted to know, that the twins are o.k. but my body wouldn't cooperate.

The wee ones are around 200gr each now! Tomorrow I will get into week 19, so that is halfway down the road. I guess, the first half was the easier one (weightwise ;) )

Out of order

2010-03-07T11:38:00.006+01:00

that's what I am since Friday.
I had some weird tummy aches on thursday evening, while babysitting the 3.5 months old daughter of my friend. So I took some magnesium when I came home at midnight and things got a lot better.

Next morning I was still aching, so I took some more magnesium and after an important meeting at work I called my doc ( it was 9.30 then and they open at 10...). I got an appointment at 12 p.m.. The doc things it was an early contraction, so I'm going to stay at home for the next week and relax, relax and relax. Damn. I had hoped, that the first problems would occur later. I was pretty panicy but the doc increased my daily dose of magnesium from 120 mg to 600 mg (or whatever the weight is) and since friday I haven't had any problems.

So, here's my small tummy (18 weeks now)

and these are the trousers I made from pattern no. 124, burda mag issue 08.2005
Size 38
adjustments: added length (but not enough, these are very short trousers)

I'm not happy with the inset for the tummy, it is very low and I can't wear a lot of tops with it. The button elastic at the "waist" isn't really comfortable either
(I know the pic is horrible, for my review I need to take another one but I guess I will have more luck with my tripod instead of telling DH what to do...)

It seems that the trousers are sagging at the rearside too :( I have borrowed tons of maternity trousers from my friends, so I don't think I will make another pair and at least for my figure I can't recommend the pattern.

Other things I've finished the last few weeks:
A pair of socks FOR ME!

Pattern: Sky master pattern by Cat Bordhi from her book "New pathways for sock knitters)
Yarn: Knitpicks Memories (100% Merino) in Redwood Forest
Needles: 3mm dpn
I hope that they won't felt as easily as my other socks from a KP yarn

And I've done some spinning, so I can make progress on my handspun cardigan

Fibre: Romney, that Sarah-Jane got me at Rhinebek and that I dyed myself.
Threeply.
(My ravelympics project)

one with sewing content

2010-02-21T14:55:00.001+01:00

Hi everybody,

my energy is starting to come back and I need to sew up a bit more of my stash, since I will be sharing my hobby room soon with my husband. So I finished 2 shirts for my friends little daughter Charlotte:

Here's my review (cross posting on PR!)
Pattern Description: "Hippie-shirt" for babies with long bell sleeves, a neck opening with a slit and 2 slits on the side.

Pattern Sizing: 62-92 European, I made a size 68.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? A lot. I changed the neckline a bit, so that the shirt has 2 buttons on the shoulderseams to make dressing/undressing easier for the mum.

Were the instructions easy to follow? I admit, I did not look at them. This is a very straightforward pattern.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern? It is cute and pretty easy!

Fabric Used: Cotton jersey with a sweatshirtlike wrong side.

Pattern alterations or any design changes you made: I drafted new facings for the neckline since I lenghtened the pieces at the shoulderseam, so that instead of having a shoulder seam, the shirt opens at both sides too. There will be snaps soon on the shoulder seam. I did not make the neck-slit so low (no need since the shirt has openable ;) shoulders) I forgot to sew the side-vents...

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others? Yes and yes. If our twins will be girls, I can see myself making more of these!

Conclusion: Great pattern!

Umfrage (sorry just German today...)

2010-02-20T17:40:00.002+01:00

Gefunden bei Frau Schlamuser und für lustig befunden:

1. Wann warst du zuletzt beim Frisör?
So vor 3 Wochen, ich brauche immer mal wieder Farbe, obwohl ich das derzeit mit Pflanzenfarben zu regeln versuche ;)
2. Schminkst du dich?
Zur Arbeit: täglich. Ich fühle mich damit einfach gut, auch wenn es meist nur Lidschatten und Mascara sind
3. Trägst du Röcke?
oh, gerne!
4. Was trägst du nachts?
Schlafanzug
5. Welche Schuhgröße hast du?
40
6. Wie viele Paar Schuhe besitzt du (ungefähr)?
ähm, keine Ahnung, nicht so viele wie andere
7. Hast du eine Tätowierung oder ein Piercing?
Ja, ein Tattoo
8. Wann warst du zuletzt beim Zahnarzt?
letzten Herbst
9. Mit wem hast du zuletzt telefoniert und wie lange dauerte das?
Meiner Mutter (musste vom Kinderwagenanschauen berichten), ca 15 Minuten
10. Gibt es eine Serie, die du regelmäßig schaust?
Mehrere: Castle, Legend of the seeker und Stargate (auf DVD)
11. Warst du schon mal im Fernsehen?
NIcht bewußt....
12. Welchen Sport schaust du dir im TV an?
Keinen. Olympia mag ich aber.
13. Hast du eine Phobie?
Ich fahre ungern Fahrstuhl, ist aber keine Phobie, nur eine Abneigung.
14. Hast du dir schon mal gewünscht, ein Mann zu sein?
Immer bei Periodenschmerzen.
15. Welche Zeitschriften liest du meistens?
Was so beim Friseur liegt. Ich mag auch gerne mal sinnbefreite Literatur :)
16. Wo verbringst du mehr Zeit, vorm PC oder TV?
Definitiv vor dem Rechner... Bei mir auf der Arbeit geht ja auch nichts ohne!
17. Wann warst du zuletzt in der Disco?
So vor 3 Jahren... ich vermisse es nicht.
18. Welche Tiere magst du gar nicht?
Kröten
19. Wenn du jetzt auswandern müsstest, wohin würdest du gehen?
Nach Neuengland oder r nach
20. Bist du in der Schule mal sitzen geblieben?
Ja, einmal.
21. In welchem Fach warst du besonders schlecht?
Sport. Ich bewege mich nicht gern ;) ausser beim Tanzen und Schwimmen...
22. In welchem besonders gut?
ähm allen anderen.... Rechnungswesen, Geschichte und Religion waren aber meine Highlights...
23. Wie viele Sprachen sprichst du?
Fliessend: Deutsch & Englisch
Teilweise weil vergessen: Französich
Stammelnd, weil gerade am Lernen: Dänisch
24. Welche Sprache würdest du gerne lernen?
Dänisch. Unsere Kids sollen ja mal auf die dänische Schule
25. Liest du in Zeitschriften dein Horoskop?
Wenn, dann zufällig
26. Beherrschst du ein Musikinstrument?
ich habe mal Blockflöte lernen müssen, das aber richtig verdrängt
27. Kannst du tanzen?
Ja :) Wir waren ja mal im Verein.
28. Was machst du nachts, wenn du nicht einschlafen kannst?
Ich kann immer schlafen. Und wenn nicht, sehe ich fern.
29. Hast du ein Lieblingsgesellschaftspiel?
ui, schwer. Arkham Horror finde ich sure, Roboralley, Carcasonne, Einfach genial, Illuminati...
30. Wohin ging dein bisher weitentferntester Urlaub?
San Francisco oder Peking, das müsste ich jetzt googlen.
31. Wann warst du zuletzt auf einem Konzert?
Im Herbst oder zählen die ??? als Konzert?
32. Welche CD hast du dir zuletzt gekauft?
ui, schwer... ich lasse mir ja so was schenken.... Linkin Park?
33. Hast du dich schon auf der Arbeit krank gemeldet, weil du einfach keine Lust hattest?
Nein
34. Hast du schon FKK gemacht?
Nein
35. Hast du schon Bungee-Jumping oder Fallschirmspringen gemacht?
Nö, finde ich aber reizvoll.
36. Welches Zweirad fährst du?
Ein ganz normales Straßenfahrrad...
37. Wann hast du zuletzt die Fenster geputzt?
Im Herbst
38. Wann zuletzt Wäsche gebügelt?
Vorletzte Woche. Bei uns bügelt der Göttergatte
39. Wann hattest du die letzte Auseinandersetzung mit deinem Partner wegen des Fernsehprogramms?
Nie, wir kommen schon immer auf einen Nenner :) wenn ich was nicht sehen will, gehe ich halt in mein Zimmer und nähe
40. Küsst du deinen Partner täglich?
Klar!
41. Öffnest du die Post, die an deinen Partner adressiert ist?
Nein
42. Wirst du laut, wenn du streitest?
Nein, nur giftig
43. Hattest du schon mal ein Blind Date?
ja, eines. Ist Dekaden her
44. Hast du dich schon mal in einen verheirateten Mann verliebt?
Nein
45. Was war dein erstes eigenes Auto?
Schwarzer Corsa
46. Bist du bei der Führerscheinprüfung mal durchgerasselt?
Nein
47. Wo muss die Tanknadel deines Autos stehen, damit du tanken gehst?
Gegen 1/4 :) wir wechseln uns ja ab und das ist die Marke
48. Hast du schon mal ein Auto zu Schrott gefahren?
Ja.
49. Warum hast du bei dieser Umfrage mitgemacht?
ich fand sie lustig

Let it snow

2010-02-14T14:51:00.005+01:00

or better DON'T let it snow :)

First, before I whine about the snow: THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your nice comments. I'm so happy about this pregnancy. It wasn't the easiest time before that since the chances for me weren't high due to chemo but now that we are expecting 2 little wonders my heart couldn't be more filled with joy, happiness and a bit of worry, how things will work out!

O.k. I won't whine about the snow but I have to admit, that by now I would rather have no snow anymore.
Northern Germany is under a white blanket since Christmas and to be honest. We are just not used to that. Our roads are full of snow and the poor people working at the companies, that keep the roads passable are working and working and working without or with just little breaks.
Our trashbins aren't emptied anymore since the trucks are too "fragile" to drive in snow.... how stupid is that? The company told us, that they are going to pick up the trash later and that we can fill trashbags and add them to the containers but where to store the bags?

There's a good side to all that snow. We stay at home a lot (since I'm tired anyway. I think I might be low on iron, will check that with my doctor tomorrow and will get another ultrasound!) and thus I knit and spin a lot (there's sewing too but I don't have pictures since my photographer spend 2 hrs. snow shovelling today and wasn't in the mood to take pictures afterwards).

So here's what I've done and what I've taken pictures of:

Flower Power Dishcloth
Made for Sarah-Jane out of some Sugar'n Cream that she send me.
Quick and fun pattern! I totally recommend it and together with some handmade soap, it makes a great gift.

Next:
The pair of socks that were three

Pattern:Woven Ridge socks by Cat Bordhi out of "New Pathways for Sock knitters"
Somehow the gauge changed during the knitting (I swatched!), so I started the second sock with 4 stitches less and knitted another 2 socks. But still: the Ridgeline sockitecture doesn't fit my food very well. So this pair is going to someone who really deserves a pair of handknit socks!
Yarn: Drachenwolle "Winterblau"

And one for me

Since it is still below 1°C here, I need socks for myself as well. So, another of Cat Bordhi's sockitecture. This time it will be the Sky Masterpattern:
It's the fourth sockitecture from the book. I decided to work my way thru the book and knit every sockitecture before buying book no. 2!

I've also been spinning and knitting for/on my cardigan but again: No pictures.

Sewingwise I finished my maternity trousers and they are comfy but not stylish. I did some mending today (but more on that soon) and I have cut out 2 shirts for my friend Billes newborn girl. But that is still not assembled!

The reason why I'm not sewing

2010-01-28T19:33:00.003+01:00

or blogging that is :)

I'm just too tired. Most evenings when I come home from work I'm too tired to do anything besides sitting on the couch, knit some easy stuff and watch tv.

Not that you are thinking, that I'm ill. I'm def. not ill ;)

The reason are two tiny people inside my tummy :) (sorry I scan the pictures into a pdf file and I'm too tired to scan them again. I will post pics soon!)

I'm getting twins in August and I hope, that the tiredness will be over soon!

The kids and I are well. I get that checked every 3 weeks

You can leave your hat on :)

2010-01-17T16:42:00.002+01:00

So, it is still winter outside although we have temperatures just below freezing, so I don't complain ( we got more snow though).
Last year I made my icing swirl hat and finally I had the idea to take a picture on my "dressform", the fake hat were I store my wigs on :)

Pattern: Icing swirl hat by Ysolda Teague (ravelry link) Ysolda will donate 50% of the sale price on all her patterns to Medicin sans frontiers (Ärzte ohne Grenzen) for their work on Haiti until Jan. 31st. Her patterns are awesome, so if you want some, now is the time to get them.

Yarn: Wolle Rödel Maxi. I got this yarn in a swap. Unfortunately it pills a bit as you can see in the second picture

And this is the first FO of 2010 knitting wise:

Pattern: Snapdragon Tam also by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: New Angora by Lang, an angora-rayon-poly-mix that was great to knit!

I think, hats are the way to go in this weather plus I look kind of nice in them ;)

The last FO of 2009

2010-01-12T19:26:00.003+01:00

( I admit, I haven't taken pictures of the things finished in 2010 yet, so you are going to get pictures of my last FO of 2009 for now :) )

The pattern is French Press slippers (yes, the yarn harlot made them too and yes, I'm a follower ;) ) and absolutely great! The yarn is Peruvian Highland wool from Elann that happend to be in my stash. I used 2,25 skeins of it, so it is great for using up odds and ends of feltable wool.

Size made: around 40-41is
Made for: Louise
Buttons: also from stash
Time needed knitting: A sunday plus some time for the sewing and felting.
Felting: By my trusty washing machine on 90°C on intense cycle (over an hour)

Recommendation: Highly recommended! Louise likes them very much and I will need to make myself a pair too!

christmas re-cap

2010-01-10T11:47:00.004+01:00

A wonderfull snowy good morning everybody,

since the world is still white outside I guess it is o.k. to show my christmas gifts, isn't is?
(I finished 2 projects since christmas but since one of them is still blocking, that will wait till next time. Plus one of them is SEWN! Gasp! And I started another sewing project and traced a pattern for one more! It seems my sewing mojo has return, at least for a while.)

So, here are my hobby-related gifts!

First there was a great parcel from Sarah Jane, which had lots of awesome things in them (like a mini uno-card game!) She send me a ravelry-mug, some really lovely lace yarn ( I got the hint ;) ) and a knitting bag, so I can start another lace project ;) (I just took a pic of the things yarny). The blue ring in front of the mug is a felt ring that my friend Louise made :)
Then there were books! I finished reading the novel that Kerstin send me, started a project from Whimsical knits from Maria and the other two books were given by my family.

Heiko got my some hand-carders and some fiber!(the colourfull ball of pencil roving at the right). Mäddi send me some nice merino (top left) and my family got me some mysterious roving plus some spools for my spinning wheel! Yay!

So, now I'm prepared for a year of using up my stash :) It's just January 10th but I already cut up 5 meter fabric( 2.5 meter are already used up) and finished 2 skeins of yarn. Not bad, not bad. Plus another knitting project was started today. I need more warm socks!

Happy sewing and knitting to all of you. Make warm clothes if you live in cold climate::::

Another one without a picture

2010-01-05T19:10:00.003+01:00

Hi there,

I'm sitting here at DH computer writing this post while it is dark and cold outside. I'm sitting at Heikos PC just because it is so much more comfortable to sit at :) My laptop is kind of very slow these days ;) and since I'm here and it is dark outside there is no picture of the first FO of the year and it is something sewn! I made another baby sleeping bag for a friend. It was supposed to be finished shortly after the delivery but lo and behold: I did not finish it in time. But now it is done and I'm happy with it.

I hope to sew more in 2010 than I did last year. I need a couple of new trousers and shirts and I do have a nice stash! Hopefully the later will become the former in the next months!

And I want to re-organise my sewing room. I need to get rid of stuff and declutter. That will also include de-cluttering the cupboard that we do have in the attic. It is full of STUFF. O.k. it also holds our linen ;) But I have to say: mostly Heikos stuff. So that will be something for our vacationtime in March. I also plan to paint Heikos room ;)

So, that are my plans for this year. I'm kind of happy that 2009 is over. The last weeks were kind of stressfull. Now I have a cold and I'm just tired. My job will be keeping me busy too but I try to avoid working overtime. I just need time for me!

I can't believe that the first decade of this millenia is already over! So much has happed. I finished my training for work (that includes going back to school on each saturday for 3 yrs. besides working full time), got married and bought a house with my husband.

We are really happy here and we have adopted 2 cute cats!

Then there was the dark period in 2003 just after our wedding, when I was diagnosed with cancer. I was really really really sick. Looking back though this year totally changed my view on everything. I now know, that I can handle most things with the love and help of my family and friends. I have the best people, that support me. This is a very reassuring thing to know.

Beeing positive about life and how things will turn out is also something I took from that time. Without beeing optimistic I would have suffered so much more. If you want to feel better, you will feel better. There's always something to look forward too.

I think I became a much stronger person during that time and I lost a lot of anxieties.

After getting better Heiko and I travelled a lot. That was awesome. We've been to the east and westcoast of the USA and met great people there like Annika and Deepika. We visited Asa in Sweden. And Frank and his family in the UK (them quiet often ;) ).

The last decade was much about meeting new people and making friends. Beeing open to them and their stories.

Than there were the losses. Both of my Grandmothers died in the past 10 yrs. Both were over 90 yrs old and while the recent loss of one of them still hurts, I'm just blessed to have that much time with them. They both loved me dearly, each in their own way and if I'll ever be able to give back that much to someone that I got esp. from my Granny Annemarie I think I can be just happy.

I think, I have grown very much in this last decade. So what was the first decade for you?

Gifts given

2009-12-27T11:11:00.005+01:00

Good Morning everybody,

this year I have made 2 birthday-christmas gifts myself. But of course I forgot to take a picture of the christmas gift before mailing that. My head was full with other things as you might imagine. I will ask the receipient to take a pic once she got her parcel :)

So, my Dad asked for some socks for his birthday. AAAND they had to be midcalf. So to make things a bit more interesting I used Cat Bordhis Coriolis pattern again with 2*2 ribbing for the leg-portion of the socks.
Both socks were knit a the same time after finishing the heel.
Yarn: Belday Sockyarn (from a swap)

Since I had some of the blue yarn left over after knitting for ever in the round and wanting to poke my eyes out (thus declaring the socks long enough) I made 2 preemie hats. One of my co-workers collects them for a clinic in Hamburg.
Out of the 25gr I had left I managed to get 2 hats! I need to weave in the ends before I can give them to my co-worker but I think she's on vacation now. Maybe I will dig into my stash to see if I have more leftovers. I don't want to use the black yarn though.... not really suitable for preemies I think.

Other than that I just knitted a few rounds on my FLS....

Thank you and merry christmas

2009-12-24T08:24:00.000+01:00

Thank you all for your kind words. My Grandma was very dear to my heart. I'm so gratefull, that she lived most of the 94 yrs of her life in good health and close to the family.

Still I wish you all a merry merry christmas and that 2010 may be a healthy and happy year with full of pleasant surprises!

Ich stelle ein Licht für Dich auf

2009-12-22T15:26:00.000+01:00

Annemarie Jöns
gestorben 22.12.2009

Du fehlst mir schon jetzt unendlich.
Danke, dass ich Dich kennenlernen und liebhaben durfte.
Du hast mein Leben geprägt.
Ich liebe Dich und werde Dich nie vergessen.

you spin my head right round :)

2009-12-12T13:32:00.006+01:00

like a spinning wheel right round, round, round.

or something along that line :)

See, another post within 2 weeks! whoo hoo! Work is still pretty pretty exhausting with tons of working over time. Thus my major spare time activity is spinning at the moment (and knitting on the bus. I finished my dads socks IN TIME. another woo hoo)

So, this is the roving Annika gave me in Paris:

On the bobbin the the spun single, the fluffy stuff is the pre-drafted roving and the thick thing in the back is the undrafted roving :) What a difference drafting makes!

I'm really getting the hang of this spinning thing :) I started my first real project out my own handspun. This is part of the yarn I made for the cardigan:

The pattern will be a variation of the february lady sweater :) but without the lace, since there will be stripes, a lot of stripes :)

LOL

2009-11-29T12:33:00.002+01:00

Hi there,

last week was week from hell workwise! I'm "on loan" in a new group of our department and they are really short on people. The work I'm doing there is related to my usual job in a lot of ways but still different (more like the job I had before changing employers 4 yrs ago). So it's tons of extra hours at the moment. From tuesday till friday my timecount went up by 5 hrs.

So once at home I mostly feel like spinning at the moment, which calms me down a lot. I need to take pictures though. So far I like, what I'm producing! Soft merino yarn, that will be a cardigan at some point, but I think I need more than the 350gr I produced so far.

Surfing the interwebs I came across this video! It's H.I.L.A.R.I.O.U.S!
Have fun!

P.S: will take pictures soon but need to decorate the house first! Today it's the first advent, so the christmas deco has to be put up!

Knitting up a storm

2009-11-22T11:32:00.007+01:00

Ha, two posts in two days!

This one is going to be about knitting :) since I still do a lot of commuting by bus I have a lot of knitting time (and is easier to do that in front of the tv but then I'm also spinning in front of the tv...)

So, three of my friends gave birth the last few weeks. Anja and Asa had baby girls and Annika had a baby boy.

For Theis (the baby boy )I knitted a baby surprise jacket out of some gray yarn that I had found at a flea market (of course I washed it before knitting with it) and that now features some metal buttons, that I had in my stash:

Pattern: Baby surprise jacket (ravelry link) by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Yarn: Karstadt "Reine Wolle" loong discontinued

For Karina (Anjas Baby) I made another Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern. The Tomten jacket out of some of the Sarah-Stash. I have nearly used up all of the Cottontots, that Sarah has send me! I knitted the jacket out of different colours I had and dyed them up.
Pattern: Modular Tomten Jacket (ravelry link) by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Yarn: Bernards Cottontots 626 Meter according to ravelry

For a charity called "christmas in a shoebox" I packed a package for a 10-14 yr old girl. The packages are distributed to kids in poorer countries and are often the only christmas gift they'll receive, since the parents have in most cases just enough money to feed the family. I wanted to add something knitted, so I made some fingerless mittens out of some yarn, that I got from my secret pal 12 pal. The contents of the yarn are unknown, but I hope, it is superwash...

Pattern: Fetching from Knitty
yarn: half of the skein, that I got from my secret pal pal.

Finally I finished the socks for the trade I have with Molly

Mods made: Since I made these sock waaay longer than the pattern suggests I added 2 stitches every patternrepeat to allow for a more shapely calf.
Pattern: Firestarter (ravelry link)by Yarnissima together with the math from the "new pathways for socknitters" to figure out the numbers for a custom fit!
yarn used: A merino-bamboo blend, that I handdyed myself. The purple was dyed using Ashford dyes, the brown is dyed with green walnuts. 460 meter

I also made 2 hats using Ysolda Teagues "Icing swirl hat" but I don't have pictures of them yet. Also used stash yarn for that.

All in all, goood stashbusting projects! At the moment I have just one project on my needles, Socks for my Dads birthday on December 10th, so keep your fingers crossed, that they will be finished by then!

Hope to see you soon! Have a great weekend!

Some kind of sewing post

2009-11-21T16:01:00.009+01:00

See, another break that was not intended.
Since I had promised you a sewing post and my jacket is still not finished, I did not post at all. Maybe I should not promise to post about a certain topic... I'll try to post on a more regular basis though, maybe at least once every fortnight...

So what have I been up to?

First I went to the European Patternreview weekend in Paris.

I had a rough start with Paris, so to say. My trip to Paris went pretty smooth, except that the lady from Air France did tell me, that ANnika needed to take the trip TO Paris to get back with me too. Since Annika was in Paris already, that wasn't an option, so we had to book another more expensive flight for her while beeing in Paris.

Than I had pre-booked a shuttle from The yellow van. I did follow their instructions to call them before getting my luggage. After the 10th attempt with nobody answering the phone (and I was on time!) I got my luggage and went to the information booth. They tried to call: no answer either. I did look around to find them but no luck, so I took the metro, where a guy talked to me the whole time and I just got rid of him one train stop before getting to Montmatre.

Our hotel was very nice and cozy. It was the Regyn's and I can recommend it.

The first day we went to see the Vionett exhibtion at the Louvre. An amazing exhibit and I met the most charming people. Here's our group at dinner time

One Parisienne is missing, so Lara, this is for you

btw. the shawl is sooo awesome

Saturday I went sightseeing with Val and Annika, but I didn't buy fabric or so. In the evening we did our ugly fabric swap and I scored big time. Val was so nice to swap the fabric I had won with me and I got this lovely fabric

and I got some nice fabric I will use for a lining, but that I haven't a picture of that.

Next day, the remaining ladies and I took a tour on the Seine, which was cold but nice.
Here we are in our thick coats standing in front of the Eiffel Tower

Annika, Val and I went to see the Monet pictures at L'Orangerie afterwards and bade all the remaining ladies farewell.

On Monday morning Annika and I made the last visit of the trip to the Montmatre cemetary, where I nearly catnapped a cute little gray stray but I guess Greebo and Cookie would have been happy with that...

Luckily the shuttle service picked us up this time (they were also very rude to Annika) and we came to Kiel after that. Annika spend the week here and we had tons of fun including Annika learning how to spin, but I will show you these pics another time.

Have a great weekend!

Soooorry

2009-10-11T22:12:00.004+02:00

Hi everybody,

sorry for not blogging for a couple of weeks. I promised a sewing post but the jacket isn't finished yet. I sewed the shell and the collar but the lining is still in pieces (it's cut out though). I hope, that I will get back to sewing next week.

DHs grandmother is in hospital, so we went there a couple of times. (we were off work, since we were in vacation). Made some grape juice after harvisting grapes at my in-laws. Did some work in the garden. I did some work for work while beeing off.

I had another appointment at the hospital, with less than stellar results. I'm still healthy but my body isn't recovering from the anti-hormon treatment the way it should and that depresses me a bit. So I really did not feel like blogging. Heiko and I overall had a good time.

I did knit a lot and I will show pictures next week. One of the babyjackets is nearly done (minus the i-cord edging) and I even already dyed it. Today I started another jacket. My friend Annika went into hospital last friday. I guess the baby is here yet (haven't heard anything though...), so I better knit fast ;) 28 of 140 rows are done!

Home Turf

2009-09-20T21:51:00.004+02:00

I know, that I promised to write a sewing entry next but the weather has been so sunny and summery the last few days, that I have to admit: I didn't sew much or at least I did not take any pictures of the finished muslin.

Instead we spend a lovely day today just at the baltic sea, which luckily, is just around the corner (we drive 5 minutes...). First we went for a walk along the shore and then had some ice-coffee at the beach:

I so love to live here. For me, it's all about the water. I really can not imagine to live in the mountains. I need to be able to see the horizon.

We also took some pictures of Ishbel, inspired by Elems post about taking pictures

(I for myself think, that the pictures are better than the others I took before, but that might be just my opinion and the fact, that there's the beach and the water in the picture)

Heiko that to grab one end of the shawl, since it was a bit windy. (Nothing serious, just a nice breeze, but Ishbel is so lightweight, that even the tiniest bit of movement in the air, will make her want to fly)

The pattern is great. Really easy to follow, once you (and by that I mean I) get your brain around, that using stitchmarkers is not really a good idea, since you would have to move them every other (read RS-row), just make sure, the decreases line up.
I made the double decrease a bit different by slipping them off together, I think, this makes a neater decrease, but that is just my personal style.

So here again the facts:

Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. Larger version
Yarn: Marika Jo by Richter Kammgarn. (Found in my MIL livingroom cupboard, when they had to clean it out because they were getting new furniture. I have NO idea how old this yarn is.) Content: 70% Angora, 30% virgin wool
107 gr.

I promise (again) to take pictures of the jacket I'm sewing next!

knit knit knit ssssssrrrrrrrttt

2009-09-13T12:42:00.006+02:00

This adds up, what I've done last weeks weekend. Knitting and spinning :) Saturday I went to a meet up with my sewing friends but since I had to go by bus I just took my knitting and no sewingmachine with me. I have to admit, that nearly all the knitting got done while beeing on the bus and just a few stitches during the meeting (but I scored some fabric for a sleeping back for one of the many babies that will be born soon since I have 4 (!!) pregnant friends around). But progress is progess :) Sunday was a really lazy day. I nearly spend 6 hrs spinning up the Corridale sliver ( at least I think it is a sliver not a roving or a batt. It's pretty packed and not really fluffy) that I got from the Woll-Schaf. My second handspun! The handling of the Corridale was different and I think I might have overspun it a bit but I had a few frustrating moments with yarn that "broke". There wasn't any acutally snapping or so but the twist wasn't high enough so the fibers just did not hold together and when I pulled the fibers let go of each other. So I changed to the second largest whorl on my bobbin
(see picture) to give the yarn more twist. As far as I understood, there will be more twist in the fiber when the flyer moves faster without the singles moving onto the bobbin. I have two books here, that I'm currently reading about spinning so hopefully there will be more progress on that. If I bore you with my forays into spinning, just let me know :) After spinning for 6 hrs. I really had to do something else, so I switched to knitting. Ishbel got some rows added. I had a few motivation problems the last weeks, so the only projects I've been working on where the baby booties for my co-worker and the last finishing touches on the OpArt blanket. Both projects showed me progress. I could see them growing/beeing finished. So instead of knitting on my Ishbel (unless you count 1 row here and there) I've spun the corridale. But last sunday was a break-thru moment. I've knitted a whole repeat on Ishbel and now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. (So that will be around 100gr and 1000 meter less stash. yay!) (Since last Tuesday, when I wrote this message Ishbel has been finished. Sorry for not posting this earlier, I just had either no time or light to take decent pictures! Ishbel is now beeing soaked for blocking and I hope to take nice pictures next week. I'm so inspired by Elems great post about taking pictures and I will try to take some too!)
(Ishbel pre-blocking)

My other WIP knittingwise are the Firestarter for Molly, which I named "starting a purple fire". (fire can be purplish, can it?) I finally finished the gusset on the first sock. Boy, that took FOREVAR and also killed my mojo. Yesterday I managed to knit 2 komplete repeats on the leg portion and will add one more before putting the socks on scrapyarn and start the second one. Since Molly really likes a long leg portion, I will knit both socks at the same time when the second one is as long as the first, using up every single meter of the yarn. I so hope, that that will be at a length that Molly likes.

(Again: Progress has been made on this project. The first sock has been moved onto a piece of scrap yarn and is waiting for the second sock to reach the same height as the first. So far I have finished the foot portion and started the gusset. Which was the part that killed my mojo in the first place, having to rip the hole gusset and re-knit it. Urgh. After the gusset the first sock went without any problems. Keep your fingers crossed for the second one)

Since last week I've started spinning some Merino. Boy, that is a lot harder to spin, than the corridale and I have a mixture of over and underspun parts. Maybe I need to switch to the bigger whorl again. I think spinning is something where my inner perfectionist comes out. I want the perfect yarn and I want it now. I know, that this is totally stupid to think but still. I want sockweight yarn, well balanced and evenly plied ;)

And I want to be able to spin the yarn I envision. I'm already dreaming of spinning yarn for the vine yoke cardigan by Isolda from the latest Twist collective.

Speaking of Twist Collective. My next bigger project will be Sylvi. I have 18 skeins of yarn in my stash for it, so that will be a good stash reduction masswise, if not yardwise ;) (meterwise?).

I might sneak in another Tomten jacket. As mentioned, there are a few babies due around me in the next couple of weeks. EEEEK. Nothing finished but the OpArt blanket. I'd better be knitting.

See you soon with a sewing post!

Work in Progress

2009-08-30T12:03:00.007+02:00

So, besides getting acquainted with the spinning wheel:

(My first handspun on the lower edge and the most recent on the upper edge. The fiber is Eiderwolle. A very long staple fibre from the sheep that live on the Deich here in Northern Germany. The sheep (breed Texel or Suffolk or mixtures or varying breeds) are raised for their meat not for the wool, so this yarn is a little coarse but really easy to spin.

I'm also still knitting and sewing.

My knitting has works in progress, so I'l start with those.

1. "Starting a purple fire"

These socks are for Molly. Once these are finished I'll be getting some bronze dpn from her.
The pattern is "firestarter" by yarnissima and the yarn is my own hand-dyed wool-bamboo blend.

Since Molly does not wear a size 38 European I had to recalculate the number of stitches, for that I used Cat Bordhis master numbers from her "New pathways for sock knitters" and I ended up having 72 stitches total. I hope, that this will be o.k. *keeping my fingers crossed*

I reached the point of turning the heel on the first sock (which is my commuting project and the yarn is thinner than the usual 4ply fingering weight sock yarn), did that and measured the total length of the sock. Lo and behold I had 1.5 cm (that is 5/8 inch) too much. gnarf. So I ripped back to the beginning of the gusset increases plus 6 more rows :( That means I had to rip out half of the work I had done so far.

Another thing I do not like so far, is that I got some holes, where I had put the stitch marker on one side :( Maybe washing and blocking will fix that.

2. "Op Art"

Is actually off the needles and all ends are woven in.Just needs blocking.

3. "Mommes baby booties"

My co-workers girl friend had a little baby boy last week (Momme. Really, that's his name). So, as usual me beeing late, I started knitting some baby booties out of the left overs from my coriolis socks. The first one is already done (using 14 gr. of yarn) minus the i-cord, which will be the last thing I'll be making, to be sure I have enough yarn for the second one. The second one is already cast on. Very easy and fast project. I had hoped to finish these before my co-wokrer returned from his break, but he started working on thursday and of course, the booties aren't finshed :( This weekend they will be done though.
The pattern can be found here.

4. "Ishbel"

My at-home project since I have reached the lace-part. I'm into the third repeat of chart, this means I will have to knit chart 2.5 more rows on chart A, 6 rows on Chart C, 8 rows on chart D and then just the 1 row of chart E. So that are just 17.5 rows to go! Since one row has over 350 stitches now, that means around 1-2 weeks of knitting ;)
This shawl will be like a heavy shedding feather. So far I have used 60 gr. of this yarn (ravelry link) and it is so soft and I totally love the colour. Unfortunately the yarn is shedding like crazy. Hopefully this will getting less after washing and blocking *more fingers crossed".

Wow. 4 projects at one time. This is a lot for me, but since Op Art is off the needles and the booties are so small, I'm kind of o.k. with that. I just need to make sure, that the booties are finished soon. I really don't like to have more than 2 projects at a time.

Sewing:

Haven't started the Paris-jacket. I'm going to make a muslin for the Onion jacket and see, if it is too frilly for the hot pink wool I want to use or if the burda jacket will be a better choice.
I also have a black-and white wool in my stash, that would be a good choice for the Onion pattern but I realls need a skirt or so out of the fabric first, since I have already made a jacket out of the fabric and a matching skirt or some trousers would be cool...

Sewing, that is.

2009-08-25T21:49:00.002+02:00

Hi there,

I just saw, that I did not post anything about the 2 finished sewing projects I have done in the last weeks (sorry, that it took me weeks(!!) to finish them. It seems, that I have too many hobbies ;)
Actually the weather has been really nice around here and the knitting (and now the spinning) is so much easier to take outside and sit on the porch (which is a Terasse in German not a porch) under the sunthingy that keeps the sun out ;) and enjoy the weather.

So 2 things that is and I'm totally copying my reviews from PR here:

First:
Bias cut skirt from issue No. 5/2007 of the ottobre woman magazine

Pattern Description:
Basic skirt with yoke and bias cut lower skirt part.
Pattern Sizing:
34-52. I made a size 40 tapering to a 38 at the waist.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it?
Mostly. I did add piping to the seam and I decided to cut the skirt front and back in one piece rather than adding a seam at the centre back. Thus I moved the zipper to the side seam.

Were the instructions easy to follow?
Totally easy and clear.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?
I really like the look of the pattern and that it was fairly easy to sew. I also really like, that Ottobre uses real people as models instead of skinny bean-poles.

Fabric Used:
Cotton-lycra denim. This wasn't the best idea since the denim isn't fluid enough, even when cut on the bias to look good.

Pattern Alterations or any design changes you made:
See above :) I also did cut the facing out of the same rayon I used for the piping. Plus I did shorten it to a length that looked good on me.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?
yes and yes.
Conclusion:
Great pattern, that might become a staple in my house

Second is the shirt I'm wearing: Onion 5022, which I got from Maria at Shoponion.com but it seems it's now OOP
Pattern Description:
Package of 5 different t-shirts. From a long sleeved raglan shirt, to a raglan cap-sleeved to a "sleeveless" shirt. I made View D "Kimonoaermer" which is pratically no sleeves but an extended shoulder seam.
Pattern Sizing: XS-XL. My measurements would have put me into an M but I have already made view A, so I knew, that this pattern runs large and I used a size S. I could have merged into size M at the hips though (need to go onto diet. I sewed a XS last time..)

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? Yes, totally but better ;)

Were the instructions easy to follow? I do not own the English translation but this pattern has 1 pattern piece, so what should have gone wrong?

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?
Like: easy to sew, very comfy
Dislike: Nothing

Fabric Used: Rayon jersey remnant from my LFS but unfortunatly the red has bled into the cream part, so this shirt is for at home only.

Pattern Alterations or any design changes you made:
Instead of binding the neckline with fold over elastic, I added 1 cm seam allowance and cut a strip of fabric twice the width I wanted the final strip to be plus 2 cm s.a. 20% shorter than the neckline and used that to finish my neckline.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?

yes and yes. Awesome pattern and really easy and comfy!

Conclusion:

In my book, this is a winner. I love my raglan long sleeve shirt and I do love this one as well!

Here's a nicer picture

I've worn both garments a lot over the last few days and I really like them both. Too bad, that the fabric bled :(

Next thing I'm going to sew is a more tailored jacket. I just can't decide if I should use Onion 1035 or the exclusive design from burda 01.2009. What do you think?

Isn't she beautiful?

2009-08-23T19:20:00.004+02:00

I mean the Ashford Traveller spinning wheel, that I borrowed from a shop (and that I guess is going to be mine).

My singles are getting more even by the day (not that they are consistend by any means. I have under/overspun parts and it's still thin and thinner parts...

And this is my first spun and plied "yarn"

I'm determined to make something with it. So far I don't know what but I still have some meter so spin ;)

(it's Eiderwolle and it's kind of coarse but easy to spin and inexpensive, so I got 300 Gramm and I'm going to spin thru all of it before buying something else. I like spinning it.)

144!

2009-08-16T19:09:00.003+02:00

144? you ask. Huh? No idea?

Here are 144 finished blocks of the quilt of doom

That means, I'm halfway there. The bed on the pic is our, much smaller, bed without big duvet covers underneath, so I really have some steps to go until this thing will be finished, although at 200 I might start sewing the blocks together (always 4) and place them on my sisters bed, to see how much more I need to sew, so that is just 56 to go. Maybe this will be my goal for this year. I initial goal for 2009 was to sew 100 blocks. So far 65 are done! (not all by me though. I love swaps!)

colourful Kiel

2009-07-27T21:26:00.004+02:00

Hi there,

after spending a kind of long weekend with my Grandma (who's totally cool but too much time spend with her, I want to poke my eyes out with my knitting needles) I'm absolutely tired, so I think it's time to show you, what I have done the last weeks.
(I'm also sewing but it's not finished and very very simple. But there will be an FO too soon, so to say tomorrow evening it should be done...)

I've done some dyeing in the last few weeks. (mel, this is for you ;) )

Here's walnut

It's a bamboo-wool blend in fingering weight. The yarn was dyed using green walnuts, ca. as much as I could fit in one of my hands and 1.5 liter of rain water. I chopped the walnuts into small pieces and put water on top. Next I tossed the yarn into the water. Stirring it every 12 hrs and after 48 hrs it was "done".

Then there's ravelry day.

A 50gr skein BFL, dyed with natural extract dyes on the ravelry day in coventry

For Molly, I dyed this bamboo-wool blend for our sock swap. I'm getting some bronze dpn and she will get firestarters from me.

The colour is not really true. Somehow it's not as "cool" as in the picture.

For me again is Fuchsia. I really wanted to try out this new baseyarn

But there has been knitting too :)

My rivendell socks are finished and they are the absolute greatest socks I have knit so far:

Pattern: Rivendell Socks by Janel Laidmann
yarn: Rittersporn by Wollmeise (100% Merino)

And finished this weekend at my Grandma's house

Spiraling Coriolis by Cat Bordhi
Yarn: Drachenwolle "Himmel & Erde"
The yarn looked so different on the skein.
This pair fits perfectly (or without the ly?), so DH, who never ever asks for something knitted, wants a pair too. And my dad will get one pair for his birthday too.

And my WIP, something totally easy. Dishcloths from yarn from the Sarah-Stash

Parting shot:

Was Elsbeth
is

Der Adler ist gelandet/the eagle has landed!

2009-07-19T21:48:00.008+02:00

Hi everybody,
hallo allerseits,

it's Santa Socke!
Santa Socke here!

I'm with Liane now and I just want to show you a few pictures of Liane and me!

Ich bin jetzt bei Liane und will Euch nur ein paar Fotos von Liane und mir zeigen.

Liane and I met at tini's sisters house last weekend and what a surprise it was for Liane.

Liane und ich kamen endlich an letztem Wochenende im Haus von tinis Schwester zusammen und welche Überraschung es für Liane war.

Tini used a Santa Claus bag, since I am kind of a Christmas gift and we do share the first name :)

Tini nutzte eine Weihnachtsmanntasche, da ich ja doch irgendwie ein Weihnachtsgeschenk bin und ich ja doch den gleichen Vornamen wie der englische Weihnachtsmann habe.

First, Liane had a good look at the book tini has made out of all what I have written so far and with all the pictures of my trip.

Erstmal musste Liane sich das Buch genau anschauen, dass tini mit all den Texten, die ich geschrieben habe und mit all den Bildern meiner Reise.

and then she spotted the bag, in which I was hiding!

und dann sah sie die Tasche, in der ich mich versteckte!

Liane was so happy to see me and I was so happy to see her.

Liane war ziemlich glücklich mich zu sehen und ich war auch ziemlich froh, sie zu sehen.

I told her all of the project and she really did not know, that I really travelled that far. She thought, tini was knitting me and was sending the postcards, although she was kind of supicious since there were different handwritings and the poststamps were different. And the postman was curious too :)

Ich habe ihr dann alles über meine Reise erzählt and ihr war wirklich nicht klar, dass ich doch tatsächlich so weit gereist bin. Sie dachte, tini hätte mich gestrickt und würde die Karten schicken. Doch unsicher war sie schon, da ja die Handschriften und die Poststempel verschieden waren. Auch der Postbote hat sich schon gewundert.

Now I'm happy living with Liane. Thank you all for participating. Liane says Hi and Thank You!

Jetzt lebe ich glücklich bei Liane. Vielen Dank an alle fürs Mitmachen. Liane lässt schön grüssen und sagt ein großes DANKE!

The joys of summer

2009-07-12T19:03:00.003+02:00

Hi there,

it's summer here or it's supposed to be summer. At the moment the weather is kind of blah though, so it's perfect knitting weather and my Rivendell socks are nearly done.

But the weather has been lovely and we spend a very pleasant afternoon at our friends house after the baptismal of their youngest daughter Johanna. My friend had asked me if I could make a cake and sure I could. So here I proudly present my Marzipan-Strawberry cake:

it was delicious, if I'm allowed to say so myself.
I have to admit, that this is one of the joys of summer for me. Fresh berries. I love them all: raspberrys, blackberries, black and red currant. And cherries :) and also plums. Isn't it great to walk over a farmers market, seeing all the fresh, local produce? I think it is awesome. Like the cake. There's over a kilo of strawberries in and on top of the cake.

The recipe can be found here. All the guests said 5 stars :) for this cake

Round and round

2009-06-28T14:46:00.005+02:00

Heeeellooo,

yesterday was a pretty nice day here in Northern Germany. Our summer was kind or rainy so far, so having a pretty nice day (mostly sunny, warm, some clouds) was a nice change. I took the opportunity to take some pictures of my current projects. Due to the light outside they are kind of overexposed but these will have to do.

Project No.1

Rivendellsocks by Janel Laidman
Yarn: Wollmeise 100% superwash in "Rittersporn"

The yarn is a tad darker than the pictures show. After turning the heel, the pattern is a pretty mindless rib, so it's round after round after round until you hit the point where you have to start the toe.

I might need the Lothlorien sock pattern too :)

Project No. 2
The Sarah blanket :)
It's for a friend, who will have a baby in autumn
Pattern: OpArt from Knitty
Yarn: Bernats Cottentots provided by Sarah (who in reality is not insane but really generous and I didn't mean insane in a bad way!)

Since I'm knitting this pattern in stockinette, it's just round after round with 2 increases every round, so each round is getting bigger and bigger ang bigger :) Perfect for the bus at the moment, not too big so far but I had to order needle tips since I did not own 4.5 mm needle tips ;) and one of my circs in that size is so stiff, that knitting with 2 circs wasn't fun.

As you can see, my cat Greebo shares my passion for yarn :) Although he esp. loves handdyed skeins of sock yarn.

Parting shot:

This one is for Maria. My new roses

1. Rouge Meilove (that is the name)

2. A miniature rose, that didn't have a name tag

Insanity

2009-06-25T21:16:00.003+02:00

Sing along with me :) but instead of singing Xanadu, sing Insanity... in saaaanaaatiiiihihiiii

And that is what happend to Sarah :)
A while ago I send her two books, that I had twice or that I did not need anymore, some chocolate and 3 crappy uhm homemade stitchmarkers. 2 books,chocolate, stitchmarkers. Smallish package. Not a lot. I was happy to send her the books and she said, she would send me some dishcloth cotton.

With some I assumed 1 or 2 balls. Smallish package and 2 days ago I came home and there was a big box. I asked Heiko what he had ordered because I wasn't expecting a big parcel like that. He just said: No it's yours!

I stared blankly at him? HUH?

'It's from the UK' and off I was to get some scissors to open the biiig box and here's what Sarah send:

22 SKEINS OF YARN. THAT IS INSANE!

I immediately cast (casted? ) on for a baby blanket using the cottontots yarn in yellow and turquoise.

Thank you so much again Sarah!