New WIPs and new yarns, because of course. But a few FO's as well!

Alrighty then!

Since taking stock of my WIPs, I actually did manage to finish a few, create a few more and accumulate more yarn. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I finished the Baggy Tweedy Beanie fairly quickly and have been wearing it pretty much every day since! Check out how it looks on a cute, if slightly reluctant model: 

I also finished the Vanilla Latte Socks in the Joy to the Wool Christmas colourway, 'Holly and Ivy'. I just need to block them and then I'll post some nice pics. 

Before I posted last time, I had actually also finished the Keighley Mitts, designed by Victoria Marchant. I actually started these last year in November very spontaneously after seeing them on IG, but I got a bit frustrated because I managed to break two 2.0 mm rosewood needles while making the picot edge for the first one, so they got left on the back burner. I'm so glad I finished these, because I have been wearing them a lot, and I love everything about them, from the yarn (Regia Premium Merino Yak) to the picot edge to Victoria's original Kiss Stitch design. Also they make me think of Downton Abbey because Yorkshire :D

And another spontaneous cast-on, which I made fairly quick work of was the Storm Shawl by Joji Locatelli, which only took me a few days from start to finish. Last year, I very spontaneously bought two skeins of snow dyed 100% wool yarn from Tõstamaa Folk Art Centre and didn't actually know what to do with them because the very variegated colour won't show any cables or lace and each skein is a unique colour. So when I saw Annijuuti Knits talk about this shawl on her knitting podcast and refer to it as a one skein wonder, I knew I had to make it! It is super easy, the garter stitch is only interrupted by a few rows of dropped stitches or eyelets every now and then, and the picot edge is cute. The design is called 'Storm' after the colourway of the original yarn the designer used, but my shawl makes me think of a warm breeze and sangria tbh :-) Such a happy little pop of colour!

True to form, I've started almost as many projects as I've finished :P

I had bought seven skeins of Drops Soft Tweed thinking about a sweater, but when Jana from the Kettu Knits podcast (and the dyer behind the Kettu Yarns label) showed the Pretty Little Plie cardigan by Veera Välimäki, I realised this was what my yarn wanted to become! I love it for its simplicity as it's mostly just garter stitch and it has no buttons! This is how far I've gotten so far:

I also started a pair of Waffles in Bed socks using the other yarn set from Joy to the Wool, their Halloween colourway called 'Joy to the Wooo-l', although I decided to try out the Fish Lips Kiss Heel construction by Patty-Joy White instead of the heel construction the pattern suggests. I really like it, because it doesn't leave holes or require picking up any stitches from the sides. 

Finally, because I seem to be on a sock kick lately, I started another pair of socks! This time I'm not following a specific written pattern, but using a motif that I found in the Hitomi Shida's book Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible. I decided to go toe up, using Judy's Magic Cast-On, and I am also using the Fish Lips Kiss Heel for these socks. Not gonna lie, I am pretty happy with them, and I love the yarn, which is once again Regia Premium Merino Yak. I have a few days off from work, which should be enough to finish the socks, but for the time being, they look like this:

I've already been browsing the Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible for ideas for more socks and I already have some new ideas for projects, but I might write about those another time :-) 

A Brutally Honest WIP Count.

Since I seem to have gotten my knitting mojo back, I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at my WIPs and see how many I have. Turns out I have seven! I thought it was going to be more, actually 😂

From left to right: 

- A Haapsalu shawl with the Hepatica pattern that I started in the spring

- The White Karen lace dress from Lacelegance that I mentioned in a previous post

- A Haapsalu shawl with the ear of grain pattern that I started in 2018 after a very dear friend of mine told me that she had gotten engaged to a guy who farms grain. I wanted to have it ready for her wedding, which was in the summer of 2019, but oh well. At least I made a few bits and bobs for the happy couple's little girl when I was invited to the baby shower last summer.

- My most recent WIP: the Baggy Tweedy Beanie, designed by Siri Anne Ystad-Deglum. I was winding some skeins of yarn into balls recently and decided that the skein of Merino Tweed yarn from Kettu Yarns in the colourway 'Foxy' which I had ordered last year really wanted to become a beanie. So I looked on Ravelry for fingering weight beanies and came across this one, which even has 'tweedy' in the name! Of course I had to cast it on, because the weather is getting cooler and this colour is just perfect for autumn. 

- Christmas socks in the Vanilla Latte pattern from Virginia Rose-Jeanes. I ordered two hand-dyed skeins of yarn from an English indie dyer called Laura who has a webshop called Joy to the Wool last year: one is this Christmasy colourway called 'Holly and Ivy', which came with a solid red mini skein for the heel and cuff and toes; and the other one is a Halloween colourway called 'Joy to the Wooo-l', which is black and purple and came with a solid black mini skein. I decided to use this very simple pattern to let the green and red stripes shine and I am hoping that starting these in August will help me to finish them by Christmas :D

- One of the Squirrel Fun mittens from Knittinglotta, which I started in January. This is probably going to be a longer and super fiddly project, because there are something like 80 stitches per round and these are made with very small needles. Lotta has said that having so many stitches is the only way she can make her patterns so detailed (and they really are, you can tell that she used to be a graphic designer!), which is fair but it also means that the mittens are going to take me a while to finish. 

- The Great British Baking Shawl 2, which I started making last year as a KAL by Mary Annarella. I honestly don't know, but I ran out of steam during the last clue! I literally only have 3/4 of the last clue to finish, so hopefully I will manage to power through and be able to wear this gorgeous (and hella expensive) shawl this autumn already. 

I also had the Wayne pullover that I started last spring as a WIP for the longest time, but I finally decided to frog it last weekend. I sold the unused balls of yarn and will use the yarn I have left from the unfinished sweater to make socks or something. 

Oh and I actually finished a very spontaneous WIP that I started last November a few days ago, but I think I will write more about that one later because it deserves its own post. 

Some lace knitting and a new book!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I got some pretty fancy silk yarn to make the White Karin Dress and after I finished the cardigan for my dear aunt and sent it off to her, I enthusiastically got to work on it. It took me some time to ball it and a few tries to cast it on, since it's obviously very slippery, and I'm sure I've made plenty of mistakes already, but this is where I am now. 

This is roughly half of the skirt portion :D

It's pretty much the only thing I've been knitting on since finishing the cardigan, which is weird for me, since I'm usually knitting several things at once. I have actually been looking for a project that would make good TV knitting and allow me to use some yarn from my stash, so I've bought two patterns recently: the Eudaimonia Tee from Meiju K-P, which I'm planning to knit using the blue Austermann raw silk yarn that I originally intended to use for the dress, and also the pattern for the Celia socks from Sari Nordlund. I have a green ball of Regia Premium Merino Yak from Schachenmayr which is longing to become a nice pair of socks. 

And speaking of Sari Nordlund, she recently published her first pattern book in collaboration with Erika Appelström! It's called 'Neulematkalla', has some lovely patterns for wearables and accessories and gorgeous photos. Sooo when I went on a day trip across the gulf to Helsinki with my mum, I of course had to stop by Lankakauppa Snurre and pick it up. I can't wait to be inspired!

State of the Project: Sulo Cardigan, part II: the finale :D

After getting the need to make cotton summer tops out of my system, I returned to my aunt's Sulo cardigan last week. And about time too, I think, because August and slightly colder nights are not far off anymore. It did take me some time to finish the body it because I got somewhat bored with knitting flat and my auntie did want it to be longer than the somewhat cropped original version, so there was plenty of fabric for me to knit - and also I ran out of yarn so I had to order some more -, but the sleeves really flew by! I knit them on circulars using the Magic Loop method and was quite pleased with how they turned out. The triangular pattern on the cuffs and the buttons with the little flowers on them are probably my fave parts :-) 

A few pics of the Summer Nights cami!

This is kind of old news, but I realised I hadn't actually posted a photo of the finished garment, so here ya go: 

And here's me wearing it, serving Ronald McDonald realness. Love that for me!

But jokes aside, I really liked the clever little details like the body shaping with different sized needles, the cabled straps which are broad enough to cover bra straps and the method of decreasing which leaves a nice neat edge. Kudos to Ivana and I will definitely be keeping an eye on her future designs!

Buying yarn and knitting are two different hobbies.

 Ooff. 

As much as I try to be smart with money, I cannot resist a beautiful yarn/pattern and I've been really bad about hoarding yarn recently. Let's just count the losses, shall we?

• After posting about the Summer Nights cami on r/knitting, I was scrolling Reddit and happened on someone's photo of this absolutely stunning lace dress. I decided that I need to make one for myself as well and spent the next hours hemming and hawing over which yarn to use for making it.I initially settled on Austermann Magic Silk in a teal colourway and placed an order, but when I got the yarn, it just didn't feel right for the project. So last night I decided to bite the bullet and order a new yarn, BC Garn Jaipur Silk Fino, which is a very luxe 100% mulberry silk yarn and costs over twice as much as the Austermann. My dream is to have the dress ready by this year's Haapsalu Lace Day, which is on the 22nd of August, but considering the speed at which I knit lace, I think aiming for next year would probably be more realistic.
• Since I finished the summer tops, I restarted work on the Sulo cardigan for my aunt and to my surprise, I ran out of yarn before getting to the end of the body. So I ordered some more Drops Merino Extra Fine for the cardigan, but because Drops recently also came out with the gorgeous Soft Tweed yarn, I just had had had to get some skeins of that one as well. 
• And yes, I still have four skeins of Schachenmayr Catania in the colourway Sand. 

What am I going to do with all this yarn? Well, I have a few ideas. I'm thinking I will use the Austermann Magic Silk to make the Kevätaurinko shawl designed by Niina Laitinen, as I have enough of the yarn and getting the gauge exactly right doesn't matter that much anyway. The original pattern used alpaca yarn, but mine will be a more summery version. The Soft Tweed is just asking to become a cabled sweater. And the Catania will make another lovely summer top next year.

Having said all that, I am quickly running out of drawer space for my stash 😆

Spontaneous summer tops!

I am happy to report that I finished the Seleste tee a few days after my last post. I was on holiday down South and the weather was really hot (the temperatures were over 30 degrees Celsius, which is a LOT for where I live!), so I decided to let it dry in the garden. I was a bit worried about the sunlight bleaching it and also I didn't have a blocking mat, so I had to improvise a bit and hide it under the lilac bush:

And here is the finished garment! Gorgeous, no?

After finishing the Seleste, I wasted no time in casting on another summer top. I still had three skeins of Schachenmayr Catania in the colourway 'Mandarine' left and just before my holiday began, I saw someone post a picture of the Heart on Fire top in the Drops Workshop FB group and decided then and there that I needed to make one for myself as well. I think I did a pretty good job of it! The only mods I made were making the body a few cm longer, omitting the garter stitch edge and using the 3-way bind off to attach the straps to the back, rather than sewing them. 

Please enjoy this picture of the finished top and my cousin's orchid: 

I actually ran out of yarn as I was making the top and had to order a fourth skein. I decided to use the webshop of the yarn store where I bought the first three skeins from, because Catania Denim has gone out of production and I hoped they would have another skein from the same dyelot. But since I thought paying the delivery fee for just one skein would be silly, I ordered four skeins of Catania Solid in the gorgeous Gold colourway. I was actually a bit embarrassed and felt a bit like a yarn hoarder and didn't even have a plan for the yarn until the delightful Summer Nights Cami from Ivana Sturm popped up on my IG feed! 

It's a pretty simple design, but it has some elements that I think make it really clever. For one, the designer has used different sized needles for body shaping instead of increases and decreases (3.5 mm, 3.0 mm and 2.5 mm)! You can see how the gauge changes on the blocked garment (and please ignore the weird lighting, the sun was already low-ish when I took this photo):

The stitch count is the same for the entire body, it's just the needles that changed!

I also really like the cabled straps and Ivana's neat method for doing the decreases for the armholes and the V-neck. I also really like the yarn! And this gold colourway is actually stunning and it looks like I am knitting with an actual sunbeam! I will post some pictures of the top in better lighting once it's dry for sure. 

Also don't ask me how I'm getting on with auntie's cardigan. 

Summer knitting!

Hello again, dear (non-existent) reader!

A few weeks ago, I was pretty bummed when I didn't get a chance to test-knit the gorgeous Sunkissed top and I didn't want to wait for the pattern to come out, so I decided to make my own summer top. I used the pattern for the Breeze Racerback by Jessie Mae as the base and substituted the stockinette stitch on the back with a lace pattern that I found in the Estonian book 'Pitsilised koekirjad' by Leili Reimann. The yarn I used is Catania from Schachenmayr in a gorgeous coral/watermelon colourway.

The pattern in the book was written for knitting flat, so I had to redraw it for knitting in the round. It was actually way easier to knit it in the round, and I was a bit worried that there would be a visible difference in tension with the one repeat that I knit flat (the part between the shoulders), but it all evened out nicely with blocking. Of course, I couldn't resist getting some new toys to block it with: 

Please excuse the fact that the colours are a bit off, I took the picture when it was already dark.

Anyway, I am chuffed with the end result and have worn it outside on a few occasions already. I am sure it will find lots of use this summer! 

After completing this top, which took me roughly four days, I decided that I also needed a summery tee with some lace. As luck would have it, Sari Nordlund had just published the pattern for the Seleste tee, which is the summer version of her Seleste pullover. The original hadn't really called to me, but having a short-sleeved cotton version with the Estonian-inspired lace yoke seemed like a great idea, so I ordered some yarn (Rowan Cotton Cashmere in the colourway Dark Olive, by the way) and got busy. After having to redo 17 rows of the lace yoke because I missed reading one line in the explanations for the chart the first time, and then redoing the short row shaping because I put an increase in the wrong place, I have finally moved on to the body decreases:

It should all be smooth sailing from here and I'm hoping to have the top ready by midsummer. I have plenty of football to watch while doing some mindless knitting :D

As for how my aunt's Sulo cardigan is going... don't ask 😬

A knitting update and State of the Project: Sulo cardigan, part I.

 Well!

About a week after I last posted, I finished the Kuutar pullover by Sari Nordlund, completing it abouth a month before the end of the official KAL :-)

Here is what she looks like. She is so cute and warm and soft, but not really weather-appropriate, since we've had a very nice warm spring: 

I have also made some moderate progress on the Haapsalu shawl with the Hepatica pattern: 

In other news, I also cast on the Sulo cardigan from Anna Johanna for my dear aunt a few weeks ago. In these few weeks, I have finished the yoke and separated the sleeves and am now working for the body, but it's really slow going, having to work back and forth and count rows to make button holes with the right intervals! Here's more or less what it's currently looking like: 

Cast on, cast off.

Well! Somehow I totally missed that I hadn't posted about finishing my Ranunculus sweater way back in March. I actually wanted to take it outside to take a photo of it with some actual buttercups, but it's still a little early for those, so I settled on just the coastal meadow: 

It was a fun, quick knit which took me a week. I initially made the i-cord on the first sleeve I finished a little too tight, so I decided to rip back and redo it with larger needles and it turned out just fine. This was the first time I'd done an i-cord edge or short rows for sleeves, so that was fun too. I just have to figure out what to wear this sweater with!

And in other news, I actually cast on for another Breeze racerback a few days ago, but when I saw last night on IG that Sari Nordlund was coming up with a new racerback-style top with a lovely lace panel on the back, I decided to rip back and wait for her to publish the pattern - or maybe even try to become a test knitter. 

Also, because I was really feeling the Haapsalu lace love after finishing the scarf last week, I cast on another shawl. Whoops. The pattern on this one is called the Hepatica pattern from the book 'Knitted Shawls of Aasa Jõelaid' and I am using a gorgeous cobweb weight merino yarn in a stunning cornflower blue, which we sometimes also call 'flag blue', because ya know. It's not exactly the blue of Hepaticas (literally called blueflower in Estonian), but it was so lovely that I just had to get it. 

Next on my needles.

During my days off, after I finished sewing the scarf, I also made some progress on the Kuutar pullover. Currently I have finished the lovely lace yoke and separated the sleeves and body. I was a bit surprised that I had to knit quite a few rounds of stockinette after the lace to achieve the required length of the yoke, but then I realised that the yoke is somewhat longer than what I have become used to with other patterns.  Ah well. I an enjoying how soft these yarns are and also the fact that I'll be able to hide in plain sight everywhere with this very neutral-toned pullover :D

Once I finish the Kuutar, which hopefully is before the end of May when the KAL ends, I will once again cast on a garment for a family member: for my aunt's birthday this year, I gave her a card saying she could ask me to make her a sweater in her preferred design and colour and she picked the Sulo cardigan by Anna Johanna, so that's what I'm making for her. I already bought the yarn (Drops Merino Extra Fine) and the buttons, too. 

Aaannd of course I had to buy some yarn for myself as well while I was at it 🙈

I am planning to make a second Breeze racerback using a sea green cotton yarn (Safran from Drops) and also the Hali pullover by Leeni Hoimela at some point. I was also quite inspired by finishing the Haapsalu scarf, so I picked up an unfinished Haapsalu shawl and I'm looking through my Haapsalu lace books, pondering if I should make one to give as a gift to a dear friend of the family who is turning 70 in December.

State of the Project: Haapsalu scarf, part V: the finale!

 Well, this was quite the journey, wasn't it?

After sitting on the lace edge and not feeling like sewing it to the centre portion since last summer, I finally finished the scarf! 

I was very worried that the yarn would snap on the blocking frame after I've spent the whole day sewing, so I actually contacted Haapsalu Lace Centre to ask if I could send the scarf to them for sewing and blocking (I know for a fact that they will block your shawl for you for a fiver), but they said they don't provide a sewing service so I had to do it myself. I had some days off recently, so I decided to just go for it. I spent the better part of last Sunday sewing and I put the scarf on the blocking frame a few days ago.

Picture with my doggie for scale: 

And a slightly closer look at how the shawl looked on the frame:

This thing is huge! It measured 130x130 centimetres. The frame I use is a collapsible and adjustable blocking frame from a local company, which you can also use for blocking rectangular and triangular shawls/scarves. The set comes with eight bars and four connectors, which I used to make four very long bars so that the scarf would fit.

Last night, I took the scarf off the blocking frame and went through all the cast-on stitches (well over a thousand!) of the lace edging with a knitting needle to make them nice and round. I then pulled on each individual scallop (of which there are something like 120) to give them a nice shape, folded the scarf, and left it to rest under a pile of pillows. 

You're actually supposed to let the scarf rest for a bit longer, but I couldn't resist the urge to take a few glamour shots this morning 😁

Why the ring, you may ask? Well, because Haapsalu lace is supposed to be so fine that you have to be able to pull the scarf or shawl through a ring.

Anywho, I am chuffed to have finally finished it and I can't wait to wear it with my red dress!

Edited: BREAKING NEWS! The lady who wrote the book that this pattern comes from just liked my photo of the scarf that I posted on Facebook. I can now die happy. 

Some knitting surgery and a new sweater!

After I finished the Ranunculus sweater (which I promise is done, I just haven't got around to taking pretty pictures of it yet!), I was eager to start a new project and settled on a summer top to use some hand-dyed sock yarn from Woolmint that I had in my stash. The design is called Breeze Racerback, and it's by Jessie Mae.  However, when I finished making it to pattern, I decided it was a little too cropped for my taste and decided to do some knitting surgery. I cut the ribbing away from the body: 

I then added about 10 cm of stockinette and grafted it back to the body: 

And this is what the finished object looks like!

You can totally see where I grafted it, so I clearly something wrong, but hey ho I am banking on my décolletage and shoulders drawing the attention away from my waist :D 

This was a fun knit! I originally started with just one skein of a more fall yellow yarn, but ended up doing alternating rounds with a brighter, more summery yellow as well. I don't think it shows.

I had been very tempted to make the Kuutar pullover by Sari Nordlund ever since I first saw it on her IG, but I had mostly been resisting the urge to buy more yarn. However, after I saw her talk about the Kuutar KAL on her Youtube and an IG Live with the girls from Nurja yarn shop, I cracked and decided to go for it. I had enjoyed using Drops Flora so much when I made her Fleuriste pattern, so that's what I went with, as well as Drops Kid-Silk. This is my first time using mohair with another yarn and I love how saaawwft the alpaca and mohair feel together! I am also very much enjoying this lovely unassuming beige colour that goes with everything.

More projects! And squirrels!

Well! I thought I'd lost my knitting mojo for a while there after I finished the Ekorre sweater, but I think I am back on track for now. True to form, I couldn't just work on one of my WIPs and actually started a few new projects... 

First things first: as I mentioned in a previous post, I started the perfect companion to my my Ekorre sweater, the Squirrel Fun mittens by Lotta Lundin. They are knitting up quite slowly, because the needles are tiny and there are 80 stitches to a row. I can't wait to see the end result though! Click on the link to see some mittens that others have made.

Also, I identified the white yarn as Drops Baby Merino leftovers from the Skärgård sweater :-)

End of February/ beginning of March is also when we get our tax returns here and I decided to treat myself to some alpaca yarn from a nearby farm. As is the case with this kind of yarn, it's all hand-made and the labels have the names and pictures of the Alpacas who provided the fibre. 

I was very excited about the new yarn and of course felt the need to cast on something new. I settled on the Helix brioche hat by Jonathan Tollow: 

It was a fun and quick knit and I thought the instructions were very clear (even though I am usually a chart kind of gal). However, I did have to start over once I realised that the ribbing, which I made with 3.0 mm needles was going to be too small for my big head. Ah well. 

And as soon as I cast off the hat, I felt the urge to start another project, this time with some yarn that had been sitting in my stash for a while. I decided to make Midori Hirose's legendary? notorious? Ranunculus sweater that everyone and their mom has made using Aade Lõngad Artistic 8/2 in the colourway 'Lamb', which is a lovely ombre with show colour transitions. The sweater is somewhat textured, but I don't think the ombre distracts from that, as there are rows of stockinette between every couple of rows of textured pattern and I think you can see the texture pretty well. The sweater is made on 6.0 mm needles, so I made pretty good progress with that first evening of knitting: 

I'm excited to see how it turns out and what the fit will be like!

State of the Project: Ekorre sweater - the finale!

 

It's done and I am very happy with it!

I finished the first sleeve very quickly, having decided to use a paper clip to mark the decrease rows and and a cute sheep stitch marker to mark the eyelet rows:

However, the second sleeve was a different story: for whatever reason, I was very distracted when I was knitting it, so I used the wrong progress marker a few times and forgot where I was. I ended up having to rip back a few rows. Anyway, all's well that ends well! 

So, how did self-isolation go?

First of all, I am happy to say that I am feeling well and tested negative on Friday, so I will be heading back to work this week. 

Second of all, because I'm kind of a hermit anyway, self-isolation wasn't exactly tough for me: I worked out (I have a pretty decent home gym, including a barbell and weights, some dumbbells, a step bench and a spin bike), did some baking (gotta have balance between calories in and calories out, right?) and of course I did plenty of knitting. While knitting, I also got through several seasons of crime shows on Netflix:

• Trapped
• Case
• Borderliner
• Paranoid
• Lupin
• Collateral

But re: said knitting, I actually finished my cousin's In Between Dreams pullover! And sent it off to her! And she seemed to like it! She even posted it in her IG stories! I don't know what all these exclamation marks are for!

I also made decent progress on my Ekorre sweater: I have now finished the decreases and increases and moved on to the colourwork hem:

The eyelets confused me a bit at first, but are actually super simple to do.  All in all, it was pretty alright as TV knitting. However, I did have to use a progress keeper to keep track of the increase/decrease rows and a pen and paper to keep track of the rows where I had to do the eyelets. 

Aaaannnd... I also cast on the perfect companion piece to the Ekorre sweater: the Squirrel fun mittens by Lotta Lundin! These are made from fingering weight yarn on tiny needles, so I am using the chestnut brown Rauma Lamull that I didn't use for this sweater, some rust-coloured Drops Nord that I had left over from the Southampton soft and some random white yarn that I found in my stash drawer and am praying to the knitting gods will be enough. Because I am knitting with 2.0 mm needles and there are 80 stitches to a row, they are probably going to take forever to make, but they are super cute so I don't mind. 

As for the Bake Off shawl, well... I have managed to finish 1/4 of the fourth clue, but tbh I'm getting a bit bored with it, even though I have seen other people's finished shawls and they look fabulous. 

More time to knit!

Looks like I will have a lot of free time on my hands for the next week or so, because  a work colleague of mine tested positive for Miss Rona and I am self-isolating. I am feeling well and not having any symptoms, thanks for asking.

My plan is to tackle my WIPs in the next days: I would really, really like to finish the In Between Dreams sweater for my cousin and the Bake-Off shawl. If I'm feeling up to it, I might also finally sew that damn lace edge to the centre part of my Haapsalu scarf and block it *gasp*!

For the time being, I have made some headway with my cousin's sweater, which almost has one sleeve :-)

And because I just can't cheating on that sweater, I also completed the squirrelly colourwork yoke of the Ekorre sweater: 

The yoke wasn't overly fiddly, since there are only two colours, but it did take a bit of doing since there are so many stitches :D

I have to say, making the double ribbing for the neck using a provisional cast-on was not as daunting as I thought it would be. I did have to rip back one round at the end, because I had made the increases with the wrong colour yarn, but it didn't' take me too long ti knit it up again. 

So anyway, I will keep you posted re: the progress of my WIPS :-)

State of the Project: In Between Dreams Pullover, vol. 2

Although my knitting mojo has been a bit off lately and knitting the ribbing took me foreveeerrr, I did cast off the body part of the In Between Dreams pullovern Between Dreams pullover that I am making for my cousin: 

Looks pretty, no? Now all I need to do is make the sleeves. At my current pace, it shouldn' take longer than a month or so :P

I have also been working on the Ekorre sweater a bit, but because it seems like everybody and their mom are taking part in the the Hnetur pullover KAL ('hnetur' apparently means 'nuts' in Icelandic), I have also become quite fond of the idea of making an Icelandic-style pullover. I don't know that I can be arsed with the Hnetur, because you have four different colours in the pattern at one point, but Meiju Knits has a pattern for an Icelandic-inspired pullover called Reykjavik soft that I think looks really cute. Now, these are normally knit with something like Léttlopi, but from what I gather that yarn, which is100% Icelandic wool, is super scratchy and warm and you wouldn't be able to wear the garment indoors, I might go for Drops Karisma IF (and not WHEN :P) I decide to make it. 

Stuff I like to do other than knitting!

I have been living my lady of the house fantasy lately and gotten into baking and confectionery again. I enjoy making sweet stuff on my days off and I am a huge fan of chocolate, so most of the cakes I make have chocolate in them. Recently, I discovered a group on Facebook where two professional bakers/confectioners do live bake-alongs (which you can obviously also watch later).

The most recent FB live was on making chocolate truffles:

I had quite a bit of chocolate left, as well as lots of dried berries, so I used a recipe that was shared by one of the ladies in the group over Christmas and baked this chocolate cake: 

And in the lead-up to Christmas, they had a paid webinar on making orange-flavoured gingerbread cookies and decorating them. I have made my own gingerbread dough for the past several years (using a recipe that my Southern memaw got from the memaw next door (fun fact: I actually found out over New Year's when I got my hands on memaw's notebook that she had like five or six recipes and was always looking for the best one)), but I hadn't tried using orange paste in the dough before, and I also hadn't found the perfect way to make royal icing for decorating, so I was pretty intrigued and decided to go for it. I made one batch to take to work and the other batch for my family just before Christmas. Both got eaten very quickly :-) 

Here's how they turned out: 

One of the ladies also wrote a book on making eclairs and macarons, which was voted the best cookbook of the year last year. My plan for this weekend is to make chocolate-glazed eclairs with creme patissiere :-)

Squirrels!

Fun fact about me: I am very fond of squirrels. Something about those furry little guys just warms my heart :-) 

A student organisation that I used to be a part of had a squirrel called Säde (Spark) as the mascot and I liked holding her every chance I got. Here is a picture of me and Säde after I chaired the local agora: 

And I also enjoy meeting squirrels in my job! 

All that to say that making a sweater with some squirrels on it seemed like a great idea and when I saw Anna Johanna tag the Ekorre sweater in one of her IG posts, I knew I had to make it. I ordered the yarn from the sweater from the Saara publishing house webshop that sells books about and yarns for traditional Estonian crafts and it turns out it's actually Rauma Lamull. 

I ordered two different colourways of the contrast yarn because I wasn't sure which one I would like more: 

The one on the left is called 'chestnut brown' and the one on the right is called 'squirrel brown'. After much humming and hawing, I went with the squirrel brown one. I haven't got very far because the needles used are tiny (2.75 mm), but I think you can almost see the acorns: 

So yeah, I am going to crack on with this sweater, but obviously also the In Between Dreams sweater I am making for my cousin.