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.