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. 

Final knits of 2020 and some 2021 plans.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was actually working on the In Between Dreams pullover for my cousin when I was down South for Christmas. I had her try it on as well, and it looks like it's going to fit her okay. However, she is tall and lean, so I am going to need to make the sleeves and body longer than what the pattern recommends. This is how far I've gotten so far, give or take a few rounds: 

However, because I am anything but a monogamous knitter, I actually started another project when I got home for the few awkward work days that are between Christmas and New Year's: the BriocheSis hat by local designer Raina Kruus. I had seen it in the latest issue of Käsitöö magazine and I couldn't get it out of my head, it is just so pretty! So when I had a two hour stopover in our second largest town as I was traveling from down South to my home on the west coast, I went to the local yarn shop and got a few skeins of Lana Gatto Misina and cast on that same night. I will say that it was a bit fiddly for me and I did have to rip back a few times. I ended up finishing it during the last minutes of 2020: I was actually weaving in the ends as I was watching our President give her New Year's address before the stroke of midnight! I am happy with how it turned out and also happy that I now have something to keep my ears warm: 

I will say, however, that I thought it was a bit cheeky that the pattern in the magazine just said to 'use method 1' when knitting the row with the MC and 'use method 2' when knitting the row with the CC and then 'use method 4' (I think?) for a 5-to-1 decrease without explaining how to actually do it and referring the reader to the previous issue for a more thorough explanation of two-coloured brioche. I mean, I did actually have the previous issue on hand and that explanation was well written, but I think a pattern should be able to stand on its own. Anyway. Loved the hat. 

So what projects do I have planned for this year? I'm glad you asked. 
I still have to finish: 

- the Great British Bake-Off inspired shawl

- the Lovely Megan shawl

- I need to just get my shit together and sew that damn lace edge to my Haapsalu scarf and block it

- the Wayne pullover - though I have admit that one is starting to look more and more like an UFO rather than a WIP

And of course I already have plans for casting on new things: 

- I already have the yarns for making the Ekorre sweater by Anna Johanna and I'm actually chomping at the bit to make it.

- I want to make a triangular Haapsalu scarf, for example one of the patterns from this new book, Siiri Rätid 2 // Triangular Knitted Shawls by Siiri Reimann which, of course, I've already acquired.

- I want to knit something from linen for the summer, though I don't know what it is yet.

Plus I have a lot of stash that I need to find some use for. 

Christmas knits, sort of.

My family is small and close. Four of us got together for Christmas this year at our summer residence: my mom, my aunt, my cousin and myself. We are one of those families where each year we say ‘No presents!’, but then end up giving some presents anyway. This Christmas, I gave presents of the knitted kind. 

In the run-up to Christmas, I finished my mom’s Skärgård sweater:

And because she’s seen it and tried it on several times, she also got a book.

After I cast off mom’s sweater, I cast on another one, this time for my cousin: the In Between Dreams sweater by Meiju K-P. She really liked my Southampton soft because of the lace detail on the sleeves and originally wanted the same one, but liked the newly published In Between Dreams, which has a lace yoke even better. I am using the same yarn that I did for mom’s sweater, namely Drops Baby Merino.

However, I haven’t managed to finish her sweater, since I only started it last week, so I gave her this one and told her that her sweater shrank in the wash:

As for my aunt, well, she seemed to like the lace socks I made as part of Niina Laitinen’s Christmas KAL, so I decided to give her another pair of socks :P

These are the Kvartsi socks by Anna Johanna, one of three ankle sock designs in her Picot Love series. This was my first time using the provisional cast-on and making a picot edge and I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. The yarn I used was Regia Premium Merino Yak and I will definitely be using it again, because it feels warm, soft and luxe as all get-out. 

State of the Project(s): Skärgård Sweater and the Great British Baking Shawl.

Although I have been a bit busy with my side gig, I have made pretty decent progress on my mom's Skärgård sweater. I bound off the body yesterday (using the tubular bind off method) and cast on one of the sleeves: 

Since I'm at mom's for the weekend, I also had her try it on yesterday and it looks like it's a pretty good fit :-) 

Naturally, I also worked on clue 2 of the Lyrical Knits mystery shawl KAL. This clue was called the Technical Challenge and I think the shawl is looking great so far! Though I wouldn't exactly call this clue technical, since Mary was so nice to us and gave very clear directions and made the pattern really easy:

Anyway, I am excited to see where this is going and what the Showstopper is going to be!