reine

i'm such a brooklyn tweed whore. you know that much if you've read any of my stuff anywhere, ever.

give me any pattern curated by the magical jared flood, and i'll be salivating all over it like them more girly knitters are doing to pictures of ryan gosling right now.

(personally, i don't find him that hot. but that's because my girly bits have recently dried up and withered away because of an involuntary and tragic lack of use.)

reine by alexis winslow

ravelry link

size 33.75

bc garn semilla dk (350g / 4mm)

reine was the ultimate piece of comfort knitting back in october. just a smooth relaxing sailing from skein to skein, from piece to piece. the pattern was extremely knitter-friendly and the top down, short-row set-in sleeves produced a sweet fit at the shoulders. it was such a perfect pairing between yarn and needles that i just wiggled my fingers every now and then and somehow from that a cardigan emerged. the sleeves took maybe 3 hours each, that's the level of simple comfort we're talking about.

but because i'm not very smart, it never occurred to me to consider some of the essential differences of semilla and the intended yarn. you may or may not know (and if not, why the hell not?) that BT loft and its delightful woolen texture allow it to be knitted up with a gauge of anything between light fingering to DK without losing any fabric integrity, drape or general awesomeness.

at 250 meters per skein, one could squeeze out this cardigan with just 200 grams of loft. semilla, as wonderfully soft and ever-so-slightly rustic as it is, is just 160 meters, so for me it took 350 grams--which is just enough for gravity to do its dastardly deed. and so the cardigan turned out droopy.

oddly, back in my LYS days, i was definitely smart enough to publicly ridicule anyone not familiar with the pitfalls of substituting yarn, i.e. those considering only one factor of the holy trinity of needle size, gauge and yardage. material obviously plays into it as well, but i don't know what you call a holy foursome in a fancy biblical way. quadrility? anyway. i know i'm a horrible person.

horrible, AND with a stupid face

but i can live with the droopyness, because the cardigan is just so freakin' comfy. and the pockets are perfect for those moments when you're feeling awkward among half-strangers and know that if you resort to your usual i'm-uncomfortable-so-i-need-to-do-something-with-my-hands routine and keep on twirling your fingers and tearing off pieces of fingernail in a visible manner, it will only contribute to making you seem even more out there than you actually are, therefore rendering the moment unbearably awkward and possibly fatal. but with this cardigan--voila! pockets.

my hand could be doing anything in here, and you would never know

not a word about the quality of seaming, though. i'm a knitter, not a fuckin' seamstress, okay? seaming makes me aggressive, which doesn't go well with my otherwise gentle manners. fuckin' seams.

again thanks to miss R for the photos!

northern non-summer

i'm back. sort of.

inspired by fellow bloggers, and encouraged by my employer-turned-mentor, i've decided that when it comes to presenting finished knits, even super duper late is better than not at all. you may direct any objections to that brick wall over there.

so in the following days, or weeks, realistically speaking--which we always are--you will see some very very random posts about stuff i've made. mostly from last year, because since moving to canada i seem to have caught a really sturdy case of i'm-just-gonna-wind-this-yarn-and-knit-a-few-rows-then-move-one-to-something-else-hence-the-pile-of-eleven-simultaneous-WIPs, and haven't been able to finish much stuff.

to start things off, this here is a shawl i made.. last... spring.

northern summer shawl by jo kelly

ravelry link

wollmeise pure in olio vergine (170g / 3.5mm)

i know it was spring because i was watching the ice hockey world champs on TV (we lost) while working on the lace edging. you know, the type of edging where you're effectively binding off exactly one edge stitch for every two rows of lace? sheesh, omg, lol. i thought it would never end.

i also remember going completely berserk when someone interrupted me on one of the last chart repeats, causing me to lose track and having to frog back at least 15 rows. with all due respect to my family, friends and the entire humankind: which part of this concentrated, constipated look on my face when i'm knitting lace does not scream "DO NOT FUCKING SPEAK TO ME RIGHT NOW PLEASE THANK YOU" to you?

i just don't like to be interrupted, is all.

i also also remember that i ran out of yarn with just two chart repeats left. i'm not gonna go over the details of that gruesome episode because it hurts too much. but i somehow managed to find a lovely generous person willing to part with her leftover yarn from the same wollmeise update (!), so i was able to finish the edging a couple of days later.

the pattern had some pretty significant errors here and there, but i trudged through anyway and i think the finished shawl looks fine. there's enough weight there to make it drape nicely and prevent the edges from curling, which is the sole reason most of my scarves and shawls are plain garter stitch. so in this case the yarn works--so much so, in fact, that this was one of only three hand-knit scarves that got to accompany me to canada.

(notice the decidedly un-springy scenery in the photos above. they were taken in mid-november, because for the actual northern summer i was locked up in the cave of fluorescent lights and windows facing a concrete wall that was my previous workplace. many thanks to miss R for helping out anyway.)

but the more i've worked with wollmeise the less i'm liking the base yarn--OMG SHE DIDN'T JUST SAY THAT--because the plying really really puts me off. an 8-ply fingering-weight yarn? are you fucking serious? yeah and we'll make the plies really loose too, so that we're effectively taking out all the luxurious squishyness of merino and replacing it with these lifeless little straws of fibre that split and fray like a mofo and completely disintegrate when drawing from a center-pull ball. why, in short we've taken a luxurious merino and turned it into something that resembles cheap cotton.

i really really want to like the yarn, because the colors are so amazingly vibrant. but i think my wollmeise hoarding days are over. surely it can only mean that my taste in yarns is becoming more and more refined? and surely that's only a good thing?

rosebud

just when we thought summer would skip our grand nordic nation entirely, that she would cruelly ignore our very existence in this odd peninsula--affectionately nicknamed either the armpit or the asshole of northern europe, depending on which warped position you imagine us in--she arrived in a blazing chariot of heat and sunshine.

"go out and get naked," she said, and the entire nation went, "okay."

except me.

this is me celebrating summer in the best way i know how, i.e. by posing in a long-sleeved shirt and a chunky woolly hat, looking as soulful and tormented as edgar allan poe, or robert smith, or to a lesser extent, aaron lewis. i can't believe that band still exists.

rosebud by jared flood

ravelry link

size small

brooklyn tweed shelter (50g / 4.5-5mm)

what can i say. hats are my weakness.

against every last grain of intuition i had in my body i made the smaller size instead of the slouchy one. usually i'm drawn to anything that's labeled slouchy like gum on shoesoles, but this time something in my brain said no. by the time i reached the point of either continuing on to crown decreases, or knitting the cable chart once more, i just found myself having less and less stitches on the needle. i like to wear my hats pretty far back so somehow i managed to figure out even the shorter model could work.

and this time, completely out of character, i even weaved a lifeline into the stitches of the final row before the decreases, so that if i totally changed my mind i could go back and undo the rows without counting them and getting all messed up on the chart. i have no idea where all this epic far-sightedness comes from right now.

it sits really well too now, and the shelter yarn (in homemad jam, for those interested) was every bit as pleasant to knit with as i expected. although i have to say that both loft and shelter tend to lose some of their perky fluffiness with blocking. or maybe i'm doing it wrong. they get a little droopy. not too droopy, but i could do without some of the droopiness. it doesn't really show in photos though.

what's also not showing in the photos is my mom crying because of my fascistic art direction during this photography session. sorry mom. at least the girl knows what she wants.

and i haven't had a haircut in 13 months. does that show? sheesh. no wonder i'm still single.

hippo hooray

just so you don't think i'm a ruthless, heartless bitch with no tolerance or compassion for any my fellow men, please know that i've just had four quite relaxing days off work and am now more or less back to my own amiable self. thank you for your patience, and apologies for all the fuck you's.

also, have a look at the following.

flodhästen by mia bengtsson

from virka glada amigurumi

ravelry link

smc egypto cotton (50g / 2.5mm)

he was a gift to my brown-eyed, four-toothed angel of a niece on her first birthday. and probably the most heartwarming, awww-inducing little thing i've ever managed to make. not entirely childproof, but festively plump nonetheless.

and he even has freakin' toes. the wrong amount though, as my dad, ever tactful, was quick to point out.

so happy birthday again, sweetheart. may this anatomically incorrect hippo be your guide through your second year of existence. just try and not eat the eyes, or mom will beat the living crap out of me.

him & me

what a ridiculously perfect pairing, this hitchhiker fellow and me. he's fast enough to keep me interested, simple enough to make me feel special by comparison, and pretty enough to maintain perpetual heat in my nether regions.

hitchhiker by martina behm

ravelry link

size awesome

handu 100% merinovilla (100g / 3mm)

i suppose he thinks highly of me too. assuming that an inanimate object cares. i like to think they do, because it gives me a sense of self-appreciation and worth. i'm queen fluffalot, remember?

with my royal guardian ponies and goats.

i love being me.

march of the sinister knits

well the crochet thing is off. having trudged through 400 meters of yarn in one sitting (with this lovely shawl in mind) i somehow just went "meh" and moved on. the construction and shape didn't feel right. or maybe the butch trucker lesbian side of me's just not ready for pink lace. how sweet is the taste of giving up.

but i do have something to show you instead. throughout the spring i've made lots of stuff which i haven't had the time to present here, due to an unexpected and outrageous lack of spare time. being currently sick with flu offers a welcome break to do some blogging as well as the inevitable jurassic park marathon.

and so, a terribly long and incoherent cavalcade of finished knits follows.

seasons by jared flood

ravelry link

size 3

brooklyn tweed loft (70g / 3 & 3.5mm)

i got the brooklyn tweed seasons kit as soon as they went on sale back in march or something. i just had to get my hands on that loft yarn. (it's totally hot, by the way.) my colorwork is rather, um, amateurish, but the colors themselves are heathered enough to cover up a lot of my inability to comprehend the concept of "color domination".

the hat was a little snug when finished, so i wanted to block it to a nice generous slouchy look. a delightful little encounter ensued at a local department store, where i just happened to walk past the flower section with some completely unrelated business in mind, and saw a white flower pot that, when turned upside down, just caught my eye as the most perfect hat blocking device ever. so i took it to the counter and asked the girl what the circumference was.

"the diameter's 19 centimeters," she said. "no no, i need to know the circumference," i replied and made her look at me like she couldn't understand the words i was vomiting out. i was then forced to explain how this particular pot seemed the perfect size to aid me in wet-stretching a knitted garment which i couldn't pin down and flat-dry because i didn't want the side creases and how the pot needed to be between 60 and 65 centimeters because my head is 58 and i liked my hats a little loose, and i just needed to be sure about the pot size before i bought it.

she was probably lost at "wet-stretching".

but in eerie silence she took out a measuring tape anyway and announced that the circumference is 62 centimeters, to which i responded with some joyous hand-clapping, to which she in turn responded with a look as if i was actually intending to use the pot in some completely different affair, possibly relating to eating babies and/or having sex with leather-clad muppets.

just imagine what a girl can do with a pot like this

but i took it home anyway and blocked the hat, and it's perfect. never mind the fact that i'm probably on some stockmann persona non grata list now.

"i never should've fallen for that muppet"

speaking of hats, back when it was -25C outside i made me a wurm to keep my precious, precious ears warm with its double-layered edge. the size was perfect at first, but after blocking and in use the yarn got all droopy to the point where it's almost too slouchy. so next time i'll be making a smaller size.

wurm by katharina nopp

ravelry link

size biggiest

lana grossa cool wool merino (70g / 4mm)

then i made two of these ruffle necklaces, one for me and one for a friend for her birthday. i had to adjust the pattern a little because following the chart i couldn't get the edges symmetric.

ruffle bib necklace by stefanie fail

ravelry link

mayflower cotton 8 big (25g / 3.5mm)

mine totally look better than the originals, by the way.

then there's a couple of socks i made as presents for some nice people who are working hard to relieve me of my family curse of hideously crooked teeth. yes, i should've gotten them fixed back in the 90s. yes, i'm a 27-year-old with braces. no, i'm not very smart. but just a couple more months and i'll be stunning. yeah. take that.

a girl at work, a.k.a. miss R, a.k.a. my partner in crime in all yarn-related mischief (no it's not an oxymoron) taught me broomstick lace because, as it turns out, i'm not inherently the ultimate master of all knittingy and crochety bits. so with this newly-acquired skill i made some bracelets. they make me look all pretty. and cool.

the yarn's schachenmayr catania in various colors and there's 10 repeats in each. one bracelet took maybe 5 grams.

and finally i made another shallows, this time with some egyptian cotton and one less chart repeat so it sits a little snugger. also i took a crappy photo of it with a warped perspective, distorted colors and dismal white balance. it's all part of the process.

there. i'm all puffed out now. i shall be dreaming about jeff goldblum tonight.

spring, snooker & shallows

it's the time of year again when men put on their bow ties and shiny leather shoes and gather up to poke their polished balls into some deep velvety holes, bending over backwards to get the position just right, crafting every thrust with precision only attainable through years of practice. for characters like "the rocket" and "the captain" failing or running out of steam is not an option. they will pound through 35 rounds of sheer sweaty excitement to see who's boss and who's.. well, the bitch.

i'm just gonna end this retarded analogy now.

turns out watching snooker and knitting makes even the douchiest life infinitely more tolerable. that and getting some global-ass support from people who are under no obligation to even care. so i thank you all in the most non-clever and non-sarcastic way i know how.

and now back to some actual knitting.

i don't have much to say about this cowl though, except that it's utterly, utterly sweet and awesome. it drapes exactly as i wanted and i dare say the color suits me, sir. i wouldn't have said that a year ago, but as it happens i've recently matured and can now wear whatever the hell i want.

shallows by bonnie sennott

ravelry link

size 15 x 114 cm

madelinetosh tosh merino light (70g / 3.5mm)

and spring's here too, that belated bastard. i've always figured you can't really truly appreciate spring unless you've clawed your way through seven months of winter first. the first day you go out and the wind doesn't slaughter you like some cosmic chainsaw, when it actually caresses you instead of withering away your last remaining breath of hope, that's when you feel alive again.

and you skip along, humming as you go, squinting at the piercing rays of light and greeting every bird and bug and blob of color like you've just got out from the cave from the descent, and happily ignore the fact that approximately four months later some creepy bearded woodsman will yank you right back down again and throw you at the mercy of the drooling albino monsters your fellow men have become because of their chronic deprivation of sunlight, human compassion and dental hygiene.

pictured: me. yesterday morning.

but until then you're sort of, kind of, fine. and baby, it feels good.

hello, april

in the midst of all the horrors that ensue from such wretched circumstances as a) staying alive and maintaining some level of sanity during a crippling nerve illness, b) working despite said illness in conditions that bear zero resemblance to the oohs and aahs state of the initial OMG THEY HIRED ME honeymooning period, and c) ducking from gigantic murderous german-speaking birds, i have completely neglected this blog.

my child, my blood, my intellectual excrement.

i left her on her own, writhing helplessly without any loving nourishment, and ignored her existence while pursuing a selfish, opiate-laden path of my own called "it's me first or the bunny gets it" (also known as the "next fucker to irk me dies" path).

what a wonderful mother i would make.

i now realize the bird was merely trying to castrate me

but that's the thing with constant, unchanging pain. it's hard to concentrate on anything else when it's always there. it won't make you prettier. it won't make you a better person. and it certainly won't go away if you just think positive. no. all it does is turn you into a saggy bitter old maid with a slightly unfocused gaze and a medical bill the size of manitoba.

of course, once you reach that point, that's the moment you go out and buy as much yarn as you and the postman can collectively carry. in all colors, in all qualities, from all continents and price ranges. because that's what makes you (and by you i mean me) happy, and maintaining that level of happy is rather crucial here these days.

my precious precious happy

but after thoroughly sniffing the hanks, petting the hanks and daydreaming about the hanks, i slap myself (with the hanks) and figure things probably could be worse. i'm sure things can always be worse. and everyone has their own private hell. it's just that some people face suffering with a sort of defeated, stoic, graceful halo that inspires others to appreciate what they still have.

me, i'm more of the kind to kick, scream and throw steaming turds at any and all instances whom i at the given time deem responsible for my current misery.

which is hardly inspiring at all.

anyway. somewhere in the midst of all this i made a pair of socks. they're pretty,  and sparkly, and they made me and my feet happy.

seagrass by melissa morgan-oakes

ravelry link

ilun erikoinen (70g / 2.5mm)

incidentally, they're the first textured pair of socks i made with the toe-up 2-at-a-time method. i figured this twinkling beauty of a yarn deserves something more than just plain stockinette. and they fit like a dream too. perfect size, perfect shape.

now if only they'd deliver my damn wollmeises already.

rekindled

meet bedford. my sweet, fluffy, cozy, comfy, drapey loving substitute of a human relationship that has restored my faith in life and yarn.

bedford by michelle wang

ravelry link

size 34.5

cascade 220 (480g / 4.5mm)

he's like a great big cup of perfect black tea in the morning. a warm and all-encompassing hug in the form of hairy gray wool.

something that makes me want to just sit here with my feet up on the radiator and stare outside and let none of that mundane, earthly, wisecracking sillyness penetrate my calm and relaxed self.

how completely out of character.

mr. freeze

it seemed like such a good idea. photographing the latest FO outside. after all, it was only -26C. surely a finn, accustomed from birth to living in the dark and wrestling polar bears while dousing herself with whale blubber, is perfectly capable of enduring such temperatures. surely?

gyllis by stephen west

ravelry link

size kinda perfect

sweet georgia tough love (100g / 3.5mm)

at first it was all good. the perfect branches were found, and the lighting was just right too. what a gorgeous setting for such a gorgeous piece of work, made from a pattern by the gorgeous stephen west, and with the yarn the equally gorgeous miss melissa benevolently donated me some weeks ago.

however, after approximately seven minutes the amount of physical pain inflicted by the freezing windchill despite the 14 layers of clothing surpassed the will to live get the perfect shots. it was now a death battle for getting any shots at all. gods were renounced, fingers were lost.

not pictured: please god let me die

at which point the artist said "fuck this" and went back inside.

self-promotion sunday

in between my scheduled weekly "me first" time, a.k.a. sunday that's entirely reserved for my own nihilistic needs which somehow always seems to mean changing bedsheets, putting my hair up in odd-looking buns and drinking tea in complete silence, i'm bringing you an important news bulletin.

i've just added lots of stuff to the etsy shop, so go take a look. new prices and all!

also i forgot to show you this earlier. a little quickie i finished a while back.

boreal by milja uimonen

ravelry link

rowan purelife renew (100g / 7mm)

certain people at work dared me to buy this yarn and so i did, because when it comes to yarn i have no self-control. you know it as well as i do. it's not the worst yarn one could be dooped into buying, though. it looks and feels pretty good and it's surprisingly soft, but the polyamid content makes my hair stand up. literally. but of course the recycled wool part makes up for any such cosmic deficiencies.

i'd had my eye on this pattern for a while but couldn't figure out what yarn to knit it with. i had other bulky weight yarns in my stash but once i brought the renews home i wanted to try them out right away. too bad it's the tweediest yarn ever that completely overshadows the textured intricacies of the pattern. oh well. it's a great piece for work anyway. i'll probably redo it with something more solid that drapes better too later on.

apologies for the shitty pictures though. again. one day the sun will come up again and we shall all live like kings.

i will now go back and turn off all the lights and enjoy the rest of me-day. in silence.