The Epic Gauge Failure and Happy 2013!

Happy new year, one and all! May all your wishes come true and all that jazz. Me, I'll stick to knitting weird and wonky projects. Here's one good example:

As my mother-in-law-to-be was kind enough to add a lovely ball of multicoloured Drops Big Delight in my knitting first aid kit, I pondered what to do with it. It is so colourful that maybe I wouldn't wear it as a hat. And being 100% wool it also seemed a bit itchy for wristwarmers. So, socks!

Yummy colours

I found the pattern from the yarn manufacturer's site. The instructions suggested using 4,5 mm needles, but as I only had 5 and 6 mm, I knitted a gauge (tension, tiheys) swatch with the 5 mm first. Hmm, 10 sts on 5 cm means 20 sts on 10 cm, the instructions wanted 18. What, I need bigger needles? Tryout #2 with 6 mm needles: 9 sts on 5 cm means 18 sts on 10 cm. Perfect!

But here's where the perfect ends: after casting on the required 48 sts for size 38/40 and knitting the 3n 3p rib (mental note: looks bad, don't do this again) for a couple of cms, the sock looked like it was meant for a giant. WTF?! What went wrong, help? How was my knitting suddenly so different than in the gauge swatch? Ripping it all I started again with the 5 mm needles and hoped for a miracle. A minor improvement, yes, but I'm pretty sure that the socks will still be too big for me. Well, colourful socks for the boyfriend! Just need to get some elastic cord to get those ribbings to stay in form.

Also the fuzziest yarn ever

Still huge

 But seriously? What do you think went wrong here? Now I'm scared of messing up all my future projects by counting the gauge wrong....

Wonky Socks

Yarn: Drops Big Delight

Needles: 5 mm

Mood: WTF?!

With love, Lilje

The Entrelac Project

Browsing the blog world once more I found another delicious e-magazine called Knitscene Accessories. After seeing a pair of mitts done in entrelac knitting, I had to try myself. The yarns don't really match, as the green one I was used was about double as bulky as the brown one, but the tryout was supposed to be just that: a tryout. But hmmm... when I get home and have my sewing machine handy, I might just add a lining and turn this into a small pouch. Stay tuned! :)

With love, Lilje

The Owl Wristwarmers

After getting a severe case of knitting fever, I started scouring the web for all things knitting related. While reading the lovely Villakettu blog I stumbled upon these lovely little dudes taken originally from the issue 21 of the awesome crafts magazine Mollie Makes and it was love at first sight. I don't know what it is about owls that makes them so adorable. I don't usually go with the fashion fads but I have to admit that you can sell me pretty much anything (or at least get a swooning "ooh") if it has owls in it.

So yes, I worked out how to use Zinio, bought the e-version of the magazine and... and nothing. I was miles and at least one ferry trip away from the nearest place where they sell yarn and knitting needles. The only knitting needles I had managed to buy from Kuala Lumpur on our last trip there were circular needles (what was I thinking?) that weren't suitable for knitting wrist warmers. So I had to wait. But I had a cunning plan: my boyfriend's relatives were coming for a visit over Christmas, and they had suitcases just for transporting me some yarn and needles! Well, not quite, but you get the picture. And after a text message to my boyfriend's mom and a couple of weeks of excruciating waiting, I finally had my 5 mm double pointed needles and lovely 2 balls of green Drops Big Merino. Yay!

The wrist warmers were pretty easy to knit and they were my first project with cables. The only problem, that also Anu from Villakettu had noticed, was that the wristwarmers were meant for a person with really tiny hands. I could get them on, but the poor owls looked so bloated that I decided it was better to give them to my boyfriend's cousin as a christmas present.

But they were so cute that I knew something had to be done to get a pair of my own. I decided to add 6 stitches to the suggested 24 and make the owl in brown. Big mistake than ended in the trash bin... But with 3 added stitched (and sticking to the green colour), success! The poor owlies are still a bit stretched when worn, but they still look ok. Or what do you think? :)

Owl Wristwarmers, Mollie Makes 21/2012

Yarn: Drops Big Merino

Needles: 5 mm

Mood: Yay for owls!

With love, Lilje

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The Beginning

Hey there! How nice of you to stop by. My name is Lilje and I'm writing this post in a hammock in Koh Phangan, Thailand. This is not actually where I live, though, as we're only here to escape the Berlin winter. And no, I'm not German either, but a Finn. Yes, Finland, the land of snow, the Moomins... and Santa Claus!

But this blog is not about Thailand, Germany or Finland. It's about the things I love, which are baking, knitting and all sorts of odd projects and bits and pieces about my life. Baking is something I've done for a while now and the results are usually pretty ok, if I say so myself. Knitting is a more recent discovery. I've done the occasional sock before but after knitting a hat and mittens last winter I noticed that it is something I really like doing. So now, in Thailand (of all places), I have harassed family members to send me yarn and needles with visiting relatives, and have started knitting like a crazy person. The results... well, the name of the blog says it all really. They don't always go like in the magazines or knitting how-to-do videos. I'm still trying to get the hang of making heel decreases without holes, getting the tension counting done correctly and so on and so forth. But whatever the result, at least there is lots of love (in addition to all the sweat and sometimes tears...) put in all of my creations.

As I don't have a proper oven here in our little jungle hut, the sweeter side of this blog will have to wait until April when we return to Berlin. There have been a couple of ventures into the world of raw vegan cakes, so there might be something to report on that front as well, but for now, the needles will do most of the talking.

As this is a new blog, I realize that it might take a while before anyone will start reading this, but until (if) I have readers, I will just pretend that there is a huge horde of you, eager to find out what's going on, like a bunch of imaginary friends. But if there are actually some human readers out there, I'd be delighted if you'd leave a comment. Any language is fine, but I read only English, Finnish, German and Swedish fluently ;).

With this view from our balcony, I'll leave you for now. So nice to be finally blogging again! Yay :)

Oh, and PS. If you want to read more about our Thailand trip, click.

With love, Lilje