The yoke section of my Icelandic cardi is going really well. I’ve got about 6 or 7 more rows of the chart left to knit, which means I should be able to cut the steek this week. I’m excited. I love cutting a steek. Of course, I’ll try to remember to try it on before I get too crazy with the scissors.

I have been finding knitting on the cardi slightly difficult though. The weight is just a wee bit too much for my wrists, and my left hand (I strand with a yarn in each hand) starts hurting quite a bit after a few rows. Again, I think it is the weight. So I’ve taken it easy and tried to only knit a few colourwork rows at a time… though as the yoke gets smaller I can accomplish more. Funny that. ;)

Since I didn’t want to tax my wrists too much, I decided to wind up some yarn for a new project.

This:

Became this:

Which in no time at all became this:

This is the Annis Shawl by Susanna IC that appeared in Knitty a few years back. Great shawl. I knit it once before (and ran out of yarn and frogged the project) and it is a great quick lace project. The shawl is a crescent shape and is constructed from the bottom up and all the lace is done right up front. After finishing the lace chart, the body of the shawl it worked using short rows and it just flies. I had to restrain myself from finishing it too quickly. It is kind of addicting, and a perfect little shawl for an odd skein of handspun. To recap, this is the yarn I recently finished spinning. It was bought in batt form from Spinning a Yarn and is comprised of Merino, Shetland and sparkle, which I spun as a heavy 2ply laceweight.

The one thing about this shawl is the nupps. I love nupps in shawls, but I often have a hard time knitting them. I’m using my Addi Lace Interchangeable needles for this project and I just don’t find them pointy enough for doing a 7-stitch nupp, though I’m sure my fixed Addis Lace needles would be fine. Instead, I used a small crochet hook to draw the yarn through the nupp stitches and it worked quite well, if slightly more time consuming.

I’m quite excited to add this to my collection of shawls. I wear my shawls like scarves, so I expect to get a fair amount of use out of this shawl during the transitional months of spring and autumn.

An embarrassingly long time ago I started making my daughter some curtains out of this fabric:

Then things happened. Our lounge furniture arrived, curtains for the lounge needed to be made, Christmas happened, and then the winter blahs set in. This past week I resurrected the long lost green curtains and worked on them whilst the weather has been a bit wet.

It has been going well, and other than needing to install some hardware so that I can fashion some tie backs, the curtains are done. Funnily enough, the lounge curtains are also waiting for their tie backs. Hopefully this week.

Here is how one set of the curtains currently looks:

I’m thinking about making little rosettes for the tie backs for Thing 1’s room to draw a little of the pink from her bed to that side of the room and to add a little finishing touch.

We’ve finally started putting up some photos on the walls. It is one of those things we usually wait to do after moving so we can get a feel of the place.

One of the places that needed a large ‘something’ on the wall was in the kids’ play area in the lounge. I wanted to keep some colour, without it being overwhelming. We decided on a couple of black 115cm long Ribba photo rails from Ikea and mounted them on the wall so that they slightly overlapped, but covered the breadth we needed.

For the frames we used Nyttja serries frames. What I really like about these frames (other than the price) was that they were thin enough that the photos could be stacked on the rail. We chose mostly black frames, but we grabbed a few colourful ones that would coordinate with the childrens’ furniture… which was easy enough since most of it was bought at Ikea anyway. I used black frames for the photos, whilst I used the colourful ones to showcase some of the various bits of important artwork. Currently, we are showcasing artwork from Thing 1… a seahorse pulled out of a colouring book, and a painting of her and her brother, both of which came off the artwork boards. I like the sense of whimsy and colour that they add, and I think featuring artwork made by children is important. Framing it adds extra meaning.

These photos rails have now become home to our favourite family photos, something that is very important when you live far away from your families. This be a work in progress that will grow and change with our family. Maybe someday I can even remember to take a photo of the entire play area. ;)

I was very excited to see my May 2012 Wildcraft club fibre arrive on the doorstep this week. The theme is ‘Euphorbia’ and it is dyed on 100% BFL. Love. Not only love, but serendipity.

I’d been keeping have an eye out for 200g of some BFL that I could pair with my remaining 100g of Primrose fibre (March club; BFL/Silk blend) as I really want to spin to knit a Sothia shawl and this will work out perfectly. Here is a reminder of what the Primrose looked like (my remaining braid only has a touch of the orange):

My plan is to spin a 3ply sock weight yarn out of both yarns to knit the Sothia shawl. The Euphorbia may have jumped on the wheel within 24 hours of arrival. I may be excited about this.

The fibre is spinning up beautifully.

To prep this fibre, I divided it into three sections. Usually if I’m dealing with a single braid I simply fold into into three sections and tear the fibre at the folds. When dealing with multiple braids, I like to weigh my braids and then measure out by weight. I do this for a few reasons, but the biggest is that the two braids could vary in weight and this is the easy way of getting equal amounts of fibre for each ply. I also never assume that just because the tag say ‘100g’ that the fibre is 100g. It often depends on the dyer. Some dyers cut it very close, some are very generous. It is always best to weight it out.

I’ll be fractal spinning the Euphorbia fibre. For my first bobbin, I am spinning it straight from the top. For the second bobbin, I’ll be splitting the fibre in two lengths prior to spinning, and the third bobbin will have the fibre split into quarters. This should be an interesting experience is it is very rare for my to split my fibre at all, let alone strip it down into quarters.

Here is how it look about halfway through spinning up the first bobbin:

I just finished off the first bobbin today. It looks just like the above photo, but with more singles. On to bobbin two… tomorrow.

Well, I’m quite pleased that I managed to finish that second sleeve this week. (The little green marker indicates where I was last week.) I joined the sleeves to the body and decided the body wasn’t long enough, so I’ve also added a wee bit over 2” (5cm) to the body (the white marker indicates where the body used to end). I’ve just added the sleeves back on and knit a couple of rounds at this point.

Of course, this is the most annoying part of the project. Not only do I have all those stitches with another dozen or so rows until I start the colourwork, but the project is now too unwieldy to take on the bus and it is nearly impossible to take an interesting photo at this stage. Life is tough sometimes.

For those of you playing along at home, this is the Létt-lopapeysa með stuttum munsturbekk og hettu (Ravelry link) which is an Iceland colourworked yoke pattern that is available for free, but only in Icelandic. I’m finding being able to read a different scandinavian language very helpful in this endeavour.

My hope is that I’ll be into the colourwork portion by next week, if for no other reason than for the sake of a more interesting photograph. It is supposed to be fairly wet in Denmark over the next week which means I’m less likely to be out in the garden which means more knitting time.

Although I did a ton of gardening over the weekend, I managed to pull together a few layouts for some of the challenges going on over at Big Picture Classes and Two Peas in a Bucket.

The first was a challenge to use 2 photos in a now and then comparative style layout. I chose a photo of me 16 years ago and a current photo and the journalling is a list of things I wanted to tell my younger self. I paired this with a colour challenge.

My second layout uses everyday candid photos taken at the playground over the course of several years (actually, the date should be ’11 not ’12) and the journalling talks about favourite places/things and how I’ve enjoyed watching my daughter develop. I paired this with a challenge to use chevrons (which I had to fashion myself as I don’t own any chevron paper).

The final layout is of a Hermitage in Warkworth. The journalling is in two parts. The journalling on the left tells about what we saw, liked, and some of the history of the site. The journalling on the left tells of how much my daughter enjoyed the boat ride to the hermitage. I paired this with a challenge to layer under a negative (in this case, a die cut W) shape.

The challenges over at 2peas are going on until next Sunday if you fancy having a go. I’m hoping I might get a few more done this week whenever I’m not gardening or prepping photos for Week in the Life.

I delayed posting my spinning entry for the week until today as yesterday my yarn looked like this:

Not overly interesting, is it? However, it is indicative of finished handspun. :)

I ended up having to give it several baths in vinegar water as I was having some excessive dye run off. I don’t usually mind a bit of excess dye being released into my yarn bath (I bathe my yarn in hot water to help set the twist and ease out any residual dye, so for me a little bit of colour it perfectly normal), but I found the levels to be higher than normal. Given the colour and the fact that I’m planning on knitting this into neckwear, I wanted to make sure all the excess dye was gone before I spent my time knitting lace.

If you do find yourself with yarn that is bleeding colour, the easiest course of action is usually to use vinegar or disolved citric acid. Either will usually set the colour of dyes used on wool fibres. I simply continue with vinegar baths (about a cup of vinegar into water which will cover the fibre/yarn) until the water is coming out clean. Very simple, though if you are using hot water, remember to keep the water temperatures consistent to avoid shocking (and fulling) your yarn/fibre.

Today my yarn looks like this:

See? Wasn’t that worth the wait?

I’m quite pleased with the yarn. The colour is still vibrant, the yarn itself is soft, and it has great drape. I ended up with a heavy laceweight of approximately 487 metres measured before setting, so this is technically not the final yardage count. However, it is more than enough to do an Annis shawl. In fact, I still have leftovers from both bobbins in case I run short. After filling an entire bobbin to beyond capacity, I felt I had enough yardage and didn’t bother plying the remainder. I’ll likely keep the singles aside and use them in other yarns.

I’m really looking forward to knitting this shawl. I may even cast it on after I finish my cardi.

I surpassed my goal and managed to not only finish knitting my first sleeve, but getting a fair way into the second sleeve, too. The green marker (on the left, barely visible) shows my progress from last week.

At this point next week I’m hoping to have joined the body and sleeves and started into the colourwork. That’s the plan. I’m so looking forward to knitting the yoke. It is the interesting bit, afterall. Of course, at the point where I join it all together is also the point at which this no longer becomes a portable project. Most of this jumper has been knit on the bus, so I’ll need to decide on a portable knitting project (likely an UFO). However, first I need to finish it… right in time for summer. :)

The documenting of Week In The Life officially ended last night, and now the real challenge (for me) begins. The actual making of the album.

I’m not very good with finite albums, I’ll freely admit that. I don’t really like making mini books. The fact that they are fun, small and can be fast are all great things about mini/small albums. What I have issues with is the finite nature of them. How everything needs to fit into a pre-defined space. I don’t scrap chronologically. I make layouts, I fill albums, and when an album gets filled I start a new one. Mini albums don’t work like that. And I won’t even start on how it drives me nuts when everything in an album coordinates. (Yes. I know. I have issues. I refuse to wear matching accessories, too.)

However, having stated all of that, I love the idea of WITL. And because of that I really want to make this work. Our family has seen so many changes in the last few years, and sometimes the everyday gets lost. People move, grow, and change. Taking the opportunity to document those little things can be significant.

I ended my week with 404 photos after purging, or an average of 57 photos per day. I took a lot of photos of the interior of the house which are not day specific. I’m thinking that I’ll pull all of those photos and make a separate spread for them within WITL. It’ll be a nice way to look back and see what everything looked like and what things will change (or not change) during the duration of our stay.

After removing the house photos, the average day has around 20 photos and that seems to be a magic number. Monday had the least at 15, and Friday has the most at 36. Apparently, I took a lot of photos on Friday. Having had a quick look at the photos, I might compensate for this amount of photos by adding in an extra page for that day.

I am planning to do this in 8.5×11 since I’m completely in love with that size. I don’t have an album yet, but I’ll likely stick with the American Crafts Modern albums which I use to house my other layouts. I’m dithering between picking a special colour for WITL, or using brown (which is the colour of our ‘Thing We Do’ section). I’m leaning towards the latter. No matter which I choose, I know that I’ll need to order more page protectors. I simply don’t have enough on hand.

I’m also planning on doing this as a traditional scrapbook. I don’t have the ability to print at home, and 8.5×11 isn’t exactly an easy size to come by in Europe. The closest I could come would be to print 8×10 photos of a digital page then mount it on card stock to bring it up to the full size. Traditional it is. However, since I am going to preplan my pages, I’m also going to take this opportunity to use some digital elements on my photos. I have a small collection on hand that I’ve downloaded or received at part of a class. In fact, I think the elements from Ali’s class ‘Yesterday and Today’ will work perfectly.

My big task now is to pick, edit, and upload whatever photos I want to have printed. I’m hoping to have them done in the next couple of days so I can have them back soon. Since we have a holiday on Friday I’m not holding my breath that I’ll get them before the weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, Saturday is National Scrapbook Day. Many sites will be holding special events and challenges that day and I plan to be hanging out at Big Picture Classes for their NSD Creative Crop. Whatever you are planning, I hope you have a great day. :)

It’s been a busy week, but I’m happy to have been able to fit in several spinning sessions.

I’ve never taken a photo of myself whilst spinning, but since I’m working on a photo project this week, I took the opportunity to do so. If you are wondering how I did it, I used a remote for my camera which I put on my treadle so that I could snap the photo with my toe whilst treadling without interrupting my actual spinning. :)

I’m about three quarters of the way through the second bobbin and plan to finish and ply the yarn this coming week.

The fibre is from Spinning a Yarn, in the True Blue colourway. The batts are made up of Merino, Shetland and sparkle.