Lesson learned

Last year I made jumpers for my boys and I promised myself: no more stripes. But of course I was tempted by to many lovely colours and the easiest way to combine them were stripes.

I hate working with more than one ball of yarn at the same time. I hate changing colours while working in rounds. I hate decreasing while working in rounds. 

And I hate weaving in hundreds of yarn ends... There is plenty other, more pleasant things to do when drinking my everyday cup of coffee. 

And then came that last one cup, last ends to weave in and it was all finished:

Now I can relax. And somehow despite really hot summer try to photograph these jumpers on my boys.

A lot to do

There are boys' jumpers...

There is Zuzanna's dress...

I've started Adam's blanket... I just couldn't go on without crocheting...

And there is still 165 squares waiting to be a blanket...
And we are going on holidays in 5 days, just for 5 weeks ;). So there is a lot of thinking, decisions making, planing: what to finish now, what to pack with me, what will be the best for 27 hour car journey, what will be the best to crochet when in the frying pan my mum's summer garden so that it won't stick to my hands, and finally what yarn I am going to buy??
Plus, to add a bit more to my keen hands tomorrow my friends are going to have their wedding - tiny, tiny one but still - and I am making the cake and the bouquet.
And I still have to do all the packing! Brrr...
In the meantime on my kitchen windowsill something is growing:

And I am worried they still gonna be to small to transfer them to the bigger pots and move them to the big, scary garden. We'll see :)

Blanket is being finished

A few months ago I started a blanket for our bedroom. I just had to despite long list of other things that should be made first. But I was cold, and I thought I could use all these odd balls of yarn that mysteriously grown in my stash.
I decided to go for "solid granny square" which isn't very 'granny' at all but I wanted this blanket to be quite thick. I. Only needdd 165 squares.
I started slowly, square after square, colour after colour... Soon it was obvious that I am going to need a lot of new colours.
Fiona from my knitting group showed me a fantastic way to make a sampler to carry around: you just make tiny squares and put them on a stitch holder:

It was so easy to match another colour to the ones I had before that I ended up with 23!!

Now all my 165 squares are finished. It feels strange... It was a perfect project to carry around and this is probably the reason I made them so quickly. I made a spreadsheet to track my progress and it even calculated the percentage of completion.

Can you see a 100% at the bottom?
Now I only have to so al these squares up...

Blanket is being started

Today I went shopping with Adam to get yarn for his blanket. My idea was to get nice, bright and bold colours and mix them in random stripes. But when I asked Adam, standing in front of the rainbow of yarns, which one does he like he picked black.
And then grey.
And when I encouraged him to pick some more he went for white...
And that was his idea for this blanket.

So we talked, and mixed, and talked some more and we got a compromise:

It didn't take long  for me to make up a small sample and I am happy to say that it's been approved.

I am going to start as soon as I finish our bedroom blanket.

In the making...

On Saturday my knitting group is having a "Gartmore at home" event which basically means we meet for the whole day to knit and make whatever we like. As a group we can do almost everything starting from knitting through crochet, quilting, cross stitch, sugar flower making to.... I don't know if there actually is the end to this list. From time to time if someone can do what others haven' t tried yet she can give a class to teach others. This Saturday we will have a tote bag making class, japanese quilting class, scrapbooking class and crochet doily  making class. And I am giving the last one. So I am busy making some samples, drawing patterns and trying to find some order in many symbols and names used to describe crochet stitches.

Creative stitches

Creative stitches is the name of the show I went to yesterday held at Glasgow Exhibition Centre this weekend. Wow, wow and once more wow. The amount of fabric, wool, needles, felt, beads, buttons, scissors and thread I have seen yesterday still makes my head spin. I went with two clear goals set firmly: first to buy fabric for some of the quilts I intend to make in the near future (and to find what I have in mind at lower prices) and second: have fun. I achieved my goals.

That is the fabric I got. It is just amazing!!! I was looking for grey and pink roses (to make quilt for my Mum) for quite some time and now I got it. The fat quarters I got were all Ł2 so now I have all the rainbow colours for Zuzanna's quilt. And some gorgeous reds with black and white for Bartosz's quilt. Oh, joy...
I can't possibly describe how great it was to wander around that hall and admiring beautiful pieces, seeing all these breathtaking ideas, soaking in the creative atmosphere... I will just mention that I've spent a long time at the Quilters Guild and lace exhibition made me cry.
Go and see for yourself...
Near the end I decided I really need to start making something or I will go crazy. I could use a blindfold and an escort outside to stop me from buying more fabric. So I went to Elena Costella's stand two knit. I was asked to knit two flowers: one for myself and one for the charity Creative Care. The pattern for the twisted flower was amazing, how Elena came up with and idea to twist the work (in one of the rows you're asked to twist your left needle anticlockwise after every six stitches) I have no idea but it works great. So I made a red one for me:

and a purple one for charity. And when I finished they started to close the show so I had no problems with getting out ;) I think I will add some beads in the centre of the flower but I love it already.
I can't wait for the next show...

For my daughter

I had this yarn for over a year, nearly two years actually. I bought it in Poland in April 2010 (!). It's called Oliwia, 20% wool, 80% acrylic, DK. Lovely colours, perfect match for jeans, and because of constant colour changing it is fun and quick to knit. I wanted something simple but not boring so I made cabled panel on the front.

I always try to minimize sewing up so I knitted the front, the back and the sleeves up to the armpits and then put it on circular needles and knitted in the round. Then I only had four straight seems: on the sides and on the sleeves, with very little weaving in.

You can see my passion for detail in matching the rib to the cables - it took some counting, the rib is not always 2 by 2 but I am very happy with it. As I am with the look of decreases with a little matching cable :)

And the best thing is that Zuzanna is wearing it all the time since I finished.