Visiting the niece

Last week I had the chance to go back to France and be introduced to my niece, and that was love at first sight 🙂 I’m not so much into baby but she’s an exception, luckily for me … or my sister 😉 She is sooooo cute, all the time smiling and I was able to calm her down when she would cry so I wouldn’t freak out from holding her :).

I didn’t visit any of my friends, just spent all the time with my family. My dad made us some homemade pizzas. Which is a very special treatment for us when we go there 🙂 He even made one in a shape of a heart so I could take it back home to the twins.

My sister took me to some kind of greenhouse where they were growing strawberries and tomatoes, all very natural and without any chemical residues. That was very interesting to see but mainly very very tasty 😛 She bought some strawberries there to make some tiramisu – which was soo tasty!! Nothing compared to those I can buy in Czech Republic sadly.

We did a lot of baby shopping too, and I finished the blanket during my trip (not so keen on the edge pattern I picked, but I needed a quick finish as I was flying back the next day. This is how it turned out:

My sister seemed to really like the vest I did for my niece too. Which I, of course, forgot to take in picture for this post again… >_< I’ll see if I can get one from her.

During that trip, I realised that I should be doing more baby patterns. I have another 3 sessions with my local crochet group before summer, and this evening we have a gathering so I’ll need to find a new pattern to work on by then. My parents should come visit in about 3 weeks so I could give them what I would have finish by then. My gut feeling is that this beautiful weather we are having at the moment is not going to motivate me to knit or crochet much 🙂 At the moment I have only 2 WIP: one carpet and a shawl – which both can wait. Priority to summer projects 🙂

I promised one of the twin to make a bolero for her for this summer so I need to find some pattern for this too. I think I want to find something with a bit of lace.

I have also been working on the knitting increase and decrease calculator, correcting a few calculations. I’m still looking for more feedback, if you got some time, give it a try and let me know what you think of it. You can find it at www.woolassistant.com. I want to finish the calculation of KFB today – it’s doing my head but it’s worth it :).

Test knitters needed!

Dear knitter, in case you are stopping by, I’m looking for people to test the Wool Assistant increase/decrease calculator we launched recently so we can catch any mistake, bugs or even work on some improvements.

So if you’re doing a project and you bump into one of these famous “Decrease evenly by… ” or “Increase evenly by” that makes you pull your hair because you don’t have your calculator next to you and tons of paper to make notes, well give it a go and let me know 🙂 Did it work for you? Was it useful?

You can access the increase/decrease calculator at http://www.woolassistant.com

Thank you!!! Much love!

Wool Assistant 1.0 is launched!

It’s taking shape! As I told you in my last post, my partner and I are working on a knitting calculator to help interpreting complicated increases or decreases in a knitting pattern.

How to spread across your stitches, and if possible, in an even manner?

So after doing a lot of math and coding, we’ve prepared our very first version of the site. I would be very grateful for any feedback you have!

At the moment you can:

• calculate for knitting in a row
• choose to increase or decrease your knitting project
• dynamically modify how many stitches you have, how many you want to increase/decrease by and get the Results and Diagram updated straight away
• change the type of stitch you are using (at the moment we have YO, M1, K2TOG, SSK) and once again update straight away your Results and Diagram
• visualise how the decrease/increase will be spread across your work in the Diagram
• expand the Diagram so you can see your whole work (in case you have a repeated pattern)
• highlight an instruction in the Results so you can see how it looks like in the Diagram and vice versa
• click a stitch to mark it (so you mark your progress as you knit) – yeah that’s really cool 🙂

And the best part: it’s FREE!

You can access the Wool Assistant 1.0 here for FREE !

We will be looking in the future to expend it with:

• calculating when knitting in a circle (that’s why the option is greyed out at the moment)
• adding more calculation options (I still have to figure them out 🙂 )

So what do you think? If you use it, please send me your feedback so I know whether it works as expected or not. Also suggested improvements are welcome 🙂

I’m an auntie! Time to get back on the needles!

As you noticed there has been a long silence on this blog… Time to undust, remove the tumbleweeds and spiderwebs that cumulated around. And what a better reason than : I am now an auntie, so I have some new projects on my needles and tons of update to share !!! 😀

Things have changed a lot since the last post, so after losing everything (motivation included), I had to find a way to get back on the horse. I finally put back my life together and after about 2 years: I got a new job, bought a new flat, I am fixing my foot (oh yeah I sprained my ankle and it’s been almost 2 years I am having issues walking with it, it’s almost finally healed!), I am finished with my divorce (yep that also happened in the meantime), and mainly I extended my family: two cats (who are loving all the yarn around!), an amazing SO with his adorable twins and his dog, and now to top it all up my sister just gave birth to my beautiful niece Eleyna.

I’m getting ready to visit Eleyna in next coming weeks back in France. So I started some new projects and wanted to share them with you 🙂

First when I visited my sister last Christmas, I had already prepared some matching knitted hats for my sister, her boyfriend and the baby to be born with a very cute pom-pom. And mind you, even the baby hat had a smaller pom-pom matching the adult one. Actually the baby hat turned out a little too big, but since you can roll it up and it’s quite flexible, she will be able to use it for years 🙂

  

During that visit, my sister gave me some yarn and a baby vest pattern she struggled with. She loved the yarn but couldn’t figure out how to knit the pattern, she then gave it to my mum who had the same struggles. So they gave it back to me to give it a go. Being the most patient and stubborn one in the family, I eventually managed to finish it!!! Ah! The satisfaction 🙂 And it looks really nice 🙂

I’m missing a picture here of the vest, but will edit the post as soon as I have one…

Later on, my sister saw some white blanket for summer and really liked the idea. So I’m currently working on a baby cotton white blanket. I found some hearts pattern and decided to create my own blanket. It still is a work in progress and I need to find what edge to do to make it a bit larger. But this is what I have so far:

I also started a new carpet, I’m already half way. I’m using three yarns together that I change at the end of the ball. Here is the over look of the color mix I’m using – I love it 🙂 :

Spoiler alert! Another reason for me to get back behind the keyboard: my new partner has decided to tackle one of my pet peeves in knitting: pattern instructions that are driving me nuts… and so he is helping me out building a knitting calculator or rather an app to help me with distributing stitches when adding or decreasing them, because yeah “Increase by 35 stitches” on paper sounds easy, but in real life: where the heck am I supposed to put them within those 97 stitches on my needle!?  And I need visuals and something interactive, and we are no longer using Windows 95, can I get something a bit more modern?!

I’ve been looking for a bunch of apps, websites, but nothing was satisfying me, so we are tackling that one at the moment 🙂 and it’s fun! Ok, it’s also sometimes doing my head when I am working with all the maths, but at least it’s really interesting and I’m going back to my programming roots that I studied at university many moons ago. So I’m learning, we’re having fun coding together and on top of it I will have an app to help me! Ultimate Win-Win!!! 😀 Since I’m expecting I’m not the only one having issues with this, we are gonna make it available on a website called http://woolassistant.com. I am actually quite curious how it will turn out. I will let you know once it is available!!

 

Yarn chicken loose, nope…

Owdy! I fought hard with that one… I finally decided to work on that scarf for my husband to match the orange and grey hat, but the last skein was wayyyy too small, so I had to cheat a bit and had a little bit of a remaining orange thread I had, and this my friend started the yarn chicken… Ahhhh

When I finished the yarn while stopping the work, well, you guess… Fail…

 
So I decided to cheat even more (well since it wasn’t the first one on that peojct why stop, right? 😉 ), so I unravelled it half way and instead of doing a k1,p1, I went only knitting, but…

  
Failed again, that saved me only for one stitch… So I unravel again till the beginning of the row and did only knitting, and… Tada!!! 🙂

  Yarn chicken WIN! Ha! Feel proud now 🙂

November WIPs and projects

Ouch… It’s already November! Time flew this month… 

Here is the list for November:

– finish black jacket

– finish reupholstering the chair

– sew the curtains

– gift for my dad in law (yeah now he’s next)

I shrank it on purpose, since I want to start my new business this month, I need to be more realistic.

And let’s see what was completed this October:

– Peter’s black and red scarf  

– one pair of socks  

– hat for my mother in law, I gave her this one and she was super excited about it 🙂  

– Lily’s bday bash diys:   

 
– crochet lesson for some new wrist warmers: 

 – one more hat, which I might give to my nephew:

– a headband for a friend:  
– And a gift for my friend’s new baby. I didn’t do the rabbit in the end, but this:  

Socks finished

I finished the colorful socks during last week.

  
Really nice mix of colors… But, … I don’t like them. I don’t like the pattern: the toe is, let’s be honest here, stupid. And the yarn is not pleasant for a sock. On top of this, the sewing is on the sole, so when you walk, it’s really not confortable.
I had to amend the toe so it doesn’t look that freaking ugly. I sew some pieces inside so it will have a proper shape, unfortunately it’s even less comfy.

  
End-result: I won’t wear these, and most likely I will unravel them in the future 😦 such a pity… Such a big disappointment… I don’t recommend this pattern at all.

Trying the gang…

Finally! I got the opportunity to buy some expensive wool from Wool and the gang. Reason: they made their delivery for free. Result: I bought 1 skein of “Jersey be good” and 1 skein of “Crazy sexy yarn” on Thursday, I received them Friday at lunch time, and by 7pm I had made already 2 beanies!

    
Both of the beanies are done using Jersey be good. I really like that yarn. It’s not made from wool but from textile, so I’m expecting it to resist much better than the usual wool beanies I do. Having done 2 beanies I still have quite some yarn from that one skein:

  
The beanies are done using circular needles size 9, then size 12. Bottom is done using K1, P1. 

This one is simply k1, p2 pattern with a few diminutions here and there:  

While this one was using the knit below and purl below stitches (of course I wanted to try a new stitch :)). It looks shorter but since the yarn is elastic and the stitch makes it even more elastic, the size is perfect 🙂

 
Review of the Jersey be good:

Characteristics: 500g (yup! Half a freaking kilo!), 2% elastane, 98% cotton. Hand wash, 30degrees, dry flat (being from jersey textile, I can’t believe you’re not allowed to use your washing machine).

The +: The yarn is elastic, which makes it really easy to knit by creating less tension. Your end result will remain elastic so in case you didn’t do the right size, you still have some margin. Pleasant to knit with. Can make 2 beanies (maybe 3) with one skein.

The -: the price… 10€ for one skein. That’s freaking expensive from my point of view, even if it’s for 500g. I would buy it again only when they have a promotion either on the wool or on the shipping. The lack of information on the label: no gauge on the label, no needle size recommendation! Wtf… And no length as well. >_< If you want more info you need to go to their site, so you can find that the needle recommendation is 10mm to 15mm, and length is 99,5m, but still no gauge (I’m not a gauge freak, but I like to have this type of information available).

Results: a long negative paragraph, but I wouldn’t mind more of that wool… Luckily christmas is coming, right? 😉

Red headband

I met my friend during the weekend and gave her her new owl pouch. Ended-up with a new challenge: build a headband in red for the same day. Challenge accepted 🙂  
My first reaction was, I don’t have any red wool! Wrong! I did have some red Big Merino from Drops, from the last red and black scarf … Ah! And actually I had just exactly enough for the headband… If one more row was needed then I was thinking of doing a black one (a little cheat, or call it decoration ;)) but not needed, so all good!

I went for the broomstick stitch wich needed both needle and crochet. First time I tried this. I almost gave up on row one as all the instructions I found were quite tedious until it finally ticked… I thought I would be able to do it in an hour. Challenge failed… Took me rather 3!  
 
but at least challenge completed, I did complete a red headband that day and my friend is happy with it 🙂 Yes, I know that wasn’t on the to-do list for this month, but shhhh… 😉

Peter’s red and black scarf finished after scarf transplantation

Finally after so many days of bureaucratie, I was finally able to touch again my needles! So I used that time to finish the scarf for Peter AND to do some crazy twist with it… I was feeling like a heart surgeon doing a heart transplantation… Except it was 2 pieces of scarves and no life saving behind that.

I didn’t like the original start of the scarf until the last red stripe so I decided to knit a new piece for the beginning which will be more matching the pattern of the scarf. 

 I tried it first by finishing the overall scarf, so when that end did turn out to look good I was on for some crazy scarf transplantation… 

I did a first trial on a small square of wool, didn’t turn so good, but I learnt a few things (such as I really need to memorize better what was my last stitch and not to be deconcentrated during this).

I inserted my needle all the way through.    

Then unravelled the bottom part.

 
Then tried a gartner stitch between my two needles. Epic fail! Ouch, bad start…

  
But I wasn’t gonna let this to put me down, so after really examining the result of the square I decided to move on to the scarf. Same process: entered the whole needle the whole way through, just above the red stripe. Then I removed gently the last red row.

  
And then I concentrated! A lot!

Btw notice the other side of the wrong “start” I did like the red stripes here much better, but anyway the overall was still not to my liking. 

 
So off I went with again the gartner stitch! And … Tada! It worked! Patience always paid me back 🙂 now I’m even doing the whole blocking for the first time since it keeps rolling on the sides. 

You can slightly s that the small columns are off, I don’t understand why when all the others line up perfectly. Oh well, you can’t go to surgery without a scare….  
Here is the whole scarf (folded in two, that’s why you can see some red on the right side going higher – it’s from the other side):