Every day I open my Internet browser, my admin window for my blog comes up and every day I wonder if I should post something, it’s been so long. Or if I should just let it die or what, I still don’t know.

Anyway, this past month I mostly spend sewing and I thought it would be interesting to see how much I can accomplish in a month. There was some knitting, too, but not much, and no crocheting going on. It was great motivation to watch the The Great British Sewing Bee (look it up on youtube if you’re not in the UK, it’s absolutely brilliant).

I am not a fast learner with this sewing thing. It’s been over 4 years now and I finally feel like I have some idea of how to do some things. But I almost always mess up some part of every project I make.

So, during the month of April, I sewed the following:

1. knight’s tunic.

2. Sweatshirt fabric cargo pants from Ottobre 1/2012

3. Miette Skirt from Tilly and the Buttons

4. Washi Dress from Made by Rae, where I screwed up the shirring several times and now it’s crooked, but I am not taking it out again. Let’s call it a muslin, shall we?

5. Moss Mini Skirt from Grainline which actually is quite nice, but I had to do the fly zip several times and it still is not right. But I have no idea how to fix it. I’ll read up on the technique before attempting another version.

6. Ruffled Skirt from Ottobre 3/2013 which would have been without problems had I followed the instructions and hemmed it before sewing the side seams (there was a reason to that).

7. Leggings from Ottobre 6/2012

8. Simple T-shirt from Ottobre 2/2013, which went great until the very last seams where I managed to put a couple of puckers into the side seams. I tried to unpick, but I can’t do this with viscose without getting holes in the fabric, so that as well, will stay as it is.

I will be participating in Me Made May 2013, that should provide some inspiration and motivation as well. I am planning on resurrecting an old design UFO during the month as well.

Happy New Year everyone!

Hope you all had lovely holidays and a good start into the New Year. This is the time of resolutions and I believe I’ve put something on the blog at that effect every year (although I don’t have time to check).

This is what I have planned for 2013:

Knitting and crocheting: just continue on, no pressure. I’d like to continue to use up the stash which I’ve been doing pretty well at since the Knitgirllls Stash Dash Challenge this summer actually. I might find some fun challenge or KAL/CAL on Ravelry to take part in, but for now I haven’t found the right one.

Designing: who am I kidding? Putting pressure on myself didn’t help, so this year I’ll just see if it comes to me or not.

Cooking: I spend so much time in the kitchen and I’ve been getting bored with cooking the same stuff over and over again. So I am challenging myself to try out 100 new recipes this year. There’ll probably be a Flickr Set for that one of these days.

Blogging: yeah…. hum…. no pressure here either, as Laura from the Knitgirllls said the other day, it seems so retro to be blogging in the time of Ravelry, Twitter, Plurk and you name it.

Sewing: I am not challenging myself to sew 52 objects as I did in previous years. But I will try and sew/do sewing related stuff for about 30 minutes a day. We’ll see if that will result in any skill improvement, hopefully regularity will do something.

Music: the kids have started music lessons this school year and that has gotten me back into music making myself. No specific goals here either, but it does take up a lot of time.

Well, that’s it. See you on Ravelry, Flickr, Twitter or Goodreads and maybe even here (don’t hold your breath).

Oh, hello again. Just stopping by to tell you that would like to celebrate my birthday with you by giving you a coupon code for 50% off all patterns that are available through Ravelry. Here’s a little reminder of what they are:

Marquise:

Cecilia:

Phoenix Mitts:

Lollipop:

Merlot Shawl:

This promotion starts right now and will be running for two weeks (until November 14th). The code is: birthday2012.

I am so happy to have some real content on this blog for once. I’ve been asked if I’d be interested in hosting a stop during the blog tour for Boys’ Knits by Katya Frankel aka the bingeknitter quite some time ago. I was instantly thrilled with the idea of this book.

If you have ever searched for boys’ patterns on Ravelry, you’ve probably seen that there just aren’t as many as there are for girls. Girls can choose between so many styles, but I always had a hard time finding something for my boy. I usually ended up just making something up myself. He will be 8 in December and he knows exactly what he’ll wear and what not. Basically he’s got the exact same taste as his dad (the rebellious phase is still to come): basic, not too much texture, only a handful of acceptable colours and never two of those on the same garment.

This book caters exactly to that sort of taste. There are no Intarsia elephants or trucks to be seen, only classic simple yet modern styles, but they all have something interesting going on. Just take a look at some of my favourites:

I was lucky enough to get a little preview of one of the patterns earlier this year. I showed the images on Ravelry to my son and he chose Chip.

He chose his colour from all the Cascade 220 that is available and this is the result:

What’s funny is that three years previously I had made a Sweater for my husband that has some very similar features.

Unfortunately I never managed to actually write up that pattern. But anyway… My boys are very happy with their matching sweaters.

For Chip, I was working from an unedited version of the pattern that was already perfectly clear and easy to follow. Having gotten to know Katya a little in the Ravelry/Twitter/Blog world, I know she is very meticulous about her pattern writing.

I chose a size 8 for my 7 year old and got a perfect fit. He is on the small and slender side for his age, so you might want to check the measurements before choosing a size (but that’s something you should always do anyway). The introduction to the book gives detailed information on how to alter a pattern for your particular boy’s measurements.

And if you don’t have any boys to knit for, take a second look and imagine any of the designs in a more “girly” colour, or with a couple of simple changes to the edging or with the addition of embellishments, etc and the book instantly transforms itself into a knitting book for girls. Brilliant, isn’t it?

You can buy the book in print or e-book format on Ravelry or the Cooperative Press site.

Here are all the links for the blog tour:

21 September - Kat Goldin of Slugs on the Refrigirator
25 September - Julia Vaconsin
28 September - Joeli Caparco of Joeli’s Kitchen
2 October - Jacqui Harding of Happymaking Designs
5 October - Michelle Miller of Fickle Knitter
9 October - Carol Feller of Stolen Stitches
12 October - Joanne Scrace of Not So Granny
16 October - Anniken Allis of Confessions of a YarnAddict
19 October - Mari Muinonen of MadeByMyself
24 October - Woolly Wormhead
30 October - Ann Kingstone
2 November - Ella Austin of Bombella
9 November - Jill Zielinski of Knitterella
14 November - Kate Oates of Tot Toppers
Petit Purls
Heather Kinne of Highland Handmades

Look, I finished something. This is my second Vitamin D by Heidi Kirrmaier. I bought the yarn at the Wollmeise Shop in Pfaffenhofen last February. I made it a bit longer in the body and also lengthened the sleeves.

The weather this morning wasn’t great for pictures, so I might add some better ones at some point to my Ravelry Project Page. But for now, this is what I have:

Well, I’ve been away for the summer from the blog and for the most part also from the Internet in general. Since last time, I have finished Stash Dash 2012. I came very close (91%) to my goal of 3000g. I am happy to see that I am (more or less) able to predict what I can do in a given time frame, always good for planning.
Since then, I’ve been exclusively knitting on my second
Vitamin D in Wollmeise 100% Merino. Other pursuits are taking over some of my crafting time at the moment, therefore there will probably be even less to show here. I will try and get a weekly update picture up as I am not ready to let the blog die right now.
I am itching to cast on for a new pair of socks. But with the number of sock patterns out there, I have a hard time deciding what to knit. I’ve read about a KAL in the UK sock knitters Ravelry group about a year ago where they tackled the sock patterns in alphabetical order. A neat idea I just might want to steal. If you’re “only” having to choose between all the patterns starting with A it surely must be easier to pick one, right?

As I don’t have my camera today, some pictures of what I’ve finished since last time. Next time, I’ll show you the progress on my Vitamin D.

The first check-in point (weeks 2&3) of Stash Dash ends tomorrow. It really motivated me to get some lingering projects finished. I did get a good head start, which I need, because I won’t have my sewing machine and only travel knitting/crocheting for the second half of the challenge.
So here are my FOs:

A skirt for my 5year old: 170 grams

Two more skirts: 134 grams

And yet another little skirt: 80 grams

First knitting FO is my Stripe Study Shawl: 198 grams

Next up, my garter yoke baby cardigan: 78 grams

First Crochet FO is my Orange Midsummer Night’s Shawl: 130 grams

And the last FO for the first checkpoint: A pair of simple socks: 66 grams

Current total is 856 g
29% of my total goal

With the blink of an eye, May has rushed passed. Why is it that as soon as the weather warms up, time flies even more than it does when it’s cold?
Anyway… I’ve been playing along with the Me Made May 2012 crowd which was fun up to about half the month, then the taking of a picture every day got a bit tedious. It was, again, very inspiring to see what everybody has made. The bottom line for me is that I definitely need to make some bottoms, more importantly trousers. Before I take part in another of those challenges, I want to make at least a pair of trousers and a jacket (both of which scare the heck out of me, but we’ll see…)

I finished another Featherweight Cardigan. I think I never told you about the first one. Here they are:

Ravelry Project Page

Ravelry Project Page

Now, it’s June, so I searched for and found another challenge. I am participating in the Knit Girllls Stash Dash. Basically a challenge where you pick your goal of how many grams of material you want to use up over the next 10 or so weeks. I chose to go for 1500g of yarn and 1500g of fabric.

I’ve been in a bit of a knitting funk recently (apart from the Featherweight which was super mindless, knit most of it while reading on my Kindle), but this made me get out my WIPs and start working on them again.

I have three currently on the needles/hook:

A Midsummer Night’s Shawl by Lisa Naskrent which is super close to being done, but those last rows are loooooong.

A Stripe Study Shawl by Veera Välimäki which I haven’t even photographed. I find it incredibly boring to work on at the moment. I have no idea why, it’s mindless knitting as well and it will be great finished. It’s black and grey, maybe that’s the problem? I don’t know.

A pair of Fair Isle gloves. I am not super happy with the colour combination. But I guess that’s what you get if you just more or less randomly pull some out of your stash. It’s so hard to envision how they will work together in a fair isle pattern.

“Distribute gathers evenly” is, I guess, the sewing equivalent of “repeat last row 239 times”? Short and concise, but takes forever. And on top of that it’s super difficult to do it really evenely. Or maybe it’s just me. Opinions?