Three Tales

I love LA's one picture, three tales feature and when I saw this picture I simply had to join her :)

1. Nail polish never looks nice for more than 5 hours on my nails. I used to blame my obsessive knitting for it but even when I don't use my hands to create something it still chips easily. I've tried everything from base coat to top coat to buying expensive brands but nothing seems to help. I concluded that the structure of my nails isn't very nail polish friendly

2. There are two different methods of knitting - the English method and the continental method. I use the continental method and whenever I knit in public people come talk to me and tell that it's a 'funny' way of knitting. I could say the same thing about the English method! In our UBC knitting club we have regular discussions whether one method is faster than the other haha.

3. I hardly ever just knit - I always watch a movie, learn vocabs, read textbooks, talk on skype, meet with friends or do something else while knitting. The only exception is when I knit complicated lace patterns but even then just knitting isn't very satisfying. Snuggling up on a comfy couch with a quilt and a cat on my lab and watching a good movie with friends or my family is my favorite kind of knit night :)

52 Knits // O W L S

I'm excited to introduce a new feature on my blog - 52 Knits!
As my art supplies are very (very) limited seen that I'm living in a dorm 8000km from home, I decided to concentrate on knitting for the next months. Hopefully there will be more knitting related blog posts in the future besides the 52 Knits project. If you'd like to see anything specific (wool-related) on here, shoot me an e-mail or comment below. I was thinking about a 'getting started guide', how I choose yarn and knitting patterns and I have been thinking about designing patterns in the future. I'm excited!

Pattern: O W L S   Sweater by Kate Davis

Yarn Used: 1.5 skeins of Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool

Needles: 5.5mm and 6mm circular needles and 6mm DPNs

Adjustments: none

Note: This was the first sweater I knitted and I'm hooked! There are so many beautiful sweater patterns out there and I don't know why I waited so long to try it. The pattern was easy to follow and didn't require many special techniques - definitely a great pattern as a first sweater :)

I'm sorry about the bad picture but it has been raining for days here and it was super windy. I refused to take off the hat and the scarf because it was freezing outside and it took quite some time to bring myself to take off my jacket. As soon as the weather will get better I'll take some more detailed pictures.

Winter Wonderland

It's been snowing here all week. ALL WEEK. In Vancouver. It's amazing. The campus looks peaceful, I get a chance to wear my knitted accessories every day and the weather is a real mood lifter.



On Monday I made bread (German 'Hefezopf') with Molly. We might have added too much yeast because it turned out to be huge. I translated this recipe into English. It tasted fantastic :)



I went down to to beach last weekend with Katja again. The beach is my favorite place on campus because it makes you forget that you're in a big city and that you have tons of readings waiting for you at home. Is there anything more beautiful than the Pacific Ocean?!









In other news, I got new glasses when I was home for Christmas. I absolutely love them! And (hopefully) soon I'll share the first sweater I've knitted - I'm almost done and I'm soo exited to share it with you! Oh and did I mention that I'll fly to California for spring break? Eeeeek! Can't wait to have a couple of lazy days at the beach and sunshine :)



What have you been up to?

Goals 2012

I'm not much of a fan of resolutions because most people forget about / ignore them after only a week or two. Also, I find it difficult to plan ahead since you never know what will happen, how your style / interests will change, etc.
But writing down goals (and making them public!) helps me remember them and ignoring them will be more painful than if they were only in my head. So here are some of the goals I wanna work on this year. I know that I won't be able to complete all of these (if I did it would be a miracle.) but just working on a couple of these will cheer me up :)

Read more
I used to be an avid reader but a bunch of readings for school and many new interests has left me with rather little time to read. I'll prioritize this year and read at least 12 books for fun. I already have a bunch of books on my list (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, At Home by Bill Bryson, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, ...) and I'm excited to spend cozy evenings reading instead of watching TV series.

Knit Knit Knit
I finally wanna knit a sweater. And finish all my UFOs (unfinished objects). I only have two or three of these but they are projects I've been putting off for a long time because they involve colorwork or other techniques I'm not too fond of. I wish I could put buy only yarn needed for the next project on here but I know exactly that I won't be able to resist a great sale or some very soft yarn. So instead I'll put knit 52 items on my list of goals because it will help me reduce my stash and I won't feel bad about buying new yarn.

Document more
The main reason why I put this one on my list is because I miss taking pictures!! The rainy weather in Vancouver is not very motivating and taking pictures indoors doesn't seem very appealing either since I live in a small dorm. So I wanna take pictures in Vancouver and on campus and art journal more. This one will probably be put of until the summer since I don't have many scrapbooking tools here. I've also wanted to make a notebook with all the items I knitted this year for future references to see which yarns I used etc. Last but not least, I wanna participate in Ali Edwards' Week in the Life project and make a minibook about it.

There are certainly more items on my list of goals like figure out my future (that's a big one!) and find and decorate a comfy apartment. But since I have no idea what I'll do from May onwards, I will keep an open mind and wait what will happen :)

Belated Boxing Day Sale

It's another rainy weekend in Vancouver and our plan to go visit Stanley Park and rent bikes didn't seem very attractive. While browsing through ravelry I read something about an annual 'belated boxing day sale' at three bags full in Vancouver. Up to 50% of yarn - who would say no to spending a saturday morning in a yarn store?
I didn't take more than 'there's a sale at one of the yarn shops...' to convince my friend Katja to accompany me :) Neither of us expected to have to wait outside for about 90 minutes although we were there 10 minutes before the shop opened. Waiting in the rain for what felt like hours was definitely worth it because they had the most gorgeous yarns you can imagine and a huge variety of colors!!



Here's the wooly goodness I purchased:

- 2 skeins of Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool in brown (8020) for the owls pullover
- 1 skein of Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool in raspberry (0508) for a cowl
- 1 skein of Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool in beige (8016) for the cinder scarf
- 3 skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca in purple (62171) for the Stockholm Scarf
- 1 skein of Aslan Trends Royal Alpaca in plum (6410)
- 1 skein of Cascade Yarns 220 Wool in red (2401) for another Habitat hat.



I'm looking forward to another rainy day tomorrow which gives me a good excuse to spend the entire day knitting. If only I didn't have tons of readings to do for school...

Christmas Day Two

We spent the second day of Christmas at my grandma's together with my uncle and his boyfriend. We've spent a cozy evening unwrapping presents, eating lots of homemade cookies, chatting and knitting. I made a 'turn a square' hat for my uncle using Noro yarn - love the colors :)

how knitters spend christmas...

With two obsessive knitters in one family, a knit-free Christmas is impossible. We've had a knitting breakfast at our friend's Ute. It was a cozy morning and just what I needed after two days of family time. Ute is knitting her way through the '55 Christmas Balls to Knit' book by Arne and Carlos. The designs are great and seeing an entire tree covered in hand knit christmas balls was amazing. Definitely something that will be on my to-knit list for 2012 :)





There are also some very cute videos about the two on youtube:

We also did a secret santa with our local ravelry group. I made the greyhaven cowl and received a super cute hello kitty pillow :)




ps: did you check out Brooklyn Tweed's Wool People 2 yet? I'm in love with Jared Flood's photography skills and I've added Lawrence, Clemence, Graham and Fuse to my queue :)

Christmas Day One

We've spent the 25th at my grandparent's eating a gourmet meal my uncle cooked and spending a lazy afternoon on the couch talking and laughing.



We made placemats for my grandparents and I knitted another quick hat for my uncle - the perfect gift for a man :D

winter break

Here's a very short summary of my winter break. I have more pictures to share from my 'real camera' but phone pictures have to suffice while I fight my jet lag and try to get back into productive mode.



Waking up to a white city is magical! Of course it's nothing compared to the amount of snow I saw during my layover in Calgary...


Made some yummy stuff :)
 
Spent lots of time cuddling my cat and bought new boots (very lucky to find comfortable ones on sale right away - because the soles of my only pair of boots broke on my way home from Vancouver!)
 

Spent cozy evenings with my family drinking tea and knitting.


Tried to take a Christmas portrait of my cat... he wasn't very happy about it.
 

Had lots of tasty food!


Completed a 1000 piece jigsaw - with the help of family and friends. And packed an entire suitcase filled with food. No more craving European food all the time :)