wiwo wednesday vol. 14

First of all, thank you so much for your feedback on my last post. I really appreciate your comments and you, my dear readers, are the main reason why I enjoy blogging!
But let's not get all cheesy. What I'm Working On this week is a mix of Christmas presents (most of which are not shown here, duh.), organizing my craft supplies, decorating my studio and some mindless knitting (99% of which is done during lectures).

I've been dreading organizing my knitting supplies because I just have so many! When did I accumulate all those needles?? And how come I have hundreds of stitch markers but whenever I need them I can't find any and have to use scrap yarn?
I've been keeping all my knitting notions and empty project bags in a big box in my closet. Whenever I had to find a needle that would mean rummaging through all that stuff for minutes. Naturally, whatever I was looking for seemed to be at the very bottom.

It's kind of embarrassing so sell needle organizers to others yet have a very unorganized needle situation at home. So this morning I emptied the box on my bed (that's how I usually trick myself into cleaning; if I really really want to procrastinate I simply sleep on the couch and clean the stuff up before going to bed the following day.) and organized everything into little piles on my couch table.
Next, I divided everything up into the little pouches, needle organisers etc as followed(from top left):

• big needle organizer: all my DPNs, notions I don't use often
• bird zipper bag: measuring tapes & buttons
• patchwork 'envelope' bag: T-pins and spare stitch markers
• wooden box: tapestry needles, safety pins, etc.
• sheep pouch: most important tools that I take everywhere (row counter, tapestry needle, scissors, stitch markers, ...)
• interchangeable needles organizer: all my gazillion circular needles

And the biiig We Are Knitters needles that are impossible to fit into any organizer / pouch. Whew, so much better than before! I'm gonna come up with a pattern for a knitting needle organiser for all my DPNs that's a little more... portable than the big one I use right now.

Please tell me I'm not the only knitter with so much stuff.

And since most of my knitting projects right now are rather secretive (less than two months until Christmas!) I'm only gonna show you this Halloween-inspired pair of socks I'm knitting for a relative for Christmas. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know this blog exists so I should be fine showing them on here. I can't wait for Christmas Eve so I can bombard you will all the stuff I'm working on!

What are you working on? Anything Halloween inspired? I really wish it was more of a thing in Germany. The only Halloween stuff I found was red-fleshed apples and purple kohlrabi!

an update & questions to you

Here's a general life update. First, I'm sorry I took an involuntary break from blogging. I've had a few technical problems which I finally resolved yesterday by erasing the entire hard drive of my laptop and installing a new operating system. Though I spent too many hours trying to figure out all that computer geek language, there's also a positive side to it: I'm now owner of an incredibly fast and perfectly organized laptop!
I must admit that my laptop used to be a big data mess - my download folder hold more than 2.5k files ( probably half of that knitting patterns that I'm never gonna use) at one point. Ugh. But I've figured out a system to keep everything neat and organized on my newly installed laptop. I'll share my laptop organizing skills in a couple of weeks - if I can manage to stay on top of all the downloads, files and photos.

Also, I used the start of the semester (thus a rather small workload) to declutter my closet and my food supplies. I'm challenging myself to only eat homemade sweets till the end of the year. Which, basically, means lots of baking over the next two months. I made oatmeal cookies to substitute for the pound of candy and store-bought cookies I got rid off last week. They turned out pretty good especially considering it only takes 5 minutes to prepare the dough & cookies and another 10 minutes to bake them. You can expect more recipe posts over the next couple of months :) So feel free to join my in my store-bought candy/cookie/cake free end of the year challenge.

I've also updated my dawanda shop with a couple more drawstring project bags. I'm currently looking into etsy/dawanda alternatives since I'm not a fan of paying 10% commission fee on every single item I made. I'm currently considering big cartel and tictail. If you have any other recommendations or would like to share your experience with one them I'd love to hear them!

Last but not least, I'd love to know what posts you like particularly or if there's anything you'd like me to blog about. I'm currently collecting blog post ideas for the next months. It seems like I have way too many ideas (I might get a little too enthusiastic whenever Christmas approaches...) so I'd love to hear what you'd like to read / see.

So that's it, I'm gonna spend the evening on the couch reading Harry Potter (I'm 2/3 into the 6th book and I'm having a hard time to put the book down in the evening.). I have a nasty cut on my finger (I might be good at baking but I'm not a talented cook...) so I'm taking a break from knitting for a couple of days. Or did anyone figure out a way to knit with a band-aid on? The yarn always seems to stick to mine :(

ps: I updated the header to somewhat freshen up the blog a little. If you're reading this using a reader you might want to click here and have a look at it.

quilt show // plesse quilter 2014

One of my mom's quilt guilds called 'Plesse Quilter' had a quilt show last weekend showing some of their beautiful quilts. The theme was '25' because it was their 25th anniversary. They had a challenge for which each of the members made a quilt that had to include '25' and two fabrics (the silver fabric and the main fabric of the quilt above). It's always fun to see what people come up with if they use the same fabrics yet the outcome is completely different depending on the style and taste of the quilter.

I loved the wall hanging above because it combined quilting and knitting! Great idea, isn't it??

The mini quilt above was made by my mom. I love the modern feel and the combination of straight line quilting and round appliqué elements.

My friend B. made a beautiful wall hanging featuring 25 tulips. I love the combination of blue and pink. My mom quilted it on her long arm machine and she managed to make the tulips pop out by quilting the background rather densely.

Another member of the quilt guild made a looong (like 15 feet?) quilt that is composed of 25 squares. Each square represents one year in her patchwork career. It started with fabrics from the 80s, then 90s. In the 2000's there were different phases like batik fabrics and most recently a phase of hand dyed fabrics. It's a great idea and I might adapt it to a scarf that represents different eras in my knitting career.

Another set of quilts I really liked were the ones made from scraps; it's amazing to see what you can make out of the tiniest scraps of fabric. I don't think I can throw away any fabric scraps anymore because I'll just have to think of the awesome quilts other people would use them for.

bray cap

Hooray, a finished knitting project!

I made the bray cap by Jared Flood of BT for Julia as a 'beginning of term' gift. The yarn is called 'calm wool' by Elsebeth Lavold and it's sooo soft and squishy yet the texture of the hat is visible. I loved working with it. I got it on sale at a LYS somewhere in Montana because it was discontinued a while ago. If you still get a chance to snatch it up - do it!

The pattern was - like all Brooklyn Tweed patterns I've knitted so far - easy to follow and knitting from the charts was easy and any mistakes variations could be spotted at once.

All the projects I'm currently working on aren't very exciting / there isn't much visible, yet. So I've decided to skip the wiwo post this week and show you this beautiful FO instead. But I have some very exciting posts coming up - finally a tour of my studio, gift guides for the holiday season and many new fall projects.

wiwo wednesday vol. 13

Instead of casting on the Wurm hat using my handspun yarn, I've decided to cast on the Bray Cap by Brooklyn Tweed. I'm knitting this hat for my roomie Julia and it's a lovely, soft yarn galled 'calm wool'. It's a much softer orange than in the picture above; let's simply blame the rainy and gray fall weather for this instead of my inability to take true-tone indoor pictures.

I have an IKEA metal bin that I use to keep all my WIPs in one place. Yesterday I was looking through it and found the Elfreide scarf at the very bottom. Naturally I had to get it out and knit a couple of rows. I'm hoping to knit two pattern repeats by next Wednesday. The progress on this scarf is slow but it's so soft and squishy - I hope to finish it by Christmas so I get to wear it this winter.

The next project isn't something I'm working on - yet. But I started preparing for my next sweater project - the Levenwick by Brooklyn Tweed - by winding the yarn into cakes. I'm gonna use Cascade 220 for this one. It's not the softest yarn out there but I hope it brings out the collar details nicely.

And the mandatory pair of socks is always in my handbag, though I didn't make much progress this past week.

Feel free to add me on Ravelry - my username there is FroggedDesigns as well - so I can see what you're up to.

stripe obsession

Yet another finished object! Yay!
I started this cowl at a knitting group meeting at a friend's house. I remember the funny looks when people asked me what I casted on and I simply answered 'I don't know - yet'. All I knew was that I wanted to use some of my Garnstudio Drops 'alpaca' scraps that I had been collecting for years.

Since the only needle I had with me was a circular needle, I decided to knit in the round and see whether I could make a hat. My tube turned out too large for a hat but then I had a vision of a gorgeous, warm cowl.

Since it is knitted in the round, it looks awesome from all sides and it's sooo warm! It has the perfect amount of fabric; it is snug enough to actually keep you warm (unless a lot of other cowls I've had over the years that were all slightly too big).

The cowl weighs 230grams so it could be easily made from five balls of yarn. I finished the knitting part in August the evening before I went on vacation but it wasn't until after our trip that I had time to sew it together.
I'm head over heels in love with this cowl and it's gonna get lots of wear this fall/winter. I mostly used neutral colours like brown, gray and beige but pops of color (blue, green, red and purple) makes it fun and it matches all my winter jackets.

I've jotted down all the important information while knitting so I'm planning to publish the (free!) pattern on ravelry. I'm also  hoping to add details for a thicker version since I have a lot of worsted weight scraps in my stash.

ravello sweater

I'm so happy to share my finished ravello sweater with you today. It was a pleasure to knit and I absolutely love the result! Tight sleeves and a body with the perfect amount of ease makes this sweater perfect for brisk autumn walks and cold winter rides to school.

It took me less than four weeks to finish which I consider a rather good accomplishment, especially considering it was knitted with rather thin yarn 3.5mm/US4 needles.

I had planned to knit an i-cord edge around the neck but I'm quite happy with the 'unfinished' look of it so I'm gonna keep it like this for now. But I'm saving some of the light gray yarn so I can add the i-cord edge in the future.

A big thank you to my mom for taking these pictures. It's great to have someone close by who I can call and say 'hey the weather is great! Do you have time to take some pictures of my latest FOs?' and then coming back home an hour later to find dozens of amazing pictures on my camera.

wiwo wednesday vol. 12

Confession time: I've only knit a couple of stitches this past week. Shocking, right?
I've knit a few more rows of the second sleeve of the ravello sweater. And that's it. No casting on new projects, no finishing those socks that I could've finished weeks ago if I had any motivation whatsoever.
But I wasn't lazy, I just had other priorities this week. Like assembling cabinets for our newly remodeled bathroom and decorating it. And cleaning and decluttering the apartment. I have an exam coming up in two weeks (oh the joys of being a student... not.) and I wanted to focus on studying instead of fussing about the messy state of our apartment. Plus it feels great to start a new term(October 20th here in Germany) with a clean and organized home.

This might not count as something I'm working on (hence not wiwo-able?) but since it's my blog I make the rules and I decided that reading seven giant books is something 'I'm working on'.
I finally started reading the Harry Potter books. People usually don't believe me when I tell them I haven't read them all. I read 1-3 as a kid but didn't get through book four. I watched some of the movies but don't even remember which ones I have watched and which ones I haven't. Since some of my best friends are crazy about HP I promised to read the books. I got through books 1-3 rather quickly(it took me two weeks altogether). Now only 4-7 are left on my nightstand. It's a rather intimidating tower but I'm hoping to finish them by the end of November. So a lot of time that i used to spend watching movies and knitting are now spent reading. And - gasp - I'm not great at knitting and reading at the same time. Though it's a skill I'm determined to work on...

ps: A blog post containing only two photos didn't feel right so here's a picture of Lina playing with her new favorite toy: a simple pompom. It doesn't take much to make her happy :)