Christmas and cardigans

Almost a year ago, I started knitting. I haven't knitted anything more complicated than leg warmers since we learned the basics in school, so it has taken me some time...But now it's finally finished, my first knitted cardigan!

I can't seem to stick to any patterns anymore, so this is made without, and therefore slightly too wide in front of the shoulders, the arms slightly too tight in the same area and so on. But maybe it's still wearable? We'll see...

Remember this?

I've taken it in and shortened it now, and I'm pretty pleased with the result! It wasn't all that difficult either, as I had read this tutorial by Casey. Very helpful.

Did you have nice holiday? Our Christmas and new years have been very low key, Mr Kitten has had the flu the whole time so we've pretty much stayed at home and watched movies.

Happy new year!

Knitting

Before Mr Kitten and I head out for a dancing/caravan weekend I thought I'd share with you some of my favourites from the knitting book I thrifted not long ago.

The cardigan I'm making (eventually?) is a mix of some really basic pattern that I thought too boring to show here, hah. Now I just need to pull myself together and continue knitting before it's too warm outside to even wear anything knitted...

Day of hearts

As sunday was valentines day (or as we say in swedish "alla hjärtans dag" roughly translated "day of hearts") I decided to paint little hearts on my nails. My entire outfit was also red and white to match the nails, but I didn't think to take any photos...

Suitably in time for the weekend (or not) I got a bad cold, so to cheer myself up I went to a flea market on Saturday and came home with these bangles;

This dress which is a few sizes too big;

And a lovely little book with knitting patterns from 1956, which I shall show another time. Here is what my knitting project looked like a few days ago;

I was so thrilled to find that book, the instructions were not that difficult to understand so I might actually manage to make something out of this experiment! But I still got a long way to go if I wanna make this into a cardigan...

I liked what I saw so I made some

Here's what I saw about a year ago (here). I've seen several similar styled trousers in other places too and I liked the idea of the high waist.


So I made a pair. Not too bad, but I'll probably make a few adjustments the next time.


Today I made a hat-thingy and started knitting a sweater. Without having a pattern. But I suppose it doesn't make any difference as I don't understand the ones I've seen anyway. So...wish me luck!

From 2 1/2 balls of red yarn

After many nights of knitting or crocheting in front of the television I hereby present to you my new hat;

And my new legwarmers;

I still have some of this red yarn left, so I'm thinking about making a mini-beret (Ranna wears these a lot). I have also bought some black yarn and might make myself a hat according to this pattern (in swedish). Anybody else out there who plays around with yarn?

New year, old pictures

A while back when me and Mr. Kitten went on our extended weekend trip to Turku, I found some old photographs in a fleamarket that I thought I'd share with you;




I just love the hair in these pictures! More pics to follow another day...

So, how's the new year been so far? Me, I have finished knitting one leg warmer and the other one is coming along shortly, I'm also crocheting a hat! Oh, and I went to my cousin's wedding wearing this dress and a fascinator I made just hours before the wedding (which is why there was no time to take any outfit pictures, sorry!). Tomorrow I've got the day off so hopefully I'll have the time and light to take some photos of my recent creations...

The smell of smoke

Happy x-mas sales shopping everybody! Christmas was nice and I survived the long days of work leading up to the holiday. At the sales I've only bought myself some yarn and knitting needles and I've started on a new pair of leg warmers. It's been years since I last knitted, and then I didn't really knit anything more complicated than...leg warmers. But you gotta start somewhere, right?

Knitting seems like an nice and stay-warm-under-a-blanket hobby, unlike sewing where you got to get partly undressed every time you're trying your item on, and right now I want to stay warm because out flat is feeling very cold at the moment. For a very interesting reason;

A week ago Mr. Kitten and I went to bed around half past ten in the evening. Roughly an hour later we woke up to the very sureal sound of the fire alarm in the stairway outside our flat door. We could smell something burning, so I grabbed some clothes and my phone and we went outside to see what was going on. There was fire engine outside the house and other residents in pyjamas and wintercoats. We couldn't see any flames or smoke, but were told that there was a fire in the storgage department of our basement, almost directly under our flat...

More fire trucks arrived and hoses were dragged across the snowy lawn and smoke-divers were making their way down into the basement. Around this time the basement window broke or was broken and smoke started pouring out, lot's of it. At this point I was wondering if I should have tried to rescue my computer and camera and thinking things like will all my clothes get damaged from smoke and so on. But, after about an hour the fire was put out and our flat was safe, but too smokey for us to be allowed back in. Finally, at half past one we got to go back into our flats where we did our best to air out the smell of smoke and get some sleep. What a night!


The stairway still smells of smoke, but luckily our flat stayed pretty smoke free so the smell is very faint in here. The fire broke out directly under the flat wall-to-wall to ours, and something must have been damaged as the heating isn't working in the room closest...And in every other room it's freezing as well. Everything in out storage cage is covered in soot and the plastic covering our garden chair cusions has melted. We had mostly camping and skiing equipment in this storage, some of it still needs to be checked for damages...But we are safe.

I wish you a very safe and happy new year! (Don't forget to get home-insurance and fire alarms if you haven't got any!) My new year's eve will be spent and my cousins wedding. See you in 2010!