Stitch and Kvetch

What I've been knitting

- another pair of socks from beige/green/brown Regia Jupiter which I *love*

- a little top-down raglan cardigan for my friend's baby. It is unfortunately a bit tight around his belly but otherwise a good fit.

Photos when I'm not in Germany any more and managed to upload photos from my digicam! After a pretty hurried, stressful night knitting until 1am to get the cardie finished I need some restful knitting now ... I haven't knitted any lace for aaaages, and I have this gorgeous Drops Alpaca :-) Hmmmm.

Little socks and a little hat

Oops, I disappeared again ... Life is pretty Good these days but I'm so glad I didn't know how long settling in would take! DH and I are still renting a room in a shared house, it proved impossible to get a mortgage for most of the year but now we have a good lead and just put a bid on a house :-) I hope, hope, hope this will work out now! DH is getting his business off the ground, it's all working really well, and I'm still working in Amsterdam, commuting quite long stretches, not finding much time for my hobbies ... But things are moving: We started on the adoption process this summer and just finished the first part! Stay tuned (if there are any of you left out there!) for some brain-storming on how to do some fun fundraising which ties in with my hobbies ...

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On 7 Oct I speed-knitted these tiny socks for the early surprise arrival of my friend's first baby:

Luckily, I happened to be in Germany the week-end he was born, so I got to see him at 48 hours old :-)

Once back home in NL I knitted a matching hat and sent it to Germany:

 

The yarn is a leftover Opal yarn, I think it's Marianne's Dackel. I ordered a big bunch of sock yarn again from her last week, I need some serious motivational aid!

Btw, I'm tafagirl on Ravelry if any of you are looking for me there :-)

Not impressed

B and I explored another part of town today, and I spotted a (needle)craft shop :-) Whee, yarn!! I'd just been thinking how another set or two of sock needles would come in useful, so I dashed inside to have a look. Hmm, they had a rather pitiful selection of needles and knitting paraphernalia so I gathered up my courage and asked (in Dutch!) whether they stocked any 15cm knitting needles. The owner grabbed the 20cm ones (they had *one* size, 3mm, I think) and said: "These are the shortest there are."
I said: "Um no, there are 15cm needles as well, they're usually used to knit socks ..."
Reply? "Oh. No, sorry. People don't ask much for that."

Huh?! And here I'd assumed people who open non-chain craft shops were enthusiasts :-(

No, I haven't disappeared!

... not completely anyway ;-)

I did, like, no knitting for months. I didn't have a spare second or so it felt, and full-time work with a long commute was just kicking me in the proverbial butt! Life is starting to settle somewhat, it's actually pretty good these days! Sure, I could write long novels about everything that still sucks (such as still living in a pretty horrible shared house, still having no more space than one shared room for B and I for almost 3 years now ...) but compared to the non-life I had back in Germany it's pretty cool now!!
In January I switched to working 4-day weeks, and I slowly feel like I'm gaining some quality time back. And I've decided that some of this time needs to be spent knitting ;-)

Except for a pair of socks for Mam I didn't do any knitting at all but now that I've been to the Handwerkbeurs in Zwolle and did some yarn-shopping I'm all fired up. I bought some goooorgeous alpaca yarn

which I want to turn into a shawl but I haven't decided on a pattern yet. A new Kiri?! Flowerbasket Shawl? I had that pattern on my old computer but I haven't found it here yet. I love that Swallowtail Shawl but I'm not sure I can find that Interweave Knits now. Hmm.

I also bought some bright-coloured merino sock yarn

and some very yummy 100% wool sock yarn which is the coolest sock yarn I've knit with so far! It's from Storm Op Zolder, a Dutch online shop, and it's just scrumptious:

I cast on for socks right away, and I'm almost done with the first one. Here's a camphone snapshot of the cuff:

I'm excited about getting back into the swing of knitting :-) I'm debating whether or not to sign up for SP10 - and I need to drop The Giving Flower an email and ask whether I can still buy one of her funky sockfish!

It shows ...

... how long I've been out of the knitting "scene"! I didn't know about the existence of KnittyBitty, the German online knitting shop! Wow, it sells all sorts of US knitting goodies that I've been drooling over here ... I so want me one of those Namaste Messenger bags :-)

Weird

It's so bizarre. I think about knitting and yarn (OMG yarn! I miss yarn!) all the time, I listen to knitting podcasts every day, I plan projects, I drool about all the yarn I can hopefully buy soon but I just *do not* get around to knitting! It's so weird. This whole work/commute thing eats up so many hours that I keep thinking I'll start "next week-end", and then once the week-end comes around there are so many things to do that I totally forget to take the time to dig the yarn out of the car - at least that's where I think it is, in one of the bags we left in the car for the time being ... So now it's Sunday night again, and I haven't started anything. Not even a sock! And while I'm all for knitting on the train, I'd like to start off at home because I know I'm too edgy to cast on for socks on the train, deal with loose dpns flying about while I distribute stitches etc. Knitting socks on the train = cool. Casting on with dpns on the train = not cool.

Sheep Poo Paper

This is probably old news to you (if you listen to Cast On, at least!) but I've been catching up with a whole summer of podcasts, and so I only heard about Sheep Poo Paper now ;-) I love the funky sheep! And I'm, um, intrigued by the idea of turning poo into paper - I've made paper myself but only from torn up paper napkins ... Not *quite* the same!

I'm slowly settling into a work routine here, but boy is there ever little left to the day if you're out for 12 hours and leave/return in the dark! I have yet to get back into the knitting groove ... But I miss knitting, a lot. I get all wistful about it when I listen to knitting podcasts. I guess I should go and find the bag that contains (some of) my yarn and the box with needles!

Pattern search

I've found a way of getting that VK back copy :-) Ordering will have to wait a bit, but I'm terribly impatient to get started!

FWIW, if you're still expecting a reply from me I have a queue of people I still owe emails, I'll get to it as soon as life is a bit less stressful ... Right now, things are crazy. I'm back and forth and have no idea where I'll be next month.

New Project

I'd love to knit the Twisted Float Shrug. Problem is, I haven't been able to get the pattern yet! It's a Modesitt design and was published in the Fall 2005 issue of Vogue Knitting. Has anybody been successful ordering back copies from Vogue here in Europe?

Knitty: Summer 2006

I'm not really knitting or crocheting anything these days ... :-( Offline life is stressful and frustrating, we're bounced backwards and forwards by decisions beyond our control, and it sucks. So while we spent the last half of June not making any plans because we expected to move the last week of June (at *very* short notice), we found out at the last minute that there was yet another delay, and we won't know anything for at least another week. We've had more bad luck in the last two years than I'd ever have thought possible :-(

But anyway ... I had a brief first look at the new knitty :-)

Fetching and Carpathia - in the *summer* issue??? I know it's not summer all over the world, but here it's currently over 40C with no air-conditioning anywhere, and knitted gloves are about the LAST thing on my mind! Lol.

Perdita - that's the sort of small project I love! Well, also not for wearing right now, but it looks cute :-)

Tulip Toes are v. v. cute, and what with moving to Holland I'll need to make them, of course ;-)

Lots of lacy socks, some of them cute - but nothing that really grabs me :-/