Hemp in winter

 

Since about a week, it is suddenly winter here. We had weeks of rain and wind and general misery weather-wise, but now it has changed. It is colder, brighter, and it is supposed to get even colder. I do admit that it is a lot better then the rain drenched ground we had to live with during most of December and January. So to start an image of the landscape from my bedroom window. As one can see, the one thing lacking is snow….. I do love snow, well that is at the beginning of the winter. At the end of it, I hate it, hate it with a passion. But each year I can't wait for a good think layer to go through. Hopefully some snow will fall soon, it gives protection for the plants!

So now for the title and plants that do not need protection…. In the back of the photo, the field with hemp is visible. It is left standing on the field until the end of winter, then it has become much more pliable and it is easier to get the fibers spun…. So yes there it is: yarn to be!

I do like hemp (not only to knit with). The plants grow extremely fast, it is an annual that grows up to about 2 m here. During the summer it is green and lush. In the autumn great flocks of birds live in it, eating the hemp seeds and in the winter it gives a nice cover to the field. It hardly needs any fertilizer and can grow even on poor soil. The only negative bit is the enormous amount of paperwork that needs to be filled in in order to grow it….

Anyways, the yarn is great for summer, but now it is winter so a winter knit...

 

This is going to be the Albero Cowl from the Textured Knits book by Connie Chang Chinchio. The yarn is Madelinetosh Erin, a 100% wool in a worsted/aran weight. The color is "tart". This is the second item I knit in "tart". The other one was a Moineau in Madelinetosh merino light. That yarn had a wonderful black haze and other colourways I have in my stash, also have a haze whether black or white. Erin doesn't have a haze, it is much more straight-forward. So the color is more "direct". Very lovely still and a good match to the pattern (I think…).

Making the pictures was a challenge….

 

This week I discovered pinterest, so I have bee pinning. I put a knitting board up, but I do think it is even better for food pinning. Now I finally can organize nice recipes that I find on the web and want to make later in some neat way.

Yesterday we went for a major bit of indulgence:

 

Homemade Nutella

Today we were more restrained, S and I made Lai Wong Boa, one of my first pins…. Our efforts were quite good:

Ease

Today I finished Goose. But since I was at home (since I am not feeling 100% for the last couple of days), and the others working or at school, the recipient was not here and I wanted to have a picture. So I worn it myself. Now here it gets interesting. The pattern is meant to be worn with 4" of positive ease. I knitted an XS so this one has only 1.5" positive ease for me. It is not super fitting, but it is not an overbid sweater either. I quite like it like that.

But I made it not for myself, so at dusk, when S came home, I just had time to take a picture of her...

Worn as an XS with 4 to 5" positive ease. It worked too and for a nearly teen maybe even better.

Nice experiment anyways.

Tomorrow I will luckily be back at work, I don't really like being not well, but it feels as if I am OK to go tomorrow!

Half a sweater

 

Normally I do not do New Year's resolutions, they are just made to be broken, so why make them….  But having  done the bit of decoration and moving things from here to there, I realized that, really, I do have plenty of yarn. And plenty to play a long time with, with quite some sweater amounts of stuff. So I made a "public" promise not to buy any yarn at least until the first of April.

So now I am knitting and planning from Stash and not looking at the MadelineTosh shop, since that would be really tempting.

Anyways this is my first item made with Dream In Colour Classy in Midnight Derby. I think I bought this yarn more than two years ago, so really high time to work with it. The pattern is Goose by Heidi Kirrmaier. It was a very kind gift of the raveler Yvonnegut.

Of course I can't just knit it, I had to tweak it slightly. I make it not as long (it is for S), the sleeves will be 3/4 (I don't have enough yarn…) and I have done the decreases in the sleeves different as well. I was going for already 10 cm or so when I found out I had skipped over the word "provisional", so instead of a 3 bind-off, I will have "deconstructed" seams…. Post-modern that :-)

I'm half-way now and I do like the half a sweater look of it!

 

Now I am digging in my stash to see what I would like to make next….

Yes I know…..

Ok yesterday it should have gone down, as it is the habit in Sweden. That is the Christmas tree…. But yesterday was friday and really, on some fridays one only wants to sit and sip a glass of wine. Which is what we did, so the tree is still there this morning. But then I could use it as background for my "Muted Thistle"…..

I like this version just as much as the earlier one. I did tweak a bit, which means that there are more short rows in the yoke so it is not as wide. About the yarn (Brooklyn Tweed Loft), it has a lovely feel to it and it is very "airy" (it has indeed loft), When I just got it, I was a bit disappointed since the colors were more muted then what it looked like on my computer screen when I had ordered it. But when knitted up, I can see that there is more depth and it is very lively and lovely. It was also very good for colourwork since just like Spindrift, it has a real nice "grab" which makes it very easy to keep an even tension. Only slight-negative thing, since it is woollen-spun (mule spun?) yarn, it breaks really easily. But then if it wasn't spun like that, it wouldn't have the nice "loft"…..

I was quite lucky here as well, since I used exactly 2 skeins of the MC. I have 2 left, so I guess I nice shawl …. maybe with some of the other colors as well….

It is well matched for vintage inspired knitting I think and I could see myself in a similar cardigan as well. S wants one like this as well, so maybe I will scale up….

Just two more shots:

 

and a slight update, here it starts to go down:

 

 

Almost there

Other Things

 

 

The winter break can be a real good time to do those things, we never get time for the rest of the year. In our case it is home improvement. I have not knitted a lot the last couple of days, but we have set tiles (in that square meter in the kitchen that needed to be fixed), put on new wall-paper (the study) and now only floor tiles have to be laid down….

A good start for 2012!

I hope you had one too!