Spring?

 

This is how it looks in my garden today….. and the prognosis for the coming week is not much better. Cold and cold again, with sometimes bitter winds. 

But luckily there are also some signs of spring a well…. and we are in "summertime" now….

On the side...

Since I was finishing of Paasbest, I needed some commuter project to keep my hands busy on the 40 minutes to and 40 minutes back from work (this is how I can knit so much…), I has a skein of Vintage left over and it is still winter here, so another hat seemed to be the best thing. I needed something else than stockinette, also since my next project will be stockinette once more (request for a plain cowl sweater), so I went through the database at Ravelry and finally I decided on a twisted stitch design from Vintage Modern Knits. The Vonderrhein Hat…very different than stockinette and a good change…..

Ready to hunt eggs

 

Just a bit more A-line, a bit more room in the sleeves and a slightly different neckline, this time in Dream in Color Classy "valentine".

Ready for hunting Easter eggs…..

 

De laatste loodjes…..

I don't speak that much Dutch these days, it is mainly Swedish and English and then some Dutch to my children and my family back in the Netherlands,. writing it is even rarer. Today I had to send some documents to the Netherlands and I just sat for a while thinking of the official phrases used at such an occasion…strange that...

Anyways one thing which is nice in Dutch is the expressions. You never know how a cow catches a hare is an expression used quite a lot in our house, the straight translation of the dutch "Je weet maar nooit hoe een koe een haas vangt…". The title of this blog-entry comes from "De laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst"  translates literally as " The last little pieces of lead weigh the most". In practice it means that the last bit of a job can take the most time, crave the most effort. And that is a bit true for knitting this cardigan as well. I finished knitting it some days ago. Now every evening I have done a tiny bit of seaming, kitchening and so on. Now the only thing left is, one under sleeve that needs to be grafted, some loose threads that need to be dealt with and attaching the buttons. Almost done, but that last bit…..

The buttons are vintage, from Etsy, nice big ones again….

Tinkering

 

I am tinkering the design of Paasbest. While M has been wearing that cardigan a lot (she real likes it and I think it is partly the wool since it is so soft….her words) I am not completely happy with it. The main thing is that it is not A-line enough for me. So a new version is coming along, more pronounced A-line this time. And since spring is not yet even near, I have to make splashes of colour myself. Brigh red yarn, at least something that makes me warm…. It is Dream in Color Classy in valentine, a real red (at least for me and this lot of yarn). It is hard to photograph well, it seems too orange in the picture and it isn't. It will have nice big black buttons again and a similar yoke. So really it is just the increases that I am playing with….

Jane Doe

Finally my lace weight project "Jane Doe" is finished. It took some time, but finally it is done. I have been tired the last couple of weeks and stared into space a lot during the evenings. I'm now feeling better, but I do hate influenza, it just keeps one down for too long.

So Jane Doe…I think it will be nice for spring-time, but unfortunately it is really not yet time to wear it. The temperature has dropped under 0°C again and it storms. Really really cold in other words. In the beginning of the week it was almost feeling like spring and flowers have popped up, but now we are back in winter moods. Ah well, it is March, at least the days are getting longer and we are not travelling to and back from work in half-darkness anymore. 

I have only lousy pictures of "Jane Doe", too cold to go outside….sorry….

Blurred

Some weeks are just not to write about. Last weekend M was ill, and I was really worried that it would be a longer affair, but as it turned out the day after she was fine again, the fever was gone and she was her own cheerful self again. Which is always a thing when children are ill, there is so little one can do and it isn't at all nice when they are ill. On top of it, to make me slightly more stressed feeling, I had a hell of a week ahead of me, so that was a major relief when M persisted she wanted to go to school on monday. All was well, until during monday night, I absolutely couldn't sleep and I felt kind of weird and also feeling as if a cold was on its way. I fell asleep finally and after only 3 hours sleep I had that "oh I have a major cold coming upon me feeling", so I decided to not to go to work that day in the hope that by staying home, it wouldn't develop into a major cold and my things I had to do later in the week wouldn't be in peril. It was good I stayed at home, since at noon I had 39.6° and yes I didn't have a major cold, I did have influenza. High fever, headaches, pain in all my muscles, coughing and all…. So that was that for the rest of the week. The fever has gone by now, I feel still as if I ran a maraton and didn't sleep for a month, I'm still coughing but I am really getting better. And all those things I had to do last week….they have been postponed, which is a good thing and a bad thing since I know that the coming month will be much work and not much play….

Didn't do much apart from laying in bed and watching Fringe episodes with S (love Fringe, really love it), yesterday I picked up my needles again, and worked on a lightweight cardigan to be. It is knitted in Madelinetosh tosh lace, on 3.75 mm, giving a nice airy fabric. It has a bit of a Fringe itself, but really it is more a peplum in sideways garter stitch. The garter was slow going, but now I am in the body doing stockinette it flies. The colour is also appropriate Fringe like, monochromatic…. And since I am still allowed to do nothing much, I can at least sit on the sofa and knit a bit…...