What I'm up to

I bought some houseplants

made an awesome pizza with a cauliflower crust

and harvested my first tiny potatoes

Ternary

Summer

I went on a mini road trip with a friend and visited Läckö Castle. It was beautiful, but I think my favourite part was the kitchen gardens.

A very pretty blue flower.

Whoever's in charge of this garden sure knows how to set up a still life.

Picture heavy hey-I'm-still-alive-post

I've gone far too long without posting here!

I think it's partly because I'm not 100% sure what I want this blog to be (like, how personal do I want to get? Do I want to share my thoughts or just post pictures of things I've made?), and the longer I go without posting, the harder it becomes to write something. And not to write too much when I finally do.

I'm enjoying summer anyway, it's nice not to have to think about lectures and exams all the time, though I do need to send in some papers so I can get my degree (yay, finished my bachelor's degree!). Of course, the person I need to talk to is on vacation, so I need to wait a bit.

Some pictures of what I've been up to, in no particular order:

Growing radishes

Scratching goats

Visited mom in Glastonbury

Had picnics in the garden

Gone for walks in the Scanian countryside

Finally got the hang of crochet thanks to Malin Bohm's excellent blog! (Swedish only I'm afraid). Not sure if I should block it. Probably? It's smallish because I ran out of yarn but boyfriend likes it and it's a good scarf size for him.

More garden picnics

Started knitting another lace shawl (still need to weave in the ends of my first one, but at least I've blocked it now! Here it is on Ravelry). The yarn is fiddlier than anything and I need to take a break every two rows, but it's fun!

Been to an old quarry which is now a lake (people actually jump from those cliffs!)

Watched the cats play in the garden

Admired my growing jungle

All in all, having a pretty nice summer break (which is what sommarlov means)

Socks and trousers

Soooo, as usual, lots of things going on. Among others, I've been accepted to the master's programme in translation that I applied for - woo!

I also made a sock - using Ellen Wixted's Snowflake Socks pattern, one of those I wrote about in my last entry. One more sock is on its way, in time for spring no less...

Stranded knitting is so much fun! I haven't really gotten the hang of holding both colours at once, so I usually just drop one colour to pick up the next one. It's fairly quick anyway, I just need to stop and unwind the yarns from one another sometimes, haha!

Today I've been sewing a mock-up for a pair of trousers from the glorious 80's book Sy Byxor, or Sew Trousers in English. Could you get away with a cover like this for a modern sewing book? I kind of doubt it. I like it, though I doubt it would have worked as well if the women inside the book didn't look so severe.

Anyway, the patterns are all great (if you're into 80's style trousers). The instructions are minimal, along the lines of "trace pattern, cut, sew", so I'm glad I've sewn trousers before (poofy viking trousers no less! Oh, and my bloomers). The sizes worked surprisingly well. Sure, this is a forgiving pattern, but I'm used to my hips being two to three sizes larger than my waist and here I was able to cut one size all the way.

I'll shorten my trousers a bit, because I want them to end mid-calf, and I also want to raise the waist a little bit - and add pockets! Apart from that, I don't think I'll make any changes for this pair.

The pair below are a bit difficult to make out on the picture, but they're made in velvet which sounds very neat, I'll make sure to try them out!

Finally, I realised I never show my face on here. I'm pretty camera shy and tend to be the person behind the camera whenever pictures are being taken. But not always, so... hi guys!

Knitting and other things

I'm really into knitting at the moment. It's so much easier to work on a knitting project than a sewing project, and since spring seems to be reluctant this year I might as well stock up on warm things.

Some might say that I ought to focus on one thing at a time, but I find that I need to indulge my whims when it comes to crafting, or I lose interest. Right now I'm knitting gloves (teased here) but they are almost done and I'm going away for Easter, so I need to find a new project. I'm thinking socks.

These Classic Kilim socks are just gorgeous, and the idea of using a rainbow coloured yarn for stranded knitting is so cool! I need to make them some day but the pattern is in a book, which I won't be able to get before Thursday. So that's out.

I'm thinking Ellen Wixted's neat Snowflake socks. Probably in the colourway shown here, unless I get really attached to another yarn while I'm in the store. It's those or the Water for the elepants-socks:

Yeah, I tried stranded knitting and found I couldn't get enough. Also, I'm on Ravelry now!

Oh and maybe you need some proof that I actually create stuff once in a while, I don't just start projects and drool over other people's things. Have some embroidery (ahem, not a finished project though):

Three snapshots

Three snapshots from my phone. I want to blog properly but I've got so much on my mind, I can't seem to just sit down and write.

 

Tibetan prayer flags on the patio.

 Crystal lamp (not quite a chandelier...) making the ceiling look all pretty.

My first go at colourwork. I might be knitting a wee bit too tightly, but it's good practice.

The sun came out today, for what seems to be the first time in weeks!
I keep having a lot on my mind, but I thought I'd take the time to add a couple of pictures.

As I said, I've moved house. We're not quite in order yet, my camera is still in a box somewhere and more furniture is coming down from Gothenburg on Friday. But I bought new chairs and I'm very pleased with them.

My shawl isn't very photogenic yet, I still need to block it but before I do that I need to mend a small hole (eh, I dropped a stitch and compensated for it without noticing, luckily I caught it before it unravelled). It's really cosy though, I hope to get a few pictures of me wearing it once it's actually done!

That's it for now, I'm off to cook carrot lasagne, write a speech about why Chinese cannot (or should not) become the new world-language and prepare a few job applications!

Life signs

Right. I did not mean to fall off the face of the earth. I see that I'm still getting page views so I figured I'd better write something up before this blog is written off as dead!

My degree essay is finished (yay) but I've recently moved house so everything is a bit of a mess - I still haven't unpacked the box where my camera is for instance. Because of that, I can't give you any pictures of the lace shawl I've knitted during my absence just yet. I've thought of taking a quick snapshot using my phone, but every time I remember it's gone dark already (damn winter!).

Hopefully I'll get past the living-out-of-boxes stage soon. I feel that my life will instantly become more bloggable when I do, but I'm not sure there's really a truth to that.