Ungbarnatreyja

This has been sitting in my knitting bag waiting for buttons and crocheted button loops since Siggi was born. Úps. I figured with all that work, I should finish it up. It’s hard to get hand sewing time, but we took a ride in the car so I was able to get it done.

It fits him perfectly now. He just had his 2 month checkup and is 11 lbs. 7 oz (5.2 kg.) and 23.5 inches long (58.75 cm). It would have been fine on him as a newborn too; we could have just rolled up the sleeves. It’s perfect for the weather we’ve been having to wear outside when it’s kind of warm.

The colour is more of a dark blue-green but the flash photo doesn’t do it justice. The bottom photo is a little closer. I am really pleased with how it came out; it makes me want to make another. Maybe for the next baby gift I have to give.

One issue: in a moment of pregnancy fogginess, I convinced myself that there was an error in the pattern and I should knit the chart the opposite way. It made total sense to me at the time. Then when I finished the front I realised it was just me and the big rose was suppposed to be in the centre, not the way I have it. Oh well, I still like it.

Snjór

We are having our first big snow storm of the year. According to the news, we had 10 inches of snow yesterday (25 cm). Everything looks beautiful and white. I love these storms when I don’t have to be out in them. (Now it’s just lightly snowing, and we are supposed to get more sometime tomorrow). I got off the hook from the outside obligations I was supposed to have today, so theoretically we don’t have to go anywhere (although I have to go grocery shopping at some point or we won’t be having supper). This is great, because there is quite a lot to be done before Christmas here. Somehow, the house has managed to get messy again since K’s birthday party last week (maybe it has something to do with us having to use the dining room as an office right now). I have to finish assembling a few gifts, and I am hoping to make time to sew a dress for Christmas Eve. And of course, I want to do some Christmas baking that I could actually eat (no wheat, no butter, no sugar). I think I will make pepparkakor with spelt flour and maple syrup instead of sugar.

Since I haven’t had any knitting content in a while, here is something I finished a while ago and never had a chance to blog about:

I used this pattern. I didn’t sew the little circles on… I thought about doing something more unique, but I may just leave them off.

Well well

In case anyone was wondering, we did get our well fixed the next day. I had left a message with a local guy, but he never called me back, so I called a big company to come out and look at it. The next day, Ingi was home, and the local guy called and he just assumed it was the big company, gave directions, and the guy came. He had started fixing the well and left to get a part when the big company showed up. Ingi sent them away (I guess we will be blacklisted from using them ever again) and the local guy came back, and ended up fixing the well by just cleaning out some parts. So it wasn’t too expensive. We are sure those other guys would have charged us for all new parts.

Also, our living room wall is done, finally (both of these things were done in time for company on Thanksgiving). He did a really nice job.

The trim colour is the one B picked out for his room (that’s next). I also have a really great closet in my bathroom finally (the old owners had these flimsy metal racks that fell down all the time, and they finally ripped out of the wall and I’ve had my bath stuff in boxes in the hallway, and our towels in a basket in our room.

I finished my Big Basin socks with birthday present Hjertegarn a while ago, but now that I’ve worn them a few times, I finally got a picture:

It’s one of the Six Sox Knitalong patterns. They are peeking out from the bottom of the maternity corduroy pants that I sewed, but there is no photo of the pants since they are pretty basic. Still, they are more comfortable than most store-bought maternity pants. For some reason, the waist on those comes right to the wide part of my belly, which makes them slide down all day long and drive me crazy. I could have made the waist panel tighter on mine, but at least it’s high enough.

Sewn gifts

A friend is having a baby and I have not had any energy/motivation to knit her something. So I actually bought a gift. I couldn’t let it go without something homemade, so I whipped together a couple of bibs.

They were super easy and fun to make. The pattern is from Bend the Rules Sewing. And I can guarantee they are completely 100% lead-free.

My only complaint is that I have is with the Dritz snaps I used. I have only used Snap Source ones before, and those are foolproof. The Dritz snaps are junk. I broke 3 snaps trying to get them set. Then one went in crooked and I have to pry it out (you can’t really tell in the picture). I guess it’s a good thing I made her two bibs, because depending on how it is getting that snap out, I may end up ruining one of them.

I am on a sewing kick lately (well, a cutting-out and planning kick, this is the only thing that has actually gotten sewn yet). So expect to see some more sewing in the future.

Picturesque

This morning I was able to snap a photo of Ingi in the finished Cobblestone pullover.

We are listening to the Juno soundtrack. That was a really fun movie, and the soundtrack is great, it’s worth it just for the Sonic Youth Superstar cover.

I’ve been using the 1001 Books list as a way to help me pick out used books when I see them at library sales and so on. I realised one of the books was a comic book that I read years ago (The Watchmen). I’ve read a few more from the list Never Let Me Go, Cat’s Eye, City Of God, The Summer Book, and The Devil and Miss Prym (which was a really fun read), bringing my total up to 70 books from the list. Part of the reason I have been reading so many books is I have been upgrading my bookshelf with PaperbackSwap.com. I have been swapping read-once books for classics and other interesting books. Sadly, this is a US-only site, but Bookcrossing.com is another good site, and international.

Two Socks, Two Needles

I am still not sure how I feel about the two-socks-at-a-time-on-one-needle method, so I decided to try out the basic sock instructions for two socks on two circular needles from Knitting Circles Around Socks. I think I like this method better, although with worsted weight yarn it was a bit of a bulky project say to take on the bus. I do like having two socks finished though!

Yarn is called Moor Ragg (apparently no longer available, this was really old stash yarn) from Green Mountain Spinnery (in Putney, Vermont). (By the way, they have some really cool new sock yarn that I just noticed when finding the link.)

Baby Gifts

I am cursed. One reason I have not been posting much, is Ingi’s laptop died. While trying hopelessly to diagnose it, I decided to fix my other Windows machine. This just completed this week. (160 GB HD + old BIOS = Bad Combination). Then. My work laptop HD died. Luckily there was another machine I could use while it was being fixed. Now my Mac just spontaneously died. That’s MY machine. The Windows machine is just the extra machine for freelancing. Clearly, I have some kind of EM fields problem with my body and should not work with electronics.

Another reason I haven’t done knitting posts in a while is my knitting project was Top Secret. The recipient reads my blog on a regular basis, and she’s having a baby girl, and the project was pink, and I KNEW it would give it away. So now that she’s received her gifts, I can share.

The hat pattern is by Bergere de France, from their cute baby magazine Tricot Baby #137. I used Katia Mississippi yarn, a lovely cotton-acrylic blend… I think this is my new favourite baby yarn.

The sock pattern was a modified version of a pattern in 2-at-a-Time Socks. Yes, I knit them at the same time, with the magic loop technique described in this book. This was my first foray into Magic Loop, and I don’t know if I like it. It remains to be seen.

I’ve also acquired some fun new CD’s:

Kate Nash’s House of Bricks, which reminds me of a cross of Björk, Fiery Furnaces, CocoRosie, Feist, and the Arctic Monkeys. (If you know these bands and think, wow, that’s a very odd mix, you would be right, but it’s still really fun.)

and of course Tricot machine, which starts out with a great song with the lyrics (translated), “Do you know how to knit? To your needles!” This album to me really is the album of the year.

Sheep-ish

I finished my sheep mittens the other day.

Note how the piece that was the UFO is the bottom of the mitten on the left, which is from way back when, when I wasn’t very good at two-colour knitting. The mitten on the right has a much nicer cuff. So my dilemma of course is do I knit a new cuff and cut off the old one and graft it on? On the one side, the cuff should be under the sleeve of my coat, but on the other hand, it does look a little weird. I guess sometimes when you have an old UFO like that, you should just rip it out and start over. It would have been faster for me to do that.

Details: the yarn is Creskeld Jacob yarn, in natural colours from one of my favourite sheep breeds. This is some really great yarn.

I am in the process of trying to fix at least one computer. Ingi’s laptop died, and we thought it was a hard drive, but after an hours-long process of copying files onto a new hard drive (with a really cool tool), it appears to be something else. My Windows desktop also needed a new hard drive, so I put in the new hard drive, but it looks like I need to change out the ribbon cable because it’s not seeing the full size of the hard drive.

Now it’s safe to post

I am not sure if the recipient of these mittens reads my blog, so I wasn’t sure about really blogging about them before her birthday. But I am fairly sure she will check the mail when she comes home from holiday before looking at people’s blogs, so now I can show the finished mittens:

The pattern is from Selbustrikk and the yarn is KnitPicks Palette.

We watched a few excellent French movies this weekend:
Ma femme est une actrice, a comedy with Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Serge Gainsbourg) playing an actress named Charlotte with a neurotic husband (played by her real-life husband).

Tous les matins du monde, a historical movie starring Gerard Depardieu, about actual masters of the viola da gamba (they are referenced in the Wikipedia article) from the 17th century and how their lives intertwined. It’s an amazingly poignant movie with some amazing viola da gamba music; the music is done by an expert in ancient music (Jordi Savall) and it’s just brilliantly performed. (This is a really interesting instrument. A friend of mine growing up played it when I was studying violin. I found it so strange compared to what I was doing at the time, but still really fascinating.)