Results tagged “friends”

52/365-2010: Samantha, originally uploaded by elemmaciltur.

Start: 18th May 2009
Finish: 21st February 2010
Needles: 2.5 mm Inox DPNs
Yarn: Wollmeise Twin; 80% superwash merino, 20% nylon; colourway "Tant Groen, Tant Brun och Tant Gredelin", light intensity
Pattern: "Sam" by Cookie A. in "Sock Innovation"
For: A.

Wow, I haven't blogged anything for a while now. Sorry. I just didn't have any FOs to show and I think that I have lost my knitting-mojo along the way, too. Besides, my energy had been focused elsewhere.

But here I am...still around. Haven't fell off the face of the earth yet.

...by getting a pair of fingerless mitts for Nikolaus from a great friend, the Wollmeise herself.

I don't know which pattern she used. There are several similar patterns to be found on Ravelry. The colourway she used was "Okzident" from the Sock-Club set from March 2009. I will definitely knit myself a pair, but I will need to add a longer thumb gusset to it, so that my thumbs won't be so exposed.

Kind of knitting related, but nothing about what I knit. There will be a proper post coming soon to announce of some stuff. ;-)

Anyway, just a short notice to point you to a couple of blog entries that I think are very vitally important and worth reading:

- Yarn Harlot's "Dear Blog"
- Flint Knit's "Let's talk"

Now, Yarn Harlot's entry just totally gave me a blood curdling chill....because, you know, this can happen everywhere in blog land. There are some bloggers who decide that they're going to bare it all on their blogs, personal stuff as well as other things. I post personal matters on here from time to time...but not all the time, usually it's just a snippet within a post. However, it is kinda scary to know that someone can be reading it and could turn it against me. Granted though, it seems that the person in Yarn Harlot's entry has some serious mental issue. But still...it is scary.

As for Flint Knit's entry.....it just bothers me that people would feel they can snatch up whatever from the net and proclaim it as their own. I have my own experience with this. I mean, if I snatch something off the net, I always try to link back to the place I got it from, especially if I didn't ask for an outspoken permission first...and moreover, I never try to profit from it.

Wow, this took me quite a while to get around to blogging about this. Blame it on the exams.

Anyway, last weekend I went to the opening of the Wollmeise's brick & mortar store and had an absolutely wonderful time there.

Start: 14th May 2009
Finish: 16th May 2009
Needles: 5.5 mm / 80 cm Addi Turbos
Yarn: GGH "Tara"; 72% Cotton, 28% Nylon; colour #25 pink, #23 orange
Pattern: "Topaz" by Yumiko Sakurai in Knitty, Spring 2009
Modification: Also did a single crochet edge around the arms and the straps.
For: Little Miss Müller

Start: 29th May 2009
Finished: WIP
Needles: 2.25 mm Clover Takumi Bamboo DPNs
Yarns: Zitron Trekking "Pro Natura"; 75% new wool superwash, 25% bamboo; colour #1501 "natural", #1507 "red"
Pattern: "Nordisch inspiriert" from "Socken aus aller Welt" by Stephanie van der Linden
Modifications: Added 20 stitches of red/white chequered (10 on each side), so total of 90 sts., to accommodate for my size...hopefully it will be enough. In order to avoid a very long toe area (did Judy Magic Cast-on - starting off with 22 sts., i.e. 11 on each needle - instead of short-rowing the toe), I increased up to 70 sts. in total and on the even round of the last increase, I also increase 20 sts. evenly spread out, then an even round before pattern begins. Knit according to the pattern, adding three chequered pattern repeats to the main pattern to accommodate my foot length, knit one round in MC at the same time, decreasing 10 sts from the sole of the foot and knit the short-row heel as in the pattern up to when knitting in MC in the round for 5 rnds. Inc. 10 sts on the sole on the 4th rnd., k rnd even and then join CC to knit the leg. 5 repeats of 20 rows chequered pattern, break CC and knit cuff in k2tbl, p2 ribbing for 10 rnds, dec. 22 sts on the second round.

Start: 9th May 2009
Finish: 10th May 2009
Needles: 3 mm / 80 cm and 3.5 mm / 80 cm Addi Turbos
Yarns: CC using Lanartus "Brando", colour 1468 "Grey", MC using Filatura di Crosa "Zara" colour 1466 "Red"
Patterns: "Halfdome" by Jesse Loesberg, aka Yarn Boy, in Knitty Summer 2006
For: Jason P.

Last week, I found out that an internet friend, Jason, who was diagnosed with testicular cancer in March and was going through chemo, had recently received some pretty bad news about his condition, i.e. the cancer is spreading and there's not much else that can be done....

A whole load of people over at Men Who Knit are knitting squares to be assembled into a blanket for Jason. However, at the rate the cancer is going, the blanket has to be done fast and so the deadline to send in the squares over to the USA is for the end of May (find more info HERE). Actually this wouldn't have been the problem for me, but I just can't get the required yarn easily enough here in Germany. Besides, I know that Jason is based here in Europe, so it wouldn't make much sense for me to send something over to the USA, only to have it be sent back to Europe again.

So, I sent off an email to Jason - and I'm happy to have heard back from him - and told him that I'm going to send something off directly to him. I would have loved to knit him a blanket, but I won't make it in time, so something fast has to be knitted up. And what's better than a kind of chemo cap for a sexy chap who has lost his hair? ;-)

I've never knitted anything for someone with cancer before, so I don't know how sensitive they are. I thought that 100% merino should be fine....we'll see. As for the pattern, I thought that it shouldn't be a full hat because the weather is getting warmer, but should still offer some warmth and so Halfdome was the perfect choice.

Halfdome is a super fast knit. I like it, but I didn't like the fact that there's a seam (although to tell you the truth, you can't feel it...but for someone who hasn't got hair, you might be able to feel it).

I'm going to knit another one in the round instead and send it off to Jason along with this one.

Start: 4th May 2009
Finish: 7th May 2009
Needles: 4 mm / 80 cm Addi Lace
Yarn: Wollmeise 100% merino superwash Sockenwolle in "Wellensittichvogelfeder" (dark)
Pattern: "Ishbel" from Whimsical Little Knits by Isolda Teague
Modification: Stockinette done in smaller size and the lace part in the bigger size.
Shooting location: At the base of Friedensengel, Munich

Start: 21st December 2008
Finish: 15th April 2009
Needles: 3.5 mm - 80 cm Addi Lace
Yarn: Filatura di Crosa "Superior"; 70% cashmere, 30% silk
Pattern: "Travelling Roses Scarf" by To Knit Is Divine
For: Astrid's Mum for Christmas 2008
Modification: Could do only 9 repeats of the pattern because I had one ball of the yarn. Was running out of yarn by row 19 of the 10th repeat and had to frog back and ended it with 9 repeats.
Shooting location: Pfarrkirche St. Johann-Baptiste, Munich

Sorry about the long silence....but well, I broke my laptop last Wednesday while I got this spurt to clean (which totally subsided as soon as the computer broke).

I decided that I needed to wash the table cloth which is under my laptop. I disconnected the laptop, lifted the laptop up, pulled part of the cloth away and replaced the laptop....without seeing that part of the laptop landed back on the cloth. I was listening to some exciting Spanish music (...a tango...and to be more exact it was "Por una cabeza"...my favourite one forever...and I was listening to that exact version - yes, I have the soundtrack) and decided to pull a table cloth out in a passionate fashion....

...as you can guess, the laptop came a-flying with the cloth. It landed on the floor with a thud....and when I tried turning it on, it made a sickening clicking noise and gave me the infamous Blue-Screen-of-Death saying something along the line of "Unmountable Boot Volume".

I actually panicked....coz I broke a laptop once already by dropping it on the floor (al contrario, sin tango). And this time it seemed like history was repeating itself. Back then, I had to send in the laptop for reparation, which took 6 weeks and EUR 250 (well, actually DM 500). And I didn't want that this time...especially the six weeks period - not that I would have the quids to spare either.

I crammed after some contacts and got a friend of another friend. We met up, he took a look and said that it definitely was the hard drive. He took my laptop with him and fixed it for me, i.e. replaced the hard drive, pulled out whatever he could from my old hard drive and set the laptop up for me again. I paid him waaaaaaaaaaay less than what I would have to pay were I to send the laptop in. Thank goodness....but then again, it's not like I have money to spare, so I'm kinda broke right now. At least til the end of the month.

Anyway, so now I've got my laptop back, with even more memory...and it feels kinda new. So, yeah, I'm pretty happy, even though the darn HP QuickPlay thing doesn't work any more (I haven't got the recovery CD), but I hardly used it apart from watching DVDs anyway. And for that purpose, I just downloaded some free third-party programme and then I'm all set.

So yeah, here I am again. Back in the beginning of September I had to unplug from the internet unwillingly for a week because the German Telekom effed up something about the contract. But I still had my computer to do stuff on. This time around it was five days completely without computer. I felt as though someone had cut off my arms....so the only sensible thing I could do was to knit. Which bore fruit. :-p

I finished my Joukahainen! The picture above is just a teaser...since I still need to do a proper photo shoot for it. Here are the specs:

Start: 5th September 2008
Finish: 20th October 2008
Needles: 4.5 mm / 100 cm Addi Turbos
Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% Peruvian Highland Wool; colour 8886, dye lot 7414
Pattern: Joukahainen by Kristel Nyberg. Published in Finnish in the magazine Ulla 03/07. Pattern is available as an English translation as Ravelry download.