Help!

I'm working on my sockapaloooza sock and I'm having some trouble. The heel flap business is not really working out. The slipped stitches at the beginning of a right side row are so loose that there'll be gaping holes there, and no matter how hard I try I can't get them tighter. This alpaca stuff sure is unforgiving I have to say.

Well, now I'm trying out a short row heel but there's another problem. My pal wants a 5cm long heel (or she says her heel length is 5cm, I assume that's the heel flap length), but with these short rows there's no way I'm ever gonna get that much. Maximum 3.5 cm. Why are short row heels so darn short and is there anything I can do to make it longer? Can I for example knit one row inbetween doing the wrapping thing? I'd really appreciate it if someone could offer advice :-)

Birthday blanket

Thank you so much for your comments and suggestions on the blanket business, and in general thanks for all comments, I really appreciate them! I've noticed that when I've been commenting on other peoples knitblogs they often answer by email. I hope I haven't disappointed someone expecting an email, I'm just not used to that practice. I'm more into answering the comments on the blog to keep the "whole story" there. Let's see, maybe I'll take up the email thing.

The blanket plans have taken an entirely new direction. My birthday was on sunday, and in addition to the fabulous þríhyrnur og langsjöl (three-cornered and long shawls) book and some knitting magazines, my parents gave me money to spend. Mom said I should use it for the home, and what better for the home than a big 'n cosy blanket to cuddle during hmmm… the winter which is almost over?! So now I have money to spend – Allright!

I had the idea to use Wonderwool from Scoeller & Stahl (I hope I remember that correctly) because I already have a few skeins and for me it's quite important to know how the yarn feels before I go ahead and buy 25 skeins of it. It's only 50% wool, but it's so wonderfully soft and decently priced. I found this German online yarn store which sells the stuff at 2.75 euros/skein, they ship anywhere and the shipping costs within Europe are not too high. My local yarn store does sell wonderwool, but they don't have the colors I need and although they could order it for me, the price is just not as good. I think I don't have to feel bad about it, since I do support the store quite substantially.

On saturday I finished the second Lopi sock, which makes them my first ever finished pair of socks! Here's a result of twisting myself in awkward positions to get a decent picture

The next picture, however, is my favorite. Tres artistique, no?

In addition to the great gift from my parents, I got some other wonderful gifts for my birthday. Cassie sent me some beautiful koigu, chibi's, tea and only, what, 1200 meters of laceweight merino!! Which was just perfect as I could immediately start knitting from the shawl book. Frank, Markus and Tuija had sneaked a huge box filled with yummi stuff into my apartment while I was out. How nice does this look?

How about this then?

Everything in the box was sweet: cakes, chocolate, cookies, you name it, except for this one can there in the middle. It's canned ravioli and don't ask me why!My dear friend Arna sent me a cd and Icelandic candy (YAY!) along with a wonderful birthday card, and my dear friend Bryndís wrote a most beautiful blog entry about our friendship (we've known each other since we were 3 years old – the entry is in Icelandic). Thank you all so much, it really warmed my heart.

Blanket budget

I had this idea that I’d make a nice and cozy blanket for myself. It should have a feather and fan pattern and be multicolored. Then I realized that the blanket will be big and big things need a lot of yarn. I have bought yarn for sweaters and that already hurts my wallet so I can only imagine what a full size blanket will do to my meager PhD student income. So now I’m looking for yarn ideas people. It should be a nice and soft wool yarn of reasonable thickness with a pricing that in an ideal world would be something like 50 cents for a 500 m skein. Have you met my perfect yarn?

Mmmm… coffee

Yesterday, my friend Sigurlaug (who has a new knitblog with beautiful stuff) commented on my entry about the dyeing business. She told that apparently you can use onion peels to make a dye. Naturally I couldn’t resist checking it out, so I spent some time googleing around and was getting pretty excited about it, until I read that you need to dry the peels for several days before cooking up the dye. As my mother can tell you, I am not a patient person, quite far from it. Fortunately for me, I found out that you can use loads and loads of natural stuff to dye, among them coffee and tea. Now that doesn’t take any drying does it!

I ran to the yarn shop just before closing and got two skeins of off-white Lanett and went straight after to the supermarket where I got the cheapest coffee in Finland and some vinegar. Let the dyeing begin. Let my apartment stink of overcooked coffee mixed with vinegar (which has an awfully strong stink). But look, isn’t it beautiful?

It really was magical I can tell you, and I am so unbelievably happy with the results. I’ve been thinking lately how much I’d like to find yarn with soft variations of the same color, but haven’t had luck so far. Now I’ve got it, lucky me!

Two lovely little lattes that dream of becoming delicate, lacey socks

I’m telling you, I’ll be the crazy lady this summer, walking around Helsinki collecting grass in a bag. It’s supposed to give a nice shade of green. Watch out!

After the trip

With incredible determination I finished the lopi lace sweater during the weekend. I had been postponing it for a while because I’m not the biggest enthusiast about sewing, as I’ve mentioned before. But having unfinished business bothers me so I met the challenge. That was a good thing because I learned the coolest thing in my Vogue Knitting book. Since this is my first knitted item that needs sewing I wanted to check out whether there are any special rules on which types of stitches you should use for sleeves. Then I encountered the slip stitch crochet and man did that make me happy! Although I have never crocheted anything except borders on lopi sweaters, I truly love it, it’s one of the most fun things I can think of. Being able to crochet the sleeves onto the body thus made me one happy girl. Suddenly, knitting in pieces doesn’t sound like an alltogether unreasonable thing to do.

I am however a bit ambivalent about the actual sweater. I find it a bit too big for me. It’s not that I’m not on gauge, the smallest size obviously just isn’t small enough. I do not have the bust size to pull off this deep V neck as you can clearly see

I had somehow imagined it to be a very tight fitting number, but what I didn’t realize is that in order for that to happen it would be wise to knit it quite a bit smaller than ones actual bust size. The sleeves also bother me a bit. I have done some (machine) sewing in the past, I even learned how to draw up patterns, so I know how sleeves are shaped. This one here has almost no shaping at all, which means that the shoulder part reaches down the upper arm and it somehow exaggerates the width of my shoulders. This does not look good on me, as my womanly shaping is not all that pronounced and wide shoulders make me look even less like a woman, or girl as I like to call myself.

Oh well, there are always birthdays and christmas.

This is what there’s left of the yarn, now what can I make of it?

During the trip

I took some knitting with me to Germany but then there was the yarn shop in Aachen and the old yarn didn’t seem that fancy anymore. I bought some thick and soft merino/polyacryl blend, a merino superwash (for socks) and three skeins of Regia Africa color in different colorways. I proved yet again that I am going through a blue phase

So I had this idea after a day in the youth hostel that I’d quickly knit some warm socks because I didn’t bring any, and the floors were darn cold. That’s what the blue chunky yarn was bought for. Excited as hell I started and it went so beautifully fast (what with all the *cough* boring *cough* lectures turning into great knitting time). Soon there was one

You see it there resting with its lone brother the green lopi sock and there’s a good reason for that. Once finished, it just didn’t seem that exciting anymore and I dunno, there was this big ugly hole where the gusset meets the instep and the color felt a bit dull and OH I just discovered that I don’t have a belt for one of the trousers I brought with me. Up came the Regia and happily I knitted until I had with a warm feeling in my heart watched the different colors pass by in one color repeat. I did not quit no, but happily I did not knit anymore. It was so freaking boring, but as I really needed the belt it did get finished and I could wear the trousers with the worlds strangest and probably most useless belt.

Then I though oh no, I’ve got to have something to keep me awake during lectures so a sock was started in another one of those Regia yarns. This one I love, both the yarn and the sock. I love it so much that I’m seriously considering making it my sockapaloooza sock. After all green is my pals favorite color.

Ok ok, I know people say you shouldn’t use busy yarns with busy patterns but I don’t care, I like it all the same. By the way there is a cable there in case you don’t see it. The pattern is the crooked cable sock from the sockbug and it’s great.

Before the trip

On a friday two weeks ago I made a trip to the pharmacy. That is the place where you get all sorts of weird stuff that nobody wants (or is allowed) to sell. I wanted food coloring and apparently it’s not sold in supermarkets here in Finland. After searching around with no luck I asked the sales lady if she spoke english and in true Finnish fashion she said “very badly”. They often say that even though it’s not at all true. I asked her about the food coloring but she just stared at me with no expression of understanding in her face, so I took the risk and said “ruokaväri?” which is literally “food color” in Finnish. Well, that’s what it’s called in Icelandic and English, so why not Finnish as well? She looked at me blankly for what felt like a really long time and I was getting really embarrassed. Then she walked slowly to a cupboard and took out a box full of tiny plastic containers and indeed it was da stuff. This she did without saying a word. That’s another thing they sometimes do here, they don’t haste and don’t necessarily have the need to communicate in words if they have understood you. She just gave it some quiet thought, reached a conclusion and acted. Very elegant but very uncomfortable for me who needs verbal verification. Now I know that its proper name in Finnish is karamelliväri.

So I got da stuff and it was expensive I tell you. One bottle of each color, each about 5 euros although the red was nearer to 6 euros for some obscure reason I don’t understand. They naturally expect that you’ll be using one grain of the powder each time so that it’s going to last you a lifetime, in which case 5 euros is definitely not that much. When you’re planning to dye some yarn though, one bottle per skein is about what you need!

So, what does a single girl do on a friday night? Exciting yarn dyeing of course.

and what does an obsessive compulsive personality do the next day? Some more dyeing… “just a little bit… even though I really should be packing for my trip tomorrow.”

This expensive red color was a total fraud as you can see. The plan was a gradation from bright red to light orange, but the red turned out PINK! And it’s twice as long as the other color sections. Oh well, you live you learn or however that goes.

I’m still rather happy with the results and I’m so going to do this again – it really is alot of fun. Maybe I’ll wait though, until I go to the States where I can buy some cool Kool-Aid. I bet it’s much less expensive than these snobby food colors. I did check supermarkets in Aachen, but all the food coloring there contained sugar so that was a no go unfortunately.

The green balls are some extra létt-Lopi I had lying around. I can see them turning into gloves. The freakish pink and orange ones are Lanett and they will definitely end up as Jaywalkers.

Home sweet home

I came back to Helsinki on friday evening after a really good trip. Really good trips are such that afterwards it feels really good to come back home and man, did it apply this time. After having to wake up at 7 every morning, sit through 48 hours of lectures, drinking bad coffee for two weeks (and alot of it to keep awake during the 48 hours of lectures), sharing a room at a youth hostel with three girls (which were very nice), sharing a few showers with the entire floor and staying up late sharing some beers with fellow physicists, it felt so amazingly good to get home, fall in my own bed, wake up the next morning, take a loooong shower and drink the long awaited double espresso from my lovely espresso machine that I love so much. And be alone. Aaaah.

But it was a good trip. I heard some interesting stuff during the lectures and got to know very nice people from near and far. Thanks to Cassie and her google skills I found a yarn shop in Aachen. The selection was very good, but I didn’t buy all that much. It’s difficult for me to buy yarn if I don’t have a specific project in mind. Some sock yarn got a new home though, along with bamboo needles. I figured that if I wanted to knit during lectures it would be a good idea to avoid clicky metal needles so people wouldn’t give me angry looks. And knitting got done, but I’ll save the details to tomorrow.

Today I’ve been hanging at home. Alone. I finished the second sleeve of the lopi lace sweater, wound some yarn into balls, tried to read up on a gazillion blog entries I’ve missed and was really happy when I updated my knitting related podcasts and saw that I have enough to last me for very long.

The other day I thought I had learned how to do a short row heel. Turns out I was completely wrong, I was just knitting a heel flap and picking up stitches for the gusset. I saw tonight a picture of a real short row heel and ooooo, must. try. soon.

One down, one to go

Yesterday I finished Lopi sock number one. The heel business worked out on the first try, but with the toe I had to frog several times to get it right and try different ways of finishing. After threading trough the remaining stitches and finding the toe too pointy, grafting the remaining stitches and finding the toe too square, I ended up doing a three needle castoff and being reasonably happy about it. Here’s a picture

and another one

They feel so nice and warm. I’m really looking forward to having the second sock. I am in fact so fascinated by the lopi socks that I am planning a second pair in my mind, which will be a bit different.

Isn’t it a bit annoying that we have pairs of all limbs?

Today I’m staying home. I finished making an exam for my poor students, and now I’m studying Finnish – which is a nice and fun change from what I usually do. I like learning languages, especially Finnish. It’s so different from everything else that it never becomes dull. I’m twisted enough to love studying grammar, and Finnish has a whole lot of complex grammar. I think it helps immensely that Icelandic grammar is also complex, so in most cases there are equivalent grammatical constructs in Icelandic. It is very difficult to learn grammar which doesn’t exist in your own language, because then it doesn’t really make any sense to you and you don’t have a feeling for when to use it.

I’m going to Germany on Sunday for two weeks. I’m attending a spring school at the Jülich research center, and will be staying in Aachen during the school. Am I lucky enough to have a reader who knows a good yarn shop in Aachen? It seems rather unlikely! Düsseldorf will also do, as I might check it out during the weekend.

Now, what knitting to take?