The crazy year that is 2013

Hello dear blogging friends! Despite the fact that I *was* planning on spending less time blogging, I didn't expect to write my first post of 2013 in November.... even I will admit that is a bit late! I'm not sure if anyone still hangs out around here or sees this in their feed, if you do, thank you so much for your loyalty!

Either way, let me tell you about a few things that have happened this year so far. Last Winter my big obsession were freeform crochet hats and whilst I am spending my time doing other things again as well, I still do love making those hats and have plenty of them that still need to be photographed and listed!

Late last year at some point I also finally finished my beekeeper's quilt, but after having used it a few days my worries came true and the knots just didn't keep the whole blanket together. It was rather devastating after having spent so much time on it, but I did start sewing the hexis together individually on all seams. I'm at this point about half way done and am fully intending to finish within the next few months. Although I can't say it's been a massive priority, as it is currently usable, just a few more seams to go the other direction, so not too bad.

Well, the really big thing this year has been that I got married to the best guy ever, my best friend and partner of 9 years! We had a lovely weekend of celebrations in my home country of Switzerland, followed by a cute little honeymoon in Paris. We were lucky to have some of our very closest friends come join us, despite lots of travel involved for some. We had friends from so many nations united, off the top of my head we had the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Austria, the US, the Netherlands and Japan in attendance. Not bad for a group of 30 guests! :)

So yes, it's been a pretty eventful year for us already and there is more to come yet!

The Beekeeper's quilt

If you have spent any time on ravelry recently, you have probably encountered the beekeeper's quilt somewhere along the road...
The pattern has only been around for a few short months, but the ingenuity of not having to line a throw, being able to use up leftover sock scraps and having the gratification of having tiny little finished objects all the time must have helped to make this pattern a bit of a phenomenon!
This picture is off her blog, I hope Stephanie can forgive me for 'borrowing' it. :) Most yarns in the original are koigu, a yarn that is quite hard to find in the UK and if you do, don't forget to empty your savings account beforehand because you will need it! I can't quite justify the expense, so will mainly be working with my own hand dyed sock yarns and leftovers from my sock knitting.

This pattern actually came at the exact right time for me as I have amassed quite a stash of sock yarns, but have finally realised that I am really not much of a sock knitter, or at least that I have knitted all the patterns I wanted to try out (my running total of finished pairs of socks is approaching two dozen). Either way, I have already started picking whole skeins out of my stash and will probably add a few mini skein sets to my etsy shop to make good use out of the rest of it. :) If anybody wants to do some swapping, I'd most likely be up for that as well!

Anyway, here is my current progress of yet to be stuffed little hexipuffs, as those little cuties are called. I've been using up some Noro sock yarn as well and will be using some thin handspun later on. Considering I only started four days ago I'm not doing too badly. ;) Is anybody else knitting one?

Handspun shrug

I started knitting a little shrug with one of my handspun yarns, the style is a thin textured single, something I spin quite a lot for the shop, but also for my personal use. :) I dyed some organic Merino wool in different shades of yellow and carded it up with undyed Merino wool, white linen, some silk and silk noil and a dash of golden Angelina sparkle. I hope the yarn will be enough for the main part of this shrug and then I'll spin a complementary yarn for the ribbing around it. More details on my Ravelry page. The pattern is from Drops, who I really like for their versatile free patterns and their yarns are very reasonably priced as well, although I haven't yet worked with any of it.
I really like how it is coming along so far, it's a great pattern for handspun yarns!

The last picture is from the Drops page, just to give you an idea of how it should look in the end. :)
Of course mine is a little chunkier and nice and yellow!

Star decrease hat knitting pattern

Here is another pattern, just a simple hat with a nice looking decrease. :)

Ravelry link or you can download now

I've used it on a few hats, especially some of my handspun ones and it's always turned out nice and cuddly. :D

Venturing into knitting patterns

It has finally happened! I have been meaning to write and upload a few of my own knitting patterns for a while now and today I have finally taken the first step by uploading my very classic cabled wrist warmer pattern to Ravelry.
They are called 'Single cable wrist warmers', yeah, I'm original, haha. (Ravelry link)


...and it's all rather exciting! I've got a few more lined up, including freebies. :D

Most of them will be wrist warmers, with some other accessories thrown in - I'll have to take this slowly, lol.

Handspun button sweater WIP

After being so busy preparing for my recent craft fair, I have really been enjoying the calm last few days. I even finally started knitting a cardigan from my handspun Merino/silk singles (The type often appearing in my shop as well). The pattern I am basing it on is the button sweater by 'Oh my stars', a design I have been meaning to try out for ages. It is a top down raglan with a wide button band. The colours on this picture seem a bit washed out as you can mainly just see the shinyness of the silk... I will get some better pictures after more progress. As I am making it up as I go, there are already a few things I would do differently to improve fit, but I kept going as I plan on knitting another raglan in this style eventually anyway...

By coincidence (ok, not really, I just buy a lot of handmade buttons) I already have some lovely ceramic buttons that would go brilliantly with this sweater! http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=9226423

Fight the WIPs!

How many different projects do knitters and crafters always have going on at the same time? I am definitely no exception and I am currently vowing to fight the WIPs (works in progress).
First of all, I don't just knit and spin (although that would certainly already take up enough of my spare time!), but I also dabble in various sewing projects. I keep seeing (and buying) beautiful fabrics, but somehow I never get around to finish anything. Somehow I ended up with a huge stash of fabrics and have now decided that I should really start working through them instead of buying more all the time. One of my purchases last year was an autumnal jelly roll from uberstitch on etsy. On the left you can see how that is coming along now, I finally made a big dent into the progress of this simple quilt!

My current knitting project are my latvian mittens and I have almost finished the first one! Ravelry Ravelry link.

And then, let's not forget my sweet little striped cardigan, the eternal WIP. Ravelry link.

Well, either way, I am trying really hard not to get side tracked in this endeavor and hopefully it will result in a few new pieces of clothing and a bit less in my stash dresser. :P

Latvian mittens

What happened? Well, quite a bit, actually.
For a start there was my birthday on the 2.2., in February I had a range of guests over for various reasons, I also finally wound my 700g of latvian wool into balls by hand instead of getting a yarn winder, started knitting an adorable pair of mittens from the book latvian mittens, which is simply amazing. It features such a variety of charts and instructions that you are bound to mix and match your favourite mitten pattern. In other news, I rediscovered my sewing machine once again and am sewing my way towards a full-sized quilt in autumnal colours (I know, wrong season, but by the time I am done it might well be autumn in 5 years time....). The fabric is from a jelly roll I bought on etsy a good while ago. :P

Spinning.... yeah, sometimes... not as much as usual though.

The very first hand dyed sock yarns. :D

Remember the white sock yarns I recently ordered? Well, it so happened that I had to get started immediately and so I mixed up some pretty colours in one of my favourite colour ranges: rainbow. :D
I started with 4 skeins, as I didn't want to mess up too many at once, but they turned out just perfectly! I greedily grabbed the least perfect one and started knitting the toe-up sock pattern 'brainless'. So far the yarn is knitting up in small stripes, which I love. One skein is also available in my shop and hopefully many more will soon be joining it. In an attempt to update my ravelry page I added this style there as well under my yarn category, but there is so much more to be done over there yet... I'd rather be knitting this sock, lol.

The new knitty is up!

This morning I just had a random look at knitty and found that the Spring 2009 edition is up!
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEspring09/index.php

To my delight there are at least two things I really want to knit. One is a lace cardigan called Decimal (I love lace cardigans, it's almost the only thing I knit and this pattern is really quite interesting) the other is Aeolian, a really stunning lace shawl. The lace shawl has been knitted from handspun yarn, and although it is a lot of yardage, I might actually spin it myself. I would do the handspun medium size, as I think it has a really nice length to it.
Decimal I could probably knit from some yarn I already have for a different cardigan.... Can't wait to start!

Some of the socks are nice too, but I still got so many other sock patterns to make.

Have you got any favourites?

The new wrist warmers have arrived

Finally I have gotten around to finishing these handspun soy silk wrist warmers I had sitting around for a few weeks, almost finished, but not quite. Well, I think it was worth the wait, as I am delighted with how they turned out. So far there are three different pairs, one with the black patterned pure silk fabric below, one with my favourite ever pure silk fabric in a light pink and purple design with teal and one with a cute brown polka dot fabric.
I have also worked on another one of my original fingerless glove designs, which is a variation of 'circles', only a little better, of course. ;) To fulfil the brief I found some commercial pure Merino yarn which comes in the prettiest colours. Below is the brightest one in rainbow, but I also bought this yarn in dark purple, dark reds and earth tones. I don't know what it is, I am generally very much into a more glamourous style, which shows in my designs, but sometimes I have this little twitch that will make me choose the brightest yarn or fabric possible and create items fit for matching a box of crayons.
The purple wrist warmers also turned out nicely btw, but sadly the pictures did not.Of course I have also been spinning, most recently 'Le boudoir', a Merino and Tussah silk yarn with pearl beads. Drying right now are also a few pure linen yarns and I am planning a few scrap yarns soon as I need to use up some of those little bits of hand dyed fibre.
Oh, plus I have finally taken the plunge and bought some polymer clay whilst I was in Munich and have started sculpting some beads for my yarns. One of the project I had in my sketch book for ages includes little comic style bones, and that is what I have mainly been sculpting so far.

Beads and sequins

Beads and sequins
Originally uploaded by snowberrylime

Well, well, well.....
I went for some shopping and a ravelry knitting meet-up to Heidelberg and we went to this lovely shop which is sadly closing down. I managed to get some really great beads and sequins which I am sure to find a good use in a yarn for.
In the front are some absolutely stunning real mother of pearl thick but tiny beads.

Yesterday I also got lots of tweed and other wool fabrics, we'll see if they end up being bags or yarns. :P

Ravelry!

bumble bee 2
Originally uploaded by snowberrylime

Finally my invite came from ravelry! If you're on there too give me a shout, my name is there as well as everywhere else 'Snowberrylime'. It's far better than I had hoped, and I am already keeping myself busy adding my stash and needles - such a handy tool!

Today's featured yarn is a brand new art yarn, made from soft hand dyed merino. It's a 2ply with lots of added coils and plenty of little bee buttons. :)