FOs

I have to admit, not all of these fingerless mitts were made recently. I knit quite a few last winter, but promptly forgot to photograph them. But better late than never - here are some of my latest fingerless mitts.

There are two pairs made with Gjestal Janne in charcoal grey. I got this yarn in a swap in November, and made plain k2, p2 and stockinette mitts with it. Very suitable yarn for mitts, and I'm hoping the yarn won't pill in use, either.

It's been a while since I've made Calorimetries - in fact it's been over four years since I knitted my last big batch of these funky headwarmers.

High time to make some new ones don't you think!

In March I made five Calorimetries with bulky yarn: talk about instant gratification! I also got to use some pretty buttons from my little button stash, which sees the light of day way too seldom.

Remember when I told you that items knitted with i-cord seem to be in after I saw them again and again at the H+H craft fair?

The funny thing is that's exactly how I knit a few weeks back!

This spring has been all about cowls. I've made so many! It's juyt the way knitting (or life, in fact) is for me - I get utterly and completely fascinated about something, devote my time to it almost exclusively... and at some point I'm through. I've seen it with shawls especially: in 2010 I knit one shawl after another - and after that I've hardly finished any!

So let's see how long it will take with the cowl enthusiasm to wear off. It's not gone, yet!

A while back I swapped some yarn with a friend, and obtained one of those balls of sock yarn that make you ask yourself "what was I thinking" as soon as you're home. I don't mean I don't like yellow, brown, white and blue as colours - but all of them in the same sock yarn? What was I thinking!

A friend of mine asked me to make her a pair of socks. She told me the size and her wishes, and added "they can be just as bright and multicoloured as you'd like".

Last year I tried my hand at making t-shirt yarn. You know the one where you cut old t-shirts into strips and pull these into thick "yarn"? I cut 4 t-shirts and an old tricot shirt of mine and worked these into yarn. They "marinated" in my stash for a while, until a few weeks back I decided to see if I could crochet little baskets of them.

In 2011 I knit a lot of scarves for charity. In spring, I learned a new stitch, the "half patent" as it is called in Germany and I guess it's called brioche stitch in English. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Anyhow, I got bitten by the scarf bug and I made scarf after scarf with this new stitch, plowing through my stash of woolen, warm yarns in different weights. Last year I had donated some scarves and hats to the homeless in a nearby city, and exactly these homeless people I had in mind right from the beginning.

Umm... socks for homeless animals? Well, it's not what you think. In fact, the animals won't be wearing the socks, instead they will be sold and the profits will go to the homeless animals.

These yarns were donated to me by the animal shelter to work them into socks. So that's what I did. The purple pair is about size 36-37, and was knit with 60 stitches across with using the Rinsessa stitch.

Remember my 17 mice from last year? Well, I made 8 more this year! They are selling so well that I may have to make a few more soon.

I used one ball of handdyed-with-KoolAid Marks&Kattens Eco Ull for these mice. They were all knit on 6mm needles. I made them all smaller than the original instructions call for, as my gauge is much bigger.