Advent Sunday christmas-balls

Some of you might know that some years ago, I published a knitting pattern for a very nice, but also very advanced numbered advent calendar. The idea was knitting one bauble a day through out December, obviously a highly ambitious plan.

I still like to idea of celebrating the milestones of December with a knitted bauble, so here is the new project; one bauble a week-plan. A much more achievable plan. Yeah! And if you download the single pattern every Sunday, then the pattern is for free.

What is very special about these yulekugler is that I have finished the top and bottom using the technique from a fair isle tam. This created a kind of star at the top and bottom, that is a little bit difficult to knit fair-isle with so little stitches, but I think its really worth it. It makes the baubles look much more fully decorated rather than just having a decorated band around the middle.

This is the teaser, the announcement, I will publish the patterns every Sunday this year, so you have something to look forward to. Just get those knitting needles ready, and order your yarn, you will need:

Red, white, dark blue, light blue, forest green and a tiny little bit of yellow for highlights. all in sock yarn. knitting needles size 3mm and some filling, I like to work with polystereen balls 8cm diameter, others prefer a soft filling. The godfathers of christmas balls: Arne & Carlos recommend wool filling.

See you on 29th of November 

I will also publish the pattern in my Ravelry shop in its interity for a very friendly price.

 

The cow and the reptile

Finally finished object: Cow sweater for my niece. She commissioned this sweater when she turned 18, it should be a look-alike to a sweater she loved as a kid, and it took me just 2,5 years to knit it..... why? Because I took some side-tracks in-between and knitted some other easier projects, because this was a hard one. I had forgotten a bit how tiresome it is to do this kind of color-blocking work were you need to twist the two colours of yarn on the backside, and you need to deal with the mess of 7-10 yarn balls getting completely tangled up. But hey I managed! Hehe.

So it’s me to the left (the reptile or dinosaur, whichever you like) wearing my COS sweater and my niece to the right wearing her cow-sweater that I knitted. 

I developed the pattern myself. The nice thing about knitting is that you can approach it just like a pixel painting. So basically I just used some checkered paper and the tried to make a drawing looking like a cows spots, asymmetric and irregular.

Here came then also the difficulty of the knit. Because of the complete irregularity and randomness of the pattern you need to look and count on every single row. It’s not a knit to relax with, it actually requires high concentration.

I used twisted rib on the edges, I just love the twisted rib, because it gives such a nice definition, on the neckline I made a double folded edge, I love the puffyness it creates, opposed the the flatness of the single layer.

The beloved sweater from 15 years earlier

Sketch

From when I just started and had not realized yet I would need to toggle 7-10 yarn-balls simultanously

Mega knit lounge boy

This is the third incarnation of this material. In this incarnation it has become a low lounge pouf or fat boy. The fat yarn is a knitted i-cord that I knitted appx. 10 years ago, when I first crocheted the mega crochet pouf. What happend was that I found some left-over yarn, and as the pouf couldn't become much bigger, I had to think of another object. My husband liked very much to sit on the pouf but was missing back-support, hence I thought to re-knit it into a twisted cube, so that the long side would function as a back-support.

the lazy leaning pouf with some back support

Close-up of the texture, where you can see the knitted i-cord

Staircase for size

Me holding the mega yarn ball

knitting on needle size 35mm, too loose texture

Knitting on needle size 12, too tight texture

knitting on needle size 25, perfect texture

Second incarnation, the mega crochet pouf from 2007

The first incarnation of this material, a jacket probably knitted in 1992

The Steve McQueen cardigan

This sweater once was featured in the Volkskrant magazine, and my hubby immediately shouted; This is what I want! It took a while to find suitable yearn, it has to have body to not be too feminine, yet on the other itchy yarn; nonono. Finally last summer in Norway we found the lovely Rauma Tumi yarn, 50% wool, 50% alpaca, just perfect for the project.

first of course quite some work went into figuring out the stitch as well as figuring out how the switch from band to body was done. Quite opposite the normal way of knitting I ended up decreasing stitches from band to body to make the stitch -pattern work.
Also spend quite some effort on getting those fully fashioned details that I love so much. Eventually I love how the shoulder is looking. I decreased 3 stitches at the time in a sort of cable way. Looks fantastic, but I must say it's a little too narrow, so the sweater tends to pull backwards a bit.

By now I have also put on elbow patches (no pictures)
My hubby loves this cardigan so much, he's wearing it all the time. I think I'll have to make another one, just like this one when it's worn out.

Twisted rib cables

Recently I have been finishing some odd skeins by making twisted rib yoga-socks and finger-less gloves. This was great way to try out a new stitch. I must say I really like this stitch, it gives good texture to the cable.

I first tried the yoga-socks by Twisted Fiber Design. This first try was with a frogged acrylic yarn I had once got from my mum with a slight fading. Not a super quality but good enough for a first try, however as you see the cables don't stand out very well. My sister has now nicked these leg-warmers, perfect for pilates she said.

First try in an acrylic fade, cables don't stand out every well here

For the fingerless gloves I had even less yarn so they became just big enough to cover the hand, though I did manage to insert a wedge for the thumb. This yarn was from a frogged collar from Margriet's sweater. So now she has got matching gloves. The stitch works much better in this yarn which has much more definition.

the stitch works much better in this yarn

Last try was in a light purple acrylic, this yarn has more body so the stitch stands out very well. Generally I find that the twist makes the cable stand out much better than a regular cable.

Leg warmers for a young girl who was very happy with these for her gym-lessons,
and she has got the matching light purple bag

Snow covered fir tree yulekugle

I knitted this yulekugle whilst we where on a delayed autumn holiday in the Vosges Mountains in France. In fact we where so late that we experienced some of the seasons first snow, which was beautiful.
I had seen these beautiful fair isle mittens by Ysolha where the top had been finished using the technique from a fair isle tam. I thought it would be nice to try that on the top and bottom of the yulekugle because I always find it difficult to make a nice top and bottom.
Also partly because I forgot to bring my sock needles I decided to knit using a magic loop, which I have never done before. I must say it really works fantastic, much less hassle especially with this fair isle tam finishing.

snow covered fir trees yulekugle with fair isle tam top and bottom

so whilst you are here, why don't you take a look at my amazing (saying it myself) numbered advent calendar yulekugler that I knitted for my mum a couple of years back.

Black mega flower crochet rug

This black flower-bed rug is made of t-shirt yarn and crocheted on needle size 12.

This project started out with a pile of old t-shirts and a vague idea of turning that into yarn and making something out of it. The original idea was a supersize ninja-rabbit (no photo) but that didn't work out so well partly because the yarn was too heavy and it was hard to figure out what to fill the rabbit with. Also I had second thoughts about having a supersize ninja-rabbit in my living room.

So I thought about it for some years, perhaps 3. I have always wanted to make unusual rugs. I had looked a lot at these doilies for inspiration but it sort of just didn't seem inspiring at all. Suddenly one day it occurred to me to just make these rosettes with leaves and attach them to each-other. In the first instance I had imagined the rosettes to turn out much bigger and there would have been less of them, but in the end it became this rug with multiple rosettes.

It is really easy to make, you just take (or make) t-shirt yarn and crochet rosettes. I used a classic rosette pattern, but then making 5 petals. Whenever the amount of yarn I allowed I attached a leave to the rosette. There are many different kind of leaves, I settled on the simplest possible leave. So I crocheted several supersize rosettes and leaves and then assembled them together.  According to my husband I should make the rug 2-3 times bigger, but the yarn is all used now.

The material: the rug is made of t-shirt yarn, appx half of it is made of my old t-shirts that i have literally cut into strip with a scissor. For appx the other half I have used one cone zpaghetti, one cone of unbranded t-shirt yarn. Due to this mix of materials the rug has a natural uneven black color.

The rug is oval measures appx 100x120 cm and weighs around 3 kilos.

It is now for sale in my Etsy shop.

Broomstitch lace tote bag

Here is the latest from the broom stitch lace tote bag series.
The material I'm using is a Industrial leftover material from Verosol. It's a curtain cord, quite hard spun, so it also twists a bit. We are a little group of crafters that got this Verosol donation and we have been exploring what products could be made with this. You can read more about that here.
This time I have done an unusual color combo. Out of necessity actually. Beige was finished and the only other colour I had available was the yellow, as I have moved all of the Verosol stash to a storage.
I like the beige, because it looks a bit like straw but it has a much nicer shine, and it turns out to work really nice with the sunny yellow.

This bag is now for sale in my Etsy shop.

Synth Green Art Walk Cardi

Finally when I saw a picture the Art Walk Cardi by Hannah FettigI knew what to make with the yarn from my half unraveled synthetic green sweater from the 80's. I had come a long way of endless swatching in search of a nice stitch that would work with this yarn and colour. Seed stitch variations turned out either too vintage, old-fashioned or boring to work with the colour. More textured swatching made the fabric look like a forest or lawn. Now here was something (the Art Walk Cardi) in a super simple texture stitch which just worked perfect.

Synth Green Art Walk Cardi by Knitbitch

I admit I totally copy catted it. To buy the pattern on Ravelry I had to buy an e-book with a total of 13 patterns, so I simply looked at the pictures and played it by "ear" or in this case rather eye. Also I decided to just finish all the yarn, so the Cardi became a bit longer. The cropped version looks younger and fresher, but this longer version probably fits my figure better.

Synth Green Art Walk Cardi by Knitbitch

Synth Green Art Walk Cardi by Knitbitch

this is my sweater from the 80's that I unravelled

Mosaic knit mini towels

The one small trip to the home country and I come back home with 3 bags of donations. Which really is just yarn stash that somebody else doesn't know what to do with. You can check my Ravelry there is some of this stash that I'm happy to swap or even just give away.

So figured some of this stash could be gifted back to the giver in the form of mini-towels, so I knitted some using mosaic knitting technique. Always wanted to try mosaic knitting by hand. Once in a previous life I did do slip stitching on the knitting machine.

It's really a wonderful way of knitting, so much more easy than real intarsia or fair-isle. The Bible of mosaic knitting is of course by Barbara G. walker. For these towels I used the free pattern and instructions by Purlsoho. I added a couple of variations myself inspired by a Danish kitchen cloth FB group. Particularly nice I think is the detail of the attached i-cord edging and the strap that I made using Purlsoho instructions. Not so easy. Honest is honest I have to watch the instruction video every time.

Goodbye Ally mini-mi

Unfortunately Ally has decided to leave us. As a goodbye gift I crafted a mini-me in her "tenue du travail" wearing some important bling brand assets such as the shield and a golden mean necklace.

Goodiebag

i crocheted this bag  to use for a birthday gift of delicacies, instead of the traditional basket. It could just about hide a bottle of wine. It was a quick weekend project. I used the thickest cord out of the "leftovers from Industry" curtain cord. That calls for hook size 8mm.

Goodiebag by The Knitbitch

Upcycle kitchen cloth

1350 gr of cotton stash, leftovers, recycled yarn, abandoned projects and yarn from the thrift shop has been turned into 37 kitchen cloths. Already given some away. My little effort to limit micro plastic washing into the oceans. Still plenty of ends to weave in, for a rainy Sunday. There is a very nice Danish Facebook group called "vi strikker vores kareklude selv".