2nd Advent Sunday bauble

Here you go, your project for 2nd advent Sunday.

Happy knitting!!

1st Advent Sunday

 Here's the first advent sunday bauble, have fun.

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

Etsy market

This weekend I am exposing at the Etsy Made in NL market in the "kas" in Utrecht, so please come by if you want to buy something. Particularly the big objects will only be on sale on the market because they are too big to ship.

My exhibition on the market is actually a discussion-piece, I want to talk to people about "true prices", therefore I have developed a pricing label that first shows the material and labor (front side) and then shows the price on the back side. I hope that by presenting this way, people in the split second when they turn the label will think about the material and labor that went into the object, before they turn the label to see the price and conclude that that is very expensive. Actually these "true prices" is the real price of objects if we want to be good to the planet and people, they are made locally often with recycled materials.

(c) Knitbitch

(c) Knitbitch, table seen from the top

(c) Knitbitch, QR-code

(c) Knitbitch, pricing label

(c) Knitbitch, Broomstitch lace bag

(c) knitbitch, shopping net

(c) Knitbitch, kitchencloth

(c)Knitbitch, Lila and Agnes

(c) Knitbitch, christmassbaubles / Julekugler

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.