Happy New Year!

Some of the snow is still here and it seems the beginning of the new year will be cold here. I hope you'll have a nice New Year's Ewe.

"A Year in Socks" on display

The 12 pairs of socks I've knit for my sock pattern collection A Year in Socks (Etsy | Ravelry) can currently be seen in an exhibition on the library in Vinderup, western part of Denmark. You can find information about it here on the library's website.

I'll also take part in an event for knitters in the same library on January 16th where I am to talk about how to use the Internet as a source of inspiration, help, social networking, etc. related to knitting. I'm told that there will also be talks on the life and knits of Elizabeth Zimmermann and a case story about a Lithuanian sock - and plenty of time for any knitters that may show up to knit and talk about knitting.

I hope you had a lovely one

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day came and went with no time for blogging, and thus no time for wishing you a Merry Christmas in time. I'll wish you a belated Merry Christmas with a photo of our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and I do hope you had a lovely one!

Safe trip!

Today - only this...

Not even the snow could stop me...

Almost ready for Christmas!

I went into town today to buy the last Christmas presents. All done now :)

I forgot to shoot any photos of the city dressed in snow and Christmas lights, but I found this photo set on Flickr - quite interesting to see what Copenhagen looked like in the winter time approx. 100 years ago.

Kalenderlys

On films and Christmas shopping...

I just watched The Queen - my favourite kind of film.

Today we finished most of the Christmas shopping in less than two hours - only two more presents to buy on Monday...

I hope you have a nice weekend :)

Not just an ordinary Friday

With Obama just arrived about 10 km from here despite the (to some people, who seem to be surprised by it every year, extraordinarily) snowy and windy weather which has caused our Christmas tree to tilt, and reporters trying their hardest to repeat themselves as many times as possible on every aspect of the COP 15 conference, I'm having a much more calm day winding many meters of red yarn on my yarn winder, planning even more new projects (including this stranded vest), knitting a bit, listening to my Italian Linguaphone course, writing the last few Christmas cards, and preparing myself for this week's much anticipated event: the Christmas dinner thrown by my dear boyfriend's employer at one of the top gourmet restaurants in Copenhagen - this year the one-Michelin-star Kong Hans. Yum! Here's hoping that neither demonstrators nor Secret Service will prevent us from arriving there later today! :)

FO: Center Square Hat - no. 4

Back in the early days of blogging, I knit this hat pattern a total of three times: at first one for Peter, then an attempt at one for myself which ended up too small for me but fit my friend Karen, and then another, larger one for me. Then, earlier this year, Peter went and lost his old one at a football match in Parken.
I don't have a very large grey stash (and that's a mistake I can tell you! ;)) and Peter is very afraid of girly colours, so these two were the best I could find in my stash.

It's knit on needles 4.5 mm with 3 strands of Noda Junik held together for a very tight fabric.

Very keen observers may notice that I have skipped one row in the stitch pattern on all four hats; at first it was a mistake I didn't notice, and then the geek in me liked how it looks like the schematic representation of either sugar molecules or benzene rings and kept it that way... :)

Time flies in good company...

Adorable miniature pointsettas...

Today, I've been watching Christmas TV series (Jul På Slottet), baking, cooking, cooking, cooking, knitting a bit, watching detective stories on TV, and observing the snow falling again after it melted away last night.

I hope you had a nice day :)

Swatches

I just wanted to show you two swatches - the top one is the one for Arietta, which I wrote about a couple of days ago. I wish the colours were more true here, but you can at least get an idea. I linked to the actual colours in the aforementioned post if you're interested...

The other one is for a very recently started project: the Asymmetrical Cardigan, which will be my sixth project from Norah Gaughan's fabulous book Knitting Nature. My mum made a beautiful tomato-red version a while ago, and it's just great, so I'm confident this one will be a success, too. I'm knitting it a bit more chunky than in the book; using New Lanark Aran (such a great yarn! Try it! The colours are gorgeous! this one is called Iris, but Blueberry is just as pretty) I get a gauge of 16 sts per 4 inches rather than the 18 it should be. Therefore, I'm knitting size extra-petite, i.e. I'm knitting a size that is just as much smaller than size petite as small is larger than petite (well, it makes sense to me...). I've already finished one and a bit of the front pieces - it's a speedy knit. I should be knitting Christmas presents, but this is such a great project I can't put it down!

10 days to Christmas

Tomorrow is baking day. Yum and yum! :) The latter - brunkager - is a classic, which I know works (although I'm using a slightly different recipe from one of my favourite recipe books); the former - the Tuscan panforte - is something I've only ever bought pre-made. Let's see how that works out...

New sweaters on the needles

I participated in NaKniSweMoDo09 (National Knit a Sweater a Month Dodecathon 2009) this year. Although, I'm only likely to finish 11 within 2009, I'm absolutely ready for a similar challenge next year, IntKniSweMoDo10.

WIPs and UFOs also count in the challenge, and I will have a few of those come January 1st. Granite and Kingscot have been lingering for a while now, but they are both incredibly nice sweaters, so I'm sure they will be done eventually.

Of more recent projects (cast-on and swatched, respectively, within the last week) I have Helga Isager's Sweater i tofarvet patent from the book Strikketøj (see really poor photo above for an idea) and then I discovered a cardigan in an old Knitty called Arietta. It looks like stranded knitting, but it really is a mosaic pattern with only one colour per row - very nice! I swatched with three different beautiful colours of Holst Garn, one from Noda, and one from BC garn. It looks really nice - and washing did wonders to the swatch! The thinner yarn gives more stitches per 10 cm, but I think I can make it work with size M. I'm looking forward to some more knitting in the new year, when all secret gift knitting is done...!

Goodnight

I've been so tired - even too tired to knit! - for the past two days. Guess that comes with finally having time off? I hope I'll be ready to do some knitting and enjoy the time off tomorrow, though. More then.

Inspiration

Sorry, no post yesterday. I was too busy celebrating my acquired MScEng degree! It was a day full of celebrations, a quite overwhelming amount of presents from the many dear friends and family I invited, and a jolly good time! Once again, we proved that our modest flat can easily have room for a party of 32 people - and a baby :)

Today, I'm a bit tired, but managed to attend a 1.5-hour meeting with my two (future) main PhD supervisors. It all sounds very exciting, but for now I'm a bit more excited with the fact that I have another 23 days of Christmas holidays - with plenty of time for knitting! :)

And now for something actually related to knitting!

This being a knitting blog, there is one of the presents I want to share with you: my mum gave me this intriguing book for by birthday this past Tuesday: Stickning - Ett hantverk att utveckla by Britt-Marie Christoffersson.

It's in Swedish, and loaded with inspiration. You can see some of the fascinating knitting Britt-Marie Christoffersson does in this photo set from a fellow Danish blogger, Lise, who shot these photos when Britt-Marie presented her exhibition (I think it was) in Silkeborg, DK. These samples and sweaters and many more are shown in the book along with instructions on how to knit them. So very inspiring! I'd recommend this one for your wish list ;)

The end is nigh...

At first - Thank you for all the nice birthday wishes yesterday!

Secondly, tomorrow is the day! The end of five and a half years of studies to become a Master of Science and Engineering in Biotechnology - also known as cand. polyt. or 'civilingeniør i bioteknologi' in Danish - is nigh! Tomorrow at 10 AM I'll start my 20-minute presentation and after a bit more than half an hour of questions from the examiners, I will (hopefully, well, most likely) be able to call myself by the above titles. Can you tell I'm excited?!

December 8th -

- will always be a special date for me. Today is my birthday :)

Nothing much to report...

I've been very busy shopping for my graduation party on Thursday all day - along with going to an appointment at the dentist and looking at new specs I can't afford :P

Now I'm really really tired, and tomorrow is a special day...

The view

We're so lucky as to have the common Christmas tree right outside our windows. It's beautiful with all its lights and the star there in the dark.

(This photo wasn't shot today where the weather is a bit more gloomy, but this was how it looked some time last week...)

Christmas TV nostalgia

I've spent several hours today watching the Christmas TV series (julekalender) of my childhood - and before then - at DR's (the Danish national broadcast channel) website; they've provided access to the archives on the site called Bonanza, and now some of Christmas TV series are on a special Christmas site. Oh, there are some of my favourites in there: Jul På Slottet, Nissebanden, and Vinterbyøster.

The link is probably only interesting to Danes, as it is all - of course - in Danish :)

Clara III

Today's post features another FO: my absolute favourite when it comes to baby girl handknit items - and the third I've knit this year - Clara. This one is for the same little girl who got the first one I knit; her mother was brave enough to request another now that the little girl had grown out of the old one and worn it a lot. Well, here it is! I love how the mixture of a pink yarn and an orange one gives such a vibrant colour :)

Info:

Pattern: Clara by Karin Vestergaard Mathiesen
Yarn: some soft and smooth orange wool bought at Henrichsens Uldspinderi (600m/100g) and some single-ply wool bought at Lystbækgaard. The single-ply makes the vest twist a bit, but I don't mind.
Needles: 4.5 mm to make it larger that the 6-12 month sizes it's given in (CO 110 sts).
Size: Well, something like 1-2 years - I'm not that good at baby sizes, but this should be quite large for its recipient who is approx. 9 months old.

Raveled here.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of knitting this pattern. There's the stockinette part in the beginning if you need some easy knitting, and then when you reach the yoke you're almost done and the lace pattern flies off the needles... Well, almost. And the result is great! :)

Shooooes!

Thank you for all the overwhelming comments on the cabled sweater dress - they make me very happy! :)

Today's post is going to quite a lot briefer, but I just wanted to show you my most recent acquisition in the Camper department, because I find them too gorgeous not to share! They are my... uhm... 11th pair of Camper shoes... But then about every other pair of shoes I have are Camper's!

You can find them online here. I must say that I paid considerably less for mine - possibly because they were bought in London - the only thing I could afford in New Bond Street! ;) - and not in Denmark, nor online. I've had that same experience about prices on this particular brand of shoes before :)

Cabled Sweater Dress for Winter

I have so been looking forward to showing you this one!

It's my new and very own cabled sweater dress:

Complete with waist shaping and a saddle shoulder construction where the sleeve cable continues onto the shoulder and the centre back cable continues on the extra rows knit in the neck to create back and front round the neckline.

I started this back in September and didn't really knit much on it until the weather started getting colder and I couldn't wait to wear it - the final enticement was that I wanted to wear it on our 4-days-in-London-where-we-bring-hand-luggage-only-and-must-have-room-for-heaps-of-shopping-anyway trip in the middle of November. The photos are indeed shot at Exchange Square in London, where we happened to pass by a not too crowded place, perfect for a photo shoot.

I wanted to give it a name (as I made it up myself, it doesn't come with a name), and initially thought of Newton, because, like Isaac Newton, I stood on the shoulders of giants for this one: Kim Hargreaves, Helga Isager, and Marianne Isager for design ideas, and not least Elizabeth Zimmermann for the ingenious saddle shoulder construction. Then again, Newton sounds more like the SI unit of force than a cabled sweater dress, doesn't it? :)

This may very well have become my favourite piece of clothing for this (and the next) winter!

Info:
Pattern: my own, but with no intention of publishing, at least not at the moment; if you want to make something similar, but with a less ingenious shoulder construction (if I do say so myself...) I'd suggest Aaren by Kim Hargreaves
Size: mine, that'll be a small/34" bust
Yarn: Cushendale Woollen Mills DK, almost 6 skeins, colourway Wine, bought online at The Yarn Room
Needle size: 4.5 mm
Raveled here - with many more photos!

NaBloPoMo

= National Blog Posting Month.

That's what I'll try to have in December: a blog post a day!
I've been wanting to do something like that for some time now, and as I handed in my MSc thesis today and is not starting of the PhD until January 4th, I now have plenty of time on my hands for Christmas shopping, Christmas preparations, knitting, gift knitting, cleaning, cooking, celebrating my Master's degree after the defense on the 10th - and blogging... :)

I'm looking forward to posting tomorrow :)