Almost a year has gone by!

Not much going on in my blog this past year I´m afraid. Why? There have been a lot of other activities and I have sort of not been inspired to post. Also, I have not been knitting all that much. I am not going to dwell on this - just state that I just did not have much blog luster this past year.So how about knitting? I have actually done some knitting, but haven't publish

ed any of it. So I am not going to try remember what I´ve made, but go straight to what I´ve knitted these past weeks. This is it:

In the norwegian yarn from Garnstudio - Eskimo, I have knitted a cardigan for myself. I did not use any pattern, but made a top-down construction so that I could try on as I knitted to figure out the right shaping. I knitted on 6 mm needles, witch is a bit small needles for this yarn. That makes the cardigan very compact and a bit heavy I´m afraid. I did it this way because I have experienced this yarn to not look good after some use. It is extremely warm, so it is nice to put on when I am cold. I have done a crochet edging and made loops for buttons. Also on the arms.

My next garment is also a cardigan for me. It is a Kim Hargreaves design from her book Amber. The design is named Beth, and it is an A-line coat in double moss stitch. Knitting this I used the yarn suggested in the pattern - Rowan Big Wool. Actually I frogged a sweater I made in December  2006 that I pictured here. It was not a good design for me - too big and it looked awful on me. But I did not have enough yarn to make the cardigan so I made shorter arms. I would have liked them to be longer because it looks better, but it is very practical to have the shorter arms.

I also have finished finger mittens for my daughter, and for myself. I used the book "the knitters handy book of patterns to make them. For my daughters mittens I used my handpainted yarn that I have for sale in my shop Spinnulla. And for the adult mittens I used Baby Llama yarn from Mirasol. The adult mittens  was knitted with my own addjusted pattern.

Also I made "blånissevotter" - blue felted mittens for my daughter. And since she was in the bath tub trying out her new swimsuit when I wanted to take a picture, that gives a really odd situation for wearing mittens.

My sister gave birth to a baby girl a few weeks ago, so now I have been inspired to do some baby knits. First was a pair of booties, pictured together with the purple cardigan.

And just recently I finished the fames Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern Baby surprise Jacket in my handpainted yarn. And on my needles right now is a matching hat.

Oh, yes, right! It is once again that time of year when we are decorating with yellow.

Knitting and glutenfree bakeing

By now you should think I had finished quite a lot of projects, but unfortunately I did not. I finished my handspun socks a while ago that is on display in my spinning-blog, and I started on a knitted dress for my daughter in a new yarn named Føn from Gjestal in bamboo/cotton yarn.

When I had reached the waist my daughter asked me what it was. Then I told her it was going to be a dress for her, expecting her to be happy. But her response was: "Mom...I would like it to be a skirt, because I want a skirt..." Oh well....I guess I will have to make it into a skirt then. So now I have been thinking about how to knit the waist. And I just think have found a solution for it. I will do some experimenting and show off the outcome later on.


Todays good knitting-news is that we now have 50% knitters in our home, because my daughter has learned how to knit. She is doing very well I think and I am mighty proud of her (off course). She wanted to knit a skirt for her doll Fia. So we picked out a fun yarn from Lornas Laces that I had in my stash and started on a easy square. I did some rows in between so that she would not lose her motivation. And then I added a row of k2tog, yo before casting off. When I told my daughter she needed to make one more for the back, she said to me: "Mommy, you can do it, because I can´t knit that fast yet. and it is taking a long time before it is done. When I am older, then I can knit faster!" So I finished the back. Sewed the two square together and made crochet ruffled edge in a solid pink alpaca and a band for the waist.

My daughter was happy, I was too, but Fia still have that same surprised look on her face :-)
Obviously, she need something on the upper body!

My adjustment to a gluten free, dairy free, yeast free life have it´s ups and downs. Some days I am very much upset and screams for a magic pill so that I can eat whatever food I want. And other days I look at my options and make something tasty. Like the waffles above. I bought a new waffle-maker, and it has been very popular. The big French waffles tastes awful good.


Our celebration of the Norwegian National Day was a food-success as well. On the picture above is my daughter and a friend of ours (Hilde), and you can probably tell that they are looking into another camera than mine. Eating out on this day would be a bit troublesome with all the needs I have, so we invited some friends to our home. I made brownies, rullekake, marsipankake and kromkake (I don´t know any English translation for does cakes). For the marsipankake I have used soya-cream inside, and it worked out very well.

Here are all the kromkake I made to go with the ice-cream and strawberry's we had for dessert.
And everything was safe for me and my son (who can´t have dairy) to eat.

Here is another picture of our daughter in a "bunad". But unfortunately it is not a real one, but one of the many you can by in a regular shop. She will have a real bunad when she gets older.

And finely, here is a picture that illustrate what beautiful days we have had recently. The summer all of a sudden arrived and the kids are enjoying them selfs outside. Here we have one of those rare situation where they are sitting quietly and reading books. In the middle is our neighbors daughter.

A new blog!

I have a new blog in Norwegian dedicated to spinning yarn and related subjects.
As for now I will be writing it in Norwegian, but I might do a mix later.

The new blog is at www.spinnulla.wordpress.com

Work, work, work!

That is way I´m not blogging.
It was supposed to be a small part-time job, but it has been a very uneven distributed work hours. Because almost everything is happening during a 2-week period it has been more than a full-time job. But from now on I will not be working crazy hours. Maybe I can even have some time knitting and spinning....

My shop is still up and running, but the technical part is a challenge. The new blog and the pages I made at www.spinnulla.no with mac software is really hard to update, so I am not able to do anything with the pages before my DH find a way of solving it, that is - have the time to figure it out. Maybe I will have to hire someone to do it...or I might just have to give up the iWeb software and do it "the hard way". That is do my own programming in Dreamweaver or something. It is just that I have not been doing much of it the last 5 years, so it will take a lot of time to learn and figure out. That is what I like about mac-software. It is so easy to make smashing looking pages with no hassle. The problem seems to be when you want to publish or integrate with something that is not part of the mac-family. At least that is the case for iWeb. When it comes to iWork it is doing pretty nice exporting and importing from Office.


OK, this is supposed to be a blog about knitting and not software! Anyway I have not been knitting much, but I have done some crochet. I am trying to make one of the new Stitch Diva designs "Hourglass jacket". This is a fun design, and I had to buy 15 mm knitting needles to be able to do the broomstick stitch. For some reason I started making the smallest size thinking it was size Small, but as I connected the fronts to the back I realized it was very tight around my arms (this is a top down construction). Then I looked at the pattern and found out I was following the instructions for a size XS. So I had to start all over again. And now I am down to the waist. The picture is me working on the jacket outside in the beautiful days we had during our Ester vacation. It was a bit cold so I tried crochet with gloves on, but that really complicated it all :-)

My shop is opened!

It has been a very long journey to put together my shop www.spinnulla.no. The whole thing started in the Fall 2005 and the Company was registered February 11 2006. But at this time my health got a lot worse and I had to put the whole project on hold, for a while. I have been a little back and forth on weather we should open it or not, but since we already had invested quite a lot of money in it we came to the conclusion that we would give it a try.

The reason I in the first place wanted to start Spinnulla, was that back in 2005 I could not find much information about spinning in Norway and there was no shops where I could buy equipment. Since then, things have happened. There is one other shop and even a Spinning Community. And I can see a growing interest for the art of spinning. Witch is good!

So this is why my knitting and blogging has been so far behind. I would not have dreamed of how much work it would be to start a shop and all the challenges that comes along. If I knew what I had gotten myself into....

Spinnulla is meant for Norwegian spinners so everything will be in Norwegian language. There is even a new blog there. 

But now I will need to call the doctor, because the fever I have had for the last 6 days don´t seem to go away.

A 107 year long life has come to an end!

My mother said "we can´t expect having her around forever", but somehow she has become the one we always expected to have around. When my great grandmother turned 100 years old we had a big party for her and thought it was amazing she had turned the 100. Then the years went by and she had her 101, 102, 103, 104, 105 and 106th birthday. I was lucky to go visit her this past summer, together with my kids and parents. It was just amazing meeting her again. She still had a good sense of humor and a very charismatic personality. According to an article in the newspaper in 2004, she had 33 greatgreatgrandchildren. Above is a picture of her from July 2007 next to her granddaughter (my mother) and one of her greatgreatgranddaughter (my daughter).

And here is a picture of me, the kids and the amazing 106 year old Hilda. I am very thankful for having her around for such a long time. A bit sad that she has spoken her last words, but happy for her because she was very tired now. Thank you for all the good years, greatgrandma!

After that it is a bit hard to go back to the crafts. But here is a picture of my new spinning wheel. I will talk more about it later.

And her is a picture of my daughter hiding behind a skein of yarn I have dyed. She wanted me to start knitting from it right away.

My handdyed yarns!

I just re-skeined the pink yarn and figured it was time for some pictures of my handpainted BFL. I like these colors and it is the first time I have dyed with Landscape dyes. 

I will be doing some more dying this upcoming week. 

Thank you, for all the comments on the January-post. I was not aware of them all. 

Yes, I will be selling a little yarn soon. I will get back to that soon!

It´s about time I blog...

So where do I begin...I think I will start with my only finished knitting. It was started in October. The pattern is easy and I only used two skeins, but I have not been very good at finishing anything lately. I have started working and I am busy with a spinning-related "event". I will tell more about it, soon.

Pattern: One Row Handspun Scarf by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Yarn: Artfibers Kyoto in green (don´t remember the color name/number)

Needles: 5 mm straight rosewood Lantern Moon.

I have been looking at all the lovely fibers and yarns over at Ravelry and finally had to ´ trow in the blanket` and order some lovely hand blended batts from the redhead and her shop Red Stone yarns. The purple is 20% silk, 80% merino and a dash of Angelina. And the green is alpaca and silk. They are very lovely and I could just keep them like this without having to do anything with them, but then again I really wanted to try them, too.

And here is the purple spun and made into a 2ply. It is skeined up on my new Niddy Noddy I made myself. I am very happy with this new home made accessory. It does not have the looks of the more fancy ones, but it works just perfect. It gives me 180 cm long skeins.

I have done some spinning lately. Here is the purple 2 ply from above and the other bobbins are commercial blended merino-silk, too. The pink is very bright pink and my daughter want me to make her a scarf from it. What a surprise :-)

Here is another picture of the purple 2-ply.

And the Seamist colored 2ply.

And the so very pink 2-ply.

And here they are again together with a few other skeins of handspun and the last two at right is handdyed yarns. All hanging to dry. From left to right: 2-ply white merino (16 micron and unbelievably soft), the three skeins of merino-silk from above, 2ply bulky Norwegian wool, almost solid handpainted and last a handpainted in shades of pink (both DK weight Blue faced leicester). I hang them up in our office and HE pointed out "I guess I will have to move out of here soon". I do like having him around, but it sure would be nice to have more space here, too.