New here

I'm very happy to be a member of this group. I admire all the fantastic Japanese knitting books and would very much like to own many of them. At the moment i own Elegance knit 11 and Knitting patternas 250. I'm waiting for a delivery of two new books from Yesasia. I have knitted two pieces from Knitting elegance nr 11 and find the patterns really good. I'd like to design some things from the pattern-sample-book too. I'm a librarian when I don't knit and have a blog in swedish, I'm also a member of the swedish knitting association Sticka and I participate in the Mystery Stole 3.

Finally finished

I guess we all had enough stories about this sweater - this is the last post about it and time to move on.

Voila : finally done. I've enjoyed every minute of knitting it - loved the pattern and the yarn - and I can only hope the yarn will behave.

To be honest I finished it last week - just that I am always waiting for special occasions to inaugurate my knits.
Been lucky last weekend, and this is me modeling it, with the French Gendarmerie on the streets of London. You don't see this very often :).

And the special occasion was of course the start of the Tour de France competition.

We spent all weekend watching bits and pieces live, following them from start to finish and even going to Canterbury on Sunday for the second (and last) stage in England.

Here is another shot - doesn't show much of the sweater BUT the man in the black jacket in the back is the great champion Bernard Hinault - five times Tour de France winner in the 80s.

You can see I try to make justice to my knits and find them the best backgrounds possible :).

This is Sunday morning - the second stage departure from Trafalgar Square.

Lace shrug by Queen Mudd

Queen Mudd (the Swedish equvilant of Yarn Harlot) has knitted the Lace Shrug. She says in Swedish that the shrug is a bit small for her.

She is not a member of this group, but since she is doing some of the projects I thought I could recomend her photos at flickr.com?

Happy dancing! The post brought 3 new books today: Let's Knit 10 & Let's Knit 11, and another called Let's Knit Autumn and Winter.

The last includes both knitting and crochet patterns.The patterns trend a bit to the older crowd and a few include a bit more glitz (metallic threads carried along) than I am comfortable - a bit too "Ladies who Lunch" for me.




I love this jacket with the attached Celtic cabled collar!
I'm already feeling the fall air nipping at my nose …(that may just be the air conditioning now but I can dream!


Rarely do I see crocheted sweaters that I like, but this green sweater looks soft and well fitted. Above all else, it looks easy!


This aran jacket with the faux fur trim is lovely. There is a yarn called Puddel that is perfect for this kind of trim. Lucky me - I have a few balls in the stash.



As a card-carrying member of the hot-flash set, I have found that I love vests. They keep me just warm enough, while still allowing for some cooling ventilation. Also coats fit so much better without the extra bulk.

One regret of life today in the US: buildings and homes are so climete controlled that the lovely wool sweaters that I really like to knit are almost too warm to wear in the winter. At work I have a sweater under my desk to take the chill off in the summer and a t-shirt for winter days when the radiators are really rockin'!This vest certainly fits the bill!

Last Episode - The Sleeves

Finally finished the sleeves.

and this is my chart. I am not going to explain the chart - if you read the history of this sweater you should know the meaning of all these codes by now.
I replaced the 'x' in the chart with 8 (by matching the parts together in different stages) but obviously it should be calculated individually, based on your body part size. And expect to have to frog, so consider a lifeline at some point, towards the end of the sleeve.

As you can imagine, a lot of guessing was involved in this - as I never did this kind of curvy sleeves before. I'm so glad though I finally moved out of the rectangle knitting land :).
I sew everything together on Sunday, the sleeves are perfect, just that I'm not sure I'm totally pleased with the neckband, so I might take one repeat off tonight. Or add another one ... One way or another, we'll have an FO soon.