Strange little useful things

When I was in Denmark, my friend Mona bought yarn and a recipe to make what we call "pulswarmere", a wollen warm garment to warm the your hand and lower part of arm....

Anyway, I had some multicoloured yarn in wool, not enough to make anything decent of, so I tried out the recipe.

The result was warm enough - and quite useful in the mornings when the steeringwheel in the car feels like a block of ice!

Monster pants and matching sweather

My lovely nephew is now a young father. For his beautiful little girl I have knitted warm wollen pants and a warm sweather for when she is big enough to start in day care. The yarn was bought in Denmark, and the

pattern is from a Danish designer. Find more at Designclub.dk

The monster pants are made in the same material. Inspired by this blog I made the pants.

So now I hope to see her in the outfit when she grows into it - may be still 10 months to go?

Fingerless gloves in lambswool/doghair mix

For my dear spouse I have knitted fingerless gloves in a mix that are claimed to protect the skin from the rough cold Norwegian winters. The gloves are rather "boring" both strangely enough warmer than the pure lambswool mittens. HMmm may be we need to look further into dog/lamb mixes of yarn for the wintermittens.

Tux mittens for my son-in-law

When I first found the pattern for tux mittens I decided to knit a pair. In size they were perfect for one of my daughters, so she got a pair of orange and purple, soft woolen mittens. Then I decided to make a pair for my son-in-law. So I switched to thicker needles and used Sisu yarn. I followed the chart - but understood that they would be too short for his hands. So that pair was finished with my oldest daughter in mind. Then I streched the pattern by adding on 4 rows with a simple pattern, and 4 rows of white before starting to knit Tux. So now they should be long enough.

Nelsons Tux mittens:

and then a shot

of Rigmor and Nelsons mittens side-by-side.

Even more TUX mittens

I strated out making some TUX mittens for my son-in-law. But they turned out to be size "Women" so now they are a gift to someone instead :-9 and I am on to the right size for men. Trial and error.

Geek mittens with Tux

I found this pattern on a link from ravelry. I just had to modify them a bit to make them fit the size needed when knitting with this thin yarn and needles 2,5.I used multicoloured yarn, the same as for the last two pairs of mittens, and was very happy with the result. This pair of mittens are a gift - so I can not tell for who, but a slightly geeky girl I know well.

Knitted gloves in thin woolen multicoloured yarn

Last Time I was in London I stopped by I Knit london to buy some knitting equipment, and I noticed this Purple, red, orange yarn in wool. Zauberball. I just knew I needed some of that yarn. So far I have made two set of gloves with the yarn. The dark set is sized for Sofie (surprise, surprise the young lady lost several knitted items at school). The lighter pair is for a niece.

Double knitted scarf for Sofie

I have wanted to learn double knitting for a long time. It seemed like a useful technique, but I did not crack the code on my own. You tube is a great thing, the show you how to....

And it was actually easy!

The result, a scarf for Sofie in her colours.

Finally done - my sleeveless jacket now only needs some buttons

This is the nightmare project. I started it a year ago when we lived in Lagos, Nigeria. The plan was to have something nice and warm for when I returned to cold Norway. It went well, until I startet with the sleeves.

No matter how I made them, it just would nor fit! It looked bulky, it looked wrong. I tried and retried, but there were no nice fix.

So my solution was, yesterday, to give up the sleeves and make it sleeveless.

So this is my sleeveless version of Drops design number 107-1, made with Bris yarn from Gjesdal.

As you can see, I used a lot of purple shaded yarn, and added on some blue-green-ish shaded to brighten it up a bit. I was happy with that result. Now I need 6 big buttons tha matches the purple colours. And knitting Mosaic knitting does not leave a lot of loose ends to fasten afterwards.

All the little things for decorating Sofies hat.

As a tassel she wanted a Michaelmas Daisy. That was not to hard. Flower number 47 in the book.

The Bumble bee were not to difficult either, but I felt my fingers were a bit to large for the job. But she was happy with it.

The Meconopsis were picked because now I could see that I could manage without beeing glued to the computer in order to make it.

This is a failed periwincle. (It doesn't know, and neither does Sofie!) But it looks like a flower at least. May be it exist in the floral world to?

After this little project failure I needed something very simple to gain some confidence again. And I looked for something were the diagram made sence.

So I wanted to make the Forget -me-not, but I did not want to mix blue inte the already colourful mix for the hat. So I made a not correctly coloured forget-me-not. That helped. The courage needed to try the challenge was there.

And then I went for the flower Sofie really really wanted.

So here it is.

My pride!

I made it!

An Auricula. Recognisable and everything.

It is in the middle of the winter olympics, so yesterday evening I was watching womens speed skating to cheer for the Norwegian ladies, and particularly Maren Haugli. (I think she became number 5 in the end.) It is not so much to watch, round and round. So I decided to be brave and try the butterfly as well. So this is my version of Orange tip butterfly.

I used a yarn that is called Silja, and it has a lot of nice colours yo choose from, and was easy to crochet with.

Sofie hat - new version

This hat seems to be very popular. It is so easy to knit. Purl 2, knit two for a rib. Then knit two stiches together, and continue with purl 2 knit two and you get this diagonal pattern.

Sofie is very found of flowers, butterflies and everything remotely connected with summer. So when this hat was done, with only one colour, she decided that to like it, it needed some decorations.

Since I bought the book 100 flowers to knit and crochet, I have just flipped through it and decided it woyuld be a nice gift for someone better at crocheting than me. But Sofie flipped through it and begged me to make some flowers, a bumble bee and a buttefly. I love YouTube, there are lessons in doing different crocheting stitches there. So I managed. I also made a red hat for Marte, same pattern, no flowers. And a black one for me. The trick is to use smaller knitting needles for the rib, the switch to large knitting needles. (I started with 4, and ended with 7 mm).

Hat for Sofie

Sofie needed a new hat, nice and warm for when the other nice, warm feltet hat my mother in law gave her, was wet. I bought some red, pink and white nice warm alpakka and made her a hat. The day after it was gone, dissapeared at school. So i Then did the same thing again. This time with some pure wool Eskimo from Drops. The hat was just a bit to big, and kept sliding around her head and falling off. So I planned to felt it just a little bit. Well, 40 degrees was to much, and it came out probably best fitting a baby. Sofie was not happy at all, so I promised to start all over again on a new hat, this time in new wool, no felting.

Fingerless gloves for my cousine

I went to a nice birthday party last weekend. My cousine turned 50 and she had invited all the family, and many turned up. Nice to get reunited with those we had not seen for years! Well, I decided to make her something she could use. She runs a restaurant very close to the water, in one of the Norwegian fjords. We both grew up spending childhood years in a fishing community off Bergen, on Askøy. So I decided to make har fingerless gloves with fish, in green and white. Again, thin pure wool, thin needles. As those with an eye for details might have noticed, I inversed the colours of the upside and underneath the gloves. So depending on her preferences she can have green with white fish and stripes, or white with green fish and stripes.

Mittens with moose - for Sofie

I was surfing internet to find some inspiration for what to knit. Then Sofie suddenly got interested. "I would love a pair of mittens like these!" she said. Again, it was a pattern from Jorid Lindvik. I bought the pattern and knitted a pair of mittens for young Sofie. Since trhe pattern were sized for a grown up mans hand, I bought thin yarn (Sisu wool), and knitted with needles number 2,5 mm. She loves the gloves, even if some classmates think they are childish.

Sofie´s knitted dress

At the local knitting shop, Garnkilden, Sofie noticed a knitted dress in white, blue and black. She liked it, and asked if I could knit her one in wool, nice and warm for the winter. But she wanted different colors. She picked red, pink, white.

Well it was easy to knit, and a rather quick project. She has used it to school a lot, but now when the snow is covering the ground, it is back to jeans and warm sweathers.

My new hat

I have lost my favourite hat! I must have forgotten it on the plane one day. To bad. Well I ended up knitting a new one. This time in 100% Merino wool, knitting needle 3 mm. Purple.

Kitten gloves for a man

I have a friend, i wanted to make some gloves for. These days are colder than what we are used to. I basically enlarged the size of the gloves by adding some vertical lines in the outskirt of the pattern, and removed the most girlish of the colours from my gloves.

I was very happy with the result, this weekend I will see if he likes them. I used a thin wool yarn, and knitting needle 2 mm.

My kitten gloves

My red knitted gloves were getting worn, so I made myself some nice warm kitten gloves. The pattern was made based on a recipe for kitten socks made by Jorid Linvik.