Work In Progress Wednesday 5

Hello everyone!

My work in progress wednesday post is a bit late today, and I was considering letting it go as I don’t have that much progress to show you. But I felt like typing and so: voila.

This last week had a theme: Frogging and ripping out

Not a very nice theme for a person that loves to create. I’ve been a bit out of luck in my projects. Over the weekend I mainly paid attention to my Floral Fantasy Blanket (the one with the puffy flowers, i forgot to take a picture) I had previously run out of white yarn (seriously the borders on these squares look small, but they take quite a bit of yarn!) and had made 40 colourful centers (2 of each colour) and those still needed borders. I have 2 left to go, so I’ll do those this weekend and then I need to make more centers. I’ve decided to keep working like this, first making the flowers and then adding the white border as it seems to go faster than when I do a complete square. I get a nice rhythm going and zoof! Loads of squares. I now have about 60 squares finished And I thought this was a good step forward. I did a little math:

Each square is about 7 centimeters. I want a large blanket of 2 by 2 meters. I need way way way more squares than I thought! To get the size I want I need 40 strips of 40 squares.  That means 1600 squares! Holy moly! That means 80 in each colour. I’m not sure I’m pretty suer I won’t have enough yarn for that, so I’ll have to see how far I get. Perhaps I should add in some white flowers to keep my fantasy calm? What do you guys think?

In the mean time I got a 12-pack of white yarn. It turns out to not be exactly the same, it’s an older version of the yarn I’m using, but as it’s similar enough and I’m having trouble getting the yarn I was using (Summer &not really a yarn store, but a store that happens to have some yarn = out of stock till next winter. Plus it seems they are filtering out this brand and are starting to exclusively sell another brand –> less nice in my opinion too! Booooo!) this will have to do.

I’ve also managed to squeeze in a row on my Ripple this week, but no real progress right now. At this rate it’s going to take forever.

I’m signing off for today. More next week I promise! By then there will be pictures again, as that’s a lot nicer to read in my opinion, but I just feel like I don’t really have any for you now and taking them now is impossible as it’s very dark out. My pictures next week should be very good in comparison to those before. I’m buying myself a proper camera! I’ll be sure to show it off here once I get it and I’m going to play around with it a lot. So expect mazing pictures in the future, with the occasional experimental angle or setting. For those interested I’m getting a secondhand Sony Alpha A350 DSLR camera. Just the kitlens it comes with for now, but I’m hoping to expand in the future. For those of you that like photography: can you recommend any good learning tools such as podcasts, websites, etc? I’m an absolute beginner and am really hoping to both pick up practical tips and increase my general knowledge of photography as it’s basically zilch.

Goodbye now!

Love Renée

Finished Object Friday 4

Hello Everyone!

As I mentioned last time I have a lot of finished project to show you guys! I’m not going to stuff them all into this one post, as I think they deserve their own tadaa moment. BNut i’m going to show you a few sneak peeks and a smaller project today 🙂

First off: hexipuffs. I wasn’t planning on making any this month, but an impromtu race in one of my groups on Ravelry got my juices flowing and I was scrambling to make 10. I didn’t win but it did really get me motivated to make them again. So even after learning someone had already finished, I finished mine. And I’m proud of myself. I’ve never made puffs this fast, i think i beat my record on time per puff. And this is the most puffs I’ve ever made in a day. It took me 2 evenings to crank out my 10 puffs. Here they are.

here they are displayed on a doily my mom brought me back from France. I love it! I’m going to use it as a basis to design my own doilies!there are a lot of blue puffs here. I bought a whole skein of the blue variegated yarn a while back to make hexipuffs. So there’s still a lot of these to come. The sparkly purple puff is also one of many to come. I also have a whole skein of this. The bright puffs in the left corner are made form cotton leftovers my grandma gave me. it’s feels really soft and I like the colours (plus it’s out of my stash!) The bright orange and purple puff is from leftovers of my not so business casual socks. I have some more of that left, so I can make one or 2 more like that.

Ok, here you go. Here are 2 pictures that will give you an idea of 2 of my finished projects 🙂

Book wise: I finished Living with the dead and loved the new characters Kelley Armstrong introduces in this 9th book of the series. I do hope they return in a later book though, otherwise it sort of feels like a filler ( a fun one though, giving another glimpse into the world she has created). I’m now on book 10, Frostbitten. Loving it so far (page 99 out of 288) as it hails the return of my 2 favorite characters, Elena and Clayton Danvers.

That’s it for today folks! See you soon (tomorrow!)

Love, Renée

ps. Linking up as usual!

Finished Object Friday #2

Hello Everyone!

Somehow I managed to completely miss Work in progress wednesday, so I’ll do an update on my Giant berry granny tomorrow! That has been my main project for the week, the others have spent some time waiting for me to get fed up with it. But I don’t seem to be getting fed up with it yet, although the rows are getting pretty endless…

But back on topic: Finished objects! I finished my Lindisfarne shawl, but I’m not calling it officially finished until it’s been blocked (which is a necessity in this case!). It turned out a bit small and has me at a loss on how to wear it. I’m regretting altering the chevron rows to make it wider now. But I’ve decided on a plan of action if even blocking does not help. I will add a braid and pompoms and turn it into a cute capelet!

I did finish some other things this week: hexipuffs! I finally picked my dpns up again and got a puffing. I have high hopes of making my goal of 15 for this month! I only have 4 left to go. And one of the puffs I will be sharing today is quite special as it it puff number 25. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t when you consider how many you will need to a quilt… So I’ve decided to not think about numbers too much and just go with it and have fun.

These were this weeks first 2 puffs. A purple sparkly puff and a hand dyed brown and blue variegated. Puffs like the second are special because they are made of my first hand dyed yarn ever. And the colours are just really pretty.

I had ordered some yarn in colours that were still missing form my beekeepers quilt form ebay as the pastel yarn I had been using for puffs is so ridiculously soft. I ordered a light orange an bright yellow and a glorious midnight blue. The blue is the exact colour of my favorite shade that the sky turns just before full dark.

Isn’t the colour amazing? It almost seems to give off light!

The yellow did not agree with my camera unfortunately. It is quite a bit brighter. It actually borders on neon… The puff with the bow is number 25! (I have a grand total of 27 now I think) I have decided to give every 25th puff a bow in one form or other. Might be tricky to come up with enough different ways of adding a bow! The puff on the right was an experiment. I’ve decided to call it a success as in reality it’s quite charming. I wanted to do something different and so made an intarsia puff. I forgot that the switching to the yarn from side to side would create a seam down the middle, but the duo puff is quite cute. It somehow reminds me of a bum!

That’s all for this week. I’m heading back to my granny blanket to take some pictures for tomorrow!

Will be linking up with Tami’s Amis again!

Lots of love,

Renée

 

Finished Object Friday

Hello Everyone!

Finally i’m getting around to posting on my finished branching out scarf! It took me a while to block the thing and then there was the problem of photo’s… I usually blog at night, so taking a picture on the spot isn’t really an option and during the day I seem to forget all about it. Oops! But I finally snapped some pictures this afternoon and am ready to show it off.

Today will just be a quick sneak peak. All my projects, once finished, get their own post and moment in the spotlight. I will share details about the project, what I thought of the pattern and of course: more pictures!

So first up today: My branching out scarf! You can read about the start of this project here.

Close-up

Close-up

Here it is blocking. It turned out to be slightly to long for the mattress I was using and only then did I realize I should have placed it diagonally… I’ll remember that for the next time!

I actually rather enjoyed blocking this scarf. I’d never done anything like this before but it was quite fun! I knew what I was doing was going to be worth it and so did my very best. i think I spent 2 hour pinning the thing out!

This is the scarf after blocking. It’s gone through a major change! It no longer curls, the lace pattern is clearer and it is a lot softer. Definitely worth the trouble!

The second thing I finished this week was Harold, whom was featured extensively in my Hoppy Easter post! For more pictures of Harold I advise you to check out this post!

Harold says hi!

My sister’s friend specifically requested handmade gifts for her birthday next Friday. As I had offered to teach my sister knitting and crochet before she approached me for help. She wanted to make something funny and not to difficult. We ended up picking the Splat Cat coasters. A coaster that makes it look like there is a cat squashed under our glass. It sounds a little strange, but they are hilarious and pretty cute if you ask me! I decided to test the pattern out before hand, so I finished one of these cute little kitties this week as well. Tonight we started working on the next set together. It’s not an ideal pattern to learn to crochet, but my sister is getting the hang of it!

Splat!

I also got back on the hexiipuff train this month and have set myself a goal of 15 although I wish to make more! here are the ones I’ve made from the first of april until now. Another is on the needles as we speak.

April 2nd

April 4th

April 5th

That’s all for this week! I hope to have as many things to show you next week!

Lots of love,

Renee

ps. I’m linking up with Tami’s Amis once again, check out what others got up to this week!

Finished Object Friday

Hello Everyone!

This week has flown by! And I feel like I haven’t managed to get a lot done this week at all. It’s high time I got my ass in gear. I have loads of projects (if you read Yesterday’s post, you’ll know!) and I have a ton of schoolwork that I’ve been ignoring (knitting is too much fun, darn it!). And still, I have only one, really tiny, finished object for today.

One hexipuff. One.

To be honest my hand was really bothering this week and I’ve only been crafting again since Wednesday. And my Branching Out scarf is almost done, but not just yet. I think I will finish that over the weekend. So then it will have to wait until next Friday!

On to my puff.

Textured puff

It’s my second textured puff. Via a pattern of slipped stitches you create three cable like effects. I only recently learned how to read charts, so it took some getting used to, but eventually I got there! I messed up a little on the backside of the puff. In the very last row something went wrong and i lost a few stitches. I picked them back up, but I got a few holes…

The chart I used can be found on Ravelry. There are a few others available as well. They were made by Ravelry user, Coxabey. You can find the charts in her projects on her projects page (here, here and here). If you use them make sure you thank her for these lovely charts!

That’s it for today! Hopefully I’ll have more to show next week!

Lots of love,

Renée