First knitting FO is a fact!

My very first knitting project is finished! And typically for me, it is not the first project I started. Nope, not the striped scarf is finished, but the ribbelscarf for my brother is.

The picture has been taken at 5 o’clock on Tuesday morning, so it’s not the best quality. I just really wanted to deliver the shawl that day, due to the bitter cold that arrived in the country this week.

The shawl looks okay, but isn’t perfect.
There are many mistakes, because I knitted the wrong stitch. Apparently I lost focus a lot during rows, so that I suddenly started knitting the wrong pattern 0_0
Also the bind off isn’t all that pretty. I had cast on using an 8mm needle, so I cast off using an 8mm crochet hook. But apparently those two don’t match, as the bind off edge turned out to be a little to wide (see the top edge on the photo)
But, all in all I created a wearable shawl, which doesn’t look all too bad for a first knitting project :D

PS: I’ll be translating my I’m-learning-to-knit-posts soon!

Once upon a time…

…there were three skeins of Alpace.

Three beautiful, soft skeins of Alpaca, each in an even more beautiful colour.

A rust coloured skein

a blue coloured skein

and a purple coloured skein

These three skeins of Alpaca were bought a long time ago in a sale. They weren’t bought for a particular reason. No, no reason but the fact they only cost half the regular price, they had beautiful colours and were soft (oh, so soft). How would it feel like to crochet with Alpaca? Would that work or was this a yarn more suitable for knitting?

And thus, the three skeins of Alpaca travelled home with me and, like so many skeins in my house, they sat there waiting for the perfect project to come along.
It wasn’t that simple for the Alpaca, as they each had another colour that didn’t coordinate well with each other and there was only 1 skein per colour.

The years passed and the skeins of Alpaca disappeared deeper and deeper in the yarn basket. Until one beautiful day it was decided that the yarn basket needed tidying (thanks to my recent enthusiasm) and the skeins of Alpaca saw daylight again.

Yes, they saw daylight, but the problem still remained: What can be crocheted from one skein of Alpaca of 50g en 100m?
An amigurumi, yes, but to use Alpaca for that was deemed too decadent. Nono, the yarn was too soft, it needed to become something useful.
Erm, a scarf? Nope, not enough yarn.
Ah, why not gloves? Good idea! A skein of Alpaca should be enough for a pair of fingerless gloves.

To Ravelry and it’s excellent search function!

  • Craft: crochet
  • Meterage: custom: 0-100
  • Category: fingerless OR gloves OR mittens
  • age/size/fit: adult

97 results! Super!
But the enthusiasm diminished as quick as it appeared, as no pair of gloves could tempt. :( What now?

Google!
Erm, nope, not a success story either.

Back to Ravelry, but now in search of projects.
278 pages! Lord, after 20-something pages I had enough. Granted, there were some cute things in the projects, but again no click.

Hmm, maybe I should take a peak at the projects made with the same Alpaca?

BINGO!

A pair of fingerless gloves made with the exact same blue Alpaca as one of the three. A project by Dark Hare, improvised based on a couple of patterns.

Not a straight-forward-just-follow-the-pattern project, but I was sold!

First the ribbed cuffs. Not that hard to make. Just make a chain the length of the wanted cuff and single crochet rows in the back loops only. Easy peasy.
Up to the actual glove part, based on this pattern, with necessary adjustments.
Last but not least, an embellishment. I chose for a bow. Bows make everything elegant ;)

And done!

What do you think? Successful?

Crocheting with alpaca is a dream, btw. Very smooth with a very soft result. :)

One skein of Alpaca down, 2 more to go!

Cheers,
Charlotte

Going overboard

I’m already planning my Christmas presents. A bit early perhaps, but the earlier the better I think. Especially with my erratic hooking abilities ;)
Anyway, no better excuse than to splurge on yarn than planned presents. So I bought some yarn last week. A LOT of yarn…

On August 30th my first order was a fact.
I have a very special project in mind for a very special someone, about which I’ll be very mysterious. For this very special project I needed a particular colour and this colour was spotted in the popular Stylecraft Special DK.
Oké, perhaps it was wish-fulfilment of me to find this particular shade in this yarn, as I have been trying for ages to find a good excuse to try out the Stylecraft. And because buying only 3 skeins of one colour didn’t seem proportional to the shipping costs I had to pay, I of course splurged on a whole lot more colours. Twenty to be exact. Of course I bought all this from Deramores.
Only a small week later I got my hands on this:

These colours are just wow. Absolutely gorgeous!
And I’ve heard so many times that this yarn is so squishy soft, but I hadn’t expected this kind of huggable softness. I think I’m in love ;)

Colours: Shrimp, Raspberry, Plum, Grape, Emperor
Claret, Cream, Camel, Mocha, Spring Green


Colours: Denim, Aster, Turkuoise, Teal, Meadow,
Sunshine, Saffron, Apricot, Clematis, Bright Pink

Now it’s only a matter of how it feels when it’s worked, but I have a sneaky suspicion it will be wonderful ;) . I see more orders in my future :lol:

And then followed two more orders on September 2nd. One from Dolce Lana and one from Bergère de France. These orders also arrived on my doorstep within one week! I can tell you, I’ve had some amazing week, yarn-wise :lol:

Dolce Lana is the Belgian Drops distributor.
For a couple of special projects my eye fell on the Drops Fabel variegated yarns. I have never worked with this yarn before and have read some contradicting reviews, but I decided to take a chance anyway. In the end you need to see for yourself if a yarn suits your needs, right?
I ordered carefully *ahum*, only 4 colours

Colours: 674 heather, 672 bourgogne , 904 lavender, 677 green/turquoise

Three skeins each of only 4 colours, to be clear

I had bought some Fabel before, but to my shame I had completely forgotten about it :blush: . Now I started working with this Fabel to get an idea of the overal feel. So far, I think the Fabel will be perfect for my plans! :D

And then, last but not least, the Bergère de France.
I’m subscribed to their newsletter and on August 28th I received the news that they would, in honour of the new schoolyear, give 25% discount on your favourite yarn. Of course I could not ignore this, so for my Christmas present list I searched for a present that would absolutely require some Bergère the France. My eye fell on the BdF Sport for the project I had in mind. This is how a couple of chosen colours wounded up in my shopping cart.

Colours: Rosier, Corrida, Blue Acier, Tatou, Pimpernelle
Armoise, Cagou, Jade, Naturel

But I have also heard a lot of good thing about Idéal and as I would be paying the shipping costs anyway, well, I decided it was I good time to try out this brand as well.

Colours: Myostis, Marinier, Citronier, Cyclamen, Fougère,
Brouilly, Hortensia, Banane, Olivine, Vitamine,
Eléphant, Orque, Chenas, Meije

When I look at all the above photo’s, I’m a little bit ashamed, lol. I really went overboard on this, but not withstanding I am very, very pleased with my additions to my stash. :D

Now it’s just a matter of converting all my plans to real items! I have some serious work ahead, but I’m always happy to work like this ;) !!

Have a nice Sunday!

Cheers,
Charlotte