October 2008 Archives

Start: 03rd October 2008
Finish: 26th October 2008
Needles 4 mm / 80 cm Addi Turbos
Yarn: GGH Cashmere Fino; 100% Cashmere; colour #10 (grey) and #7 (sand)
Pattern: Generic 1x1 rib scarf with slip stitch edge, 2 alternating colour blocks.

This was the first time ever that I worked with pure cashmere. The yarn itself has a woven structure, another kind of yarn that I have never worked with before.

Cashmere is definitely a luxurious fibre. It's really soft to the touch and the fabric knitted from it provides great warmth without adding to the weight (the whole scarf weighs approximately 135 g). The yarn has a light halo to it (I would say - if I remember correctly - due to the short staple length of cashmere). The woven structure of this particular yarn didn't affect the appearance of the knitted fabric. It seems to help make the knitted fabric flatter than a plied yarn would.

Knitting pure cashmere was not that easy either. Due to the loftiness of the yarn, I had to take care that I don't knit a dense fabric, so the gauge has to be just right. This posed a problem for me, since I am a tight knitter: The appearance of the stitches at the beginning of the scarf appeared a bit uneven. The same thing happens when I put the scarf down for a period to work on other projects. When I picked up the scarf to knit again, my stitch appearance would turn uneven again. Thank goodness a good (light and non-aggressive, i.e. steam) blocking helps even out the stitch appearance.

So, here I am. Elemm got a new and kind of an official place to blog about knitting. :-p

Well, I'm a knitter - perhaps with a capital K already -, living in Germany and hopefully will still be here for a while. Studied, or still am studying political science and coughing my way through it. The end is however in view. So keep your fingers crossed for me.

Anyway, I got to know Anina a while ago (I think it's been almost two years) and I was quite active in reading and commenting on the whole 360 blogs...until at one point, other things just consumed my time. But now I'm here in the midst of it all and I hope I can make some kind of contribution to this spot.

Like I mentioned, I'm a knitter. I haven't really designed anything myself yet....but that will come. Over the next few days (or perhaps weeks), I'll be copying my old entries from my normal blog Númenna - Nan Annûn over here and put the back-date on them. So, don't be surprise if there are suddenly older entries popping up around here. ;-)

And so just to kick things off, I finished a raglan sweater yesterday and just got around to wearing it today. So here goes to my Joukahainen:

Start: 5th September 2008
Finish: 20th October 2008
Needles: 4.5 mm / 100 cm Addi Turbos
Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% Peruvian Highland Wool; colour 8886, dye lot 7414
Pattern: Joukahainen by Kristel Nyberg. Published in Finnish in the magazine Ulla 03/07. Pattern is available as an English translation as Ravelry download.
Modification: I shortened the body a bit because I don't like jerseys that hang down too low.

Sorry about the long silence....but well, I broke my laptop last Wednesday while I got this spurt to clean (which totally subsided as soon as the computer broke).

I decided that I needed to wash the table cloth which is under my laptop. I disconnected the laptop, lifted the laptop up, pulled part of the cloth away and replaced the laptop....without seeing that part of the laptop landed back on the cloth. I was listening to some exciting Spanish music (...a tango...and to be more exact it was "Por una cabeza"...my favourite one forever...and I was listening to that exact version - yes, I have the soundtrack) and decided to pull a table cloth out in a passionate fashion....

...as you can guess, the laptop came a-flying with the cloth. It landed on the floor with a thud....and when I tried turning it on, it made a sickening clicking noise and gave me the infamous Blue-Screen-of-Death saying something along the line of "Unmountable Boot Volume".

I actually panicked....coz I broke a laptop once already by dropping it on the floor (al contrario, sin tango). And this time it seemed like history was repeating itself. Back then, I had to send in the laptop for reparation, which took 6 weeks and EUR 250 (well, actually DM 500). And I didn't want that this time...especially the six weeks period - not that I would have the quids to spare either.

I crammed after some contacts and got a friend of another friend. We met up, he took a look and said that it definitely was the hard drive. He took my laptop with him and fixed it for me, i.e. replaced the hard drive, pulled out whatever he could from my old hard drive and set the laptop up for me again. I paid him waaaaaaaaaaay less than what I would have to pay were I to send the laptop in. Thank goodness....but then again, it's not like I have money to spare, so I'm kinda broke right now. At least til the end of the month.

Anyway, so now I've got my laptop back, with even more memory...and it feels kinda new. So, yeah, I'm pretty happy, even though the darn HP QuickPlay thing doesn't work any more (I haven't got the recovery CD), but I hardly used it apart from watching DVDs anyway. And for that purpose, I just downloaded some free third-party programme and then I'm all set.

So yeah, here I am again. Back in the beginning of September I had to unplug from the internet unwillingly for a week because the German Telekom effed up something about the contract. But I still had my computer to do stuff on. This time around it was five days completely without computer. I felt as though someone had cut off my arms....so the only sensible thing I could do was to knit. Which bore fruit. :-p

I finished my Joukahainen! The picture above is just a teaser...since I still need to do a proper photo shoot for it. Here are the specs:

Start: 5th September 2008
Finish: 20th October 2008
Needles: 4.5 mm / 100 cm Addi Turbos
Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% Peruvian Highland Wool; colour 8886, dye lot 7414
Pattern: Joukahainen by Kristel Nyberg. Published in Finnish in the magazine Ulla 03/07. Pattern is available as an English translation as Ravelry download.

360Fashion welcomes Numenna

Start: 11th September 2008
Finish: 23rd September 2008
Needles: 4 mm / 80 cm Addi Turbos and Addi Lace
Yarn: GGH Cumba; 42% new wool, 28% alpaca, 30% acrylic; colour #014 (anthracite), dye lot #85459
Pattern: Morgan by Anne Kuo Lukito in Knitty Fall 2008 issue
Modification: I had to add more snap buttons on each side near the base of the peak because of the softness of the yarn and my gauge, the crown gets pulled back and puckers in a weird way. I also sew the buttons through to the top of the hat, otherwise it will just totally puffs up and look weird.

So, yes, my written exams are over more than a week ago. They were all horrible, and I think I did absolutely miserable on the last two, especially the last one....it was catastrophic. But well, I don't want to talk about it, because I can't do anything about it any more and so I'm resorting to the wait and see strategy.

Anyway, I started knitting Morgan shortly before my exams...probably out of sheer frustration with the studying. I finished the cap on the evening after I've written my second to last exam.