Happy New Year!

Happy new year, everyone! Thanks for visiting and commenting in 2009. See you in 2010!



1. Knitted H for poetry society, 2. a, 3. Pperu, 4. Allison's Baby Shower, 5. LetterY, 6. Lucky Love Heart, 7. Nnantucket, 8. jumper with E, 9. P1000146, 10. knitted star tutorial, 11. Letter Y 001, 12. E, 13. A for Anna ~ my sis, 14. letter R, 15. Peace Baby embroidery detail

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

2009 in knitting

When it comes to knitting, I think I'll always remember 2009 as the year of the football hats. This has so far raised 16 000 NKr for football fields. (We need one million, but luckily, there are other ways of getting money too..)



But there have been other projects also, most of them you can see in my Flickr set, FO 2009.

I have tried some new techniques in 2009. The most useful thing I learnt, was spit splicing (see under tutorials in the left sidebar, if you wonder what and how). I've also understood what "wrap and turn" is all about, didn't really know about short rows before.

I also had the great pleasure to teach a little girl to knit. I recently learned from her family's Christmas letter, the pot holder is now finished.

Ecuador mittens

This beautiful hat is a gift brought to us from Ecuador. It's all alpaca, I think, very soft and warm. And I love the colours! But there were no matching mittens.

I used the charts from the Lion mittens, removed the lions and found my crayons. It's fun to draw charts by hand (using Excel is tedious and boring).

The mittens are made of 100% wool, different scrap yarn, worked on needles 3 mm (cuff) and 3,5 mm. I was going to make a corrugated rib, but beeing in a lazy mood, I invented a "Lazy currogated rib" (I'm sure it's done before, but haven't seen it.) I don't like purling with two colours. So I started out in black: k1, p1 (working in the round). Next round only knitting: 1 black (over the knitted stitch from last round), 1 blue (over the purled stitch from last round). Then repeating these to rounds. I'm quite happy with the result: A firm and elastic (and quick) ribbing for lazy knitters.

The rest was just fun, except from weaving in the ends...

Merry Winter Solstice

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever you wish to celebrate!

Yesterday was Winter Solstice, and from now on the days are getting longer, a good reason to celebrate up here, anyway. This is how it looks outside my window today. Beautiful, qiuet, cold (18 degrees below zero, to be exact). Knitting weather.

Never ending story

When I finsished this summer's football hats, I promised myself I would not make another hat till after Christmas. But I haven't been able to keep that promise. At the end of the football season (which in Norway is in October..), the ten year old's football trainers were to receive a gift. One ManU fan and another Liverpool. I knitted, the other parents paid money to the football field project and the trainers were happy.

One of the mothers told me she had been an Aston Villa fan since childhood, because she liked the sound of the team's name. And now they even have a Norwegian player, John Carew. So, a hat for Cathinka:

The pattern (in English)is available for purchase, 4 £.






















I made the Brann hat this summer, and the pattern is now updated with a child version with earflaps. You can download it here for 50 nkr (Norwegian pattern)

This is not a football hat, but the pattern is still sold for football fields. A lot of Norwegian kids play both football and ice hockey. This is the hat for the local hockey club, LIK.

Pattern in Norwegian, 50 nkr.







So, if you need a quick gift before Christmas, go ahead!

Scrap gnomies - finished hats and pattern update

These hats are sold for football fields, they will be Christmas gifts for two small sisters.

The pattern is for sale, and has been updated with a children's size. Pattern can be downloaded from the left sidebar. If you prefer the Norwegian version, please send me an e-mail.

The pattern will also be included in this book, along with nine other hat patterns. The book can be preordered on Amazon.

Inspiration

When I saw Kristin Nicholas ' new book on Twist collective 's blog, I decided I had to get that book. I ordered it straight away from the author's side. But then got an e-mail about additional payment for postage, which turned out to be 22 $, almost as much as the book itself. I thought that was a bit too much, and Kristin Nicholas was kind to refund what I had already payed.


But I still wanted the book, of course, so I looked for it in Norwegian online stores. It took a while before I found it, because they showed a different front page (I notice it's been updated now). I finally ordered it from Tanum. And the book is lovely! I really like her bold use of colour. The projects are worked at a gauge of 20 per 10 cm, which is an unusual gauge for me. When working stranded colourwork, I normally knit at a gauge of around 25-27. But the book is full of inspiration! And I might make the mittens - or something else.

If you need more inspiration, check out this dress from Kenzo!

Or what about a new tie for Christmas? These ties are fantastic, have a look!

Canarian colours!

Leaving rainy and cold November weather for a week in Gran Canaria was a good idea! It's amazing how quickly you get used to 25 degrees celcius. (But I'm still happy I live in a place with four seasons, where I get to wear my woolly knitting.)

Puerto Mogán

In the sun I finished my green Noro Scroll Lace shawl (from Ysolda's Whimsical knits 2). The picot edging did not turn out nicely, so I omitted it, and did a plain cast off. (Choosing to blame the ugly picots on the yarn, and not the Spanish red wine..)

Award

Judith has given me a blog award.

Thank you so much! I'm supposed to give it to five other blogs. (Judith did, you should have a look at my fellow award winner's blogs - blogs I did not know before, but will certainly visit again!) It's hard to choose five favourites among the blogs I follow. So consider it given to all the blogs I like to visit. "Ingen nevnt, ingen glemt" as we say in Norwegian (meaning "nobody mentioned, nobody forgotten")

Mittens at forty

For some reason, my friends keep turning forty... And I've been making mittens for them. These are for Torgun, who turns 40 today. It's a free pattern by Hanneke Sieben. You can download it from her Ravelry shop. I modified the ribbing, otherwise followed the pattern.




These were for Charlotte. Free pattern from Knitty Winter 2006, Tiffany.











And these were for Marianne. My Hippocampus mittens, pattern can be found for free in the left sidebar.









Edit: I just realised I had spelt 40 wrong - it's forty, not fourty. I also didn't know that this is the only English number whose letters are in alphabetical order! Good to know! This is what Wikipedia says:

Despite being related to the word "four" (4), 40 is spelled "forty", not "fourty". This is because etymologically (and still in accents without the horse-hoarse merger), the words have different vowels, "forty" containing a contraction in the same way that "fifty" contains a contraction of "five". The letters of the word "forty" are in alphabetical order; this is the only number that has this linguistic property in English.

Whimsical FO

Ysolda is one of my favourite designers, and I'm very happy with my Damson. It's my first lace shawl. First, I meant to make the Swallowtail Shawl (ravelink). But after just a few rows, my stitch count was already wrong - and I was planning to knit this in the car, so I changed my mind, and opted for Damson, a very cute little shawl. Not very lacy, but enough to call it my first lace shawl, I've decided. The hat is also from Ysolda, Urchin, from Knitty Fall 2007.


Blocking

Ysolda's Whimsical Little Knits 2 is such a cute collection of pattens, I'd like to make all of it! Next up is another shawl, the Scroll Lace Scarf (ravelink), from the same collection. And my next cardigan is going to be Ysolda's Vine Yoke Cardigan from Twist Collective Autumn 2009.

(I'm sorry to say the model was decapitated by gravity just after the photo shooting...)

New needle cases

I'm very happy with my new needle cases, made by MirreVirre.

One year blog anniversary!

So it's been one year... I hesitated a long time before I threw myself into the knit blogging world. I was - and still am - ambivalent about this project.

Before starting, I wondered
- will anybody read?
- will I have something to write about?
- will it be to hard to formulate interesting posts in English?
- will it take too much time?
- why am I doing this?

The answer to the first two questions is obviously yes. When it comes to my English, I try not to think that I have to compete with blog writers whose mother thongue is English. The main thing is that people understand what I mean. I could of course have used Norwegian, which is my mother tongue. But that would exclude most of my Flickr and Ravelry friends. So English it is.

And blogging does take time, I'd rather think it takes time that I otherwise would have used surfing around on the web, but I'm not sure...

And why am I doing this?

As I said, I am ambivalent. But when I got my first pattern published, I decided it was time. I enjoy visiting designer's blogs. It started with Knitty, visiting the Knitty designer's blogs opened my eyes to this part of the web some years ago. And I was disappointed when I saw an interesting design, but found no blog. So I figured, other people would probably like to visit my blog, if they liked my design. So there I was.

I also blog to have somewhere to show and sell my patterns. Opening my own website would be to ambitious, so I'm fine with this. With the help of Ravelry, of course!

And when you answer one question, there comes another one: Why do I design? Or rather, why do I publish it? Couldn't I just be happy making things without necessarily publish it? I probably could. But once you've started, it's hard to stop, somehow. So I'll be around for a while, still, I think.

Thanks for reading and commenting this first year of blogging! If anybody wants to win one of my patterns (ie, the ones to buy in the left sidebar or one of the football hats in the right sidebar) just make a comment and tell me which pattern you would like. Three of you will be lucky winners! You have till Sunday 22nd.

Closure of The Inside Loop

Some days ago I got a message from The Inside Loop to let me know that the website will be taken down in a few months. This is what they wrote in The Inside Loop group on Ravelry:

Diane and I have decided that The Inside Loop website will be taken down sometime shortly after 31st January 2010. Due to other commitments we will not be producing further issues, and have therefore decided to take the site down rather than keep it up indefinitely with no updates.

The patterns and articles will remain available to download until the site closes, although we have already contacted everyone who has contributed to the magazine and expect that everything will still be available somewhere. :-)

Thank you for your interest in The Inside Loop. We have really enjoyed running the magazine.

Diane and Kate

This is how my patterns looked on the website:





Those were my first (and so far last) published patterns (not counting the self-published ones). Especially the mittens have become much more popular than I ever expected, with 2256 faves on Ravelry today, and 70 projects. You can see some of them here.
Thank you, Diane and Kate, for letting me be a part of this magazine, and good luck with whatever you wish to do in the future.

My patterns will still be available on Ravelry, probably still as free downloads. Until 31st of January, they will be found on The Inside Loop website.

Knitting in colour - g r e e n -

Judith 's challenge this time is green. Which is on of my favourite colours. Just go back to my last post to see my newest green projects. Here are som older ones:

Top, from left to right

• Vaila verde (Green Vaila in Spanish, I liked the letter rhyming) And I love the sweater!


• Loppem Pattern by Norah Gaughan


• Curly My free hat pattern )

Middle, from left to right

• Lizard mittens My free mitten pattern


• Old hat, combination of two patterns from Small Sweaters: Colorful Knits for Kids by Lise Kolstad and Tone Takle


• Little fish sweater from the same book

Bottom from left to right

• Bonsai tunic by Norah Gaughan (Interweave knit)


• Green hat, no pattern, for sale here


• Square for afghan The motif is Asturias' logo, Paraíso Natural (Northern Spain, Natural paradise) A beautiful part of Spain.

Lion mittens - or how to mirror a chart

The little boy of the Lizard mittens now wanted lion mittens:


I used Juvel yarn from Idena, needles 3,5 for the ribbing (36 sts) and 4,5 for the pattern. I should have used smaller needles for the pattern, they are a bit loose, and a bit big, but he'll grow into them.

I ran across a discussion on Ravelry about how to knit Selbu style mittens, and there I was explained how to make a mirrored picture of a chart. When the pattern is not symmetrical, I like the mittens to be mirrored pictures of each other. So, for the second mitten, I use to read the chart from left to right. But since you knit from right to left, some people obviously find this a little tricky.

I use excel to creat the chart. Marnie has a very nice tutorial on how to do this. But I've not been able to flip the chart in excel. (It might be possible too, for all I know). But anyway, it's very easy to do with for example Paint:

- Make a chart, for example using excel.
- Mark the pattern and copy it (ctrl C)
- Paste it into Paint (or any other editing program like that, I suppose) (ctrl V)
- Save as for example "Left lion mitten"
- Then choose "Rotate/flip" (I have the Norwegian version, but I suppose this is what it says in English)
- Click on "Flip horizontally"
- Save as "Right lion mitten"

Left lion mitten

Right lion mitten


Click on the charts to have an enlarged picture.
Text, charts and photos are © torirot design. The pattern is for personal and non-profit use only. Have fun with the lions, knitting and playing in the snow!

Ready for a green winter

And a white one, I hope...

Droplet hat from Norah Gaughan's book Knitting Nature.

I searched for projects on Ravelry when making this hat. And found Tora's post about it. I totally agree with her that there's no reason what so ever to work this hat flat. (Unless you don't find a suitable circular needle and want to start knitting straight away, like i did.) And like her, I had to add more rows to make it fit, at least ten more rows.

About the book: Coming from a family of mathematicians and phycisists, I enjoyed reading about how she has been inspired by math and geometrical and fractal figures from nature. I read all the chapter introductions with interest (I often skip them in knitting books). Except for the Droplet hat, there were no patterns that I immediately wanted to make, but there are elements I might use later, and maybe a cardigan or a sweater somewhere in the future.

The yarn is Kilcarra Aran Tweed, bought from Koolkitten destashing. I had almost two skeins left from my Loppem, also by Norah Gaughan.

Owl mittens, "Give a Hoot", free pattern by Jocelyn Tunney fom Kelbourne Woolens.

A nice and quick project. My gauge was too tight, and I had to make them longer and block them quite a lot to make them fit not too tightly. So they're not my warmest mittens, but very cute, I think. The black and white buttons were just coincidence, I only found four buttons in my stash that were small enough.

Congolese tunic and Mama's lace

I bought this lovely fabric in Congo (Brazzaville) in 1988. I made a dress, that I used to like a lot, a big sack with shoulder pads, as you might guess, at some point I stopped liking it. But I still loved the fabric, so I decided to turn it into a tunic. I sort of removed the central part of the dress; I cut it right under the bust, and then sewed on the bottom part of the skirt. I made a V-neck and added a velvet ribbon and some flower buttons. It was still a bit wide, so I knitted a lace to hold it in a bit, and add to the cuteness. I found the lace pattern through Ravelry, it's from Janine. I thought the story of the lace was sweet, so I'd like to share it with you. Here how Janine describes the pattern on Ravelry:

"I was recently going through my late Mom’s craft things when I found this knitting pattern.

It is the pattern my Grandmother used to make lace. She was a simple country woman. A farmer’s wife and mother of four children.

I can remember her making quilts and knitting lace.

She used this simple lace to edge all of her pillowcases.

I am not a knitter but I wanted Grandma’s lace to live on so I decided to share the pattern. "

The pattern is easy, and gives a simple but cute lace. It's worked from one end, so you can make it as long as you wish. Thanks for sharing, Janine! I added a crocheted cord of chain stitches to the lace in this tunic.