Two flowers for the Christmas gift along

Another pair of mittens is finished. This time a Christmas gift, not saying for whom...

Pattern is my own Blomst.

The left thumb crisis is overcome, and the (literally) afterthought thumb worked just fine! 

The yarn is a new aquaintance for me, Sterk, from Du Store Alpakka, a delicious sock yarn, a blend of 40% alpaca, 40% merino, 20% nylon. Super soft, and probably strong, too. (The name Sterk meaning strong in Norwegian.) I used just under 20 g of each og the CC, just under 30 g of MC.

Modifications: I omitted one pair of leaves, to make the mittens a bit shorter.

Want a pair of your own?

Get the pattern here:

If you buy the hat pattern to, you get 1$ off each pattern

(you see the discount when you come to your cart)

Effectivity in pot holder photographing

 This is my 3rd pot holder in the pot holder swap, sent to Knitnetty.

Pattern of central flower: African Flower Hexagon

Pattern of this side:  Fargesterk grytelapp from Olavas verden

I think I can say that the swap has been a success (although I'm still waiting for my third pot holder). More third round pot holders here. And the whole swap thread here. Non-Ravelry members can see some of the pot holders here.

Pot holders #2

Yesterday I sent my third potholder to Knitnetty! So it's about time to show you potholders number two:

Here's the red one I received from AnnetteK .

Nice, red and thick! Thanks a lot!

And this is the one I sent Annepålandet. She wanted blue, and it's mostly blue, isn't it?

I think she liked it.

Pattern is "Something pretty" by mille makes, a Norwegian blogger.

 Inspired by one of Dottie Angel's many thrifty finds.

Here are all the pot holders I have received and sent.

Christmas knit along - September

Just a quick visit to show you the September gift. Details on Ravelry.

Butterfly tunic

More than twenty years ago, a good friend of mine made me a yellow butterfly summer top. It was a swap, I sewed her a skirt, she didn't know how to handle a sewing machine at the time.

The skirt is long gone, but I've kept the top, even though I haven't used it much. It was cute, but a bit to short for my belly...


Since then, my friend has learnt to sew. In easter, during her dress exhibition, I was inspired to turn the old top into a tunic, using an old college sweater from my father and some lace ribbon.

Redesign is fun! My friend has an Epla shop now (Epla is the Norwegian version of Etsy).

Have a look!

Christmas gift along - S e p t e m b e r

Surprise, surprise, the September Christmas gift is - a pair of mittens!


I was inspired by a KAL on Ravelry to pick up my Latvian mittens book by Lizbeth Upitis.

I used Finullgarn from my stash, and chose graph 116 from the book. I got gauge 30 - so I omitted part of the cuff pattern, and one repeat of the main pattern. Cast on 54 sts for the cuff, increased to 64 sts for the hand. Thumb opening after 4 cm of palm pattern. Felt a little bit like I was cheating, other people in the KAL are working at the traditional Latvian gauge of 40 sts per 10 cm.

Selbu meets Holland

These mittens have been finished for a while, but I wanted to show them off first when the pattern was ready, either for testing or for sale. But life is busy at the moment, so here they are, with no pattern yet. (I have made a Norwegian version of the pattern, but I have to improve it after one test knit, poor Sigrun had a little trouble understanding certain parts, and I don't blame her. Her mitten looks very nice, though.)

The blue yarn inspired me to make these mittens - they made me think of Dutch tiles. Again I played withe the selbu rose, here they've become the wings of a wind mill. The yarn is Hacho from Mirasol, lovely to knit with, but I just heard it's beeing discontinued.

May pot holders

I had decided not to start any new projects before finishing some old... But I could not resist when Annepålandet came up with a pattern for her gorgeous pot holders! It's free, and so far only in Norwegian, but will be translated she says. The other one is Disc-Disc (ravelink) from ChickenBetty.

Thanks, Anne, it's a lovely pattern, I will make more!

(I fear pot holder crocheting can be a bit addictive...)

This was a nice pattern, too!

And this is what they look like from behind:

Hats - lost, knitted, crocheted and queued

I made this hat for my brother for Christmas (he lost the hat I gave him last year the first time he wore it, on Boxing day last year...).

I'm planning a tunic for myself using Latvian stars, and I used this hat to try out the motifs. I also decided to give the Latvian braid another try (The first and the last time I did, I found it very tricky, and that's probably the reason why this sock is still single. Well, the braid doesn't show in the photo, but there is one on the cuff.) I found this tutorial, because I had forgotten how to do it. And you should purl, with to colours, and hold the yarn in front of your work, which is an awkward thing to do. So I thought, instead of purling with the yarn in front of the work, why not knit with the yarn behind the work? So I tried that, and it worked perfectly. Just turned the worked with a wrap and turn. I think I'll make more braids like that. I also want to try this Latvian twist one day.

The stars I found in this book, on Flickr and on this site.

This FCBarcelona hat I made last winter has also disappeared. We all suspect it will reappear at some point, behind a shelf or in a bag, but winter is now (- 25 today) and another hat was requested, a hat like the new Barcelona ball. I first consiedered knitting, but decided that would involve to much calculation and swatching, so crocheting was a better option. And the receiver was happy.

Lost, knitted, crocheted and queued -A couple of my Ravelry friends, have recently released new patterns: Asplund's Sigge hat is a very nice hat in stranded colourwork with two colours - his first published pattern. Hopefully not his last. In my queue. And Woolly Wormhead, definitely not her first hat pattern, she has lots of nice patterns - but I especially liked this one: The hat with no name (as yet). She has got lots of name suggestions on her blog, mine was Galaxis. Have a look here to see why.

That was today's hat update, now back to mitten knitting.

Knitting in colour - b l u e -

Judith 's first colour challenge this year is blue.

I searched my Ravelry page for projects tagged with blue, and here's the result. I know there are more blue projects, although it's not the colour I use most, but I obviously haven't tagged them with "blue".



The first four happened to be my own designs:

1. Stella Polaris mittens To be published sometime soon (testknitting anyone?)

2. Scrap Gnomy more photos here

3. Hippocampus

4. Phantasy

The last three patterns are available from the left sidebar.


The next two are other designers' patterns:

5. Headigan by RedLipstick

6. Nicole by Chic Knits

The last two are made without pattern:

7. Baby hat more or less just crocheted as I went.

8. Child hat with elephant

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.

Seminar knitting

I used to knit during classes, at school and in university. Nowadays I sometimes knit at conferences and seminars. This is the result of two days of seminar and a train trip:

It's a child version of my Scrap Gnomy , or Pointy Striped Color as Annie Modesitt called it in her book project 1000 faboulous hats. I love using left over yarn, and putting together colours. I'm quite happy with how they're turning out so far. They're going to be Christmas presents for two little sisters, I think.

I started the blue one when the pink reached the point where I wanted to change to double pointed needles. There is too much jingling with dpn's, I don't want to annoy people. And I don't want everybody's look on me when a needle falls to the floor...

There's another hat on the needles, too.

Can you guess what football team it is?