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)

My Maya Mittens

Am I not the luckiest swap participant?!

These mittens are just perfect, and very much me!

Thanks, Laura!

You can read more about the mittens on Laura's blog.

And there was chocolate (was...!), tea, yarn and more - as you can see. I've never joined a swap before, it was fun!

I do realise that to get this result, you need to pay attention to yarn dominance...

Aren't the colours lovely and glowing?!

"Estrenando mis pájaros amarillos"

"Wearing my yellow birds for the first time!"

In Spanish they have one word meaning "wear for the first time" - estrenar. I like that! We don't have a similar word in Norwegian, and, as far as I know, not in English either (correct me if I'm wrong!)

So here I am, wearing my yellow birds:

This was such a fun knit (apart from the currogated ribbing, that is). I can see why Jettshin has made so many. I have another one in my head - but there are other projects to finish first...



My gauge is 23 for the body (needles 2,5 mm) and 28 for the yoke (needles 3,0 mm). It sounds like a huge difference, but the fit is perfect. The yellow yarn from Ninukka is a little thinner than Wollmeise, but it doesn’t matter, I think.

This was my first project with Wollmeise, and I do see why people love the yarn som much. My problem is that we have a meeting at work every Friday morning when the shop updates, so it's hard to get. We might have to change our meeting time...

EDIT June 26: For some reason, the commenting link on this post is invisible, but the comments are still there, and you can still click on the where the link is supposed to be, and make a comment. Don't know what's happening to Blogger - any ideas?

Trying on my yellow birds!

It's such a fun knit!!

I'm so happy with the colours.

The purple is Wollmeise.

The contrasting colours are from Ninukka (etsy shop).

Birthday tunic

A while ago a good friend complimented me on my new tunic bought from ZadOR ( see small photo). So I thought I'd make her something similar for her birthday. Like me, she likes the idea of reuse and redesign, so I'm sure she won't mind me using an old trouser, an old sweater and old fabric cut off from a dress turned into a blouse a while ago. The yarn for the edging is from my stash, left overs. The buttons are new though, from Buttonmad, Incomparable Handmade Buttons , bought in our local fabric store. On Flickr, you can see a photo with notes.

Selbu Sea Horse Mittens - free pattern

This is a “Selbu version” of my Hippocampus mittens, originally published in the Winter issue 2008 of The Inside Loop (now closed). Some people (from Selbu, which is a place in the middle of Norway, not far from Trondheim) have criticized Terri Shea’s book about Selbu mittens, saying that not all of her mittens are authentic Selbu mittens. Then the Norwegian publisher of the book announced a competition; they wanted knitters to send a photo of their best Selbu mittens. So I was inspired to make a mitten that would pretend to be a Selbu mitten, but that the “Selbu purists” certainly would not accept. Just for fun :-) I don't know what the criteria for a real Selbu mitten would be, but I've read somewhere that animals are not allowed, so these ones are definitely bastards. The text says “Selbu mitten or not” and “This is a real mitten”. If you want to make yourself a pair, you can download now , the pattern is a gift from me.

The pattern does not offer detailed instructions on how to make Selbu mittens. You find the charts that I used (with small modifications (hopefully improvements)). I also offer a mitten palm without the Norwegian text, and one blank palm where you can write your own text if you wish. 

Have fun!

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.