The Candy I Can´t Resist

Nowadays candy, sweets and even chocolate seems to have lost their grip on me: I´m often not very tempted by them anymore! And when I am tempted, usually I can resist them. I don´t know where this comes from, I certainly haven´t tried hard to avoid these totally unnecessary sugar-loaded fiends. Mabye I have finally realized that they usually don´t taste as good as I think they do.

But there are other tempting things hard to resist: looking like candy and totally impossible to ignore:

100% cotton, totally sugar-free!

This was the view from my kitchen window yesterday morning. Winter is here!

There is a Time for Everything

When the wind is howling around the house it´s time to light up the fire. We live in a modern house and it has to bee minus-degrees outside before we can use the fire-place, otherwise it gets to hot indoors. But now it´s fire-time, and we lit it up in the mornings before we go to work and again in the evenings when we get home. And someone have to walk out in the cold and darkness to bring in more fire-wood...

A new pair of mittens is in progress, in Istex Létt-Lopi.

December is soon here, and so is Advent. It´s time to get out the Christmas-time recepies and get on with the baking for the season: here is the beginning of this years English Fruit Cake. The dried fruit is soaking i cognac before the actual cake-baking begins.

While the fruit is enjoying its bath, I continue with the very traditional baking of "lussebullar": wheat-dough spiced with saffron, that is formed into the shape of "lussekatter" and decorated with raisins.

The finished result: the 2010 batch of lussebullar! The time for this bun is between the first of Advent (on Sunday) and Christmas Eve, with a peak at Lucia ( December 13th). It´s totally improper to eat them at any other time of the year, it just isn´t done!

Odd Bits and Ends

It feels very economical to turn odd left-over balls of yarn into something useful! Some Rowan Cashsoft DK was left after a vest with sailingboats on, that I once knit for my son. This yarn was more than enough for two baby-hats, both lined with white fleece. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the one in pink and blue before it left the house.

Riding on the Wave of Inspiration

After the finishing of R:s hat, I still had a whole ball of brown Rialto left, and some white. So I cast on for a new baby-hat; this time in brown with pattern in white. It was a very qick knit and also this one was lined with white fleece.

Looking through my supply of yarn I found odd bits and left-overs of RYC Cashsoft DK that would possibly be enough for two more baby-hats. And there is a lot of fleece left. So I will surf on the wave of hatterly inspiration and cast on for a new one in beige and blue.

Someone Will Have Warm Ears

My neighbour asked me to knit at winter-hat for her 8 months old daughter. I looked among my yarns and found some Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran, bought a long time ago for a project that never came into beeing. In a leaflet with Selbu-patterns I found the jolly men and women and I quickly produced a swatch. After som calculations I cast on and soon the hat was finished!



The photos with a pinkish back-ground are taken with a flash, the one with a gray background is taken without flash.

It has ear-flaps and i-corded "bands" to knot under the chin. I wanted it to be a really useful hat, something that actually could be worn during the cold winter, so I decided to line it with thin white fleece. I cut the fleece in a very simple form and sewed it together on the sewing-machine. Then I handstitched the lining to the hat, using blanket-stitch (langettstygn). I´m very pleased with the result, but was a bit nervous when I walked across the road to present the hat to the intendend recipient. It turned out a success, however: little R was laughing loudly in her new hat!

I used one of my son´s outgrowned hats as a model when making out my hat. I have found this a useful way when knitting for children: to use a store-bought item as a guide. One very quickly forgets the size of children at different ages. I have an assortment of baby-bodies from H&M in different sizes that have turned out very useful.

The Socktoberfest is over!

Early Saturday morning the Christmas-sock calender was finished - the last number was embroidered on and the final hank sewn in place. Thus my own Socktoberfest was at an end. I´m quite pleased with myself for seeing this project through -it got boring after the third sock or so... A lot of tempting ideas kept plopping up in my head and had to be pushed aside. Finishing one project before casting on for the next seems very grown-up and mature! Boring even! So the rest of the weekend was spent casting on several new projects.

The socks are all my own "design" - a very simple standard-sock in some different variations. The white yarn is mostly Drops "Karisma" and the red, green and gray are unknown leftover wool that long ago lost their ball-bands. I used ca 500 gram of wool. The hanks are of a wowen band I bought at Panduro , that very charmingly says "God Jul" (Merry Christmas). The socks are mounted on a wire decorated with small fake leaves, like lingonris - the small evergreen leafs from the sprigs of lingon. I think this plant is also called mountain cranberry, red whortleberry or cowberry in English.

Yes, in the photo above the number 6 is turned the wrong way. This was, of course, noticed, and I tried to argue that it was artistic to turn some numbers around, so as not have to unpick it and redo it. But my critics turned down my argument and simply said that it looked like a stupid mistake. So I turned it the right way.

Mother-and-Daughter-Activity

Is there a better way to spend a free Friday that visiting Syfestivalen at Älvsjömässan? A great hall full of everything you need to fulfill your creative dreams! Mother and I went together, and this is a great Mother-and-Daughter-Activity for a sewing mum and a knitting daughter.

I was totally amazed by what modern sewing-machines can do - my own machine (inherited from Mother) is a dinosaur in comparison!

I spent money on the lovely yarn from Huskroken, it was almost like buying candy! But I was a bit disappointed at the supply of yarn, I have expected to find much more tempting yarn of good quality.

I´m not very fond of sewing, but when I saw all the wonderful fabrics and the fantastic things people had made, I WAS tempted... However, I don´t have to sew myself - Mother does that for me! And we bought a skirt-pattern for a fabric I bought a long time ago and had great plans for, but has been laying sulking on a shelf for far to long. But now Mother will take the project in hand and I eagerly await my new skirt.

I´m not very fond of embroidery either, but when we looked at the wonderful things from Fingerfärda in Karlshamn, I couldn´t help myself and I bought the material to make a pincushion. Mother bought the material for the pillow on top and it will be interesting to see who finishes her project first... I bet it will be Mother!

On the way out we saw these fascinating felted creations. Unfortunately I forgot to note down the name of the artist.