I'm dreaming of a white....

.....blanket.

Or rather, I was dreaming of it, and decided to make one. 

Different white wool yarn, 

different sized squares,

different patterns. 

Mostly worked during lectures at university many years ago. 

For some years now, it's been in desperate need of repair, 

which I recently got around to do: 

Ta dah! A new bedspread.

Blomekrans Blanket

Pinneguri, who test knitted  the Blomekrans vest, asked med a while ago if I could make a baby blanket pattern with the flowers, since she wanted to knit that. Hard to say no...!

Here's her finished blanket!    Beautiful, isn't it?  

The pattern has been available in Norwegian for a while,

but has now been translated to English.

Pattern details 

Gauge 

27 sts and 33 rounds in 4 x 4 inches / 10 x 10 cm 

(Gauge is not crucial for the result; 

the blanket will be a little smaller or larger 

if your gauge differs from the suggested.) 

Yarn suggestion 

Wollmeise sock yarn, Shetland spindrift, J&S jumper weight,

 Rauma Finullgarn  or similar, 

in three colours, one background colour, 

one colour for the leaves and one for the flowers. 

Needles 

Circular needles 60[80] cm in a size 

that gives you the right gauge in stranded colourwork.

 A longer circular one size smaller for the edging (120 or 150 cm) 

 Sizes 

Small blanket: 28 x 27 inches / 71 x 69 cm

 Medium sized blanket: 32 x 31 inches / 82 x 79 cm

 Large blanket: 37 x 38 inches / 94 x 96 cm

 

The blanket is worked in the round, and edge stitches are picked up after cutting the steek. This is the largest version, so there's an awful lot of edge stitches... The edging is a modified version og this  edging from the Purl Bee. 

Thanks a lot, Pinneguri, for the idea and the test knitting!

And thanks for letting me use your photos. 

All photos in this post are © pinneguri

✿ 17 ✿ Granny's granny square blanket ✿

This blanket was made by my grandmother 

and given to my parents at some point. 

I remember we used to have it at home. 

A while ago my mother gave it to me. 

Or rather, she said I could have it if I mended it. 

You can see a seam defect in the upper photo (bottom right).

There were several holes like that, 

and also a couple of squares that hat to be partly re-corcheted.

Which I did the other day!

And voilà!

Isn't it a beauty?

I think my mother will be glad to see it in or sofa 

when she comes for Christmas.

A nice little square from France

I have tested this pattern for Sigrun. It's called Le Vesinet Square after the place she lives in France. It's a really nice pattern! I love the small circles, and you can get to use really small amounts of yarn. So there is no reason to throw away anything! I think I will use it in my now more and more modified Babette Blanket.

Help for Haiti

Some days ago Ravelry made it easy to tag patterns with Help for Haiti, where designers have pledged to donate a portion of the proceeds to Haiti relief efforts. When I saw this, I had already made a donation to the Norwegian Red Cross' work on Haiti . And given my small amount of pattern sales, I didn't bother to mark my patterns for Haiti. But then I read Ysolda's post about this. She had sold so many more patterns than usual that she increased her donation from 50 to 80%, and yesterday she was able to donete more than $6000 to Médecins Sans Frontières . So I decided that from January 15 to February 15, a 100% of the sale price of these two patterns will go to the Norwegian Red Cross for their work in Haiti.

Lullaby Love

Phantasy




To see other patterns for Haiti, you can see the huge list on Ravelry.

2010 crafty resolutions

I usually don't make many resolutions at New Year, at least not vere explicit ones (they'r so easily broken.) But as the title of this post indicates, there has to be something, so here we go:

- I'll make two pair of socks.

- I'll make more mittens and less hats.

- I'll continue to try new patterns and techniques.

- I'll reduce my stash.

And, more specifically, to achieve the last goal, I'll finally finish my (modified) Babette Blanket. Ok, there I said it, so now there's no way back.. This is what I've got so far:

PS The poppies is a pattern from Liselotte, a free download (click on "mønstret" in her post to download it). Her blog is in Danish, but if you don't read that, you can always enjoy her photos. Or you can find her on Ravelry.

New pattern: Lullaby love

I fell in love with the Rainbow Kauni yarn in a small yarn shop in Copenhagen. I had no idea what to make, but I just had to buy a couple of rainbow skeins. I soon realised that this yarn would be perfect for a baby blanket (at least esthetically, maybe not practically..it’s handwash only). I've seen some shawls made of this yarn, that's a bit too much, even for me..

I finished the blanket last autumn, but I haven't showed it till recently, because I was trying to get the pattern published. I first submitted it to The Inside Loop, who published my first patterns, Hippocampus and Amiga. But sadly, the magazine had to close down this spring, as I told you before. Then I tried Knitty, but was again nicely rejected. Amy suggested I submit the pattern to Petite Purls, "a magazine that specializes in baby and children's knitting patterns". And so I did, but no... So here is the pattern - self published - for sale ($ 7). Hope you like it. More photos on Flickr.

SKILLS NEEDED
Basic knitting skills
Stranded colourwork
Steeking
Fabric lining and binding

MATERIALS

MC Kauni Effektgarn wool; 438 yd/ 401 m per 100g skein; color: Rainbow;
(The Kauni skeins come in different sizes. I used just over one 160 g skein.)

CC Rauma Finullgarn wool; 360 yd /330 m per 100g skein; color: white; I used appr 125 g (Rauma Finullgarn is a Norwegian fingering wool yarn.
You can use any other fingering wool, f. ex a solid coloured Kauni.)

1 24-inch US #2,5/3mm circular needle
1 24-inch US #4 /3,5mm circular needle
Fabric for lining.