Astrid knits her way out

wedding ring scarf

The wedding ring scarf is blocked, finished and loved. It is incredible how soft this yarn is. But what else to expect of a blend mohair and silk. (rowan silk haze)

I'm not much of a blocker, but with this kind of knitting it is absolutely a must. The pattern comes out so much better. And the really amazing thing is that after blocking you hardly see what is the front or the back of the scarf.

For the pattern look here.

At last: Look at my (not wedding) ring: It fits easy !

 

knitters in crime

I love crime books

I love knitting

So this is hilarious: knitting mysteries! How fun is that: as if they were written just for me. Thanks Mary Kruger and Maggie Sefton ! If you follow these links you will notice that there are dozens of those knitting mysteries. The main character of the Maggie Sefton-serie starts knitting in the first book and gets a more experienced knitter book by book. Of course every book ends with the knittingpatterns of that story (book 1: " kelly's first scarf" and " lambspun's whodunnit shell" ! I love this idea: hope it stands up with my expectations.

book meme

On  eliza-jane's blog I found this book meme:

Look at the list of books below:
* Bold the ones you’ve read,
* Italicize the ones you want to read
* Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.


1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

31/100 not bad for a dutch woman. Who among you will have a go with this list?

confused?

In this dutch magazine I saw a beautiful wedding ring skarf, designed by her. This wedding ring skarf was knitted by her and her.  A wedding ring skarf has its origine in the Shetland Islands. When it was done the skarf had to be drawn through a weddingring.  I don't wear a weddingring, but in this time and age my self-bought and by-hard-working and earned-it-myself- ring will do just as good.

I have started the skarf according to the pattern. Scouts honour! But as you all know, I am a combined knitter-tv.watcher. No way with this chart. I missed a complete episode of Grey's and Men in trees!

So I made my own chart: much easier and less confusing if you are a combined-knitter (is that an excisting word: combined-knitter? Well, it should be.)

Cast on 90 stitches. Knit 10 rows. row 11 and every odd row: knit 5 at the beginning and at the end. In between look at the chart. (8x repeat). row 12 and every even row: knit 5, purl 80, knit 5. Knit the last 10 rows.

				o	v	o
			o		v		o
		o			v			o
	o				v				o

O = yarn round needle

V = slip 1 stitch, knit 2 together and pass slipstitch over

And you will get this:

My friend's mother used to say: life is a party, but you must hang out the garlands yourself. Free translation of: het leven is een feest, maar je moet zelf de slingers ophangen.

The moral of this story: Make yourself a nice cappuccino, install yourself with the knitting, turn on the tv (if neccesary sent your kids to play outside) and enjoy the comfort of what life can be.

ps you can comment again! problems are fixed.

famous!

It's official now: I am famous! Look at my pattern of the tasselsocks at wolhalla : only available in Dutch. But if you have knitted socks before, you will manage with just the pictures on the pattern.

the struggle of taking the right picture

After finishing a project, the next project comes along: taking the right picture. That is not my thing. I will show you the struggle, the battle and conquering of the right picture. Watch and shiver!

  1. standing in front of a mirror and HE! there is my camera on the picture!

2. Holding the camera a bit on the side won't help. Turn that camera around, woman!

And besides that: look at my old chin and neck area! I won't go on the internet with that !

On the background you can see all kinds of laundry: Who will look at my scarf now?

3. No camera this time, but there is not a good focus on my scarf. And still distractions on the background: who is interrested in the contents of my closet (and cardigan?)

4. this can be fixed: but boring, boring, boring.

5. too dark, too obscure. 

6. This is it!

A young and firm neck , a good look at the scarf and no distractions!

pattern: my own

yarn: noro