Knitting 1914- 2014 University of Southampton

Knitting 1914- 2014 University of Southampton

Wow. Just look at the video above. I really wish I could go and see this exhibition. It seems awesome.

And they have an archive too, I love archives!

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/intheloop/knittingcollections.html

Real life Alpacas!

A couple of friends of mine are keeping lots of Alpacas and fill up my Facebook- feed with furry, fuzzy cuteness. I have kinda been wondering what they do with all the fur, because you know; really soft locally bread and born fuzzy fur= awesome yarn. Today I found out that they are actually selling it through their webshop, Kullholen . No gauge, and no yardage, but yarn that begs to be experimented with! They also sell feathers from their birds, which they have lots of. The webpage is in Swedish, but if you don't speak the language, just ask (they speak English) them because they are really nice people and surely will help you.

So fuzzy!

Procrastination, no more.

Good mentors are the best thing. I just got my head sorted out for my spring paper and now I'm on it again after being slightly overwhelmed for a while by the sheer complexity of history. You know, it's not the straight line with little dots at regular intervals you learned in school- reality is way more complicated. Lots of things intersect with each other and morph into new phenomenons and structures. I kinda like it being this way, it feels very human for history to be so complicated and messy, but it's also a bit of a bugger because it makes it so hard to pin things down.

Another tricky thing is the Grace Cardigan. The lace part looks alluringly easy, but what's very easy is how easy it is to make a mistake and not realize it until a couple of rows later. And this is not the kind of cardigan you will be able to just frog a bit and then pick up again, the lace part goes all wonky. It's just frog the whole deal and start over.... I only had to frog it once this time (I have knitted one of these before) and have now passed the fiddly lacepart and just have endless rows of stockinette in front of me.

And I might meet my bf:s parents tonight, for the first time. How scary is that?!

The rise of the FrankenCat

The morning begun without even a sneaking suspicion from Whiskey that the day would evolve into something dramatic and horrible. If he had known, I strongly suspect he would have peed in my bed or something like that, just to make a point beforehand.
He was working hard on his "being really annoying to make The Female take of that stupid cone"- routine so that he could scratch that itch in his ear and go out again to kick that other cats butt.
Poor kitty never saw it coming...
Me on the other hand had decided that the situation of his ear probably was out of my hands and needed to be seen to by a vet. In to a carrier he went, wildly protesting and off to the Vet. The Vet told me that this was deep and that they needed to keep him for some hours to patch him up.

I forgot my own knitting at home. Would you belive it?!

During this time I managed to borrow some yarn and needles from a friend who was kind enough to be the designated driver of this whole ordeal. Some wrist warmers in a really soft yellow and wine red yarn are in the making.

Rubber antennae satelite cat. He gets more space-y every day.

Later on we went home, me and a heavily drugged cat who for all I knew hallucinated about the zombie apocalypse, at least he was behaving that way. It was kinda scary. The only was to keep him relatively calm and not try to walk or jump was to hold him tightly and stroke his back. He has two rubber drainage thingies sticking out from his head, and he got his teeth cleaned when they were at it and had the whole 5,5 kg (yep, he is a big boy) cat under sedation, so he now drools heavily. Guess who has to wipe that up? Well, I don't mind. I feel kinda sorry for him, he is going to be fine and all, but I can't really explain that to him.

Oh, well. On to new yarny depths, with FrankenCat by my side.

Gecko Green Ginko

To be quite honest I have no idea of the color of a Gecko lizard. Some kind of green, hardly this viivd bright one, but it made a fun headline.
The Ginko Shoulderette Shawl is done, and it's a bright reminder of the teaser spring we had/have that after some promising alluringly sunny days turned back into snowy winter. I know this kind of weather is expected in this place of the world, but nevertheless it's a bit of a disappointment.

Something that is NOT a disappointment is this knitting. Great pattern with good instructions for how to make it bigger (or smaller) and an interesting double sided lace part that came out as pretty ginko leaves. I think mine didn't become as clear as they could be, if you want your ginko leaves to really stand out I would recommend a hard spun sock yarn, not mohair.
No matter, I think it's really pretty the way it is.

An intruder/attentionseeker in a cone again.

My one is bit bigger then the original, I knitted stockinette until row 107 when I started the lace part. It came out as a good sized shawl, rather then a shoulderette. Not a huge one, but not small either.
I used aprox 1.7 balls of ONlinie 253 Hommage color and an unknown amount of some kind of 2-ply lace yarn I got in a swap way back. The subtle color changes in the mohair yarn made the color of the shawl almost shimmering, the effect really was pretty.
Also, remember to BO really loosely so that you can get the pretty edges.

A bit of Meh and a lot of Wants.

I'm having a period where the only thing I really feel like doing is sitting around, knitting and maybe listening to some music. It's making it really difficult to get something else done, you know- that whole being a responsible grown up- part. The cats are making their part to keep things this way too, Whiskey has once again been out fighting and got his ear bitten and infected, and Amelia is just really clingy and cuddly.
There is really tons of projects I would love to do, another vintage cardigan, the Lantern Festival Cowl or anything by Thea Eschliman . Or the Sherlock lives cardigan in some pretty colors. Yes, I'm kinda hooked on stranded knitting for the moment, I love to see the patterns growing.
The other day I cast on another Grace Cardigan , this one for myself in black Cascade Fingering. I can never have too many black cardigans, I can't see that happening. I need a torch to find anything in my wardrobe, and proud of it!

A little stranded

Oh, and I made another baby cardigan on leftovers. I still have a pile of leftovers that could be something...

I don't even know what to do with the cardigans. I'm not preggers, no one I know are and no one have a baby that would fit in one of these cardigans for aprox 3 months olds. Ah, the daily knitting problems...

The obstinate pile.