This ball gives very different hexagons

Did they really all come from the same ball?

Obvious brothers

We are different but the relation is quite obvious

I like them both but what a difference!

This is the first ball of Opal Hundertwasser sock yarn series 2 that arrived and the first two hexagons I knitted with it (first one on the left):

I prefer the second what can I do?!?

And the rest of the Series 2 plus all of Opal Hundertwasser Series 3 arrived a week or so later:

Look what arrived in the mail not too long ago

And this was hiding underneath the first layer above

I actually finished knitting one hexagon from each of the new colors but they are in a long not very photographable ribbon so it will have to wait. No time right now.

9 more meshushim added

While knitting on this I was wondering what does it want to be and I went looking around in Ravelry and beyond.

I discovered that the yarn is a limited edition series and most of its colors are not readily available any more. I also learned that some of the colors of the second series of the Opal Hundertwasser yarns are also not easily available and a third series is going to be available this September – can you sense the brewing of a major new obsession around here?

I first learned about the existence of the second series during one of my strictest yarn diets and I decided just to ignore its existence but now all sorts of  crazy ideas start popping around in my head:  Am I going to make a throw? baby blanket? or maybe this thing wants to become a bedspread for our bed in the new condo we bought in Toronto? Maybe I should try and buy all 3 series for this bedspread?

So I looked more carefully and discovered that I can get all the colors of series 2 except one in Europe (and much cheaper too) and lucky for me, the color missing in Europe, is still available in the USA. I also found out that series 3 is already available in Europe and I found it even cheaper than series 2!

I think you can imagine already what is making its way towards me, right?

In the meantime, I decided to knit free standing hexagons so I will not have too large a block knitted with only 8 colorways when I am going to have 24 of them and this is what I got so far:

My current collection of free hexagons

Don’t worry, I didn’t lose my mind completely. All these can be incorporated into the final object by picking up stitches along the sides, I still hate sewing and don’t have any intention of sewing anything in this project except the hiding of the ends and I do this as I finish each hexagon!

A little decoration

Am I pretty?

Almost blue - good brdiging hexagon

I have a calming effect

I am sooo yellow

Pretending I am a fair isle,,,

I came out quite red didn't I?

I really like how I can’t always predict the colors of the hexagon from the colors I see in the ball.  Some of them are really surprising, some I can tell already. Some repeat after 4 hexagons or so but they are still a bit different.

I think I am doomed! wish me luck :)

Do you see the good luck on some of the stars?

It was one of the lovely, creative presents Sam made her father for his 60 birthday! She made all those little stars from long ribbons of paper and they are three dimensional too! I especially adore the ones with the little faces and how she managed to get the face smack in the middle of the star, lovely!

Here you can see some free stars for more details

My presents were so boring in comparison:

Socks in all sorts of stages

This year, Joe received socks in different stages: a complete pair, another one almost completed (it was all done a day after the birthday) and two pairs in a Sock to be stage:

These will be socks before the winter, I hope!

Mazal tov my darling and many many happy returns with loads of boring socks from me and creative gifts from your daughter!

Sock to be in STR Rare Gems mill ends mediumweight

Ain't she beautiful?

Couldn't choose the photo I prefer!

Maybe I am the best?

I am not perfect!

My photographer in action

and I still knit circles,,,

During the same walk we found the first batch of ripe wild berries, the same ones as last year,  I had a mouthful, it made me very happy.

And I received this photo of the ropes I sent to my friend Luly in Dublin:

I think she likes her birthday present

She was so happy with the visiting sun that she forgot I asked for a professional photo, oh well, I think I will manage to forgive her.

Today, I decided it may be a good subject of a blog post, this feeling of blah when you finish knitting a project – does it sound familiar to anyone?

So I took my shawl out of its hiding (I had to hide it to protect it from a too hasty ripping attack you see,,,) to take some photos to try and explain the problem and suddenly I saw quite a lovely shawl spread on the table and the grass in front of me! I had quite a strong HAH feeling – what a lovely surprise.

The sun brings out the purples in me, good!

I look quite green don't I?

I think the problem was the garter border that wanted to fold and not stand straight and the tension of the upper border that makes the shawl end in a weird way. Today both issues look OK to me and I think blocking the shawl will make it look even better, what do you think, to block or not to block?

The Malabrigo Yarn Sock colorways I used gave me many surprises too.

As you can see in the two photos above (excuse the quality, my photographer is busy right now,,,) they look quite different in different lights.

Looking at the yarn in the skeins:

Aren't the center skein look kind of purplish to you?

I was sure this shawl will be on the purply side but in most lights it looks more blue/green/yellow combo to me.

The biggest surprise was that when I look at the two colors in the cakes they look quite different to me:

These colors are very different no?

But while knitting the stripes in some sections I had a problem differentiating between the two colors so much that I had to check the source of the thread I was knitting with to make sure I am using the right color! The light outside brings out the stripes but you can see the mingling of the colors in the right side of the second photo above.

This issue made the knitting of this almost all knit shawl quite a pleasure, I kept waiting to see how those stripes will come up next but I must admit I would have enjoyed it even without the colors play, you see, I just love knitting simple stockinette, I am weird that way!

Oh and I have enough leftovers of these two colors to knit some ropes too ,,,, did I admit of being weird or didn’t I? :)

I still remember my shock when during my first visit to London, UK, after I finished my army service (yes, I was once a soldier but this is a story for another post I think), I saw in a very fancy department store, a very pregnant and very elegant young lady with her similarly elegant mother (I assumed), shopping for her baby with the assistance of a few of the store workers. My first thought was: what will she do with all these things if god forbid something will go wrong with the baby,,,

Since then I witnessed this kind of preparations and heard about baby showers but my reaction remained the same.

So imagine how much I shocked myself when before I went to Israel in March, I went and bought yarn to knit some presents for my sister’s first grandchild that was still a month or more away from being expected out here and even more, when I decided to follow my friend’s advice and knitted things for a baby just because I had an urge to suddenly knit for one.

Those knitted creations were officially designated to Noam, my new grandnephew (do you call them grandnephew or what?) only after he was born, a big healthy boy.

Baby's knits are so cute

You can see all the details of this set on my Ravelry Project page (did you notice you can now make your project pages accessible to the public?)

As it turned out, Noam was born quite big and the set is too small for him, I think it is a sign that I should have kept the tradition and waited patiently,,,

I also knitted a larger cardigan for him:

Will this one be too small too?

As this one is knitted in a merino yarn, I knitted it for a 6-9 months baby which will be Noam’s age when the winter is expected in Israel but I have my doubts about fit of this one too.

Oh well, Noam is going to have very elegant teddy bears I think.

Talking about knitting for babies, I knitted something for our “baby” too:

Look at her T-shirt

We celebrated her 22 birthday yesterday.

Did I do a good job?

I call this Pink Lemonade as the design is called Citron and I used some 70% Alpaca 40% Silk lace weight yarn I bought in some small place in one of our little day trips in Ontario, I am sorry I don’t have any other details about this yarn.

Please excuse the quality of the photos in this post, I will try doing better next time.

]]> http://knittingintranslation.com/?feed=rss2&p=1907 6 http://knittingintranslation.com/?p=1911 http://knittingintranslation.com/?p=1911#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 03:06:36 +0000 Rachel http://knittingintranslation.com/?p=1911 Joe has some bird feeders hanging close enough to his window that he can take photos of his visitors. This is a frequent one:

A lovely Cardinal frequenting Joe's bird feeder

Joe has quite an impressive collection of birds’ photos on these feeders and I may use them to decorate some future posts,  but today I want to tell you about a different visitor.

A few mornings ago Joe noticed that the level of grains in the feeders went down dramatically during the night and we saw some seeds spread on the ground under them. Joe suspected one of the animals who frequent the back yard but tonight Sam caught the visitor in action and Joe managed to catch him on camera:

The raccoon decided to climb to our balcony Saki's way!

He was very brazen:

Oh well maybe I can get to it from here,,,

He wasn’t bother by the flash light shining on him:

I will get to these seeds no matter what!

Going down the pole

or the camera:

See what a lovely manicure I got!

I think it is a good thing we kept Saki away don’t you agree?

After a week of this:

Tough Life!

I returned home and was promptly attacked by a vicious cold bug that spread around and caught our whole family. No wonder it took me so long to re-surface, right?

I don’t have  much knitting to show you. I still kind of ignore what I knitted in Israel and the explanation will come with the revelation of those knits but I did knit there another of those circles of mine for my sister, this time in cotton in a light denim/silvery kind of color, she liked it a lot:

A summary version of The Circles

I am almost done with a hot pink Citron but it is very non photographable right now and I also started a Daybreak but didn’t take any photos of it either yet – I am so boring,,,,

I also took out an old project:

A project with a charm over me

and started working on it again. I knitted about 2/3 of this blanket in 2006 and I took it out to see if I want to finish it as a present but upon seeing it I realized I have some strange affection to this knit and I am not sure at all I want to give it away. This is quite a weird feeling for me as I give a lot of my knits away without any issue, so I think this one just wants to be mine!

Did you ever had this feeling about something you knitted?