Lots of crafting, but nothing finished

Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

I was so happy to see you all here. I thought that since I was away for such a long time, no one would find me anymore, but here you are! This is wonderful! I am aiming to write once a week, it would be great to be here more often but once a week is good and I should be able to manage it. It is often enough not to drop off writing and updating. (I do need a new computer, I have needed it for a while, and now there is a good reason to update this old companion. Would you believe if I told you that I have had this one for 9 years, almost 10… and it still works, it is just a little bit slow these days.)

The crafting journey has had many twists and turns this past week, and I must write about that, but at first the update on the furry children and the weather.

This is Piisku. She turned one year on August 20^th and is first grader now. She is slowly learning not to eat everything and knows a whole lot already, she is a good listener, concentrates well and pays attention to what is being said. She is calm and gentle (mostly), a real joy every day.

Here, the girls were contemplating on moving to Sweden when my girl was packing and was ready to fly back and they hated to see her take out her suitcase… farewells are never easy. Piki is in the middle of hunting season and quite busy every day and Väinö (the cat) is taking shorter and shorter trips outside since the weather gets cooler every day and nights are cold already. (He just made a remark that he is busy hunting every single day…) There was frost on the roofs in the morning. The sun rises and sets at seven, but from now on, we will loose more than half an hour of daylight every single week until Christmas.

Since last week, I cast on for a new shawl; ExplorationStation by Stephen West but I think … I will rip this.

There is something that is not right, I don’t like how it is turning out. I changed the needle size to a smaller one and now I think the shawl will be too small… I have thought of making the wedge part bigger by adding two wedge repeats and thus save the shawl, but I am not sure. Stephen will have a mystery shawl along soon, starting October 4^th and I am thinking of taking part in it… but am not sure. His patterns are fun to make and I enjoyed last year’s mystery a lot, but I will think it over.

I was on Ravelry looking for something else and for a long time I have admired crochet shawls by Elena Fedotova. I am going to make one of hers at some point, but I am not sure which one and when. She has many nice projects. I love her style and her projects are beautiful and sophisticated.

This is my new crochet sweater… and there is something odd there too, but I am not going to rip this. I think it is the color. The combination is stuffy somehow; adding white would have made it more fresh, but I did not want to add white, because it would have taken the center stage and added gray instead of it. The sweater can breathe now, but I am not completely happy with my color choices. I should start all over again, but I don’t want to… I will continue and see if I can make it better somehow. It will be a challenge… I have had a few comments of the way the fabric feels and seems in my other two crocheted sweaters, and some have asked me if the sweater has been felted. The yarn (Maisa Tikkanen Finnish wool - not all Finnsheep wool, discontinued) blooms beautifully when washed and it does appear little bit felted, but it is not and probably I could rip it if needed. I have lots of this yarn left and you will see it many, many more times in the future. It resembles Shetland wool. It is good, rustic woolly wool. 

Fall and darkness, candles and frost, fires and shadows always sparkle up my imagination and I just had to try, if knitting creatures would feel right.

I finished knitting a bear that has been on the needles for a long time and cast on for a new one.

I tweaked the ears and I like the new more rounded look of them, but I still must wait for the right kind of mindset to continue them. I need to find the warm and fuzzy place to feel comfortable making them. I know it is there somewhere, I just have not found it yet.

And finally, I sewed a little bit. Hopefully this will be a grandmother’s flower garden quilt at some point. The petals are quite big, one side is almost 4” and I have pieced the fabric using the improvisational technique, where you don’t stop and think but just sew random pieces together.

I don’t have the capacity to plan, I just grab a piece, find a match to it, place them right sides together, sew and then trim the seam to a quarter of an inch. Iron and keep adding pieces. Once the piece is big enough, I cut the piece into the measurements or the shape. I love this kind of quilting. Very liberating and a lot of fun.

And this, I think is all today. This sums up my whole week of crafting. There are no finished objects, just lots of this and that. 

It is Yarndale this weekend. I wish I was going. I will, someday.

I hope you have a good week! Thank you so much for reading, xx.

Wool with you,

Lene