New loot from Knitpicks

Moving to Singapore has opened my yarn-related world even more than before. Mainly because I can participate in overseas online yarn sprees. Before I simply didn't order because of the sites not selling overseas or the price for shipping was too high. Now I share the shipping fee with other participants and vPost helps out with overseas shipping (one of my knitting friends here has an address in US thanks to that service).
This time we went berserk on knitpicks.com. I got:

Knit Picks Bare Peruvian Highland Wool Fingering Weight - 4 hundred-gram skeins.

3 skeins of the same yarn in Worsted weight and

2 skeins of Knit Picks Shimmer in Turquoise Splendor.

I am pretty sure it's not going to be the last one, and neither is the next one far along the road.

Halliste Girl - Folk Costume

It's done! (nearly). I got the set ready just in time.

The apron is still not quite "full" - it is supposed to have a very crowded embroidery. But I'll do it one of these weeks - I still have the other side to do anyways. The motifs on the apron are very old - they represent crosses, roses, cart wheels, sun and arborvitae.

Finish is near. 6th day

The hip-apron is nearly done. We had a weekend get-away to Tioman island in Malaysia and I didn't stitch a single stitch those days so I've reached the 6th Day:

I'll fill in the caps and attach the fringe tonight (I hope) and can consider it wearable (it should be embroidered from both ends, but I simply have no time). Actually I am not too sure it ever will be done from both sides, since my knuckles really hurt me. I do embroider a lot in one day: 4-5 hours, but not continuously.... if I will ever complete it, I promise it won't be more than 1 hr per day of embroidery.

5th day

I've nearly finished adding yellow - it turned out to be more tricky than I thought, because it's silk and tends to un-spin and then break.

I've also added some more brown and green and am currently "drawing" more figures.
I included in the picture also the woven belt she is going to wear with the apron.

Day 4

I added some brown...


And splashed some green.
Today red and yellow.

Third day

Day 2 of hip-apron

I hope to finish "drawing" today and start with "coloring"

Project - folk costume for a child

I'm making a folk costume from Estonia for my daughter for the school's Culutral Celebrations day. I chose clothes from Halliste region in Estonia.
I'm cheating a little, first because a six year-old shouldn't have a hip-apron (it is usually introduced in the clothing of a young girl in teenager years, more or less at the confirmation day), I have to use techniques that are somewhat different from original (the headband for instance is not made by the the exact traditional techinique, but has the right pattern and colors) and I cannot dress her in wool - for instance the stockings and skirt should be woolen. But I would like her Cultural Day costume to include as many as possible of items from Halliste (a village in Estonia) - I chose this costume because of its simplicity and because of the materials I could get my hands on.
I have already finished the tasseled headband:


and thanks to my mother for sending me the wool (and one silk) embroidery yarns on such a quick notice:

I got started on the hip-apron embroidery:

This has about 2 hours of work in back stitch - I'm not a very fast stitcher, but I'll post pictures of my progress here shortly again. This is one of the limited time projects again - I have until 27th of March.

Stash flash 2008

As a method of self-control in buying new yarns (hahahahahahahaha) I recorded all skeins I have at home at this moment.

I have cleverly hidden my stash here:


I have a total of app. 10 kilos of yarn and the full list can be found here.


This is just the stash inside my bed. I also have a basket in the living-room and that is the camouflage stash - if my significant other would ever realize I have yarn in other places as well, he would so go berserk. Luckily he seems to have forgotten that you can open the bed, and would most probably fail to open it without first giving up.

Updated:

This is my stash in the living room - leftovers of latest FOs, materials for current projects or wool for swatching when I find nice stitch patterns.

So what are you hiding and where?

Little surprises

Piecework January/February 2008
Originally uploaded by Sun Shines Better

I went to local bookstore Popular on Saturday to get some reading books for my daughter and stopped by the magazine section as well. Even though major part of the magazines sold are about embroidery, bead work or even crocheting, sometimes one might get lucky and get something about knitting as well.
I found Piecework. And this time it was all about knitting. I've been eying the Rovaniemi mitten technique for quite awhile now so I mainly got the magazine for this. I also was intrigued by the poetry in stitches mittens. I also found knitting in Lithuania article enlightening and was happy to find an article about kimonos.
The rest of the projects were a little simple for me on the first glance so I didn't care to read them. And then suddenly looking at the cover I saw a title: "Traditional Estonian Lace" ---- my first reaction was: hey, how could I have missed that before, it has been staring me most of the afternoon!
It shouldn't be a huge surprise though. Nancy Bush is fond of Estonian colour work, traveling stitches and knitting techniques; Evelyn A. Clark uses a lot of Estonian shawl patterns to create her own artworks: in the last few years there have been quite a few articles and patterns in Interweave Knits and Vogue Knitting mentioning Estonia; and with each year, more and more people come more interested of our knitting heritage. It's not much for big countries, but believe me, when your people are about 1 million in the entire world and your country has no real influence in the history or economics or science or literature, then our crafts are about all we can be really proud of.

Oh Happy Days...

... until I realize how much money I've spent.
Today was out March Knit-Out with Lois handing out the long waited Jaggerspun Spree goodies. Since the loot was still on cones we had some winding to do:



I had 12 OZ (app 350 grams) of Zephy 2/18 (wool-silk blend) waiting for me:


Close up of the thread:




Copy-paste for future reference:

JaggerSpun Zephyr 2/18 Lace Weight Yarn Specifications

Content:	50% Chinese Tussah silk, 50% fine grade Merino wool
Length per Cone:	5040 yards
Length per 2-oz:	630 yards
Weight per Cone:	Slightly over 1 lb.
Ply:	2/18 Lace Weight
Care Instructions:	Hand wash lukewarm, do not bleach Preferably dry clean Cool iron can be used under a pressing cloth, never iron wet Do not tumble dry
Storage tips:	For long-term storage, make sure this yarn is in a moth-proofed environment. Clean, clear plastic containers work extremely well. You can also wrap the garment in archival tissue paper to extend garment life.

Next week: Stash flash!