Beatnik- Sweater

My favourite kind of delivery!

Hey folks, how have you been?

Life has been pretty busy in our neck of the woods. My work life is crazy right now, so I am happy when I have some knitting in my hands by the end of the day and can see what I can accomplish there.
In the middle of February I finished a project I was looking forward to for some time and it was so much fun to knit, I will definitely do it again. It's the Beatnik-Sweater, a free pattern on Ravelry by Norah Gaugan.
There is so much about the pattern that appealed to me: the aran-style cables, the short sleeves, the neck, the 60s feel about it. And what can I say? The pattern is totally easy to follow, even the cable pattern gets easy after a little while and after all this fair-isle sock-knitting it was feeling like a break to knit in only one colour.

Don't you just love cables?

The sweater is knit in parts, back, front, sleeves are all knit apart from each other and then sown together. The only part you knit onto the whole thing is the neck.

My skin is super sensitive with wool, so I was a bit afraid that the Drops Nepal I used would be a bit too itchy. On instagram I read about washing wool with a bit of conditioner, which makes sense, after all, it's hair, too. And it worked. The yarn wasn't scratchy at all and the sweater fits better than any other piece of clothing I ever knit. I am really happy with the end result. Due to its material and the several layers the cables form, it is pretty warm, but as there still is very cold evenings I am sure I will be able to wear it a few times in spring as well.

Dita likes the Beatnik too

The Back is done!

Soaking in the Bath

Proud and wearing it for the first time!

I made a mistake in the front part which will haunt me till the end of my life I guess. But it's only one cable that is turning the wrong way. Admist all those other cables you don't really see if, if you are not looking for it. So I am ok with it, I am no perfectionist anyway.

Wearing it in the Scottie, looking fat, but happy. 

Fits perfectly!

While I took a friend who just started to knit yarn-shopping ( I am such a self-less friend, don't you think?) I happened to find some pretty well-priced bright red and dark grey yarn, which I already had an idea for. Mr. Schön had managed to get me two Norwegian knitting-books. "Kofteboken I and II" which sport a lot of beautiful Norwegian patterns of those traditional cardigans, called Kofte, that are knit in the round and later cut open. I have written about my first Kofte before.
This time I just want to knit a sweater however (a genser in Norwegian) and the pattern looks so different in grey and red, compared to the black and white in the book, but I love how it is turning out. Apart from the knitting chart, I don't understand that much from the book, as everything is in Norwegian. But I am thinking of knitting it just like the Beatnik-pattern as it fit me so well. I hope it will work out, as of course the beatnik wasn't knit in the round...

It's amazing, how different colours work

Love the pattern!

Do you remember Opus the Octopus and his brother? My cousin has seen my Opuses online and asked me, whether I would knit one for their kids as well. So of course I started immediately, very happy to have found the perfect project for blue and green yarn a friend had given to me as a present years ago. It looks perfect as an octopus. I will show you the finished project soon.

TGIF, work really is a hazard at the moment and this afternoon we will take the van out for another adventure. Have a great weekend, everybody!

A cabled hat I made in between

A knitter never talks about her stash...

How have you been? The new year has started with all it’s madness and it is already the 7th of February. Where has the time gone?

January has been a surprisingly beautiful month. Before all the horrible news from the US.

Sadly, all the Christmas lights, Christmas markets and the beautiful ferris wheel of Düsseldorf are gone and with them, all the holiday vibes. I tend to be very depressed on New Year’s ending up hating January. This year was different though. Maybe with all that has happened in 2016, including politics and also the sudden passing of so many celebrities, 2017 seems like a new opportunity. A chance to become a better year. (leaving Trump out of the picture for a second now, as I bet we all need a break from that guy from time to time.)

I knit those for a friend of mine but liking the pattern, I made a pair for me, too. 

Sorting my yarn. What a mess!

So far it has worked, by last year this time already Bowie and Alan Rickman had died, so I keep my fingers crossed, that we won’t have another year of too many young dead people. To boost the mood a little more, I was much more disciplined during those last few days, when working from home, I studied, sat over my books, like a PhD student is supposed to. And only in the evenings I allowed my hands to grab the needles and keep on with my knitting. The pattern for the cardigan I was planning turned out not to look so great with the ordered yarn, which still is very beautiful and I longed to do something two-coloured again, so I dove deep into the topic of Norwegian knits. My, there are an abundance of cute patterns here. Especially the concept of Kofte fascinates me. Did you know that they knit the cardigan, top to bottom, adding the arms later. In order to avoid backrows, they are knitting the cardigans in the round, like a jumper, and then they cut them open! It’s true. My knitter’s heart screams when I hear this. Imagine, knitting a whole jumper in a beautiful pattern, with differently coloured yarn and then cutting into it? The thought scares me big time, but I would love to try it. The technique is called steeking and the stitches have to be secured either with a sewing machine or with the help of a crochet needle. Check out the crocheting way in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vno-cMURQjc

To prepare for the big project and also to use up some of my leftovers, I started to knit socks again, with Norwegian patterns. This is so much fun! Plus they are finished in no time and I am a big fan of that. First I used leftover yarn for those babies. A friend of mine liked the pattern a lot and so I asked her for her favourite colours and made another pair, this time in blue und purple. Feeling prepared for the adventure to knit a Norwegian cardigan, I started with a kid-sized one, which turned out a bit bigger than expected. I didn't knit a gauge, as I did not have a specific size in mind, but when I begin to knit one for me, I definitely have to prepare much better. 

First socks made from leftovers

second pair

Third one, made in blue and purple as a request for a friend

So far, so good. It is a lot of fun to knit in the big round, plus the baby yarn is really nice and easy to work with. I am collecting patterns from all over the place, different books and Pinterest, to connect them to one cute little cardigan. I am not too happy with how the yellow bell flowers turned out, as they don't contrast enough with the green background, but what the hell... I am not the kind of person that unravels their knitting. Perfection is overrated. I guess, one more evening to go and then I can face the adventure of steeking. So exciting!

The bell flowers are a nice idea, but they somehow don't fit the rest... Lisek likes to help, of course!

The top row here is part of a border of snowflakes, which I finished yesterday, so yay!

Next, I want to knit for a sofa cushion and when the ordered yarn is here I am going to start a Kofte for myself. Let's see how it goes. Especially knitting the right size seems to be a challenge for me. 

Shawls, shawls, shawls

So this is Christmas. Or rather, so christmas is over. It was an especially great one. My grandmother sadly hasn't been all that well during the last weeks, but she started to feel better again with the whole family around. Christmas eve tends to be quite hectic with between 15 and 20 people around, we argue, people race to dinner, race to open their presents and all in all it is usually less harmonic than I hope it to be.
This year was different though. We had raclette, which means less running to the kitchen and people being forced to take some time to eat. And only afterwards we gave each other our presents. Every present was highly appreciated and we had a lot of fun. I gave my mom a whole box of comfort-stuff, like very snugly socks, sweat pants and an extremely soft sweater, plus a book for self-helping you to sleep better. She has been a bad sleeper for such a long time and I know that you can get better at it. I hope she will take care of herself better and I wanted to tell her with giving her all that cuddly stuff. We all had a good laugh when she immediately changed into the new clothes.
The next day we went to my inlaws, also having an extremely relaxed evening. I can say it was one of the loveliest christmas I ever had. Presents include a small Lisek made of felt, a monthly chocolate delivery, bath oil and a spa day. It is going to be great!

I really liked the way the shawl for my friend turned out

It was a light, cottonly yarn, very soft

During the last three weeks I had some time to knit presents. As I loved to knit the cable shawl, I did some more of those. One of them, a pink one, was supposed to be a present, but I made so many mistakes knitting it, that I didn't dare giving it away.

The cables come out nicely with the thick yarn

The next one was a present for my mom. She likes colours I would never wear, bright colours like apple green or orange. So I ordered some of the finest merino wool in orange / yellow. I like the result, it is soft and warm, but you can see I haven't washed it yet, it is less stretchy than the pink one.

soft and warm merino - not my colour, but my mom likes it

Right now I am using some really nice Alpaka Silk to knit a shawl for myself. As it is very thin yawn it takes a lot of time. After wearing my knit cardigan Palma for christmas I feel motivated to knit another one for myself. I ordered some very fine yarn in silvergrey and will knit the following one. It's special to me as my mom gave me the book it is in as a present some years ago and so far I haven't knit anything of the patterns.

My next project

Creative Day - Dog Bed and Collar

Today I was really inspired to sew something, after a long time of only knitting. One reason is Lisek. who is mastering lying on his own bed at the moment. It is part of training him to be quiet while staying home alone: to assign him his very own place and to forbid him to lie anywhere else.

Also, he gets all his treats in his bed now, which is why it quickly looks pretty horrible and has to be washed. As we had bought only one bed I decided to make him another one, in order to be able to wash either one. There was so much nice fabric to choose from, I decided on one strawberry pattern and one with white hearts on green. I filled it with little plastic balls, which I sew an inlay for, so that I can still wash the outer parts.


If you want to make a bed yourself:

You cut two big pieces measuring 100 and 70 cm,
two stripes measure 110 x 15 cm
two that measure 80 x 15 cm

Then you sew the fitting stripes to the first big piece, putting right side onto right side. Make sure that the stitching of all four pieces meet, in order to close all the gaps. When you are finished, you close the sides, also by making the stitches meet the stitches from the upper part. After that you sew the bottom part to it, right side facing right side, but make sure you leave a rather big gap you can later close with the help of buttons, if you like.

Sew all the sides to the top

Leave a gap for the inlay or filling - maybe bigger than this 

The inlay can be made the same way, but actually, I just took a big piece of cloth that measured 220 x 80 cm and joined all the sides except for one whole on the side, to fill it with material, and then closed the "gap". Here I used a zigzag stitch in order to make it really stable and flexible at the same time, so none of the horrible little pastic balls escape.

That's my inlay

It was quite a hassle to put the inlay into the cover, as I had made the whole a little bit too small. In the end I succeeded and made a poor puppy lie on the bed. I think it will take Lisek some time to love it as much as his other bed, as he is not used to dig a little whole into his bed, but I think he will like it eventually. It looks super cute to see him lie in it already.

Another thing I made today was a new collar for the little one, fitting his turquoise leash that he already has. I also like the fabric for the collar a lot. If you want to make a collar for your dog as well, be sure to get all the extra parts, like the metal ring and the latch. To make it a secure collar, you need to sew in squares like I did here. That way there is no danger of the seam to rip open. I took another collar I really like as a model.

Still not sooo comfortable

... but being a dutiful dog, Lisek still stays on his bed, as told

Better already....

Recent Reading, recent Knitting

Spring is on it's way...

Tomato Plants slowly emerging

As if having a job and doing a PhD wouldn’t give me enough to read, I have been reading like crazy during those last weeks. Maybe, because it has helped my dealing with my sugar addiction to read again and again why it is so bad for you and what you can do to eat healthily instead.

One book that was a good read, but definitely no life-changer for me like “Thrive” was “Pretty happy” by Kate Hudson. I have noticed her wellness / health-approaches through all the ads for her company “Fabletics” that was shown to me on facebook due to my interest in Yoga and wellness I guess. “Pretty happy” focuses around self-love and how to attain it. Sports and nutrition are – not surprisingly – two key elements of feeling great for her. Her nutrition is based on some ideas from Ayurveda, the idea of keeping the level of acids in your food low. I do not completely agree with her concept of nutrition, but she basically says what I hold true: eat mostly vegetables, reduce intake of meat and dairy and keep your fingers from processed food as often as possible. Most interesting for me and what I will definitely take out of the book for myself is her inspiration to put your thoughts / progress / ideas into a “drawing board” or in my case, a journal. I used to write into my journal a lot during my teenage years and it has always helped me a lot. Thanks to Kate Hudson I want to make journal writing more of a priority again. I have started to write into my journal again and there are so many topics I still want to cover. Like everything about our LeanIn Circle and the massive development we have seen there... So many thoughts! Journaling can really help you to cluster your thoughts and see connections where you haven't seen any before.

Catching Ball in Grafenberger Wald

The other book I recently bought is “The Stash Plan” by Laura Prepon and Elisabeth Troy. I have always liked Laura Prepon and admired her work. We have a quite similar body type I think which is why her story of finding a good way to eat to help her to feel awesome spoke to me. Her coach, Elisabeth Troy, a wellness coach, something quite unheard of in Germany I think, impressed me with her concept of integrating Traditional Chinese Medicine into our Western world and applying it to all kinds of clients. Some people might believe the ideas of Meridians as energy pathways inside the body to be humbug, but as I have been relieved from my weekly migraine attacks by acupuncture, I cannot not believe in the concepts of TCM. Troy believes the liver and goal bladder to be crucial to our health and it makes sense if you read about the liver’s task in your body. To make a long story short, I recommend you read the book or check out some of the interviews with Laura and Elisabeth on Youtube to get an idea of what the book is about. I have been making my own beef broth only yesterday and I can definitely say that at least one member of the household absolutely loves it, which is Lisek as he gets to eat leftover bones.

We had another LeanIn Circle meeting the other day and this time I had prepared a kind of workshop on attentive listening, which had been such an eye-opener during my mediation course that I just wanted to share this “gift” of listening. People might think it is easy, but if you are a very outgoing person, always used to share a lot about your life, it can be tricky. The “rules” for it are easy enough, (give the other person your full attention; do not interrupt, ask open questions to get a better understanding of their problem, and that’s it. Do not talk about yourself, just listen.) but it can be a challenge, I can tell. It gets easier after a while and last session’s conclusion was: you always have to “tune in” consciously. Do not get used to it and do not do it all the time, or you and your point of you will get lost, but use it as a tool to make others feel better and to relax a situation. I loved how the others reacted to our little exercise and how much all of them also took out of the workshop.

Next to reading, writing, workshops I have also done some knitting. One of my favourite presents of my 30s birthday was definitely the burgundy red supersoft Merino yarn that some friends gave me for it. Up till now I did not dare to make anything from it, as it no project seemed special enough. And you know what I am doing with it? A plain beanie. Dah! I could have started much earlier. 

Don't you just love that colour?

But to have still some of the great looking yarn for more special projects I ordered some online, so that I do not have the feeling to “waste” all of this special yarn. I am crazy, I know.

To follow the pattern more easily, I adjust Washi tape to the part I am currently knitting.

I also started some stockings in a Norwegian pattern, but I just found out that I do not have enough of the same yarn to finish them. I love the pattern though, so I started the pattern anew and took more of the beautiful red merino wool. The pattern takes me some time to knit it, which is why I have only started, but I am looking forward to owning two beautiful warm knee high socks I made myself. 

The first attempt, I didn't figure  I had not enough of the orange yarn to finish at first. Plus, the pattern is not very well distinguishable,,,

So, I went back to the beuatiful red yarn. The pattern comes out much better.

Knitting is a great way to keep you busy while craving chocolate...

You can never have enough puppy pictures...

Yesterday it has been three weeks of no sugar. I am holding up quite well, although I have experienced some craving those few last days. I often suffer from PMS and this time it hit me especially bad. I am proud that I didn’t give in though. I just ate a lot. And I mean a lot! But not the sugar that my body was craving. Usually I have no self discipline whatsoever on those days, I basically run to the supermarket and put everything into my shopping cart that is loaded with sugar, chocolate and caramel. I managed to stay away from the stuff this time, but it was hard. Saturday morning I did not only have the worst kind of cramping, but felt really sick and could not eat at first. It was worse than usually, but maybe I had some kind of infection at the same time.

Yesterday, while at the supermarket, I was tempted by the “industrial sugar free” isle and took home with me those two babies. They cost a whopping 3.50€ per piece, but I wanted to give myself a treat, so I did. The chocolate is sweetened by coconut-blossoms, so not really sugar-free, but at least no processed sugar. I ate a little piece of the coconut flavoured one and it was MAGICAL! The good thing was though, I was satisfied after the little piece and did not need more of it.

Ombar you get it in German drugstore dm. Yummie!

I have noticed several things about my brain and mind while being without the usual candy-dose: they are working much better! I am less tired, less moody and my memory is much better. Furthermore, I am motivated to move, to run, to do Yoga, to take the dog on a long walk. (Ok, I won’t deny, the awesome spring weather those last days has helped big time, too.) In one movie I have seen they tested the effect of sugar on the brain. The hippocampus, responsible for memory function and personality has been proved to be damaged by too much sugar intake. I used to be forgetful all the time, I forgot things that I had said and done, events that should have had a huge impact on my memory. My memory loss proved to be so profound that Mr. Schön was sometimes really worried (and also annoyed) about living with someone having the memory of a goldfish. Maybe it is just wishful thinking and knowing about the effect on the brain, but I have the feeling that my memory has gotten much better and I am more able to focus on one thing at a time. (By the way, Mr Schön got infected with the idea of sugar-fasting, but he has decided to indulge on weekends. I am proud to say that so far I have not been tempted, even when he was sitting next to me, enjoying chocolate.) A nice side effect, I have lost a pound per week since I started sugar fasting, without ever going hungry. To further motivate me, I read all I can about sugar and nutrition. This new German book is a lot about the body chemistry while digesting. Very interesting, but not always so easy to understand for a laywoman. 

Knitting is a great way to keep yourself busy in front of the tv if normally you were snacking. I don’t know about you, but I am terrible with all my projects, I almost never finish them at once, so you can find a lot of UFOs in our flat, Unfinished Objects. Elephant socks almost finished for our neighbor, a big shawl, a half-finished cardigan… Finally I took up the work on one cropped cardigan again that I have knitted ages ago. The back seemed to be way to broad, so I got frustrated and let it rot in a corner of my knitting basket. A few weeks ago I found it again and a friend suggested to knit a collar on it, tightening it. I did that yesterday on my way to work and hey, it doesn’t look too bad. The colour is a really beautiful deep red, and the fabric is surprisingly soft, so it would have been a pity not to finish it. On the way back I started with the missing sleeve, the last part of it and by tomorrow it is going to be finished. I like the style of Bernadette in the Big Bang Theory and wanted to have a small cardigan to put over dresses. Voilà! My next project (new project, ahem…) is going to be a Miette. (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/miette) I have always wanted to make one, but so far was too lazy to follow the English instructions. A friend of mine, she is Australian, has bravely started to knit a German pattern, as though it is really hard for her, all the abbreviations of the German knitting terms, so I feel like an idiot, shying away from an easy English pattern. Miette it is. Then I will have one more nice cardigan to wear on my dresses.

My cousin’s wife wrote to me yesterday, that they badly need a new hat for their son, as he loves the hat I made him so much, he refuses to wear anything else. By now the old one is pretty drawn already, plus too small, so I started with a new one yesterday. I had written the pattern myself, it is not complicated at all, but apparently, little Lukas likes it a lot, so I also tried to find matching colours, hoping he will like his new hat just like the old one. I also started a new one, in different colours, so maybe they can wash one while he is wearing the other one, but kids know what they want and maybe he does not fancy the new orange/yellow one, which I admit looks a bit crazy.  It is, of course, a big compliment that he loves my knitting so much J

A copy of the hat that Lukas loves so much

Will he like the bright orange? I don't know... 

The pattern is really easy. It came to me after talking with Mr. Schön about how digital "code" consists of only 0s and 1s. 

Two friends of mine on a stroll last Sunday

Lisek of the leafs