Works of gratitude

If you have ever laid your hands on japanese craft/knitting/crochet magazines or books, you will know how lucky I am to have a friend with a kind hearted husband, who brought me a whole bag full from a business trip to Japan. 

He even went through the trouble twice! 

The books are packed with beautiful pictures, awesome projects and the writing.. ah well, looks lovely, too, even though I don't understand a single word! (In most cases I can figure out how to work from the pictures, crochet charts or sewing patterns, so it really is okay!)

I found out that he very much likes scarves and with the new year and the whole UFO thing, I finally got on to it, picked up the project that I had started a good while ago, but dumped for tremendous ugliness. 

I had a great idea how it would end up perfect and started knitting in a brioche pattern.

Literally just the next day after I started working on the scarf I found out from my friend that her husband is leaving for a temporary job in Switzerland THIS friday! Yikes - it sure still is freezing cold over there and people not just wear scarves, they NEED them.

I pushed the red emergency button and put that knitting into high speed gear and I am almost there, it's about 4 ft long already!

Now if you'll excuse me, have a great day, I gotta get back to my scarf knitting!

Flashback Saturday

All of us bloggers take plenty of pictures, even more since photos went digital. I have lost pictures with computer crashes, but just recently I have found pictures and I want to share them for more reasons than just because the are so darn cute! 

I discovered them on my online photo site Shutterfly and at some point Shutterly must have changed rules for users, because - what used to be not possible - I could get them back from the site to my computer.

Here are some of my favorites.

Lewis at the time was into nature, specifically bugs and had watched this little guy transform from caterpillar to butterfly! 

 I really enjoyed looking at the "old" hand knits, too.

My mom made this cardigan and it was a favorite for a long time.

The earflap hat grew with Fiona, lol, I believe she wore it for 4 winters - would you believe it?!

She did have a sweater that matched the scarf - all hand spun - unfortunately no picture of that.

I loved this sweater - made from space dyed hand spun merino wool, I still remember how soft it was! I believe it was one of my own early dye attempts!

Same sweater here..

Makes me realize that our lives are not just measured in years that pass oh-so fast, but also in what we create and what we are passionate about, may it be butterflies, tricycles, spinning, knitting and oh yes, definitely pictures as well!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

Blue Changes

A little while after I was done with my dyeing yesterday I found some forgotten strips, that I should have thrown in with everything. In the end this turned out to be a good thing because it gave me the chance to really compare the old to the new strips. 

When I looked at the mellowed out wool pieces on the drying rack I was initially disappointed because besides evening out the shades I had also tried to go altogether lighter and I thought it did not happen.

But once I compared them side by side - above two strips are the new blues (one of them originally a houndstooth) - I found a real distinct difference!

I am very happy with the result!

Won't have a chance to pull some loops until tonight, it will be exciting to see!