Five plus two is... Seven?

Some times stuff happens that makes me reevaluate myself or my life , it doesn't happen very often but it happens. And it has happened! I have realized that I can't do math. Now, I've never claimed to be a math genius but I do remember learning addition and subtraction in the first or second grade, and being quite good at it as well. That is what my math teacher told my parents anyway. I don't know what happened, if I never actually had any talent or if I have just lost my talent recently.
So you ask, how did I discover my lack of math talent? It's the Baby Bobbi Bear. Look at him, doesn't he look cute? He doesn't look at all like someone who could make people realize life altering things about themselves does he?










He is almost done, I have knit some arms for him (T thinks they are a little short - I haven't made up my mind about that yet) and stuffed him. Now he needs some ears, and here is where the life altering thing happened. The patterns says:
"Cast on 5 sts, work back and forth in rows, cont as foll:
Row 1 and all odd rows: Purl to end
Row2: knit 1, Make 1, knit 1, make 1, knit 1 [5 sts] "
Huh? Five? Please correct me if I'm wrong but if I've got five stitches and I make two more stitches I should have seven stitches total, right? I don't get it, do they want me to cast on three stitches and end up with 5 or do they want me to cast on 5 stitches and knit 1, make 1, knit 3, make 1, knit 1 and end up with 7 stitches?
Or the even more disturbing possibility, the math in the pattern is correct and I'm just to stupid to get it!?

The knitting has been a little lazy. I've started a new pair of Broadripple Socks. These will be for my mom - for Christmas! I can hardly believe it, we're only in the beginning of October and I've already started on my Christmas presents. This is a definite first for me.










Mom got to pick out the yarn and pattern herself! Fortissima Colori, Mexico-Disco-Color! Pretty!

Done!

Taa daaaaaaa!










Can you believe it? CC is finally done. It turned out that I did have enough yarn to knit a wider collar and I even have one third of a skein left over. The collar is wide enough to cover my chest, and I can wear it open or closed with a pin. I've pressed the collar and the cuffs (with the collar I might have been just a little too efficient with the iron, I've basically ironed away everything ribby about it....but I think it looks and feels ok.)
I have learned some things knitting this sweater, some of which I surely will have forgotten next time I knit a sweater.

• Making a gauge swatch is really important, especially if I don't want to reknit half the sweater.
• Read through the pattern before you start knitting, if you don't want annoying surprises.
• When knitting in the round - the rounds can be VERY long.

I'm so happy with the way my Chocolate Cover turned out, I think I will wear it a lot this fall and winter.

Specs: The pattern is # 14 50 58 05 from HP Garn, the yarn is Iceland from Løve in a brown color. I've knit a mix of size M and L, and have knit the collar at least 10 cm wider than what the pattern describes. I've also changed the collar and knit it in the round instead of back and forth. I bought 6 skeins and have used all but one third skein.

Now I have to consider what to knit next. I'm really into the Lace Garland from Shawls and Scarves, and have already knit up a test, just to check out if I'd be able to follow the instructions. And to se how difficultt it is to knit in the round from 6 stitches....See I told you I'd forget what I've learned knitting CC - the rounds can get VERY long.... Visse vasse, the rounds will be just fine.

Lola sure is one fast girl. She has already written her meme!

Linda asked me a while ago, why my cat's name is Banana. When I first got him from Kattens Værn (cat shelter) two years ago, he had been named Gustav at the shelter. But a few days later I realizedd that it was just not the right name for him. With some help from my sister I decided that Rasmus would be a better name. Unfortunately that name didn't stick to him either, it just didn't sound right when I called out for him. And then the name Banana came out of nowhere, and it really is the right name for him and his big kitty ears. When I met T a year and a half ago,
he wondered about the name as well. He asked me: Do you call him Banana because he is not yellow? And yes, that is probably why!

No pictures again today. Is this what you get when you don't pay? Blogger-schmogger!

Hanne wanted to know some more about the CC pattern. The pattern is originally called sjælevarmer med stor krave. The pattern number is 14 05 58 05 and it is by HP Garn. I got the pattern from Nicoline Garn on Nørrebrogade, Kbh N, but you can get both pattern and yarn here. I'm using the original yarn Iceland from Løve, and I'm impressed with the yarn. The sleeves I reknitted look absolutely fine even though I didn't wash the yarn after frogging the two first sleeves.

I'm getting closer to finishing CC. I'm ready to pick up stitches around the wrist. Ok, done or done... um...I'm not quite sure that the collar is wide enough. I'd really like the two front corners (is it possible to have corners on something round?) to be able to cover my boobs without flattening them completely. But I'm playing it safe and will knit the two cuffs first, and then if there is yarn left over, I'll try and knit a few more pattern repeats on the collar. I tried it on yesterday, and it will be ok if I don't knit anymore on the collar, it'll just be more of a shrug than a cardigan.

Please let there be enough yarn to knit a wider collar!!!

Meme

I've been tagged for the first time to do a meme. It seems that Linda wants to know more about me. Thank you for the very nice compliment you paid me in your post from this Monday - I think I almost blushed. I'm having so much fun with this blogging thing, and I think it is wonderful that you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy reading all of yours!

Number of books in the house.
I grew up in a house full of books, and I used to play bookstore or library sitting in front of the bookshelves, actually the bookshelf-picture Linda posted pretty much resembles the bookshelves I grew up with. One time I even discovered some money my dad had hidden in a book 5 to 10 years earlier. He hid the money because we were all going away on vacation and he didn't want the money laying around the house while we were away. When we came back, he had forgotten which book he had hid the money in....He only remembered that the book was about something that smelled bad. I don't know how much time he spent looking for the money, my guess would be quite a lot of time. Years later I found the money in a book about fishing! Guess he was right about the smell.
Anyway... the number of books in my house: not enough. I love books and I love to have books around me, but the prices on books in Denmark has made me a passionate library user. I estimate that we have about 250 books in the house.

Last book I bought.
Do knitting books count? I've bought two recently, Strik og sy til den lille ny and shawls and scarves - both very fine books.
In fiction the most resent buy would have to be Harry Potter 6.. um...I actually bought it twice! But it was an emergency, really! I pre-ordered the book from Play months before the release of the book, then T (the one formerly know as the Boy, now with the new uninspired nickname: T!) and I planned our summer vacation, and it turned out that we would be leaving on the day of the release, meaning that I wouldn't be home when the book was delivered or be able to take the book with me on vacation like I had planed. I decided that I would just buy some other books to take with on vacation, The Time Traveler's Wife and The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, both really good books! At the airport T asked me if I were sure that I didn't want the book, because it was for sale at the airport bookstore, and he wanted to buy it for me. I told him that I was a grown up and that I would be perfectly able to wait until we got home two weeks later....And I probably would have been able to wait, had I not finished the two books I had brought with me a little sooner than I had expected AND seen 117 people (at least!) lying around the pool reading HP 6. I had to get it. I just couldn't stand not reading it. So maybe I'm not a grown up (28 isn't old is it?) at all. I finished the book while we were still away, and I left the book at the hotel, as a kind of Bookcrossing. Er.. well...there really wasn't room in the suitcase.

Last book I read
I spent all of Sunday reading Undtagelsen by Christian Jungersen from front to cover. I meant to blog that day, but I was just really caught up in the story and I couldn't put the book down. The book is about four women who work at a center for information about genocide. They receive some e-mail death threats and then the story takes off. It was interesting, because the books also includes some articles about the psychology of people involved in committing genocide. Pretty scary stuff.
Earlier this month I've read Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, and The Kite Runner, both really good reads.

Five favorites
Børnerim, by Halfdan Rasmussen. "Tyggegummikongen Bobbel, sidder i en ...." Reading these nursery rhymes is really like reliving my entire childhood.
Winnie the Pooh - one of the first books I read. I still read achapterr once in a while. It really helps put things in perspective.
100 years of solitude. Love Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This book was the one that got me turned on to magical realism and South American literature.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. Great book, with elements of magical realism, and historic fact.
Kærlighedens kåbe, by Thit Jensen. About a young mans fight with tuberculosissis. I cried and I cried.

Passing it on
I will pass this meme on to Lola. Like me, she is a new blogger, and she has been book shopping TODAY!!

round and round and round and.....

I might just get dizzy from knitting round and round on the collar of CC and from working with Blogger pictures, has anyone else had problems with Blogger today? Anyway, it took me a while to figure out why the pattern told me to knit the collar back and forth instead of in the round. Take a good look at this picture. Do you see it?
I've circled (ok tried to circle it, it's hard without a mouse!) the problem area. The collar is not knit in the round because it is not round. It's open in the back, like a shirt collar, just in the back of the neck instead of the front.
Huh? Why? What were they thinking?
I honestly hadn't seen this... er... design feature earlier, because I naturally assumed that the collar would be knit in the round like Nanas bolero.
But of course,I couldn't live with that, so I knit it in the round anyway. I fiddled a little with the chart, left some stitches out and knitted away. I have been a little concerned that the collar will be too short, when worn, to go all around the shrug without stretching too much, but I can't be bothered to take the shrug of the needles to check it before it is finished, and now that I'm almost done, I think it will be fine.
Right now it look like this:
Well, you'll have to imagine what CC looks like now - Blogger won't upload the picture!!!!

Ok, I'm done with Blogger for tonight, they must be trying to drive me insane... and it is working! Mwah!

New person

A new person will be entering the world at the end of October. This baby's mother has decided that the baby shall not have any plastic toys, I really don't know how she is going to pull that one off, but I do think it is very commendable. I have thought long and hard about what to give this baby, and I think I have come up with the perfect thing. The Baby Bobbi Bear, knitted with Blue Sky Alpacas organic Cotton. The yarn is organically grown and the color is a naturally occurring shade, free from bleach and dyes. It should be safe for a tiny little new person to suck on this yarn right? I really hope that baby's mother will agree.









Er...right now the bear looks more like an alien than a bear, but I hope that will change with some stuffing, a pair of arms and ears, and a face! The bear is also a lot bigger than I had expected, and I am really pleased I didn't knit the original Bobbi Bear, because it would be too big for new born.
It is a pretty quick knit, on 5,5 mm dpns, but the yarn....it is soft... and totally unforgiving of any of my knitting flaws. Everything shows with this yarn, I think that if I were to knit the bear again, I'd use a wool yarn instead.

Look what I got at Netto:

I took out this book from the library the minute I first found out about my friends pregnancy. I knitted a pair of tiny socks for baby, they turned out to be baby's first piece of hand knit (might as well start them early - in the womb isn't too soon!). Well, I fell in love with this book, it is pretty and cute, but not too pretty or too cute, if you know what mean. I could have jumped up and down from sheer joy when I found this book while buying milk, and with a good price too!

CC is sewn togther... still need to pick up stitches...

Would you like some coffee with that?

So he came home, and all is well now. He has however expressed some discomfort with the nick name I've given him here on the blog. I suspect he feels that it doesn't represent him very well. So, I have to think of a new nick name for him. I really like the nick name DivaKnits uses for her boy: CoPilot. I haven't figured out if he really is a co-pilot or not, but it is still a very cool nick name. Sadly the Boys line of work doesn't make a very cool nick name: computer guy in bank. Totally uncool. If you have got any suggestions I would love to hear them.

He(the one formerly know as the Boy and currently without nick name) brought home some stuff: horrible (he thinks so too) synthetic stuffed animals from Universal Studios (they all went on Wednesday - not a vacation my b...!), the Ipod Nano and American candy. Hersheys chocolate and Pretzel Flips.

Pretzels covered in white fudge! Need I say more? Would you like some coffee to wash that down with? I wonder if these have ever been featured on super eggplant.

I hurried up and finished the fingerless mitts, because I had seen this article about frosty weather on DMI, the Danish Meteorological Institute, and they are always very dependable, especially concerning yesterdays weather. But now they are promising 20+ degrees (Celsius) the next days, and I guess I have to wait a while to try the mitts out on the bike. But I am currently testing their blogging abilities ...

...they work just fine. Keeps the hands nice and warm, but leaves the fingertips free to type. I think they might come in handy in my new cold dark north facing office.

Specs: The pattern (nr 8 from Drops 93) was, if no well written, then easily understandable. I knitted the mitts on 2.75mm DPNs instead of the 3mm DPNs the pattern calls for. The fit is prefect, but I do have very small hands. The yarn is Arwetta, soft and strong, and I used a little less than one skein. I highly recommend these fingerless mitts!

I spend the afternoon speed knitting, and now the third and fourth sleeves of CC are done. Didn't really use a lot more yarn than the first time I knitted them, but they do seem bigger. I'm sure they are bigger. They are bigger. I mean if I knitted them a size larger, they must be larger? That is how it works, right?Bigger size equals bigger sleeves?!

Tonight I will sew the pieces together (again) and by tomorrow I should be ready to pick up the googolplex stitches that will be the large collar. Finally some lace!