Knit Crush: Knitbot aka Hannah Fettig

Hannah Fettig, most of us know and love her for some of her viral patterns like the featherweight cardigan, but she has a lot less famous, but equally brilliant patterns as well out there for us to drool over and knit. Here are a few of my favourites.

As always, all pictures in this post are borrowed with permission from the Ravelry project pages and by clicking their name, you'll be taken right to them.   

Willard Fair Isle Pullover

Sock Yarn Sweater - Child's version

Yoked Cardigan

Theresa Hat

Nauset Tee

What is your favourite Hannah Fettig pattern?

Introducing the #NUCRAL

1995 was the year I began my education. The year I finally knew what that mystical thing called 'school' was really like. Since then I've never been out of it. That's almost 20 years straight of education for me and I can't seem to get enough of it. I have 3 years left of my university degree (resulting in a master degree) and I dream of going even further.

This love for learning fills almost every second of my waking hours, so it's only natural, that I want to further my knitting education as well. I've dreamt of taking the master knitter courses, but never been able to justify the cost (yet). Luckily there are a much cheaper way of honing our skills: Craftsy classes.

Join me!

I've taken a few classes from Craftsy already and have generally loved them. I should get around to giving you a review of them some day, shouldn't I? Well, maybe I'll start with the class I'm about to begin: Short Rows with Carol Feller. This happens to be one of the free classes Craftsy offers.

Since it's free and all, I want to invite you to join me. It will not be a big time commitment either, Each lesson is between 18-45 min of watching and then of course the swatching. There is no doubt in my mind, that we'll get the most out of the class, if we actually do the swatches required. I, however, know myself well enough to know I'll need some seriously awesome accountability partners, if I'm actually going to do the swatches all the way through the course. That's where you come in! You might be like me and need a gentle reminder to make the swatches, take the lessons and have someone to talk about it all with. I know I'd love to hear what you have to say.

The plan

Each week of October we'll work through a lesson. 

Each Monday you can expect a post from me on the lesson we'll be going through. Wether you take the class the weekend leading up to Monday or during the following week will be entirely up to you. 

You can participate in various ways:

a) Leave a comment on the relevant post of your experience with the class, feelings, troubles, insights, anything goes. 

b) Leave a comment with a link to a blogpost you've done about said lesson.

c) Use the hashtag #NUCRAL (Noget Uldent's CRaftsy-A-Long) on all social media platforms and let us know what you are up to.

Here's the schedule:

Oct. 6th: Lesson 1 (intro) and 2 (wrap and turn).

Oct. 13th: Lesson 3 (Japanese and yarn over)

Oct. 20th: Lesson 4 (sleeves and shoulder)

Oct. 27th  Lesson 5 (bust shaping)

I can't wait to go through this class with you guys at my side. 

Let me know in the comments if you are planning on joining me!

Ad fontes

Today, I'd like to direct you to a guest post, I wrote for my dear friend Zoë. Go read it and let us know what your next step is. If you aren't already familiar with Zoë's blog, I would like to encourage you to check it out. She is one talented lady.

Saturday - Reclaimed!

Let me tell you about my Saturday. All of last week, I worked so hard to be able to have Saturday off, to reclaim my time and it worked! By Friday 2.45pm, I was done with all my homework for Monday and sat down to knit and work on patterns. I was able to not only write and turn the heel of the sock, but write and work the gusset as well. After placing the heel turn off-centre once or twice, (okay, three times, don't judge me, it was Friday night, my stitches were in party mode, dancing all over the place), it was all smooth sailing.

Saturday morning I had to prepare something for the job I get paid for, otherwise known as work- work. By 11am, I was done and ready to tackle my mental list of things to do for my micro business. I have been craving a day like this for the past 20 days, that is ever since my semester began.

With a cup of tea at my side, I sat down and began filling in the blank spaces in the sock pattern. Once I had filled in everything I could, I decided to spend some time investigating knitting fonts, since I really need one for charting this pattern. I looked high and low on the interwebs, most free fonts weren't for commercial use and the once that were simply didn't speak to me.

StitchMastery came to mind. A font collection and full on editor, I remembered hearing good things off in the past. I also recalled why I had never looked much further into it. The font collection is 100DKK, the editor 600DKK. For comparison our weekly grocery budget is 600DKK feeding two adults. This is a lo-o-o-ot of money for me. I asked around on Twitter and was told, it was the best money ever spent on a design tool by someone I fully trust, when it comes to these kind of things.

Thankfully, there is a demo version of the programme, which lets you experience how intuitively it works and the group on Ravelry is filled to the brim with info. Cathy, the maker of the programme, provides very quick feedback to any questions, even on a Saturday.

The remaining part of the day was spent playing around with the programme and knitting on the shawl and the sock.

This editor, I think I'm in love. I've already asked for the full version for my birthday. I charted the pattern repeat for the sock in no time. I believe you can even have it give you the written instructions from the chart and vice versa, although I haven't tried it yet, since I'm still on the demo version.

Do you have any experience using StitchMastery or any similar editor or knitting fonts?

Reclaiming Time

We all have 24 hours in a day, so how come some people appear to have 36 and others just 12? I've decided I need to reclaim a bunch of my time, if I want to juggle being a full time student, working a job, having a micro business, blogging, being a loving partner and oh, do I need to mention sleeping well? Cue my question to all of you for tips on how to do it all.

Now that I have an idea of what my weekly schedule is looking like for school, I need to carve out time to do the other things I'm passionate about. This means I'll have to fight the urge to cuddle up to my man every night in front of the TV. Instead I need to spend most of that time getting things done.

Would you judge me, if I told you I have some wonderful feedback on one of the patterns, I have in testing, that I still have to get around to implementing? I just haven't had the brain space to sit down and work on something important like that. If, however, I want to work on my micro business during my semesters, I need to find that brain space.

Believe me, I have considered using the semesters to work on knitting up new patterns only and leaving the majority of the pattern writing, testing and adjusting to vacations. I'm still undecided on this point.

Having a fairly anal personality, I do well with schedules, planning and checklists. I might even venture so far as to say I thrive with them. So I'm sitting down to re-evaluate every hour of my week. The aim is to find 30 min here and an hour there to work on the things, that so far has been put on the back burner.

Do you need to reclaim your time? Join me and we'll do it together. I'll keep you updated on my progress.

Waves of love

The waves are gently and slowly rolling in, on the shawl that is. My last ferry trip was anything but gentle. We headed home Friday and surprised my parent's with a small gathering for their 40th wedding anniversary. It's slightly insane to think of all the years they've stuck together through thick and thin. We had a wonderful time celebrating their love with close friends and family Saturday night and early Sunday morning I went home to go to work right away. I don't think I knitted a single stitch this weekend nor did I have the time to do a blogpost Monday.

Studying is still eating up most of my time, leaving me very tired by dinner time and ready for bed around 9pm. I find it difficult to carve out time for pattern writing, since I need to be on my A game, when I'm working on the patterns. I have, however, started to get a feel for the homework load, how long it takes to complete and when I need to do it. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a tiny bit ahead soon and then maybe have the weekends off, so I can work on pattern writing one day during the weekend.

Thankfully, the shawl still feels like a warm embrace. I have 8 waves done so far and still a long way to go, but I don't mind. Knitting a shawl where you decrease is my favourite kind of shawl knitting. Starting at the point makes the work grow fast at the beginning, but then you meet those seemingly endless rows. With this shawl, once you've conquered the cast on it's smooth sailing and every so many rows you get to cast of a nice amount of stitches.

If you happen to know how I can *do it all*, then please let me know. Until I figure that out, I'll have to stick to doing the most important things first and sadly, knitting isn't one of them right now. But don't worry, I'm sneaking in a row here and there and every stitch counts.

Spinning the ocean

With the ocean on my mind, I had to pick this lovely Malabrigo Nube as my next spinning project. I'd really like to design something with the finished yarn for the collection. 

The colours are absolutely my mum's colours, so if I could gift the FO to her it would be great! So um, if your reading this*, what would you like? If your reading this and you're not my mum, I'd still love to hear your suggestions. I'm thinking shawl...

Well, since I only have 113g. shawl may be an overstatement, maybe a kerchief of some sort? The colours are absolutely lovely. I'm spinning them so they'll blend and barber-pole once plied and because my mum likes 2-ply and this will likely be something for her, a 2-ply it will be. 

It will probably be a while before I finish this project, since I'm surprisingly busy at the moment. New semester, new job  and so much studying and things to do... It really east away my crafting time and energy. Anyway, here is the very beginning of the first single. The colours just really reminds me of the ocean on a calm day where you can see all the colours of the various depths. Beautiful, right?

* I have a suspicion, that my mum mostly looks at the pictures, now I'll  no for sure soon, right?!