Noget Uldent

Knit Crush: Allison Janocha

With a cute baby, interesting sock construction and a beautiful shawl, you are sure to find a design you like among Allison Janocha's patterns.

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

Florisa

I'm not one for variegated yarn, but this baby is too cute and won me over and I'm sure the dress would be perfect (in my eyes) in a solid or semi-solid yarn.

Samovar

This samovar is a beauty. Knitted from the centre out it is bound to be a fun knit too.

Mariee

The cables on these socks spoke to me and I may have to get Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters to find out more about the construction.

Knit Crush: Kelene Kinnersly

Texture, lace and cables. Kelene Kinnersly knows how to place a design detail for maximal effect.

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

Sidetracked Cable

This fingerless mitt is a beauty, but am I the only one wondering what sweater she is wearing??

Stardust Hat

There's something about a simple textured hat that you just can't go wrong with.

Kyra Boatneck Pullover

This lace is ready for a slightly chilly summer's day.

I could see myself wearing that to a market with a wooden basket in hand.

Have you heard the news?

If you are on my email list, or as I like to call it, my list of wonderful internet friends, then you already know. The secret is out and now the entire world will know, or at least the portion of it, I come in contact with...

I'm pregnant

That explains a lot, doesn't it?! Between an engagement, planning a wedding, a move and thesis writing the 20 hours per day nausea set me out of commission entirely. But I'm all better now and we are so excited to welcome this tiny human into our family. I'm 16 weeks pregnant and the baby is due on November 29th.

I still have one more exam left before the wedding and my impending summer vacation. So you may not see a lot of action here for the next week or so, but then I plan on coming back, full force. I have a few 'duties' I've neglected in the form of knit crushes that I wanted to make, trust me, but the nausea won, what can I say? I didn't even want to knit, much less look at patterns.

Speaking of knitting, I have some secret knitting I'll be revealing soon, and yes it is baby related. I'm also looking for a few test knitters for a vest and a sock pattern for the up-coming e-book, so please join in if you are up for it.

Finally, if you would like to be in the know sooner about things like this in the future or say, get the very special discounts that are reserved for my list of wonderful internet friends, then go ahead and sign up now, this way you won't miss it in the future (and you get my e-book Faithful Knitting for free as well).

A day in the life of a thesis writing university student.

*Eat, write, knit, repeat from *. My days are easy to sum up at the moment and since the only knitting I'm doing is secret knitting, I though I'd do something different and share a day in my life as a thesis writing university student.

As I still have the remainders of a horrible flu in my body, I'm sleeping in without an alarm, resulting in some late mornings. Today I woke up at 9am to the sound of the church bell. The first thing I do every morning is to grab my phone and read my Bible portions for the day.

Once I got that done I got out of bed and fixed breakfast and had a chat with my parents, whom I'm visiting at the moment.

Not long after finishing a non-picturesque breakfast, I grabbed my laptop and started writing on the last analysis needed for my thesis. By now the church was sounding 10am and I was off to a good start.

No hero is complete without his trusty sidekick and when it comes to thesis writing I seem to have two: food and knitting. By 11am I was feeling peckish and grabbed a midmorning snack. My mum had fixed a batch of bread for our up-coming wedding, and had 1 bun left over from the circle. It was delicious and just what I needed to get a little more writing done.

When I inevitably fell into a writing rut, I decided it was time for a shower and as I returned from it, all refreshed and relaxed, my mum was fixing lunch. There really is something to be said for having all your meals prepared by someone else when your trying to write an important paper.

After lunch I managed to include an important point in my paper that I had no clue where to place up to that point. A look on the thermometer revealed that it was really all to warm outside to be working inside, so I grabbed my laptop and the needed papers and headed outside.

It wasn't long, however, before it felt like it was time for a knitting break.

Ahh, look at all that sunshine... Unfortunately secret knitting does not get a paper written and I was determined to finish the analysis today, so I returned to the screen (thank you technology for screens you can actually see outside in the sun nowadays).

Some more eating of snacks and some more knitting was involved. I even finished one secret knit and cast on another and by 4pm I had a finished analysis and just under half of my conclusion written. Not bad for a days work. What does a typical day in your life look like at the moment?

9 Random Thoughts on Moving from a Tiny Apartment.

#1
We will have a KITCHEN! Oh the joys of no longer having an oven in our livingroom, or worse our bedroom, as they are the same room... We will have a proper stove and cabinets and counter space, not a lot, but significantly more than now. Our Kenwood Major can even get its own corner, no more having to hold onto the shelving unit when using it.

#2
We will have a BEDROOM. Imagine being sick and only having one room to be in all day long. Imagine one person wanting to sleep and the other wanting to watch a movie. Imagine trying to write an important paper and your partner being desperate to fill the air, not his ears, with music singing in his beautiful voice, but annoying you beyond believe. A bedroom means a place to really rest. My man can sleep in while I can get up and move around without the fear of waking up a cranky man. I can go to bed early and my man enjoy his evening without the fear of waking up a cranky lady.

#3
I will have an OFFICE. Okay, not entirely true, but I will have a corner of the bedroom filled with all my books and my desk. A place to work separate from everything else that is going on in our home. A door to close and not open until I'm ready to go out into the world again. I may need a Do Not Disturb sign.

#4
We will have WINDOWS. Fear not, we have windows now. They take up almost one entire wall in our tiny studio. But we live at the ground level, so we have the curtains drawn all day long. Who wants strangers to be able to see just what TV, computers, oven etc. you have when they stroll by. Don't tempt the weak souls. What I'm most excited about concerning the windows is that we won't need any blinds except in the bedroom...

#5
We will get BLACK-OUT CURTAINS in the bedroom. The bliss of actually going to bed in a cold and dark room. Enough said.

#6
We will have PLANTS. Along the lines of #4 we haven't been able to keep plants alive very well during the past 5-6 years. They simple don't get enough light. That will change when we move and I'm already dreaming of herbs in the kitchen and succulents everywhere else.

#7
We will have a proper LIVINGROOM. The space should be big enough to have a dinning table and a couch and tv fit comfortably into the same room. We can finally entertain people more and we can finally have a place for people to sleep when they come to visit from far away.

#8
There will be SPACE between things. Everything is slightly crammed now as we have a lot of things, but in the new place we will actually want a few more pieces of furniture and there should still be space between our belongings.

#9
We will get to DECORATE. Even thought it is a rented apartment, we will get to decorate it. We will be able to create a calming bedroom, a beautiful livingroom and a kitchen that invites to you to cook delicious and nourishing meals. Most importantly, those rooms will all be separated by walls and doors.

These are a few of the random thoughts that keep popping up in my head and make me smile.
Which part of your home do you love the most and why?

Engagement rings and other excuses

Life is changing rapidly at the moment and with all that change blogging has proofed difficult. The one yarn related thing that has been happening is a secret, ironic isn't it, in the year of full disclosure. I had so many plans for this year, but God had different plans - much better plans.

I haven't blogged since March. One excuse is that on April Fool's day in the middle of the LYS my mum works for, my man got down on one knee and proposed to me. We are now trying to plan a wedding in just a few short months and will tie the knot on July 4th 2015.

I'm so excited to be engaged, after being with this man for 7 years, there is nothing I'd rather do than marry him.

But I'm getting way ahead of myself here. You see, 4 days ago we were offered a one bedroom rented flat. Since then we've seen it, signed the contract and paid the deposit. I've lived in the studio we call home since May 2009. Now, in May of 2015, I'll leave. My man has lived here for 4 or 5 years too. For some reason people seem to think we are rockstars for pulling that off. That many years together on 28m2 and the only place you can 'escape' to is the bathroom? Truth be told, we've hardly ever had to 'escape'.

Now, in just over a month, we'll be moving to a place twice the size of our current flat. With an actual bedroom and kitchen! In just over 2,5 months we'll be married as well. But again, with the getting ahead of myself.

In between the move and the wedding I have two big exams. For my oral exam on June 24th, I have to first write a synopsis, the topic will be given on May 26th and we only have a few days to write that. Then on June 1st my BA thesis is due.

Oh and there's more. Much more, that I can't or won't tell you at this point. Not everything is meant to go on the internet.

All this has lead to a lot of debate in my head concerning blogging. Should I stop? Should I just post when I actually have something yarn related to share with you? How about a year from now - where do I see this blog then? The answer to all those questions is I don't know.

I love the community of blogging. I love reading your comments and getting to know you just a tiny bit better every now and then. I love the creative outlet writing is and I wouldn't want to be without that. But if this blog is going to survive and I really want it too, then it may have to go through as many changes as I am. These past two months have seen more life changes for me, than the past 4 years put together.

In a quiet moment I'll have a talk with my fiancé (that is so odd to type) about this blog. He almost always knows what questions to ask and when to just listen and frankly, that may be all I need to figure out what the future, at least the near future, of this blog entails.

For now, thanks for stopping by and thank you for being part of my community.

Knit Crush: Rena Varsakis

Rena Varsakis is the woman behind The Red Fox and Gown. I Love the quirkiness of her patterns.
Would you wear a fox hat?

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