I Keep Knitting (despite TAST)

And now that I’m on vacation, I actually find time to photograph and post a few of my knitted things. I’ll show more over the next few days.

This is a little bag I made. It was inspired by seeing the leaf pattern on a cowl I didn’t want to make. I know the thing is lacking a drawstring – I’ll buy some satin band as soon as i get round to it.

I quite like the improvised pattern and may actually write it up for download, but I want some braid between the seed stitches and the rest of the bag. I will have to test knit that before publishing.

the empty bag:

The same, filled with a pack of tarot cards (which is what I knit it for):

Once more, from a weird angle:

And a closeup of the pattern:

Would that be something you might knit?

TAST – Chain Stitch

I missed chevron stitch and detatched chain stitch because my sampler went missing and I couldn’t quite bring myself to start a new one. So I found the old one again – under the sofa. Can you spell freudian slip?

I’m still not too happy about the background but challenges are about challenging oneself right? So I stitched on.

This time’s TAST stitch is chain stitch. Chain stitch is a a stitch I’m using a lot, but it doesn’t really inspire me. I use it as a plain filling stitch or line stitch, you do need Those either.

In Extremo

Between years, I was at a concert of In Extremo. They play metal with a medieval tough. And boy did they play! I’ve seen them many years ago, back then they did more medieval than metal, but this time they were as loud and hard as can be. but still had backpipes.

On another note, I am disappointed with my new camera. Good as it is in good light, it did a lousy job that night. I used ISO 400 fixed and changed between manual mode and image noise suppression mode, and still everything is full of image noise! I have yet to find a small cam which is useful during concerts. Any ideas anyone?

Well, the first band were Nemesea, they were kind of interesting but I so did not like the voice of the singer, and she does not sound better on youtube at all.

Now, there are the pics of the heros of that night!

Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge – Fly Stitch

So it’s this time of the year again – new beginnings, good intentions, new challenges starting…. I didn’t do any great posting on this because I was first busy celebrating christmass with family drama and the new year with lots of booze and then I was down with a tummy bug big time. Well, I still am, but the show must go on.

So, happy, healthy new year to you all.

And yes, there’s an exciting new challenge on Sharon B’s blog. She’s running Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge again, see Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 Challenge Information page. Which means, she’ll propose a stitch every tuesday and participants try them out. I answered to the original posting that I’m looking forward to seeing participants work, but won’t take part due to my notorious inabillity to follow up with challenges as required. Obviously, she did not really read those gazillions of replies and added me to the particpants list. So I’ll take this as a good omen and take part. I do love challenges.

So, Take a Stitch Tuesday Week 1 is fly stitch, one of those stitches you cannot really do justice in one week imho. Anyway, I added it to my current sampler, drawing inspirations from the appropriate chapter of Eindhoven’s book. I’ll probably try to do more later this weekend.

The two leaves in this section were knitted for a holiday knit along on ravelry. Beside them, there’s some free form fly stitch.

The next row shows a few ways to combine fly stitches to patterns. The possibilities there are truly endless. The last two variants are from the book, the green ones are tied down with detached chain stitches, this is also called tete de boef stitch, or when connected “pulled-through cable stitch. I’m showing this one here. I did some more with tete de boef stitch on that other sampler, but I just realized I haven’t really photographed that. Maybe I should. the lilac stitches are tied down with bullion stitches.

Hiking arround Hopfensee

I love my new camera so much I did not get to sketch that day. That doesn’t mean I know how to use it yet. It allows for a lot more manual adjustment than my old one. On the down side, the automatic programs are rather crappy so I have no joice but mastering the darn thing.

Sketch and Knitting

I just keep doing what I do…

This time, I’m knitting no socks but a fingerless mitts/scharf set. The are “Merletto” pattern from ravelry.com. The scharf is an improvised bias knit triangle with the merletto pattern. Maybe more on that when it’s finished. I want something that keeps me warm but is not looking like i’m wrapping myself for deepest winter.

Last weekend would have been sketch crawl. I had family visiting and was exhausted from a hard week at work, so I didn’t make it there. I did a little sketch anyway. It is a charcoal sketch illuminated with watercolours. I realized again how much I love natural chacoal. I will have to do more of that.

My Weekend two Weeks ago

Two weeks ago, we had a long weekend at Germany thanks to the Day of German Unity being a monday. I did so much I didn’t get to write postings about it.

Saturday, I was to a metal concert. Still without a camera, I can’t offer pretty pics. The headliner were Suicidal Angels, a thrash metal band from Greece. Loved them.

The real heros of the night were Red to Gray, a Bavarian thrash band that’s ten years old but never made it to financial greatness. Which is totally undeserved. They played powerfull and agressive yet unbelievably tight. I especially loved the complex rhythms and frequent rhythm changes.

The second band on the stage were Running Death, a local metal band. I’m not sure if they want to be death or thrash, they are young, but they sure have potential.

The opener were Decomposed Existence, a death metal band from greece. I like death either really, really evil or with a dash of melody and they were neither, but they know how to make music, so there, too, is potential for improvement. Also, I had a nice chat with the singer later that evening.

By the way, I have a new digital cam by now, and another concert ticket for mid november, so watch this space….

Saturday I was completely floored, I was in bed most of the day. In the afternoon, I dragged myself out of the door to do this; it is a little woodland pond in the woods near us.

Monday, I took my mum on a little hiking trip near Reutte/Tirol. It was a wonderful warm day, the last real summer day this year. The lake Urisee looked really romantic this day as you can see.

A Loss and a New Beginning

Something horrible has happened: I forgot my tast sampler in the train to work, and gone it was. Gone the months of work, and the material proof of all I learned during this time. This really put me off embroidery and blogging for a while, but I guess that’s life.
I’m sorry for whining, and for not letting you know earlier why I’m silent.

Anyway, I could not bring myself to continue with tast where I was forced to leave it, so I abandoned the challenge for this year. I collect all the stitches ans since there won’t be a new challenge next year I’ll try again from the beginning then.

Of course, I did not abandon stitchery. I did the finishing toughes on two old things you’ll see soon, and I started to faff arround with blackwork. Mary Corbert has posted a bunch of free blackwork patterns here and here, I used them to have a go at blackwork. I have no idea how the finished piece will look.

It is stiched on light yellow linen I got at a deco fabric shop. I don’t think it’s perfect evenweave but close enough. It was labelled 100% linen but was to cheap for that and feels more like cotton. Never mind, it feels good and looks nice. By now I have gone back to the shop and bought more of the fabric, both in that yellow and white.

The threads are machine stitching cotton 30, machine stitching cotton 12 and a silk sewing thread that in in between in strength, all in brown. When I was shopping for thread they were out of black, can you believe this? I was angry about this but now I think the brown on yellow looks very good. They are more smooth and are easier to work with than one strand of floss, but more expensive.
The pic is not that good, my scanner doesn’t like hard contrasts, I had to photoshop it heaviely to make it look brown and yellow instead of dark and off white.

Embroidery and Sketches

This is a little bit of embroidery I started some time ago when I was researching sacred geometry, and geometry in general a bit. It’s two intertwined Triskeles. It is done in shadow work using 3 strands of Anchor embroidery floss on orange poly organza. I did it using this method.

I finished it this weekend. No idea what to do with it, I guess it goes back into the bits and pieces box for now.

I know there’s too little fiber content on my blog these days, but hey, stitching takes time. Sometimes too much time for me. Also, I’m in good health now and want to go out more. This weekend’s outing took me to an exhibition of life insects. I did a sketch of a big spider and a scorpion. They were done both on sunday, I was just kinda confused about the date.

They were done in watercolours with my trusted pentel waterbrush without a preliminary drawing. And no I still don’t have black in my fpaintbox. Seems I’m learning to do without it.

Sketchcrawl Addenum: Goldwork and a Hamster

Jen, one of the participants of sketchcraw, claimed she has never seen a dwarf hamster. Here is a pic of one of my robos (Phodopus roborovskii), with an Euro for size. It didn’t turn pout that cute because the little beast was rather uncooperative. She ended up running away and I had to hunt her for half an hour. Sorry that this took a while Jen, but she so doesn’t like to stay in one place, and much less when she’s supposed to.

And for the sake of extra cuteness, shy 6 weeks old robo babies (thy’re long since grown up)

At the Marstallmuseum where we went for drawing there was a lot of horse gear with gorgeous goldwork. Sadly I had forgotten my camera, but someone took three pics for me. Goldwork is not on my current list of things to try, but I do find it looks fascinating. It think these pieces are from the second half of the 19th century. One day I’ll have to go back there to find out more (and plaque you with more pics).

By the way, recently there had been a very good article series about gold work on MrXstitch.com, part I of III is here, you get to the next parts from there.