Where I like to do THAT

I put on my bed anything I could need (needles, yarns, notes, scissors etc). Then I watch TV and knit. I hate to be disturbed during that. Nobody may touch anything of my tools or yarns or knittings (that means the safest way to avoid this is not to come in the house at all). This is how my bed usually looks like:

I have no problems to knit in publics (The most interesting reaction was from my neighbour who said: "You knit??? My god, I would better chop wood than knit." I was also very surprised at such a weird choise but finally that's even good that some people prefer choping wood, because somebody has to do that as well). I have knitted in train, bus, and even during lessons at school (hundreds years ago, lol), I don't like to loose time. But actually I have not many projects suitable for outside home knitting - my projects often uses many yarns or perpetual calculations, or consists of many small pieces etc. So it's always better to knit at home. As every normal knitter I dream of a special knitting room, forbidden for other family members.

My new skill is very old one actually

There is another one skill which doesn't fit in one blogpost with previous one.
I enjoy doing something different. If everybody makes jewerly I will not make it. If everybody knits socks I will buy mine in a supermarket. I want to do something exotic. And I also like to enter into the spirit of past. Once I got to know about sprang - very old (coming from bronze age) and almost forgotten technique. The idea of that is braiding the piece from both ends towards middle. This site explains the spranging basics.

I watched all videos and the technique seemed not to be too difficult. Actually I decided that I should sprang a jacket or at least a tunic. But unfortunately there is a special frame needed for serious spranging. My husband promissed to make me one but that will not happen immediately because he also needs inspiration. So - while my special sprang tool is still expecting to be made I have to braid something little bit smaller at first. I decided to make a hair band.
Well... I wish I should chosen a bookmark better (the length of garnment is determined in the beginning). There is some mess with edge yarns and that leads to mistakes. Should I wear a faulty hair bandage?

Even if you cannot sight any errors (of course you cannot - it looks like there isn't anything correct at all) in this picture you can believe me that there are a lot of them. But I haven't given up the idea about tunic.

Making a mess of wool

One of my new passions is felting. My felting skills are in the very beginning. Some time ago my opinion about felting was that it is not for me because it means doing weird actions for making a mess. I do not like mess - well, there actually IS mess in my kitchen - but there MUST be strict order when creating textile. But somehow I have changed my mind - when I realized that felting is much more flexible for making art while knitting and crocheting are more "mathematical" and determined. After 3 lessons I have to deduce that I have not enough 2 main qualities needed for felting - feelings and muscle. Logics doesn't help here at all! So it's time for me to go out from that "box" which is called "logics". You just have to feel how long and how hard to act on that soggy piece of wool - and always to be ready for a surprise at the final. When knitting or crocheting you count stiches and make some calculations and can follow the quality all the time. When felting you just hope that the result will not be worse as you expect.
Well, you can see my first feltings (I didn't manage without help of the teacher):
Flower:

Slippers which are not technically perfect however fit well:

This one HAD to be upside, lol (actually it is even good that it turned out to be downside for accident because it is rather ugly):

Crocheter plus mathematician

Is there anybody who still has not heard about a profesor of mathematics and a crocheter Daina Taimina whose book "Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes" is published last year? Please, visit her site: http://www.math.cornell.edu/~dtaimina/ Mathematics is not boring anymore.

I have at least one point in common with her - we both are from Latvia. And there is also at least one point in which we are in opposite positions. Her planes are hyperbolic. Mine - as I have already described in my post before - were spherical. Unfortunately I have never met this lady but if we meet one day we both together maybe could crochet a normal flat plane. LOL!

My top 3 of Ravelry patterns

I know a lot of knitters who have collected a huge amount of patterns from everywhere. They share those patterns with each other but it seems that they still doesn’t have enough because they always look for more and more. I don’t do that. I wouldn’t be able to find anything in such a huddle if even I really needed something. I could never study them all because of lack of time. Sometimes I take a look on designs somewhere in the web or magazines, admire those which seem to be really interesting but I never collect patterns and never try to make the same thing. I never think: „What a beautiful cardigan, I have to knit such for me.” I usually think: „What a beautiful cardigan, unfortunately it is already made by someone else, so I must not even try to copy it.” Inspiration means for me just that I have to get spirit and ideas to find my own mountains to climb.

I run through my favourites list on Ravelry. So -my top 3 items:
This pattern from Tudor Roses inspires me very much. Gentility and elegance of passed centuries, wonderful jacket:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/katherine-howard
Look at this adorable patchwork blanket! I could never imagine that so strange shapes can be combined together without holes. It inspires me to play with shapes:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/an-african-adventure
I have fallen in love with these beautiful dragonflies. They inspired, no, even forced me to acquire new skill – felting:
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/filztraum/libellen-tanz-my-ravelympic-feltproject-2010

Mittens and bowls...

I learned to knit and crochet from my mom at the age of about 8 or 9, a little bit before it was taught at school as well. Actually crafting was almost mandatory skill for a girl or woman in a socialist country. You could not just go to the shop and buy clothing you like. To have something special and a little bit different from the 70-ties-80-ties poor supply at soviet shops you had to be able to knit, crochet and sew. However the supply of crafting equipments, yarns, fabrics etc was very poor as well…
My first „projects” were mostly socks and Latvian style mittens. I found some that style mitten patterns in Ravelry for illustration: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/latvian-national-ornament-mittens; http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fringed-latvian-mittens;
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/graph-19---district-of-vidzeme---latvian-mittens. Of course, mine were far from such perfection which you can see in the links above. At first I discovered that stranded colours knitting shrinks, so I tried to avoid this shrinking. That ran into my mittens being very loose and ugly. Another interesting detail - when I made mistakes I didn't allow my mom to help, I didn't allow her even to touch my knitting because I needed the feeling that it is 100% my job. However knitting seemed rather close and familiar technique for me anyway – unlike crocheting. Crocheting was a little bit disaster for me. I remember that I had to crochet a circle form for my crafts lesson at school. I tried to follow instructions (well, I usually lost the starting point actually) but unfortunately my circle became a bowl when growing bigger. I frogged it several times and made again but it always aspired to a bowl. I was so angry with that silly bowl!

After some time (at high school maybe) I realized that not only mittens can be knitted. However my fantasy didn't go very far anyway that time. Usually I knitted sweaters, some of them even happened not to be too ugly. Then there was a period in my life when I almost didn't any crafts at all. I laid it aside just after the capitalism had come at last - everything was available at shops suddenly, so no need to struggle anymore. After some time again I realized that knitting is not only a way to dress oneself at poor economical conditions. Knitting is fun, knitting is a way to express my creativity and after all it is a smart method to hide my lazyness.

My first one felted flower

This is the result of my first felting class:

Summer suit "Little green witch"

Made to fit to the new jewerly.

Top - knit in garter stitch.

Still in pieces:

Trying on:
Completed (bottom crocheted):

Skirt - knitted straight round from top to bottom. 6 increase points in the bottomside. Increased each 2 rounds 2 stitches at each point.

Hat is crocheted, the butterfly is knitted. I am not able to hold by only one technique.

I was confused a little about how much to increase.

The butterfly - each wing knitted separately beginning from the central axis (central axis consists of 7 chains). Big wings - start with 5 stiches, each 2 rows - increase 2 in the top of the wing, decrease 1 in the bottom. Small wings - start with 3 stiches, each 2 rows - increase 2 in the middle.

All together. I like this one:

Photo session: