The big and the small

Blogging has been on hold while I have been stuck reading Harry Potter. I read the 6th book during last christmas and I felt that I didn't enjoy as much as I expected because it had been so long since I read the 5th one that there were lots of things I had completely forgotten. When I bought the last book ever, I decided to read the whole saga in one go, for better continuity. So, for the past few weeks I have been using every spare moment to read and I haven't done much else. I finished last night and can now go on with my life! I'm not going to say anything about the last book, in case you haven't read it yet.

My niece turned five in the beginning of August, and for the occasion I bought the pinkest of pink yarns and knit her a cute little beret. Although I am not a big fan of this shade of pink, I decided that I could bear buying it because my nice likes girly, princessy sort of stuff.

Specs:

• Pattern: Seed stitch beret from Debbie Bliss' Family Knits.
• Yarn: Smart (#4503) and Kitten Mohair (#4513) held together.
• Needles: 4.5 mm for ribbing, 5 mm for seed st.
• dt: 5 - 12 August 2007.

It was a quick project, the knitting was done in two evenings but the finishing took days because I was lazy. When I did get round to it, though, I went a bit overboard on the pompom, it's really huge and dense and fluffy.

Today is a big day: I just finished knitting the Selbu mittens! Wish me luck on the blocking, because these guys

need some serious stretching or magical shrinking in order to be passed off as a pair. That should teach me never to let UFO's that come in pairs linger in the knitting basket. Or it won't, considering that I already have two unpaired socks having a little vacation. Never mind.

Árbær museum trip

This weekend the Árbær Open-Air Museum celebrated its 50th birthday. There were a bunch of events going on and admission was free, so today I decided to pop in and have a look. I had read that there would be ladies demonstrating wool preparation and spinning in the old way so that was kind of the reason why I went :-D.

Árbær was a farm that used to be on the outskirts of Reykjavík and travelers to town would stop there for a break. In 1957 it was turned into a museum, and through the years other houses, mainly from the city center, have been moved there and restored. In each of the houses an exhibition displays different aspects of life in Reykjavík through the times.

This weird old spinning wheel was placed in a small exhibition area about the old ways of preparing wool. Notice the fake guy in the background carding wool.

The ladies of the wool were on the loft of the actual Árbær farm, one spinning

and the other winding the spun singles into hanks (notice her pretty shawl!)

I stayed there for as long as I could, but at some point I forced myself to leave as it was becoming weird, you know, me staring at them. I was really fascinated by the act of spinning, it seemed so effortless for the woman and felt really relaxing. Hmm... ;-)

Aah, gauge

After regaining my knitting mojo (at least partially) I've been working on the second Selbu mitten. I set myself the goal of knitting at least three rows a day, and it worked pretty well until one day last week I measured it up against the first one, which I finished the about a month and a half ago. To my horror, this is what I saw:

The second one is significantly smaller. Innit great? Since then I haven't touched it, but after worrying about it a great deal I think I've come to the conclusion that I'll just say Whatever! and hope that I'll be able to stretch/shrink them to indenticalness in the final wash. So, we're back to three rows a day.

In other news, my friend Arna (to whom I gave the blue mohair stole) invited our group of girlfriends over on Tuesday evening for a knitting club! I was the only one to show up (with bags full of pattern books and magazines - overenthusiastic?), but I'm sure we'll lure the others into the knitting circle given time. It's going to be a weekly event from now on, awriiight!