The Setesdal Cardigan is complete--and despite making the 12-18 months size it looks more like a 3 year old size to me. Better than being too small, but I guess baby will have to grow into it!All the finishing was pretty time-consuming, but I love how the edgings do double-duty as a tidy little facing to cover the raw edges: I just got some cheapie metal buttons at Joann's but I think they are in the spirit of the traditional pewter buttons used on Norwegian sweaters without being too flowery/girly:Overall, this was a fun and surprisingly speedy knit given the complexity of the sweater (I think it took about 2.5 months, and I was working on other projects concurrently). There are a couple things I'm not happy with--one is that I made the sleeves a bit too long. The other is that it would look better with a wider section of plain blue knitting between the design at the top of the sleeves and the sleeve join. It's shown that way in the pattern photo but the charts just show two rounds of plain blue before knitting the reverse-stockinette facing. I should've taken my cue from the photo rather than the chart but I just wasn't sure whether that would be a problem, never having made this type of sweater before. Oh well, not a major deal.
Pattern: "Setesdal" from Dale of Norway book #8101 "Favorite Baby Designs"
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull in colors 5545 blue and 0020 natural, knit on size 2.5 mm needles.

Before I go, here are a couple of my attempts from New Year's Eve at taking some pictures of the cool holiday decorations downtown. They look better in real life ;)

Hey all! Hope everyone has been enjoying the holiday season! It's just been way too busy to blog lately...I have made a lot of knitting progress though. I finished the lumpy bumpy hat but unfortunately did not get a photo of it before giving it to my mom :( Hopefully I will get a photo at some point in the future but rest assured that it came out nicely and looks really cute on her!

I had a nice visit with my family and got an awesome birthday surprise that my sister brought from Germany...eight balls of a beautiful cream Anny Blatt yarn and a skein of Opal Rainforest sock yarn in color "Veronica die Wilde," which is a very cool combination of lime and dark greens. I was trying to figure out what "Veroncia die Wilde" is--apparently some sort of butterfly, according to the label--but it just seems like a funny name and literally translates to "Veronica the wild" according to Google translator. Very interesting!

Another nice surprise at home was four boxes of yarn that someone my mom knows gave to me. Apparently this person's mother used to knit all the time but no longer does (gasp!), and wanted to give her yarn away. There were all kinds of interesting novelty yarns in there, amongst other things, but really nice ones, not tacky. I decided to leave most of it there since I don't have room right now, but I did take four balls of Tiber Rayon de Soleil, a black sparkly yarn, in hopes of making a pretty scarf with it. (photos of all yarn are also on my Ravelry stash page).

The most exciting thing was that I GOT TO CUT MY KNITTING THIS WEEKEND. Yes, the long awaited moment for steeking had finally arrived! I started by sewing the steeks, and was horribly upset when this happened:You've heard of yarn barf, well here is thread barf. I was totally worried that the knitting had somehow gotten caught by the feed dogs of the sewing machine. Finally I realized that I had just mis-threaded the machine--oops!

Luckily I was able to extricate my knitting without any damage. I finished the sewing, making two lines on each side of the cutting stitches:Can you tell why I stick to knitting and not sewing? Despite my extremely crooked lines, I forged on to:Eeks!
But...It works! It works!
I stayed up really late trying to finish it Saturday night, since I would be seeing my friend who it's for on Sunday, but only managed to get the thing sewn together and one side of the button band done. It's amazing how time consuming the finishing of these things are! But, it is looking really great and I'm going to try to finish it today for my final FO of 2007!

Happy New Year all, and don't make too many resolutions ;)

It's so hard to believe that not only has it been two weeks since I last posted but that it is the last day of November. Doesn't it feel like last Christmas just happened?

Since I last posted, I was able to complete the body of the Setesdal cardigan:Unfortunately I am starting to have to use the flash to take photos, as I don't get home until after dark most of the time! Boo hoo! Here is a closer view of the pattern on the shoulders, with more natural coloring:It's surprising how fast this is going, because I hardly knit at all this past week. We had a last burst of activity to finish unpacking and organizing, and our apartment finally feels livable . The job is definitely starting to feel a bit more comfortable as well, although I'm pretty sure that I won't ever be as close to the people in this office as in my last one. I think that's just the nature of living in a very small town and working with only a few other people. The pangs of homesickness for our old town are starting to subside as well, but I know I will always miss it a little bit, just like I miss all the places I've lived.

I hope everyone (in the US, at least) had a happy and warm Thanksgiving! I had a very nice weekend at my parents', and we enjoyed dinner with G's parents which was fun (and delicious). The drive home was also wonderful, since it felt like we had just barely left Connecticut by the time we made it back. I was like, "We're home already?"

On Saturday, my mom took me to a new yarn shop called Connecticut Yarn and Wool Company that opened up in the area, and it was amazing. They only carry one brand, Farmhouse Yarns, but they carry the entire line. It was fabulous walking from room to room of the most beautiful shades and textures. And, my very sweet and wonderful mom (hi mom!) offered to buy me some yarn, and it was sooo hard to choose what to take home. I ended up getting some of the Fannie's Fingering Weight sock yarn in "Black Cherry":And some of the Lumpy Bumpy yarn which was also labeled "Black Cherry", but I think that this was mislabeled. Anyway, it is going to become a hat for my mom:I just can't stop looking at it!

I put up our bird feeder outside one of our windows so that Quincy would be able to watch the birds. But I realized that the local wildlife may not really need much food assistance:What do you think?
Have a great weekend, everyone! :)

Phew, I'm finally back and mostly settled in (if by the word "mostly," one means "still needs to unpack and organize 18 million things"). It was probably as smooth a move as I've ever had. No incidents with the U-Haul or anything, except for the line of cranky drivers behind us due to the limited ability of the truck to get up hills, heh. The only other incident was the wretched stomach-ache I had by Sunday night after three days of eating junky Chinese take-out and the like. A trip to the grocery store and a couple of home-cooked meals have gotten the ol' intestinal system right back on track. I must say though, the biggest culture shock of the move so far was the grocery store run. Our old grocery store was about 12 aisles total (and each aisle was about half the length of the ones here), so we were not prepared for it taking over an hour to shop. We had to go through the whole store about three times to make sure we got everything on the list, besides the obligatory gawking at the many unique tropical fruits and other mysterious and previously unknown products now available to us.

The first week of work went OK too, though I did feel a little sad all week, kinda homesick. It's so weird to try to connect with a whole new group of co-workers, when you are coming from a very comfortable environment with only three co-workers. Unfortunately the new job doesn't seem terribly exciting but then again, I wasn't expecting it to be. It's not horrible, just kind of blah.

I have been working on a little something since the week before we moved:
This is the "Setesdal" cardigan (pattern #4) from the Dale of Norway book #8101 "Favorite Baby Designs." Here is kind of a crummy photo of the design:I'm attempting to make this as a Xmas gift for my best friend's son who is around 8 months old now. It probably doesn't need to be done right at Christmas since I don't usually see my friend until after the holidays, but it is actually going pretty quickly, regardless. I only have a few more rows left to finish the main section with the flecks:Hopefully it blocks out well 'cause it looks a little lumpy right now, but it seems that's the nature of fair-isle knitting.

There's so many other cute patterns in this book too...is it wrong of me to want to make some of the funky zebra socks in my size?Hope you have a nice weekend, I gotta do more unpacking!