CRAZY ZAUERBALL

This year saw my second trip to Berlin where I re-visited Fadinensel from my first trip last year and found another new beaut of a shop called Frau Tulpe (Post coming soon). On my first visit to Fadinensel I bought the yarn guide and this time I bought a ball of fantastic Crazy Zauerball which is made in Germany. I'm still not entirely sure I like the way that this kind of yarn knits up but just look at those strands, oooh! I can hear you asking what am I going to use this for if not knitting then. Well, when I saw this it reminded me of the lovely bakers twine which I've seen a lot of recently and thought I'd use this yarn in a similar way. Wrapping parcels, presents, generally tying things up nicely! I haven't had a chance to do any of these things yet, but when I do I'll take a quick snap to show you how I've used it. In the meantime if you want to get your hands on the above Zauerball No.1507 a quick google should find you a few online sellers and here it is for you on the Skacel Collection website.

BABY WINTER KNIT

I made one of these for both Sarah and Marie when they were babies and they were the handiest winter coats they had for when going out in the pram. I've not long finished this one for a friend of mine and it's just in time for the chilly weather. Marie thinks it looks like a big marshmallow, which it definitely feels like, it's sooo soft! It's best to use the wool that the pattern sheet suggests for this piece which is Sirdar Snuggly (55% Nylon 45% Acrylic). Marie has just ordered some wool from ebay where she got 50g balls for £2.25 each to make her friends recent arrival her winter coat.

BERLIN HABERDASHERY STORES

I'm sure a while back I may have mentioned my little trip to Berlin. Whenever I go away somewhere I'm always excited to have half a day or so to myself searching for shops that sell fabric and wool. Berlin was a bit disappointing in that respect and I only really managed to find 2 shops (Maybe I didn't try hard enough!). On my next visit I think I'll be spending a little more time online searching for shops as there do seem to be more places scattered around.

The first shop I found was Fadeninsel and it sold mostly wool. I only managed to snap an image of some of the wool inside but after doing some research I have found the shop has a lovely sign on the front and so have borrowed an image from here for you to see. Fadeninsel can be found at Oranienstrasse 23, they have a website here, it doesn't show anything really but has the contact information. I did make a purchase here for my Mum's birthday, I'm not sure she'll ever use it though, it's a yarn divider for when you're using more than one colour on a knitting project and you pop it onto your finger! I'll get her to take some pics soon.

The second shop (which I found online!) was a fabric store in Charlottenburg. It's called Kumasch and although small, it did host a wide variety of fabrics. I didn't buy any in the end as I thought most of the stuff they had there I could probably buy back at home and a tad cheaper too.

We were a bit more successful on finding lots of other interesting things in Berlin though, some of which I haven't blogged about yet. Others I have and they include Polish poster design, an independent artist run space with some fab pieces of graphics inside. The colourful beer, mmmmhhh! A double decker bus cafe, the worlds largest open air gallery, lots of inspiring graffiti, and much more to come! So as you can see we were hardly disappointed really!

CONVERT DOUBLE KNIT PATTERN TO ARAN

I've now started this pattern! It's fab and already from just doing the rib my needles feel like they have some weight to them! My Grandma came over for a visit the other week and we both went up to Abakhan in liverpool to get wool for our new projects. The smaller ball of wool with golden flecks was in the sale and is aWendy wool. 

However the pattern is for double knit wool but the wool I chose was aran. Luckily my Grandma has a brilliant trick to convert you're pattern so you can use the aran wool. To start with you find a pattern in aran for a similar item, in my case a jumper. Find your size on this aran pattern and see how many stitches it asks you to cast on for a main piece i.e. the back. So for mine on the aran pattern it was 96 stitches to cast on for the back piece, now go back to the double knit pattern and find which size uses roughly the same amount of stitches to be cast on for the back. Mine was a couple of sizes smaller on the double knit pattern and casts on 95 stitches which is close enough as missing one stitch wont make a difference. NB. You use the needle sizes from the aran pattern. I'm not too sure how Grandma figured out how much wool to buy, I'll have to quiz her on that and post again but I think she pretty much doubled the weight. Don't quote me on that one though! I hope all that makes sense, if not drop me a line and I'll try to explain it a bit better!

P.s. I prepped this post yesterday and have since started this new aran jumper of mine and it is fabulous! I can't believe how quick it's knitting up! 

WHY WHY WHY 4PLY?!

As my first "big" knit project I decided to make a cardigan for myself to go with some buttons I bought in Japan about 2/3 years ago. I was quite new to it all and didn't know much about wool etc and chose a 4ply pattern, mmmhhh! My mum bought me the wool and since then I have also foolishly started another 4ply fair isle jumper. I have now managed to finish all of the jumper except one sleeve but the cardigan really has been put on the back burner which I feel quite sad about but I really wanted to start something with a bit of chunk to it! so....

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND!

Over the past few days we have seen some very disturbing events take place here in the UK but it's good to know that if you're nice to people, wherever they are in the world, people are generally extremely nice back. I recently did a favour for one of our readers of The General Store blog and in return she very kindly sent me some Alpaca wool. Now this is no ordinary Alpaca wool as it comes from the ladies........very........own........Alpacas, amazing! I was very excited at the idea of owning your own Alpacas and ever since she said she'd send me some it has put a big smile on my face whenever I think about it  :  )  Her two Alpacas are called Lorenzo and Diego. I know my Mum and Sister fancy getting a donkey, I wonder if Donkeys get along with Alpacas?! I haven't decided what to knit with this beautiful wool yet but I'll let you all know as soon as I find something!

KNITTING WIZARD GRANDMA!

This piece I'm sure has been knitted and undone at least 3 times! I managed to take a picture of it before Grandma changes her mind again as I really love the pattern she's doing. Grandma can probably whip up a jumper during the weekend if she wanted and what's more she can watch T.V whilst doing it and not even watch what her fingers are doing, amazing! Grandma says she enjoys the knitting more than the joy of being able to wear something you have knitted afterwards. So Sarah we'll have to buy some wool and find some patterns for her to do so she doesn't keep doing and undoing the same thing all of the time!! I don't know how she does it!

CARDIGAN WEATHER

It's all grey and gloomy outside which only means one thing, it's cardigan weather! This calls for being sat indoors with a nice hot cuppa and a cardi! I made this last winter but it's definitely getting it's use at the moment, Marie has asked me to make one for her too as she likes the 'stripes' as she says! So I'd better get onto ebay and find some wool for this winter! xx

CRAFTY COFTER WOOL

It seems the only one of us not to have knitted a pattern using Crofter wool is Marie. Here is an example of a piece I have just recently finished, I had to carefully note the pattern on the wool when getting to the neck division so that both sides matched equally. I know that Alison (aka Mum) has made this same pattern whilst Sarah made a lovely pair of socks a couple of christmases back in the sock challenge Marie and her set one another as gifts. Oops, I forgot to mention about the wool! The Crofter wool has it's pattern pre printed or sprayed onto the yarn, so by simply knitting in an easy stocking stitch (knit one row, purl one row) you get a beautiful faire isle pattern all over the garment.

BAMBINO TALK

There's been quite a lot of baby talk this year with lots of my friends bringing little bambino's into the world. I haven't made many items for babies but as my first I quite liked this one. A friend of mine wanted one making but inside out as he preferred the pattern on the inside! I'm not quite advanced enough to transform baby size into adult size just yet though so he'll just have to do with the tie for now and wait a while!

FAIR WHILE

Both Sarah and me took up the task of learning how to knit in fair isle. Both of us had aimed to get our pieces ready for the Christmas just passed and I even thought I could get one for my boyfriend done in time too. How wrong were we? It's fair to say now though that we are almost finished with just the sleeves to go. Here's a sneak preview of Sarah's cardigan which has a strip of the fair isle across the top of the body. Nearly there now!!

MAN OR MOUSE?

This year definitely is the year of the bambino! I made this pair of beauty booties last year for a family friend and have another 2 ordered for this summer (Make that 4! 17.04.2011). I might consider making them a size bigger for the winter so they can have some cheesy mittens to go with them too, watch this space!

POM POM QUILT

Say hello to the pom pom quilt! After a hard days work it's nice to settle down and make something that doesn't require much thought. My quilt is still very much in it's early stage but there is a big bag tucked away in the cupboard bursting full of ready made pom poms waiting to take their place on the quilt. Happy days, pom pom pom pom.