Yarn and books and THE cutest dog

Isn’t it funny – when what’s keeping you busy is household chores, not work, suddenly you have all the time in the world to blog…

It’s Friday and that’s usually the day of the week when I do most of my cleaning, but today I just don’t feel like it. (Well – not that I frequently feel like cleaning anyway…)

I’ve managed to get some half decent pictures of yarns and projects, so here it goes:

A new little project:

I wanted to try some stitch patterns and decided to make something useful in the process: this is going to be a dish cloth.

The yarn is Viva from Marks & Kattens, 100% cotton, bought here. Quite nice to knit with, even though I’m not very fond of cotton (I like cotton, just not knitting with cotton).

White might not be the smartest choice for a dish cloth but…, oh well. I like white!
The beige yarn in the picture is also Viva. I bought two more balls of it:

These will also be turned into dish cloths, or maybe a kitchen towel. We’ll see.

I also bought this:

Yes, I like brown and turqoise together.

This is going to become a striped scarf, for myself. I love these colors!
I don’t know why I only bought 2 balls though, I think I’ll need more than that. Duh!

I’ve knitted with this yarn before and liked it and I was very happy to see some colors I hadn’t seen before. I want a brown and pink scarf as well. Or maybe a pink/orange one.

And then there’s the February Lady Sweater… Sigh. I don’t think I’ve ever re-done so much on a project before. I wanted to decrease the extra stitches under the arm – I think the sleeve is going to be a bit too wide with those extra stitches – but I’ve done it in several different ways now and haven’t been pleased with any of them. I’m starting to think I might just leave those stitches and let the sleeve be however it wants to be. Bah. I want this sweater to BE DONE.

My Stickfrossa wrist warmers are almost finished. It’s a really nice, quick and fun knit.Taking good pictures of the yarn is something else. :-/

This is not a good representation of the color, at all. The true color is much more apple green. I’ll take some photos outside, in proper daylight, once the things are finished.

I suspect they will be too small for me. I should have done an extra pattern repeat, I think. We’ll see. If they’re too small for me they will go into the gift pile. I can always make another pair, for me, later.

Speaking of Stickfrossa, have you seen her shawl, Anna’s shawl? Gorgeous!! Oh, and speaking of shawls, go take a look at Dödergök’s Cascading leaves shawl! It’s soooo beautiful!

A couple of weeks ago, at the knitting meet-up in Borlänge (Hi girls!), we talked about books and I was told that Håkan Nesser’s books about inspector Barbarotti are very good. So, I ordered the first two. At the same meeting, Zooni told me about Storytel (audio books in your cellphone) and I decided to try it. So far I think it’s a great thing! I started listening to Kathy Reichs’ Bones to Ashes. I love her books. Listening to it was very nice, but I decided I really want to read it so I ordered that one as well.

I also ordered this.

My youngest son (11 years old) reads a lot. A LOT. And his favorite books are the Harry Potter ones. He’s read the whole series at least 3 times this year, in Swedish. Now he’s reading Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince in English. Reading is something we encourage very much, and reading in English? Even better!

So, this will go into his advent calendar in December.

Well… I guess I’d better get started on some cleaning now. I can always reward myself with some knitting afterwards!

Last, but not least, isn’t little Dobby the cutest thing ever?!