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Archive for the ‘self made…’ Category

Just in time for Christmas my tiny German LibriVox Solo is finished and ready for listening. Yay! 😀

The book is called “Weihnachtsmärchen für Kinder” by Luise Büchner (translated the title of the book means “Christmas stories for children”). As the title already suggests, the book consists of 9 fairy tales all centered around Christmas. The stories are all connected in one way or another by a frame story, in which a loving aunt tells them to her small niece and nephew – Mathilde and Georg – to shorten the time till the Christ Child finally comes.

Luise Büchner

Luise Büchner

»Liebe Tante,« sagte eines Abends, grade acht Tage vor Weihnachten, die kleine Mathilde, »du erzählst mir immer von dem Christkindchen, aber gar nichts von seiner Mama. Sage mir doch, wer sie gewesen ist und wo sie gewohnt hat.« »Nun, wenn du hübsch ruhig sitzen und zuhören willst und der Georg auch, dann will ich euch alles erzählen, was ich von dem Christkindchen, von seiner Mama, dem Knecht Nikolaus und dem Eselchen weiß.« (Zusammenfassung von zeno.org)

As I’ve already posted my reading the preface, here is my reading of the first chapter :

It’s a sweet little book with really cute stories and I enjoyed reading them. The only thing I found a bit strange – spoiler ahead – is that the Nikolaus is made out to be be the one who punishes bad children and also that he travels with the Christ Child. Oh and in some of the stories there is almost a bit too much morale, but apart from that the stories are very cute and fun to read.

Anyway here is the whole recording: http://librivox.org/weihnachtsmaerchen-fuer-kinder-by-luise-buechner/

Happy Listening and Merry Christmas!

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Mr Snow 2012 ;)

We finally got some real proper snow. Yay! It even had the perfect consistancy – wet, but not too much and just the perfect kind of sticky – for building a snowman. As y’all can imagine I just couldn’t resist temptation and so may I proudly present Mr. Snow 2012 to you. 😉

Mr Snow 2012

Mr Snow 2012

Isn’t he a beauty? Unfortunately he had to borrow Mrs. Snow’s hat and as if that hadn’t been enough he had a slight accident later that very day… if I may add, not due to sloppy construction of course. 😉

tumbled snowman

Soooo, after some “slight” repairs may I present the New Mr. Snow to you all:

new snowman

New Mr. Snow 2012 😉

Oh and here is proof that our cat actually ventures outside occasionally in winter.

kittypawprints

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Just a short update to show y’all the new smoothie hats I made. My “modellling” smoothie – I don’t actually like the taste of them – has disappeared but as K. said this bottle is just as good…  😉

Smoothie hats

I particularly like the hat with the big flower on top. The funny thing is that it totally wasn’t planned that way. It more or less just happened. Originally I wanted to make a plain black pointed hat like those you see in the Harry Potter movies. But I had a left over flower from the crocheting project I’m working on at the moment and it just looked really cute. 😀

And here is what has become of his Evil-ness:

His Evil-ness

He is now a bit more than a week old and is starting to look toothless. 😉

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His Evil-ness ;)

In preparation for tomorrow’s Halloween party, I carved an absolutely wonderful Jack O’ Lantern out of a HUGE pumpkin. I got this beauty from a local farmer and it turned out just perfect for carving…

Acutally we don’t really celebrate Halloween here…. no witches, zombies, ghosts, gouls, trick-or treating and other fun stuff. It’s a real pity that we miss out on all of that. Oh well!

Here is the  be-heading:

The de-gutting: The “guts” will be turned into soup – lots of soup actually – eventually.

Getting eyes and teeth… lots of teeth!!!

…. finally here is His Evil-ness in all his evil splendor:

Soooo…

Happy Halloween, everyone!

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At the moment I’m down with a rather nasty cold and after finishing up all the socks and stuff I started to knit over the past few months – except of course for my crazy sock yarn blanket – I decided to again work a couple of tiny hats for this year’s “Innocent Smoothie Hat Knitting”.  Underneath you can admire the first 3:

So far I’ve I have 3 hats completely finished and another 2 are in progress and if I don’t run out of ideas and left-over yarn I’ll do a couple more soon… so be prepared for more smoothie hats posts in the future. 😉

In case you are wondering, why anybody would be crazy enough to knit a hat for a smoothie…the whole thing is basically a charity stunt. For every smoothie that is sold wearing a self knit hat 30 Cents are donated to help elderly people through the winter. Besides of that it’s a lot of fun!

While knitting I watched a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones, which is amazingly good…. and that’s high praise from me. I’m usually VERY picky when it comes to movies about books I’ve read before, especially when it’s a book I loved. But they didn’t spoil it and even the choice of characters is pretty good, though the Eddard Stark of my imagination was way more handsome than the actor. 😉

The only thing about the series, that is really annoying is that they did an awful job with the German translation. It would have been better, if they’d left a couple of words untouched, especially the names…. even Casterly Rock got turned into Casterly Stein, which is just plain stupid. Oh well…  it’s a good thing Dvds let you switch to English.

Anyway, back to those smoothie hats. Here is my ravelry page with the usual yarn/needle details. No patttern details this time, as I made everything up while knitting. http://ravel.me/aravis83/b6ikq

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A couple of days ago I started a new solo recording for LibriVox. It’s called “Wintermärchen für Kinder” by Luise Büchner, who you can see in the picture below. It’s a fairly short book and as it’s a Christmas book I’m hoping to complete it by then… we’ll see. 😉

Luise Büchner

Here is how the book starts out:

 »Liebe Tante,« sagte eines Abends, grade acht Tage vor Weihnachten, die kleine Mathilde, »du erzählst mir immer von dem Christkindchen, aber gar nichts von seiner Mama. Sage mir doch, wer sie gewesen ist und wo sie gewohnt hat.« »Nun, wenn du hübsch ruhig sitzen und zuhören willst und der Georg auch, dann will ich euch alles erzählen, was ich von dem Christkindchen, von seiner Mama, dem Knecht Nikolaus und dem Eselchen weiß.«….

The book is about a little girl called Mathilde, who asks her auntie a couple of days before Christmasl to tell her something about the Christ Child’s mother too and not always only about the Christ Child himself…. and so each day leading up to Christmas the good auntie tells her a story.

So far I’ve recorded (still need to edit though… Ugh!) the first 2 stories and I just loved them. The first is about Frau Holle and how she helps the good people. In the second story, which is connected to the first one, Frau Holle askes the Nikolaus for help…. but if you’d like to know more you’ll have to listen for yourself. 😉

For starters here is my recording of the intro:

Enjoy! 😀

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Omg, it’s been ages since I last posted. Sorry! Life has been very busy here lately…. work, several congresses, lovely long visit from N. and lots of other stuff. Anyway it’s past time for a new post and there also is a lot I need to show y’all. First of all here is an update on my crazy huge sock yarn blanket:

Sock yarn blanket

I’ve been working on it a lot lately and it’s growing nicely. The last time I counted I already had 250 squares but that was a couple of weeks ago and now I’m probably closer to 300. That does sound a lot, doesn’t it? Still it is a long time before it will be finished, but so far I’m really enjoying it. It’s just such an easy project that doesn’t require a lot of thinking.

To give myself a bit of a break from the blanket I’m also working on another pair of socks. I started them on a rather long train ride to K. this summer. It’s a mosaic pattern, which looks rather complicated, but is actually quite easy to do.

Like the blanket pic, this pic also is already a couple of weeks old and so I’ve completed the first sock by now. Right now I’m working on the second one… though for some reason it’s rather slow going at the moment. But I guess that’s pretty normal for second socks…. they never seem to knit up as fast the first ones. 😉

Lately I’ve also worked on a couple of baby projects for a friend, who is expecting twin girls. Here is a pic of one of the cardigan-hat-bootie-sets I knit…. of course there also is such a set in a lovely white-pink-orange yarn for the second girl:

As I had some yarn left over from the projects I’m working on matching toy bunnies at the moment. Actually the bunny pattern is supposed to be a blanket, but as I didn’t have enough yarn left for blankets I’ve turned them into toy bunnies instead. Here is the one, which is already done:

The pattern for the bunny (as well as for all my other projects) can be found on ravelry. For the bunny I modified the pattern a little. That is I shaped the head differently for I didn’t like it that square. Here is what I did:

I followed it closely up to row 63 (including that row). This is the increase row and there should be 28 stitches on the needle. I then switched to DPNs. For that I alternately slipped one stitch from the circular needle on the DPNs (f.ex.: 1. stitch on 1. needle, 2, stitch on 2. needle, 3. stitch on 1. needle, 4. stitch on 2. needle etc.) and started working in the round. For the head I increased to 40 stitches:

1. round: k all stitches

2. round: k1, kfb, k12, kfb, k2, kfb, k12, kfb, k1

3. round: k all stitches

4. round: k1, kfb, k14, kfb, k2, kfb, k14, kfb, k1

5. round: k all stitches

6. round: k1, kfb, k16, kfb, k2, kfb, k16, kfb, k1

After that I worked a couple of round in plain knitting till the head was long enough. Oh and I also embroidered the eyes and mouth before started the decreases:

1. round: k1 k2tog, k16, k2tog, k2, k2tog, k16, k2tog, k1

2. round: k all stitches

3, round:  k1 k2tog, k14, k2tog, k2, k2tog, k14, k2tog, k1

4. round: k all stitches

5. round: k2tog, k12, k2tog, k2, k2tog, k12, k2tog, k1

Slip about half the stitches back onto one needle (alternating as before), stuff the head and then slip the rest of the stitches back onto the one needle. You should again have 28 stitches now. Work the ears according to pattern. 😀

As usual all patterns, yarn details and a lot more pic can be found on ravelry page: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/aravis83

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Today I finished my Eyelet-Cable Socks. It is a simply sock with an off-center cable at the side of the sock. It is hard to see in the pics, but there are eyelets in the cable itself. For the socks I used size 2,5 needles (US size 1 I think) and a very stretchy sock yarn called Lana Grossa Meilenweit Point Stretch.

Finished Eyelet-Cable Socks

Cast on 60 stitches and work about 10 rounds of k2, p1 for the ribbing.

1.-6. round: k3, p3, k6, p3, k to end of round

7. round (cable round): k3, p3, slip 3 stitches onto cable needle, hold cable needle at the back of work, knit 3 stitches from the left needle, now knit 3 stitches off the cable needle, p3 and k to end of round

8.-14. round: k3, p3, k6, p3, k to end of round

15. round (cable round): k3, p3, slip 3 stitches onto cable needle, hold cable needle at the back of work, knit 3 stitches from the left needle, now knit 3 stitches off the cable needle, p3 and k to end of round

16.-17. round: k3, p3, k6, p3, k to end of round

18. round (eyelet round): k3, p3, k1, Yo, k2tog, k 3, p3, k to end of round

19. round: k3, p3, k6, p3, k to end of round

20-23. round: repeat rounds 18 and 19 twice more

24.-27. round: k3, p3, k6, p3, k to end of round

Repeat the pattern starting with the first cable round (7.round). Work your favorite heel and toe, block to open up the eyelets, wear! Happy Knitting! 😀

More pictures as well as yarn details can be found on my ravelry page: http://ravel.me/aravis83/kfew

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My Elphaba pullover is finally finished and it turned out great!!!

Finished Elphaba pullover

Unfortunately it’s too warm here at the moment to comfortably wear a knit pullover for more than a few minutes at a time. But I of course tried it on and it actually fits. Well it’s maybe a tiny bit too big, but that doesn’t really matter as I usually wear something underneath anyway.

The pattern I used is from ravely and was really great! All instructions were very clear and I followed them closely. The only thing I modified is the main part of the body….  I added a couple of rows, as I like my pullovers a little longer. (I did about 40 rows.)

More pictures and all needle/yarn details are on my ravelry page: http://ravel.me/aravis83/l6fya

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It’s really been ages since I last blogged. Sorry! Lately things have been quite busy here, but not too busy to do some knitting, especially socks and now I need to show all of them off. 😉

Here are my lovely Laurelhurst socks in purple and black with always 2 rows per stripe. The pattern is from ravelry and I followed it closely except for the heel and the toe decreases.

Purple Laurelhurst socks

….and here is my second pair of Laurelhurst socks. This one I modified a lot more. I didn’t do the slipped stitches along the sides and also used a different pattern for the heel and toe.

Colorful Laurelhurst socks

Below is my pair of crazy stripes socks. I used two different multicolores yarns – one with different shades of blue and the other with various shades of pink, yellow, orange, lilac and blue – and worked 4 rounds before switching to the next color. I just love how they turned out and they are supercomfy to wear.

My crazy stripes socks 🙂

At the moment I’m working on the green and black-white-gray striped socks for K. Basically it’s the same pattern as my crazy stripes socks, only in this case I’m switching colors after only 3 rounds. And I’ll probably start the second sock with the black-white-gray yarn and also do the heel and toes in this color.

First sock for K.

And finally here is my sock yarn blanket, which of course is still very much in progress. At the moment I’m working on the 6. row of squares and it’s still a lot of fun…. though I need an occasional break from doing them, as you can see by the amount of socks I’ve done lately.

Sock yarn blanket in progress…

Oh and there is one small thing I changed about the blanket. What I at first intended to be the broad side of the blanket is now the long one… I got a little carried away when doing the initial squares and it got WAY too long for a broad side. 😉

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