A bit of knitting

This winter was not all about sewing. Thanks to Knitty and Ravelry my interest in knitting has been revived these last few years. During my teens I was hardly ever seen without a knitting project in my hands, where I went the knitting went and numerous sweaters were made during lectures at college, waiting for buses, chatting with friends... Somewhere along the way it all stopped, but the skill is still there and my hands luckily remember how to go about it. I fell in love with these Deep in the Forest mittens and especially this version. I used a Schoppelwolle Zauberball in shades of blue for the background and I love the effect of twilight seen through the trees. I tried a different Zauberball first, but the shades of blue were too dark to get the effect I wanted. That one came in handy for my next project, though:

My next project was inspired by various fair isle designs seen online, and somehow the idea of making a Harry Potter-inspired sweater occurred to me. I started charting various ideas: spells and potions, brooms, owls, the sorting hat, a snitch Harry's patronus, wands, glasses and the scar on Harry's forehead. I needed to test all the different borders and knitted them in the round, ending up with a rather long tube, realizing that I had too many borders for a sweater. I stitched the ends of the tube together and ended up with an infinity scarf. It proved to be very difficult to photograph, so here's a small collage of various borders instead. And now that I have tested the borders (and modified some) it can also serve as a pattern to choose borders from, should I ever get round to making that sweater.

I'm easily distracted, though, so there are always new projects tempting me. This book was a great discovery that will provide endless inspiration. The genius of these patterns are that you begin with a few stitches and increase along one side until the scarf is as long and wide as you want it, or until you run out of yarn. No need to worry about gauge and the patterns can be used for any kind of yarn you have. I haven't come all that far on this one yet, but I can tell that it will become a favorite. Eventually.

My Ravelry page is here, by the way.