Knitting - an Ice Breaker

Today I woke up to a snow-clad yard. New snow is beautiful (I spell that word in my head every time I write it... funny! Does anyone else?).

This evening, on my way back home (yes, I actually call my room at Lambertseter my home! I like it here. You are more than welcome to visit me.) from town, I sat down on my train and took out my knitting. An elderly lady sat next to me and commented on it. She had used to knit a lot before, but then her hands became unwilling to do such work. She once knit herself a winter coat! That's respect! Cannot see me doing that. Not on the train anyway. So we talked about knitting till she got off.

Yes, I am knitting socks again. And two hats on order (I really felt that was not the correct word to use, but I couldn't find any better ones...), and the baby jacket, and I will start a head band tomorrow, and I've an order for a pair of wrist warmers with pearls, and Christmas is closing in. Good.

And I drank a cup of black coffee today. *proud*

Sometimes I wish I was an American

They've got so many beautiful girl names. Names that translate to beautiful words. And these translated words really cannot be used as names... Here are some of the names I really like:

• Joy
• Hope
• Faith
• Grace

And probably some more that I don't remember at the time. And then there's Charisma. Not sure how much I like that for a name...

I am writing my journal entries.

Last weekend I was on the train, basically. Home for my aunts 5oth birthday party. An the train brought me between Oslo and Stavanger (from which I took boat/bus), app. 8 hours each direction.

So, what do you do on a train for such an extensive time period? You bring your new book about crocheting of course!
On my way there, I learnt some new stitches and made a "gryteklut" that got almost finished. I didn't have enough yarn for finishing... Anyway, I left it at home. And there I also left the vintage bottle warmer I started on.

So, on the way back I had to start over with some new things! So I tried a wave pattern with double crochet stitches:But I want some more yarn in different colours to finish it.

And I learnt how to do tunisian crocheting (hakking):These three panels are made in "enkel", "rett" and "vrangvendt" tunisian crocheting. (My book is in Norwegian so I don't know the correct English names...) The plan is to make several panels in different colours and turn them into more "grytekluter". Do they always twist like this?

And lastly, when all I had left was white cotton, I made this little hexagon thingy with spirals:

Back in Oslo I have been working on a very large and baggy Turn-A-Square which will fit my head of dreads:

The poor thing has been waiting for me to find the dpns for a long time now so I can finish the bind-off... Almost done. I used some left-over yarn. The white is Denim Chunky from Sirdar and the purplish one is Shadow Tweed from Patons. Needles 6mm. Don't remember how many stitches I cast on... But I increased several times afterwords.

This summer I started working on a baby jacket in BabySilk from DSA. It looks like this now:

And I've started a Kiri-shawl in Tynn Alpakka from DSA:

I love DSA.

Secret Friend...

I realised I'd forgotten to post the gift I got from my Secret Friend at Hobbyforum!

So, here we go!
The content was as follows: Lots of lovely fruit tea from London Fruit & Herb Company (the very best!); a leaflet on "How to make giftboxes"; a sheet of sweet stickers (I realise their not in the picture... ups!); 1 ball of pink merino wool yarn; two balls of Regia sock yarn; and a card - which hinted that my Secret Friend was Frk. Badegakk. Loved it! And pink is so totally and absolutely my colour, so you made a good choice. Thank you! :-).

The sock yarn has already turned out to become great socks! The pattern is called Horcrux-socks.
See the scar below?

Neither do I... Lousy picture. Sorry.

And this is me trying to sort out some of the yarn and needles I've got...