Cashmere Cafe

This was not a knitting week, really. We stayed home Monday, because it was Easter Monday and Tamara had fever throughout all Easter which did not give me any opportunity to try knitting. Than a normal working week resumed and it was marked by our search for a plot of land where we intend to build a house together with our friends. This project has only started, so we are so enthusiastic about all the possibilities and good things that will surely happen to us. ;)

My Bi-coloured Spring Park Cardigan (working name) is done to the point where I have to decide what I will do with sleeves. See, I only have 2 skeins of red and 2 skeins of grey yarn. One skein on grey yarn is reserved for buttonband. I am considering making short sleeves in red. The other option is to combine red and grey in a similar manner that I did on the front… What do you think? Any suggestions? :)

Of course I knit all three parts too short, so I had to cut the ribbing and knit some more to get the length which I want. The difference in the first length and the desired one can be very well seen on this photo:

And here is what I have up til now:

I hope my next post about this particular cardigan will be showing you the FO!

Just as I was bragging about the spring which arrived to Slovenia we get another flush of snow. Here’s some photographic evidence:

And since this is mostly a knitting blog I will share some of my secret knitting frustrations with you. :)

As I have already pointed some time ago it was my mum who taught me how to knit. My family originates from Bosnia, so my knitting technique is ‘Bosnian style’. What does this mean? Well, loads of things. First – my stitches ‘turn’ around differently than what I see on most blogs. Second, we use only two needles to knit. Third, most of the patterns are made up in people’s heads, so I am one of the strangers who know how to read them from magazines. (I should add a disclaimer here – this kind of ‘native’ knitting is common for Bosnian village folk, those living in the cities are much more advanced.)

And than – what happens? I enter the knitting blogosphere and – oh my God, a whole new universe hits me in the head. Sincerely, I thought I knew something about knitting. Well, after couple of months my  self-concious is a bit hurt. Do I know anything about knitting at all?

For one – there are so many expressions which I simply don’t understand. Some of them are because of american-english – british -english division, some of them are rooted in different techniques. For example – purl. What is purl? I had to check this word in the dictionary, honestly. That I said to myself “Aaaaa – that must be a row of ‘lefts’”.
See, I knit only using lefts and rights ;).

Than there’s a whole bunch of expressions, completely unknown to me – differen types of yarn (fingering weight?, sock yarn (why, why? is this yarn good only for knitting socks? I don’t understand this…), provisonal cast on, etc.etc.).

And, oh, wait, there’s more, there’s a whole bunch of kinitting accessories I can’t imagine any use for. For example – stitch markers. I regularly check quite some blogs and as far as I can see all knitters that make beautiful projects (like I would really like to make as well)  use stitch markers.
To be honest, I tried to use stitch markers (well, kind of – I just adopted paperclips for the once I’ve tried)  and found them pretty useles. I assume that is because: 1. I was not using them properly, 2. I count all along my knitting, anyway.
And then I go and read somewhere that ’stitchmarkers are like knitters jewelery’. My God! They truly are, they can be like earrings hanging all over your knitting. And there I go – have no idea what to do with them. 

Ahhh well. I’ll just say that – there’s so much to learn and you’ll hear about other Wonders of Bosnian in the Knitting land soon. :)

There’s not much to write about, really. Except – I got finished the back of my two-coloured cardigan and started working on the first right front. I think I might frog a part of the back (again) since it seems just too wide. Now, I am too enthusiastic about how the front looks like and I want to finish that. I just must remember to start working on decreases for sleeves and neck.

And you do remember the package from Japan, don’t you? My friend sent a very cute embroidery book – in fact it is for Tamara, but since she can’t do embroidery, I’ll use it for some time ;)

I don’t know if there’s anything cuter than Japanese craftsy books, I really don’t… I was so tempted by sweet motives  but I really didn’t have a particuar idea until recently, when I decided to start writing a journal about our life. It’s a very special kind of journal – every day I wirte one sentence about something that happened that day. So, when I read it, it’s easy to remember those not so special days that make our life.

I used to write such journals (or diaries?) until just a couple of years ago and abandoned it when I started working on my ‘Sunday journal’. That didn’t really work very well, so, now I am back to condensed journal. This one will of course be filled with things Tamara did, so I decided to make an embroidered sleeve for it and use one of the cute japanese motives. The fabric is from my turkish stash, it’s linen in natural colors.