The first of two embroidery workshop sessions took place today, and I started working on my starfish design. I’ve done embroidery before and I was familiar with all the stitches we went through, but still learned new things.

The most useful trick I learned today is to sew applique designs not with blanket stitch but with whip stitch, and then work stem stitch or backstitch around the edge. It’s faster, more stable, and looks more even. Whenever I sew blanket stitch along a curve – and most appliques tend to have curved shapes – the stitches always tend to slip, no matter how careful I am with the thread tension. I never have any problems with whip stitch. Plus stem stitch is thicker and stands out more than blanket stitch, so the whole applique becomes more distinct and gets more depth this way. I loved this.

I also got to try out some new materials. The materials kit contained pieces of felted wool cloth (vadmal) in various colours, wool thread and linen thread. I hadn’t worked with vadmal before, or with linen thread. I quite liked the look of shiny, sleek linen thread on matte wool fabric.

An embroidery workshop in Swedish is probably not relevant for you all, but in case you are interested, the workshop was held by Tamme Craft. The name “Tamme” is Estonian, which is what caught my eye to begin with. It turned out that the company is run by a lady with Estonian roots.

Please excuse the atrocious lighting in the photo. It’s so dark here that I have to turn on all available lamps for embroidery.

I bought myself an early Christmas gift in the form of an online wool embroidery workshop. I need some new impressions and a break from the never-ending sameness.

The workshop package included a bag of materials and also a suggested design. Traditional Swedish wool embroidery designs tend to have a lot of hearts and flowers which seems rather dull and “been there, done that” so I wanted something more interesting.

The larger traditional embroideries often include animals such as birds and horses. I don’t feel any particular affinity with birds or horses, so I went looking for some other cool animal, and decided to embroider starfishes. They’re like flowers, but cooler. Especially when you go beyond the most well-known species.

The first of the two workshop meetings is already tomorrow so I’m sitting up late, sketching starfishes.

All the socks I’ve planned to knit for Christmas are finished but there are still several weeks left until Christmas Eve so I thought I’d knit some more things. Both kids will get a pair of mobile mittens with finger openings. I found a nice easy pattern to follow in relatively chunky yarn – Keep in touch by Drops Design.

Ingrid isn’t supposed to get any Christmas gifts at all this year, because the gaming computer she got was expensive enough to be both a birthday gift and a Christmas gift and then some. But mittens are more like a utility so those don’t really count, I think.

Oh, let’s be honest. Every gift I knit is a selfish one. The knitting is as much a gift to myself as the finished object is to whoever gets it.

Nice easy patterns are quick to make but also kind of boring to knit, so I decided to add some cables to these mittens, inspired by another design I saw in a book. Then I had the idea of doing the cables in contrasting colours and when I pictured the result in my mind it looked so much better than what I saw in the original pattern that I just had to do it this way. I’ve never done intarsia cables before, but how hard can it be.

Not very hard, it turns out, but fiddly. So my quick pairs of mittens are now not so quick any more. Every other row there is cabling to do, and in the rows between the coloured stitches have to be knitted backwards because the yarn end is at the wrong side of the coloured band. It’s not quite double the work but almost. Maybe it would have been wiser to stick to a simpler design for a last minute project like this… but I do like these a lot. I have two weeks left still so it’ll be fine.

I can knit for Ingrid right here in plain sight without her noticing anything. She’s busy with her own thoughts. If you asked her, she would probably be able to tell you that I have been knitting, but not much more.

It’s much trickier with Adrian. He is curious and sociable. He looks at my knitting, comments on the design, opines on the colours, tries it on even when he knows it’s not for him. There is no way he would not notice. So I’ll have to make his late at night when he is in bed. Or perhaps during the day when he is at school, if I can find the time.

This is what happens to gingerbread cookies in a household full of people who like order. They get sorted by shape, and stacked. Small hearts, large hearts, left-facing pigs, right-facing pigs, and numerous piles of small stars and circles made from the scraps of dough between the larger cookies.

This looked satisfying but later turned out to be not a very good idea. At least not when the cookies are stacked when they are still warm. Because this way the steam can’t evaporate and the cookies end up soft rather than crisp. Unfortunately we only discovered this when we had finished decorating. I put the undecorated ones back in the oven to dry them out, but you can’t heat the decorated ones because the icing goes all runny. So we will be eating soft gingerbread cookies this year.

Ingrid is a skilled decorator and makes the most fancy ones, like the Christmas trees here. Adrian likes lots of icing on his, and preferably in colour, not in white.

I like understated decorations, mostly in white.

One Christmas we got a truck-shaped cookie cutter from Mathem (the online grocery store). I guess we are valued customers or something. It’s one of Adrian’s favourites, and Ingrid made an actual Mathem truck cookie for him.

This is Adrian’s photo of the cookies he liked best: a Santa couple, a very Grinchy Grinch, and a donut with extra everything.

There was a full-on crisis at work today, which I spent all day resolving. Once the crisis was over my brain was mush and I felt too dull to do anything. I’m borrowing this photo from an earlier day, and posting this two days later.

This is the second oven mitt I’ve patched in exactly the same spot: the tip of the thumb. I’m pretty sure that the wear here is due to the thumb getting into food. Maybe someone lifts a heavy, full baking pan with lasagna out of the oven and the thumb of the mitt gets a bit of sauce on it. That spot of food goes unnoticed and unwashed, and somehow it weakens the fabric. As we keep using the mitt the fabric in that spot gets exposed to heat and a hole is burned in the dirty spot. But only there, and not in the parts that are most exposed to heat. There’s some chemistry behind this, I’m sure.

Here are the finished 1337-themed woollen socks in all their glory. I hope my colleague likes them.

The yarn is Novita’s “7 brothers”, so I used Novita’s “basic wool socks” pattern which is made for this yarn. (The pattern only has sizes 30, 38 and 46 though, so I had to make up my own variation for size 42-43. Luckily 42 is right in the middle between 38 and 46.)

I first tried knitting the logo but it was fiddly and the result didn’t look good, so I ripped that up and knitted plain socks and embroidered the logo afterwards. It came out much better this way – nice and even with no puckering, and only very slightly stiff. And as a bonus I learned the Estonian term for “duplicate stitch”.

The cuff has a hidden “1337” in it as well. One row of blue, three rows of blue, three again, and then seven.

Textile crafts class at school has progressed from weaving friendship bracelets to actual real sewing. Adrian has taken a “sewing machine license” which allows him to use the sewing machines at school without supervision. He loves it, and has already sewn a fleece hat that he is very pleased with.

The hardest part about sewing is finding a suitable project. Adrian wants to make a Pokemon plushie, but most of the photos he finds on the internet have no pattern, and they’re too full of complicated 3d shapes for him to wing it. Like Snom with all its spikes, for example. But Centiskorch, another of his favourite Pokemon, is fundamentally a relatively simple centipede shape that we thought we could figure out.

This is the first time Adrian’s sewing project is actually Adrian’s sewing project, rather than him designing and me executing the design. I provided some construction advice and helped him pin the design to the fabric, but he has been doing all the real work: designing, measuring, drawing, cutting, and sewing.

Four socks 100% finished now, after I wove in all the ends. Feels good.

I was going to take photos of the whole finished thing and show off my embroidery but forgot to do it while I had daylight, and these really do deserve daylight. It’s a good thing my colleagues don’t read this blog or otherwise I’d have to keep these under the wraps until after Christmas! (Like I will do with the other pair which I knitted for a family member. He might not even mind, but I still think a Christmas present ought to be at least a little bit of a surprise.)

It feels unfair that the last step of a knitting project would be the least enjoyable one. I don’t enjoy the weaving in of ends. It’s like cooking a meal, seasoning it, tasting it – and then having to end it with peeling potatoes. I even like peeling better than weaving in ends, because you can’t really get the peeling wrong, whereas with the yarn ends I can never get them quite as invisible as I would like.

My knitting basket is overflowing with nearly-finished socks. First I knitted one pair, to give away. Figuring out the sizing took a few attempts, but the second sock went fast because I now had the pattern worked out for this exact size and this exact yarn.

Well. If the first sock is the time-consuming one and the next one goes fast, why not make more of those fast ones? I have the pattern now, and I have one more skein of the exact same yarn, so let’s be efficient and make use of this! I know more than one person with size 42/43 feet who might benefit from a pair of sturdy woollen socks. Actually, most people in this part of the world probably would.

The second pair will be for a secret Santa gift exchange at work. They’ll have some nice tretton37 styling in duplicate stitch, i.e. embroidery that looks like knitting (maskstygn/can’t find the Estonian name). I’m excited about doing the embroidery so I’m all focused on finishing the second sock in this pair and getting started on the decorations, and putting off the much more boring work of weaving in the yarn ends on all the finished socks. 3 socks 99% done, 1 sock 90% done, not one 100% done.

When I had come about halfway on the first sock, I ripped up all I’d done and started over. And then I did it again when I had done two thirds of a sock. Today I started on my third try and finally it feels right.

It’s just a pair of socks, how hard can it be! It’s not like I haven’t knitted any before. And it’s not like I don’t have a pattern to follow. But getting the fit right with a new yarn still takes some trial and error.

The first time the ribbing around the calf looked ugly when stretched out.

The second attempt with more stitches looked better but fit worse – it was way too loose around the heel and ankle. (The socks are not for me but my feet are the closest so I try them on my own feet anyway… The difference in width isn’t huge.)

For the third attempt I am using the lower stitch count again, like the first time, but 1×1 ribbing instead of 2×2 – and now I’m happy with both the fit and the looks.

With my previous attempts I kept guessing and trying it on and hesitating. I kept putting the knitting away because it didn’t feel quite right. Now that there is a feel of rightness about the whole thing, progress is fast. Although I started from zero today, after an evening of knitting I’m back where I was yesterday evening.