So many things

These have been very introspective times here in this studio of mine. I´ve been having loads of work (which I´m thankful for) and am, constantly, searching for more work, creating new projects and presenting new ideas to potential clients.

It´s been busy, busy, and I haven´t felt like posting much. Sorry.

One thing that has been on my mind is the (long overdue) portfolio website redo. Oh dear. I wonder if I´m alone in this, but just thinking about having to change it makes my heart shrink a bit. It´s not that I don´t think it needs to be updated - it´s just that working on something that I can´t control (because I don´t know enough when it comes to web design) and therefore takes me three times longer than it should makes want to jump off my 49th floor balcony. Ok, not so literally, but you get my drift.

Other than that, it´s still kind of weird not to have four seasons, but only two: it´s still pretty much rainy, terribly wet all the time. Not too hot, though, which is fine. It´s almost the end of the year and I don´t feel it around me. No yellow leaves on the floor (as during my northern hemisphere days) nor purple jacaranda trees (as in Buenos Aires), so sometimes I must check the calendar just to be sure. It´s November. It´s chestnut and fireplace time in Portugal.

Anyway, enough about this. Here´s some of the things I managed to do on my breaks from my design projects:



This is my third attempt at knitting a Christmas present for someone mysterious - can´t say that person´s name as he or she does not know he or she is a recipient of a knitted gift.

The first finished sweater was too small (but too cute to frog); the second one was rightly sized, but not well designed; therefore, frogged.

This is the third go. We´ll see how it goes.



We use cloth napkins at home and needed our stocks refilled, so I bought some native kuna design fabrics (100% cotton, unfortunately not organic) and sewed a pretty simple hemline on them. There´s a learning curve in sewing, people!

And I finally started painting again. This time, there´s no class, no studio, no model, just me, my brushes and the beautiful view from the balcony. We´ll see where that takes us.

What have you been up to lately?

Xaile viajante

Now that I have the photos of the shawl I mentioned the other day, I´m writing a proper post about it.

It´s a mix of the Boneyard and the Travelling Woman Shawls. I needed something easy yet beautiful (emphasis on the Boneyard part) to knit while moving from Buenos Aires and walking around there finishing the last paperwork. Some mindless knitting was also needed for the airplane and some later travels around central and north America.

Moving can be... hmm, very demanding, let´s just put it this way, smile, and carry on.

To finish the shawl i wanted it to have some lacy texture, so I went for the Travelling second part. One repeat of chart A and another one of chart B and the yarn was just enough. With emphasis on the "just".



And now I have a wonderful woollen shawl that is absolutely not needed in the tropical country I now call home.

Raveled here. More photos here.

Coming close...

...has a totally new meaning for me:



This is the total amount of yarn left from knitting this shawl!

I´ll post more photos of it when I have them. If you want more info in the meantime, here´s its ravelry link.

Happy weekend!

World Cup (knitting) fever

Along with my friends in Argentina (ravelry group here), we ran a World Cup Challenge to accompany the match watching that was predicted. I didn´t watch many, as they were broadcasted at ungodly hours like 6 in the morning, or "totally-at-work-hours", like 9 am.

Still, I managed to finish my challenge (and to draw it too).

Hemp

I´m knitting with hemp. It sounds like a statement and it could be one: hemp is definitely a misunderstood fibre, mostly because it is plain hard to knit with. Or at least, I´m finding it rough on my fingers and am looking forward to the advertised softness that comes with machine washing.

Now, it may seem as I don´t enjoy it. I do, I really do, but this particular fibre improves with wear and wash, and, you know, I´m a slow knitter. Let´s call it a process knitter, actually, and knitting with a rough fibre is... odd.

There are plenty of positive aspects to it, though: it´s a vegetable fibre, which I like; it gets softer with use; it´s fresh enough and warm enough for my covering needs in Panama (indoor temperatures extremely low due to excessive air conditioning!); it´s easy to care for, so no hand-washing will be needed. And, mostly, I felt an urgent need to knit for myself, even if I´m moving to a tropical country where temperatures are always high and it´s summer all year round.

Pattern is Citron and my shawl is ravelled here.

New pattern! Meet "Bonecas"

I´m happy to share with you that I´m publishing my first ever knitting pattern! It´s Bonecas, the pattern for my ravelympics challenge, which I blogged about here.

It is a dress-slash-tunic for a five year old kid, knitted in two colours of fingering weight yarn. Any two yarns with similar weight will work for this project.

It is free to download, with all the usual restrictions: not to be sold, shared or published in forums. Items knitted using this pattern are not to be sold - you know how it goes! If you love it and want to share it, please send people here. Please write me if you spot any mistake or you want to share your thoughts on it. Happy knitting!

Ravelympics?

Well, yesssssss... and although I do know that I´m way behind, I´m still very happy for having finished this project altogether. It was a challenge for me and one of my crafty goals for the year. I´m happy to have completed it in March, which leaves me nine whole months of new challenges ahead of me.

Pattern is my own and yarn used is industrial alpaca (discontinued) in white and pure wool, handpainted by me, for the contrast colour. I was very serious about destashing, but I guess that it takes more than a dress for a five-year-old to finish 200g of lace weight yarn... Destash mode goes on!

More photos here. Project on ravelry.

My own olympic challenge

Although i haven´t signed up officially for ravelympics, I set myself a knitting challenge - one of my crafting goals for 2010, which was knitting with more than one colour, using stranding as a technique.

On the opening ceremony day and the weekend after, I went away to the seaside in Uruguay and, didn´t get to it - I love knitting but swimming in the sea comes before if I happen to be near the ocean. So, lots of swimming and no knitting at all!

Upon my arrival I had a new prototype for abbrigate* to finish, so all of the previous detours to say that it was only last friday I managed to cast on for my olympic challenge. Knitting two colours the portuguese style (with yarn going around your neck for tension) is just plain easy, there´s no juggling with yarn on the right or left hands, so I highly recommend it as a good technique for this kind of pattern.

I´m knitting a pattern of my own, it will either be a dress/tunic or a short sleeved sweater - let´s see how much yarn I have for it - for one of my nieces (or for both of them, considering the first will outgrow it sometime soon-ish), with a little doll pattern on the yoke and raglan sleeves. I´m using 2.5mm circulars and white yarn is industrial alpaca and the coloured one is my own hand-painted pure wool. The result is a lightweight warm sweater, perfect for end of winter and spring weather.

I know there´s a more than huge chance of not finishing it by the end of the olympics but all in all my challenge was to knit with two colours, a mission that has been accomplished with a high degree of satisfaction. It´s amazing how many new creative knitting-doors it opens!

What are your (knitting related or not) challenges?

My crafty new year resolutions

One of the things I hate the most is the feeling of not having time to do something and having to postpone it. So this year I decided to get on with my crafty objectives as soon as possible, as if the year were about to end in a couple of months.

Without further ado, I present you two of my crafty resolutions for 2010:

1. Knitting with more than one yarn (and colour).





This was long overdue. It was actually a 2009 goal but knitting projects came and went and I didn´t have the chance to fit this one in. Also, I knit portuguese style (yarn goes around my neck for tension) and thought that it could only mean: huge mess. Well, it isn´t. I think it is even easier than to use both english and continental styles at the same time and I can say that while knitting this swatch I almost got the same speed as if I were knitting with one yarn only. I need to add here, though, that I´m not a speedy knitter nor pay much attention to speed when it comes to knitting; it is only to illustrate how not messy it is.

I´m going to knit a dress to my older niece (so that it will fit my younger niece in a couple of years!) with a decorated yoke. I researched a bit for knitting techniques and decoration design but the pattern is basically a combination of different sources.

This is my Ravelympics project and it is ravelled here. More photos available here.



2. Learning to quilt.





I am a quilting beginner, so I welcome any suggestions or links to useful resources you may know of. I read as much information as I can find on the web and I watch lots of youtube videos. So far, I´m loving it. I started with some fabrics I had at home (used on abbrigate* packaging) but am now hungry for more. I still don´t know what I´m going to do with this small project but I think I want to finish it and it may serve as... I don´t know, a doll quilt? For one of my beautiful nieces? Hmm? We´ll see.

For more photos of this project, click here.

Well, we´re still in January, so there´s plenty of time for new and improved crafty goals for 2010, right? Coming soon, my entrepreneurial goals, though this is a far more complicated topic!

I´m poladroiding anything that appears in front of me

I know the poladroid ship has sailed long ago but I am in utter love with this, it might even be the beginning of an overload of polaroid-like pictures around here. Please do let me know if I use them too much!

This is my adapted version of Saartje´s booties, pattern to be found here. It has transpired that these booties were immediately put to use. I´m a happy (adopted) auntie.

Ravelled here.

They knew I wanted to model my latest hand-knit...

Snow isn´t the most common phenomenon in Portugal, happening every now and then in the north and mountain areas. But I guess someone knew I needed a good background for my Koolhaas hat pictures, right? Maybe not, but who cares. It was a beautiful, beautiful Sunday seeing the snow falling outside and then going for a walk and being a kid all over again. (Any Canadian reading this might be laughing their socks off, but guys, you know, this is more of a summer country than actually a winter country! Do come by in Spring, though, it´s lovely.)

Now I´m back to Lisbon and it´s cold, though not the snowy type of cold, and I´m already thinking about summer, which will begin (for me) next Sunday, back in Buenos Aires. The holiday season goes by too quick.

P.S. Photo above by my sister.

Looking back on 2009

2009 was a good year. Not only did it bring me personal happiness, but it also brought me the enthusiasm to carry on working as a freelancer designer and illustrator. Knitting was a huge part of it, not only because of the creation of abbrigate*, a huge thing on itself, but also because I challenged myself as much as I could pushing me to try and do things I didn´t know I could or knew how to do.

In knitting terms, it meant knitting a huge blanket, knitting a sweater in the round (with cables!), and another one, this time top down, with a zipper sewn in.

I missed my goal of knitting with more than one colour on a given garment, but that I´ll leave for 2010.

For now, I wish everyone as much as I wish for myself: peace and health. For me, though, I´ll add lots of practice on the ability to embrace uncertainty and face change gracefully. I´ll fake until I make it.

Happy 2010!

We´re shipping!

abbrigate*´s kimonos are shipping! It´s so much fun to look at them and think about how this project has been developing. It feels a bit like a child, albeit a professional one. I´m proud of it - if I may say so myself - and I look forward to the new challenges 2010 will bring along. A new pattern is being written as we speak, and that´s when I found out I could design knitted garments.

Sometimes we just set ourselves too many boundaries and it feels good to overcome them, a little step at a time.

Almost mugged - but not actually

Last Saturday we were almost mugged by two girls who tried to steal my camera. There go our prejudices regarding who looks suspicious and who doesn´t, because they looked absolutely normal, they could be your teenage kid´s friends. Or your kid, actually. Grrr.

Anyway, for some unknown reason we both fought back and I got to keep my camera, as well as all other valuables I was carrying (ID, basically, I don´t even want to think about losing my ID card here and having to go to the police station to report it - been there and it isn´t nice). Well, all this to say that I have my camera and I can still take pictures with it.

And that´s what I did. I took pictures of the vest I finished for my younger niece:


And I even took pictures to its picot edging, which I learnt specially for this project, as crochet is just not my thing (or maybe I should say crochet wasn´t my thing?):


And documented my older niece´s matching vest:


(both vests are Signé Summer Top by Lisbeth Kjeldsteen. Ravelled here.)

I also photographed some sketches for a new pattern for abbrigate* - my first pattern, how exciting! - to send to my sister in London:


And then I took lots and lots of pictures of the blooming jacarandas here in the city. November is definitely the best month to visit Buenos Aires.




I´m thankful for having my camera! And for everything, really.

Took my knitting out...

...to the beautiful Rose Garden here in Buenos Aires. As I mentioned in abbrigate*´s blog, I really believe the knitting retains parts of the places we went to and feelings we had while knitting.

That´s why I think this is the perfect setting to knit a vest for my yougest niece, don´t you agree?

More photos of the places her vest has been to.

Two vests in Vestvember

There´s some knitting going on here, worked with this fingering weight pure wool yarn. With my "partner in crime"´s help, its natural colour became a dark cherry and a wild fuchsia. Two vests will be made, for two little, adorable nieces.

Totally coincidental, Vestvember is going on and this is how I´m participating. Yay for Vestvember!

"Tongues of fire" goes penguin watching

Those tiny things on the background? Penguins. They were delighted to meet my knitting.

We took a short break during the weekend and flew to Puerto Madryn to see the whales that come close to shore for reproduction. These three days were absolutely stunning and we also got to see penguins, elephant seals and lots of other animals. The landscape is stunning and the shinning sun helped make it even prettier. I´d definitely stay a couple more days, but work was waiting for us here in Buenos Aires.

Yay for short breaks with friends, penguin spotting and wonderfully cooked fish!

Frogged

A frogged project is all I can write about now. I had an urgent project landing on my desk a few days ago and it was just sent to production. During these few days, it was all I worked on during work hours, after hours and even before hours. I went to bed late yesterday and I had lunch very late today. That is why talking about the frogged project seems like a holiday to me!

So, about the Morningside Neckwarmer. I´m not sure wether it was brioche stitch or the combination between the yarn and the pattern. Something wasn´t working for me. I love the neckwarmer and I love the ribbed and puffy result of this stitch - I just don´t appreciate knitting it. I didn´t the first time, I didn´t now. I wonder if I´ll give it a third try though - life is too short to insist on something that seems not to be rewarding.

I knitted a few rows, I practiced the sequence of movements, I appreciated the ingenious way of achieving a ribbing... and I frogged it. And moved on to another project. I love knitting, specially because I knit what I want, when I want, at the speed I want. Or can. Or both, really: I knit slowly but fully enjoy the process.

About knitting

I´m preparing an oral presentation for my german class tomorrow about... knitting! Funny how knitting became so anglicized to me, that sometimes I even have difficulties using the portuguese terms for it. Learning those in german was fun and useful too.

Above, my Tongues of Fire scarf (free pattern here), using Joji sock in Diavolo.

My growing yarn stash part II

Woollama by Joji

Sock by Joji

The other day I mentioned my growing stash.

I left some yarn for a new post, because this once I must tell you about some yarn that is hand-painted by Joji, my associate in abbrigate*. She chooses the best local fibres and hand-paints them herself, producing nicely hand-crafted yarn that is a pleasure to knit with.

I did enjoy knitting with Woollama, but am smitten with Sock. I´m using them for my Christmas knitting and therefore am not sure wether I can post pictures here, in case the recipients read this... In January, maybe? Until then, let the knitting-pleasure go on!