anti-calima baktus scarf

We had a small sandstorm a few weeks back, possibly calima, possibly something more local. Timur requested a scarf in his school colors to keep it over his mouth and nose if it was ever to occur again. I made it for him very quickly, and today he worn it again — more for coldish strong wind than for sand.

I couldn't find the origins of a "baktus" scarf, but that seems to be the right spelling at least. If you never seen them before — they are very long narrow triangles, very easy to tie. This is a very basic model, all-knit keeping to shape.

Knitting pics on Shutterstock

moebius scarf

This time is a simple Moebius scarf I made. It's proved to be surprisingly easy once I found this excellent video for the cast-on part. There's no pattern to it, just simple "knit-all" — that is, till I got somewhat bored and decided to do a ruffled edge. I didn't want my ruffle to be too obvious, so I decided that I will add one stitch per each three in every second row. However, even that adds stitches very quickly. Say you start with 200 stitches, you have 267 approx after the first row of added stitches, 356 after the second one, and 475 after the third — that is, more than twice the original amount of stitches. I like how the edge turned out, but it's a lot of knitting to do.

paella

Yesterday's paella. It doesn't include as many ingredients as "real" Valencian paella of course, and the protein component is represented by just one type of seafood, which is probably a big no-no for aficionados. It tasted excellent though. The only note to myself that I can make is remember not to use red onions in my paellas any more - they mask the beautiful color provided by saffron strands.

By a funny coincidence, I read a nice text in Russian about "sad eyes of the prawns" among other things yesterday as well. Here it is — enjoy (if you read Russian, that it)

More photos of seafood on Shutterstock

moebius top-waistcoat (a top with a twist)

For a while I felt that some of things that I want to show in my blog don't fit very well into original format of "Pics and other stuff", which was planned as a picture blog. Things that didn't fit very well included mostly what I made by hand — knitting, cooking, small home design arrangements. I decided to make a separate blog for those. I don't expect to publish here that often — things that you really make tend to take a bit of time, quite unlike things that you photograph.

Here is the first real entry

I was explaining the idea of infinity of Moebius scarf to Kirill when he came up with the idea that it's not only scarves that you can half-twist, and you don't have to half-twist when casting on only. He came up with two possibly designs of a top with a twist — one with a twist to the back, one with a twist to the straps. Since the result was somewhat unpredictable, I bought cheap thin acrylic yarn (it cost about 3 euros, I think) and started to knit. I interrupted the knitting to make a blanket, but now finally it's finished. It was knitted as one piece, front first, over straps and then joined into the back, so there's no shoulder seams. There are partial side seams — partial because I joined front to back and made a few rows of round knitting at the edge.

What can I say. Next time I try to do it, I must knit a swatch, make measurements and try to really calculate what I will end up with. It started as a top, but due to a big(ish) mistakes in sizing, it ended up with altogether too big holey areas — the neckline ends down around the waist, the underarm edges are down there somewhere too. So it is a waistcoat really, but an interesting-looking one.

test post

I want to start this blog solely for things I've made by hand, be it knitting, cooking, embroidery or whatever. This is just a cross-post from Pics and other stuff to see how it goes

Ok, that blanket I was knitting turned up to be veeeery long, so we can cover ourselves with it all four of us when we watch TV or something. It can also be used for fun photoshoot :)