What I've been doing in my "spare time"...

I'm back! Well, I really haven't gone anywhere, just was finishing some knitting and doing family stuff.. Here's what I was doing yesterday!






Although my family is not Ukrainian, my sister and I have been doing pysanky for years. A few years ago, we introduced it to my daughters and now it's a family thing. At least once a year we gather and create these little jewels. It takes 6-8 hours to do one, and yes, those are real, raw eggs. It's done like batik, where you cover with wax the color you want to show, put the egg in the next color, and repeat the process up to black. The result is the egg above.. you then melt the wax off and a beautiful surprise comes out! I'm not too good with close-up pictures, so I'll have my DD take some pictures of the results and post them later.

Meanwhile, I also finished my second miniature Norwegian sweater, and it ended up being a better experience for me:




(Note the dirty thumbnail above... that's actually black dye from the pysanky!!)

Again, this is basically my own pattern, though fashioned off of a picture I had saved. The sleeve went in well - I do have questions as to whether I'm doing them correctly and have posted to questions to Ravelry. What I'm doing doesn't look like the pictures in the Dale of Norway pamphlets - I tend to sew them in like sewing in sleeves of dresses, then turn the sleeve facing over the raw steeks to cover them.

The steeks on the front went much better. I knitted 6 steek stitches down the center, sewed them down so they would NEVER move (straight stitch, and several zig-zag stitches) then created the button placket over that. THEN I realized that to make the placket I was copying was one with a zipper, thus no buttonholes. In order to cover the steek and have buttonholes, I realized I had to make them matching on both sides of the placket... sigh. I need to get a pattern for cardigans so I know what I'm supposed to be doing. Still, I'm pleased with this attempt. I'm going to do one more cardigan, this time the way they are really done, hopefully with the armholes correct and the neckline a little bigger...

me, still learning.