Newness.

Mum visited last week and we went winter coat/jacket shopping. Behold the results.

A jacket with nice fringes on the collar, and a minibelt to tie it. I'm going to add more buttons as soon as I figure out how to use my sewing machine. I want to be able to wrap it tighter around my body when it gets colder so the wind can't get in.


And a bright red winter coat with black buttons and a high collar that you could button up. Those two buttons on the collar sleeve were originally on the other side, so they would be visible when you button up the collar. There were two versions of the coat in the shop (H&M): one with the buttons on the inside, one with the buttons on the outside - depending on if you like to button up the collar, or leave it down and wear a scarf instead. The point is to keep the black buttons visible. I had to get the wrong version for my taste though and sew the buttons on the other side. The colour is truly lovely!


I love having two very different coats/jackets. The shorter will be good for warmer winter days; the red and long coat will be warm in colder days. I also got a Sexy Librarian skirt to go with the shorter jacket. It's too warm if the temperature is anything above 0 celsius, so it's a true winter skirt!

(No, that's not my cellphone in the corner..)

Now that it's colder, I've also started using the boots I bought in Liverpool in the summer, when I attended the Corpus Linguistics conference there. They have 5cm heels and they're really comfortable!

Mum had also bought me a tri-layered sports underwear set to keep me warm in the winter when I go jogging.

It's not the sexiest outfit to wear, but it's warm and dry. It's actually very difficult to dress right for jogging in the winter if you don't have this kind of functional sports wear with special qualities.

Finally, I bought myself two skeins of the new Teetee Pallas yarn because the colours were so pretty. I thought I would make a Baktus scarf from them, but I'm not sure yet. I wasn't actually supposed to buy any yarn, but since I met Heidi that day and we both love knitting and yarn, we ended up going through all yarn shops in Tampere! That's a bad, bad combination if you're trying not to buy yarn..

I started a new crochet project last night (as if I need more of them), a vertical stripe scarf, and I'm going to use the Red Heart Lisa yarns I bought in the summer, plus some oddball skeins of Novita 7 Veljestä and Gjestal Superwash Sport. Here are the colours:

(The red skein is just about to fall off the picture, that's why it's blurry..)

I'm going to make fairly thin stripes. I started by crocheting a long chain of chain stitches, then I started working back with single crochet. I left long loops at both ends to make a fringe. I'm excited about this because I was able to figure out how to make the scarf all by myself! It may sound very simple to someone who's been crocheting and knitting for a long time, but for a newbie like me it's very cool. Besides, I used to think of myself as completely hopeless with handcrafts, so this is definitely exciting.

I've noticed that my personality applies to my knitting and crocheting style as well. As usual, I like to start several projects before I've even finished the last ones! I am strongly determined to finish them all, I just don't know when...

My current projects are the following:

1) My first mittens, the second one of which should be unraveled and started all over again with a bigger needle! You can guess why it's still unfinished..

2) The hexagon blanket for mum. I'm in the process of making double crochets around the rim with white yarn. Then I have to cut the darning ends on the other side a little shorter and tuck them inside so it won't unravel. Boring, but I'm making progress slowly.

3) A regular scarf which I figured would look good with my new jacket, because my old scarves don't have suitable colours. But I managed to eff it up already! It's simple knit-purl-knit-purl, but it went awry still! I was angry and I didn't unravel the wrong parts, so it's less than pretty now. I'll finish it anyway and use it myself, it's not like I'm going to stare at it when I'm outdoors.

4) Pikachu, whose head I started to crochet and while I was at it, I realized there are three different ways of crocheting!! I have to start from scratch again, but I didn't get very far.

I'd also like to knit socks for my best cousin from the light blue Isoveli skein that I have. I hate the colour myself, but my cousin likes it a lot. I'm not sure if I can do it in time for Christmas, though. For my second best cousin, I'd like to knit mittens from my extra two skeins of fuchsia/purple Gjestal Superwash Sport yarn, because I think she might like that colour. Originally I bought that yarn for the hexagon blanket, but the colour didn't fit with the others.

I'm also thinking of making third scarf from Novita Kaarna, because it's so soft and bulky. It's also expensive and I have enough projects already, so I think I'll leave it till later.

On a final note, please note that I added links to my Ravelry projects on both my blogs with a little help from Amoena and JR. Looks so nice!