purses and hats

We woke up this morning to Helsinki having been covered by a dusting of snow overnight - it's very pretty and makes me wonder whether we'll finally have a white Christmas - we thought we'd get one last year in Trondheim, but they had some freak mild weather and it never happened. So, fingers crossed I haven't just jinxed it for this year.

I've followed through on my thoughts about knitting a change purse. As you can see - a few rows of ribbing and then just plain old stocking stitch. As I'd thought, I knit it in the round and then did a three needle cast off along the bottom.
I've also put a zipped lining into it:

The wool's fritidsgarn by sandnesgarn. It's nice and chunky - I wanted to make a fairly firm fabric so used 3.5mm needles (more than anything because I seem to have a gap in my needles for knitting in the round (both dpns and circulars) from 3.5mm to 7mm and didn't feel like going out and getting more at that point). I'm pleased with how it's turned out. I've made it so that it's big enough to put a bank card in it - for those times when you want to just take out a bit of cash, but then a bank card just in case...

I've got another ball of this same wool in the greens colourway, so am going to knit another one, but this time with more texture - maybe some cables? I have a change purse at the moment that I made (sewed rather than knit) and can never find it as it feels the same as the inside of my bag, so I think some texture should help.

I ended up going into Helsinki yesterday in order to swap over our modem so that we could get the broadband TV service to finally work. While I was in town I decided to check out a wool shop that had a stand at the Arts and Crafts Fair that we went to last Friday and also had good reviews on knitmap . So, I wandered around and found Käsityötalo Priima. A nice little shop with some interesting and well known wools. I also found out that they have a knitting group twice a week - so I'll probably try to go.

So, I bought two balls of Debbie Bliss' casmerino aran in order to knit the Koolhaas hat that's in the interweave knits holiday gifts 2007 magazine.

What else? I photographed all the wool I have and uploaded it into ravelry - I seem to have an awful lot of pretty random parts of balls, or just odd balls of wool. so I need to have a think about what I can use it for.

I've also made a start on my wedding dress - but no photos...!