LIFE RIGHT NOW // SEPTEMBER 2014

loving the Ravelry and blogging community. so much kindness and generosity! 

thinking about way too many things.

eating no gluten and no dairy. It's been 2 months and a total game changer. 

wondering way too many things.  

listening to Imagine Dragons.

enjoying my growing stash of yarn. Winter is coming and it's the best!

making my own knitting project bags. which is taking forever because you know: hand sewing!

struggling with the shorter days.

feeling a bit lost. but working on "something real" to fix that.  

dreaming of cable-y sweaters for Winter. 

finding it hard to believe that September is over. Wasn't August just yesterday??

celebrating Pumpkin Spice Latte season at Starbucks!

watching Outlander. Also reading it. Completely obsessed. Also, Sam Heughan <3.

hoping to make the most of October.

STASH ENHANCEMENT

You know how animals gather up as much food as they can before Winter and the cold days arrive? Well I sort of have been doing the same with wool lately ;) Planning for Christmas presents, Fall cardigans, comfy sweaters and socks of course!! I kind of feel like Molly Weasley right now, but she's awesome so it's quite OK! 

Speaking of Harry Potter, can you believe I finally got into Hogwarts?? Very, very excited about it!! More seriously, the very sweet and cool ladies behind the Oh! Loops yarn are doing a massive Harry Potter Knit Along on their Ravelry Group and of course I had to join in the fun and get some of their gorgeous yarn!! That skein on the top picture is the Gilderoy Lockhart colorway, and below you can see the light pink one (Expelliarmus) and the red/pink one Dudley!) Their Etsy shop is empty right now but I believe an update is planned for the 1st of October! I can see pink socks in the not so distant future! (my Hermione's everyday socks are almost done by the way!!)

Even though it is still quite hot here in Paris, I have a few sweaters ideas already in my mind and so got some
Knit By Numbers yarn by John Arbon at my LYS. That yarn you guys!! It is gorgeous, crazy soft, the colors are BEAUTIFUL and as if that wasn't enough, it is quite cheap!! (10£ per skein in the UK).  I got 4 skeins in the prettiest light blue to make a Coronis sweater! I haven't bought the contrasting yarn yet because I cannot make up my mind about it! What do you think? Dark blue and yellow? Grey? Pink? 
SO many possibilities!! Fall is the best!

PS: clearly I love to knit more than to read this week, but that doesn't stop my from joining Ginny for the Yarn Along! Click through if you're in the mood to see pretty things ;)

YARN ALONG // GREENS & BLUES

Joining in with Ginny for the Yarn along. 

I love to read. I love to knit. Here's a little bit about both.

On my needles right now: It's a green and blue kind of Fall over here. First Molly released her first shawl pattern called Whispering Pines and I knew i wanted to knit it in a dark Forest green right away (yarn on the left in the basket). Then my sister asked a scarf and hat for Christmas and we chose a peacock and azulean mix of blue yarns. Then I found the prettiest emerald green in one of my LYS (that will make cute socks I think). And so here you have it: a blue basket full of yarn :)

Speaking of socks, I finished my first one!!! SO much to say about it but it will have to wait until the second one is knitted for a post of its own. But here's a picture of the first finished one :)

I love it!

On my Kindle: The Outlander series!! I am obsessed you guys, those books are so good! I heard about the TV show just before it started a few weeks ago, watched a couple of episodes and just knew I needed the books. There's adventure, romance, action, history, a strong main female character, a hot guy, a bad guy, scottish accents. Basically everything you need to make a great story. I raced through book 1 (who needs sleep right?) and just started book 2 last night. So, so good!

So, what are you working on?

PS: I made a Knitter's wishlist Monday, and I'm always looking for cute yarn made by awesome people, so feel free to share your suggestions!

A KNITTER'S WISHLIST

You guys, shopping for knitting supplies is the best. everything is so squishy and colorful! Here's a few of my current favorites (it's never to early for a Christmas list right?)

1// Knitting Project Bag. I need them all!

2//Uncommon Thread Tough Sock. Kind of too expensive for me at the moment, but those colors!!! and the quality is amazing!

3// Doctor Who Tardis Knitting Needle Gauge! Of course I need it!!

4// Oh Loops yarn - they even have a special Harry Potter collection!

5// The Brooklyn Tweet Fall 2014 collection. That yellow sweater is called Docklight and is most definitely going on my Ravelry queue!

So, what have you guys recently spotted on Etsy or Ravelry?

1 PHOTO & 20 WORDS // AN ADVENTURE

"I'm going on an adventure", said Bilbo, dreaming of mountains and dragons. 

My adventure is quite different, yet as scary. 

Let's try and knit socks! 

—————————————

Joining in with Abi over at Creating Paper Dreams for A photo & 20 words. Sort of a day late, but let's ignore that fact. Also, her blog is awesome.

PINECONE & MULBERRY

Pinecone & Mulberry is a very lovely hat I test knitted for Melody. I first thought I would use Brooklyn Tweed Shetler yarn but really did not like the stitch definition on the central panel (i'm thinking it's more of a cable style knitting). So I went through my stash and picked my Malabrigo worsted yarn in the Frank Ochre colorway (yellow mustard for the win!). It's actually the same yarn I knit the friendship scarf with! I just love the quality of it and the colors are all super rich. Definitely a big fan of the brand, I'm planning on trying their fingering weight pretty soon!

The pattern is super simple, mostly garter stitch with a very elegant stitch pattern in the middle. I just love it and seriously can't wait for the weather to get a bit more cold just so I can wear it! 

You can check out the pattern and the other versions made by the test knitters on Ravelry!

PHOTO APPS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT

I love my iPhone, I love taking photos so it really is no big surprise that I love photo apps I guess. A LOT of the photos that I share here are taken with my phone, like Playing tourist in Paris, all 100 photos taken during my 100 Happy Days challenge or even most of the photos from 1 photo & 20 words. So I'd thought I'd take 5 minutes to talk about my all time favorite photo apps.

PIC TAP GO. is just the best photo app ever. It was developed by Totally Rad, the awesome company who is also behind RadLab, which is a Photoshop/Lightroom… plugin that I use to edit all of my DSLR photos. I talked about it before here and here. PicTapGo is basically RadLab but for iPhone. Which is really cool because it means i can give all of my photos the same look and feel. The filters I use the most are: Light On, Crispity, Shadows, Auto Contrast Mason and Skinny Jeans. The B&W filters are pretty cool too! 99% of my Instagram photos I first edit with the app, it's just the best. 

INSTAGRAM. Should I mention Instagram? I love it. I "met" so many cool people through it, I get inspired every day there and it's just awesome! I'm @alinor89 over there, feel free to share your profile name in case I'm not following you already :)

CAMERA +. I mostly use that app to take my photos because they have that cool feature that lets you set up your exposure and focus separately, which is, you know, really cool! 

ABM. From the cool ladies behind A Beautiful Mess. It's a fun, festive, colorful app awesome to either make collages or add doodles and text to your photos. I definitely don't use it every day, but it's still really cool!

VSCOcam. It used to be my main editing app before PicTapGo was launched. It's really clean and well designed and the VSCOcam community is awesome and inspiring. Also it's a free app (as opposed to PicTapGo) which is awesome considering its quality

YARN ALONG // wanderlust

Joining in with Ginny for the Yarn along. 

I love to read. I love to knit. Here's a little bit about both.

The friendship scarf (i'm thinking of making that a thing!) has been offered and well received, the lovely hat I test knitted for Melody is drying on my balcony and so I can now completely focus on my chèche which is growing by the minute. I'm just about to attach my second ball and the rows just keep getting longer and longer. I just love the yarn (it's a linen coton blend by Phildar), it has a great grip on the needles but doesn't hurt my hands at all. I'm hoping to finish it as soon as possible because it clearly will be perfect for the Fall days. (also, i have so many other things I want to knit right now!)

As for reading, I am in between books right now. I finished The Magicians King last night and am quite not sure what to read next right now. Maybe Outlander? (anyone else watching? I just love it!!). I've been browsing my travel magazines a lot and Afar is by far (haha) my favorite. Amazing photographs and beautiful writing. Also, they clearly have great taste in fonts, right?

PS: here's a sneak peek at my new hat made with Melody's pattern. More on Monday!

PLAYING TOURIST IN PARIS

I spent the last week walking for what seems a thousand miles, in Paris, with a dear friend of mine from the US. It's funny how you can live in the most visited city of the world without really enjoying it that way on a daily basis. So for 6 days I did my best to be a tourist in my own city. We went to the museums (Orsay is my favorite of all time in the history of ever!), walked the stairs to Montmartre, had picnics by the Seine, then drinks by the Seine, stopped by the prettiest english library ever, said hi to the Iron Lady, wandered in le Marais and so much more. So it is true what they say. Paris is indeed very pretty. (even after 4 days of never ending rain.)