Archive
I'm taking part in a stashbusting effort: Personal Small Items club. The idea is to bag patterns and yarn from stash for them, one for each month, and then knit them one a month.
I made my bags in December, and I can't wait to get to open the February one!
In the meantime, I'll show my January finished objects. Originally I just wanted to make the Beret easy! beret with a bulky yarn from my stash. I started it (and actually made it all wrong and way too small the first time and ripped back, knit happily and noticed my yarn ran out. So I ripped it up again, and decided to make it in different yarn. I used a beautiful handspun which I got in a recent swap from the US!
The beret was knit with 4,5 mm Knitpicks circulars and 4mm bamboo dpns.
I started my second sweater some time ago, and noticed I won't be getting it done too quickly. So I'll show it half done and not wait for FO status before blogging.
The pattern's called Corona and I'm making it with basic acrylic yarn in fiery red colour. I'm one third through, and really like the pattern. The yarn's not so nice, but hey, I can't afford 100€ second sweaters! If I ruin this one, at least the loss won't be so bad and I will have learned a lot.
Hope you get to see the FO soon!
This time I'll use my Darfur Friday to make a book review. I devoured such a strong, impressive, emotional, raw and honest biography this week I have to share it with you.
It's called Tears of the desert by Halima Bashir, a Darfurian doctor who did all she could for her people, was hunted down for it, but could escape to Great Britain and survived.
She witnessed the mass rape of 40 school girls (age around 10) which the Sudanese regime allowed. She herself was raped and abused for 2 days, raping and cutting and burning her until she lost conciousness. Her village was destroyed by helicopters and Janjaweed. Her father was killed. She doesn't know where her family is, if they're alive or not.
The talented crochet designer Donna Childs was nice enough to design a pencil case for the Sudan project I've been running with the Ravelry Darfur group and will be running for a few months still - so please participate
She doesn't have a blog herself, nor a Ravelry shop page, so I offered to post her pattern here. I've uploaded it and you can find it attached into this post, or as direct document in pdf here Please take a look, it's so lovely! The other patterns available you can find on the right hand side navigation.
I have two 3 euro coupon codes for my t-shirt and bag shop at http://shop-eu.worsted-knitt.net/ to give away. Delivery all over Europe (there’s a sister shop for US at http://shop-us.worsted-knitt.net but the codes’s won’t work there this time around).
Please leave a comment or use the contact form if you’d like to have a code.
If you like the designs but not the shirts (or colours), I can make shirts per order to the shop, so please let me know.
Look! I made a cheese cake last weekend! An American cheese cake! All on my own! See, I'm not the most experienced or best baker in the world, so I'm really happy that this came out edible.
As you can see from the second picture, the cake is really thin, but the base really thick. That was the only really unsuccessful thing with this cake - the base being too thick and therefore crumbling a lot.
Anyway, half the cake was gone in 30 minutes, so if not so pretty, it is at least tasty!
My niece, whom I love very much and who is crafty herself, had her 14th birthday on the 16th January. For her I made this little bag.
The bag itself is knit with Novita's Rustika yarn, which is 51% wool and 49% acrylic. It felts a bit, so that's what I did with it - felted it. The pattern is the buttonhole bag from Mason-Dixon knitting. I think I used 10 mm needles and ca. 100 grams of yarn.
The bag came out really ugly, so I decided to felt some flowers to decorate it. I got out my feltmaking gear and made three different colours of felt pieces. From these pieces I cut flower and leaf forms, and then sew them on to the bag. I think they really cheered the bag up.
Hope she likes it!
I read an article in Ullaneule a while back about kitchen cloths and how useful they actually are. As backround to you readers, in Finland no-one uses cloths to do the dishes, rather brushes and sponges.
Anyway, the article was very positive and showed that dish cloths can be used as kitchen cleaning cloths rather than actually wasking with them. Now that sounds good, I thought, as I have up until now been using store-bought kitchen cloths that you use and throw away when they get smelly. Not very environmental; I'd rather have something I can wash.
So I made myself some kitchen cloths! The first one is a basic basketweave pattern, and the yarn is TeeTee's Poppari 100% corn yarn! The problem here is (which I noticed after the cloth was done...) that it can only be washed in 30 degrees. So this cloth is for dusting rather than cleaning the kitchen table!
We have the first crochet pattern available, so please get your hooks and make one for Sudan.
Clara designed it, and you can find it at her blog.
A note to all: please send any cases you have ready to HELPSudan now, as they'd love to have some for their Annual Craft Auction on the 24th January!
Finished pencil cases can be sent directly to HELPSudan at
HELPSudan
5255 N. Ashland Ave.
Chicago, IL 60640
USA
Here is one of the pencil cases which I've made until now for the "Pencil cases for Sudan" KAL which I'm sort of conducting along with the Ravelry Darfur group!
See the pattern I used at the right side navigation! This is the test knit for Kieran's pencil case. I used Novita's 7 Veljestä yarn, which is a wool blend, kind of a thick sock yarn. The white yarn was something unknown! My needles were 4mm dpns, and I made a twisted cord for closure.
Now I only have Wendy's pattern to try!
I don't think I've never finished this big an item so quickly. That might be explained with a) I loved the pattern and b) I wanted to wear this gorgeous piece during Christmas. I can remember blogging about it on the 7th of December, and I actually wore it during Christmas!
It's the Versatility shawl-cardi-sleeve-knitted-item, and I love it. The yarn was good, the pattern fascinating and beautiful, and I managed to find gorgeous buttons for it too. I had to really concentrate on the pattern, but I managed to make the shawl with very little mistakes.
I used 6mm needles, and the yarn was a merino blend from my stash - I cannot find any info about this yarn online! Must be a really old one... The colour's the trick of this yarn, it's such a luminous and deep red tone!
Now that Christmas is gone, I can show all the gifts I made but hesitated to blog about in the fear the recipient might read about it here! Nick's slippers were the first one, and here's the wine cozy.
It was a gift for my sister's husband, accompanied by a bottle of German organic white wine. He seemed to like it!
The stats:
Pattern: Knitty's Wine Cozy
Needles: 4mm dpns
Yarn: Kilcarra Aran Tweed
Mods: knit in the round
I liked this knit, it was quick and fun, and simple enough. The yarn was a surprise to me, I had bought this one ball in Ireland way back just to give it a try. Now I did, liked it a lot - and don't live in Ireland anymore! Bummer. Must see if I can get one of my Irish friends send me some over!
A while back I blogged about the failed Christmas present for Nick, which felted so badly I had to throw it away. Well, I knit it, or them, again, and felted them with much caution this time - and they worked out fine this time!
They are the 8-square-slippers (in Finnish) and they are gorgeous! Plus, Nick loves them, he wears them all the time. Success!
Here are the stats:
Pattern: The 8-square-slippers, with 14 stitches and ca. 20 rows per square
Needles: 10 mm
Yarn: Novita Huopanen felting wool in white, dark blue and red
Mods: Added some Regia slide stoppers to the bottom!
***
Finally I get back to my normal blogging rythm, I hope. Vacation and the Sudan project have taken up all my time lately - we spent 8 days over Christmas in Finland. I was so happy to meet my family and see some familiar surroundings. I like Essen, but one does get homesick from time to time! Here are some impressions from the trip.
First, the Helsinki harbour.
Picture number two is the Christmas tree at my Mum's.
For the KAL/CAL "Pencil Cases for Sudan" which the Ravelry Darfur Group is moderating I finally got my pencil case pattern done as well.
It's great to be able to participate alongside with other generous and talented designers like Wendy or Kieran - see the links to their patterns on the right side navigation bar!
You can get the .pdf version of my pattern here, plus it can be seen here (press "Read more") as a blog entry (and the pattern is even attached here - you should find it!) I wish you all happy knitting and please let me know if you see any mistakes or unclarities in the pattern!
And: don't forget to submit your finished ones to the Flickr group!
