Half a day sweater

Winter meets spring - woollen turtle neck sweater with snowdrops, completed in just a few hours. The lower body part and neck are worked in the round, sleeves are knitted flat and sewn on.




The sweater is in medium ladies' size in 1:12 scale: the body part measures 5 cm in height and 4 cm in width. It is knitted using lace weight merino wool (1400 meters per 100 g) and needles 1.5 mm (US size 000 apparently and not -1 as I first thought). Knitting tension is 60 stitches and 70 rows to 10 cm.




Here is the colour chart for snowdrops and grass, would probably pass for crocuses and cyclamens just as well.

Book with sharp content

This needle book is made of small piece of printed corduroy and black felt. Some flowers on the fabric are outlined with seed beads - it is very convenient to embroider when a template is already provided.




The book cover is padded with felt sheet and another layer of felt is sewn to the inside, so that needles can feel safe and comfortable.




The backstrip is made of grey blue lace, suggesting a romantic sewing story.

When out of yarn...

When I was a child, old ladies used to crochet bathroom floor mats out of strips of white plastic milk bags. I found these really ugly. Nowadays the selection of plastic bags has increased tremendously, all sorts of colours and qualities are available, even bags with colour blends.




I cut some bags to spiral strips 10-15 mm wide and used 4 mm metallic needles for knitting. Not hard at all. The most useful know-how learned, was to hold the strip folded in double, if the bag's inside colour would not fit the project. Some sample swatches:








Floor mats for bathroom or mud room would probably still be the best usage for plastic knits. Perhaps a shopping tote or swimsuit bag for a hiking trip? But seriously, nothing really pretty and cosy can hardly be brought about.

Shades of grey

When there are many small things to keep organised, there is a need for many small drawers! Those antique cabinets with lots of drawers are just perfect, but really hard to find. Now I discovered a line of these small drawer cabinets in a local hardware store, adopted one at once and dressed it in shades of grey.




Only a few days ago this was just an unfinished birch wood cabinet manufactured by Zeller Present.




After dusting and wiping, a coat of dark grey paint was applied. That was a mix of beige and blue interior paint leftovers with some black acrylic art paint added to make it darker.




The next treatment was painting the exterior surfaces intentionally unevenly with lighter shades of grey and beige using both brush and sponge for a distressed look.




Last but not least - some stampings with rubber stamp and that darker grey paint again.




Further decorations and varnishing I had had in mind, seemed redundant now. The surface was really nicely and chalkpaintly matte, so this piece was declared finished. Poor thing looks so much older now.

Crazy colours against cold

In the midst of white snow, ice and cold, even tiniest colour splashes can feel like a warm Southern breeze. Hot weather is brought to you today by a ribbon embellished pincushion from Bollywood and a miniature crocheted thread basket from the Caribbean:

Wool spooling

Another great find from the attic department: antique wooden wool spools. These look so cozy on the shelves and are perfect for storaging cords and ribbons or a single yarn ball. Not yet tested, but it must be very convenient to wind yarn from the spool during knitting. Only a spool holder missing now.




The spools went through a thorough cleaning, nevertheless kept the terrible 'attic' smell and had to be coated with furniture varnish. This is why they are a bit shiny, but the antiqueness is still quite visible.

Linen table linen

It had never occurred to me to knit a doily before, but it did now. Probably because of this one lonely skein of thin linen yarn calling out from the stash and the curiosity to see this material in a finished form.
My dream is to knit a large tablecloth designed by Herbert Niebling one day, for testing purposes, this small round doily with 40 cm diameter should be sufficient, though.




The pattern is from Burda Stricklehrbuch and the doily was small enough to be knitted on double pointed needles (2 mm). Knitting was quite easy and I managed to learn a couple of new tricks on the way, e.g. circle cast on, crochet bind-off, how to handle double yarn overs.


The yarn used is a lace weight linen named Midara Linas, shade No. 650. Approximately half a skein required, only 23 grams.

Ribbons under control

January always gets me in the mood for some home improvement and this year I'm taking on my craft supplies organisation. Naturally, they should be convenient to use, as well as look pretty and inspiring.
Ribbon storage was the first project and it was really fun. I found a tin candy box, cut some cardboard strips in appropriate size and wrapped the ribbons around these.








The most convenient method for storing shorter gift wrapping ribbons seemed to be using clothespin. And glass jars are probably going to be the key element for storage, so I need to collect more of these (originally occupied by candles).

Heart for the country

With weather getting darker and colder, the cravings for cosy and warming home accessories grow stronger. And the sewing machine is a good quick solution for a change, when most things take forever to make. These cuddly country style hearts were accomplished in no time and now they're just hanging around, bringing out smiles with their funny shape.

Multiplying seeds

Seed beads have a tendency to multiply very well over the years and take over more boxes and drawers all the time, no matter the season. I wanted to decrease the amount by creating some extremely long necklaces. These are like unjoined glass ropes offering various wearing options. But although they are each 3-5 metres long and have taken hours to bead, only a fracture of the stash is used. Still got enough for years.

The new Haapsalu Scarf book is out

The warm and stylish presentation of 'Haapsalu rätt / The Haapsalu scarf' book was held in Haapsalu yesterday. The first books were sold at the event, it will be about a week until they hit the stores.




This post is intended to make your mouths water, because I already have the Pink Bible! And naturally, signed by the authors.
These are just my first impressions, it will take a while to take it all in and fully comprehend all the contents, after all, the book has 272 pages and weighs 1.888 kilos (4.2 lbs)!
This time it is published simultaneously in Estonian and English, that may add somewhat to the volume, but charts still make up most of the contents.




There are 47 patterns for square shaped shawls in the book. A square shawl consists of a centre section and a border section with a special narrow stitch pattern inbetween, plus a sewn-on lace edging. These stitch patterns are already conveniently combined together in the book, but can be used separately to design your own shawl as well.




The triangular shawl pattern count is 26 and there are three different techniques explained: knitted beginning from the upper edge, from the lower point or decreased in the centre. Triangular shawls/scarves also have a sewn-on edging.




Must be my favourite part of the book, because these can be used in so many other types of knitting projects too - the lace edgings. A lot of them, all so gorgeous and more intricate than in the first Haapsalu Shawl book.




Since the charts are given fully with all corners included, making enlarged copies or using a magnifying glass might be necessary for some of them. Of course, there are pattern repeats, so the large chart can be used as an overview.




As a nice little gift for everyone attending, these pocket calendars were handed out at the presentation. The text says: 2012 - the year of knitting a Haapsalu scarf. Everyone could then mark those (few) days they were not knitting. Great as a bookmark and chart marker.




More pictures of the event can be found in a gallery of the local newspaper.

The first Haapsalu shawl completed

Two months have passed in a flash and changed summer to autumn, now finally the shawl started at the end of this post is really finished. Everything was made following the steps of a true Haapsalu shawl and I'm very glad I attended a short course last winter with Aime Edasi, who showed all the necessary techniques.




Knitting the centre part was very enjoyable, but all the finishing from sewing to gathering the edge stitches after blocking - not my favourite pastime at all.




The stitch pattern used is Karukellakiri (Pasqueflower pattern), I like its varied texture. Made four pattern repeats in width and 19 lengthwise to obtain the standard size, but the shawl seems a bit small. Rinsing with cold water might have been a mistake, this made the wool stretch significantly less on the blocking frame.




The seam is not quite perfect, there are some occasional larger spaces in it. These are probably caused by looser edge stitches, next time I will focus harder on the end stitches of every row and pull them more tightly around the needle, maybe that will do the trick.
This made me a little unhappy first, but I'm sure nobody will notice it while the shawl is worn. Besides, I discovered that the seams look similar in the Haapsalu Shawl book (blocking frame photos).




The yarn used for the shawl is Midara Micro in natural white (shade No. 025, pure wool). Not the easiest lace yarn to knit, because it's not very smooth and tends to dangle easily, but ripping it was quite possible - had to try this a little along the road. Perhaps the yarn is not quite thin enough either, but the result seems fine and the shawl has a better hold than those knitted with merino wool.

Very old yarn stash members

Sometimes things just appear in unexpected places, like these spools of grey wool I found in an antique store among furniture and other non-knitting items. Each of these holds more than 100 grams cobweb weight wool.
The large black spool is not antique, but definitely vintage and acquired from someone's old stash. There is more than a kilo of cobweb wool on it!
No time to be bored in the foreseeable future - all of that should be enough for at least thirteen shawls.

Featured in a book, Lovebook

One of my knitted home decoration accessories has landed in Dawanda's new Winter 2011/2012 Lovebook booklet, this is really exciting.
The item in question is this beige simple knitted pencil cup cozy with cables:




The booklet is printed in three languages and it is also available as a pdf file. My cup cozy can be admired on page 19 of the English Lovebook, on page 23 of the German Lovebook and on page 14 of the French Lovebook.

Woollen winter blazer

Started preparing for winter early this year and made a blazer style jacket that would be comfortable under winter coat.
The body part was knitted in one piece, sleeves and collar separately. The main pattern is twisted stitch ribbing that allowed convenient decreases for the waistline to be made. Front pieces, sleeves and collar are decorated with large scale aran motives. Quite modestly.











The jacket required 14 skeins of Patons Fairytale Colour 4 Me yarn in shade No. 4978. This is a lovely thick and warm pure wool, the weight is somewhere between DK and worsted.

The season of colour coming up

My favourite season is getting closer day by day and finding red and yellow leaves feels more exciting and inspirational than looking for the first signs of spring.
Colour is usually the starting point of new projects and choosing which ones to use, the most fun part. When in need of theoretical help, interactive colour wheels are very useful for visualising different colour combinations. And you can always rely on the result.
This Color Scheme Designer is what I prefer. Although intended for web design, colours are still colours:




And here is a small reminder of colours for this autumn suggested by Pantone. Just lovely.