Not-so-frozen leaves beaded shawl

The thing about lace knitting... There are only a few items that allow you to immerse yourself in that kind of knitting, and those are shawls, scarves and table cloths. And since lace knitted table cloths really aren't anything I'd ever use, shawls it is. This pattern is called Frozen Leaves, but I've done mine in a lush, vibrant green and beaded it for added shine.

Frogging mohair is a nightmare, so I wanted a simple, classic design. The large leaves of this pattern appealed to me, and I’ve done enough knitting now to be able to figure out the pattern and recipe despite its obvious shortcomings.
The yarn, however, is gorgeous! DROPS Kid-Silk is soft and thin, and still strong. The matte, dark green mohair has a light, glossy silk core that gives lots of shine and life to this shawl. It’s strangely warm despite its feathery light feel… :)

The last row in pattern, with beading, took me the better part of three whole evenings. Yes, you read that right. THREE evenings. For ONE row! But it was all worth it. :) Not enough beads for another row, so I ended it there.
There are twelve leaves along the center spine, and a few rows of filler pattern at the edge. So this is quite big. Finished measurements: 90cm from the neck down, 180 cm across. Big&beautiful. The beads really make a big difference, adding a lot of shine and brightness to an otherwise quite dark shawl. Love it. :) Details on my Ravelry page.

The wedding standard

Whenever I get a request for a wedding card, I immediately reach for the white and silver cardstock. It's the silver standard, so to say, for my wedding cards. This one came together quite quickly for that reason - no tricky colours to match or contrast, no long hunts for that perfectly coloured embellishment. Neutrals I've got. ;) The layout is also very familiar by now... Three cheers for effectivity!

Sunday mittens

After my Echo Flower shawl, I had enough yarn left for something small to match. These mittens caught my eye and was made with just over one skein DROPS Alpaca. I am so pleased with these! The lace pattern looks beautiful and they are a great fit on my hands.

I’ve knitted both mittens at once as usual, on two circular needles. As the pattern says, there is some guessing required, but most of it is very easy. The decreasing at the end had me scratching my head for a while though. Fortunately, someone else had guessed before me and charted a solution! Ravelry is a wonderful thing. :)

The mittens underwent the weirdest blocking process ever. I nibbled away at two corners on two large chocolate bars (making the ends slightly pointed), replaced them in their plastic wrappers, and stuffed them into the wet mittens! :P It worked great by the way - now they’re just a tiny bit looser around my finger tips. Perfect! Details on my Ravelry page as usual.

DIY distressed photo canvas

Aaaaaw... Now look at that cutie!! :) She's my niece, 7 months old in that picture. What a smile. :)
There's a ton of detailed tutorials out there on how to do this, check this one out for example. I'm not going to bore you by repeating it - but since there are so many variations, here's a super quick recap of the choices I made: After tweaking the picture to my liking (and mirroring it!) I printed it on a laser printer on ordinary printer paper. I used a thin layer of Golden Gel Medium (Soft Gel, semi-gloss finish) to attach the picture and three more coats after removal of the paper pulp, for a good seal. Then used the same medium to fasten the lace, which wraps over the canvas edge. The string was the final touch - it's something K's mom does when she makes her own art, so this canvas should fit in nicely in their home.

The transfer of the photo was nearly perfect! In fact, far too perfect for the look I was trying to achieve. So I scrubbed really hard along the edges of the photo, even scratching it with my nails, to give it a more distressed look. I also sanded down my signature (bottom left corner) a bit.



When I chose the lace it was late at night, and the sunlight the next morning sent me into a bit of a panick. The lace was crisp white and the canvas is off-white - a difference that was invisible in lamp light, but incredibly ugly in sunlight. What to do, what to do... DistressInk to the rescue! I carefully inked the lace and sides of the canvas and the problem was solved. In fact, I probably should have inked it even if the lace matched the canvas. The darkened edge (which is surprisingly difficult to see in these photos) created that depth and definition that pulled everything together, and it echoes the brown string. All in all, this was an easy project that looks awesome. :)

It's the little things that make life big

...like little cards for example. ;) This is the last one for now, but I'm sure there will be more some time soon. Next up is some canvas crafting, and then some knitting. And then more cards. A sudden rise in activity here, I like it! :)

A little hello

More tiny cards! More scraps! More baker's twine! Do you see how this works? You make one, the leftover materials are right there in front of you, and you slap them onto the next card base. Easy peasy. That leaves enough brain capacity to chat with all the other girls/women in the room while crafting. :)

Happy birthday

Oh I think this one is a favourite of the tiny cards... Simple, with just the right amount of detail. Baker's twine of course, and that gorgeous Stempelglede stamp is perfect.

Happy day

Another small card. It's so easy to use paper scraps with these, so the cards will often have similar colours... The washi tape is Tim Holtz. Love it!!

Tiny cards

I'll be sharing some small cards the next few days. These are 10x10cm, a format I have come to love lately. Especially for those card making evenings at someone else's house - when you talk as much as you make, so the brain needs something simple to work on. :) The papers are from some BG paper pad, can't remember which one. The cute yellow baker's twine is secured by a couple of dots of glue, but is fairly loose.
And in case you're wondering why I haven't made these pictures big and lovely like in the previous post - well, it just looked silly that the card was bigger on screen than in real life. ;)

Short-sleeved pink toddler jacket

I've resisted naming this post "The hated pink jacket", but that's what I've been calling this project for a while now. That recipe is rubbish. It’s a shame really, because the end result really is quite pretty. Cute, feminine and I can't wait until K is big enough to wear it! I chose to put buttons along the whole length because I knew K's mom would prefer it.

 The original lace pattern annoyed me to no end and didn't look like the pictures, so I made up my own (simpler) version. It basically looks almost the same, but knits up much easier. I chose a cabled cast-on and it looks gorgeous. When it came to casting off, I had hoped to find a pretty technique that could match the cabled cast-on, but hours of googling left me with nothing that looked good on garter stitch. My crazypants solution was to cast on the same amount of stitches with the pretty cabled cast-on and grafting it to the jacket. It was worth it (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

Look at that back! Oooh... Also, I did a little trick with the neckline that I absolutely love. One extra stitch and a slipping technique gave me that gorgeous unbroken column of stitches running along the top (picture below). I learned that one from the baby "bunting bag" I did last fall. Details, as usual, on my Ravelry page.

Oh, and by the way: I've tweaked the HTML coding so that I can have these lovely big pictures! :) :) I love it and it looks fine from this end, but if you're having trouble viewing the blog, feel free to leave me a note.

Mini card for a baby girl

Yet another nasty flash photo! But it's almost light enough outside to snap a decent photo by the window before leaving for work now, so you won't have to put up with these for much longer.
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This card is small, 10 x10 cm. Usually I love working in that format, but this one took some time. The pattern papers were scraps I collected in my recent desk clean-up project, so I'm not entirely sure where they came from... The white rub-on wing is by Hambly Screen Prints.

Hip hip hooray

Just a quick flash photo today, a card I made late at night for a colleague. That seems to be the trend these days, late night scrambling to get things done. But at least I've managed to dig my desk out from beneath a massive collection of accumulated odds and ends, so maybe there's hope for some more crafting in the near future?

These papers are of the few I have remaining from the lovely BG Wisteria stack. Most of them are the greenish-brownish kind that I have so much trouble finding matching cardstock to, but that flowery one had some lilac I could tie in and so the solution was obvious. :) My MS punches have been left alone in a drawer for far too long, it was about time one of them got do do some work...

Simple and masculine

Oh the colours came out a bit weird on this one... It's actually a nice brown on kraft sort of thing. And there's that brown baker's twine again, I told you it was a current favourite! ;) Plain and simple, just twine, gesso and washi tape.

If anyone is still reading...

Hello everyone! It's been a while... High time to bring some activity to this little blog! This card was halfway done for a long time, and I finally managed to colour in the stamp so I could give it away. That brown baker's twine is a current favourite of mine.

In case you've been wondering what I've been doing all this time, you can see that my Pinterest account is showing a lot of activity lately. I'm also knitting this shawl and this baby jacket (both recipes are rubbish but I'm working out the kinks), and watching my current TV obsession: BBCs Sherlock (be still my heart). And to compensate for all this sitting-down-activity, I'm out geocaching now and then - it's a wonderful way to discover new places and get some exercise in the process. There might be more cards coming soon, but I think the yarn projects will still dominate for a while. :) See you later!

Hello sunshine!

After months and months of steel grey skies and seemingly unending downpour, this warm yellow alpaca yarn kept begging me to be wrapped around some knitting needles and made into something that could brighten up any rainy day! How could I resist? When looking through my Ravelry project page, it is immediately clear that this is most definitely not my usual colour scheme. I think I should be more bold in the future, because I absolutely love this shawl. :) The lovely yellow works well with both my dark grey winter coat, and my cool lilac autumn coat. A wonderful splash of colour!
-This shawl measures 62 cm from the neck down, 125 cm across. So, not a big shawl for me, closer to a shoulderette. I’m using this more as a scarf than a proper shawl, but it also works well if I'd like to cover up a V-neck top on cold days (as demonstrated in the first picture). The pattern is easily adjusted for size, because you can end on whatever number of repeats of the main flower chart you'd like.
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The excellent pattern is called the Echo Flower Shawl. The only tricky part is the nupps, those big blobs you see lining the cathedral window pattern. The secret is to knit loose, loose, loose!! Purling those 9 loops together into one was a challenge at first, but as it is with everything in life, practice makes perfect. More details on my Ravelry page.

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I have a little bit of yarn left, and will try to make some matching accessories... More sunshine to the rainy days!