Tuesday's Tallies: a knitty distraction

It’s Tuesday already! The pebble has increased in numbers to 17 pebbles. Yep, I only did 4 this week Shame on me! But I have a very good reason.

A lot of distraction this past week, we had a holiday here in Holland! What better way to celebrate autumn than with having some free days. Free days is great, but it didn’t provide us with a lot of ‘free’ time. I had a little mom and me time (which was very necessary, I see her so little since I starting living together with my B-friend). We had a little baby-sitting day with my cute nephew (he is now 10 months) and it went well! *Mr. L. and I are not really baby persons yet*. Next to these nice events we had one very special day, we went to the forest with my parents, brother, uncle, aunt and kin. We went to Putten, a cute little town with a lot of nature surrounding it. We go there every year. 

The wooden cottage looks like it comes straight from a fairytale.

We made some pumpkin soup on the fire.

We walked through the trees and stopped sometimes to spot any hiding wild life and to make some pictures. Strike a pose little bro! *yep, the giant is my little brother*

Do you see the Viking hat? I made that one with a combination of patterns. I will try to find some time to put it on paper.  In the second picture I sort of attacked my bro with the intension of knocking him over...I failed....miserable haha. I look a little like a horse, but I thought it was a good picture to show the spirit of the day! We had great fun. 

So a lot of activities going on, but there was still time to snuggle on my sofa with a little project. But it wasn’t crochet I was most busy with, I started knitting again! I went browsing on Ravelry and I knew I wanted to make something with cables. They have such a sophisticated feel to them. So I started to make a pillow cover based on this pattern. I only make a front with yarn and use fabric for the back. I haven’t found the right fabricyet, so not really a tada. But it won’t be long!

Since this went pretty well (I never worked with cabels before, so I was a bit proud), I tackled another ‘scary’ knitting project….Double pointed needles! Aaaaaah, they are so scary! Working with two needles is already double the amount I used to work with and now working with FOUR?! But I really, really, really have wanties for warm mittens like these…and they can only be made with circular or dpn’s.

I'm not sure if this will work out, but I’ll keep you posted on the progress of this project. 

Sigh, I think I will continue my stripy granny blanket tonight. So easy, so fast! 

Thank you for all your lovely comments and support! Check here for more inspiring One a day projects. 

xxx Suzanne

Wonderful day

I had a wonderful day! I'm totally in the autumn mood. I made a little trip with my parents, brother and some other family in to the woods and I had so much fun! I made some pictures and I hope to find some time to share them with you. Although this trip got me totally revived, this wasn't the thing that made my day. I checked my mail and got out the usual leaflets, bills and other daily mail, until my hand touched a very big envelope. I knew what it was right away! My price I won on the wonderful blog from Hazel, Hazel's Crochet. You should check it out, she also participates in the One a day group with a rainbow blanket! She also added a cute little note and a crochet heart! She is such a sweet person. 

She organized a giveaway and I won this book. It is very big and there are sooo many wonderful patterns. I cannot buy this book in the Netherlands so I am so happy I was lucky to win it. Look at some of the patterns:

Some cute penguins...

Some cute softies, look at the gingerbread man! I am totally going to make him.

But there are also pattern of clothing and blankets like this one...

Or this one! 

Time to make a list of Christmas projects that I want to make and I should get started soon. Time flies. 

Thank you Hazel, for your lovely gift :-). 

Tuesday's Tallies: New project reveal

Well hello there lovelies!

It is finally Tuesday and I can show you my new project! I will not talk too much about it and show you some pictures instead.

All grey and green colored woolly pebbles. 

They are soft...

They are squishe.....

And they will be growing in numbers. 

Because I will need a lot of these little pebbles! The purpose? Something like this:

This is a picture I found on Ravelry and later also on Pinterest. You can find it here, there is also a pattern that you can buy for these pebbles. I didn't use this pattern, since I know how to crochet a ball and I just made them not perfectly round by randomly increasing or decreasing a bit. I just make them up as I go. They are filled with fiber fill and they are so quick to make! 

The goal is a rug, I am not sure what size. It would be great if it could be bigger than the one shown above. We will see! For now I'll focus on making one a day and not being distracted by other projects. Although I have a few other small projects that I will show soon! 

Check here for more One a day projects! 

Saving Saturday: Moss Madness

As a happy couple that just started to live in their first home, money is easily spent. There are so many things I would like to add to our little appartment. Some things are old (and not in a nice antique way) or just plain ugly. A lot of these were moved from my college dormity room to our new appartment. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful since I got a lot for free from family and friends. But now I would like some stuff I actually LIKE haha.

But in times of crisis we cannot just run to the IKEA and buy a new sofa and a bunch of decorations. So one has to be creative and patient (especially patience is a challenge). There are many things to make your home cozy and comfy without spending much money on it. I love the challenge of creating something with little resources. Therefore I want to have a new topic: Saving Saturday. Leaving you with a tip every Saturday to make your home even more wonderful!

Let's kick off with an autumn decoration tip. I love to add a little touch of season to the house and what better way to do so than with all the free goodies from nature! One of the things I totally love is moss. I found some amazing things on Pinterest: 

Look at the bathmat, the moss grows from the water that comes from your feet! How amazing. Although this is a very nice idea, I don't think the b-friend will be thrilled about this idea (he is always a bit scared of possible bugs and mold and sometimes he has a point -_-). The use of moss in some decorative touches to the house is more practical.

So I went to the parc with a spoon *yes, a spoon...I don't have a shovel* and I found myself some green fluffy moss! I spooned my moss into a bag and I found also some mushrooms! Wiehoe. What a nice bonus. Back home I put them in a nice little tray, added some of the chestnuts I picked up earlier this week and a candle, all done! 

Very easy to do and I think you can always find some moss no matter where you are. So take a nice long walk and go get yourself some moss! Don't forget to spray a little water over the moss every day. Be careful with mushrooms, a lot of them are toxic. You don't want your kids taking a bite of them so keep them out of reach or out of the house! I don't have any kids around here so I don't have to worry about that. Of course I have a dog which is a bit stupid but not THAT stupid... 

Although he might surprise us ;-)....

Big kiss and I'll soon be back with my new One-a-day project reveal. Thank you for all the lovely and sweet comments about my table runner! It was an amazing journey. Oooooh I'm so exited about the next one. It's going way faster than I anticipated and it is going to be on my hook for a looooooooong time. It's a big one. 

Talk to you soon!

One a day Tuesday's Tallies: Tada moment!

Hi darlings!

What a week, autumn has really found Rotterdam. The wind won't give my little plants on the balcony any break and it makes my umbrella totally useless from protecting me from all the rain that has been pooring. Not really my favorite kind of weather, but autumn also has a sunny side. Sometimes the sun peeks through the clouds just long enough for me to take a stroll with the dog hunting for chestnuts. I love chestnuts so much! They really represent the change of the seasons for me and the color, my oh my the color! 

Next to getting these pretty little fellows, I harvested my carrots. They were on my balcony for months and this is the result:

A bit disappointing to be honest, they didn’t even tasted sweet. Bummer! A well, on to the part you all have been waiting for: my One a day Tada moment! I think it is pretty and I love it! Sometimes finished objects disappear from my home as a gift for friends and family (for example my scarf went to my mom and my bunny went to a cousin), but this time I am sure it will stay right here! It just took me too long and it has been an amazing journey with all of you supporting me. So here it is:

I have started this project on the 30^th of August 2011, so it took me one and a half month. I used Super Durable Breikatoen No. 10 for this project, which is a 100% cotton 3 ply yarn and a 2.0 mm crochet hook. You will need a whole skein and a tiny bit of a second one. 

The project is 1,5 meters long and I choose to make it slightly bigger than my table. 

The pattern I used is this one. I just used the flowers and made the project into a table runner. 

The pattern is Japanese so for the ones that don’t use a chart, I have written the pattern down of one flower:

1.       Chain 8 and slip stitch in the first stitch to form a circle

2.       Ch. 4, *dc in the next stitch followed by a ch. 1* repeat until you reach the end of the circle and join to the 3^rd stitch of the chain 4

3.       Ch. 8, *skip 3 stitches and dc in the next (so skip a ch. Stitch, a dc and a ch. Stitch of the last round)* and repeat. At the end of the circle join in the 3^rd stitch of the chain 8.

4.       Ch. 1, sc in the same stitch, *ch. 2, dc in the 3^rd stitch of the chain 5 of the last round, ch. 3, dc in the same stitch as the other dc (so the 3^rd stitch of the chain 5), ch. 2, sc in the top of the dc of last round* repeat and join into the sc at the end of the round.

5.       *Ch. 3, 3 dc’s into the first stitch of the ch. 3 of last round, ch. 3, 3 dc’s in the 3^rd stitch of the ch. 3, ch. 3 and join in the sc of the last round.

And that’s it. You can join the flowers as you go by joining the tops of the flower petals with a slip stitch.  I must say, it sounds a bit difficult when reading the pattern and I highly recommend using the chart. So much easier ;-).  


Well, that was my first One a day project. Of course my tallies will go on, since I have thought of a new project. I will tell you all about it next Tuesday. Check here for the other great One a day projects! 


Edit: The diner set is the "Jokkmokk" from IKEA. It is very tiny, which is very convenient since we have a small appartment. Of course it made my live also much easier when making this table runner haha. 


Edit2: Some of you might already want to know what kind of project the next One a day will be, why not take a guess? I'll give a hint, it is also for the home and it is NOT similar to the table runner. 

charming

Hello again!

I tend to hop from one craft project to another, from blankets to amigurumi but also from crochet to sewing to polymer clay. Maybe I am not really focussed for that matter, but it does keep me enthusiastic and thus motivated. It gives some variation and sometimes you can even combine crafts (for example my cupcake keychain I combined crochet with a polymer clay ice cream cone and some ribbon). 

This week I went crafty with polymer clay again, I just love that stuff! It's so easy to use and I found out the possibilities are endless. You can even paint on it! I've seen some pretty cool stuff all around the internet that you can create with clay but the cutiest ones were the charms. So, it was decided. I got out my clay and just tried some things out. Wanna see the result? Ok, here you go:

I made the background in photoshop and my inspiration came (of course) from the beach. In the top of the image you can see a baby and her mommy jellyfish (which I hate in real life, but like this they are rather cute), in the bottom an octopus and a hermit crab. I painted faces on them with acrylic paint after baking and glazed them when the paint was dry. I use the brand FIMO clay, another well-known polymer clay brand is Sculpey but it is not offered in my local stores. It should be simular though. 

Has anyone worked with polymer clay before? 

Lot's of love,

Suzanne

Oh by the way, in the image you see "by Suzannetje87" this is my username on DeviantART. A website for all kinds of crafsts (a bit like Ravelry). So if you are a member there you can find me :-). 

Tuesday's Tallies: Blocking

Hi lovelies,

Hurray, it's Tuesday! I made a lovely discovery today, boy oh boy, I'm so excited. But I will share the excitement at the end of the post, first I will share how I discovered it:

I must be honest, the progress hasn't been fasting up but I did do one a day for both my projects. The stripy project is not far enough to post about, so I will focus on the flower project. I wanted to know how I was progressing and the flowers tend to curl a lot. So to see how big they really are, I start blocking the first part. 

Look at all those pins, putting everything in place and revealing wonderful figures. For those of you that never blocked before, blocking is a method to shape your crochet project. Not all pattern require blocking, take for example my stripy project. It is loosely hooked and it is flat when I lay it down. But this flowery project is curling up like a little baby. By pinning it down and then spraying some water with a spray bottle the right shape will start to form.

The hardest part is waiting for 24 (!!) hours, if you don’t the project will start to curl again. By the way, I am not sure this method also works for non-organic yarn projects. This project is 100% cotton and other projects that I blocked were also made from organic yarn. Maybe some of my lovely followers can comment on this. 

Look at the difference between a blocked and a non-blocked flower:

And this is where the exitement kicked in. Because of the huge difference in size between blocked and non-blocked, the project is now so close to a FINISHED OBJECT! Also, I first wanted this project to cover my whole table. I don't fancy that idea anymore. I think it will be a bit much and a tablerunner would therefore be much suited for these flowers. Which again decreases the amount of flowers to make! I think I dare to say that in the next Tuesday's Tallies I will share a finished project, hurray! 

I'm so exited, and I just can't hide it, tutututututututu. 

Hope your having a blast with your one a day project too, haha ;-). You can check the other projects here at the Gingerbread Girl blog.

PS: Sorry for the bad quality of the pictures, I don't have my camera around and used my phone. 

P.P.S: In my next post I will share some little polymer clay charms I have been making!