Scrap Sunday: Back to the roots

This used to be a blog about knitting and it really is time to go back to its origins. I haven’t given up on knitting yet, don’t worry. In fact I am mainly working on the second attempt of a baby blanket for my niece. The first one got lost in the mail…. or shipped to Australia rather than Austria. So maybe there is now a cute baby kangaroo who had lost its mum wrapped up nicely in that blanket.

36 squares out of 49 are already done so I can soonish show you a result, before investing in the extra costs for guaranteed delivery.

For now, it will be a small scrap project, a knitted phone case.

Do you remember when I made a christmas present which was roughly 3 months delayed? A rather beautiful bag with lining and lots of pockets? IMG_3263

This time I made a birthday present for the same person, two weeks early. So I thought the logic asks for something really small 🙂 Also due to the stress and lack of time of the last few months, I had cancelled all birthday presents, my own parents included. So actually getting a small phone case meant quite a lot I guess.

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I had once written a pattern for very simple phone cases, a bit intended as knit and purl and joining pieces practise for my knitting students. For this phone case I used the same idea, but I made a much more advanced version with a flap and a stretchy lining. I also made it bigger as the original Balduin was done for my own phone which is – these days at last – on the small side. I wonder if I should add the big version and the flap to the original pattern. Hmm.

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Colourwise I meant to keep the colour scheme of the lining of the Christmas bag which was red and orange but I do wonder now if that wasn’t a bit silly as clearly it will be hard to find in a sea of red and orange.

The lining of the phone case had to be a contrasting colour, obviously. Unfortunately I had no nice small patterned jersey in my boxes so plain blue it was.

As we are already talking about knitting, I will have to knit two other baby blankets in the next month…. 2015 will be another big baby year in our family. Then a little baptism cardigan for my niece and future goddaughter most likely using a pattern by Georgie Hallam, I just love her designs. And I was thinking of another jumper for me. I have realised that the past year I have basically been wearing two jumpers whenever a clean one was required and both were knitted. Basically, I had one for winter IMG_1739

and one for summer.IMG_1856

I have already since a while downloaded another pattern from atelier alfa, another very cool designer and I have already invested hours (well, minutes really) into choosing colour combinations however, knowing that I will be covered in baby vomit for another winter, I don’t think I will wear precious hand knitted jumpers that often, unless I used different shades of cream of course 🙂

Scrap Sunday: Christmas Crackers

I guess I should apologise for what you are about to read, I have been stuck at home with two sick children for a couple of days now and we are watching a lot of fairy tales, so please forgive me 🙂

Once upon a time there lived a beautiful princess. Well, probably more of a queen since she was married to a king and the mother of two beautiful, clever and well behaved children, but she certainly looked like a young beautiful princess, who happened to be also extremely clever, witty and kind-hearted.

The queen and her family lived on an island where the sun always shone far away from her home country somewhere in the highest mountains you could possibly imagine.   During one particularly hard winter there, the queen decided to travel home to help her family who lived on top of a very high mountain.

The beautiful, clever, witty and kind-hearted queen did not want to come empty handed and in countless sleepless nights she created very useful little gifts for all the members of the her family.

After a few weeks of preparation, she, the king, the little princess and the little prince set off  in their golden carriage drawn by twelve white horses  and after days through wind, ice and snow they finally arrived on top of the mountain.

The parents of the beautiful, clever, witty and kind-hearted queen could not believe their eyes when they opened the door of their little wooden house and her daughter stepped in with lots of presents in her hands. Rapidly, they called all of the queens brothers and sisters, their partners and children to celebrate the family reunion. The mother of the queen hustled into the tiny kitchen and started to cook a beautiful meal, her father lit the fire and everybody gathered around the big table to enjoy the meal together. And it was a miracle, the food came out of the tiny kitchen on big plates which never got empty!

The beautiful, clever, witty and kind-hearted prin queen handed each one teir  handcrafted, extremely useful gifts, beautifully wrapped in something she called “cracker” in the language spoken by the indigenous people on the sunny island.

Everybody got a beautiful crown made of the finest and most delicate paper and a little written thought to cheer them up.

All the children got little toys, something that they had never even heard of, let alone owned.

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For the adults, she had chosen more practical things to help them through difficult times, for example magic wands for her sister and sister-in-law, both mothers of young children,IMG_0826

a portable milk frothing device for her brother-in-law, a coffee connoisseur,

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practise nappies for her brother and his partner who were expecting a child,

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and the probably most challenging to be executed by the beautiful, clever, witty and kind-hearted queen : a working satellite for her brother, a sage (not the plant, the wise man of course) who has given the world the knowledge of befriended location determination

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The presentees were gobsmacked yet not surprised by the creativity and the skills of the beautiful, clever, witty and kind-hearted queen and just did not know what to say, they had never seen such refined technology and did not even know how to use some of these items. But they were overflowed by gratefulness and the evening ended in lots of laughter, tears of joy and an amazing firework display in the clear sky mirrored in the peaceful white blanket that covered the mountain that night.

And the beautiful, clever, witty and kind-hearted queen knitted happily ever after.

 

official advent post

IMG_2787Before you are thinking : No, please not another posting advent calendar this year! don’t worry I won’t be doing that again. Not that I would not have enough to say to post on a daily basis 🙂 but I really haven’t got enough time for this at the moment,

But I would still like to officially switch to Christmas mode. I guess when you have children it is easy to go back to the excitement of this particular time of the year.

How do you celebrate Christmas and the time before?

We have our advent calendar hanging from the railings of the stair. I guess I should make new bags. (Every year, it annoys me that actually I haven’t got as many green as red ones.) Each morning, they can open one bag from the bottom. When we have reached the top of the stairs it will be Christmas 🙂

IMG_2784Each morning we light a candle on our advent wreath and sing a few songs. Usually rather Christmassy ones. But my three year old sees a candle and sings Happy Birthday 🙂

For those who are not familiar with this tradition: There are four candles (sometimes one has a different colour), and each sunday in advent (waiting time before Christmas) you can light one more. Yesterday was the first sunday,  so we will always light just one, until next Sunday, when the second one will join.

We will now be waiting for two things to happen, on the 6th, Nikolaus (much more bishop looking than Santa Claus) might be passing with a few tangerines, gingerbread and nuts. In Austria he would probably pass in person and talk to the children about their behavior in the past year, here in England he is just passing very early in the morning and leaves his presents on the balcony. (I guess, as he has to rush to Austria, visiting everyone there 🙂 )

And the second thing to wait for is obviously Christmas. We will get presents on Christmas eve already. Brought by Christkind (baby jesus but not baby looking, rather like an angel, I think. I have never seen it, really. It is very shy and flies off with all the presents if you would ever make an attempt to see it).

To make this waiting time more exciting, I have started to decorate the house, starting with the window display. Remember I used to have flowers in there and lately I was wondering what to do with them as they get damp now in Winter. (I must admit, on the first morning with a wet window I tried to give them a blow dry). They would not have survived the whole winter. So the christmas posts by the twisted yarn came in handy and I stole adapted her idea of a knitted wreath.

IMG_2771I used two green wools held together to get a more “real” variegated tone for the actual wreath. As you can see (if you look closely), I had to cheat, I did not join the ends as it would be far too small (I was running out of the super chunky yarn). The red ribbon has been knitted by my daughter using her knitting fork and the bow is made by me. I am very pleased that we have finally been able to make a project together.

I love all of thetwistedyarn’s ideas for Christmas knits (and they are all perfect Scrap Sunday projects too 🙂 ) so I might make a few other things, depending on my time really. But that wreath looks a bit lonely, doesn’t it. So we will see what time brings. In the meantime, enjoy your Christmas preparations.

Update

I have finally managed to update my Etsy shop and list a few things that I had been knitting many moons ago (ok, not many moons but still a while ago). So there are a few variations of my personal favourite – the flower headband, made of super soft Debbie Bliss Rialto 100% merino.

And there are a few hats for little ones, using the same yarn. I am a big fan of the Rialto. It is just soo soft and it comes in beautiful shades.

So, to celebrate the fact that I have finally managed to get things more up to date, there will be 15% off until next weekend when you are using the coupon code UPDATE11 at the check out.