Category Archives: projects

summer, sun and sew

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Lots of sewing rather than knitting lately. I have been told to stop knitting on several occasions. It makes me tired apparently. According to one of the little persons in this household at least.

Anyway, I am currently planning my future (September) and have decided to take sewing a step further. There seems to be a huge gap between Level 1 and 2 in the college of my choice and as I want to skip the first one, I am actually really “studying” my fancy – unopened until now – sewing book to learn new techniques rather than making the zillionst simple little girls skirt…. by making the first simple big girl skirt for myself.

I was thinking since a long time to one day make a better version of my cheap but very comfortable tiered skirt and when I found a pattern / tutorial from the pattydoo-blog in my inbox I went for it. Finally.

Pattydoo is a great young German dressmaker, designer, blog writer, sewing tutorial creator,… and I am sure I will realise many more of her ideas. There is also a pattydoo designer where you can customize her designs before downloading the pattern and she would have just started her own line of fabrics (in cooperation with someone), just beautiful. But the delivery costs from Germany to the UK are still too high for such small orders…. This might sound silly coming from someone who lives a 5min walk from Shepherd’s Bush’s (London) fabric paradise but it really seems that those Germans have better fabrics (not just football)

Anyway, back to my skirt: It was simple and quick to make and it took me almost longer to take the pictures than sewing the skirt. I eventually gave up. That photography class was obviously a waste. Lets hope for a better outcome from the sewing class 🙂

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teacher’s pet

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I am currently working on little somethings to thank the nursery teachers for putting up with taking care of my little darling. They will mainly get little butterflies or flowers which I will show in an other post but I made something special for the head teacher and wonder if anyone could actually guess what it is meant to be.

So, what do you think? What is this supposed to be? Without any hints or multiple choice options.

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I would be most happy if anyone could guess what I have tried to achieve, so don’t hold back with our ideas.

In any case, the little fellow proved to be very popular in this house, I hardly managed to take a single picture without catching any thieves red handed 🙂

I am done

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No more knitting. I am done with it.

Vase 09sOk, ok, there might me the occasional addition to my window display in the future, maybe a hungry caterpillar maybe another flower but for now I am done.

After the octopus flowers I was a bit unproductive and only managed to make a few more flowers and a few lovely mini beasts.

The improvised bee, as requested by my daughter:

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And two butterflies.

butterfly both sI was looking for patterns and could not quite decide which one of these two I prefer. The small and simple knitted one from Spud and Chloe or the crochet one following a video tutorial by nadelspiel.

I think the simple knitted one corresponds maybe more to my generally rather childish style and I have already gotten a firm request to make one of these to be fixed on a hair clip 🙂

The crochet one is beautiful (just as butterflies are) and it was another good crochet experience for me.

From a linguists point of view it is really interesting how much easier it is for me to refresh my almost inexisting crochet skills in German rather than English. Even though I do not remember how to make the different stitches, hearing the familiar words Staebchen and feste Masche has a very comforting effect. And I guess, following a very clear video tutorial is helpful too.

I decided to arrange two of the mini beasts rather close to the flowers.

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butterfly knit window sThey might not be spotted from far away or from people just passing but they will be the fun little surprise for those who actually look at it properly. I really think having them there makes a lot of difference. The flowers are nice and people might even admire the knitting skills (if they can not knit at all) but discovering bee and butterfly will hopefully make them smile. Especially if they are on their way to the dentist next door 🙂

And just for those who think that I am always overcritical with myself: I think I should have planned the arrangement in advance rather than just putting them up when knitted up. They are not very well mixed colourwise nor specieswise. And as all tulips and roses are rather high up it is difficult to actually see the difference between them when standing on the pavement which is a bit of a shame because they are both made from very good and accurate patterns. But don’t worry, I am very pleased with the finished display. I just don’t know what to knit next… HELP!!!!

 

 

How to crochet an octopus

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Yes, I said “crochet”.

I thought my flower window display is the perfect opportunity to brush up my crochet skills dating from primary school days. And since I was unable to knit the beautiful Gerbera on oddknit I looked for a crochet pattern and found lovely flower patterns on the Meli Bondre blog and because of the rather deadly combination of crochet skills dating from primary school and trying to understand a pattern in a foreign language, I looked up all the strange letter combinations in Cherry Hearts Crochet Corner, an incredibly useful and also pretty site for anybody who wants to know about crochet with great tutorials to all sort of crochet stitches.

But back the Octopus – tutorial:

Choose a Gerbera pattern, ignore completely yarn and hook suggestions, take the one hook that you have and ideally too thick yarn for that hook.

Don’t bother counting the stitches when creating the inner circle. It is late and the yarn is dark. It will be roughly enough.

Continue until there is no more space to add any more petals legs. I know, from a marine biologist point of view, an octopus should have rather 8 legs (and probably that same marine biologist would not necessarily call them legs) rather than a good 30 but the crocheted octopus looks good with that many legs or arms or whatever.

Gerbera A1

(As my daughter has pointed out, it clearly isn’t an octopus because it doesn’t have eyes.)

If you like it but still want to crochet a Gerbera, just do the same again, maybe with different yarn, but don’t be surprised to get another octopus.

Gerbera B1

The octopus tutorial finishes here.

After a bit of ironing the seafood actually turns into something more flowery

Gerbera C2but size wise they are not quite at the same scale than my lovely knitted roses and tulips.

Vase 07A little overpowering I guess and not recognisable as Gerberas next to the smaller flowers, maybe weirdly dyed sunflowers? But then it helped a lot to make the bouquet much fuller quickly. And they work well to attract views from further away which was the point of the whole window display anyway.

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