Thursday 28 February 2013

Celebrating Spring And You

The giveaway is now closed. Winners has been contacted and have 24 hours to reply. 

The days are getting longer and the sun is about to win over the winter. I so love this time of the year. In spite of having a lot of wollen garments to keep me warm.

I will celebrate that with you. But most of all I will celebrate that my blog is three years and that I now have over 300 followers.

And would you know - over 117.000 have visited my blog. That is A LOT!

And I am so blessed and happy about every comment, every visit and all your encouragement.

You are all brightening up my life in blog land.

Because of you my creativity is growing. Sharing the joy of creating with you is so precious to me.

So the two sea urchins pendants in polymer clay are up for giveaway. They are handmade by me.

You can see how they look when wearing them here. They have long leather cords and polymer clay beads in the end cord ends. This is to give you opportunity to adjust the length as you please.

As usual, the giveaway is free and I ship internationally.

No hoops to jump through - only a comment is enough.

So, to have a chance to win do this:
* Choose the color (green or purple) you will like to win (only comments with one of the colors will be concidered)
* Post a comment with your color choice
* If you do not have an email in your profile - post that too

The giveaway will end Friday 8th of March, 10.00 am CET

I will draw a winner from the purple comments and of course a winner from the green comments. Winner will be contacted via email and will have 24 hours to respond. With no respond, another winner will be drawn. If you do no leave contact information (or having it in your profile) I will draw another winner.

Good luck - and thank you so much for all your support and for visiting my blog.


Thursday 21 February 2013

Outside The Box

Bright colors and contrast will be my first design.
I am always fascinated when I meet people living outside the box. They are rare to come by, but they exist and are colorful meetings in life. Nothing inspire me more. So what do we mean with living outside the box? I guess it is about being oneself and thinking that is good enough. And not being scared of what others may think.

People seem to be so afraid of being themselves, and not good enough, that they chose to live inside narrow boxes. Transferred to knitting - choosing colors that everyone else does and what is considered right. That would be grey, black, beige, brown and white. I am so done with that period of my knitting. Colors give me wind under my wings.

I am babbling again. This is really about me working on a new design I intend to publish. It is so scaring to do that. It is like putting a little bit of myself out there and give up the control. I create with a part of my self - and it sort of gets personal. I am terrified and happy at the same time. And so excited. I never thought I could create a pattern - it is not complicated. Just a little bit of me and living outside the box.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing
Marc Chagall


Wednesday 13 February 2013

Felt Like Rainbow Mittens

It seems I like to add accessorize to my knitted garments. This time I added mittens and bracelets for my scarf. I should mention that I already made polymer clay bracelets for the scarf. Good I have two arms so I can wear it all at one time. 

Well, the mittens were not what I expected. I followed the pattern, except that I dropped the ribb, but ended up with too wide mittens. Could it be the felting process??

I felted them three times in the washing machine to get them properly felted.

They are lovely to wear but I have to keep out so they do not fall off. I used scrap yarn from the scarf - so no excuse to buy more yarn. For now...

I took the colors of the rainbow in the scarf and knitted bracelets from it. I cast on 4st and knitted about 23cm before sewing up.

I felted them two times in the machine and put them on a bottle to dry. That helps a lot for making a round shape that holds up.

So, here we are. Since the winter is hanging on a bit more I think this will be used...

The Stitch Story
Yarn: Rauma Finull, Pt2
Needles: 4mm
Mitten Pattern: Burning Love
My Ravelry Pages: MittensScarfBracelets
I use a bottle when the bracelets are drying - that gives them a round shape and the hold up better.


Wednesday 6 February 2013

Starstrucked Hands

As much as I disliked the yarn I wanted to finish my mittens. I started knitting them before I knew about heavy bleeding from the yarn.

I do not give up easily so when I found half a mitten on the bottom of my project basket I decided to finish them.

I have actually made the pattern my self. Well, not the stars. They are from the estonian book Kiri Kari.

I knitted a scarf with the same pattern and wanted a pair of mittens to go with it.

So far so good. I took out some graph paper and made up the pattern by writing a million x´es.... I have not had any success with excel, I find it awkward to use.

Well, anyway I manage to knit my mittens from my chart.

They are a bit too long but fine to use. I washed them with color catcher. The reds were bleeding a lot but the mittens were still useable.

The other day I lost them in the wet snow and they got soaked. The result was a lot of bleeding from all the red colors.

So, I learned this: Never use Drops delight again, never knit mittens from bleeding yarn, and never doubt a winning team (proper wool yarn).

But hey, they look good in the photos at least. And appearance is supposed to be everything that matters.... Or not... LOL!!

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance
Aristotle

The Stitch Story
Yarn: Drops delight, Pt Panda
Needles: 2.5mm
Pattern: Improvised
My Ravelry Page: Starry Mittens
Read more about this scarf here.