Piece of cake!

Last monday I had the wonderful opportunity to celebrate my birthday. Very rare delicacy, only happens once a year. What made this year more special was the cake I made for the first time ever: a pancake cake! Yummy yum!

Wonderful blueberries on top and jam and whipped cream as filling. Tasted like heaven.

Perhaps inspired by that sensational taste and the colours, I made these super easy and soft summer accessories the day after:

Want to make some of your own? Do so, it's the easiest piece of accessory you've ever made, I promise! As yarn I used some tricot weft rags and the hook was size 10. Then you just crochet a chain as long as you want, leave a 10 cm tail in both ends and put a ribbon on it. And voilà! Doesn't take more than 10 min to make a whole set. See? A piece of cake! :)

Snowflake dress

Well, now that I study handicrafts at the university, I have to do stuff I normally don't do. Like sewing. I think I've only made one or two garments since the compulsory ones in highschool, and even those were a very simple skirt and a very ugly dress. So when I heard we'd have to plan and sew a dress (or a skirt + a blouse) and even draw the patterns ourselves, I felt very unsure of my own skills. And actually still feel. But this is the result, anyway.

I was quite surprised that it turned out this well. I totally exceeded my expectations. And I was quite proud of it at first. But then my teacher found a thousand flaws in it. And as the perfectionist I am (or at least on some level), it kind of changed my opinion about the whole dress after that. But perhaps, if I'll let it hang in my wardrobe long enough, I'll start liking it again?

Anyway. It's quite a simple model, the only details being the pockets and the snowflakes and the vintage buttons as decorations.

Pattern: Windom Peak Snowflake
Yarn: Novita Tico Tico
Hook: 2,5

And if you wonder where the beautiful background is, it's in Espoo, at Villa Elfvik.

(By the way, this time I was the poor model. It was freeeeeezing outside that day!)

Roses on rocks

For the past three weeks I'll just been knitting, knitting and knitting. A deadline really is the best way to get things done! You see, I signed up as a testknitter for a new cardigan pattern, and the testknit had to be finished yesterday. And eventhough I still have some things from the winter to show you, I decided to let this one go first:

Pattern: Rock Rose Cardigan by schneckenstrick
Yarn: Novita 7 Veljestä, beige
Needles: 4 mm
In Ravelry

I'm very pleased with the result. This is a perfect cardigan for a chilly summer evening! The pattern was also very well written and easy to follow. Only the rose pattern was actually quite annoying to knit at first, but then I got used to it.

The cardigan is knitted from the top down and it's compleatly seamless (me likes!). In fact, this time I made only two minor modifications: I added some waist shaping and some length to both the sleeves and the cardigan itself. What was even more perfect, was that I also managed to use up some of my stash of yarns! Yay!

So far I've only been knitting sweaters using a rather thick yarn (or well, Tender lavender being one exception to the rule), so I was actually quite terrified at the beginnin. After two weeks of knitting I was sure I wouldn't be able to finish it in time. But there I was yesterday, ready to shoot pictures of a brand new cardigan!

I'm not that sure of the buttons, though. I found them in my mom's old stash and they are perhaps a little bit too "bling" for my taste. But I'll see. They were after all the easiest part of the cardigan, so it won't be hard to change them later if I feel like it.

As a bonus picture I'd like to present a quite new friend of my: Miss Owly. She's making sure I always know what time it is. Sweet, isn't she? And I'm just crazy about owls. Funny thing I actually don't have that many things with owls. At least not yet... :)

Hoot hoot!