Last week someone new came to this world when a good friend of mine gave birth to a little girl. I just love knitting small things for babies. Those projects always turn out so cute, and they're fast to make too. Usually I always make a pair of socks or a hat or something, but this time I had a feeling this little girl would have enought of all that as it is, so I wanted to make something different. Something she could use for a longer time. And perhaps already before the winter. After searching among all the millions of patterns in Ravelry, I happened to stumble over a sleeping bag.
Pattern: Snug as a bug sleep sackYarn: main colour in Novita Saana, the rest are leftovers from my stashNeedles: 4 mm
As always I made some small modifications to the pattern. The ribbing isn't that wide and the sleeping bag itself is made a little bit bigger than the pattern suggested. I hope it will fit the baby the whole winter. Some people had also changed the bottom part of the sack and made it round, decreasing stitches like in a hat. But I decided to let it be wide so that the little girl would have room to kick around her feet.
The stripes looked nice, but the sleeping bag still needed something extra. So I knitted a small pink elephant to decorate it with.
Pattern: One patch from the Eläinsatupeitto in the book Neulo. Virkkaa. Kirjo. Jämälangasta! by Sanna VatanenYarn: cotton yarn from my stashNeedles: 2 mm
This was harder than I thought. Obviously I have to practise colourworking some more...I haven't seen the newcomer yet, so our pink elephant had to step in and be my model. At least some children in the parc found it very amusing that I took a stuffed animal out for a swing. But a blogger has to do what a blogger has to do! Anyway, I hope the little one will find her new sleeping bag cosy and warm.
Geez, we had a real thunderstorm here in Helsinki last night. I woke up to the sound of a lightning that must have hit something really close to our house. And the sky just kept on flashing, like if it had discolights. But today is a new day, and hopefully we'll see some sun again.
Anyway, this is a small project I made to try to use up some of my stash:
My kitchen stools needed some soft covers and I happened to have 1,5 skeins left of this beautiful red yarn. The colour fits our kitchen perfectly. And I don't remember when I've made such a fast and brainless project the last time. I mean, thick yarn combined with crocheting in a circle, without any fuss. Can it be more simple?
Pattern: from my headHook: 8 mmYarn: Phildar Ondiaflamme The only thing I have to redo is the straps holding the covers to the stools. The yarn itself stretches too much, so I'll have to come up with something else to hold them in place.
One other thing I like doing (apart from organizing my yarn) is to put everyting in order in my teabox. I bought this beautiful wooden teabox in London a few years back and I always try to keep a nice and diverse assortment of teas inside it. Then I also have a lot of loos leaf tea that lives on an open shelf just next to our tiny kitchen table. The small beautiful turquoise teatins are from London, too.
Last but not least, we've had some herbs on the windowsill this summer. (Guarded by some tiny moomin characters...). And since our basil was getting quite big, we had to come up with something to do with it. The result was a delicious basil oil.
I forgot to take a picture of it right away, but here's a picture of the bottle almost empty. I really recommend this oil. It's great as a salad dressing but also for frying or grilling vegetables. Yummy yum, I'll definitely make more of this!
If you want to try it, here's what I did:
1 basil plant1,5-2 dl olive oil (just enough to cover the leaves)1 clove of garlicsome salt and pepper
Mix them all together in a blender and it's ready to be served!
This summer I've had time to finish and photograph some old projects that's just been lying around. I also finally had the time to really go through my whole stash of yarns. And I have to say I was both shocked and pleased afterwards. Shocked because my stash was so huge! But rather pleased that only a very small amount of the yarns were "unidentified", i.e. yarns I really didn't see any purpose for. Most of my yarns were really lovely.
I'm sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, but I took them with my phone. Anyway, this is what I started out with:
Looks pretty horrible, doesn't it? But a while later it already looked like this:
I organized the yarns in small stacks. Some are yarns that will be used up in projects not yet finished. Some yarns are just waiting in line for me to have time to start some queued up projects. Then I had a stack for really nice yarns that I didn't yet have a specific project for but that I was sure would find their place in this world very soon. Finally some small stacks with yarn I really don't like and some with really small leftovers. But those stacks were so small, that they didn't bother me that much.
This is what it looks like right now. I organized the yarn in four plastic boxes, and put the yarns I use at the moment in two smaller bags. Then I also gave away some of the leftovers and yarns I don't think I'll use myself.
My next project is to really start to knit, knit and knit and try to use up as much of my stash as possible. And I have to say I feel quite inspired by this project. Imagine all the possibilities! And now that I actually know exactly what hides in my stash, it's easier to see what might become of them. Really exciting!
So, hopefully you'll be seeing a lot of stash-eating projects further on in this blog.
