Himmeli

Himmelit erilaisissa muodoissa ovat viime vuosina olleet taas todella muodikkaita. Ja enhän minäkään voinut vastustaa kiusausta tehdä tästä perinnekoristeesta uuden version pilleistä ja helmistä. Pienet helmet ovat isoisoäitini perintöä <3

Löydät hyvän ohjeen perushimmelin tekoon esim. täältä.

The traditional Scandinavian Christmas decoration called a Himmeli has srtarted to get modern again. And I couldn't resist the temptation either to make a new version of it. This is made using straws and pearls. The small pearls used to belong to my great-great grandmother <3

A basic tutorial for the Himmeli can be found here (in Finnish but with good pictures)

Together through the autumn

Taas on saumuri surissut ja tällä kertaa sen jäljiltä valmistui tällainen ihana hupparimekko:

 

 
Kaava on oma, mutta ispiraatiota olen toki hakenut useammastakin paikasta. Kangas on iki-ihanasta Verson Puodista, joustocollegea nimeltään Yhdessä ja värissä petroli. Resorit tilasin sen sijaan Noshilta. Huppuun löysin pienen palasen vaalean turkoosia trikoota vuorikankaaksi. Tuo siihen mielestäni ihanan pienen piristyksen!

Karkelot-blogissa on hyvä ohje kietaisuhupun valmistukseen, mutta koska kyseinen blogi ei näemmä ole tällä hetkellä saatavilla, napsasin pari kuvaa kaavoistani. Vinkin tähän olen siis poiminut Karkelosta.

Jäljennä hupun kaava kahteen kertaan kaavapaperille, toinen peilikuvana toisesta. Näin kaula-aukon linja jatkuu luonnollisesti, ja kun pidennät hupun etuosaa kietailsuhupun malliseksi, sopii se täydellisesti vaatteen kaula-aukkoon.

Punainen viiva osoittaa uuden huppukaavan. Jatkoin kietaisuhuppua ihan olkasaumaan asti. Hupun kietailusosa onnistui tällä tavoin hyvin, mutta ensi kerralla aion kyllä suurentaa itse huppua vielä lisää. Se jää nyt turhan naftiksi pään ympärille. Tämän kyseisen huppukaavan olen napannut jostakin Suuri Käsityö-lehdestä.

Kerrassaan täydellinen vaate pimeneevään syksyyn ja talveen! Lämmin ja mukava mutta silti työpaikkakelpoinen.

I've been sewing again! The fabric is from lovely Verson Puoti and the design is my own (but of course I've been seeking inspiration from several places!). You can find a lot of nice instructions in the blog Karkelot, but as it seems to be unavailable at the moment, I tried to illustrate here with a few pictures how I drew the pattern for my hood. The red line indicates the new hood pattern. Feel free to ask if there's something you're wondering about! Otherswise I'm pleased, but the hood itself could have been a bit bigger.

This hooded dress is absolutely perfect for the cold autumn and winter! Warm and cosy but yet wearable for work. 

Colour therapy

Vihdoinkin jotakin tekeillä kaikista niistä kasvivärjätyistä langoista...

Finally doing something with all those naturally dyed yarns...

Tea buddies

Kuten olen aikaisemmin kertonut, pidämme teen juomisesta. Pussiteistä erityisesti ihanat Clipperin teet ovat olleet suosiossamme, mutta niiden huono puoli on se, ettei teepussissa ole narua, jonka avulla sen voisi nostaa kuumasta kupista ylös. Siispä päätin tehdä asialle jotakin. 

Idea on alunperin blogista Ihan oikea blogi?, ja huomasin näin jälkikäteen, että olin myös vahingossa käyttänyt samoja värejä omissani. Se ei suinkaan ollut tarkoitus :D

Päätinkin sitten tehdä neljä erilaista: kaksi tänne meille kotiin, yhden minun punavalkoisen työmukini kaveriksi sekä yhden Mr. V:n töihin. Hän pyysi itse Esc-näppäintä muistuttavaa kuvaa. Esc=Escape=Kahvitauko.

Spiraalikuviossa pääsin myös kokeilemaan uutta virkkaustekniikka. Suosittelen! Se oli helppoa ja hauskaa ja sille löytyy varmasti monia käyttötarkoituksia. Kuvallinen ohje spiraalin virkkaukseen löydät esim. täältä. 

As I've mentioned earlier, we like tea. We also like Clipper teas, but the problem with those are that the tea bags doesn't have a string to pull the teabag out of the cup with.

This idea is originally from the blog Ihan oikea blogi?, but I liked the idea so much that I had to make some of my own. And only afterwards I noticed I had chosen the same colours as she had! :D

Two for home, one for my work and one for Mr. V to have at work. He especially asked for an "Esc-button". Esc as in Escape as in Coffee Break. In the spiral one I also tried a new crochet technique. It wasn't at all hard and I can think of a dozen things to do with a spiral. A tutorial with pictures can be found here.

Blogitapaaminen Lankamaailma Nordiassa

For international readers, please scroll down

Sain kutsun Lankamaailma Nordian järjestämään blogitapaamiseen, joka järjestettiin eilen illalla Oulunkylässä. Tämä oli minun ensimmäinen blogitapaaminen ja hauskaa oli! Olipa mukavaa tavata muita bloggaajia ja tutustua moniin uusiin blogeihin.

Olen käynyt Lankamaailmassa useamman kerran, mutta heti kun astuin tällä kertaa ovesta sisään, huomasin muutoksen. Langat olivat löytäneet uuden järjestyksen sateenkaaren värien mukaisesti. Toki eri kuidut ja lankalaadut ovat edelleenkin omissa ryhmissään, mutta ryhmän keskeinen järjestys perustuu väreihin.

Syy tälle mullistukselle selvisi kun kehityspäälikkö ja väriterapeutti Merja Lieppinen piti meille lyhyen luennon värien merkityksistä. Tiesitkö sinä, että sininen väri rauhoittaa ja on hyvä väri esimerkiksi makuuhuoneeseen? Tai jos kaipaat piristystä päivään, kannattaa pukeutua keltaiseen tai oranssiin?

Lankamaailman runsaus ja värien kaunis järjestys antoi kyllä todellisen piristysruiskeen tähän syksyyn. Olipa ihanaa vain istua siellä neuloen, nauttien värien paljoudesta ja hypistellen ihania, pehmeitä lankoja. Siinä samalla unohtui pieni nuhanenäkin!

Markkinointipäälikkö Elina Urmas esitteli meille lisäksi syksyn uutuuslankoja, joista itseäni ehkä eniten kiehtoi villa-nokkos sekoitelanka. Ihanan pehmeä mutta samalla kestävän tuntuinen. Myös merinovilla-puuvillasekoite vaikutti lupaavalta.

Ja voi sitä onnea, kun saimme kaikki myös omat lahjakassimme, joiden uumenista löytyi vaikka mitä! Muun muassa niitä himoitsemiani uutuuslankoja, ja sattumalta vielä ihan minun väreissäni! Ja tarttuihan sieltä kaupasta myös muutakin mukaan, vaikkei ehkä lankavaraston takia olisi pitänyt...

Iso kiitos vielä Lankamaailmalle tämän tapahtuman järjestämisestä! Kevällä nähdään! :)

Last night I was invited to a meeting for bloggers at the yarnshop Lankamaailma Nordia. The shop itself is just so beautiful with all it's yarns - all arranged according to those beautiful colours! This kind of colour-therapy was just what I needed! And it was so nice to meet fellow bloggers, too!

We listened to a short lecture about the inpact of colours in our lives and in our knitting, and then some of the newcomer yarns of this autumn were introduced to us. Last but definately not least we also got a wonderful giftbag containing yarn, needles etc.! Thank you Lankamaailma for this wonderful opportunity!

Hattara

I bought a new phone and suddenly my old phone case was too small. This one is inspired by Molla Mills but is my own pattern.

Yarn: leftover cotton yarn
Hook: 3 mm
Button from Eurokangas many, many years ago

The little foot stool got a new layer of paint this year.

My soul in ochre

Now that I've actually started to like sewing, I've been sewing more and more! And after the rather OK outcome of my first take on a slightly more expensive fabric, I felt encouraged to try more!

Fabric: Soulbird from Ikasyr, in the colour ochre

This is a modified and a much better version of the Onnenlintu-dress I made earlier during the summer. I made this one slightly shorter, slightly better fitting and with simple, short sleeves and oh so useful pockets. And I love it! The fabric feels really soft and has this lovely retro look. I've washed my dress several times already and nothing has happened to the fabric nor the colour. Good quality, I'd say! And organic too, which is always a plus.

Mossy Owls vol. 2

Here's my second take on my Mossy Owl mittens. Instructions can be found here.

Pattern: my own
Yarn: Four Seasons Gründl Hot Socks Marrakesch, held double
Needles: 3 mm

It was a good idea to make the same mittens a second time. Now matter how closely you think you've read the instructions, you always find some mistakes when you read it again. But now I've corrected the mistakes I found. Feel free to tell me if you find more mistakes!

These were made as a birthday present for a friend. Hope she liked them!

Something new and something old

The worst bamboo dishcloth boom has already started to wear off, but my first try was still waiting to be born. I don't know what exactly hit me, but one day I just decided I HAVE to make one too. Just to see how it works in real life. Is it practical enough to be a permanent inhabitant in our kitchen?

Yarn: Novita Bambu
Hook 2,5 mm

A similar pattern can be found here, at the eilen tein -blog. My dishcloth is however a little bit smaller and shaped like a square. 

So far I've been quite pleased with it. I really like the idea of a sustainable, washable dishcloth. And it works just as well as the old wettex one, but this will definately last longer. It could have been still a little bit smaller, though. You have to fold it once to make it fit the faucet, but that - in it's turn - makes it dry out slower. A larger hook would also have helped the situation, but all the right sizes had mysteriously disappeared...

I also crocheted a neat, little basket for our kitchen to store pens, notes and other small stuff in. It continues the candy theme I've mentioned earlier.

 

There's also some other new-comers to our kitchen since the last time you saw some pictures of it. The first one is an old kitchen scale that I found at a flea market in Lohja. The other one is a bowl from the Arabia Kirsikka series I found stuffed away in my mom's kitchen. It made a perfect new fruit bowl and is even small enough to fit the window sill!

The other polkadot kitchen scale is from Clas Ohlson. Just couldn't resist it when I saw it. It was just too perfect! And that's the scale we use the most, the old vintage one is more of a decoration. The plant on the window sill is a Stevia - a natural sweetener. Have you ever tried it? I sometimes find it quite tricky to cook with but it certainly is sweet!

Last but not least: here's a cute new pepper grinder I happened to stumble over at Tiger. So now my old Maatuska (a souvenir from my trip to Moscow in 2007) has a new friend in the kitchen!

Summersoups

Here's the result of some dyeing I did during the summer at my old job:

The three on the left are all dyed with violet lupin flowers. The yellow ones are dyed with onion and the red ones with a mixture of cochineal and madder. The striped one used to be a yarn in the french colours bleu-blanche-rouge, but I think it looks much, much better this way! Aluna was used for all of these soups.

There's also a small apricot- or salmon-coloured ball of yarn in the front. That's a silk-alpaca yarn dyed with japanese safflower. It's used for dying silk and gives both yellow and pink shades. If you're interested to know more about how it worked out for us, take a look at this blog kept by one of my old colleagues. There's also a bit more information about the lupins.

Here's another thing I learned this past summer:

I spun my first skeins of yarn! And everything is made from scratch. The sheep is called Elviira (in the middle of the picture below, picture by Espoon kaupunginmuseo) and I helped shearing here, then I carded the wool by hand and finally spun it into yarn. Can't wait to start knitting something out of it!

 

New job, new keys

I've always looked at teachers walking around with their keys hanging around their neck in a beautiful lanyard and thought for myself "If I one day become a teacher, I want to have a nice looking lanyard myself!". And now that I have my new job and my new keys, the only thing that was missing was the lanyard.

But since big, colourful lanyards pretty much catches the eye, I made three of them - all in different colours and all designed to match different kind of clothings. The yellow-brownish pearl lanyard is for my retro clothing. The white and pink lanyard with crochet pearls is for sweet and girlish light-coloured clothing. And finally the violet one (looking almost black in the picture) is for casual clothing.

The pattern for the violet crochet lanyard can be found here at the blog Pienestä Suurta. I made my lanyarn 5 dc wide and then added a loop at the bottom to hang my keys at.

The pattern for the crochet pearls is from a very good book called Lankatekniikoiden käsikirja. If you're interested in special techniques using yarn, I really recommend this book. It has anything from frivolité to tunisian crochet and needle lace.