Merry Christmas!

Tänä vuona tein pienen ja söpön Joulun Ihmemaan pianomme päälle:

Alustana toimii virkattu pitsiliina ja erilaisten korkkien päällä on neulottuja joulukuusia. Molemmat ohjeet ovat DROPSin. Kuusien ohjeen löydän täältä.

Tein ensin muutaman kuusen tuolla vihreällä langalla. Olen sen itse värjännyt ensin koivulla ja sen jälkeen indigolla. Sitten löysinkin lankavarastostani pienen kerän tuota valkoista lankaa pienillä lasihelmillä. Lasihelmet näyttävät minusta hieman pieniltä jääkristalleilta. Eikö niin?

Eläimet ovat sekalaien kokoeilma vanhaa ja uutta. Ja kuusen muotoinen pyörivä tuikkulyhty on tulijainen Kööpenhaminasta.

Aikas söpöä!

This year I made a cute little winter wonderland on top of our piano. Nothing fancy really, just a crochet lace doily underneath and some knitted trees on top. The instructions for the christmas trees are by DROPS Design. You can find the pattern here. The green yarn is a yarn I've dyed myself with birch and indigo. The white yarn is some leftover yarn with small pearls woven into it. Looks a little bit like ice crystals, doesn't it?

 

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)

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.

Drip drop

I think the summer of 2014 was officially the Summer of Love. I attended three weddings, and they were all beautiful. And along with the weddings, also comes wedding presents, of course. This time the bride asked for a small contribtion to their upcoming renovation of the kitchen, something nice for the interior decoration of the house OR anything homemade. After some thinking, I came up with an idea that combined all three of those wishes.

This is a set of handmade textiles for the kitchen. Two kitchen towels, one double sided pot holder and one crochet table mat.

The white fabric is 100% linen. The details and the initials are embroidered by hand. And inside of the pot holder is two layers of flanell and four layers of white cotton fabric to give it enough isolation.

Last spring I had a course in screen printing at the university, and designed some figures for that. This drop was one of them, and the only one that I actually didn't use during the course itself. But I had all kinds of plans for how to use it in the future. And here I've used a few examples.

Although it - once again - felt quite stressful to make something as a wedding present it was really a lot of fun printing and embroidering! And I didn't even have to do all the "boring" sewing myself. That's where my better half hopped in. For some reason he's decided he wants to learn how to sew. And I don't mind at all - quite the opposite. I think it's absolutely great that someone else is willing to do stuff I usually find quite boring :)

Spring flowers

Long time, no see. But  now I'm back. And I actually have quite a lot to show you. The only thing that is missing is the time to write about them and the time to take pictures of everything. But one step at a time!

I was really busy with my studies this spring. I took some time off from work and finished my last studies at the handicraft teaching program, so now I'm officially a teacher of history and handicrafts! Yay! I must say I absolutely loved this spring, even though it was quite stressfull. I just learned so much and made a lot of things I'm really pleased with.

Already a few summers ago, I made a new "painting" for our living room. All you needed was a frame (thanks, dad!), some nice fabric and a staple gun.

I chose a green fabric by Marimekko named Valmuska. After that, our living room has seen more and more green details. First I made this small lace doily, and then a bigger one. The latest addition to our living room is this one:

A new cover for my grandmother's old rocking chair. I made this during a weaving course at the University and I call it "Spring flowers". The best part is the fact that the cover is reversable. Both sides look nice, even though they are slightly different.

Miss Bambi - DIY ring

I think this might be the cutest ring I've ever had! Bambi <3

Originally it was one of my colleagues at work that came up with the idea for a ring like this but I thought it was such a great idea that I wanted to make one for myself too. And since it wasn't at all hard to make, I thought I migth as well share some simple instructions with you too.

This is all you need:

Scissors
Glue
A ring base
A decorative glass stone
A small-enough picture

I didn't find a picture I wanted in magazines, so I simply printed one out from the internet. But remember, it has to be small enough to fit the ring base. Once you've cut it out, glue it to the ring base. Then, put glue only around the edges of the picture and press the glass stone on top of that. This will prevent the glue to blur out the picture. Last but not least, let the ring dry and then it's ready to be shown off to everyone you know! :)

For small and fancy projects

Look, look! Isn't it sweet??

It's perfect for small sewing projects when you only need a few pins at a time. Plus, it really makes you feel fancy! I swear! When I put on this ring I feel kind of special. Like a princess in the land of fabrics.

And the best part is that it was really easy to make! It didn't even take me half an hour to finish. So if you want one of these too, don't hesitate! I'm sure most of you have all the things you need already at home. And if not, use you imagination! ;) You find the easy, illustrated instructions here.

Then I also made a normal pincushion for myself, because believe it or not, I didn't have one before. For this I followed the same theme as for the baby cardigan I knitten not that long ago. The sheep-button was left over from that project. Now I have my own lamb on a field :) Baa baa!

Needle organizers

Here's a hint for how to make your own knitting needle organizer! Already last year I got one beautiful organizer for needles, and this Christmas I got another one (the striped one). It's made by Fanciful Belongings and bought in Etsy.

But even though I had these two organizers, I still had a lot of long, straight needles and nowhere to put them. But then I got an idea! And since the idea is very simple, I decided to share it with you:

It started out with an empty Pringles can that I washed. Then I took a sheet of plain white paper and decorated it the way I wanted. After I had glued it on to the can (with just regular paper glue), I wrapped some thin yarn around the bottom part to make it look like some earth. And voilà! I new knitting needle organizer was born!

Presents to me!

Time to show some of the many, many lovely presents I or we got for Christmas this year. Better late than never, right? ;)

First some knitting and crafting related presents:

My aunt gave me this box full of linen yarn designed by Gianni Versace! Forgive me if I now show my total ignorance, but I actually didn't know fashion designers also design yarns. I didn't find this yarn on Ravelry, though. I think it's quite old and not in production anymore. It would be interesting to know how my aunt came across it... Although, she has a diploma in crafts and design, so she probably knows a hell of a lot more of this stuff than I do.

Then I also got two wonderful books:

The bigger one is Martha Stewarts' Encyclopedia of Crafts and it has more than 200 project of totally different kinds. Then the smaller one is the new finnish knitting book I already talked about earlier: Neulekirja by Ilona Korhonen and Jenni Österman, and I will actually very soon show you my first project from that book. Maybe already in my next post, if I have time to finish it.

I just wish I'd graduate from the university soon, because for some reason I imagine that once I don't have essays after essays to write and exams after exams to study for, I'll suddenly have lots of free time to do all sorts of handicrafts. Still I know that once you start working full time, you become a slave of "nine to five" in stead. But the evenings and weekends will still be free, right? If not, please don't crush my hope, because that's what gets me going right now. I haven't done almost anything else for the past two weeks than writing on my masters' thesis. And it actually goes better than I thought it would. I'm already on page 51, so only some 20-30 pages to go! Plus all the corrections. Plus all the extra reading. But still. I can already see the end. Yay! :)

And from these happier thoughts, let's move on to me showing off two of my collections:

This year two cups were added to my collection of Moomin cups. And now they are 21. But believe me, I don't have all of them yet. The two new ones this year was the two cups on the lower shelf on the left: the Muddler (Hosuli) and the Skiing Competition (seasonal special 2010). I think my favourite cup (at least at the moment) is Mymble, the pink one, because it's just so sweet and girly.

Then my other collection:

Disney cartoons! Now you must think I'm crazy, but I actually have 37 Disney movies (some are Disney-Pixar, though), almost all of them on DVD. So the shelf in the picture is only 1/4 of the movies I have. And this years' new ones: Robin Hood and the Beauty and the Beast <3 So if you have kids that needs a babysitter, bring them to me! At least here there will always be something to watch ;)

Turquois!

I made a new necklace again, this time with turquoise and white pearls. I think it'll suit my black dress perfectly, since there's some embroidered turquoise flowers on it. And then I also already have matching earrings: the ones I made before the baptisme in july.

But here comes some photos of this new creation:

White pearls!

More pearls! :) I actually finished another necklace too:

(Note the panda looking over my shoulder ;))

The white pearls are actually rather old. I think they used to belong to my great grandmother Katarina but then she or my grandmother gave them to me already when I was pretty young. Then they've just been in my stash for years, waiting to be used for something. I'm glad they (or at least a few of them, I still have some pearls left) finally did find a new home.

Then I also used some golden and silvery sweetwater pearls, and they have a compleately different kind of story. When I worked at the Mustio Mannor a couple of years ago, we sold these bracelets made out of sweetwater pearls in different colours. The problem was that they used to break quite easily, making the pearls roll all over the room. Of course, we tried to gather all the pearls and send them back to where they came from, but there were always some pearls left behind. So, occasionaly, when I a few days later found one lonely, lost pearl on the floor, I put it in my pocket :)

Necklace in red

Yesterday I was reading some handicraft blogs again and found especially one that I liked very much. It's called Annan aarteet. She's got a beautiful blog, where she presents all her different crafts. Mostly jewelry and cards, but also some sewing and knitting. 

Once again inspired by all the lovely things I found around the web, I finally finished my first pearl necklace.

It's mostly made out of old pearls I found in my stash. I actually have quite a lot of them. When I was a teenager, I was really into this pearl-stuff so my mom bought me a lot of small glass pearls. Unfortunately I think my inspirations flew away after making only a few bracelets back then, but lately I've had some use for the pearls again in a lot of different crafts. Like this one :)

In case anyone's wondering, the music sheet underneath the necklace is Mozart's Fantasie in D minor :) I love playing that tune. It's really beautiful! But I really should practise it more... I never seem to learn some parts of it.