Zakka Style: Patchwork Potholders

My mom and I had a morning off and decided to sew some lovely potholders. We made pink, turquoise, green and yellow ones. The pattern is from the Zakka Style book by Rashida Coleman-Hale. We both love the simple design and the combination of linen and modern fabrics.



They are cute and functional - they aren't only great potholders but also trivets! They match my teapot perfectly :)

Wool People Vol. 3

Have I mentioned that I looove Brooklyn Tweed designs? There's something fascinating about subtle colors, soft wool and unique, wearable knits. When I saw the lovely new Wool People collection by Brooklyn Tweed I couldn't help but favorite about 90% of the patterns on ravelry. 

Photo Credit: Wool People Volume 3 by Brooklyn Tweed

Have you seen the lovely lookbook yet?

My favorite patterns from the collection are Bayard, Boardwalk, Breckon, Reine and Rivage. I can't wait to get my hands on some soft yarn and knit something fun (aka no socks!) again. Am I the only crazy person who already started a Christmas knitting list? I'm hoping to start early this year and finish some Christmas gifts before December - wish me luck!

These Days...

...drinking tons of tea. I blame the awful weather(it's been overcast for weeks with a lot of rain, lots of wind and 14°C/57°F!!! - it certainly doesn't feel like summer at all). Also, I've been attempting to take a couple of minutes every day to art journal. Big fail. I'm up to date with my PL project(I'll post the spreads from the past weeks soon... hopefully.) but I'm terribly behind with regards to birthday cards, letters to friends and the summer of love book I've been hoping to work on this week.




...spending lots of time at the hospital. My grandma has been in the hospital for five weeks because of a bowel obstruction with lots of complications. Her condition isn't life-threatening anymore but her recovery has been slow. My grandpa gave her these gorgeous roses that have been standing on the window sill in her hospital room for a week and still look great; they give us a little bit of hope and joy every time we come into her room :)

 

... being sick and tired of renovating. After three weeks of renovating something in my apartment every day (painting all the walls, putting in new floods, cleaning the bathroom that didn't seem to have been cleaned for at least a decade, disposing trash previous tenants have left in the basement, ...), we were finally ready to move in our stuff and call an electrician to plug in our oven. But then we received some devastating news: the power supply in the kitchen is charred. After inspecting the other sockets in the apartment and in other apartments in the house it was clear that the entire electricity in the house is too old and a fire hazard. Thus, we'll have to replace all electric wires, which basically means removing all the freshly painted wallpapers, opening the walls etc.
Luckily, we'll have a painter redo all the walls. Today, I took the last picture of my turquoise kitchen wall before the electricians come tomorrow to cut everything open. After putting all my time and energy into this apartment for weeks, it breaks my heart just imaging how they'll tear down everything we've worked on. Let's hope that it'll be quick and that I'll finally get to move in two weeks :)

What have you been up to these days?

52 Knits // Mr Fox

Pattern: mr fox stole my heart by tiny owl knits

Yarn Used: see all the yarns here

Needles: 5.5mm circular needles, 6mm DPNs

Modifications: attached the legs to the left of the tail, shortened the legs. somewhat.

Note: Now, before I rant about the awful construction of the fox I have to say that I LOVE it. I haven't really taken the fox scarf/stole off since I finished knitting it yesterday; it's a super cute accessory, I got lots of compliments for it already and it was sooo windy today, I was glad I had something warm around my neck :)

Now to tell the truth, I was pretty disappointed by the pattern; the result is cute, but assembling the fox wasn't much fun and it's simply knitted back & forth, thus the wrong side looks awful, the body, tail and legs curl like crazy and the tail always turns around to the 'wrong side' (as seen in the picture below). The head turned out really cute(although you can see the stuffing, but I got used to it pretty quickly) but a pattern like this isn't worth the $$$.

This was the first tiny owl knits pattern I've tried, but a friend told me that the other patterns are better. I might try a different pattern in the future(maybe this hat or these mitts?) but for now I'm craving a well-written, easy-to-follow Jared Flood pattern. Hah.

ps: pardon the amount of pictures, I just couldn't help it!!

This is project #15 of 52


As part of my 2012 goals, I want to finish 52 knitted items this year. You can see all the items I knitted so far on my blog or on ravelry.


See knits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,  13 and 14

52 Knits // Holden Shawlette

Pattern: Holden Shawlette by Mindy Wilkes
Yarn Used: 0.8 skein Regia hand dye effect sock yarn (70% wool, 25% nylon, 5% acrylic)
Needles: 4.5mm circular needles
Modifications: used a stretchy bind off instead of the picot bind off the pattern called for.

Note: Very simple boring shawl to knit. The pattern was very easy to follow but also rather dull. If I were to knit this shawl again, I'd start the lace pattern earlier because I'm not too fond of the garter stitch part. I like the colors of the yarn but there were many knots in it. Not too happy about the quality!

This is project #14 of 52


As part of my 2012 goals, I want to finish 52 knitted items this year. You can see all the items I knitted so far on my blog or on ravelry.


See knits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13

Thinking Out Loud

As I'm renovating and buying stuff for my new apartment, I've been thinking a lot about the kind of lifestyle I wanna live. I get the feeling that many blogs promote consumerism - outfit posts with new clothes, ads for fashion companies, links to buy stuff on amazon, ...
Of course there's also a huge handmade and vintage blogworld out there but pretty much the only thing that seems to matter are recent purchases. Of course it's nice to find a great deal and show it off online - but is it really necessary to own 20+ pairs of high heels? Or 50 summer dresses so you can wear a different one each day of the summer?
I usually clean out my closet every year or so to get rid of the clothes I haven't worn for months. I think it's about time to donate/sell some clothes so I don't have to move with several boxes full of clothes. Owning less clothes means that you have more space for craft supplies that you can hide in your closet :)

These Days

I'm moving!

I'm moving to a cute little apartment about 10 minutes from my parent's house. It'll only take me 5 minutes by bike to go to the campus, there are supermarkets, hardware stores, restaurants etc. just around the corner yet it's quiet and there's a huuuuge garden. A good friend will be my roommate and we managed to thrift a high quality kitchen very cheaply. The best thing about the apartment is that my family owns the entire apartment house! Which means I can renovate the apartment according to my taste, I can plant some herbs in the garden and my parents have very little costs because the rent is very low and I have a roommate :)

Now as you might have guessed from the pictures, the apartment needs looooots of cleaning! By lots I mean the apartment doesn't seem to have been cleaned for at least 8 years. The building is from the 1960s, thus it's time to re-do the floors and we'll get new, very cost-efficient windows :)

The next days (weeks?) will be spent cleaning, painting and renovating.

A very big thank you to my parents, especially my mom, for helping me renovate and clean the apartment. I love you!

Exciting News

I am proud to announce that I'm the owner of this beautiful KitchenAid. But let me start at the beginning.
It all started about 13 years ago when my parents purchased a KitchenAid. Back then I didn't quite grasp the extent to which it would change my life; the endless hours of pure joy we'd spend together; the endless possibilities it'd offer. About 6 years ago I started to comprehend what a KitchenAid was capable off and I swore I'd never buy any other stand mixer.
Fast forward to the end of May 2012 when I'm about to move into my own apartment and try to make deals with my mom to borrow the KitchenAid mixer whenever she's not home (without any success.). I dragged my mom into a store to marvel at all the gorgeous colors(ours is a muddy green). And there it was - the PINK beauty(the official name is "raspberry ice"<3) at an awesome price(well, the price was pretty steep but it came with another bowl and the food grinder and etc.).
Two days later I got a job offer(more about that in another post...) and my parents lent me the money to buy it before the great deal ends. I've been dreaming of this moment for years!
I couldn't be more excited and I'm seriously thinking about painting the kitchen to match my KitchenAid. Would taking a stand mixer into a hardware store to get the right paint be weird? Color charts are pretty rare in Germany :(

The color looks pretty different in real life; I'll take better pictures when there's daylight :)