Two birds

The Christmas book from Arne & Carlos has 55 designs, but I limited myself to the ones with hearts and birds. I think the birds are really sweet!

Now that I've finished the yarn I bought for these Christmas balls, I'm going to use the little balls of white left-over yarn I found in my stash, and then I think it's time to start working on my throw again :-)

ps: I was told that Arne and Carlos are working on an Easter knitting book. You can browse the look book (no patterns) here. And, they've designed an extra advent Christmas ball, downloadable for free here. It's in Norse, but don't let that scare you, because the basic pattern is the same as the one in their book.


Dit zijn de vogelballen uit het boek van Arne en Carlos. Ze hebben ook nog een gratis patroon voor een gebreide Advent kerstbal gemaakt (hier) en werken aan een Paasbreiboek. (voorproefje hier)

Knitted leaf & lace throw: a '70s interpretation

So far, I've finished 5 leaf & lace squares, only four more to go :-) It was nice to find a seventies example of this throw in the thrift store last week! I didn't like the colors (orange and brown), but I do like the way the design was adapted, such as knitting the leafs and the border in two different colors. I think this would work for e.g. a cushion cover knitted in thick yarn. The squares are stitched together diagonally. This surprised me, because it makes finishing the border quite difficult. She (I assume it was knitted by a woman :-), used half a square to fill the gaps in the border. Now that I'm writing this, I wonder how she did that... I forgot to take a look...

I took picture of the throw, but I didn't buy it because of the colors. I really hope it will find a happy new home!

Inmiddels heb ik vijf gebreide blokken :-) Vorige week vond ik een jaren-70 versie van dezelfde sprei in de kringloop. Ik heb hem niet gekocht (want bruin + oranje), maar ik vond dat er wel leuke details in zaten, zoals het gebruik van twee kleuren en de manier waarop de blokken aan elkaar genaaid zijn.

Lavender and light blue

This color palette was inspired by my train commute through the Veluwe, a forest in the Netherlands. Last week, we had the first frosty November mornings, and the forest was beautiful in shades of gray, light blue and lavender.

A crochet workshop @ Kleinvak, Schalkhaar

Last week, I was at a crochet workshop in my local yarn store, Het Kleinvak Schalkhaar. We learned how to crochet with Hoooked Zpagetti, a very thick yarn (hook size 12!) made out of left-overs from the textile industry. It was really fun! In the top left corner, you can see the fluo-pink toy basket I made for my daughter. She now uses it as a hat, by the way :-) The cute gray bags were made by Mireille, the shop owner.

Ps: The Hoooked Zpagetti website offers free patterns of bags and pillow covers in Dutch, English and German.

Vorige week heb ik meegedaan aan de Hoooked Zpagetti workshop van Het Kleinvak in Schalkhaar. Het was erg leuk, en ik ging naar huis met een knalroze speelgoedmand voor mijn dochter. De grijze tasjes op de foto's zijn gehaakt door Mireille, de eigenaresse van Het Kleinvak. Je kunt de patronen gratis downloaden van de Hoooked Zpagetti site.

Aran knitted Christmas balls

Last weekend, I visited the Knitting & Crochet Day in my local yarn store. Knitted Christmas balls were all the rage, and we exchanged a lot of tips, tricks and patterns. That's how I found out about this aran Christmas ball pattern. It's taken from a free HolidayKnitting e-book by Knitting Daily. It’s quite small, about 5 cm, and really sweet :-)

Ps: I decided to include a Dutch summary in my posts from now on. 

Vorige week was ik naar de Breidag van “Het Kleinvak” in Schalkhaar. Een leuke dag, met veel gebreide kerstballen! Dit patroon voor een gebreide kerstbal met kabels komt uit een gratis e-book van Knitting Daily.

A collage: watery shades of blue and green

I love playing with color and making mood boards and collages. So, I really enjoyed last week's Blogging Your Way, when we learned how to make collages in different types of photo programs. One of the programs discussed was Google Picasa, which you can download for free here. It's very user-friendly, in a “drag-drop-and-click” kind of way, and it can be used to make the type of collages below. It doesn't have fonts, so I uploaded the collage in The Gimp to add the text.

 

These are some pictures I took on my holiday in Sweden and Denmark this summer. The bakery and the seaside garden are in Gotland, and I saw the wonderful door in the city center of Copenhagen. So actually, I should have called this “Scandinavian summer colors” :-). The shade card is from Werner's Nomenclature of Colors, an early 19^th century book on the nature of colors. It really makes me drool, and I hope that one day, I'll find the plate that's called “Colors of the sea”. I've seen it in a picture of and artist's atelier once, so I know it must be out there somewhere... :-)