Fishy

Well I’m doing some more embroidery. These won’t be lavender sachets, I don’t think. But I did give away a good many of those.

This is just for pleasure. I’m using an old cushion cover of linen that I bought second hand for the sachets. Since the yarn is second hand as well I don’t really know what it is, doesn’t feel or act like silk, and to be honest I didn’t like the colors either, but was surprised how good it came out. Thinking I might make a breast fin as an appliqué, but not sure how to yet.

This one is made with regular cotton yarn. I like the sixties feel of the color comination. Needs a face, or at least an eye, though.

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We spent the night before Midsummers Eve needle felting. It’s such a great technique, when my son was younger he said it was like drawing in 3D. I agree.

And I think wool may be may favorite material.

Pants! Pants! Pants!

So I finally finished my second pair of culottes and I look forward to loving them as much as my first pair which turned out to be a hit.

Now I’ve made quite an effort with these, I decided to line them which I’ve never bothered to do before, but since the fabric is pretty thin I figured it was necessary. I used a beautiful robin blue lining from my stash and used an orange colored zipper- I love how the two colors clash!

They’ve got a very small hem as I wanted to use the pretty gold print at the edge of the fabric. I was a bit worried that this wouldn’t be heavy enough and make them shapeless, but I think it works.

Zipping up Tokyo

I finally found this fabric store on my last night in Tokyo and by then my suitcase was kind of difficullt to close from all my shopping, but at least I got me these really neat zippers to put somewhere visible.

Bowie pants

I was going to Tokyo to visit my son and felt I needed to dress well. I had the idea for some short wide pants and found this really great blue green linen to make them from. I used a vintage pattern Stil 6166, but made the legs straight instead of bell bottomed and of course shortened them. I also made the waist dubble width and put on two buttons to hold them up, I’m really plesed with how they look and they go so well together with my Bowie boots!

Trying and failing and trying again

I’ll admit it, instructions bore me. I see myself as a person who carefully reads instructions and follows them promptly, but either I’ve changed or I’ve lied to myself my whole life, because that clearly isn’t true.

So I decided I should knit some socks, continuing with my Christmas presents. How hard can it be? Right?

I had the needles, I had the yarn and started.

My first realization was that it was really difficult to start with 4 needles. My second realization was that I’d forgotten how to start a knitting and was doing it wrong. My third realization was that you need 5 needles, not 4. My fourth realization was that, no, you can’t use a regular needle as the fifth one because it has a stop in one end and you need to knit from both ends. My fifth realization was that the multicolored yarn I was using made it a lot more difficult to see what I was doing.

At one point my partner commented “Wow, you’re working so fast, I only see you starting nesw ones, never finishing them”. Eh, well…It’s actually because I rip up what I’ve done and start over and over again.

I’ve now come to the point where a few centimeters of the ankle of my first sock are looking ok. I will report back when I reach the heel.

Apples

For some reason I’ve had the idea that embroidering from a pattern is boring and unsatisfying. As it happens, I ‘d ran out of ideas and wanted something easy to do, so I thought I’d try this cute vintage pattern I’d found in a thrift shop, and bought mainly for the yarn.

Was I wrong! It’s really challenging, maninly because it’s so hard to keep track of the threads in the fabric, I keep making mistakes and taking up stitches. And it’s SLOW.

All my respect to those of you who do this a lot!

Have no idea how long this will take to finish.

Composition: Greta Hammarquist