Knot bag

A couple of weeks ago I posted images of a bag project, where I used spray paint with freezer paper resists. When I last wrote about this project I hadn't decided whether to embroider the resisted shapes or not. Of course I couldn't resist (if you pardon the pun) stitching them, as I found the perfect embroidery thread in my stash. A skein of hand dyed embroidery floss from Oliver Twists Fibres that I got in Birmingham last August. I mean, feast your eyes on this:

(The fabrics in the background are from Liberty, and I am saving them for something special.)

So, here I am stitching away. In fact it was fairly quick, as I did just a running stitch. I love running stitch. Simple, yet effective.

This little bag is perfect for holding my yarn when I knit or crochet:

One handle is shorter, and forms a simple knot when it's slipped over the longer handle:

And If you're curious about the crocheted thing dangling from the bag, it ended up in this project (which is still in progress):

Have a great day, and thanks for dropping by!

- Annika

Midsummer

Midsummer is here again, and in this part of the world that means that the sun is up more or less all night. It's fair to say that it's the second largest festival in Finland after Christmas, and people celebrate it for good reason. We spend so much time cooped up in darkness that it's no wonder this is such a big deal to us. This year we've been incredibly lucky with the weather: the sun has been shining almost non-stop and it's been nice and warm. Here you can see my dad hoisting the flag. The night between Midsummer Eve and Midsummer Day is the only time of the year when the rule says you can fly the flag all night.

Fia the Terri(fi)er enjoys the weather, as well as rolling around in the grass.

These sheep looked pretty happy too, but ran away when I tried to get a little bit nearer

My Midsummer project this year is this cute crocheted moth wings shrug (follow the link for an image of the whole shrug). It's portable and very easy to work with on the train as well as out on the sun-deck behind the house. I've finished the back piece and started with the front halves. I've made great progress on it this weekend.

It took me ages to get started, though, because I just couldn't figure out the gauge (Sw. masktäthet). It seemed to me that the recommended yarn was way too thin for the recommended hook. So I first did some research about possible errors in the pattern, but didn't find what I was looking for. I then made a sample with the recommended hook and yarn, and discovered that the way I crochet, the sample became way too small. I tried substituting the yarn, and got the right gauge, but then the fabric became too thick and stocky. So I finally ended up using the right yarn, but a hook that is two numbers bigger than what is recommended in the pattern (2.5 mm according to the pattern, but I use a 3.5 mm needle for a yarn which is designed for a 0.75 mm needle). It took me a while to get used to the combination of thin yarn and big hook, but I got there in the end. And I guess the point is that with bigger loops, you get a much softer fabric. It makes sense when you think about it, but it felt pretty strange to me at first.

It's been a really relaxing weekend with sunshine, fresh air, good food, good company, a good craft project, exercise, sauna, flowers in plenty and birdsong in the air. I don't think I've ever seen so much cow parsley (Sw. hundkäx) in bloom before. Here, they're mixed in with lupins.

Some of mum's flowers, with the house in the background.

Thanks for visiting! There's only one more week of office time for me now, and then my vacation and new life starts (pleaser refer to this blog entry if you haven't heard about my adventures next year)! I will keep you posted! - Annika

From Cuffs to Colour

After my second intense dyecation it's been rather quiet in the dyeing department. True, today I did some dyeing, but it was just overdyeing a pair of sun-bleached cargo shorts. Nothing much to blog about there. Last Sunday was Mother's Day, so I spent the weekend with my folks up north. On the train journey there and back I knitted and crocheted a pair of cuffs. I bought a kit with patterns and materials for a scarf, cuffs and a brooch from a local craft shop, Taito shop Helsky. Everything apart from the brooch is finished and ready to wear:

 

This is what the scarf looked like when I started. It didn't look very promising at that stage, but it turned out fine.

A couple of days ago artist Melanie Testa's new book Dreaming from the Journal Page. Transforming the sketchbook to art lay on my doorstep when I got home from work.

It's been a long and impatient wait, and now I'm eager to immerse myself in her wisdom. I started today by jumping straight into a couple of the colour exercises in the book.

First I did a colour chart of the watercolours in my palette. I use Royal Talens's van Gogh watercolours, for no other reason than that they suited my budget at the time I wanted to invest in watercolours.

The other exercise I did was to grab a pile of magazines and select a colour. I then flicked through the magazines and cut out swatches of that colour in different values and leanings. I didn't analyse too much, just cut out colours that suited my mood and that I felt were related. I was quite surprised by how much colour I found in these magazines. It wasn't difficult at all to fill a page, but perhaps it was because I chose pink. Pink is pretty hot this spring, it seems. We'll see what happens when I do the next colour.

Next, I glued the swatches onto a sketchbook page in an arrangement that was pleasing to me, and then I studied the different values and leanings and tried to mix them with my watercolours. This will be a really useful reference in the future, and I wonder why on earth I haven't done this before. I guess I needed someone to point it out to me.

For a good reason Melanie calls herself 'agent provocateur' on her webpage. She's very generous with her knowledge, and through her blog and video challenges on YouTube she has done much to help me along on my own creative journey. Anyone who wants to learn some really cool things to do with their sketchbook or visual journal, and who wants to learn how to use what they have in their sketchbook as a starting point for textile work should check out Melanie's new book, as well as her first book Inspired to Quilt, which I have mentioned many times before on this blog.

Thanks for visiting, and stay tuned for more of my explorations into colour and cloth. - Annika

Rooster and Ruffles

Easter is approaching fast, and with that four days of vacation, thank goodness. I sorely need it, as I've had a pretty hectic three weeks again and my vertigo has returned to my great dismay. I really should have stayed away from everything craft-related this weekend, but I was just so craft-starved after all the work I've done that I disregarded vertigo and crocheted this goofy bug-eyed rooster anyway, as therapy. It makes me laugh. (The pattern is from the spring issue of Novita magazine (Kevät 2012 [in Finnish].)

And I couldn't stay away from starting another project too. I've been planning to do this bag for months. This is as far as I got tonight. I love sashiko embroidery and decided to embellish the pockets with a flower motif I found in a book (Sashiko by French author Agnès Delage-Calvet). More information and images later.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week! - Annika

Advent Doodlendar

I’ve been thinking about getting an Advent calendar. I’m childish enough to enjoy that sort of thing. “But what type?” I ask myself. I have been assuming that it should be one that contains chocolate, but I haven’t been able to make my mind up what to buy. The chocolate in the kiddy calendars isn’t very good, and I felt that an ordinary box of chocolates was a bit boring. I’ll get enough of those anyway before Christmas is over. And then I had an idea: I’ll make a Doodlendar, i.e. a calendar with a doodle a day until Christmas. Next I remembered one of the exercises that Melanie Testa suggests in her book Inspired to Quilt. In the exercise you draw a grid on fabric and fill the squares with quilting patterns. Some of the areas are left blank, and those areas form a figure (in the book a flower stem). I’m going to apply this exercise with paper and ink, and fill a square a day until Christmas. By 24 December I’ll have a completed page with patterns and an image formed by blank spaces. I haven’t drawn much since July and this will be a simple and fun exercise for me to get accustomed to holding a pen again. I will upload the Doodlendar to my Flickr account daily, where you can follow my progress day by day if you wish. That’s my Advent calendar to you, my reader. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Here’s the Doodlendar waiting for its first square to be filled with pattern:

 And now, to offer you something more to look at than an empty paper with a grid, I also offer you these crocheted cuffs that I recently finished. They’ve been living in my UFO-basket for quite a while, until I took pity on them and finally completed them. The pattern is from the book Virka muddar! by Maria Gullberg - a book filled with cuffs inspired by the crocheted wrist warmers that were used by both women and men in 19th century Scandinavia.

Thanks for visiting and see you again on 1 December!

Snowflakes and Wooly Socks

I enjoyed a whole day of adventures on my own yesterday. I got up early, boarded a train and went to Tampere, where Finland’s biggest handicraft fair was held this weekend. I’ve never been to this fair before, so I was quite excited. I even brought my camera, but there were signs that asked visitors not to take photos. So I’m afraid I don’t have any images to show you. But it was huge. At least in Finnish terms. I spent five hours wandering around in the throng. I was quite dazed by the end.

And the loot? To be honest, there isn’t as much as I had expected. It may be that the thought of the dentist’s bill lying on my desk put a damper on my eagerness to shop. (Almost two weeks ago I had a wisdom tooth removed surgically. Yikes.) But the main reason for the meagre shopping result, I believe, is that they didn’t really have the things I wanted. There were very few things related to quilting there, and as for dyes and PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabrics, these were practically non-existent. Art supplies such as paints and pens were also pretty absent. So I was rather disappointed in that respect. But I had a good time anyway, got some new ideas and some advice, and made a few bargains, so I’m glad I went.

I bought a few fat quarters of fabric at the fair. I love the batiks, the blue fabric is for a future sashiko project and I’m planning to overdye the white fabrics.

On the train to and from Tampere I worked on a crocheted snowflake mobile that I started a couple of years ago. I finished the snowflakes and today I dipped them into a solution of water and sugar to stiffen them. I’ll string them together with metal wire when they’re dry.

After frosting the snowflakes I finished a sock I started a few weeks ago. The pattern is from a book titled Around the World in Knitted Socks by Stephanie van der Linden. It should be titled The Rolls-Royce of Knitted Socks. I never knew knitted socks could look like these. The socks in the book are so gorgeous, I didn’t know where to start. So I started with the first pair in the book.

The sock is on the wrong foot, as the clock pattern should be on the other side of the ankle, but it was easier to photograph it like this. I don’t want to twist my ankle again.

The cable pattern travels over the foot. Ingenious.

I have a lot of smaller projects going on right now, and will save some of them for my next blog entry, so please stay tuned. Have a great week!