Stitch markers

Lately I´ve been feeling like my stitch markers don´t fit my knitting needles - it might have something to do with the fact, that I've been knitting a lot with needles nr. 10-15 since last summer :-) That´s why I decided to make my own, perfect sized stitch markers...

I went to a great craft store (í Holtagörðum) with some stitch markers I´d bought&liked and simply asked them how they where made. They were really helpful and showed me all the right stuff...

I used pearls in different sizes and shapes and felted balls I made with my boys the same day - you could use so many different things, just use your imagination! (mæli með búðum einsog Tiger og Söstrene Grene í perlukaup). 

I can´t wait to make more of those and some special people 

might even get some of those for christmas...

Thankful

Time to be thankful... 

I´m thankful for those three...

... and days like this one... 

 

I´m a lucky lady!

Word of the week

Johanna from Knittingmydayaway chose this weeks word "glass" and I picked the exercise: take pictures of an object, from different angles and see how the picture changes, depending on the surrounding. Take picture from far away, closer, walk around the object if you can and take pictures and even take pictures from underneath if you can...

This week has been really cold here in Iceland - snow, ice and wind! The good thing about it is, that it´s not hard to find something that reminds one of glass when everything is covered with ice :-) Take a look...

Ice - close up

found some footsteps -  ice, from above

 

 Icepanorama

A heart of ice from above 

A heart of ice 

A heart of ice in the sky

A flat heart of ice

What ARE you doing mamma??

Picture-Wednesday: "framing" as a photography technique

 This week, Knittingmydayaway and I where all about "framing" in photography. That means, you can create an interesting picture with depth, perspective and direct the viewers attention to a particular subject, by "framing" it with something in it´s surrounding. You can use many things as a "frame" (or border): trees, walls, fences, people... in fact anything... be creative! You can read a lot about this technique online, but here you have a nice and simple explanation.

We also chose a random word as a theme: "round". We where allowed to mix those two things up, "framing" and "round" in one picture if we wanted to.

I took a lot of pictures in 101 Reykjavík (city center) - I really liked so many of them that I decided to share all my favorites with you instead of choosing just one!

I would really love it, if you would take the time to leave a comment and tell me which one of those YOU like the most...

Please click on the pictures to see them in full size...

round and framed

also round and framed - I love how this sign screams back to you "your perfect day"! It reminded me of really enjoying my day and what I was doing that day!

framed and round: we have beautiful round, red berries, framed by small stone-walls on both sides - I like the depth and perspective of this picture (me being a crazy lady, almost laid down on the street to shoot this one :-)  

 framed by a window: Viking-Christmas-beer (jólabjórinn er mættur!)... I like the humor of this advertisement in the window of a cafe: Santas reindeer's pulling a vikingship!

framed and round: I had this one already taken in my mind when I started my city center tour:        street art, a beautiful butterfly framed inside a circle - take a closer look... do you see the skulls, bones and faces???

framed by houses: well, this one is a tourist-tour-classic: Hallgrímskirkja at Skólavörðustígur (the brown and green building on the left is one of my favorite spots: a bookstore with a wonderful selection of magazines, nice tables with a view, free wlan and great coffee)

 Esjan, framed by houses and a fence at Vesturgata

 

Round: take a LOOK at this cool street art found in Vesturgata, 101 RVK

 Framed and round: me, framed by this amazing door, inside a circle...

Framed by walls... 

 

framed: take a look at "inside" my childhood - because this is the place where I grew up as a child (Sólvallagata)... this is where I played with my younger sisters, picked berries from those trees, inspected worms with my wonderful childhood friend Ásthildur and did a lot of other crazy stuff... everything is still the same, just a bit older and in a strange way smaller...

Bat Mask

Last year I wanted to be really practical and bought some Halloween costumes for my boys on sale, for them to use this year. This summer, since we live in a really small flat, I decided to pack all things unnecessary away  - what a wonderful feeling that was! The only problem is that on the same day my boys needed their costumes, I discovered that I had packed them away and it was impossible to find them again. :-(

What is a mother supposed to do in a situation like that?? I had to solve this costume-problem right away... so I went online and found this very cool, simple and quick Bat Mask for my older one. I also bought some really cheap but pretty black velvet (þunnt flauel, 3m á 1400 kr. í Rúmfó) and made him a black bat-cape - all in all it took me about 1 hour to make those 2 things... he just wore black pants and a black shirt and turned into a bat...

I bought my younger one a cowboy-gun&a sheriff star badge - he wore jeans and a shirt and turned into a cowboy...

What I learned from this Halloween-costume-situation: costumes don´t always have to be complicated, store bought and expensive to be fun! My boys had SO MUCH FUN with those simple, homemade costumes - and I really had fun making them... I think I might even make more masks like that for them to play with at home or as gifts... how about a fox-mask, a superhero-mask or a bear-mask???  Do you have more mask-ideas??

I´m so sorry, but the quality of those pictures is really poor... the light has been really bad lately and the weather has made it totally impossible to shoot some pics outside.... but at least you can see the costumes! 

 My Bat boy:

a bat and a cowboy:

Ikea-hack

I have a favorite spot in the living room where I love to sit and knit. My knitting-corner can be quite chaotic and my knitting-related-things have been taking over the rest of the room - do you know the feeling? That´s why I went to IKEA the other day, and I bought a "Rast" chest of drawers for my knitting-corner in the attempt to make the living room look a bit more tidy and my husband happy :-)

Since Rast doesn´t look very pretty or interesting the way you get it at the store, I knew from the start that I wanted to pimp it up. I used some wall-paint I had at home and bought some really pretty knobs at Bauhaus... I´m not only very happy with the result, but also quite astonished about the way it turned out.

Here you can see how it looked before...  and now take a look at it after my hacking:

my new, off white Rast

 

 Love those knobs... they make such all the difference

 My new, tidy and well organized knitting/crochet-corner... 

I made the crochet-jar myself...

... and as you might have guessed, I got those retro-looking, wonderful doilies at my favorite          thrift store :-)

 

Growth

While reading a great book about digital photography the other day, I got this Idea of a weekly blog-post-project that could help me develop my photography-skills. 

Johanna, the talented hobby-photographer from Knittingmydayaway is also very interested in photography, so she decided to go along and do the same thing! We are presenting you a new project on Wednesdays on our blogs - we always have the same task but we never let each other know what kind of pictures we are talking until we post them on our blogs... meaning I´m as excited as you are to see what Johanna is doing!

At first, I was afraid that my little Casio Exilim camera wasn´t good enough for this project, but then I red two things in my book that helped me get over this fear and I hope they inspire you too...

1. The best pictures of all times where shot with cameras, that where so much simpler 

than the once we have today.

2. The camera is important - but the person, standing behind the lens is much more important!

This week we decided on a theme, "growth". 

I´m using my own, first baby shoes as a motive - for me, they symbolize "growth" 

Important: please click on the pictures to see them in full size!!!