small things - big things

 When it comes to creating, I have a thing for "unusual material". Everywhere I go I´ve got my eyes open for interesting things (some people might say I´m crazy, but that´s why I love spending time at big hardware stores like Bauhaus). 

The other day I went to  a place where they sell material for the fishing industry: chains, ropes and yarn to make fishnets among other things. I fell for some white, shiny, soft and flexible yarn they use for fishnets. I didn´t know what I was going to do with it, but it was way too pretty to just leave it there :-) 

I started by making a crochet-cover for a mason-jar I use for pencils at my workspace, just to get a feeling for the material.  I used one of my biggest crochet-hooks and now I´ve got a lot of  ideas on what to do next with this exciting material! 

A LOT of beautiful yarn for fishnet-making...

... makes an interesting texture when used for a crochet-cover

I used really thin cotton-yarn for this one - a interesting contrast to my fishnet-yarn-cover

 

together in peace and harmony 

simple and pretty

The other day my oldest sister came back from a trip to Germany, with her bags filled with really nice necklaces she bought at a local market. Those necklaces are so simple, mostly made out of wooden beads in different sizes and colors - and SO beautiful! 

I felt really inspired and the day after I met my sister, I went straight to the next "Tiger"-shop, where they sell small bags with different kind of wooden beads and started making my own necklaces. 

I was so happy with the result, that I bought some more beads in different colors at "Tiger" and am  already fantasizing about making myself some more of those. I´d love to try dyeing my own beads with something like nail polish or maybe fabric-dye?

The first one

Nr. 2 - love those colors - this one makes me happy!

Nr. 3 - those are not wooden beads but really pretty anyway...

All three together

bracelets for boys

My boys decided they wanted to make each other brotherhood-bracelets and of course I had to fulfill their wish :-) I would never had guessed that they would have so much fun, for such a long time, making each other bead-bracelets - and I thought bracelet-making was something only girls would have fun doing... I was so very wrong! 

 

My older one, so very concentrated

My younger one, also very, very concentrated

 

Beautiful hands

choosing the right beads for your brother is really important...

I´m so glad they are such good friends.

  

Brotherhood

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...

A giant

Two day´s ago, inspired by pictures of hand carved crochet hooks on the internet, I got this great idea: why not make my own oversize crochet hook? I was so very excited about this idea, that I went straight out on my balcony at 10 o´clock in the evening (it´s still quite bright in the night at that time in Iceland at the moment) with: a branch of a pine tree (smells like christmas :-), my cute little saw, my wonderful carving knife and some sandpaper and started working on my giant.

My mission was a success - after a while, I actually had a well working, oversize crochet hook and I still can´t believe I did it. Of course I had to test it out immediately... I used 6 strands of plötulopi & 2 strands of einband and made a classic granny. At first I had to figure out how to use this huge thing but after that it was a piece of cake and so much fun! 

Now I can´t wait to try out some other, more complicated granny´s and see how they turn out! 

My giant hook is about 20cm long and has a diameter of 2,5-3 cm

  just to show you the difference:

 

It still smells like christmas... 

 

Huge granny (27x27 cm) and a normal granny (12x12cm)

So squishy, soft and cosy... 

natural dyed wooden beads

I´ve seen people write about their experience with dyeing wooden beads (ólakkaðar og ómálaðar tréperlur) with natural dyes, on different blogs. Inspired by those blogs and some pictures on Pinterest I decided to give it a try!

I got some wooden, undyed beads (Litir og Föndur, Skólavörðustíg) and let them cook together with some wool in Alum - I don´t know if it makes any sense using Alum... but I did it anyway! :-)

I then tryed out the following dyestuff:
1. Curcuma (Túrmerik)
2. The liquid from pickled Red beetroot
3. Grounded chili and paprika
4. Cranberry Apple Zinger Tea from Celestial Seasonings
5. Loyd´s Blackberry&Blueberry-tea

How I did it:
I poured boiling water over the dyestuff in different jars. I put the jars out in the sun on my balcony and let the beads soak in the liquids for 2 days and 1 night - I occasionally shook the jars a little bit.

Result:
I was really amazed and at the same time disapointed by the result - only 2 of the things above gave some colour:

1. Curcuma: great result; wonderful, mustard-yellow
2. Loyd´s Blackberry&Blueberry-tea: an interesting purple-brownish... I kind of like it...

I expected that the beetroots would give the best bead-dye (pink) - but I was really surprised and disapointed that my wooden beads didn´s soak in any colour at all! I wasn´t really expecting much of the chili/paprika-blend and the Zinger Tea...

Other natural bead-dyes I tryed out: 
I also tryed boiling the beads together with some wool with different plants that normally give you a strong colour like rhubarb-leaves, madder root, red and yellow onionskins - but none of those things worked out as a bead-dye (no colour at all).

Now I´m wondering:
1. Can you think of any other possible well-working bead-dye-material I could try out?
2. Should I try getting a different kind of  undyed wooden beads in another store?

Me and my older son love the result - we now fight over who get´s to wear them... I´ll have to let him make his own... ;-)

Curcuma-beads... yummi, love them!

Loyd´s Blackberry&Blueberry-tea-beads - nice...

Cross stitch and pretty in pink

 

When my husband and I where living in germany, we sometimes watched this televisionshow where the host used to end every show with this quote in german: "alles wird gut" or something like "everything is going to be just fine". ... we have been using it since and love it - it sounds so very soothing! Soooo... when so my mother gave me this wonderful woven fabric in the perfect colour (mustard of course:-) the other day, I new right away what I wanted to do with it: a "cross stitch piece" with our favorite quote, since I really wanted it on my wall as a reminder and also just for fun! We really like the result and we can´t wait to find the right spot for this piece!

I used my own handdyed einband from Ístex (left overs) for this project:
grey: crowberries
brown: lichen
yellow: Rumex longifolius

Letters: found somewhere on the internet (I picture-googled: "cross stitch letters")
Pattern: from the wonderful icelandic "Sjónabók" (if you picture-google it, you´ll see why it´s so wonderful)
Frame:  from a thriftstore

 

my current knitting-project:

 

Hama pearls and plötulopi

The other day it was my mothers birthday and we decided to make our own birthdaycards for her. I´ve told you before that I really love making my own birthdaycards, but this time we wanted to do something very special and totally different. Inspired by all the wonderful Hama-pearls-projects on Pinterest we came up with this:

I made this one - a classic star from the beautiful icelandic patternbook

"Sjónabók"

Freyr (4 y.) made this pretty thing:
Bidenam (5 y.) made this free-style-Hama, I really don´t know why, but it´s a shoe :-) He thought a lot about the colour-combination!

Of course, we had a lot of fun, crafting together - but what I also liked about the Hama-pearls was, that it really helped my boy´s working on their patience!

We gave my mum/grandma this (among other things) mason-jar-crochet-candle-light, I used my own hand-dyed einband (blueberries)

At the moment I'm working a lot with plötulopi, or icelandic unspun wool from Ístex. The interesting thing about this material is, that it is so versatile. You can use as many threads as you want to: just one thread (single) and than you get a feather-light but at the same time very warm garment that you can wear underneath every jacket or coat. If you use two threads, your garment becomes similar to léttlopi (worsted weight), three threads are similar to Álafosslopi (bulky) or just as many as you want to, depending on your project... the fun thing is, that you get really interesting colour-combinations if you use thread in different colours - like in this hat:

7 threads of plötulopi and 1 thread of einband (lace) in 2 different colours - very warm, bulky and cozy and the colour is so very alive!

It has also been very popular to use one strand of plötulopi and einband (lace) together. I´ve never quite understood why that´s any different from using 2 strands of plötulopi or léttlopi - until now. I just finished my first project, using this yarn-combination and now I really do understand why it´s so popular - for many different reasons:

1. single, unspun plötulopi is very fragile while knitting and splits very easally. One thread of the much stronger einband (lace) solves the problem.

2. Using einband opens up endless possibilities in colour-combinations! This way I get the possibility to use my naturally-dyed einband, since I can´t dye the fragile plötulopi with plants like I did here:

1 thread light grey plötulopi and einband, dyed with rhubarb.

3. This yarn-combination is so much lighter than I thought - it´s nothing like léttlopi. It´s feather light, but at the same time very warm and will last for a long time because of the strong einband.

4. It has a wonderful texture... I just love it! It might even become my favorite plötulopi-yarn-combination!!

Felted...

Ever since I saw a post about felted balls and got some great ideas on what to do with them, on the very fun blog:
"systraseiður",
... I´ve been wanting to make my own felted balls.

I asked my very good friends Google and Youtube for advice and found this:
1. Youtube: making feltballs with Rachel Greenland

2. Martha Stewart (btw: you can find just about everything there... I just love this website): "how to felt balls"

I thought this would be a fun project to do with my boys, so I picked them up early from Kindergarten last week, and we got some wool (ullarkemba) together at the wool factory-outlet Álafoss. The two of them (and me too ;-) had so much fun all the way on this felting-journey... picking the colours and the wool, rolling the wool between our hands and dipping them in the soapwater. The whole thing had a very calming effect on the us and we listend to some nice christmasmusic while rolling and squeezing the wool... we love the result... this is such a great way to spend some quality time with your kids!



Something green...


Something red...


Experimenting...


My white ones...


Something purple...


Some more experimenting...


Creative Freyr...




Creative Bidenam...

Origami

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There is something about Origami that I love. It looks so beautiful, graceful... and complicated to do! ;-) Therefor I´ve been wanting to know how to fold some Origami for a few years now, but I´ve never had the time and peace necessary to do it - a good thing:
nr. 1: that I´ve got plenty of time and peace at the moment
nr. 2: I´ve been rediscovering youtube in the last few days
nr. 3: stumbled over some beautiful but cheap origami-paper the other day

I just found this great Video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4L5nDDgEEk that helped me make my beautiful butterflies. My friends and family can be sure to get an origami-butterfly on every card and gift they get from me in the next months! This is soooo much fun and I just can´t wait to learn some more!!!