Mousie

My little niece had birthday earlier this month. I decided she should have a cute little mousie of her own and that this would be the perfect opportunity to finally knit Ysolda Teague´s Mousie from the book Whimsical Little Knits (you can also buy the pattern online here).  

This was the first time I knit a toy and it was surprisingly fun. The pattern starts with the tail/Icord and is knitted in the round, ending with the tip of his nose. I used léttlopi for this one and the pink yarn used for the tail, ears and nose is dyed with madder root.  This irresistible little mousie is not only really really cute, but also an extremely quick knit...

  

  

And just because I was having so much fun with my new lens... 

Yarn dyeing with kool aid & knitting for a baby

I´ve been knitting quite a lot for a baby that will soon be born

I started by knitting a baby-hat, using this pattern - it´s in Icelandic but there are so many similar patterns out there for free - but if you read Icelandic I really do recommend this one: it´s so simple, extremely quick and you get a beautiful, really practical hat for your little one. 

I loved this kind of hats when I had my two sons and think you just can´t have to many of those. 

For all those projects I used the same yarn: Trysil baby-yarn from my stash. I really liked working with it - it´s sooooo soft, light and wonderful - perfect for baby-clothing... so sad that we can´t buy this yarn in Iceland anymore :-(

For this one I used needles nr. 2,5 - that makes it a newborn-size

For those hats I used Trysil-baby-yarn I dyed with Kool-aid (keypt í Megastore), 

using this tutorial by Xandy.

Blue: red/blue/white Kool-aid (needles nr. 3,5)

green: lemon-lime Kool-aid (needles nr. 3,5)

red: cherry Kool-aid (in the small packets/bréf í Megastore - I didn´t get the same deep-red color from the one in a tub/dunkur í Kosti), needles nr. 2,5 (newborn size)

 I really had fun dyeing yarn with kool-aid and I really loved the way it turned out - I´ll definitely be using this dye-material more in the future. 

... just can´t wait to see those hats on the baby´s head :-) 

I also made a sweater - I really don´t like knitting cables, 

but I decided to try to get rid of my cable-phobia for this project. 

I used a pattern from the book "Fleiri Prjónaperlur"

about the pattern:

I really had fun knitting this sweater - I even enjoyed knitting the cables for the first time ever.

It´s a quick and simple knit - the only thing is, that I didn´t like the way the pattern is written and a beginner could have some serious problems getting through the second part of the instructions (lack of information and not very clear).

But I DO LOVE he outcome - and more importantly: the mother to-be did too :-) 

(even my husband said: can´t you make one for me, using the same yarn and pattern - only bigger?)

Yarn: Trysil baby-yarn from my stash

buttons: from my button-stash... got those from my mother and they where so perfect for this project  - it´s almost like they where just sitting there, waiting to get on this sweater!

I love knitting baby-things... so quick, cute and soft - instant gratification!

Christmas is coming...

I´ve been busy creating different things lately.

The first thing I want to tell you about is our new advent-candle-holder. I really love driftwood and I found this beautiful piece in the north of Iceland about 2 years ago. I took it with me because I loved it, without knowing what I was going to do with it. Right now, I´m so glad I did! 

Using my pretty piece of driftwood, old candle-holders with a needle at the bottom - the ones you would normally use for candle-wreaths (like those) & tiny wooden stars I bought at Laugarvegur (púkó og smart) I made this really simple and natural-looking advent-candle-holder. :-)   

Ooooohhhh how I love it...

Kría

The second thing I want to tell you about is my second Kria-shawl - what a wonderful project... you can work on it everywhere and in almost every situation (except maby while driving or sleeping)... 

you can take a look at my first one in this post and on Raverly. 

yarn: my own, handdyed einband (icelandic wool), dyed with different kind of plants

made for: my lovely friend Rodrigo for his birthday

Button: from my "button-stash"

And now to my nr. 3: my candle-decorating. 

How I did it: 

1. I found some lovely pictures on pinterest (you can find them over there in my "jól" board), printed them out (normal paper, landscape layout, with black ink only) 

2. Cut the picture out in the right size, depending on your candle

3. Finally, I mod-podged my candle about 3 times, glued the picture on the candle and mod-podged it from the outside. 

It has been burning for a few days now, the paper has still not gone up in flames and we really love the way it looks... 

I´m thinking about making some special designs, using Illustrator as Christmas-gifts...

Crochet snowflakes and christmas in my heart

These little crochet decorations simply make me happy - I´m so glad I learned how to crochet this year! :-)

Snowflake from the book "Þóra"

Crochet hearts, the one in the front is from the book "Þóra" and the one in the back is a free tutorial, found here

I really loved making Lucy´s (attic24) snowflakes - they are so easy to make, quick and really really pretty! I just couldn´t stop making them and had to try out other materials than cotton... bulky lopi, léttlopi and einband (jurtalitað), which I dyed myself with dandelions and Rumex longifolius (njóli)

Since the light was so poor last week (it´s dark most of the time at the moment) I wasn´t able to take any pictures (word of the week). This shot is in a way a little something to compensate for that. Last weeks task was to choose a little spot (a room, a corner of your garden, balcony... ) and look for something interesting to take pictures of.
I went right outside my front door and tried to find something interesting there - not an easy task - but since I love moss, this little spot, covered with green moss is really interesting in my eyes...

My roots

It has been a dream of mine for some time now, to dye with rhubarb-roots (rabbarbararót). It´s not easy to get this dyematerial, so that beeing able to make a strong dye from those roots has only been a dream of mine... until last friday! The thing is, that day my cousin G. called and told me he knows somebody who is getting rid of rhubarb in their garden and if I wanted to and could go there right away, I could get some rhubarb-roots. 

I drove like a mad person to Garðarbær and was expecting to get 1-2 roots... but never in my dreams did I imagine that I would drive back home with 2 big garbage bags, filled with roots! Wow... what an amount of roots... and how much beautiful colors could I possibly get out of this dyematerial!! 

Now I just have a really tiny problem: how to dry this amount of roots without filling up every empty space in our really small 3-room flat? We´ll see... wo der Wille ist, ist auch ein Weg... 

Thanky you so much cousin G. - you made me really happy and I can´t wait to make a strong rhubarb-roots-dye! 

 A huge root... gigantic!

shades, texture, sweet smell...

  cutting the roots so that they´ll dry faster and better

beautiful from the inside... 

 

so much dye-material - love it! 

Another thing I wanted to share with you are 2 dyeing-experiments I did the other day:

I dyed some kambgarn (wool) with the roots of Rumex acetosella (hundasúra). I had read on the internet, that it should give you pink or grey color.  I used Alum and then dyed with the roots, and got a pretty brown colour out of it. Even if I washed it out with a small amount of salmiak spiritus, it only got a slightly different brown shade. It´s quite similar to the brown colour you get from coffee - and coffee is so much easier to get than those small and tiny roots, so I would prefer coffee to get this brown shade. 

kambgarn dyed with the roots of Rumex acetosella

The other thing I did, was dyeing einband and kambgarn (wool) with horse-tail. I had read that it should give you a pink or a grey shade - but the only color I got was a pretty, even yellow.  Well, yellow was not the color I was expecting and aiming for - so hoping for a miracle, I tryed dyeing it again with Rumex acetosella (the leaves and flowers), since I had heard it should give you a green tone. And once again, I just got a deeper yellow... really anoyed I threw the wool into water mixed up with salmiak spiritus - and the color I got from that was just wonderful: a golden mustard but really the most pretty one I´ve ever gotten! 

I DO love this golden mustard 

Boredom-can (leiðindadós)

There are days, where my boys are soooo bored and everything I think of, no matter what: they only stick with it for 2-4 minutes and after that, they want something new... does this sound familiar to you? Well, to me it does and that´s why I made the "boredom-can" (leiðindadós)... 

What I did: 

I covered an old cocoa-power-can with pretty owl-paper (keypt i Tiger) and wrote small notes with different acitivities my boys can do on their own like: lego (small), lego duplo, listen to a story (CD), puzzle (big), puzzle (small), paint, play with knights, read books, play football in the garden, Playmo... and whatever I could think of and they like doing on their own. 

The rules of the Boredom-can are really simple - in fact there is only one:

1. Draw a note and do whatever it says for at least 15-30 minutes, or even longer, depending on the activity.

The boys take their turn on drawing a note and until now, they always do what to note tells them to do and love it every single time... and the amazing thing is, most of the time they only have to draw 1-2 notes, and after that the boredom is gone and they start playing like they usally do... 

Keeping my boys busy was really important to me this week, since I´ve been dyeing a lot of yarn (einband, kambgarn and léttlopi) - with madder root  and lichen. Next week I´ll do green-dyeing: lupina flower and "deschampsia caespitosa" (little bit of salmiak afterwards)...

kambgarn, madder root (first dye)

 

 einband, lichen (first dye)

On the 17. june, the icelandic independence day in the city center of Reykjavík

a picture taken in my favorite part of Reykjavík (west, 101) - I grew up in this neighborhood... some day I´ll move back there...

Dyeing with Lupina

It´s finally Lupina-season again! I´ve been looking so much forward to this time of year, since you get a beautiful green flower from the Lupina flowers without using any other chemicals but Alum. I´ve tryed dyeing with every single part of Lupina, the leaves (only the green leaves), the flowers (only the purple part), the root and the seed-pods (read about it in this post). We have a lot of Lupina in Iceland so it´s very easy to get a lot of it in a short amount of time, without having to look very far...

About 2 weeks ago, I went for a walk with my boys with 2 bags and together we filled them up with the flowers from the Lupina. Picking the flowers with them is so much more fun than beeing alone and they are getting really interested in knowing what every single flower, plant and tree is called... so it´s kind of educational for them too.

I dyed some "kambgarn" with the flowers and got a wonderful, light mint-green colour... like always the pictures don´t really show the true nature and beauty of the natural colour, but here you go anyway:

the boys helping me out:

Picking flowers with mum is so exhausting!

Beautiful, wonderful, amazing Lupina flowers in my dye pot!

 Kambgarn, dyed with the Lupina flowers (only the purple part), light mint-green:

Kambgarn, dyed with the Lupina flowers:

Lupina-light mint-green close-up:

me and my boys:

léttlopi - on the left: red onion skins;

to the right: Rumex longifolius (washed with a little bit of salmiak spiritus)

where the wool comes from...

 pretty little thing

Madder root and mustard yellow

At the moment I´m working on several projects at the same time like always... last weekend I started a new shawl, Hyrna Herborgar - a shawl I´ve made once before together with RodPrjonar and Gummi. I really love this pattern - it´s quite quick for a lace shawl, looks so beautiful when finished and it´s a traditional icelandic design. I´m using icelandic lace (einband) dyed by myself with madder root. It really is amazing how much colour you get from madder root - this yarn was the 4th dye... and all in all I dyed about 6 times with the same material. How amazing is that??

madder-root-yarn and my Hyrna Herborgar:

I´m also still working on my crochet-skills - and I´m happy to say, that I'm starting to develop a good sense for my crochethooks. What I like about crochet is, that once you´ve finished a piece, you´ve got the feeling that you´ve really accomplished something special... maby it´s because I'm a beginner in this field?
Yesterday I learned how to make a new square, using a chart from this site. I used cotton yarn in mustard-yellow (from Söstrene Grene), because I've got a thing for this colour at the moment... It might turn into a pillowcase once I´ve finished more of those - I´m thinking of joining 2 different kind squares, using this mustard yellow together with grey... just love that colour-combination!

 my new square:

pretty colours: 

Have I already mentioned in this post, how much I like mustard yellow at the moment?  Because of that, I just couldn´t help myself and started a new kind of collar, using this yarn ;-) I´m very excited to see how it turnes out...

my new collar in progress: