charity-knitting

At the moment, I´m really busy, knitting hats for a "charity-event" called: "help Japan" (hjálpum Japan). If you read icelandic, you can read about it on the following link:
http://www.postur.is/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-29/26_read-1501/
It´s the first time I participate in a thing like this. I decided to knit hats for this event, because hats are a really fun and quick knit, so you hardly get bored making those. I also decided I wouldn´t knit anything but hats for this charity-event for the rest of this month! Above you can see 5 of the hats I´ve already made. I had 2 more, but I gave them away - 1 to a birthdayboy and 1 to a little german boy...

A favorite one - old and new

Freyr wearing his new green hat
Freyr wearing the new green hat

Bidenam wearing the old green hat


Freyr wearing the old green hat

This hat has a history of it´s own! When Bidenam was born, somebody gave him a lot of used clothes - one of those clothes was a green hat with stripes made out of fine cotton. Bidenam really liked it and we used it a lot! When it got too small for him, Freyr Dasima started using it and it became his all time favorite hat. He even had this green hat on inside (no matter where he was) and he even slept with it on - so when it became to small, he was soooooo sad and of course I had to make my sad boy another one! But it had to look exactly the old one - so I had to make 3 different versions of it until I finally had one that looked just like the old one! I´m so happy with the result and I´m definitely going to make Bidenam one for the summer too.
The great thing about this cotton-hat:
1. you can wash it in the washing maschine
2. it´s not too hot in the icelandic summertime (sometimes cold wind)
3. it´s soft and cosy!!

Progress on chamomile-/fjallagrös-oil

My chamomile/fjallagrös-oil has been standing in the kitchen window for over 2 weeks now, so I opened the jar for the first time to see what has happend in those last 2 weeks. It was really exciting to find out , that the oil has a really mild and pleasant smell of chamomile and when you rub it in, your skin becomes really, really soft! So the experiment seems to be a full succeed! I just have to wait for 1 week now to make my salve and other exciting things out of it!

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!!!

Progress

A while ago, I posted this one: http://kh-handcrafts.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-project-verkefni-mitt.html
I´m still working on my "grandma-afghan" and still loving it. I often take this project with me when I go somewhere or when my other projects get boring and I need a brake! :-) I want it to be very big so I´ve got a looooong way to go - but I don´t mind because the way I see it, some project are quick ones while others are a long-term-thing. In the end, it will get finished.

homemade necklace

When I was surfing around the other day, looking at all the pretty things other creative bloggers have been creating I found this interesting blog: http://paperraindrops.blogspot.com. This blogger made herself a dino-necklace out of a almost nothing, and I really wanted to try this out. Today I went on a hunt for things that I could turn into something special and found this: tiny plastic-toy-animals, acrylpaint (silver, gold etc.) and hooks in "Smáralind". At home I found some other things, like old jewellery that I have been using to decorate my knitted stuff, a jewellery chain etc. After painting a squirrel with silver paint and fixing a hook in it - and combing it with some old stuff this is what came out:

Treasures of nature

I´ve always been interested in the healing-power of wild herbs, especially the icelandic ones. Since I´ve got the time to do different things now, I started some experiments with herbs, after reading a lot about the healing-power of herbs, homemade balms, creams and oils on the internet. My first thing to do was to mix up some dry chamomile with olive oil in a glass jar, which I then put in my kitchen window, since it´s the sunniest spot in the flat - now I have to be very patient (so hard!) for 2-3 weeks and after that I can mix it up with some other things to make a balm and some other things out of it! This is so exciting!