Christmas notes

verdande — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 02:28:57 +0000

I know most teachers would prefer a gift card of some kind, but this year we went with the handmade gifts.

I finished the Noro Scarf and decided it was a Christmas present for …me!

It looks very cool with my black coat.

I spotted this bookmark on Pinterest a couple of days before Christmas and decided to whip two of them up for some book gifts. I am honestly not sure how suitable they are for bookmarks, but they are kind of cute – especially with the contrasting embroidery floss.

Craft area

verdande — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 03:50:28 +0000

One of the great things about moving to the US has been the amount of space in our new house. I finally had room for a proper crafting area, and promptly did what every other crafter does – hauled off to IKEA and bought some Expedit…

The Expedit desk and shelves, a new sewing thread bobbin stand from Michaels and my magnetic whiteboard from the Container Store have really helped with the organisation of all my crafting stuff. Now I actually look forward to sitting down to sew.

All my books and patterns are close by, too.

My spinning wheel has got its own corner where I can keep it if we’re having guests and can’t have it in the living room.

My inaugural sewing project in my new space was a trash bag for the sewing desk. I have seen this ingenious type of bag in my mother-in-law’s sewing room, and I wanted one for myself:

It sits on the desk, right next to the sewing machine, so I can get rid of small fabric remnants and snipped threads right away, keeping the work area clean.

If you click any of the pictures, you can see notes I added to the pictures in Flickr. But you probably aren’t THAT interested about just what is on my shelves, are you?

Crafting with kids

verdande — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 04:29:00 +0000

Decorating your door for Christmas (really, any particular “season”) seems much more common here than in Norway, so the kids and I decided that when in Rome…

We took a trip to our local, very peculiar hobby store (it stocks everything from French curves to dish cloths, from gum balls to photo corners) and stocked up, not being entirely clear on the game plan:

To begin with, I wrapped the styrofoam ring with jute ribbon. This reminds me of my mother’s old Christmas wreath, which was a ring made of braided jute embellished with a red ribbon. It was hard wrapping the ribbon evenly, and it wasn’t completely successful.

After that, I cut holly leaves from doubled green felt (with fusible interfacing between the layers), sewed some “veins” on the leaves and added some red plastic pearls for the holly berries. The bird (a “cardinal”, according to the wrapping), may have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas or even the season of winter as far as I know, but it’s red, and that’s good enough for us.

It was a little harder to involve the kids than I had thought, mainly because the glue got absolutely everywhere, and the kids didn’t like the stuff on their hands. But we’ll get better at this.

And here is the finished product. We may yet take it down to add some more holly or maybe a snowflake or two. But we’ll leave this up for a while and see if we miss anything.

Green!

verdande — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 04:12:49 +0000

One of my new friends here in the US is moving back after a sabbatical here in DC, and I thought she deserved a little send-off. I gave her a knit washcloth and gave her a bar of olive soap to go with it. I already had a green set of cards, but no coordinating wrapping paper, so I made a gift bag out of newsprint. Not the prettiest option, but it works.

Reappearing

verdande — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:15:52 +0000

So, this has been a busy six months. Some of you may remember that this blog used to be called “Expat knits and crochets”. I am once again an expat, this time based in Washington, D.C. The last few months have been filled up with everything but knitting, spinning or crocheting. There have been school and preschool entry bureaucracy, getting settled into the house, learning my way around US grocery stores, identifying necessary foodstuffs and baking supplies…

But I’m back! And I have a couple of small things to show you:

Around Halloween I made a few dishcloths in very autumn-y colours. I gave a few away as hostess gifts (the expat life!), but some are hanging around my kitchen, cheering me up whenever I see them.

I needed black mittens. That’s really all there is to this project. Garter-cuff mittens by Deborah Newton, in black Sandnes Smart superwash wool.

I have a couple of WIPs going – I’m leaving out yet another hostess gift dishcloth…

This is, yes, a Noro striped scarf, bolstering my reputation as an extremely tardy bandwagon-jumper. These scarves made the blog round a couple of years ago, I think. I am striping two balls of the same colourway, but started the balls from opposite ends.

Montego Bay Scarf in Fleece Artist SeaSilk. I bought the yarn as a souvenir in London in 2007, and it still holds the honour as the most expensive single skein I have ever bought.

Coffee date dress

verdande — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 21:59:19 +0000

I recently tried my hand at the lovely Coffee Date Dress pattern (free download on the Burda website). I used a duvet cover I bought on sale recently, as I intended it as a muslin. In the end, however, I decided to line it and install a zipper after all. It was a good learning experience, and I’ve worn the dress a couple of times. There are, however, a couple of adjustments I need to make if I ever make this dress again.

Based on the measurements on the pattern, I cut the pattern and the fabric to a size 40 in the shoulder and bust, but a size 42 waist and hip. That, however, turned out to be ridiculously loose in the waist. So next time, I’ll go down to a 40 throughout.

I also should have adjusted for my long torso (a lesson I should have learnt already). So next time, I will drop the top points of the bust darts and the waist line (bottom of the bodice) by two centimetres.

It does work, however, especially if I wear it with the elastic belt I made to go with it after discovering the waist fit issues:

Jeans rescue

verdande — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:18:28 +0000

My favourite pair of jeans – high-waisted stretch flared jeans from FCUK – recently died, in that they developed a hole on one of the knees. It’s been lying in wait while I pondered my options. I thought of patching it with a fun applique, but I realised I wouldn’t ever wear it outside the house. So the other night I took a pair of scissors to it, and cut it right across the knees where the hole was.

The top half became a knee-length pair of shorts, which will come with me on vacation shortly:

The wide flared legs gave me an idea. I opened up the inside seam on both of them, sewed them together, added a wide band of ribbing (maternity-style. I am – as previously vouch-safed – not pregnant, but who can deny that maternity-style stretchy ribbing is the most comfortable of all waistband styles?) and made a skirt:

There are, of course, two other benefits to the ribbing. First – no zipper! what’s not to like. And secondly, I can wear it higher or lower, because the ribbing just hugs my curves no matter where the skirt sits.

I may embellish these a little later.

Quickie

verdande — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:01:47 +0000

I have so much bloggable material right now, but its blogging has been postponed for lack of proper blogging time. When my sister started SMSing me, asking when I would blog my new dress, I knew it was time to lower my ambitions and just blog the damn things, already.

These t-shirts, bought for 173 kroner at Dressmann(!), and some ribbed cotton from the Stoff & Stil discount pile

…inspired by this tutorial became this:

(not pregnant, just unfit with bad posture).

After the Acer Cardigan, I needed a quick and simple knit. I took some leftover silk and the Lacy Baktus pattern, and three days later, I had this:

I sewed up a small yoyo pin to go with it:

…using a leftover piece of Kaffe Fassett Roman Glass fabric from this – made using this tutorial:

And I also made this little thing for my sewing:

Epic project

verdande — Thu, 26 May 2011 19:46:31 +0000

January 2010:

March 2010:

January 2011:

February 2011:

May 2011:

[fibre: jamieson&smith shetland
spun: short draw, two-ply to a worsted weight on my ashford traditional
pattern: acer cardigan
all posts on this project are here]

Bibs from a repurposed pillow case

verdande — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:28:42 +0000

This is one of my favourite types of repurposing. Sewing fabric is very expensive where I live, especially if you want nice prints. But linens and bedlinens are often very cheap, especially when shops start discounting to get rid of last season’s patterns and colours. I bought a nice set of bedding for very little recently, and decided to repurpose the pillow case for two bibs I want to give to my best friend for her new baby. The backing fabric is some towelling I bought as a remnant, so the bibs are nice and cushy.

I’m not particularly proud of the topstitching, and I had to undo one of the snaps two times, but they’re not too bad, I think.

Modeled by my trusty old bib model: