vrijdag 24 mei 2013

Some Knitting and Some Embroidery









Yep, that's what has been going on, craft-wise, some knitting and some embroidery.

As for knitting, I was sort of in between projects, so I have mainly been knitting on socks recently.
In the meantime I was trying to figure out if it was possible to knit a chevron shawl in the way that I envisioned it in my head. Well, it took some trying and ripping out, but then I finally figured out how to do it, and I have started knitting a Simple Chevron Shawl out of cotton yarn from my stash.
I like the way that it's turning out, and it uses up quite a bit of stash yarn, which is good too.

As for embroidery, somebody recently asked me if I had already finished my Emily Peacock Tapestry 'Mexican Tree of Life' cushion. Well, ehm, no I haven't actually... In the winter I usually don't do a lot of embroidery, but now that spring is here (sort of) and there is more daylight, I have taken it up again.
At the moment I am alternating between two embroidery projects.
The first project is the small table cloth that I bought during our summer holiday in Cochem (Germany) last year and that I keep in a nice project bag bought at Jansje.
My second embroidery project is my Mexican Tree of Life. I'm trying to finish the table cloth first, so that I can start using it. But I absolutely love how the Mexican Tree of Life is turning out, so I think I will officially turn this into my Summer of 2013 Project. I'm hoping to be able to show you some progress here soon, and then hopefully at the end of the Summer I will be able to show you a very bright and cheerful Mexican Tree of Life cushion!

Color Inspiration from the Keukenhof









I visited the Keukenhof several times this spring, before it finally closed last week. Because of the cold spring, most of the Keukenhof (bulb) flowers were still in bloom in the middle of May, providing a lot of color inspiration as usual. And because of the cold weather, there was also plenty of opportunity to wear one's knitwear...

donderdag 23 mei 2013

Back to the Middle Ages












Last Sunday we visited the Archeon, where we went back to the Middle Ages during a visit to the 'Grijze Jager dag'. This day was inspired by the 'Ranger's Apprentice' books and the 'Brotherband books' by author John Flanagan. There was a Brotherband-inspired fight staged in the big arena, there were knights on horses, and there were also many old techniques to be admired, including weaving, needle binding (which I had never seen before, so I found that really interesting), and drop spindling.
The weather has been rainy and quite cold for weeks here, so we were lucky in that it on this particular Sunday it didn't rain once all day, and the temperature was quite nice too.
On the way to and from the Archeon we came across several flower bulb fields (still in bloom, because of all this cold weather) and living as close to Schiphol airport as we do, one is used to seeing airplanes all the time.

vrijdag 17 mei 2013

One Hat, Two Fingerless Mitts, and Five Socks








Unfortunately the little cable that I used to connect my digital camera to the PC has mysteriously gone missing some time ago. This is why I haven't uploaded any photo's recently, or written any blog posts. But we've got a new cable now, yay! and I've got lots of projects to show you :)

I'll start off with my knitting projects, and - as the title already suggest - the knitting projects include one hat, two fingerless mitts, and five socks (the sixth sock is started as well by now).

The first project to come off my needles was a pair of fingerless mitts. For this I used left-overs from the Loret Karman 'Van Gogh Sunflowers' Dutch Palette that I used for making my 'Steps'.

Once the fingerless mitts were finished, I still had a little bit of yarn left. I then decided to use the Margot Wittendorp yarn that I bought at the Ambachtendag (see my previous blog post) and combine this with the Loret Karman left-over yarn, to make myself a hat.
I made a very simple hat design, and I really like how the two types of yarn (and their colours) work together in the finished product.

It has been a rather cold and rainy month of May so far, and so I have been wearing my Steps, the fingerless mitts, and the hat a lot.

Apart from this, I have been working on several shawl designs, but I haven't started knitting any of them yet. Instead I've just been knitting socks. I always enjoy that, and a girl can never have too many socks, right?!