Crochet washcloth with a border

I made a new crochet washcloth. It is just single crochet square (8.5"x8.5" if I remember correctly) but with a border. My friend Nancy gave me the book 'Around the Corner Crochet Borders'. These are borders are great for blankets, but Nancy gave me the idea of using them for washcloths. She was absolutely correct.

I didn't have a lot of the contrast color, so I made a small border. It still jazz' it up a lot. Love it! The light in the photo is uneven because it was already getting dark so I used a lamp and my camera is getting worn out - the flash doesn't work anymore. I almost got a new camera at the beginning of the year, but never did. Hmmm....

I used sugar'n'cream light blue denim for the square and bright green for the border. Both were leftover yarn.

The possibilities are endless with this pattern. I itch to use up my kitchen cotton like this, especially the leftover yarn.

p.s. There is a distinct possibility that I am procrastinating finishing a sweater that I'm making that's almost done.

We Interrupt this Program to ...

... bring you a picture of my Plötulopi stash.

Of which the ones here below are meant for my newest project.

I'll tell you all about it later.

Another Victim of the Washing Machine

The washing machine claimed yet another victim. This time a Citron shawl made out of Malabrigo (Mmmmm.... Malabrigo) lace weight yarn.

I made it two and a half a year ago while traveling to a conference and to hang out with a friend (who happened to be visiting New England at the same time as me). Here is the link to the project on Ravelry.

Well, now the shaw fits my cat nicely.

It actually felted very well. It shrank up to next to nothing in size and there is no stitch definition. The fabric is very thick (and still very smooth).

I don't know how this happened. The shawl was hidden inside my husband's blue Snuggie (warning - never get a Snuggie!), but how it got there in the first place is beyond me.

You can trust kids to find humor in everything. My 9 year old thought it was only appropriate to give the shawl a good burial. So she made a casket for her (the shawl), a tombstone, and a rose to go on top. (Seen in the photo below) The tombstone reads "Bless this shawl for it had a fear of the washing machine". Ha ha ha. It's not possible to be sad about the early demise of the shawl with humorous kids like that around. The next day her 7 year old sister added R.I.P. to the tombstone.

p.s. It's my husband that loads the washer and the dryer, not me. I'm completely innocent of this heinous crime.

p.ss. There is an Icelandic translation of this pattern

Quicky Scrubbie

Right now I'm the zone in between projects where I'm not really ready to start another big project, but want to do some crafting regardless. I've been reading a lot since Christmas when we (the family) got a 7 inch tablet. I've read 2 ebooks, and have started on the third one, plus a hard cover book. The good thing about the ebooks is that you can knit and read at the same time providing that your project is fairly simple (like my sweater, which was mostly stockinette). Also, I've not been exclusively knitting in the evenings like I used to. I even found out that there are social networking sites for readers that work similarly to Ravelry. I joined Goodreads.com.

So last night I was reading, but I felt that there was something missing. So I made this little project that you see in the beginning of the post in about 30 minutes. It's a scrubbie for the kitchen (or bath). What you do is to take an onion bag (or any other netted produce bag) and fold it. Then you stitch around it (I used the blanket stitch and I should have checked those directions first, but I just did something resembling the blanket stitch) to secure it and to provide you with the basis for the crochet part. Then I crochet with single crochet around it (US notation) with 2 chains at the corners for two rounds (joining the last stitch of the round with a slip stitch to the first). Presto! A scrubbie.

I think I'll be making more of these.

Sweater for ME!

After Christmas I was very motivated to knit something for me. Actually, it's been a long time coming. I've been wanting to make a sweater for me since last spring. The sweater I originally had in mind would require considerable amount of designing on my part and I find that I'm not very particular to design work. I want to have everything figured out for me and just follow a pattern (although I'm not adverse to deviate from the pattern if it makes sense or if I prefer a different method than the designer suggests).

Before Christmas I knit a scarf for my one daughter and mittens for my other (plus countless of candle holders, but that's fodder for another blog post). After Christmas I was so ready to make something for myself. What I picked was the sweater Hraði from the Einband book. Einband is lace weight Icelandic wool, and hraði means speed. The reason the pattern is called hraði is because you knit with 6 mm needles (about US 10), so this should be a fast knit. Well, I started the sweater the day after Christmas and only finished it this week so you'll be the judge of the speed.

I got the yarn for this sweater a looooonnnnnggggg time ago, or about 4 years ago,when we were in Iceland.

Wednesday I finished the casting off and finishing (weaving in ends, close the armhole) and yesterday (Thursday) I washed it and blocked. This morning (Friday) I put it on to go to work. I had be be at work early today because I had a training course, but I asked my husband to take a quick picture.

I wore it all day and loved it. I have to wear a tank top underneath because the fabric is see-through, but that's ok. The sweater is very light and airy and not too scratchy. It kept me very comfortably warm.

I have couple of issues with the sweater. For the first, they ask you to cast on with the yarn held double. I'm fairly sure it is because of wear and tear, but I think it makes the fabric curl up even more. There is no ribbing but the fabric is not supposed to curl up on the edges, but it does. This doesn't happen with the neck opening, where I forgot to bind of with the thread held double (even if I got the other end of the skein all ready to do so).

The other issue is that the sweater got really wide at the bottom. I think it is due to the eyelet holes in it. But I'm not sure. Maybe I can block it into shape? (pun intended). You can't see this in the photos but I think both these problems got worse as the day went on and I wore it longer.

If you have any suggestions for me for these two issues please let me know and leave a comment.

I have to say though that overall I'm very happy with the project and love the sweater itself, the colors and the fit.

Athens County Knitters Exhibition

My knitting group (Athens County Knitters) meets at the library and on Saturday we set up an exhibition there (mine is the gray and brown shawl - Rockafeller by Stephen West).

This is the first exhibition case:

And this is the other (including my shawl):

Great job everyone!

New-cycling*

I wanted my kids to have a good reusable drink container to take to school. I saw a recommendation for the 'Funtainer' from Thermos and since I didn't find anything else even remotely as usable (it is both stainless steel, seals and is easy for kids to use) I decided on getting one for each of my two girls. Unfortunately The store (Walmart is the only store around here) only had three varieties: Dora the Explorer, Thomas the Tank Engine and Tinkerbell. First of, I'm not a huge fan of children's products that have cartoon or movie characters on them, and second, my children are a bit old for the ones that were available.

I figured the younger one would still be able to use the Tinkerbell one, but there is no way the older one would have used the Dora or the Thomas ones. Fortunately, I recently saw a blog post where the person was using novelty Duct tape to upcycle boots. I thought to myself that I could do the same with the thermos'. So I picked out the Thomas the Tank engine thermos (since it had a blue top and bottom - my older daughter favorite color) and headed to the home repair part of the store. You gotta love Walmart - they have everything there!

Low and behold, they did have colorful duct tape. Actually it was Duck Tape. So I took Kamilla's thermos and covered it in tape.

When her sister Ása saw what I did with Kamilla's thermos, she wanted it done to hers to. Kamilla wanted hers from side to side. I thought it would be easier to match the pattern on the tape going up and down, which I did on Ása's, but I was wrong. It was harder, mainly because I didn´t have a handy craft knive to cut the tape. I only had my knitting scissors. While they are sharp, they were not optimal for cutting the duct tape on a round surface! It all worked out in the end and the kids are super happy!

Here they are, side by side:

Who knew duct tape could be so fun to use. Kamilla grabbed some and made her flip flops more colorful. I think they look a lot better now!

*New-cycling is a play on words drawing from the expression 'upcycling' when you take a used item and make it into something new. I on the other hand took something new and commercial and made it into something that's unique.

Kamilla sews too.

My daughter Kamilla will turn 9 in a week's time. When I was sewing she and her 7 year old sister were very interested and wanted to help me. They did help by pressing on the foot pedal to make the sewing machine go. They've never been this interested in knitting, but then again, knitting doesn't have cool machinery involved in it.

So after I finished my project. Kamilla wanted to do her own project. She picked out a fabric, cut it and pinned it together (right sides together). Then she sewed the pieces together as she had seen me do previously.

After she was done stitching the pieces together, she turned the piece inside out (she left a small opening).

And stuffed it with polyfill.

After mom helping with decorations (closing up the hole, sewing on buttons as eyes and gluing the mouth on with ribbon using stitch witchery) Kamilla was one very proud owner of a brand new stuffed animal!

Her sister has a design all drawn up for a boat! I guess we know what our next project will be.

Unpaper towels!

The name of the blog 'Handavinnublogg' means something like 'crafty blog'. Handavinna is an Icelandic word which literally means 'handwork'. It is used to group together all sorts of activities you do with your hands: stitching, knitting, crocheting, lacework, etc. I chose this name because I was interested in cross stitching, knitting and crocheting so I figured 'handavinna' was kind of all encompassing.

There is one handavinna I've always wanted to do more of, but been having a hard time getting into. It's machine sewing. I did some last summer, when my daughters were in Iceland, but not much since then. I was having an issue with my machine (it kept breaking the needles). But I've resolved that now, so no excuses. One of my problems is that I don't have a good place to do it. I was totally charmed by these 'unpaper towels', i.e. paper towels (eldhúsrúlla) made out of fabric. Here is a tutorial, and if you search the web for 'unpaper towels' you can find many examples. I just had to try and finally whipped out my sewing machine again. :)

I found the tutorial above on Friday, and instead of saving the link, I sent it to my email with the title: must make this wknd. I guess it worked since on Sunday I started picking out fabric, cutting out a whole bunch of 10x10 inch squares (enough to make 10 towels) and even starting to sew them together. Then I realized we were getting late for a dinner party and had to run out of the door (forgetting bunch of stuff and looking fairly casual).

Well, I kept at it. I worked on them some more after I came back home and then Monday after work and 4H (program the kids are in) I kept going still, and finished after the kids were in bed.

I finally found a nice comfy place to sew. The coffee table! (sófaborð). I could sit comfortably on the sofa and even have the Olympics play in the background. The kids could sit next to me and even help (pushing the pedal was a favorite). My husband fusses about having to watch the olympics (he's an anti-sport kind of person), but secretly he enjoys watching it and awwws and owwws at nice performances. (p.s. we were watching the men's synchronized diving and these men have the best sport outfits ever!!!)

So I finished the 10 towels (or almost). You can put snaps (or velcro, but I´m worried that the velcro will become full of fuss in no time with these towels) so you can roll them up like a real paper towel. I was planning to do that, and earlier this evening I got the snap kit out only to discover that I had but 5 snaps (gasp!), but I need more like 20 of each kind (male/female). So for now these towels have no snaps. I was even in Joann's this Sunday looking at snap stuff, but I didn't think of buying extra snaps (I was wanting to see if they had a good tool/machine to make snaps with). Since the nearest Joann is 45 min away, I don't go there very often, but perhaps Walmart has snaps now that they have their fabric department back (yay!).

The fabric I used was a terry cloth I got when my mom was visiting about 5 years ago and the cloth is vintage fabric my friend gave me after she help clean out stuff for someone else. I picked it because it was kind of cute and whimsical and now I'm really glad I did because this fabric gives the unpaper towels a certain character, don't you think?

My kids (two girls, almost 9 (in a week) and 7) were fascinated by the sewing, much more than they are ever with my other crafts (except maybe stitching). It prompted them to want to make their own projects, but more about that later. Until then, here are couple of pictures, one of them helping me iron and the other of their 'littlest pet shop' characters, which profited from the fabric scraps.

Power outage

From about 6 PM on June 29th to 6 PM on July 1st, out electricity was out (or our 'electric' as people around here say). We were actually lucky to be only out for 48 hours, compared to other people who were out for 5-10 days, and that in the middle of a heat wave - days and days of 100F temperature (38C).

While the electricity was out I did some knitting. I finished the bath towel I was working on.

When I was done I didn't quite know what to do. It's not like I could go online to find a new pattern to knit.

The electricity went out at the same time point as I was leaving work on a Friday evening, the last day of work before a week long holiday (vacation for people in the US). I was planning to stay home for this week long holiday and hand out with my family and work on organizing the house.

The electricity being out kick started the cleaning/organizing efforts. Since there was limited amount of activity possible, cleaning kind of happened naturally. So I wanted to clean up and I needed a knitting project. So what did I do? I went into my closet and pulled out a bunch of projects that had been hibernating for a while.

Some of the projects are never going to happen and I frogged them. Others got worked on. The towel here below is one of them. I worked on it almost 3 years ago from a pattern for garterlac dishcloth (garterlac is the same as entrelac, except in garter stitch).

All I had left of this towel was a little triangle on top and the strip it hangs from. That's it! And it took me almost 3 years to finish it!!!! At least it's done.

I also pulled out a blanket I had made and then decided to make it bigger. But it turned out to be too warm for me to work on it. It is also simple and not very pretty and hard to photograph. If you don't believe me check out this flickr photo.

Not done yet!

In the last post I wrote about a hat I made out of leftover worsted weight yarn. When I finished the hat, I still had a bunch left of three of the colors. It was perfect to make Kate from Knitty. The pattern is old, from 2005 and I have to say that it's not as well edited as more recent patterns. There's nothing really wrong with the pattern. There is not an error per se, but there are differences between the instructions and how the item looks.

You start at the bottom of the body and increase. The increases don't look like the increases in the pictures. The increases in the pattern are 'knit in front and back - kfb' while in the pictures you can see that the increases are directional and they don't look like 'kfb'. So I just made up the increases as I went. I didn't know which way they were supposed to be but I more or less made the increases on the first half of the stitches one way and the other half of the stitches the other way and that worked out all right.

The decreases at the top of the body were directional. It would have looked funky if the bottom half all increased in one direction and the top half had some of the decreases in one direction and some in another.

It was by no means a bad pattern. The rest of it was a smooth sailing and I did learn a great way to attach extremities.

Friend of mine is having a baby in November. Actually a friend and a co-worker's wife. Plus couple of other people I know, but I don't know them enough to knit them anything major. Maybe a bib? So anyways, Kate (whom I call Kata rokkar in Ravelry - Icelandic for Kate rocks) will be a present for my friend's baby.

Kata rokkar is also a name of a song Björk recorded on the jazz record Gling Gló in 1990.

Clearing out leftover stash

Last month (May) I have been in the mood of clearing out my leftover stash. In particular the worsted weight leftovers (I organize my leftover stash by weight). The leftover stash was taking up too much space, in most parts because it was kept in too large of a bags. Some of it I moved to a plastic box, but the worsted weight I started to use up.

It started because of a rather large skein (large for leftover yarn) of bright green yarn that I always wanted to make a hat out of, preferably patterned hat.

When I was looking around Ravelry for a good pattern I came across the fish hat from Knitty.

It wasn't quite what I had in mind, but it was the perfect hat to use up the leftover yarn. I only used the bright green yarn as the tails and fins. I finished up knitting him at the very beginning of June, but only put the eyes on him and blocked him yesterday (June 23rd). I needed to buy white felt and black buttons for his eyes. The pattern has the fish being dead (eyes are crossed out), but knowing my kids, that would not do. I was right. They were horrified with the thought of making the fish dead.



I didn't really make it with anyone in particular in mind. But after I had finished putting the eyes on it, my older daughter (who's 8 almost 9) took a big fancy to him so now he's hers I guess.



It shouldn't be so surprising to me that she liked it (she wasn't so interested before I put the eyes on) since she's taken up a liking to fish lately. This spring she wanted to get a fish tank really bad. She started to save up some money and we borrowed a tank from my friend, but it was just the tank. We still needed a pump and filter and a lid, and these things add up!

Then a few weeks ago, she went fishing with her dad and younger sister in a lake next to our little village. She brought a terrarium and scooped up two tiny little catfish, very newly hatched! So she got her wish! Her dad fitted the fish tank with blue pebbles (blue is her favorite color) and put a large rock from our garden in it. The catfish love to stay under the rock. We needed a pump/filter and pretty soon we got an aerator too, as well as a sucker fish and couple of live plants. We still need to get a proper lid and maybe a few more fish.



Here are couple of more photos of me and Kamilla wearing that silly fish hat

Bathmat for me!

I've made this bathmat twice before. This is my third one. The first two were both made with one string white and one ecru, and were both given as a part of a wedding present (in a spa basket). My bathmat is sage and ecru.

The pattern is from a well beloved book - One Skein by Leigh Radford. I've made a few of the pattern and I tend to make them more than once, which is very unusual for me. I made the bowls, the bib and the bathmat, as far as I remember. I'd love to make the cupcake too!

The yarn is Peaches'n creme from a cone and although the V shaped pattern is a bit hard to see because of the two different colors used. All in all, I like the colors though and the bathmat looks great in the bathroom.

I started with an already used cone of the ecru and I ended up running out of yarn with only 3 and 1/2 rows to do. Then I found a small ball of ecru among the leftover kitchen cotton yarn and I continued to make the bathmat. Unfortunately I ran out again and this time with only 14 single crochet (fastalykkjur) left!!!!! My knitting friends came to the rescue and let me use some of their leftover ecru - thanks Steph!

It was a very rewarding project and I'm glad I finally made it!

Now with photos

This morning I posted a little update (which ended up being not so little and I got late for my Mommy breakfast (a group of mom who meet every month during the school year).

I took some photos after I came home from work today. Here is the blanket (unwashed and unblocked):

Here is the dishcloth I finished last night. Lavender the cat was too adorable not to be included in the photo.

The pattern is Honeycomb Check Dishcloth (you need to log in to get the pattern) by Sugar n' cream. That's the name of the kitchen cotton I used to make the dishcloth and the color is 'Country Red'. The pattern was hard to do because of two things. First it contained mistakes (notice the deliberate use of the plural from of that word), one of which is actually visible because since I followed the pattern blindly for the first repeat I was at the second or third repeat when I discovered it and decided it was not worth it to go back and fix it (although I was thinking about giving it away but the mistake makes me want to keep it for myself). The other reason it was hard to do was because you had to maneuver stitches from two rows down once in a while and pull them up to the needle. It was tight!

Other than that, I'm very happy with the finished product. I like the texture and the look of the pattern.