Knit and purl treasures in Vogue stitchionary

I love what you can do by just knitting and purling, as you can see from some of my patterns. To find out more I bought Volume one of the Vogue knitting stitchionary and I'm amazed.

It contains over 250 stitch patterns. My first project based on this stitchionary involves the heringbone linen stitch. I made this pencil pouch with less than one skein of vintage yarn.

The flower I got from freubelweb.nl. It's a free crochet pattern by Ellebel. I made it with five different bits of leftovers and I love how the multicolored yarns bring life to the flower.

 

A number of stitch patterns from this stitchionary are on vogueknitting.com. Some really pretty ones too. Me, I'm looking out for a new edition of Vogue knitting stitchionary 5: lace knitting.

My first ever piece of handmade furniture

Together with Etsy.nl DIY store Karwei has started organizing workshops called Ziezo Zaterdag. Today was the first. I subscribed and in two hours time we made this simple stool / side table.

The instructions were easy. And luckily the wood had already been sawn. I loooved the electric screwdriver (I don't have one myself) and came home with no blisters or splinters at all.

To finish it off we shopped for a little can of paint and found this lovely transparant lavender color. The stool will serve as a side table next to my garden bench. Thank you Karwei and Etsy.

Happy Easter egg cozies

A while ago I purchased ten leftover skeins of a mix of cotton and linen. The other day I noticed some very cute egg cozies. I imagined it would be a perfect use for this yarn.

I figured out a pattern and with Easter coming up next week and the extremely cold weather we're having at the moment, this is what I made this weekend.

Every egg cozy is from another skein. With a small household I don't need this many myself, but they'll be great to give away as a present too.

Happy Easter!

Freedom, fun and passion at Gaultier exhibition

'The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier' is the title of the main exhibition at the Kunsthal, the museum of modern art in Rotterdam at the moment. Its subtitle: 'From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk'. I visited it yesterday and it was Great.

I sort of know Gaultier's work, but it's impressive to see many pieces in different styles all put together. They are categorized around six themes and the mannequins alone are spectacular: they move their eyes and give the audience little smiles and they sing from time to time.

In the first salon are dresses worn by Madonna, Kylie Minoque, Cathérine Deneuve and other celebrities. The theme is Odyssey with dresses from the Virgins collection and garments with the well-known navy influences. I love this style and was taken by the jersey dress on the left.

Each salon has a theme. There is The Boudoir (with many pieces based on old-fashioned underwear like the corset), Skin Deep (with bodystockings with tattoo-like prints for example, and lurex and leather items), and Punk Cancan (with influences from the streets of Paris and London).

Urban Jungle shows combinations of influences from different cultures from all over the world, and finally the last salon has the urban theme Metropolis. For an ordinary Tuesday in March it was good to see the numerous amount of visitors, young and old.

Each item is numbered and described. Details like the year of the design, who wore it at what occasion, and what it is made of are often interesting. What surprised me was the number of hours dedicated to create certain garments. Some of the dresses took more than 300 hours.

And of course I love this crochet and knitted dress with a hat made of sheepskin. I'm very happy to have seen the exhibition. To me it showed the joy of creating, the freedom of mixing genders, cultures and times, and it showed the passion of a man who's been designing ever since he was a boy. C'était très inpirant.

Free pattern for infinity scarf

What to do with a single skein of pink mohair? Its length is limited. Luckily I had a stash of similar red yarn. Adding 1 + 3 together turned out great into this partly striped and partly solid loop scarf. The colors show differently every time, depending on how you put it on.

It's designed in double moss stitch on needles that are half a size too large. This gives the scarf a rather bulky look, which makes a nice contrast with the fuzzyness of the mohair yarn. If you want to make one similar, the pattern is available here for free.

You'll find it under 'infinity scarf' / 'eindeloze sjaal' under free patterns at the top of this page. Will you add a photo of your finished scarf to this blog? I'd love to see how it works out in different colors and other materials. Have fun.

Knitting two scarfs in one

I had been trying and testing to make a scarf with beautifully handspun yarn of Colorcrazefiber on Etsy. Then I found the solution at the Purl bee with a mix of woven stitch and linen stitch.

I love the striped pattern: delicate and horizontal on one side of the scarf and deeper vertical ridges on the other. It's outspoken in pewter and ivory. Mine is more subtle and because the handspun yarn is not sufficient, I chose to add two colors to it. (I'll start using blue later on.)

I'm also giving it my own signature with some extra patches along the way, like a twist in sides as you see below and another eye catching stripe. I'm designing it as I go and it's fun to knit - knitting every other stitch with seperate yarns it's like knitting two scarfs into one another.

Keep an eye on my Etsy shop to see the final result :)

Try the linnen stitch

The internet is a great source of info. In the past few years I have learned so much more about knitting. At the moment I'm trying some new stitches I discovered.

Take the linen stitch. I'd never heard of it and wonder if this stitch even exists in Dutch. I tried it and find it very suitable for the kind of pouch I made earlier. It makes a sturdy and strong patch.

I added the pattern for another pouch to the section with free patterns above. Hope some Dutchies will try it and share my joy.