Useful handkerchief sweetness

I keep my yarn and fabric stash in these display cabinets. To keep the sun from fading the yarn and fabrics, I made a kind of screen or curtain from vintage handkerchiefs and attached it to the cabinet doors. Sweet colours from bygone times They make me smile...

A French market bag

This is a free pattern from knitty.com, you can download it here.
It's a market bag with a square base and it's knitted in the round.
I used Debbie Bliss Aran tweed, in a beautiful soft purple colour with speckles. Running out of yarn, I dived into my leftover stash and found just enough Debbie Bliss Donegal aran tweed (dark grey) to finish the bag. I think the colour combination works well.
This is a felted bag, which means that the finished work is put into the washing mashine on a high temperature. The fabric felts, shrinks and strengthens. Here, the purple yarn has felted less than the dark grey and you can still see the stitch definition in the purple knitted fabric. I don't mind, I like it this way. Perhaps I'll try to felt it tighter later on, but for now, it will do.

starting on double pointed needles:

finished, not felted:

before felting : clear stitch definition

after felting in the washing machine:

done and ready for shopping!

Who's calling?

Dr. Who is big in our family. This phone cosy (yesss it's the Tardis!) I knitted for my nephew. You can find the free pattern, by Erinn A. Starnes, here. I used some acrylic yarn from my stash (just the right colours!) for easy maintenance. Nephew happy = me happy!

Eco cotton slipper socks

This is the very first pair of socks I ever knitted. I chose slipper socks, because they don't need an exact fit and can be a bit slouchy (good choice, looking back...:-) )
You can find the pattern for these cabled socks in 'Knitted and crocheted slippers', by Alison Howard (p.102). The yarn I used is an Italian ecological cotton : Mondial Bio Soft, bought at a branch of 'Veritas', a Belgian retail chain. To my delight, Veritas sells every so often an ecological yarn, wool or cotton. They could make more ecological choices in their sales policy, but it's a nice start!

Knitted necklace

This necklace I knitted is based on the sev(en)circle pattern by Kirsten Johnstone. I only made 3 circles.
The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Serena (60% baby alpaca and 40% cotton).
It looks good on the photos, but on me not so much, I think. Perhaps I should have made it a bit longer...

'Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?'

I finished my Balsam Hollow shawl, a design by Paula Emons-Fuessle
"Balsam Hollow was created for the Green Gables kit, a shawl kit from Little Skein in the Big Wool that celebrates Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic story of the optimistic, unforgettable red-haired orphan, Anne Shirley, who finds her forever home at Green Gables.
Balsam Hollow is the name of the actual forested trail on Prince Edward Island that inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery and became the fictional "Haunted Wood" of the books."
This knitting project was a real learning curve for me. One of the things I learned was reading charted directions. For a part of the pattern no written directions are provided, so I had to dig in to decipher the chart... and found out I love charts much more than the written directions! Important lesson learned!
Here, you can find more information on the pattern, on its Ravelry page.
The yarn provided in this kit is Leading Men Fiber Arts Callback, Green Gables colourway (2 100 grams skeins, sportweight, 100 % superwash merino). Lovely lovely soft yarn, so nice to work with!
The kit is sold by Little Skein in the Big Wool, a small San Francisco company with "sentimental, handmade knitting kits and original fabrics and notions". All the kits they sell are inspired by children's literature and come with tools and materials from indie fiber artists. Their customer service is, by the way, second to none.

                                     

work in progress...

and finished...

Boho bag number one

This bag is made out of knitted pieces sewn together with some recycled fabric.
The grey yarn is bulky acrylic that was a gift. The light blue yarn is something very special : a vegan yarn, from 'Darn Good Yarn'. It is made from banana fiber, a great renewable resource!  I found it very enjoyable to knit. In my imagination it felt like it was spun from a magical beast's fleece, like a unicorn or something. It's so shiny and super soft. I bought it at Bristol Wool Fair in 2015.
The strap I made from an old jeans of mine. For the "inner bag" I used old t-shirt fabric.
I also added a few lovely beads.

Make do and mend part 2

I love my winter coat. I have been wearing it for more than 5 years. The cuff got really worn though, sooo I decided to mend it with a piece of tartan wool fabric. I think it turned out very well and I am very pleased with it myself : that coat will serve me for another year or two !

Jane Austen

I have tremendous admiration for Jane Austen. This amigurumi Miss Austen was a very fun project! She guards her novels now, in my bookcase :-) The pattern, by WonderAnn, can be found and bought here on Etsy. The yarn I used is Fonty Bambou, 100% viscose, bought at Cross&Woods in The Hague, the Netherlands. I prefer to crochet with bambou, it is smoother than cotton and has a nice shine.

Happy thought

Part of an old sheet, an embroidery hoop, some thread and a bit of inspiration from the magazine Mollie Makes (issue 9). This was my first attempt to embroider letters. They turned out a bit wonky, but in this design, it's kind of suitable, I think. This happy thought hangs in my crafting space now.