Laminaria shawl

At the beginning of June my knitting group desided to have a KAL, Knit-ALong, and knit the shawl called Laminaria, made by Elizabeth Freeman. I started around the 10th of June and so did the others too. I've made the first pattern-part of the shawl, the star-pattern. It looks like this:Now I'm on the transition to the next pattern part, the blossom pattern. For me it is difficult to concentrate at the moment so I have ripped a few times when I've noticed it didn't add up with what the pattern chart says. But I love to knit the star pattern and I think it looks beautiful.
The yarn I'm using is from Knit Picks, Shimmer in Lilac Dream. It is a hand dyed yarn made of Baby Alpaca and Silk. It is soooo soft and cozy!

Little rain

From Alanya, Turkey.

Today when I woke up it was raining and I was happy! It has been such warm weather the last two weeks that it was a relief to get some coolness this morning. But now the sun is shining again and the temperature is rising too high for me. But I shouldn't complain, the last two summers has not been that good, weather wise.
YesterdayI was with my work to a lake outside the city. We bathed and sun bathed for a few hours. I got burned but now I have a nice color on my skin. I really like to get tanned, you look so well and healthy with a tan.
Here are some pictures from my vacation in Turkey last summer.

No Gap Wrap

I've finished two of my knitting projects! The No gap wrap is assembled and blocked. I'm not that pleased with the result, but I think I will use it anyway. I like the color and my friends tell me I look good in this blue. I'm sorry that the picture is so dark. The pattern is found in the book More Big Girl Knits by Angela Hahn

The second project I've finished is the Ruffles shawl. It is made in Malabrigo Lace, in Merino wool. It is sooo soft and cosy, I love it. I've put some beads in the ruffles that make it sparkle a bit.

Birthday

Last week I had my birthday! I love to celebrate my birthday by inviting my friends for coffee and cake. This year I invited some of my closest friends and I had a very good evening.
I made a cake with custard and strawberries between the layers, and cream on top with raspberries as decoration. I'm soo into custard so it was a thick layer of it.
One of my friends had picked lillies of the valley, which is my favorite wild flower.
I also got beautiful roses and flowerpots with roses on them and some beauty products. It was a wonderful day! Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

Art Quilt

It was a long time since I blogged or looked at other people's blogs. I've been creative in other ways.

Last weekend I took a class with Mikael Svensson, a Swedish quilt artist. This class was about Quilt Art with all sorts of materials. We got to try different materials that you can use in your art quilts or other projects. Mikael is a wonderful teacher and he is giving out all of his knowledge, and share his experiences with the class. It was a really fun weekend with all girls in different ages in the class. I would like to share some of the small quilt art pieces that I created.

I tried the different techniques with angelina fiber and film, friendly plastic, stamps and metallic films, all in different colors.

To collect the small artworks I made a small album/book to put it in. Mikael came up with the idea with this kind of album. The picture above.

I used a pink cotton upholstery fabric for the outside of the album and a pink linen fabric for the inside. The pages are made of Thai silk, pieces is left over after sewing my sisters weddingdress. Here is a pic of her and her husband. Our mother has done the bobbin lace at the waist of the dress.

This is the first art piece I made. I've used Angelina fiber and film, and then free motion quilting on the fibers and film with different threads.

In this piece I also used Angelina fiber and a piece of metallic film that I sewed on in free motion quilting.

I think I'm in my pink period right now ;-)

Here I've used Anglina film for the blue copperish part, Angelina fiber under that and the silvery piece is friendly plastic. The friendly plastic is melted on the iron and then I used a stamp to get the heart shape.

Fler Tävlingar

Nu har jag hittat fler tävlingar och utlottningar på svenska bloggar!

Det är så kul att se alla fina saker de här tjejerna lägger ut på sina sidor. Önskar jag hade hälften av deras idéer och energi.
Se vänstra kolumnen för tävlingarna!

Ha en bra vecka!


Sorry I write in Swedish. It's about competitions on Swedish blogs.
Have a nice week!

Competitions - Tävlingar

I've found several competitions with very nice prices. Here are some of them:

Link to Ulliga gulliga saker.

Link to Princesstävling.

Link to Alvas Hus tävling.

Link to Den tatuerade mammans tävling.

Look to the left column and click at the picture to redirect to the competition (in Swedish)
I hope I will win something, but with the luck I have it's better not to hope for anything.

Spinning on a spindle

Recently I've learned how to spin yarn on a drop spindle. At first my friend showed me on her bottom whirl spindle. I borrowed it, looked at videos on the internet about spinning on a spindle and learned from that. I got some roving from my friend to start with. It was hard in the beginning, and still is sometimes. The first yarn I accompished was this green one.

I also got roving made of Bluefaced Leishter and silk. That was so much easier to spin because it has long fibers that kling together nicely. It became three small skeins of novelty yarn in the color I love, Blue.

Now I have bought myself a drop spindle, bottomwhirled. In the kit I bought it was four different kind of fiber, Gotland wool, merino, Corriedale wool and some colored pencil roving. I started with the Gotland wool to begin with. It has very long fibers but with the new spindle I couldn't make it work. So I took the pencil roving and made some novelty yarn of it. Now I have started on the corriedale wool and it looks quite well, but I still think it is hard to get a smooth and evenly thick yarn, so it is also novelty.

Angel Swap

I've been in an Angel Swap with a winter/christmas theme. I got my christmas package today. It hold a wall quilt with an angel, chocolate with gingerbread taste and tea. It was Jen in Finland that sent it to me.

I've been knitting both a pair of Lovikka mittens and a headband. See pics below.

Tomte and cat

As I've written before I've been knitting a lot and little seweing has been done. Last week I knitted a Jultomte (a Swedish tomte). It was supposed to be for my aunt, but it was not finished when I went to see her. Maybe I will mail it for her closer to christmas. Anyway here are pics of him.

This December I've been in an angel swap with people from several countries in Europe. The theme for the angel we should make was winter/christmas. I made a stuffed doll with a dress and an apron and then I put wings on it. When I was sewing on my machine my cat was very interested in all the stuff I had on my table. He really enjoyed laying in the middle and purr. Here are pics of him.

I'm just loading pics of my knitting needle case.

Knitting - No quilting

For the past months I've only been knitting. No quilting at all, except for the quilt I put together for my friend Barbara.

I have made socks for Max, my nephew, gauntlets with braids for me and an other pair of fingerless gloves. The fingerless gloves above are made of silk yarn. The gauntlets are made of merino wool. I have almost finished a bolero that I've been waitning for more yarn to finish. Now I have sewn the pieces together but there shall be a crocheted edge on it and the sleeves shall have crocheted cuffs. I started crochet the edge around the front and neck but I thougt it was boring. So I started to knit Lovikka-mittens instead. You can see how I began knitting them below. I bought the yarn in July and it is blue-grey, so the mittens will be a little striped. The first one is finished and I've started the second. It is a thick yarn so it is fast to do.

As I'm thinking about it I have been sewing a little bit. I made a case for my long knitting needles.

Birthday quilt

One of my sewing friends, Barbara, turned 30 this week. To give her something special from her sewing-friends I started a quilt for her. I asked some of Barbara's sewing-friends if they wanted to help me sew a quilt for her birthday. I decided that we would make two blocks each, one with a house and one with a flower/flowers. At the end we were nine people who made to blocks each. The others sent their blocks to me and I cut them the same size and put the top together with a brown sashing. I also added a block to say "Happy 30th Birthday!" I quilted it simple in the ditch and put the label on with all the names of the people contributing.

Today, I and two sewing friends went to Barbara to give her the quilt. She was thrilled.

Here you can see a pic of the quilt.

Knitted socks

Have not had the energy to do any sewing this summer. It has been knitting and reading instead. I started a pair of socks in the beginning of the summer and in middle of August they were finished. I have never knitted socks before and never used dubble-pointed needles so it was very hard in the beginning. But when I got a hold at it I got really hooked on socks. My first socks are done with fingering weight yarn and 2,5 mm needles. So it was very thin in the beginning I thought. But now I want to do something in laceweight yarn than I bought from KnitPicks. It will be a shawl of sort, that is decided, but there are so many beautiful things out there I can't decide what to do. It has to quite simple to knit also because I'm not used to do lace.

Shawl

During the last months I have been knitting most of the time, and reading the rest. I have had no inspiration for quilting at all. But I had a couple of hours when it came back to me. One of my friends borrowed my machine, because hers had broken. I had no machine for over a week. Isn't it typical that the inspiration comes when I don't have a machine?!! I had such inspiration to begin two new quilts, but thought that I had no machine, so I put it a side in my mind. Then I thought I could cut the pieces and sew them later. When I got in my sewing room everything was in a mess, so it was nothing done anyway. Now I got my machine back but I do not have the smallest inspiration or energy to to any quilting.

The knitting has resulted in two shawls, one grey-blue and one purple. The on in grey-blue is mad of 100% wool with lace-knitting. It took a while for me to finish it, but I'm so glad I did.

The purple shawl is made of a yarn that is put together out of different yarns as you can see in the picture. Only knitting and some rows with purl. It is so big that I can cover more than my upper body with it.