Digital crafting

Wouldn't it be convenient to have all sorts of real life tools available also while being online? For example, scissors for cutting, glue for pasting, safety pins to put something on hold, pins for pinning?


I turned some of such tools and small craft related items into digital format. The images are free to use for embellishing your craft blog or website. These are .png files without background and will blend in anywhere.
To save an image, right-click on it and choose 'Save Image As' or similar.

All images are shown in actual size. They can be made to appear smaller by using the code marked in green inside the image tag in HTML and adjusting the width in pixels:
<img width="50px" src="http://..." />

If your default web template adds border to images, you can add this green code to the image tag to remove the border:
<img style="border: none; background: transparent;" width="50px" src="http://..." />

Between the Lines fingerless gloves pattern

These gloves feature simple vertical stripes with a twist: easy colourwork and a few cable crossings on thumb and at the back of the hand. Thumb gusset shaping ensures a good fit and knitting with two yarns makes the gloves wonderfully warm.

The fingerless gloves fit an average woman's hand and are approximately 19 cm (7.5'') long. Only 25 g (100 yds) of fingering weight yarn in each colour is required.

The pattern is available on Ravelry and on my pattern page.










The sample gloves are knitted with Garnstudio DROPS BabyAlpaca Silk, shades No. 5670 (brown) and No. 7820 (green).

Half a day sweater

Winter meets spring - woollen turtle neck sweater with snowdrops, completed in just a few hours. The lower body part and neck are worked in the round, sleeves are knitted flat and sewn on.




The sweater is in medium ladies' size in 1:12 scale: the body part measures 5 cm in height and 4 cm in width. It is knitted using lace weight merino wool (1400 meters per 100 g) and needles 1.5 mm (US size 000 apparently and not -1 as I first thought). Knitting tension is 60 stitches and 70 rows to 10 cm.




Here is the colour chart for snowdrops and grass, would probably pass for crocuses and cyclamens just as well.

Book with sharp content

This needle book is made of small piece of printed corduroy and black felt. Some flowers on the fabric are outlined with seed beads - it is very convenient to embroider when a template is already provided.




The book cover is padded with felt sheet and another layer of felt is sewn to the inside, so that needles can feel safe and comfortable.




The backstrip is made of grey blue lace, suggesting a romantic sewing story.

When out of yarn...

When I was a child, old ladies used to crochet bathroom floor mats out of strips of white plastic milk bags. I found these really ugly. Nowadays the selection of plastic bags has increased tremendously, all sorts of colours and qualities are available, even bags with colour blends.




I cut some bags to spiral strips 10-15 mm wide and used 4 mm metallic needles for knitting. Not hard at all. The most useful know-how learned, was to hold the strip folded in double, if the bag's inside colour would not fit the project. Some sample swatches:








Floor mats for bathroom or mud room would probably still be the best usage for plastic knits. Perhaps a shopping tote or swimsuit bag for a hiking trip? But seriously, nothing really pretty and cosy can hardly be brought about.

Shades of grey

When there are many small things to keep organised, there is a need for many small drawers! Those antique cabinets with lots of drawers are just perfect, but really hard to find. Now I discovered a line of these small drawer cabinets in a local hardware store, adopted one at once and dressed it in shades of grey.




Only a few days ago this was just an unfinished birch wood cabinet manufactured by Zeller Present.




After dusting and wiping, a coat of dark grey paint was applied. That was a mix of beige and blue interior paint leftovers with some black acrylic art paint added to make it darker.




The next treatment was painting the exterior surfaces intentionally unevenly with lighter shades of grey and beige using both brush and sponge for a distressed look.




Last but not least - some stampings with rubber stamp and that darker grey paint again.




Further decorations and varnishing I had had in mind, seemed redundant now. The surface was really nicely and chalkpaintly matte, so this piece was declared finished. Poor thing looks so much older now.

Crazy colours against cold

In the midst of white snow, ice and cold, even tiniest colour splashes can feel like a warm Southern breeze. Hot weather is brought to you today by a ribbon embellished pincushion from Bollywood and a miniature crocheted thread basket from the Caribbean:

Wool spooling

Another great find from the attic department: antique wooden wool spools. These look so cozy on the shelves and are perfect for storaging cords and ribbons or a single yarn ball. Not yet tested, but it must be very convenient to wind yarn from the spool during knitting. Only a spool holder missing now.




The spools went through a thorough cleaning, nevertheless kept the terrible 'attic' smell and had to be coated with furniture varnish. This is why they are a bit shiny, but the antiqueness is still quite visible.

Linen table linen

It had never occurred to me to knit a doily before, but it did now. Probably because of this one lonely skein of thin linen yarn calling out from the stash and the curiosity to see this material in a finished form.
My dream is to knit a large tablecloth designed by Herbert Niebling one day, for testing purposes, this small round doily with 40 cm diameter should be sufficient, though.




The pattern is from Burda Stricklehrbuch and the doily was small enough to be knitted on double pointed needles (2 mm). Knitting was quite easy and I managed to learn a couple of new tricks on the way, e.g. circle cast on, crochet bind-off, how to handle double yarn overs.


The yarn used is a lace weight linen named Midara Linas, shade No. 650. Approximately half a skein required, only 23 grams.

Ribbons under control

January always gets me in the mood for some home improvement and this year I'm taking on my craft supplies organisation. Naturally, they should be convenient to use, as well as look pretty and inspiring.
Ribbon storage was the first project and it was really fun. I found a tin candy box, cut some cardboard strips in appropriate size and wrapped the ribbons around these.








The most convenient method for storing shorter gift wrapping ribbons seemed to be using clothespin. And glass jars are probably going to be the key element for storage, so I need to collect more of these (originally occupied by candles).