Recycling bag and plastic jewellery/Recyclingtasche und Plastikschmuck

I'm in the mood for recycling again ... besides all the well-known reasons why this is a great thing to do, it sparks the imagination!

This is a small round shoulder bag, made out of tiny scraps of different sock wools which I found in my stash.

I started with the bottom, crocheting a round piece, then I turned it and went on crocheting upwards, without doing any more increases.

I added four button loops on the last round, turned the top down to make the bag more sturdy and sew on some flower buttons, so I can close the bag if I like to. As the shoulder strap has a button hole on each end, I can unbutton the strap and use the bag as a table container if desired as well.



And this is 'plastic fantastic' - a simple summer necklace to wear on the beach with the swimming gear, for instance:



I crocheted a long necklace with a thick, multicoloured cotton yarn, then I took a dive into that box with toy plastic beads which my daughter had sorted out - and I had kept in my stash a while for some reason :-) - and added these by crocheting another round onto the cotton necklace, this time with some of that variegated embroidery yarn.

As I still had more of the thick cotton yarn, I went on by knitting two circular necklaces in stockinette stitch, letting them curl up to a kind of rope:



And the colourful combination of these necklaces could be quite an interesting piece of summer jewellery, don't you think?



(German summary: Aus vielen kleinen Sockenwollresten habe ich eine 'Topftasche' gehäkelt - und aus dem Kaugummiautomaten-Plastikperlen meiner Tochter und dickem Baumwollgarn noch einen bunten Strandschmuck gestrickt und gehäkelt. Recycling fördert die Fantasie!)

Quite busy spinning, crocheting, embroidering .../Textiles Allerlei

I've been carding some bamboo, fine wool and silk fibers together for a very soft and delicate yarn. As I didn't find any bamboo fibers in green, I decided to dye some and mingle them with the white roving - funny, but in my opinion it looks more 'bambooish' that way.

Slower treadling, just to the point of holding the fibers together, made this yarn as soft and delicate as I wanted it to be - then plied with a very thin cotton thread.

I still have some problems with the new slide yarn guides, though - they just don't seem to stay where I want them, but keep sliding towards the bobbin ... Anyone else who's got the same problem, or am I doing something wrong?



I've been playing around, doing some necklaces too - using cotton yarn and glass, bone and wooden beads from my stash. Thought it could be a nice thing to wear now to the summer clothing.



This is how the embroideries proceed for 'My Neighbour's Garden':



and for 'The Vineyards':



Sara is coming on Saturday - maybe we'll do some acid dyeing this time ... :-) By the way, if you want to read about really archaic natural dying, go visit Manya Maratous' wonderful Greek 'Mythcolour'-blog!

(German summary: Bambus-, Woll- und Seidenfasern - und laaangsames Treten - machen diese Wolle sehr weich und geschmeidig. Allerdings wollen die neuen gleitenden Fadenhalterungen immer wieder von selber Richtung Spule gleiten - ärgerlich. Mache ich etwas falsch oder hat noch jemand die gleichen Probleme damit?

Und dann gibt's noch ein paar Bilder von Halskettenspielereien mit buntem Baumwollgarn und verschiedenen Perlen, für's Sommergewand - und davon, wie die beiden gestickten und gepunchten Bilder voranschreiten - fleißig diesmal, gell?)

Three knitted shawls with crocheted endings/Gestrickte Schals

I'm done!

Actually I finished my country lace shawl just before leaving for Sweden, but I didn't have time to post about it then. It's just as cosy and warm and 'wrappy' (with a tiny smell of sheep - I love that :-)) as I wanted it to be - but in the end, I didn't do that fancy border à la Nicky Epstein, which I originally had planned to do.

I decided that this rustic shawl would look better with a simple crochet ending instead, the only decorations are those curled tails which I've come to like a lot ...



I used my Sweden holiday for knitting a bit too, this is a 'false' moebius which I did out of one of the Schoppel lace balls (yes, same curly tails there too!) - it's knitted in simple garter stitches, starting with three stitches in one corner, knitting kind of quarters in a row -but the yarn itself is so beautifully rainbow coloured, that I wanted the knitting technique to stand back for the yarn:



And this is another one in garter stitch, the yarn being a red Swedish traditional one-ply wool which I bought on site - I'm considering doing some mouches in different red yarns on it - and finally a new design (my own) on a crocheted flower necklace:



(German summary: Drei sehr einfache Dreieckschals mit gehäkelten Umrandungen - ich wollte, daß die dollen Wollsorten hier die erste Geige spielen dürfen! Und noch eine Häkelkette ...!)

Knitting a moebius and crocheting flowers/Ein gestrickter Möbius und gehäkelte Blumen

Trying to ignore the fact that it's raining cats and dogs and that I've got a silly bad cold, I'm keeping the fireplace burning, knitting a moebius in an explosion of colours to keep spirits high ...

(Unfortunately, the colours just don't come out here as vividly as they do in reality - but maybe you'll get the idea anyway.)



It's a moebius scarf - a twisted circular knitted scarf - where you need to do a special cast-on, shown for instance on this youtube tutorial.

As I had tried a couple of moebius versions before, which I wasn't quite happy with, I decided to buy a real nice moebius pattern online at Zauberglöckchen. It's a bit complicated, but turns out beautiful!

I hope being able to finish it within the next few days, as I'll be leaving for an Easter trip to Sweden at the end of the week - and it's going to be a present!

I've also done some flower necklaces for the Easter eggs:



(German version: Ich stricke gerade einen Möbius von Zauberglöckchen - nicht ganz einfach, aber der Mühe wert! Eine selbsterdachte Blumenhäkelkette wird auch den Weg in ein Osterei finden ...)

Crocheted necklaces/Gehäkelte Halsketten

While Sara and I were knitting and chatting in my living room, she told me about a necklace she had seen in a boutique in Wales while visiting her daughter. It sounded fun, so we decided to try our own version with the variegated wool we had at hand.

Sara crocheted hers in black and pastel colours, I chose my favourite winter colours, black and red:



We both made them long enough to reach three or four times around the neck, and as it is a woolen yarn, it even warms the neck almost like a scarf.

I tried some other versions as well - these are flat stars which I punched lightly with the embellisher afterwards in order to get a smoother backside:



The next one was crocheted with linen and cotton yarns - starfish and small pebbles wrapped in
chain, double and treble crochet - a bit more of a summer necklace, this is:



And finally, another kind of flowery necklace, more like a collar:



These are really uncomplicated necklaces, perfect to wear with a sweater or with a straight linen dress f.e. I think the variegated sock wool ;-) is marvellous for this purpose, but a thin cotton or even silk yarn would of course be a nice option as well ...

There is no firm pattern to follow, just play around with your hook and your wool and crochet along!

(German summary:

Diese unkomplizierten Halsketten sind vorwiegend mit bunter Sockenwolle gehäkelt - die Sternvariante noch zusätzlich leicht gepuncht; bei der Seesternkette sind noch kleine Steinchen mit eingehäkelt.)