Bottlecap recycling/Flaschenverschlüsse recyceln

I guess you know me by now - and that I have a faible for recycling things, especially if they come in some form of textile context.

Finding recycling possibilities for beverage cartons/tetrapaks or PET-bottles isn't even that hard - but for quite some time now I've been looking for a good solution on what to do with those bottlecaps.

And finally I've found one - it's provided by Jen Segrest, alias 'verybigjen', who turns them into sweet, tiny pincushions of all sorts - here is the link to her very clear tutorial on flickr.

So below you can see the ones I made - don't you think they would make a nice, small gift for X-mas? Really easy to do and you can use the tiniest of scrap supplies! And - they really come in more handy than you might think: I'm using mine all the time now!



(German summary: Schon lange habe ich überlegt, was man mit den vielen Flaschenverschlüssen machen könnte, die sich so ansammeln. Bei 'verybigjen' auf flickr gibt es eine einfache Anleitung, wie man daraus winzige Nadelkissen machen kann - genial! Vielleicht als ein nettes, kleines Geschenk?)

Chopping up shirts/Mit Hemd, Pullover und Krawatte ...

Although end of September, it's still warm outside, so I can work in the garden.

I'm chopping up four men's shirts which I found at the parish flea market last weekend. One of the shirts is solid natural linen - mmm, this means lots of embroidery fabric ...

The other ones are heavy cotton - I chose them for the texture and for the faded colours. Maybe they would work well as a frame for my deer project?



I also have some broad men's neckties in my stash - and when using my little bias former/tape maker (Prym) the other day, I suddenly remembered that most ties are cut diagonally - what if I'd use them for making unusual bias bindings? They could look quite nice - and it would be repurposing and at the same time saving time and effort, when I don't have to prepare those fabric strips first ...



I bought a big mens' sweater at that flea market too - the price was 1 Euro! It's 75% cotton and the colours are off-white with a touch of brown inbetween, machine knitted in stockinette, the yarn consisting of three threads - two of them are straight cotton, the third one is a bit of a moderate bouclé.

As the seams are cut and overlocked, unravelling means getting a lot of ends - which is quite bad for knitting, but good for sewing. The straight natural white/light beige cotton threads will give me loads and loads of threads to handsew with - it's the perfect colour and the perfect thickness!



So, what are you waiting for, ladies? Hubby's not around? Where are those scissors ...?

(German summary: Am Flohmarkt habe ich einige feste Herrenhemden billig erstanden - guter Stoff, gute Farben - zum Nähen, Embellishen und Sticken - dann noch die Idee, aus alten, breiten Krawatten Schrägbänder zu nähen - und die einzelnen Fäden eines Baumwollpullovers für's Handnähen zu verwenden ...)

A little extra for the third of Advent/Kleines 3. Adventsextra

Tomorrow is the 3rd of Advent, and I guess you might be busy baking ginger bread and making Christmas decorations. Last year I made simple yet quite nice snowflakes - and this is how you make them:



What you need is a packet of basic, white pipe cleaners (available at all tobacco shops) and a wire cutter (or old pair of scissors). The pipe cleaners mostly come in a packet of 100, they're not expensive, and as you only need 4 1/2 pieces for every small snowflake and 6 pieces for the big ones, you'll get a whole bunch of them - to hang in the window or in the branches of your tree - or on the parcels or greeting cards.

For the smaller ones, you cut up five pipecleaners into half, leave three halves for the base and cut up the rest into halves again (one half or two quarters being left over for the next snowflake). For the bigger ones, you cut a third off the basic three branches and chop up the remaining two ones into thirds, no leftovers there.



There's no glueing - just twist the branches once or twice to get stability, the same goes for the small branches.

And while you're doing this, you might want to listen to Bing Crosby and David Bowie in one of my very favourite Christmas performances:





Have a nice and comfortable week-end!

(German summary: Eine kleine Adventsbastelei für den 3. Advent - Schneeflocken aus Pfeifenputzer! Und ein wunderschönes Duett von Bing Crosby und David Bowie, zur Einstimmung auf Weihnachten. Ich wünsche Euch ein schönes und geruhsames Wochenende!)

Spinning the Dog - Auf den Hund gekommen!

Well, I know I'm likely to put about anything in my carders, but I never knew I would be spinning a dog some day ...

No, not a whole dog - it's the winter fur (underwool) of a Leonberger lady, belonging to a friend of mine - see what a dog like that looks like:

http://www.leonberger-oeclh.at/gallery/album/slides/DSCN3430.html (about 75 cm shoulder height - glances over the dining table, still standing on all four feet ...)

One combing/brushing (and there will be a few more this Spring) already contained about 100g, although it is light and soft (and clean!) like angora wool ...!

I blended it a bit more than half-half with white Merino to make it spinable, and the medium 2-ply now looks like this:



I think it looks quite promising!

Another experiment which I made lately was to spin a slightly variegated brownish/grey thick-and-thin wool and ply it with a skiny, metallic looking viscose yarn I had in my stash:



I have also spun more of that ice-cream yarn plied with beads and sequins and have now started knitting it with 15 mm needles:



It will probably become a slipover with separate arms (in another design) to button on ...

And as I'll be leaving for Stockholm for a week now, I wish you all a very happy Easter time!



(German summary: Ich spinne gerade die feine, seidige Unterwolle einer Leonberger Hündin mit 40% zu 60% weißer Merino, und bin recht begeistert über das Ergebnis!

Ein weiteres Experiment ist die braungraue Wolle, dick/dünn gesponnen, mit einem metallisch-glänzendem Viskosegarn verzwirnt - und dann noch mehr von der Eiscreme-farbenen Wolle mit Perlen und Pailletten, aus der ich gerade einen krausgestrickten Pullunder mit 15 mm-Nadeln angefangen habe - da überlege ich eine Lösung mit separaten, angeknöpften Ärmeln in einem anderen Material ...

Da ich demnächst für eine Woche nach Stockholm abreise, wünsche ich euch jetzt schon ein frohes Osterfest!)