Joint venture: Cell phone cover

A little while ago, my friend Gabi was visiting me for the weekend - and while sitting out in the garden talking, we made a colourful cover for her new cell phone together.



First, she knitted a double overlapping strip in garter stitch, with some red crochet cotton and some variegated sock yarn, decreasing the number of stitches in the end - and then I showed her how to punch the knitting with the embellisher to densify the wool and make the cover stiffer.

At this point, we both saw the face of the snake taking form - Gabi embroidered the eyes, I punched the tongue and added a strip of punched glitzy neon fabric to the back, decorating it with a black zig-zag free-motion embroidery - she sew the cover together with the sockwool and added the glasses, which she made out of a piece of wire and some button hole stitches. Finally, we found a bit of red Velcro-tape in my stash and sew it on for closure.

It was ready in no time and we had quite some fun with this joint-venture!

(German summary: Ein kleines, buntes Handytascherl, daß meine Freundin Gabi und ich beim Plaudern im Garten eigentlich so nebenbei gemeinsam gemacht haben - witzig, oder?)

Still crocheting like mad ...

Octagon flowers - aren't they nice? Quite unusual, still easy to make - so I had to try them out ...



... with some scraps of cotton yarn - but I reckon they would look interesting with variegated sock yarn as well ;-).

I found them in the latest issue of 'Marie Claire Idees', a great French craft and decoration magazine, que j'adore - it comes six times a year and is a real treasure box of ideas and inspiration.



A couple of weeks ago I also finally managed to get hold of my preferred crochet hooks (at Amazon UK), the ones which are completely made out of metal - I just don't like the ones with soft grip or full plastic.

To celebrate this, I sew myself a brand new hook case too,

open -



- and closed:



(German summary: Ich finde diese achteckigen Blumen recht apart, und doch sind sie sehr einfach zu häkeln, Stäbchen und Luftmaschen im Wechsel, jede Reihe in einer anderen Farbe - das Muster habe ich in 'Marie Claire Idees gefunden'.

Und dann habe ich mir noch ein Häkelnadeletui genäht, denn im Moment bin ich ganz versessen aufs Häkeln ...)

Hibernating in a pile of sockwool ...

Oh dear, this year seems to run even faster than the last one ... and although hibernating regarding my postings (and I'm sorry for that!), I haven't been idle at all, but quite industrious -

So where shall I begin?

Well, it started with me finding an on-line provider of high-quality and non-expensive sock wool ... and as you know I love making anything but socks with that interesting, variegated yarn, I was tempted enough to buy a couple of kilos ...

As I had bought packages of unspecified colours, it was an even bigger challenge to find suitable projects - pink/rosé isn't really what I use to wear, but in combination with that green ...



anyway, it turned out to become a vest, a very comfortable one, which I'm already wearing.

The pattern, which is actually a kind of 'granny square' with distinct 'holes' at the corners, not only shows the colour variegation well but also produces a diagonal pattern which I find quite attractive. I found it in 'Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders' by Judith Durant, where it's originally used for a shoulder bag.

Then I had some of that greenish 6-ply wool left - and together with some scraps of Noro Silk Garden Sock Yarn from my stash, I decided to crochet a little neck bag, using Lucy's 'Granny Wheel' at Attic24.



My bag is about 14 x 13 cm, and I can use it both sides.

The next thing I want to show you is the second version of the 'Japanese Flower Shawl' - exactly the same pattern as in my previous posting, still very different-looking as I used a 4-ply sock wool with very long colour sequences this time (found at a local shop) and a smaller hook. I also deliberately made a colour change for each round to get a more distinct appearance.



Here you have another picture featuring the Noro shawl to the left, the sock wool shawl to the right, for comparison.



As you can see, I've become really hooked on crocheting with variegated sock yarn - both the 4-ply and the 6-ply yarns are very comfortable for that purpose, and choosing smaller and bigger hooks makes the work pieces sturdy or soft, whatever intended.

And of course I started more projects than these just presented ... but I will show them later on, when accomplished.

Finally just another triangle shawl which I've just finished - knitted with a multi-coloured yarn I spun myself - a dear friend of mine will receive it as a birthday present.



(German summary: Es tut mir leid, daß ich wieder einmal so lange gebraucht habe, um aus dem 'Blog-Winterschlaf' zu finden - gefaulenzt habe ich trotzdem nicht, sondern mich vor allem mit Sockenwolle und verschiedenen Häkelprojekten beschäftigt: eine Weste, eine kleine Häkeltasche und noch eine zweite Version des Blumenschals - ja, und ein gestricktes Tuch aus selbstgesponnener Wolle ist auch noch dabei.)

Mini Summer Project III: Tiny neck bag/Kleines Sommerprojekt III: Winzige Umhängetasche

Since it's raining cats and dogs almost every day lately, I decided to do the best of it and curl up under a warm throw on the couch and amuse myself with listening to audiobooks while knitting or crocheting ...

After having treated myself to a small MP3-player I now needed some kind of tiny bag to hang it around my neck - so I came up with this:



The whole bag is quite small, only 9 x 9 cm, still it can hold both the player and the ear phones along with the cable.

I took some sock wool scraps and a 3,5 mm crochet hook, doing 10 chain sts and working scs for three rows, then connecting the rings to one another with a couple of stitches, using the yarnend left.

The neck string is simply done with double yarn and chain sts - this is the 'backside' of the bag:



(German summary: Diese winzige Umhängetasche haltet MP3-Player, Ohrhörer und Kabel bereit für meine Hörbücher - sie ist aus Sockenwollresten gehäkelt und nur 9 x 9 cm groß.)

Some experiments with the flower loom/Experimente mit dem Blumenwebgerät

Do you remember the cotton threads I showed you in an earlier posting? And that I tried them out as a sample on a flower loom?

As I'm very captivated by the idea of recycling and re-using, I decided to try to do some kind of garment out of it; I like the kind of sloppy and casual retro-look of these flowers and think they would be great as a loosely hanging slipover over a T-shirt for example.

(If you google on it, there are several links for buying or crafting a flower loom yourself.)



Another possibility to use the flower loom is to make some woolen flowers and then to combine them with the embellisher and felt them into the background - here I did some free machine embroidery with variegated thread on the leaves afterwards:



For this bag, I crocheted the carrying straps with handspun wool (the same as for the bag itself) and then again punched them with the embellisher to get them more sturdy and less flexible.



(German summary: Ein paar Experimente mit dem Blumenwebgerät - einmal mit den grauen Recyclingfäden für einen lockeren Pullunder, einmal mit handgesponnener Wolle für eine gepunchte Tasche.)