In the Making

After some internet searching I’ve finally adapted a mitered granny square to get a really nice square ‘unholey’ granny square. Phew. So far so good. And I’ve played with the possibilities of a wall photo studio :)

Today I’m connecting to Our Creative Spaces.

My Creative Space_Colour Friday

To animate myself to blog, I've decided to make a colour post every Friday - the colours that are around a lot at the moment, or catch my attention for that or another reason.

Here are the colours of this Friday - orange, several shades of green, yellow - all bright and summery. The crochet squares will eventually (and hopefully, soon) morph into a pillow cover, a companion to this one. The rolled up orange-green creation is a ripple blanket, pattern by the lovely Lucy of Attic 24.

Why the toys, you ask? Well, my (normally) favourite colours are blues, greys and dark greens, even in summer, actually, I have several dark blue and brown summer dresses and pants. I can even wear black in summer! Such colours are great for combining with some white or some brights - you don't need a lot to stand out. And being a colour freak, as I've said before in this post, I have to 'balance out' the brights by some neutrals or dark shades, otherwise it's like chalk screeching on a blackboard (not the nicest sound on earth, don't you think?)

But enter the baby - and other colour preferences! My boy is a spring child, and all those oranges, greens and yellows just say SPRING all over. I didn't want any baby blue for him from the beginning (we were gifted enough of blue things, anyway), and  I much preferred green as a baby colour. But some thinking over why this colour choice actually stuck brought me finally to the toy box. Presto!

Oh, I've forgotten to mention that tiny turquoise triangle on the needles. It's a dishcloth-wannabe. I think I'm hooked (feels like a terrible word since it's knitted) on homemade dishcloths. I've always been skeptical about handmade dishcloths. Yes, they are environment- and budget friendly, but that's basically all, I thought. Inspiration struck when I realized that I don't have any more storebought cloths and somehow I always returned empty-handed (at least without cloths) from my shopping (crafty gods's doing?) So instead I remembered to buy some dishcloth cotton. I've already made one, and it's superb! It does the job so much better! And of course, you can recycle them many more times than those from the supermarket. You know, budget-friendly.

And here's someone caught ... what should I say... red-yarned? This is what happens when you have stray yarn lying around and mummy's blogging...

I wish you a Friday in your favourite colours!

A whole bunch of creative people is just a click away.

My Creative Space_Colour Therapy

 

We've finally got snow here, after quite many sunny and snowless days. And even though I grew up in a climate giving you -30°C winters, I'm not a fan of cold and am pretty content with the climate I have in my current place of residence. So, while outside it was looking like this:

I was working on this:

A crochet pillow cover, in cool cotton and bright summer colours. My boy loves to fall down on big soft pillows, especially face down, and I've realized that there are not that many covers to change. In fact, there's only one (before the pillow was just for decoration, simply lying around, and one cover was more than enough, who knew it would get such a workout?).  I've added some neutral, to calm down my inner colour freak, but you've got to start somewhere, right? All those colour really make me think of summer (oh, summer, where are thee?) and all the good edible things associated with it. The back will be fabric, with a zipper, I have some IKEA red and green fabric with funny hippos.

The only thing that bugs me about this cover, is the fugly 'seam' running on one side, typical of those granny squares. Mine is not even straight... Unfortunatelly, I've came across the granny square crocheted from the corner a bit too late, and didn't want to rip it all out. But if you are bothered by the seam, spoiling all your granny beauty, check this out and start making grannies from the corner!

And when I got some 15 minutes of quite time (it was more, in fact, but the other 45 min were used for something else), I've picked up this:

Have you ever read Gerald Durrell? If not, I highly recommend it, especially for children! His writing is highly entertaining and well-structured, it's simply a pleasure to read! Anyway, taking place at heat-infused and fragrant Corfu, this book will certainly make you forget about all the cold and snow outside. I've read some of his books as a teenager, and now want to relive those long gone days of my life, I guess... Now, where's that chocolate I've stashed away?????

More creative spaces you find here.

September, 6th_Better late than Never

Crafty snippets of my day:
sewing in the ends:

staging a small photo shoot:

 packing:





































Yesterday I finished the baby blanket I’ve been working on. One year later, it is a present for a friend’s baby. I was planning to make one BEFORE she was born. Plan never became reality. I did start a blanket, but I was struck by a rare gauge disease – my squares were getting smaller and smaller. I’ve blogged about the symptoms of this malady here.
But truth be told, I think the knitting gods must have been watching over me, as the idea I’ve chosen later fits so much better! And I have to say, the blanket worked up much faster and (almost) without incidents. It really looks striking, if I say so myself, and the pattern is super easy to memorize. I’m very pleased by how it turned out, and really hope that it will be used a lot! Yarn is a very baby-friendly cotton, machine-washable, and should survive quite some tear.
Pattern: Rainbow Ripple Baby Blanket

Raspberries with Milk

Berries with milk is  a favourite of my father’s. I fail to see the appeal here, though I do like both, just separately. But raspberries with milk are also sweet memories to me, memories of those warm summer nights, darkness cooling down the steaming earth, flies and mosquitoes circling around the lamp (isn't it an ultimate attribute of a hot summer?), appetite coming finally after the heat is gone. Taste of childhood, this is what raspberries with milk are to me, even if I don’t eat them that way.
Now that I have my little boy, I want to pass on this feeling to him, wrap him up in summer and warmth and sunshine. The colours remind me so much of raspberries, sometimes slightly crushed and giving their juice to milk, making it pinkish.
I wonder now, what he would say to raspberries – we haven’t started with solids, yet. He’s still a baby, I mean, baby baby, just drinking milk and knowing nothing about all the other tastes in the world. I want him to stay like this, forever, so that I can make him blanket after blanket after blanket to wrap him up in.

But down to (knitting) earth: it’s just a Babette-ish square,  I will simply go on until the size looks like something we could use. It’s loads of fun, though, watching the colour emerge – as the rows are getting longer, the colour changes vary. It’s just like watching your child grow – you miss what you leave behind, but there’s more waiting for you, never letting you get bored or long for the past. Always something to look forward to. Just like watching your children day after day after day...