Sunday, August 9, 2009

sunshine, lovely sunshine

My second marathon-spinning project (ok, it was only 1,2km of yarn running through my fingers but it definitely FELT like a marathon).
The fiber is bamboo, silk, merino and alpaca. 2-ply, 400m, 130g

I'm planning to knit a lace scarf with it.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

floss bobbins

I recently picked up embroidery again and found a nice design idea for floss bobbins on craftster. For the people who don't know why you need such things:
Newly bought embroidery floss is wrapped up nicely but when you start using it, sooner or later it will tangle, produce knots... Wrapping it around a piece of cardboard prevents this. This design is especially nice because you can put them on a string so you'll can grab all colours that you need at once when leaving the house in a hurry. And of course they look cute...

Handspun socks

For my mothers birthday I've knitted my first socks made from handspun yarn. I couldn't understand why people spin kilometers of yarn and then knit socks when handspun 2-ply yarn is much weaker than commercial sock yarn. I just knit these socks because I had some handspun yarn left over from a lace scarf.
But now that I've tried them on for the photos, I think I might need some handspun socks...



The pattern I used is:
http://www.exartstudent.net/?p=60
It's a great pattern and fun to knit!

And another photo:

Monday, June 1, 2009

Tissue Holders

I've recieved fabric tissue holders in a craft swap and I think they are really useful. Yes, I know, you have to transfer the tissues from their plastic packaging to the tissue holder. BUT: you can refill them the next day even if they are not completely empty, which prevents having ten plastic packages in your handbag each with one or two tissues left.
So I decided to sew a few more for myself and some additional ones as Christmas presents (remember: only a bit more than 6 month left until Christmas! ;-) ).
I've used this tutorial as a guideline and bought the fabric from various sellers on etsy. Here is another design using plain fabric and cute ribbons:

Unicorn Earhangers

This is the result of my first try with Shrinky Dinks:
After cutting and baking I painted them using metallic acrylic paint.
I love how they turned out, even though they are huge, ostentatious and sometimes poke you in the neck when wearing them...

Friday, May 15, 2009

painted mugs

I love painting mugs with porcellain paint or porcellain markers! It is really easy and a customised mug is a great gift.
This is my last mug creation based on a button of my favourite band:

first lace scarf finished

Over a year ago I started my first lace project. Unfortunately I decided on using mohair and knitting with blunt knitting needles with bad joints...
For the non-knitters: this is similar to running a marathon in Flip-Flops... possible but you could have it much easier.
Well, I finished this beast!
To be correct it is my first started lace project, but I've finished others because this was such a pain to knit.
But here it is in all its fluffy glory:

Knitted with one skein Vivaldi from Garnstudio. The pattern is this but I decided to make the scarf one repeat wider.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

horse cakes

And another cake post...
Today I show you the perfect cake for the horse lover in your life. The cake is simply cut out from a rectangular cake and very easy to make (but still cute).
The first cake is a chocolate-cherry-cake horse:And the second is a lemon cake. The inside is coloured in the colours of the rainbow. This one is actually not my idea, I saw a cake like this on craftster.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

raspberry cookies

I think I have a new favourite cookie recipe... They sell American Cookies in the university cafeteria but I calculating that making them at home would save me 70% of the cafeteria price and allow me to put as much chocolate in them as I wanted convinced me to give it a try.
I searched the internet for a recipe and found this (German).
Instead of using the grated nuts I used additional 100g flour and substituted the chocolate for white chocolate. Then I added some frozen raspberries broken into small pieces. Though the combination sounds a little bit strange, they are delicious!

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Rose's wrist warmers

I love Dr. Who! Sadly the show isn't on TV anymore here in Germany (but I'll assure you that Germany otherwise a civilised country). To do something for my Dr. Who obsession I knitted the wristwarmers Rose wears in "Doomsday".
Even if you're not a Dr.Who fan they are a great knit, because the pattern is well written and easy to knit (but not boring). And the result is really beautiful:

They turned out a little bit small, but I think that is my fault because I had to substitute the yarn and maybe my swatch was not big enough (or I should have swatched the cable pattern... *cough*) Luckily I have small hands! So if you have bigger hands I really recommend knitting a swatch with the cables.
You'll find the pattern here.

Cake Week

Last week was cake week. I made three! birthday cakes. But I had a lot of help from friends...
Here is the first cake:
Knitter's cake

The next one is an apple-apple-cake (inspired by this cake)
We didn't have a laser ready in our baking laboratory so we improvised and cut by hand.

And last but not least a cake with cream filling:

No, just joking... :-) The next picture shows the real cake. The ugly one was made with the leftovers. Of course we first pretended that it was the real cake, hehe.
And there is another birthday coming up... So stay tuned for the next birthday cake!

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Not your ordinary cheese cake

I always bake birthday cakes which have something to do with the birthday childs likes or hobbies. Usually I just take a plain cake and decorate it. But the birthday cakes for my father are always a bit difficult. He rarely eats cake and only eats certain sorts of cake. The only cake he really loves is cheese cake.
But I always have a hard time coming up with fun decoration ideas for cheesecake.
Some time ago I found a pig baking mould in a shop and I knew I had to buy it to make a birthday cake for my father who loves pigs. But cheese cake in a pig mould? I was not sure whether that would work out...
But it did! And my father loved it!
Here the proof that it is really a cheese cake:

For those of you who are curious how such a masterpiece of cheese cake was made:
I made a plain shortcrust pastry and put it into the (greased) mould. Afterwards I prepared the filling and the only thing I altered in the recipe was to add an additional two tablespoons of starch.
After baking I let the cake rest for about 3 minutes and then turned it out onto a plate. I still can't believe that this worked out, I thought the cake would break, stick to the mould or do anything else horrible...

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Customized Converse

I got a pair of plain black Converse Chucks for Christmas. Of course they are absolutely adorable, but everyone seems to have the black ones. Not that I'm being snobby and want to wear only one-of-a-kind designer pieces but I want to know which shoes are MY shoes when standing in front of one of these stundent-party-shoe-piles. Because my drawing skills haven't improved since I'm ten I decided to stitch them. Things I make with some kind of string in general turn out better than projects that involve pens and brushes...
Here is the result:

The thread is glow-in-the-dark thread. How cool is that?

After this successful customization I took a pair of plain brown chucks, which were a bit too plain for my taste.
Stitching on fabric shoes is much easier than I had expected. If you want to try it yourself just make sure that you don't use knobs for fixing the loose ends of the thread. I just stitched a few times through the inner fabric until it looked like the thread would stay were it should.
And last but not least I'll show you the painted pair. I really love how it turned out but you'll understand why I think stitching is the better option for me...

Procrastination...

is starting a craft blog...
I usually don't have much time for crafting. I still craft a lot, but some ideas have been on my to do list for ages and I never felt I had time for them.
Well that was before I started studying for my last university exam. I've become a professional procrastinator in the last weeks and I think I haven't been so productive craftywise since kindergarden (you know the time when you produced 10-20 masterpieces of art a day).
So instead of studying, I finished 6 craft projects, started 4 new projects, ordered fabric, cleaned out my wardrobe so there is more space for new (knitted and sewn) clothes and invented a new point system for cleaning our apartment.
And started a craft blog...