my niece is expecting her second child, i think her due date is the end of august, so the baby should be here any moment... so i thought it would be about time i made her a gift!

 

i ran out of the baby booties i made a while ago and i decided to make something else this time. i have a lot of brightly coloured cotton yarn laying around, so i thought a toy would be a good idea. after some searching on ravelry i found some nice patterns for security blankets or "loveys".

we don't know if it will be a boy or a girl, so i made a boy and a girl-version. i personally prefer the boy-version because of the bold colours. :) i generally tend to like baby-boy-stuff more because i'm not a big fan of really girly things (especially not pink).

 

i mixed 2 patterns to make these: for the head and blanket i followed this tutorial and for the owl face and wings i used this blogpost as inspiration (because the pattern wasn't quite right, i just made everything up with the pictures as an example)

 what do you like giving a newborn? always something handmade or do you pick something from the birth list? or both?

i finally finished and photographed my newest pairs of socks today! i made "duo socks", made to wear in pairs but they look so much better when mixed together! 

 

 

 

the blue pair traveled with me to switzerland (in march) and i took the yellow pair to croatia and germany in july. i love how my knitting projects travel with me and absorb memories.. :)

more details on ravelry: here and here. 

 PS: after more than 3 years, i got tired of my old blog layout...
sooooo... hello new logo and layout! what do you think? 

hello everybody! i'm back from a month of blogging vacation! i never meant to be "away" for so long, but it just happened and to be honest, it felt really good! i have loads of things to share with you guys and i really found new energy and motivation to start/finish some new projects! july was a great month; my boyfriend and i celebrated our 7-year anniversary and we spent two weeks camping in croatia and germany, which was great!

last year when we went camping, we borrowed everything from friends, because we weren't quite sure we were into camping at all. but it turned out we both loved it, and so we decided to buy our own equipment this year. we bought a cheap cutlery set and my boyfriend said he would like me to make a cutlery roll. so, the obedient and grateful housewife that i am (note the sarcasm), 4 or 5 hours later there was this: a camping cutlery roll; one of the best-looking things in our whole camping set! (why is everything they design for camping coloured khaki or beige???)

it rolls up just like a pencil roll or crochet hooks roll would do, and it has a fold-over flap so nothing will fall out.

 

 i also went a little overboard with the patchwork on the outside. the reason for this was that i didn't have enough canvas fabric lying around, only some small leftover fabric from our pillows and some other small pieces. so, heavely inspired by Kelly's patchwork leftover blanket that she showed some time before, i decided to do a little patchwork. (which took me waaaay longer than i had planned, but i'm loving the end-result)

 

 and, after two weeks of outdoor cooking, it proved to be a very handy and usefull object. no spoons or knives getting lost, and everything always in the right place. yay! success!

so after turning all those scraps into a magic ball, it was time to start thinking about a project. i first started a granny square blanket (the one where you crochet a huge square) because i liked the idea of hours of mindless crochet. but i didn't like the result. it was okay, but i didn't love it, you know?

so i did a lot of browsing and searching for magic ball projects on ravelry and now i think i found a way to make it work and turn it into something pretty! 

i knit a log cabin with the magic ball, which is basicly a square in garter stitch that is created by picking up stitches on the other side. (for a tutorial, check out this link)... and i think it looks quite nice! a bit messy and scrappy, maybe, but that's the look we're going for, right?

 

 

 now that i have quite a big square, i was wondering what to do next. i think these squares will look best on a neutral background, to tone down all these colors... probably grey, or black. i made a little sketch to see what works best, but it is so hard to judge. so i think, once i have enough squares, i will just try and see what looks best... but i think it will make a lovely scrap blanket either way!

 i'm already collecting scraps for my next magic ball, i'm almost finished with this one. :)

talking about scraps: i'm also saving my sock yarn scraps... too pretty to throw away and i reaaaaally want to knit a pair of mismatched socks someday. :)

what about you? do you keep your yarn scraps?

last year i started collecting all my yarn scraps (literally anything that is long enough to tie together, everything else is collected in a plastic bag and will be repurposed as toy stuffing)... 

i tied all scraps together using a russian join... (have you heard about a russian join? it's brilliant, every knitter or crocheter should know how to do this)

... and i ended up with this... probably the ugliest ball of yarn i've ever seen. 

and i LOOOVE it!!

(apparently this is what you call a "magic ball" because you never know which colour comes next)

and now i'm trying to figure out a way to turn this "pretty ugly" magic ball into a "ugly pretty" project! :)