To Market!

Today, the eve of my first craft fair, seems fitting for a revival of my little space here.

I have made many thins in the past years, and many I would have liked to share, but the longer I went without posting, the more difficult it felt go get back into it.

My mini quilts!

So tomorrow, from 10-16 I will join the "Koffermarkt", a craft fair where everyone presents their handmades in a suitcase. The initial motivation came from my stash - I had (and still have) a lot of great fabric that I once loved, but I just don't find exciting anymore. In order to free up space and still use this material, I made drawstring bags, mini quilts and zipper pouches over the last few months. Since the same goes for my yarn stash, I also made armwarmers and fingerless mitts for the market.

Fingerless Mittens! The black smudge is actually a pair of mitts, the same pattern as the pale green ones.

I'm so excited for tomorrow, to see if anyone is interested in my stuff, and also what the other people are selling! I have no doubt that some of the money I will (hopefully) earn will go right back into handmades.
And if I sell nothing, I will have christmas and birthday presents for the next few years, haha.

the suitcase, stuffed full of drawstring bags. I put in the green lining, and I looove it!

So, off to market I go!

Pants!

Me and my sewing machine have made our peace, and I'm sewing up a storm lately! With the very hot day we had in the beginning of july, I was in need of some light summer pants, but all my closet offered were heavy jeans... so I looked around in my burda patterns and got to work.

Super confortable light plaid pants, perfect for summer, nice enough for work but loose enough for biking... They are awesome.


But I couldn't stop there. I had fabric lying around, intended for comfy stay-at-home pants, and it called to me. After all, I was on a wave of sewing success, right? I combined my mock-patchwork with some castle peeps by lizzie House and BAM! another pair of pants. 

Having more and more handmade items around me, in my closet and also for daily life, makes me so happy!

Feeling challenged

This was the situation on my desk a few days ago.

I knew what I wanted to make, I had the pattern cut out.
And then it took me ages to decide on a fabric combination. I played around with the fabric for the better part of an evening.

Sometimes, the fabric choice for a project is crystal clear to me. Other times, it comes over time, when I play around with the prints and put them next to each other. But I don't think a fabric decision ever took that long before. I hope the end result will be as I imagine it...

Still with the small things

Me and my sewing machine get along much much better lately. So well actually, that I am planning clothesmaking again. But in order to not break the peace, I focused on small projects in the last weeks, First of all my first mug rug:

I Used an absolutely gorgeous mushroom print that I bought a while ago, having no idea what it would become. I still have a lot left, and it is really hard to cut into because the colors are so vibrant and beautiful.

After that, when I was playing around with some stuff while I actually shout have been organizing my sewing supplies, I found a baby pink zipper. Pink. I would have never bought that, it must have come from my grandmothers stuff - and I wanted to make something special out of it.

So a zippered pouch it became, after I dug around my fabric stash looking for a print that at least features pink. I think this was the only one (back then - I ordered a ton of fabric since). I love the polka dots on the inside, and it was fun to try a patchwork pattern for the outside without committing to a whole quilt. I like how the star turned out, but I am sure that there is a more efficient way to do this pattern, I just winged it. If I would do it again, I would look for a pattern first.

And of course, there have to be buttons. Big colorful ones.
The pouch has already found a home in my office, I keep all my girl stuff in there that one needs but does not want to have floating around in a drawer - like aspirin, hand lotion, tampons and such. Now they are stored away prettily, and I don't have to worry about accidentally spilling tampons everywhere.

The little things

My life is very full right now. Full of work, training, sunshine, cozy nights in with my man, cinema nights out with my girl friends... And here and there, in between all that, I snatch away a few minutes to craft. I still don't trust myself with big projects, so I have been focusing on smaller things lately, and finishing old projects.

These socks are one of the old, old projects... I started them in September last year I think, and only finished them a few days ago. But I love them so much.

I like the colorful stripes and the cable pattern (which almost drove me insane while knitting), and I like to wear woolen socks even on summer nights.

In a sudden burst of courage, I wanted to try a dresden plate patchwork pattern a a few weeks ago. Inspired by this post, I set to work, paper piecing the pattern, and I love how my new pincushion turned out. Almost too pretty to stick pins into...

Harry Potter

Look what a kind owl dropped off at my doorstep yesterday!

My very own complete hardcover Harry Potter series.
Don't worry, I have read them before, but I had to hurry because the books were usually borrowed... Now I can read and reread them as often as I want, yeah!
I think the program for easter holidays is set! (Unless, of course, me and my sewing machine get along again. Then I may also make some stuff.)

It's already March?

So apparently it is possible to not blog for almost three months. Who would have thought. I tried to figure out what kept me away from here, as I usually really like to ramble on about stuff on my blog, and it all comes down to three reasons:

One: My priorities at the moment are my boyfriend, my job and my training. Closely followed by the household, that’s kinda necessary sometimes. The boyfriend has to work horrid overtime (like 50+ hours a week, every week), and that leaves me with most oft he cooking and organizing. Which is fine, but does not leave much creativity time. Plus with starting my new job and training for a half marathon, my days are full. It’s a good kind of full, I like my job and I have learnt to like running too, it just makes you tired at the end oft he day and quite unable to read knitting patterns or the like. At least spring has finally sprung and I don’t have to go out looking like this anymore:

Two: The lack of camera. When I had to hand in a picture of me for my masters ceremony last week, I realized that in the year 2010, about ten pictures were taken of me. Total. I may have about 4 or 5 of them, all in awesome cell phone quality (as proven by the pic above). Now what you have to know about my cell phone: It’s old. It has a cracked lens, the color is coming off and it is held together by adhesive tape. Not the best option to take nice pictures, but the only one I have. I will look into purchasing a decent camera with the next paycheck, or at least the one after that. Yesyesyes.

Three: I am in a serious sewing rut. I have several projects that I was totally motivated about, that turned out horrible. One pair of pants that may still be rescued, a skirt that looks like a potato sack on me and a blazer that went wrong on so many levels are waiting to be turned either into trash or something nice. I think the only thing I managed to fabricate lately are dishcloths, which meant sewing bias tape to fabric squares, what a challenge.

I hope I can share how I rescued the other projects sometime, but the motivation to try again is pretty low.

What I do have, as opposed to sewing luck, is ideas. If only a few oft hem come to be I will be most happy. I will keep you posted (and I mean it, failed projects or not).

So with getting to know my way around my job last week, I didn't have much time to blog or craft or anything. I didn't even go for runs! I am used to doing sports at least every other day, but last week I only managed to go once... I guess it will take some time to fit all the parts of my life together now that I work in a new place. But its really interesting, I'm looking forward to tomorrow! 

In my time off however, I had tons of time to try new things, one of them quilting. So I bought some fabric:

Decided on a layout (this is actually about version 3 or 4... I just could not decide)

After putting together the quilt top, I kind of hit a wall. I never really quilted anything before, let alone such a huge thing, and it intimidated me to no end. So I decided to take a detour and practice on a couple of cushion covers:

After that I felt confident enough to work on the actual quilt, stippling the whole thing:

And now its only waiting for some binding. Which is perfect for doing in front of the TV, especially during such rainy days as today...

And it feels like this won't be my last quilting adventure, so instead of just referring to it as "the quilt", I named it by the sea. It looks like sand and a few waves to me...

 After sending my corrected thesis off to my supervisor (fingers crossed that the next corrections will be the last ones... I really really want to finish my masters already), I am now again at liberty to do with my time as I please. It feels so good to have some time off before my next  big adventure - having an actual job - starts. 

Much of my time has been spent crafting, and before I really dive into knitting again I made a cozy home for my needles. They look like they all lie in their sleeping bags, waiting until I wake them for the next project...

And from the leftover fabric, I made a bag-of-sorts, using the very last scrap of the red fabric on the outside, the red fabric on the inside, the ribbons for the braid, and the red thread. A stashbusting project really (ironically, I am trying to build stash too). The design was heavily inspired by dottie angel, and the words say "knit fast, die warm", a quote I found on craftster one day and instantly knew that I wanted to use it in some project.

And now the bag is home to many many many small knitted patches, which will become a cozy blanket some day. Maybe not this year, as there are over 120 pieces so far, and I am still knitting...