Nordic Julekuler: "Poinsettia" 19/55

It's been a while since I blogged a post about my finished knitted Christmas balls. Hope you missed it :P Been knitting quite intensely for the past two weeks and a big build-up of half-finished balls has turned up. Spent the whole day steaming and stuffing the balls and here they are! - 16 new knitted balls! Put them in a big glassy vase for a temporary display :)

So, What do you think? :)

I like to feature individual ball patterns on my blog. Today I'll present the pattern no. 19 - Poinsettia - one of my favourite ones. So Nordic, so Scandinavian and captured my heart with its simple form and geometric shapes so that one poinsettia ball has turned into 6 ones!

I wanted to knit a few variants of different colour combinations and so here they are:
I found the blue and white version particularly nice. Even this blue shade of Heilo yarn is called Norwegian blue :)

Shades of grey (Just two this time, not 50! :P) plus some red would look nice on a festive tree too, I think.

Time to join up Hand-made Monday. Heading over to Hand-made Harbour to see some other lovely creations.

Full steam ahead!

Busy, busy, busy... with steaming a new batch of my woolly christmas balls. Finally moving on!

Dala Horse

After Etruscan Horses I painted another picture of a horse in a different style :) a Dala Horse - folky, colourful, Swedish in origin ...

The picture is painted on an A4 clipframe. I like to use clipframes for painting pictures when I want to give them a frame of my own :) I chose the same colours for the frame as for the horse plus the stripes to deepen the folky effect. So how did I do? :)

A few things inspired me to paint this picture - my interest in Scandinavia, the world-wide fame of the Swedish Dala Horse as a cultural icon and product of Sweden, some lovely pictures of Dalas on the internet, some lovely blog posts like the one of Heather's as well as my own authentic little wooden Dala Horse I bought ages ago at a car boot sale without even knowing it's the one! At the time I didn't quite realize what sort of horse I found, not until I'd become interested in Scandinavia!

Just look at those Dalas off the internet! Aren't they gorgeous?

They wanna make me head north to the cold Scandinavian countries to find one!

Firey Leaves - twin votives

Time for another blog update. Here are my recently painted twin votives with firey leaves :) I really wanted to paint some glass with some warm orangey colours. They give nice glow and shadows with tealights inside :) The pattern comes from one of the glass painting books I have (sorry, I don't remember the exact title as the book has been lost somewhere in the abundance of my craft books, I should really dig it out ;P) and it was painted freehand.

Taking part in Hand-made Monday tonight! Get clicking to see some other nice web places! 

Bowl with roses

I wondered how I should call this piece of glass? A bowl? Plate? Platter? Whatever it is, it was meant to be painted with some red roses. I deliberately kept this pattern simple - only flower heads, no extra stuff :)

The glass has got sorta rough, frosted texture on the outside and it is smooth inside the bowl. I painted the roses outside the bowl so that any food put in it won't come in contact with the glass paints.

You can see the glass texture still coming through the glass paints. Quite interesting effect, I'd say. Enjoyed painting this one :)

Treuddyn Festival 2012

Just thought I'd quickly blog the photos of my last fair in Treuddyn. It took place last Saturday, 14th July. Yes, I've been a little lazy and slow with up-to-date blogging as my last days were pretty well busy. It's the end of school year now and we've just broken up and started our summer holidays! Woohoo!

Coming back to the festival - it was a public event with some music, dancing, barbequing, archery plus there were some stalls with the car boot junk, jewellery and hand bang stall and 2 stalls with hand-made stuff - mine and my Polish friend, Grażyna :)

This is what mine looked like: (wish you could see all that mud on that day!!!)

Sorry, this bundle of hanging clothes (a nice photo spoiler, eh?) doesn't belong to my stall. It was the car boot junk table top that seemed to be sprawling everywhere under the tent. Somewhat oppresive but what could we do? Home junk sells the best at fairs these days.

Grażyna's lovely stall with hand-made decoupage. She brought her daughter with her too. Probably to boost up her sales! :P Hope, she will like the photo, when she comes here ;)

Some other entertaining places :)

This is the last summer fair for me this year. Think, I'll stop for the time being. Not impressed with the sales. Poor interest and clearly a pinch in people's pockets. May give it a go at Christmas fair later during the year.

Tube Vase with Hearts

Another, the 3rd tube vase I've painted recently. Simple freehand pattern with hearts. The vitrail colours mixed and I used a golden relief paste. It sold on one of the fairs as a present for a girl :)

 and the  two of my tube vases, side by side...

and all the 3 types together :) Pretty nice in a group, eh?

Love to see how some plain pieces of glass turn into something colourful and vibrant :)

Offa Festival

What a buy week and what a busy weekend! Yesterday for the 3rd time this summer I had taken part in a summer fair. This time it took place in Wrexham under the name: Offa Festival. A few crafty stalls were gathered there - there were quilts, sewn items, jewellery, a cake stall and a bric-a-brac and of course mine with the painted glass. My place looked like this:

and here's a view from a seller's perspective, through the sweet pink glass ;)

This fair was special in a way as for the first time I'd been accompanied by my friend, Sue :) who had a lovely stall with sewn items.

Other stalls:

I won't make comments on the sale profits as we were short of customers, BIG TIME!  Very few who entered the building where we were selling in showed any interest in crafts. Dunno why, all the 3 fairs (must admit: not typical craft fairs but rather summer fun days) I've done so far have one thing in common - poor interest in buying hand-made items. Is it the case with all fairs these days or is it just me being unlucky with the spot and customers? Single sold items can hardly be called a good sale, can they? Let's hope my 4th one will be more successful.

time for Hand-made Monday at Homemade Harbour. Heading over there to see what others have been up to this week! Get clicking!

On the knitting front: Heilo, Falk, Daletta and Freestyle

Some more news from the knitting front. About two weeks ago I received another ordered big batch of Heilo and some other Norwegian wool for my Nordic balls from the Kidsknits online shop. This is my preparation for the knitted advent calendar balls, which I'm gonna start knitting as soon as I've finished the first 55 balls from Arne & Carlos's book. Now, with my holidays coming in just over a week, the prospect of knitting with some fresh yarn is pretty alluring.

The package included some fresh red and off-white Heilo wool, which is the one I've been knitting with so far plus some other DaleGarn yarns: Falk, Daletta and Freestyle.

Freestyle yarn is chunkier than Heilo, very soft and cosy. It's 100% natural worsted wool.

Falk is similar to Heilo in gauge. Soft and cosy to the touch. It can be used instead. it's sportweight type of yarn.

Daletta is thinner than Heilo and supposedly more economical. Looking forward to seeing what balls made with this wool going to look like. 

Heilo is the yarn I rely on. This time beside the red and off-white shade I ordered some grey colours as I want to knit some (off-)white and grey/graphite balls in addition to the whole red-white collection. Think they will go nicely together on the Christmas tree.

And here are some ball "skins" I've knitted for the past 2-3 weeks. Not stuffed or ironed yet as I'm knitting for the pleasure of knitting :) Poinsettia is the pattern I've currently fallen in love with so I've been knitting more of its colour variations :) So truly Nordic! 

Been recently knitting a ball with a metalic yarn (Anchor) and it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. Metallic yarn isn't as stretchy and smooth as natural wool and tends to tangle more than a natural yarn. I even spent over an hour trying to untangle some loose layers of yarn! Fed up, I started to use a glass to stop my Anchor yarn from rolling and tangling. It works!

I've also discovered how to nicely weave in the loose strands inside a ball and now it all looks neater. Very pleased with myself.

Vase with butterflies

Another tube vase I have painted recently :) I thought some butterflies would look good on it :) The tubular shape is a bit awkward to paint and to place patterns inside so I kept the motifs simple. The vase has been on sale on my fairs this year.