Minty, the rabbit

I've been into knitting lots recently. Now that Easter is approaching I thought I could knit some bunnies. Perhaps you remember my first knitted rabbit. The pattern taken from Arne & Carlos book Easter Knits. Eggs, bunnies and chicks with a fabulous twist. Time I had a go at another Easter bunny :) Actually I started knitting this minty green rabbit months ago, I just couldn't finish it for a long time until one day I told myself: That's it! No more UFOs! No more leaving the unfinished stuff behind.

So here he is! Minty, the rabbit :) Finished and ready to be adopted by a soft toys loving kid :)

All I had to do is to help him out of his rabbity "deafness" and knit him a pair of ears as well as his jumper :)

I'm pleased. I think he came out quite well. The stitches are smooth, the yarn knitted well, the colour looks fresh.

Doesn't he look happy, this little soft fella? :) I'm also happy with this tiny cute stripey jumper :)

Minty has quickly found his companions - the rapping bear from Muller Rice and Monkey from PG Tips :) If you watch the British adverts you must surely know these advertising characters. 

They have even had their photos taken at a photographer's :D

Cool, huh? :)

Have a happy crafty weekend x x x

Martha

Easter tree with Scandinavian balls and eggs

I love Easter time. All around is so fresh and cheerful, the days are getting longer, there's more daylight, it gets greener and trees go into bloom. Shame Easter days last so short. Since I have a thing about cosy knitted Scandinavian things I usually have my knitted theme as a part of my Easter decoration :) So this year for Easter I arranged this tree:

On the tree went on all my Easter knitted balls and most of the knitted eggs from the previous years, including the 4 new one from the previous blog post. All these knits come from Arne and Carlos' books.

Under the tree I put a white porcelain hare surrounded by even more fair isle knitted eggs. Well, let's make it cosy this year, shall we?! It can still get cold, you know! ;)

And this is the view of the tree from my sofa :) I'm really pleased with my knitted collection, which by the way, still keeps growing. 2 years back I didn't even think I would be able to make such things by myself :)

So how is that? :)
Thank you for your opinions x x

Time to link to the Handmade Monday blog hop no. 165 tonight at Handmade Harbour. Do join in for some blog hopping fun and go round visiting others.

Knitted Easter balls and eggs

Hi all. There's more Easter craft of mine I'd like you to see ;) I'm still fascinated with Arne and Carlos' Easter knits so for Easter this year I made the 4 new Easter knits:

In fact I knitted the "shells" for these eggs / balls last year but couldn't get motivated to finish them off so they had to wait all year to be finished off this Easter. I steamed them, stuffed with polyester and attached the strings. Ta-dah! Ready to join my knitted Easter decoration :D

They are all knitted with double pointed needles and Dalegarn yarns: Lerke, Heilo and Falk :) I just love how these colours come out in knitted patterns. Very eye-catching, I must admit. The stripey egg is my first own designed pattern :)

In the next post I'll show you my Easter tree with knitted eggs and balls :D

Have a good day and thank you for comments x 

1 and 1/2 rabbit

What a busy time this Easter time is for me. I've been busy tidying up, cooking, setting up the decorations, finishing my craft projects and now I've found a spare moment to come online here and write this blog post for you. I hope you all enjoy your Easter time and spending it together with your beloved.

Today I'm going to show you what I have been creating recently :) Do you perhaps remember this cheerful book with Easter projects by Arne & Carlos I blogged sometime ago? I have knitted a few Easter eggs and the Easter balls from this book already but this year time has come to try out something else. Something out of my knitting comfort zone. Something I've been wanting to knit for a long time. So this time I have knitted my first Easter rabbit  and I think I've got hooked on it :)

I know it's not perfect. It's a prototype. It may have some sort of "knitted celullitis", flabby bottom and some lumps and bumps on his body. I've made a couple of mistakes on the way as I went along but now I know how to avoid them :) Overall the bunny isn't that hard to knit, you just need to read the instructions carefully, perhaps a few times to get the idea. However the hardest thing was to knit the heel - that extra 6-row bit that is knitted and purled and then you've got to work out on your own how to pick up and knit the vertical stitches on both sides of that bit. The book is not very helpful with the explanations on how to do it (which is a shame really) and I know from the Amazon reviews that the other knitters usually struggle with this bit too. I basically used a trial-and-error method and did my own thing which ultimately helped me to shape the bunny's heel but it wasn't exactly what the instructions said. However, looking through the other books of Arne and Carlos and searching for more explanation I have discovered that their knitted dolls book (lucky if you've got one) includes a very similar piece of instructions for knitting a doll's heel and there is a small helpful picture showing which stitches should be picked. Finally I managed to work it out and I think it is the right way to knit the bunny's heel. I'm gonna practise that with the next bunnies.
The rabbit's face was another "critical" knitting moment as the face requires the very same type of knit-and- purl bit of fabric and it needs to be knitted into bunny's face, giving it a characteristic bunny type nose. 

The second moment I struggled with was how to join two legs and knit the corpus but it turned out that you just put four dpn needles together just as you always do when you knit in rounds and simply knit two legs together with the bind-off sides facing each other and then you stitch them up. The 3rd moment I struggled with was embroidering bunny's eyes. I unpicked the stitches 3 times before I managed to get them look acceptable. I followed the instructions from the book which basically said: knit the head, fill it up with stuffing then embroider the facial features. Ha! The problem here will is: how to embroider the bunny's face without the knotting the yarn on the opposite side. Next time I'm going to stitch the eyes while the head is not fully knitted and bound off. 

Generally I'm pleased with my 1st bunny. The colors of yarns are random. I never care much for the colours I use when I make my first model. They are mostly any scraps of yarn. I'm more focused on reading and understanding the pattern. 

I stuffed the rabbit with the cotton wool. It's very light and it feels nice to hold the bunny in hand. It would make a nice teddy toy for a child.

The pompom at the bunny's butt.

My bf adopted the bunny. Now he's driving around with it on his dashboard. Sorta a campervan mascot now ... and a dust wiper :)

And in the meantime a mint green cousin rabbit is dangling half way through off my needles :) Still using an acrylic yarn but the stitches are smoother and more even. The heels look nicer too.

I stuff and sew up the bunny as I go. It is knitted in pieces which are connected with each other at some point. In the end the whole bunny is dangling off your needles.

And this is what the bunnies look like in the book:

Don't they all look fab on that shelf? :)

edit: I shared my knitted bunny on the Arne & Carlos' facebook fanpage and they liked it!!! ;) 

Spring Sampler (1)

Hi. Hope you all had a good weekend. It was quiet and quite cosy here. The dreariness and the coldness of the February days have made me long for something warmer, cheery, full of life. Now that Christmas season is gone, I am looking forward to spring. So alongside with my crochet, I've started cross stitching a spring sampler from Riverdrift House.

What I like about this kit is the compilation of various springy elements in cheery colours, the stitches are only full and there's no backstitch so the sampler should be pretty quick to stitch. 

A close-up of how it should turn out.

With a glass of wine next to me, I was stitching all Saturday and Sunday evening and this is what it looks like right now:

I love working on the fonts in this sampler and stitching every little character featured in the sampler is a single little joy too :) The finished piece should measure about 25 cm x 25 cm.

The rainy Saturday was all about being cosy and warm. We had a long lie-in in bed and my little furry buddy, Cookie, was enjoying that lazy morning with me :))) He's such a lovely fella (Oh, by the way, have I mentioned that initially SHE turned out eventually to be HE? A real tomcat boy! The name - Cookie -  remained.)

"He is soooo your cat", my bf often says. He hangs around me most of the time. He always seeks for me to play with him, he waits for me on the stairs when I get back in from work and he is my personal morning wake-up call assistant hovering over me when it's time to get up for work. He talks to me, he meows back and absolutely adores being in the centre of attention. He is always full of beans.

So we both enjoyed that morning together. Purring kitty on your lap is such a calming moment of the day. I always treasure it.

Currently on my reading shelf is this novel: Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell. I just started reading it and already I'm finding it whimsical, even sensuous as the author is good at creating moods through the description of the simple everyday things. There's some sort of illusive peace and serenity in this book alongside with a scorching heatwave that makes people behave a little bit strangely...

I don't know how the book will develop. I'm dying to find out soon! :) Now back to my cross stitch sampler.

Joining up Hand-made Monday no.154 tonight. Do join in!

Even more Nordic Spring cards :)

Yes, yes, yes, the cards again :) I still keep making them as it's great fun to mix and combine all those stamps, inks, punched shapes, papers, backgrounds and die cuts together and it's also a perfect opportunity to stretch and exercise your imagination and creativity (the sky is the limit, so they say) :) I usually make one or two cards after hours, in the evenings and then I end up with a few by the end of the week. Here are my recent Nordic Spring cards for this Easter season.

The "Norwegian sweater" style eggs on aperture cards - my idea for Easter 2013 and one of my favourite type of cards. I tried to keep them simple - the knitted pattern speaks for itself. Pastel colours are a must here! 

In the card below I had an opportunity to use my new polka dot embossing folder :)))) Been looking for one for a while!

All 4 apertures together :)

I've also made some pink/purplish cards with folky eggs, they have been inked and shaded with the blending chalks.

And side by side :)

A couple of aperture cards in yellow-green-orange colours:

And one with a cute yellow bunny :)

Voila! It has been a very crafty week! :)

Well-deserved Hand-made Monday blog fun! 

Easter Cards (2): Nordic Spring

We all know very well those Norwegian winter jumpers famous for their characteristic geometric patterns and coziness. I had a very Nordic Winter last Christmas full of these Scandinavian patterns and loved it a lot! Why not  prolong the feeling and have a Nordic Spring then? 

Since I've been in love with the Scandi culture for some time now, this year I decided that my Easter cards will have the folky Nordic accent too. Christmas greens and reds will be replaced by the cheerful Eastery pastels - whites, yellows, oranges, blues, fresh greens and pinks. As far as the colours and patterns are concerned, the main source of inspiration for me has been the "Easter Knits" book by Arne and Carlos where you can find a bunch of projects bursting with springy colours, yet maintaining their Scandinavian feel.

These are my first "Nordic Spring" cards I've made. They will participate in The Nordic Spring Card Swap on facebook :) These are mostly stamped cards with various coloured inks and decorated with some simple punched shapes. The stamps I used to make them is a mixture of The Waltzing Mouse stamps, Noolibird stamps, Craft Fun stamps and W Plus9 Design stamps. 

The hopping bunny stamp from Noolibird has been my favourite this season! In the card above, I tried to stamp with one stamp but with 3 different inks at the same time. It worked quite well, I think.

The well-known Norwegian stars featured in so many knitted jumpers, hats and scarves, here embellish my cards in forms of decorative bands. Can't imagine Nordic Spring cards without them! They are undoubtedly my favourite motif.

All 4 together :)

More Nordic cards on their way! Keep on checking! :-*
Joining Hand-made Monday tonight at a lovely blog Handmade Harbour and off to do some blog hopping.