Folky Eggs

Hello  my dear blogger friends. Hope you all are doing ok :) Been busying myself recently with some knitting and crocheting. Wanted something folky for the house decor so I knitted these:

Five knitted eggs with floral a motif :) I used the knitting pattern from Arne & Carlos book Easter Knits.

Originally it meant to be only 3 of the eggs -a red, orange and a yellow one. But they are highly addictive and I ended up knitting a pink and a blue one too!

I used Norwegian yarn to make them: Heilo and Falk of Dalegarn. These yarns are always a pleasure to knit with as they are 100% natural wool and they are good for smooth knitting and ironing.

I'm very pleased with how they turned out. Particularly I love their whiteness and freshness. Lots of Scandinavian artefacts features bright colours, white being most of them. 

Good weather and sunshine put me in a playful mood with a camera :)

Eventually I attached the crochet chains to the eggs and now they are decorating my seasonal tree :)

In the meantime I'm having a go at my first fair isle knitting on flat needles. It feels so different to DPNs I'm so used to. I'm knitting a cosy for one of my gadgets.

It is slowly coming on! :)

Have a good and creative week. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a trace behind. Always pleasure to hear from you. Love x 

Martha

Spring Sampler (3) and some cross stitch goodies :)

Monday 5th of May - bank holiday here, in the UK. Aaaah! So nice to have one extra day off which I'm going to spend mostly tiding up but hopefully will find some time in the evening to do some crafting. Currently I'm working on my Spring Sampler from Riverdrift House. I haven't shown my progress on this piece of cross stitch for a while so here it is! Half way done. I think the colours are emerging very nicely on the fabric. Now I can see that aida is getting a bit grubby now and it looks like a gentle wash will be needed when all has been stitched. The cotton thread inlcuded in this kit is Anchor. I never use Anchor threads, so I hope the colours won't run in the wash. Does anybody use Anchor threads and has ever had any problems of this sort? Please let me know. 

I just love stitching samplers - they are always a nice collection of various little "characters", motifs and decorative frames so you just don't get bored stitching them. I am much better with small cross stitch projects rather than the big ones - I get bored quickly and lose my will to keep on stitching. I need frequent changes and vibrant colours to keep me going. I tend to put a project away and then it is very likely to turn into a so-called long-term UFO - an UnFinished Object. I usually come back to it after a while :)

This design comes from Riverdrift House - a UK-based company that designs many other lovely samplers. Amanda, the owner of Riverdrift House promised me (and others too, I suppose) to design the remaining three seasons in a similar style - SUMMER, SPRING and WINTER. I did ask her to include some nice wording in them. I'm really looking forward to seeing them. Actually the Summer Sampler is on sale now and I shall be buying it soon! :))) Check her blog and the Facebook page for more sampler updates and you can post a photo of your progress too! 

Speaking of the Riverdrift House designs, I have done quite a big crafty shopping recently so have a peek at what treasures I've got! :)))) They arrived very quickly just before Easter. Blissss! I purchased 4 card making sets and a set with a frame. All cross stitch motifs. I really love those mini-samplers for cards. Perfect for me!

Here are the sets I ordered:

The royal themed card set. Full of regal symbols, red, white, blue and gold for splendor. Perfect for the British people who are royalists or for someone who is fascinated by the Britishness and the Royals :)

The Love set: this one is super sweet. I love the wording, I love the font and I love the choice of colours. The cards can be given both as Valentines or as birthday ones. Really looking forward to stitching those!

The Christmas kit no.1 I love this combination of white, red and blue with some beige. The motifs have some sort of a folky twist to them, which is what I just love. Another one to look forward to!

Christmas card kit no.2 - this one is my favourite in the entire collection. My regular blog readers will know that I love all things Scandinavian and anything with Norwegian stars, reindeer, Nordic folky hearts, christmas trees and snowflakes captures my heart straight away. I can't wait to lay my hands on this set! :)

The last set of cards to stitch is the Spring / Easter set: fresh, cheery, full of daffodils, hyacinths, bunnies, and spring branches. Easter may be over now but still there are some spring cards to be stitched :) I think I'll start with this kit first very soon. I live in North Wales where a daffodil is a national symbol so this card kit just blends nicely with the overall Welsh theme :)

And the last but not least is this gorgeous white Scandi-looking heart frame with a Home Sweet Home design in it. So pretty! So keen on this one. Not sure when I'm gonna stitch this one as with such a choice I really find it difficult to decide myself! 

Well, anyway with some new cross stitch kits in my cupboard, I'd better get a move on with my Spring sampler. I've already been looking on the web to find a nice frame for it. What colour would you suggest? I have had a white one on my mind.

Linking up to Hand-made Monday tonight - the blog hop no.166! Do join in :) There is also a newly created facebook group under the same name as the blog: Handmade Harbour where you can meet other crafters and chat about your blog and crafts. Check us out too!

Christmas Cards 2013 (12) : Red, white and brown.

Hi everybody. Sooooo busy and rushing with everything now as most of us are with only a few days to go before Christmas. Just popping here for a moment to blog about these cards:

It was great fun with Marianne Designs dies, Papermania papers and Martha Stewart stamps. Loved making these. 

And all three together:

Hope everybody is ok and enjoying preparing for the festivities :)

Christmas Cards 2013 (11): Red and White again

Hi all. How is everyone? Hope all of you are getting into the festive mood and enjoying waiting for those joyful winter days. I'm slowly starting to plan what I want to bake for Christmas and how to set up the whole decoration. Again, like last year, I'm dreaming of a real Christmas tree for my knitted julekuler from last year. How far have you been in your festive preps?

In the meantime I'm sharing with you a couple of my Christmas cards. Both reindeer stamped and embossed in red come from noolibird.com

For this card, I decided to make some hand cross stitches and add natural paper panels. I really like how it combines well with white and red cardstock.

On the card below, I used my favourite stamp with the reindeer in heart. It was heat-embossed and laid on a layer of white straw :)

Thank you for your comments and visits x

(Early) Christmas Cards 2013 (8): Cards with washi tapes

Yay! Weekend finally! This weekend I won't be doing much, I guess. Just a bit of knitting and cross stitching. Perhaps I'll find some time to sit down to make some more cards. In the meatime I'm going to show you  some cards I used the washi tapes on. Washi tape is a relatively new product on the market. It's a type of a low-tack masking tape but as opposed to the traditional boring masking tape, washi tape is patterned and decorative and it can be used in scrap booking or applied to various surfaces like glass or plastic. I have a few of these tapes at home and thought they may look good on some Christmas Nordic cards ;) So here are my attempts at including the washi tapes in my cards :)

Mine are naturally (surprise! surprise!) Nordic-themed :) They are a bit translucent and your can layer them to get some overlapping shades :) For this card I used Himalayan Snowflake from Martha Stewart, stamps from Scandinavian Christmas set, also from Martha S. and the Norwegian star stamp comes from craftfun.pl :)

Moving away from reindeer to ... Scandinavian wreath hearts :) This lovely heart stamp is from Noolibird and it has been one of my favourites since the beginning. I wanted to create a red and white card with some green accents :) 

And finally a festive card with a mixture of red, white and turquoise. This time three snowflakes have been stamped and heat-embossed with some scalloped layers and washi tape. The snowflakes are a Noolibird brand again. I love how they come in various shapes. The Merry Christmas stamp is from Scandinavian Christmas stamp set from Martha Stewart (as mentioned above). The red paper is Scandinavian Christmas from Marianne Designs, the polka dot paper comes from the last year Hobby Craft Christmas paper set. 

And what about you? What are you up to this weekend?

Turquoise and Brown once more

Time for another batch of cards with brown and turquoise features :) I already blogged about some of them before HERE -  have a peek if you interested. Again - it's all has been made using some scraps of paper, kraft cardstock and stamps :) My favourite card making motifs: hearts and cross stitch pattern.

This card has something new I wanted to try out - hand sewing on card. The cross stitch on the central card topper has been heat-embossed in seafoam white and the squares have been embellished with cross stitches by hand. I'm quite pleased with the effect. "Dla Ciebie"  = For you :)

This card has been literally made from remaining scraps of paper. I had a few coloured offcuts and why not go for a stripey composition? 

I think the vellum fishtail and the pearls are my favourite details here. 

Another card with a heart card topper. Used one of my cross stitch stamps on it.

And the last card, not with turquoise this time but with pink / purple shades. 

And all cards together:

A crafty fellow Emma from Emma made blog awarded me a blog Liebster Award.

What a lovely surprise! Thank you Emma.