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

Happy Easter

Celebrate this Easter with a heart filled with love and peace. 

Have a blessed and wonderful Easter!

As for me, I'm celebrating this joyous time in a folky style ;)

These wooden horses and the cart were brought to the UK from the Ethnic Museum of Countryside in Lublin. They keep reminding me of my country, Poland :) I thought they would make a nice folky display for my knitted eggs.

Hope you all have a great spring break. The weather here in North Wales is just perfect - sunshine, warmth, daffs and blossom. Gorgeous!

Egghenge

Easter Monday is almost over now :) Hope you all have been enjoying your break. Tummies full of chocolate and of all sorts of Easter bakes. Chill-out and feet put up in this nice sunny weather. There's been lots of Easter crafting for me this year.

This season I'm having a knitted Easter theme again. It's my favourite on cards and in decor. In preparation for Easter this year I've knitted these Au Naturale eco eggs :) Very pleased with how they turned out as this is what I wanted to achieve - a natural smooth pastel effect combined with soft coziness and a knitted texture. 

To knit these I used Twilleys Freedom Sincere organic cotton yarn (DK) and dpn needles. I knitted two of each colour and would probably have kept on knitting if Easter hadn't come so fast this year! They were so easy and fast to make as they are plain, not patterned so you don't have to worry about joining in other colours, you just knit automatically like a robot, one by one :) The pattern for the egg comes from Arne and Carlos' book: Easter Knits I mentioned many times on this blog (check for the blog tags) and I'm already well familiar with it as I've already knitted dozens of eggs :) 

Basically I just wanted some plain knitted eggs in natural earthy tones with this lovely knitted cotton texture. I am fascinated by this classic stocking stitch - its simplicity, its genius, its structure. Cotton yarns are particularly good at creating this kind of knitted texture as the fiber is smooth and the fabric weave is so clear and distinct. It loses a little bit of this effect if you knit with a wool. 

I filled the eggs with polyester well to the brim. They keep the shape and they even can stand... like penguin eggs in a nest ;)

And how about having your own Easter Stonehenge... or I should rather say... an Egghenge  - a mysterious circle of knitted eggs :) So what was first then: a stone or an egg? ;)

Or...the Easter Islands perhaps? Doesn't that photo remind you of those colossal stone statues standing proudly in a row?

I had lots of fun making these and will probably come back to knitting them sometime in the future as I've got some other yarn colours and would love to see these in other shades too. 

I haven't been taking part in Hand-made Mondays blog hops for a long time! Time to join up the 164th episode of Hand-made Monday at Handmade Harbour :) 

Star Garland (2) - finished!

This week I've worked on various projects. Mostly crochet. Finally I've managed to finish off my crocheted star garland :) Here's what it looks like now when all done and dusted :) This project comes from the book: Ros Badger Hook, yarn and crochet and it's been my favourite since the very beginning. It's even made into the cover star (yes, literally too, pun intended)

Below you can see the stars both on their right and wrong side.

I'm really pleased with how the whole thing has turned out. It's my first completed (more significant that just the simple crocheted flowers) project from a crafty book. I've learnt a lot about crochet with this one and now I can finally see the similarities and differences between the basic crochet stitches. At last I can make them out of my head, without help from any books. Everything in crochet starts to make sense to me. Like a jigsaw puzzle. That's a big step ahead. I feel like I'm getting more confident and adventurous with my crochet now that I can read better written instructions. I feel so encouraged to go further now with my still-basic crochet skills.

The garland is made of 15 stars - the brown and cream coloured ones have been knitted with an organic cotton Freedom Sincere yarn and the red ones have been made with Lerke of Dalegarn cotton.

Because it has been cold and rainy today I couldn't take my garland outside to take a photo of. Instead I had to do with some photos at home :-/ This is what it looks like when the garland is stretched over the mantlepiece:

This is just a temporary presentation to show you the span of the garland. I'm still looking forward to some nice weather to take it outside and will add the photos to this post later. Standing back and looking at it, I'm pleased with the colour combination. It doesn't look particularly Christmassy so I believe it could be used throughout the whole year, what do you think? However, I'll surely come back to this project as I'd like to crochet some stars in more Christmassy colours. Perhaps I'll crochet just single stars on their own to hang on the tree too.

Before the garland was finished it had to be blocked. This is something I hadn't done before. The books suggested to pin it down and steam it with an iron. I did exactly what it said but also sprayed the stars with some spray starch for the crisp finish. Not bad overall. The stars do keep their shape! Yay!

What to do with the rest of the cotton yarn? Obriously knit an Easter egg! I'm slowly building up my Easter egg collection this year. I have a vision in my head of making my Easter decoration in plain pastels and au naturel this year :)

Anybody on their Easter projects already?

Joining up the Hand-made Monday blog hop no 157 tonight. Very curious what others have been up to!
Thank you for your visits and feedback. x x

10 Scandinavian knitted eggs

Yay! My 10 Nordic knitted eggs are now ready to be featured on my blog. The fruit of my knitting labours from the past 3-4 weeks. The patterns were designed by Arne & Carlos and published in a Norwegian Paskestrikk booklet. I found those eggs simply irresistible. I knew I would have to knit them! The white floral eggs and the jumper patterns on them captured my heart at first sight.

The eggs have been knitted with the Dalegarn Lerke yarn and it was quite a different knitting experience for me. The yarn is basically 50% cotton and 50% merino and it knits a bit different to Falk and Heilo yarns I'm used to. It's smooth in knitting (though sometimes it tends to split) with a "string-y" feel and gives nice smooth weave. I think it just perfectly matches the overall Easter'y style of these eggs.

I absolutely loved knitting those floral eggs with the white background. The white is so typical of the Scandinavian home interiors and it gives an impression of freshness and cleanliness. Perfect with tulips and other spring flowers. 

The blue-yellow-red-white designs will also look great on an Easter tree or an Easter table :)

My knitting basket has filled up with the knitted eggs now! And I still keep knitting them! 

And these are all my Easter knits so far:
Quite a cheery collection, eh? :)

Pleased with them how they turned out and I can't wait to see them hanging on my Easter tree :) (I need to somehow conjure one up soon!)

*  *  *  *

One Sunday trip to an Aldi supemarket and this lovely sewing tin is mine! Sorta Tilda style. Couldn't resist not buying these gorgeous pink roses with a turquoise background. After all, we all crafters love to have our stash stored nicely and in style :) Supermarkets can be surprising sometimes :)

The content of the tin includes all essentials for sewing, even with some extra bits and bobs. Quite a decent bargain for the price of £2.99.

More crafty shopping. Recently I've been discovering and exploring the beauty of the Polish folk. For that reason I ordered some scrapbooking papers and stamps from GoScrap. I was really looking forward to that order. They came all the way from Poland :) I want to make some seasonal and birthday cards with a folksy look. Looking forward to it big time! 

I'm always on the lookout for some new folky stamps :) These are the silicone stamps inspired by the motifs from the Polish paper cut-outs. Google "wycinanki łowickie" (= Łowicz paper cut outs) and you will know what I mean :)

The online shop people were so nice that I also received some labels/tags for free. How kind! :)

Let the folky fun begin! :)
Back to my knitting now. It's so freezing cold tonight that I don't fancy anything else than this:

Would love to share my knitted stuff with the other crafters at Hand-made Monday tonight. Do join in! Great places to visit are waiting there.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Please feel free to comment and share your feelings. Pleasure to hear from you. Cheers.

Martha x

Arne & Carlos: Easter Knits (2)

Half-term break is a good thing. You can craft, craft and craft as much as you want. And this is what I've been doing this week. Plenty of knitting on those rainy days.

My Easter knit collection is expanding slowly :) 2 new knits joined up - an Easter ball with blue hens and a small green Faberge egg.

Loved knitting the ball with the hens - its pattern reminds me of Norwegian jumpers, yet it retains its Eastery feel.

The little eggs was knitted with 2.5 mm DPN and with Daletta Dalegarn yarn, which is thinner than Heilo and Falk. I wanted to see how small a knitted egg can be.

Now, I've knitted 4 Easter balls so far:

 and 5 eggs - starting from the 1st most primitive one to the improved ones :)

All my Easter knits together:

and this is what I'm currently working on:

The first knitted eggs made of Lerke yarn :) Love the  mix of colours. Perfect for spring.