Make-up bag

Well, sometimes I get extremely lazy even to write a message to the blog, and really feel like I need to fix this :)
Here is one of my works, which may be called a make-up bag, or just a little bag, or a pouch depending on what you'd like to use it for.

You need: piece of fabrics, zipper of a right length, sewing machine (you can sew by hand too), sewing thread, yarn of 2 different colours, knitting needles.
Cannot give you any pattern for knitting, 'cause I have it only on paper. But you can find really a huge amount of different snowflake fair isle patterns on Internet. The rest of the piece gets covered with a "dot" pattern (*one st in color 1, another st in color 2*, repeat from * to *). And you'll need 2 knitted pieces.
Then take your piece of fabrics and cut it in two.
Then you take a zipper and start your sewing machine. Your next task is to attach the fabrics and knitten pieces to the zipper and you can use this tutorial for help:  http://ginapina.com/wordpress/08/zipper-pouch-tutorial
When fabrics' pieces and knitted pieces are sewn to the zipper you act as following: with sewing machine, sew fabrics only (!) together, leave your knitted pieces open. Then cover the fabrics lining with the knitted top (so that you see the right side of the nearly ready pouch).

 Unfortunately, you'll have to sew the knitted pieces together by hand. I did it with light pink yarn. I thought it'd be funnier this way, when stitches that keep two knitted pieces together would be seen.

On photos you can see the finnished bag (I didn't take any photos of the whole process). And I still haven't found any use for that :)

Hellurei!

Happy New Year to everybody! Hyvää uutta vuotta! Bonne année! С наступившим Новым годом! Auguri di Buon anno! Gott Nytt År!
(Sorry for a late wish.)

Well, I really hope you had great celebrations of Christmas and New Year. I bet you received many presents and you gave as many.
At the end of the last year I did't have much time, so I didn't manage to make many hand-made presents. But among those were mittens, which I would like to present:

They went for the very loved ones.
And I'm in such state of mind that I'd like to share a description of the grey mittens. I called them "Tamara's mittens".
Feel free to download the PDF. I really tried my best to make the description as clear as possible, but I'm not sure if I've succeeded in that :) So you're very welcome to ask question (if you have some) in comments.

;)

Tamara's mittens PDF

Last knits

Long time no messages from me. However it doesn't mean i stopped knitting :)
I've knitted quite much lately, but i'm just so lazy to take photos and post them.
This week i managed to fight against my laziness and here are the newest items.
At first it's a pullover for myself.

It's very light (only 200 gr of yarn used) but warm. Made with needles size 3,5 mm, but my knitting is very loose so, one st in 3,5 mm needles here could equal approx. 4-4,5 mm with somebody else's knitting. The yarn used is composite: 30% mohair, 70% acrylic.
Unfortunately, i cannot give you instructions just because they don't exist. The only thing i had was the picture with measures in cm, that's it.
You can also check how it looks on me on Instagram.

The latest item is socks.

This time i used pattern from DROPS Design.  I changed it little bit, so the socks are about two cm longer in ankle. I also didn't have Garn studio yarn available, so i used what i had with approximately the same length/weight ratio (in my case it was "7 Veljestä" by Novita). Quite easy and quick to make, but they look very nice.

So here were the latest news from me :)

New address

Hello there!

From now on you can contact me to yulianknitwear@gmail.com :)
I'll be happy to answer your questions concerning my blog and it's contents. For example, you can try asking me to translate instructions into Finnish or Russian and even French or Italian (but i do not promise a good result).

Looking forward to hearing form you!

Pillow stories

Some time ago one of my acquaintances asked me to knit pillowcases for her new interior. That was an interesting project with only one "but - some of them took too much time to make.
But nevertheless they are all done and I present you pictures of two of them:

Two same-style pillowcases for a sister and a brother :)

Old new clothes

About five years ago i bought a light coat. I wore it for maybe couple times and then it got stuck in my wardrobe for a long time. But two months ago i occasionally remembered about it, but it looked just so boring and, if i can say, unwelcoming:

It was really necessary to do something with it. I thought to make a colourful belt or put some embroidery to the collar, but finally decided to do only minor change: to make colourful cuffs.

And here i'd like to share my experience with you.

Here is the set of tools you may need:

(There are sewing threads of two different colours, but finally i used only the brown one).
At first, i knitted a piece in 1x1 rib to measure how many stitches and rows are in 10 x 10 cm, then measured the circumference of the sleeves and came to the conclusion that i needed to cast on 68 st onto my stockinette needles (#2,5 mm).

Then I made a 10 cm heigh piece in 1x1 rib.

And for the cast-off I used a needle.

After i hid the ends of the thread i got a piece that finally looked like that:

Then i took off the cuffs of the sleeves (sorry for the yellowish picture).

The next step was to iron the open edges of the sleeves, fold them inside and attach the knitted piece with pins (or needles) so it would be comfortable to sew them.

I want to put special attention to how the knitted piece was attached. I turned the sleeve inside out (so on the picture above you see the sleeve's inside) but left the knitted piece right side out (or did nothing to it), and then i just put the knitted piece onto the sleeve and fixed it with needles.
Then i turned the sleeve back out and sewed everything together.

(As you can see the sleeve is now seen from its right side but the knitted piece is inside out coming from inside the sleeve.)
As for how to sew. I did it by hands 'cause i fount it quite uncomfortable to sew with a machine in this particular case, and i'm not so good at machine sewing. But if you like machine stitches i see no problems with that :)
And then you just fold the knitted piece up the sleeve and do the other sleeve the same way.

And here's the overall look :)

Thanks for reading this post and i hope to see your comments. If you've ever tried to remake any of your clothes you're very welcome to share some photos!

Knitted flower

Here I present my version of quite a popular instruction on how to knit a flower.

It's very simple and quick. I think it would be very cool to make it together with children.

So for that you'd need 2 needles (30-35 cm long) and a thread. You won't need a long thread, so if you have some leftovers you can successfully use them here.

To start with, you cast on 56 st, and knit 9-11 rows in st st. An you get smth like this:

In the next row (which should be on the back side) we start manipulations: edge st, 4 p, drop 1 st, 8 p, drop 1 st, 8 p, drop 1 st, 8 p, drop 1 st, 8 p, drop 1 st, 8 p, drop 1 st, 4 p, edge st.

As for the dropped stitches, you need to unweave them down to the 2nd row. When you turn the piece it looks approximately like this:

So in the next row (right side) you do like this: edge st, 4 k, *put the right needle through the dropped stitch and under the loose yarn and knit it, k8*, repeat 4 times, k the dropped st, 4 k, edge st.

In the next row purl 3 st together at a time, so when you turn the piece it should hopefully look better than this:

You can notice that i didn't put the needle under the loose yarn. But anyways, the only thing left to do is to gather all the stitches onto the thread forming a flower and graft the ends of the piece forming a petal:

With this piece i made a pin.

I'd be really happy to read your comments and see your flowers! :)