Christmas feeling

It's Christmas and New Year celebration soon. The weather this year doesn't please, so I tried to create Christmassy atmosphere by myself.

This time it's not about knitting, but about something that is hand-made.
This year such Christmas trees are especially in fashion and are very easy to make. You need only to make a paper cone and cover it with tape or film. Then take a thread to your taste and reel it over the cone covering it with a good layer of decoupage glue. Leave your future tree to dry (i left it for two days) and then carefully take it of the paper cone. And that's it, the tree is ready, you only need to decorate it (if you want).
Hope this year we see snow...

Socks

It's snowing today and the ground is finally white, so i thought it's time to tell about another "work" of mine. Made it several months ago (as a birthday present), so it'll be quite difficult to remember details.

For these socks i used a thread which, as producer says, was specially for knitting socks (40% wool, 35% acrylic, 25% polyamide) and needles #4 (4 mm).
The size was supposed to be 37-38.
So at first you need to cast on stitches to four needles (not sure already but in my case it should have been smth like 51 st). And the first row you just knit on 1st and 4th needle but on 2nd and 3rd you make 2x2 rib starting and finishing with 2 k.
Next row you start pattern on 2nd and 3rd needles. I found my pattern on internet on some website and it was probably taken from some magazine. I changed it a little and finally got pattern which took 22 stitches in width and 16 rows in height. And you knit the pattern until the piece comes to the toe.
On the 1st and 4th needles you continue in rib until it comes to the heel. You knit the heel on two needles (1st and 4th) in traditional way in stockinette stitches.
After the heel you continue the piece again on four needles and again continue making the pattern on the 2nd and the 3rd needles, while stockinette stitch on the 1st and the 4th.
When it comes to the toe you start knitting in st st on all the four needles.
So when your sock is ready you can see that its top has quite interesting pattern: it has pattern in front, 4 k st on each side and a rib on the back.
Through the length of the sock the pattern (in my case) was repeated four times (as you can see from the photo).
It's Christmas and the New Year celebration soon. So if you can't decide what presents you wanna give to your family and friends and definitely wanna do presents by your own hands socks could be a good idea. One can always find a way to use them :)

Tubular scarf aka "snood" (crochet)

I personally find knitting more interesting (for me) than crocheting, but nevertheless I do crochet sometimes. And here is one of the examples - extremely easy scarf.

It was crocheted with a 3,5 mm hook in circular rows. The first and the last rows were made in double crochet, and the rows in between them - in treble crochet. *
Simple crochet patterns have beautiful texture, so the only thing to do is to choose a colour.

Yep, I really believe - the simplier the better.

* For American English - single crochet/double crochet accordingly.

Bolero for a little princess

As, I think, most of those who knit, I knit for presents and very often those are presents for children. Here are couple of pictures of one of such works. Inspiration came from Garnstudio models.
This bolero consists of 5 parts: 2 sleeves, 2 front and 1 back pieces. It was knitted by the needles #3,5 in stockinette stitches.
It really didn't take a lot of time and pattern is extremely easy as you can see: only hearts on the left front piece. I think flowers would look good also. The edge is crocheted in contrast colour, I just thought that sharp contrasts is one of those things which distinguishes kids' clothes from adult outfits.

P.S. And I should have ironed the edge before taking pictures :)

Dress

I usually knit for presents. Here is one of my presents to a 1-year-old girl.

I made this dress in spring, so I hardly remember how it went as it was improvisation. I can only say that I used needles #3 or #3,5. Threads were pure cotton. I'd recommend light threads from natural materials.
As you can see the patterns are very easy, as well as the edge, which was crocheted.
From the colours you've probably understood that I was inspired by quite old trends, which were presented 6-12 (or even more) months ago. I'm quite late in fashion trends :)

Colour issues

I don't know if you've ever had problems choosing colors, but I can say that it does bother me a lot. What bothers me the most is how colours match.
Couple years ago I heard a good piece of advice from TV. It was a program on how to dress and the "victim" of style gurus had a problem of matching colours. Besides everything this person really liked butterflies. So one of the "gurus" said that to develop a good taste for colours that person could buy a photo-album of butterflies and see how the nature itself matches colours.
I consider it to be a very good advice which concerns not only clothes but interior and crafts as well.
And some pictures for inspiration :)

Pictures borrowed from from here .

about Inspiration (#1)

A little thing I'd like to share is devoted to inspiration.
Besides the fact that one can find inspiration in all the big and small things that surround us, we sometimes need a verbally expressed "push" to activate our brains and muscles. Personally I'm not a big fun of long speeches "Steve Jobs style", I prefer short forms. So here is an example from a guy with a symbolic surname:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUsl9zh96wQ

Kinda pot

Well, I'd like to start telling that this blog is aimed primarily at those who like creating smth with their hands even though it may be something completely stupid. At the present moment of my life I have a lot of free time. Some time before I didn't know what I could use all this time for, but now such question just doesn't even come to my mind, usually I take needles and start knitting. And I'd like to share some ideas with the general public and will be very grateful to get some feedback from you... and maybe some ideas also :)

So, today I'd like to make a post about how to make a little "kinda pot".

For our future pot we'll need a box made of cardboard, a plastic bag, thread, stocking needles, free time and a drop of imagination. For the thread I chose acrylic thread, because it's quite resistant to water and other elements and it's also light. And the needles are #4 (4 mm).
The plastic bag (or a piece of it) will go inside the box, obviously it's needed for our box doesn't get spoiled because of soil and water. It'll look like this (quite funny):

Then with the help of two needles we knit the base according to the size of the box's bottom. As nobody will ever see this side of our future "kinda pot" it really doesn't matter what pattern you choose. 

After the base is finished don't cast off, leave the stitches on the needle and increase on the other three edges of the base, like this:

After that you may choose what ever pattern you like. I personally prefer smth simple, so for the next several rows I continued in stockinette stitch, and then I used the following pattern: 

1 row: the first and the last st on each needle - purl stitches, the stitches in between them - knit stitches.

2 row: first 2 stitches and last 2 stitches on each needle - purl, the stitches in between them - knit.

Continue like this till this piece covers the box. 

Then continue in st st for several rows and cast off loosely, so that the edge rolls up.

Then put the piece on the box.

My "kinda pot" looks like this:

I threw several seeds into the soil, but nothing has grown so far :)