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! :)

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 :)