DIY portable yarn case

Having done a lot of knitting with DROPS Baby Alpaca, I've had some issues with the very loosely wound skeins. They have a tendency to disintegrate and become a tangled mess in my knitting bag. Annoying. So I figured I would have to love to figure out a DIY solution, something lightweight and sturdy. And so I did! Now, I might have spotted something like this around the mighty interwebz at some point and the idea buried itself in my back drawer of inspiration... Or possibly, this photo of a bagel case that has done the Pinterest rounds lately might be where I got the idea, who knows. But I've had so many questions and comments about my case that I figured it deserved its own post anyway!

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The construction process is simple: Find a CD/DVD spindle case you don't mind destroying repurposing. Make sure your skein will fit - there are many sizes available. Cut away the center pole in the base (now becoming the lid), leaving a hole in the center. Warning: this will take a sharp craft knife and some effort, as the plastic is quite sturdy. Some sort of power tool would probably make this task easier. Avoid cutting where the plastic is thickest and protect your fingers!! Missing fingers are not really an advantage for a knitter. Just saying.

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Place your center-pull skein in the spindle case. You can see that mine is actually a perfect fit. Lucky me! For a bigger skein, use a bigger spindle case. Feed your yarn tail through the opening in the lid and screw it on.
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Ready to start knitting! If you pull out too much yarn, just unscrew the lid and pull the yarn back, coiling it in the center, and reattach the lid. With this design, you'll have to place new skeins in the case before joining the yarn to the knitting - once you've started knitting with it, it's too late. If this is a deal-breaker for you, I suppose you could cut a slit from edge to center hole and slip the yarn through it, but that would be more trouble than it's worth for my part. It may affect stability and create edges that could catch the yarn and damage it. This version is simple, strong and functional.

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The finishing touch: However hard I tried, I could not cut or sand the opening smooth enough to keep the yarn from snagging, so here is my own solution: I mixed a large dollop of epoxy glue, spread it on the edge of the opening and rotated the lid so the epoxy coated the cut edge evenly all around and on both sides of the lid. This requires a few minutes of continuous attention, but epoxy hardens fairly quickly and after a while you can put it down for a few minutes before flipping or rotating it. Just don't ignore it for too long until it has properly stiffened. When cured, the epoxy is perfectly smooth, even with all those bubbles! The yarn slides out easily without any damage.

If any of you read this and make your own, I'd love to know! Leave me a link in the comments and I'll come and check it out. :)

Water bottle cozies

The coffee machine at work broke this summer. This wouldn't have been much of a problem, except that I relied on it to supply me with ice cold, filtrated water as well. With no replacement in sight and the tap water there pretty much undrinkable, I had to solve the problem myself. So I started freezing a half full bottle of water at home and bringing it to work.
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Now, this worked just fine, but I noticed a couple of things I knew I could find a solution to.
First: A bottle of ice water is, well, cold. No surprise there. Which made my fingers cold, which made my patients jump and twitch when I touched them, which, in turn, made taking x-rays of them a little bit tricky.
Second: If I left the bottle on a desk somewhere and didn't come back to it for an hour or so, it would collect quite an impressive puddle of condensed water. Which was merely inconvenient when the water dripped down my uniform making it half transparent, but really quite dangerous when the water gravitated towards electrical stuff (and that stuff's pretty much everywhere in a radiology ward).
Third: On hot days, there just wouldn't be enough ice to last the shift, even if I froze the bottle nearly full.
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The bottle cozy not only keeps the water cold for longer, but is also nice to the touch and completely eliminates condensation. I brought it along on a canoe trip this summer, and enjoyed ice cold lake water the whole day, to the slight envy of my friend. I made her and her husband one each for christmas. :) Also, my cousin got one, but I seem to have forgotten to photograph it... Not a very exciting object, I suppose. I've got two myself, one for the 0,7 litre Imsdal bottle, and one for the 0,5 litre bottle.
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How to make them, you ask? Well, it goes like this. Find a medium to thick yarn of 100% new wool, a hook that's one size smaller than recommended for the yarn. Make a tight spiral for the base, and just stop increasing when you start the wall. The cozy should be slightly wider and taller than your bottle (that's a precise technical measurement term, that). Hand felt in soapy water until snug (testing the fit regularly) and allow to dry on the bottle (refilling the bottle with warm water now and then speeds up that process). Ta-da, enjoy ice cold water anywhere. :) Ravelry links one, two, and three.
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Smart phone cozy

Just a tiny little project to warm up, since it's been sooo long since my last post. I've got a few unpublished cards that will make their way in here eventually, and another (big) knitting project that's in its finishing stage as I write.

I specifically chose a yarn that doesn't shed much - Ella Rae Lace Merino. Too pretty a yarn to spend on such an ordinary project perhaps? Oh well. I splurged on the phone, it deserves a luxurious home. :P
The label says 3,5mm needles are recommended. I cast on 2x22st on 2,5mm needles using Judy’s magic cast on, keeping the gauge fairly tight. Decreased 4+4sts in second half of ribbing. The phone doesn’t slip out by accident now, but it wouldn’t have hurt to have decreased another 2-4sts in case the ribbing in the turtleneck gets a bit looser with use. Good excuse to make another one? I want to make a TARDIS cozy next. :) Ravelry link.

Lining a fabric opening (tutorial)

When it came time to cut the openings for the handles in my denim firewood tote, I encountered a major obstacle. My original plan was to simply fold back the fabric and topstitch it in place, but that turned out to be a very weak and flimsy technique. Not only did it look bad, but the corners would definitely have frayed badly already after its first use. No, it was time to find a more sturdy solution! I vaguely remembered having seen a tutorial on something suitable ages ago, but only had a very vague ide of how it would look when finished, and no idea at all of how to get there. After an hour searching for it on Google with no luck, I spent another hour with pen and paper to figure it out for myself. There's just no stopping me when I get these ideas stuck in my head. ;) And I did figure it out! :D So although there is a tutorial out there (and it's probably written better than mine), I thought I'd make my own, just in case anyone needs it. Maybe mine will show up on Google. ;) It must be said that I am an amateur sewer and really have no idea of what I'm doing here. You have been warned.
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You need to start by marking, on the wrong side of the main fabric, where you want the opening to be. You can see my white lines in the picture below. Cut a piece of lining fabric larger than that. How big you want the lining to be depends on how much of the lining that needs to be visible in your finished product. Mine was about twice the width and height of the opening. Center the lining piece over the opening and pin in place, right sides together. (What you see in the picture below is the wrong side of the main fabric, and the right side of the lining fabric is visible through the hole I cut as a part of my discarded Plan A.)

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Sew a rectangle along your lines (refer to picture above). Then, cut into both fabrics in a 45 degree angle towards the corners (refer to picture). My opening is not square, so I did a straight cut across the center, to connect the angled cuts. As mentioned before, you can see that I had already cut a hole in my main fabric as a part of my discarded Plan A, but that's not nescessary. Lines are all you need. Go as far as you dare to the corner, but be careful! If you cut too close, the fabric will unravel - or even worse, you'll cut the actual seam.
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This is the fun part (and the one it took me a while to get my head around when planning this thing): turning everything inside out! Grab the lining fabric and pull it from the right side through the opening...
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...keep pulling and turning...
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...and turning, until all the lining fabric has been brought to the reverse side. You are now looking at the right side of the lining fabric and the wrong side of the main fabric! And now you can see the size of my lining piece. You may have to do some small additional snips towards the corners if they are very bulky - just be careful to not cut too close, or to cut the actual seam! You will now have two layers of fabric with angled cuts hidden under the visible part of the lining.
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Pin in place, pulling the lining well back. I pin from the wrong side, but will sew on the right side, so I take care to ensure that all pins are accessible through the opening.

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Topstitch as close to the edge as possible. If you look carefully, you'll see that I've offset my needle all the way to the left, enabling almost the entire presser foot to rest on the fabric and both feed dogs to grab onto the fabric. You might find it easier that way, instead of having half the presser foot floating in the air... I did a second topstitch seam outside the first, just to make it match visually to the rest of the tote. Also, if you have have to sew across french seams, like I had to here, I strongly recommend hand feeding the needle over the thickest parts.

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This is what it should look like from the wrong side. See the little wrinkle in the bottom right corner? That's the reason for topstitching on the right side. ;)

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Ta-daa! Flip over and admire your finished result! I'm so proud and satisfied with this, you have no idea. :P It looks twice as good and must be at least four times stronger than my first plan!

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A closer look at the details. You can just spot the lining fabric in the opening.

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And here are my two openings, ready for the handle to be inserted.

Denim firewood tote

This was a christmas gift for my dad this year! I've finally managed to write up this post - and there are quite a lot of images here. That's just how it goes when I'm very pleased with what I've done! :P I haven't sewn much in my life, so completing this project felt really relly good. Even so, it is a fairly simple thing, this firewood tote. Basically, it's just a long piece of fabric with a handle in each end... Trust me to complicate something so simple. :)
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I've made other stuff from old jeans before - like this wrench case for my dad, and a Scripture cover several years before that... All my jeans get worn out in one particular place, while the rest is still in virtually pristine condition. Incredibly frustrating, right? So it feels so great to use something I would ordinarily throw away!

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After I had started working on it, I came across Laura Wilson's version of the same principle. The dimensions of her tote are radically different from mine, because it was made to carry a completely different type of firewood. Her construction is also different - I believe mine is slightly more complicated, but significantly stronger.
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I thought I'd share a little bit about how I made this tote. It is by no means meant to be a full tutorial - there's no way I have the necessary sewing skills to make enough sense in a tutorial. Also, I made this up as I went along and that's no good starting point for a tutorial. ;) (Also, please forgive the colours of the pictures being all over the place - they were taken at different times of day and in wildly different lighting conditions and I haven't done a very good job at matching the colours in post processing.)

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Basically, what I've done is to cut up the legs of two jeans, giving me eight rectangular pieces of fabrics. I sewed four of them together on the short sides to make a circle/loop, and then did the same with the other four pieces. The picture above shows the two circles pinned together along the long edge, gving me one wide circle of fabric.

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The seam you find on jeans is the flat-felled seam. I've done something closer to a french seam, which is significantly stronger, especially when anchored by the two topstitched seams you see here. I did my own version of it, of course... *lol* Skipped one step and added another - because I wanted two seams to be visible from the front, rather than hiding the seam on the wrong side, like in the video. And obviously, there's no way you'd find me pressing these seams! Hah! *rofl*

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Sooo many layers... You can see the short-side seams are slightly off-set, because there's no way they would go through the sewing machine if they lined up. I hand-turned the sewing machine over these, every time. That's a good way to give yourself an aching arm, trust me. But this way, I only broke one needle! *lol*

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Aah, now this thing right here, that's one of the things I really struggled with. But the result was so worth it! I made two holes like this, cut into the fabric at opposite sides, where the handles would go. My initial plan was just to cut a hole, fold the edges back and stitch in place. That turned out to be a really lousy plan... It was ugly and flimsy and would have frayed badly after the first use. Time for Plan B - which was to line the opening with a separate piece of fabric. Not such an easy thing to figure out for a novice sewer. But I triumphed and have actually written up a tutorial on this thing, ready for you in a day or two just follow this link!
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And there you have it, when folded at the middle they make the perfect space for a hand. After making the openings I put the fabrics right sides together and stitched down both sides. Then I turned it inside out through one of the handle openings and topstitched down each side near the edge for added strength (this seam is only just visible on the left side in the photo below).

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I cut two pieces from a broomstick handle and sanded down the edges. The handles need to be strong enough to carry some weight, but thin enough so you can comfortably get a secure grip on both handles at once. The topmost double seam holds each handle in place, while the bottom double seam secures all the fabric layers in this area - including the lining of the handle opening.

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Always sign your work! ;) I freehanded the letters and embroidered my name using double thread. I actually did my whole name, but have removed my last name from the pictures. All done, now go present it to your dad/mom/family member/friend and bask in compliments. :) If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments and check back later, and I'll try to answer them there. Keep in mind that I'm not an experienced sewer, so take any advice at your own risk... ;)
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I'm linking up to this week's Strut Your Stuff Thursday at Somewhat Simple (button in side bar), and Fabric Fun Thursday at Cheap Chic Home.

Homemade Bounty

Having made our traditional peppermint pralines last week, there was lots of the shredded coconut stuff left. This happens every year. I once found a bag of coconut I had first used three years before. Honestly! Then and there I vowed to find a recipe that would help me get rid of these leftovers.
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Last year I made some Bounty chocolates using this Cut Out + Keep recipe, but the amounts were totally off, and you'll see in the comments that many had the same opinion. Way too much butter, not enough powdered sugar. Luckily I had tasted as I went along (well, that's half the joy of baking, right??) and added what I needed to make them taste good. And trust me, they were very good. :P This year I thought I'd go about it a little more carefully and write up a better recipe. I measured and added ingredients until the texture and taste felt right and added it all up in the end. There are other variations out there, but most require double cream or condensed milk, and I like the simplicity of this recipe.
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The amounts have been rounded off, and adjusted so you can use a whole bag of shredded coconut (250g). I had about half that left this year, and I still got about 40 bite-sized pieces, so this recipe is quite large. I think I'll stick to half amounts of everything in the future too. The picture above is from last year, when I made them in a size more similar to the original Bounty chocolate. If you do them that big, I think you'll get about 25 bars from this recipe. That's a lot of Bounty! (I'm trying very hard to avvoid the cheezy bounty-ful jokes here folks. Help me out.)
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Quick, before I say something too stupid: Let's get right down to the (huge) recipe!
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250g shredded coconut (the dry, unsweetned stuff, sometimes called dessicated coconut)
170g butter (at room tempererature)
400g powdered sugar
500g chocolate
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Mix together coconut, butter and powdered sugar well using a fork. This takes a bit of effort, and the mixture will seem way too dry at first. Keep working on it for a couple of minutes and it should suddenly come together to a firm, but sticky mass. Press toghether to form a sheet about a cm in thickness - I just do this by hand on a piece of parchment paper on my kitchen counter. Place in fridge for an hour or so, until completely firm. Cut into pieces of desired size - a sharp, hot knife will make this easy. Melt chocolate (temper if you like), cover coconut pieces. Place on plate covered with non-stick paper and let cool completely. Store in fridge.

Christmas traditions: peppermint pralines

There are a few traditions that never change, this is one of ours. There is no christmas without these peppermint pralines! I have to be careful not to make them too early or they will mysteriously disappear long before the big day. They look a little like snowballs, don't you think, even if the dark chocolate shines through?
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I distinctly remember stiff shoulders and aching arm muscles after stirring this mixture, and complaining to my mother that these took ages to get done. I must have been very young then, because although you have to expect to spend some time with these because of the several steps involved, it's a breeze compared to my childhood memories. Thankfully. ;)
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1 dl milk
1 large teaspoon flour
500 g powdered sugar
6-8 drops of peppermint oil (food grade)
300 g dark chocolate
ca 150 g shredded coconut
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Combine milk and flour and bring to a boil. Let cool. Stir in powdered sugar, a little at the time. Add the peppermint oil somewhere on the way - it's easier to stir it in before the mixture becomes too thick. Add more powdered sugar if needed. The consistency should be such that you can roll little balls of it with your hands. Do so, and let them cool in the fridge for a few hours until properly stiff. Melt chocolate and pour shredded coconut in separate bowls. Using forks or other suitable tools, dip each praline first in chocolate, then roll in coconut and let cool completely in fridge. Store in fridge.
I have no idea how long these can keep - because they never last very long in my fridge anyway... ;)

Felted robins tutorial

Tweet tweet! I'm not tweeting electronically just yet, but here are some of the felted variety. Robins are gorgeous birds! Their round red bellies are so easily recognisable and a lovely touch of colour during the relatively monochromatic winter months.
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These felted robins have become something of a winter tradition of mine. I love them! Since they feel more like a winter decoration than a christmas themed one, I bring them out of hiding some time in October/November, and keep them up until all the snow has come and gone, long into the new year.

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Several robins have flown away to my family members as little gifts the last two years. Even my brother spontaneously declared that he loved them and would like a little flock of robins for his appartment. Well, I couldn't deny him his wish, could I? ;) Away they went, all of them, and I started gathering a new flock for myself.
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This time I thought I'd make a little tutorial for you. I originally made mine from a material set from Panduro Hobby, but all the nescessary materials are available in hobby stores. Needle felting is incredibly easy, just hold the wool and stab repeatedly with the felting needle. The needle has notches that pull the wool fibers in and when you pull it back out they leave the wool fibres behind. Just one thing though. Be very very careful with your fingers, that needle is incredibly sharp!! Go on, ask me how I know. ;)

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ETA: I've been asked for more details on how the technique works. To start the robin you hold the red wool on top of the styrofoam ball. Stab the felting needle through the wool into the ball - this will bring wool fibres into the ball and make the wool stick to it. Keep poking the needle through the wool and into the ball until all the wool is well entangled around the whole styrofoam ball, and starts to resemble regular felt. You'll see the transformation from fluffy wool fibres to the dense red layer happen right before your eyes. No glue is needed! The wool sticks to both the styrofoam and itself. In fact, the styrofoam ball isn't actually necessary because the wool felts to itself, but it gives you a shape to start with, and therefor saves a LOT of time and wool. It probably takes a couple of hundred stabs on this first step, so have a little patience. When I got the routine in, it didn't take me more than fifteen minutes or so to complete the entire bird.

When you get to step 3, you simply gather some gray wool and hold it over the now red ball and repeat the process. Stab through the gray wool into the red wool and styrofoam ball and watch the gray wool entangle itself. Use the needle to guide it into the desired shape. After a while you'll actually see an effect from each stab. To make the tail you use the felting needle on just the grey wool for a while, poking through it into thin air, and it will entangle into itself forming a firm clump of wool protruding out from the body.

I hope this clarifies the process!

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So here it goes!

1: Grab your styrofoam ball, mine are ca 3 cm in diameter.

2: Cover styrofoam ball with red carded wool and felt with felting needle.

3: Cover half of the red ball with grey carded wool and felt. Be sure to let some of the felt protrude from the body to make a tail.

4: Make a ball of black carded wool and felt to body in the opposite end from tail.

5: Felt a tiny amount of grey carded wool to both sides of head, to make eyes.

6: Cut a small square of orange felt and attatch to head along the diagonal with felting needle. Attatch black sewing thread to back of head. Done!

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I'm linking up to the Strut Your Stuff link party.

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ETA: I've been featured on Five on Friday at Singing with Birds! Thank you for my 15minutes of fame. :) And thanks to all of you lovely ladies - and gents - leaving comments! I read and enjoy every single one! :D

Also, if you have any questions, just leave a comment and I'll answer as soon as possible right there in the comment section.

Biscornu pincushion (with tutorial)

Every aspiring seamstress needs a decent pincushion. Right? So in my desire to start sewing more, I decided that a pincushion was not only a necessity, but also a nice and small starting project. -

I first saw this kind of pincushion on the blog Bridges on the Body and was absolutely fascinated by this fairly complex shape that was created by just two square pieces of fabric. How could that be? On a side note: Yes, there are women out there who make corsets, in this day and age. And yes, there are other women who read their blogs with great interest. Yours truly included. ;) Take a look at Bridges on the Body and prepare to be amazed!
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This particular shape is called a biscornu, meaning "irregular, quirky, complicated, bizarre". And quirky it is... Originally, they were made with linen or other embroidered fabrics, but I decided to go a bit more modern and used two pieces of fabric from the Sunset range by Paintbrush Studio. The trick to this pincushion is that the two squares are sewn together, not directly on top of each other as usual, but with a relative 45 degrees rotation. That's it! Sounds easy enough, right?
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Materials needed:

Two squares of fabric in desired size

Matching thread

Sewing needle (and, if you like, a longer needle for attatching buttons)

Disappearing fabric marker

Stuffing

Two buttons (not pictured)
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First, mark the middle point of each side, on the wrong side of both squares of fabric. You can just about make out my lines on the light fabric in my picture. Layer them, right sides together, in the following manner: The middle point of the light fabric should line up, not with the edge of the of the dark fabric, but a little bit to the side of it (refer to picture). This little distance is your seam allowance! You'll see that the middle point of your dark fabric matches up with the seam allowance distance on your light fabric in the same way (refer to picture).
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This is what it should look like before you start your first seam!
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For the very first seam, start just right of the middle point of the light fabric, and sew to the middle point (right arrow). This means that you are stopping the correct distance from the edge of the dark fabric (left arrow). The reason for making just this little seam to start with is to secure the first corner of the biscornu while leaving a gap in the side for turning inside out and stuffing.
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Then comes the tricky part. To keep sewing along the light fabric without going past the edge of the dark fabric means that you'll have to turn the fabric 90 degrees and align the last half of the light edge to the first half of the next dark edge. Not making any sense, am I? ;) It makes a lot more sense when you're sitting there, trust me. There's really only one way to turn in order to continue. I've added two white arrows in the picture to try to clarify it: each corner meets the side of the opposite fabric. Corner meets middle, middle meets corner and so it goes.
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So, continue to sew along the side until you reach the middle point of the dark fabric (arrow), that means you should stop just short of reaching the edge of the light fabric (refer to picture). Again, this is your seam allowance at work.
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Turn 90 degrees again, and line up the middle point of the light fabric to the seam allowance point of the dark fabric. Is it starting to make more sense?
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Sew until you meet the middle point of the light fabric. Do you see? On the last seam you stopped at the middle point of the dark fabric and near the edge of the light one - now it's the opposite.
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OK, now it's getting funky. All this turning is making the fabrics fold and curl in surprising ways and it's not always easy to align the fabrics. Go on, you can do it!
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Just keep sewing and turning, and the shape of the finished pincushion will start to reveal itself.
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When you turn the last corner, don't sew all the way over to your starting point. You'll want to keep an opening for turning your pincushion the right way out and stuffing it, while still securing that last corner with a few stitches. I went back over my original seam once more at this point to strengthen it.
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Look at that! Turned the right way out and stuffed, we're nearly done! See how both corners next to the opening are sewn and secured, so all that remains is to close the opening in a straight line using a ladder stitch. I learned a little trick a while back - don't use big wads of stuffing, it distributes unevenly and creates lumps. Instead, tear little tufts of stuffing and put in a little at a time. I've stuffed mine quite full, but make sure not to overstuff it, because you want your buttons to be able to make that signature "dent" in the middle.
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So for the buttons: I just tied four strands of thread to the black button, pushed the needle through to the other side, went through the white button and back down to the other side again. Tighten the thread and bring the thread between the two buttons a few more times. To secure the thread I simply tied the two ends together under the button using a few tailor's knots, and squirted a drop of glue on the knot for good measure.
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Ta-daa! One finished biscornu pincushion! I'm fairly pleased with this one, especially considering my lack of experience in this area. Now, on to sewing bigger things! I have so many projects lined up that I don't know where to start...

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If you made it all the way to the end of this looong post, thanks for reading! :)

See you tomorrow!