Charger cable crochet

With a phone that's about three years old comes a battery that doesn't quite have the same stamina as before. Sometimes I'm caught a bit off guard and the battery runs very low if my work day is longer than expected. I've decided to keep a charger cable at work so that this problem is easily solved, but that brings the challenge of making sure that charger cable doesn't get "borrowed" more or less permanently by someone else.

Arts&crafts to the rescue! :) There's no question who this cable belongs to. :) Just in case though, I chose the oldest cable, already kept together by duct tape. I did single crochets tightly over the entire length of the cable, crocheting over both ends to hide them and twisting as I went along. Easy peasy. Ravelry link.

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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White batwing shawl

It only took me two night shifts and one extra evening to finish this shawl, now that I've got a corrected recipe to start with! It's made from one skein of crisp white DROPS Vivaldi on an 8mm hook. It's definitely smaller than the first and second, but this one isn't made for me and this size seems better for the recipient. No fringes this time, for a cleaner look.
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More details (with free pattern) on my Ravelry project page.

Featured again!

This made my day - again! :) My fulled red(-ish) basket made the Flickr Friends Roundup over at One Pretty Thing! I've been featured once before, with my denim wrench case. Phew, that's a lot of links for just two sentences... :P

It doesn't take much to please me - it's just so much fun to see my own work pop up on a page I read every day, and to be featured among so many other amazing crafters! Thank you!

Little lilac bowl

With my very last skein of lilac mix yarn, I made a little bowl/basket/catch-all. I don't know what this one will hold exactly, maybe some felted easter eggs...? For the interested, here's the Ravelry link with details about the project.
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Ice cream box cozies!

Anyone else longing for summer? I know I do! Now that the temperature no longer dips below zero at night and the sun has had a real go at melting all the huge piles of snow everywhere, spring fever has hit me. It's been the best winter we've had for years and a part of me is sad to see it go, but I think it also means we'll enjoy this spring and summer even more than usual. :)

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So to prepare for the impending heat wave (well, it could happen??) I've made two cozies for Häagen-Dazs ice cream boxes! No more nasty melted ice cream! And no more frozen fingers. :P Great stashbuster project - and it took exactly one skein to make each cozy. Perfect!. :) The lilac one doesn't quite reach the edge of the ice cream box because of the extreme reaction to the machine wash, but I've decided not to stretch it more - who wants wool fibres to find their way into their ice cream anyway?

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I also made one in my last skein of light green mix. I added one row of slip stitches in a left over strand of dark Eskimo - but that looked better before felting.

Crocheted in Eskimo on 6 mm hook and felted in washing machine. For the details, check out my Ravelry project page!

Fulled red basket

Here's the first installment in my new "felting with Eskimo" series - there are a few more projects like these lined up for next week you see. I've had a whole table full of drying wool baskets the last couple of days! The first project I'd like to share is a basket crocheted in a rust-coloured mix yarn. I used three skeins for this one, so it's a decent size despite shrinking like crazy in the machine. For the details, check out my Ravelry page.
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This particular colour is so difficult to describe! When examined closely, the yarn reveals strands in bright red, blue, green and yellow, and the overall impression is something red-brown-ish... After the machine felting it changed quite dramaticly: the blue fibres are apparently long and have been contained within the stitches, while the red, green and yellow fibres seem to be shorter and therefore sticks out in every direction. The result is a soft red-ish fuzz with little firm bumps in clear blue. I can't stop stearing at it. ;)

New on my needles - white batwing shawl

Because new on my hook just doesn't sound that good. ;)
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I feel like I'm just feeding you WIPs lately, sorry about that - I promise you an FO or two before the weekend is over! This is the batwing shaped Seraphina shawl I've made before, in a brown/gold version (Ravelry project page) as well as a lilac/silver one (Ravelry project page). Love love love this shape.

A basket of goodies

I've made a vow to myself - to not to buy more yarn until I've used all the yarn I bought on sale last year. Oh dear.
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So I've been knitting and crocheting like crazy lately! It's not always easy to find uses for those last left over single skeins - and I had quite a few of those lying around, in lots of different colours. What you see above is a basket full of various small projects waiting for a turn in the washing machine to be fulled. Yep, I've learned a new word. ;) Apparently, it's not called felting when the wool is spun and knitted first... The term "felted" is reserved for wet felting and needle felting. End of today's lesson. ;)
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Now, if I could just figure out a way to transfer this ability to spend stuff before buying new stuff to my paper crafting addiction too!?

Blue-lilac batwing shawl

I've been meaning to post pictures of this shawl for a month now. It was finished a few days before my brother's wedding - in the nick of time! It's the same design as the one you can see in this post. The yarn is a finer mohair than the first one, and combined with a thin silver thread this time. I was a bit worried that the silver thread would be too dominating with a thinner yarn, but in fact, it is actually less visible! I guess this yarn is fluffier and therefore covers it more.

Trying to find a colour to match my blue dress was a nightmare! I didn't even consider this yarn to begin with, but after trying to find a suitable colour among those I thought would match (and failing miserably), I decided to examine every single variety I could find right next to the dress, and suddenly this colour seemed entirely different from what I first thought. Hm. I was never really sure that the colours worked the way I wanted, but I wore it and I'm glad I did!

Batwing or angel?

I've been working so intensively on this crochet shawl that my shoulder hurts. The recipe was called a batwing shawl, but some colleagues of mine called it an angel shawl. I wonder which I prefer...? Whatever the name, this shape is perfect, and I will never make a shawl in any other shape! At least I'll try. The forward-swept shape makes it fit perfectly around the neck and shoulders, and fall very nicely in front. I love it!

It's made from one strand brown mohair, and one strand thin gold thread to give it a bit of sparkle. Once I got the hang of the system it was very easy to make, and very addictive - actually I made this in only a week. No wonder my shoulder is complaining.

Baby blankets

My best friend Kristin, has two children. I knitted a baby blanket for each of them when they were born. This first one is a little ruffled at the edge, but it doesn't really show up when it is used as the main pattern is fairly stretchable. I should also mention that I learned the stitches from a huge library book from 1980... What else is there to do when you desperately need to knit something and your mother (who could have tought you) is in China for two weeks?? Of course, these days I learn stitches on the web. The blanket is unblocked, quite simply because I had never even heard of blocking then...

When the baby was born and it turned out to be a girl (some like it to be a surprise), I made a little pink flower connected to a braided pink band that runs along the edge.

Now this was a fun way to knit, I can tell you! All the squares were knitted separately and then stitched together. OK, so the final stiching and especially the weaving in of the ca 60 yarn ends (oh the horror!) was an endless boring task. But the knitting itself was super easy and fast. And extremely practical too, you never have to carry more than one skein and the square you are currently knitting. Whenever you've knitted so much that you can't immediately see that you've done a row or two, it is time to bind off and start a fresh new one where every row makes a difference. ;) Now that's good for the mind. The blue squares have a center with alternating knit and purl stitches. Unlike the other blanket, this one is fully reversible. I also made a crochet edge to give it a nicer finishing.