The Wedding Blanket Squares Eighteen

Well yeah, so I accidentally forgot another Wednesday post, and I have no idea how I did that either. Sorry. But here it is because I have learnt that better late than never! 

Kata by Penny Davidson

I LOVE this square, I wonder why it is called Kata though.

In this square we got to do  clusters which I love, and the way the clusters were made in this square was most entertaining in around row 9 (my last two rows of light blue) where you make three DC's in one stitch and in the next row make a cluster on top. I am not sure how to explain it, but I would recommend just trying to make this square because it was most entertaining.

This is another square I would do again  and again, maybe in a pot holder or two?

This looks like another flower and *Kio and I have made very similar squares.

31g and 21x21 cm.

*Kio's Kata

The Wedding Blanket Squares Seventeen

Winter Rose by Julee Fort

It sure looks like a winter rose, I love it when the names makes sense.

Look at this beautiful mesh like effect. I love V-stitches, and using two colours on this part I think was very effect-full, but if i wanted a cooler look I would have used just one colour. These colours together are again very much like the sea in summer for me.

 I really liked this pattern but I am not so sure I would make an entire blanket in it.... The back post stitches are also very fun and after making this blanket I have made several back post stitches. I have not made any more popcorns though as I am not a huge fan of that stitch, looks awesome but it is such a hassle. 

33 grams and 21x21 cm

Four colours, this square uses Popcorn stitch, shell, V-stitch, front post double crochet and front post double crochet two together so it might look and sound complicated but honestly it was rather fast, about four hours and minimal ripping because I made mistakes. ^^ Yay!

And once again *Kio's square is the North-Sea. Love her purple lines in between!

Tuesday Tunes Because I can't help it

 So, I just realised I forgot to post the post I made on Tuesday! Oops, but better late than never. Even though I still listen to all the songs from last week, (I even bought them all) I re-found this Angerme song from April. I remember I loved it when I heard it, but it was too painful seeing Meimi and knowing she would graduate soon and I was not over Kanon leaving yet and seeing Angerme without her was weird...

Please excuse the stupid hat. (Yes, newbie I am looking at you) Someone should fire the people who came up with that hat, the other hats are fine I think.

The pants look a bit strange too but I can live with that XD

The newbies sound good too. Which is surprising. I love the lyrics even though I hardly understand anything since it is in a dialect of some sort, but I still sing suitou-to or whatever it is. 

Also when did Ayacho learn to sing? :O 

このまま終わりなんて嫌なの　お願い近づかないで

kono mama owari nante iya na no    onegai chikazukanai de

I don't want to break up this way   I don't want this to end... 

だって仕方ないやん datte shika nai yan Because I can't help it.

Do you like it? I think it is my favourite of the three singles. Which one do you like?

Tsugitsugi Zokuzoku or  Koi Nara tokku ni hajimatteru or this, Itoshima Distance?

The first has a fun name, hate the rapping though but the dance,  the start and chorus I like a lot!

My love already begun a while ago by Tsunku, and I love the clothes, casual and cool, love the letters in the video, love the place the movie is shot, love the naze and nee's, love the lyrics, the chorus is 

nice and I love how it sounds like there are too many words in some lines so they need to be sung fast, love the dance. 

But still I haven't listened to this a lot. Must be me missing my Kanon and 

Meimi who was the only ones I loved in this group...

Lazy Bunday

Hello, how was your weekend? Our was nice, not doing anything in particular though except hanging out. Doing some housework, going on a walk, and looking at our DVD's to see if there were any we were never going to watch again and I think we took about twenty to be donated. Well, we haven't gone yet, they have just been put in a box.

 It does feel nice to give away things that are not needed and just stay around the house as clutter. But still there are things everywhere here... Maybe we need to look at furniture next?

Bunnies have been taking it slow. Eating on the bed, binky-ing in the evenings and siesta-ing all day.

Just being bunnies I guess.

They have even been nice(er) and more loveable towards each other.

Mimle has as usual demanded cuddles from every human each time we've walked past. This little bun can never get enough cuddles. Too bad they are molting, again!

Finished Friday again and more baby gifts

Are you tired of baby-things yet? I hope not, because in my endeavour at getting better at crocheting and designing things I though it good to start small and you don't get any smaller than with baby things...

As I told you earlier, I used one of the baby jackets as size measurements and started on a sort of vest for a baby. It was supposed to be a jacket, but I didn't have enough yarn for the arms and I kind of had no idea how to make it as I wanted so I opted for cute litte wing-like things instead.

Here I am sporting a lovely bracelet of Drops Merino. It was rather useful to hang my yarn on my and when I was halfway through the yarn so it didn't fall off the sofa as often.

#yarnholder

Here I was the other day.

And here it is finished, tadah!

I have no idea what size it is, because small babies are hard to come by for size comparison, but I am guessing 3 month?

As you can see it is pretty much the same size as the jacket. Now it only needs a button and a fastening hem thing. And a baby inside, but for now I will just put it in my baby-gift box and hope someone comes a long to wear it. And in the meantime I am making more clothes so that I will get better at it, because this is rather sorry looking even if it is kind of cute. But hey, I designed it, sort of so I am kind of proud of it anyway.

The jacket weighed 78 and the vest 95, so almost two balls of Baby Merino from Drops...

Now what to make with the leftovers....

Retro Baby Clothing Bonanza

Well, I told you I went through a lot of my things at moms place right?
And she is very good at saving things and so I got two boxes of baby/doll clothes, a lot of which I wore when I was a baby.

 I had to throw out a few of them because of holes and elastics and stains, but after cleaning most are fine to use. And fun to look at. I showed my neighbour and he exclaimed that he couldn't believe I had been so tiny... Neither could I, but my uncle assures me that my head was like a small orange when I was born so maybe I was tiny. Anyway, would you like to see some adorable baby clothes?

Picture of me, my brother and grandmother at my 1st birthday and the only baby picture I could find, I know there are some more but I guess my mother has them. And look I am wearing red and my brother pink, he loved pink and light purple.

I hope to use some as templates to make my own in crochet later and make some more baby clothes from my list from the blogpost here or my Ravelry list here.
After all baby clothes are fast and I need practising on small things before I can do bigger things for me I think.

I love these two. The pants even have little feeties...

Oh how I wish I could knit! But learning to knit baby things is on my to do list. Maybe I can make something like this one day. Like when I am a great aunt or something. Hehe.

Mister M and I are not that fond of yellow, I wonder if my mother was? Look at those tiny booties and cute dress. The sweater and jackets are home made by someone too. My mother told me some of these were hand me downs but one of the jackets was made by her aunt? I think, which is amazing, just wished I liked yellow >.<

Pink, I love pink! The lightest I think is in some kind of eighties mohair mix and might not be the best to put on sensitive skin, but with something with arms under I am sure it could work. And the other pink jacket has cables! The bright pink cardigan is not home made, but it is still cool and usable. I found three! White jackets in acrylics from the store also.

The back of this dress has some stains on it (or front, but since both sides are the same I say back) so I am thinking of colouring it, it is after all home made by someone and should be used. White is not the most practical colour to put on a kid I have learnt. I love the ruffles on this, so adorable. I hope someone has a winter girl so this could be put to use.

The pocket of the blue dress is loose, but that can easily be mended. Or removed, but aren't these just the cutest?

The red dress I also love, and finding baby clothes that are not pink and blue is not the easiest these days I have heard. But I still think colour is just a colour and not a sign of gender, I could easily put my kid in blue, red, green, yellow, purple or pink although I don't think I would put my boy in these dresses.... ;) 

I remember I loved to dress my dolls with this sweater. The skirt is not pictured so great, it has blue dots I think. And amazingly the elastics is still fine. I wonder if I ever wore this, it seems more 90's, maybe my cousin wore it? Or I just got it for my dolls?

The purple dress has a tiny hole that needs mending but the sweater is still in almost mint condition. Look at those sweet hearts on it, who would not wear this? I hope someone I know has a winter baby.

A lovely blue dress with an open back, and those are my toes for size comparison, this was one of the largest dresses so you could imagine how tiny the rest are. Maybe it can even be used as a shirt for older kids?

On the back it says: Sorry, sold out. I love this t shirt ^^

 There were some other body-things too, but this one was the cutest.

Even some I remember my mother buying as baby gifts but the baby grew too fast so my dolls got it. 

Lots of velour and reds and some pinks. Some even have my name in them so I know I wore them. I do think most of these clothes are mine and not my brother's, but perhaps some were my brother's first?

One is missing a button but it is crazy throwing it away just because of that? I can fix that.

Even some might think these clothes look old or dated they are so small they mostly look cute and adorable.

There were some more clothes, but I only added the most interesting ones. What do you think? Even if they are only from the eighties I am sure they could be considered retro right?

 And I have already started to use one jacket as a measurement for a small baby wrap with short sleeves, just because I don't think I have enough yarn for whole sleeves.

The Wedding Blanket Squares Sixteen

Block 15 Lace Petals by Chris Simon

 I have a bit of trouble seeing the difference between some of these squares in my photos, because the flower in the middle has been used so many times in this Cal, but luckily for me, I took pictures of each square in the correct order. But even if I say that the squares are different and not just with a few rows, but every square (except a pair by the same designer) is completely different when looked upon on a second glance.

The colour of my petals and in the second row of *Kio's square here has been a bit confusing because I call it purple and *Kio calls it pink and I could not for the life of me remember a pink ball of yarn in our purchase. The dark purple we agreed was purple, but there is another colour that is in *Kio's square that she calls medium blue-purple and I called violet and still seems more blue than purple to me. So that was fun. It is amazing how people see different colours in different ways, different not wrong mind you.

Except when Mister M calls his burgundy robe and my fuchsia pink the same colour, which clearly they are not!

I really like the lacy air of the flower, it was fun to make a flower not so solid and the square part went by with a blast. This is another square where I was scared I had used too many colours and tried to stick to a few.

This square was 33 grams and 21x21 cm and took a little under four hours in total, with a few rows ripped with the flower part but I made up for that lost time in the square part with row upon row of easy DC only.

*Kio's square, it looks like a flower I really like called Viola Tricolour according to Wikipedia, but I call it night and day. Just needs a bit of yellow. But yellow has been hard to find at Søstrene Grene. I am not quite sure what my colour scheme is, it does not remind me of anything natural, perhaps forgetmenot's? They come in purple too don't they? Syringa vulgaris perhaps, they come in purple/pink, white and blue?

Tuesday Tunes again

So because it is Tuesday and I like to share, not just to you, but to myself kind of like a diary of hits, here are this weeks selection.

This song is a bit older and I think this is one of the songs my friend Evi wanted me to listen to, I know I have heard and liked it before, but I found it again while looking at men dancing morning musume and then found this song.

Jump like me.

The dance looks easy but I am pretty sure I could never dance like this;)

踊りたい

odoritai. 

I want to dance! So I am dancing around to this and singing, although I must confess that my moves look nothing like this >.<

And I will miss Kanon, the one in blue talking and DJ-ing who just graduated. I have felt too bad to mention her and my two favourites of Angerme graduating. (Tamura Meimi and Fukuda Kanon)

At least Fukuda sings on her IG sometimes.

 And I have not been idle, I have crocheted our pattern Søtten in pink and purple for a summer party.

Almost two balls of yarn, I haven't weighed them though, and some white scraps for the thread on top.

What do you think?

And we are very close to releasing our next pattern as well.

Birthday and Bunday

So Happy Birthday Mister M! I hope you had a blast even though
we had a slow day at home.
We made sushi and baked a whole cake just for us.
(We did give some to the neighbours.)

I hope you liked your presents. I had fun picking them out.

Other than that the bunnies have been super lazy all day.

We have not, we have done some cleaning, clearing the storage a bit, going for a walk and changing the curtains and washing them as you can see in the next picture where Mimle is up to no good.

Mister M's haul.

This weekend we saw three movies, one Finnish/Swedish (hallonbåtsflyktningen), one Swedish (Hundreåringen som klatret ut av vinduet og forsvant) and one Icelandic (Rams). And we laughed a lot on the first two, the third was funny too, but not as funny as the others since there were some sad moments. I would recommend seeing all of them. The Rams one had some gorgeous Icelandic knitted sweaters so if you are a knitting fan I would strongly recommend watching.

Book Review Crochet for Baby

Crochet for Baby or Babyhæklet as the original title is, a book by Sys Fredens. This book is now out of print in Norwegian but I borrowed it at the library to see if it was a good book and since I was busy making baby gifts I thought it a good place to start. Also small things are fast and fun to do and might suit me rather well as I am always starting something new. Well I opened the book and loved it. 14 patterns which included; baby booties, bib, body, wrap around top, jacket, dress, another jacket, short trousers, dress with sleeves, hooded jacket, trousers, "devil" hat, blanket and driving pouch. All in all a good set of things a baby needs I thought and started looking into finding and purchasing the book for myself. But when I started actually reading each pattern to see which one I wanted to crochet and what yarn I would need, the yarn I found out easily as there was a section at the back but I struggled with the patterns. Usually when I read a pattern I understand it and can wizz through but in this book it did feel like certain key tidbits of informations was missing. When I try out a pattern I like the pattern to be easily read and well written, I don't want to wonder if I am supposed to crochet in the round or back and forth, I don't want to wonder if I start at the top or bottom and things like that and in this book I felt a lot where up to guessing... I asked my mother who has been a crocheter all her life and she could not understand the jacket pattern either. I felt discouraged and put the book down. It had looked so promising, and a baby book with crochet in Norwegian is hard to come by. I wanted to try again and felt betrayed by the author and her beginning words in which she talked about her patterns as easy... But I started anyway with the baby booties.

Aren't they adorable? And sure they look really easy.

But looks can deceive, I started out and did a row at a time, and surely after three rows my sole looked like a V., this can't be right I thought but I continued on and after reading the whole pattern again I decided I was doing it right since the pattern said the sole and heel needed to be sewn at the end. But I still think that would have been better said more plainly at the start. Ok, carry on. When I got to the top of the feet I struggled again and did not understand anything and after crocheting and ripping and doing over I decided it might be right and just continuing again. Then I did the ankle and I didn't know if I was supposed to continue back and forth or do it in the round but did both and the round seemed better so I stuck with that. In the end I spent four hours on one but the second went by so much faster although I am still not sure if i did it right after the pattern. And number two is slightly bigger but oh, well. They are still adorable.

And good baby gifts.

In my finished blogpost of the booties I used Drops Paris which was not the suggested yarn, but luckily in this pattern it is stated how big the sole should be in cm for each size which was very helpful. The booties weighed 45 grams with bows.

 The second one I did in a couple of hours so I am sure a good crocheter can make a couple in a night.

I am not sure if the size of the book 15x15 cm made it so that the patterns needed to fit into a too small place so some important pieces were missing or if I am a bit too much beginner for the book but I do think it could have benefitted with some more sentences here and there. And more pictures. In fact I hope she makes another version with more detailed patterns more pictures and perhaps more patterns and twice as big a book.

I also made the bib which wasn't easy, but easier, even if I know there are a few small mistakes in it I just couldn't be bothered ripping it up too many times. I think patterns like that take some getting used to and perhaps I need to trust myself a bit more and just finish instead of redoing all the time. But after the initial grumbling and ripping I quite enjoyed it and I still think the patterns are gorgeous, so much in fact that I am contemplating buying the Danish version, after all I read Danish so it shouldn't be too hard... I want to make the wrap around, "Devil" hat and a dress or jacket or two...