Never too early for shoes

The fact that my niece isn't born yet is no excuse for not collecting shoes, and since she will be born in June, I made some sandals.

Crocheted with hook no 3 and cotton yarn.

A wittle bunny wabbit

I saw this somewhere a couple of years ago and I finally got around to try it out. Amazingly easy :)

First, you start with a knitted square. This is knitted with needle number 3 and yarn to go with it.

Then you thread a needle and sew with big stitches in the middle of the piece and up to the top and down again, making a triangle(I've drawn with orange here, white on white doesn't  show well).

Then you pull a little, making the head. Before you pull all the way, you stuff it with wadding.

And then you pull it shut, making both head and ears. Then you sew down the back to make the body.

 When you get to the bottom, you sew around the bottom edge, so that you can pull on the thread to close it when you've stuffed the body with wadding.

To make a pom pom tail, you cut a little peice of cardbord into a circle, with a hole in it(make the hole a bit bigger than in the picture), and pull the yarn around the ring until you absolutely cannot pull it through anymore. Cut the yarn along the edges- since the hole is stuffed with yarn the yarn will stay in place. Attach it to the bunny.

Time to sew a face on the rascal. This isoptional, tho :) Here I've just used dark grey yarn for the eyes, with white sewing thread to make the white dots in the eyes, and pink yarn for the nose.

And, if you like it, you can but a ribbon on it ;)

Better as new

So, when I bought this house the people I bought it from left a couple of items so I would get the house as complete as possible. One of the things they left was a roller-shelf-thingy called Molger from IKEA in the bathroom, placed underneath the sink.

 Picture taken from the advertisement for the house when I bought it.

When I put in real drawers underneath the sink there was no room for the roller-thingy(the stool next to it is in the bedromm, helping not-very-tall-me reach the upper shelves), so I asked my very creative and talented friend Linda for advice. At this point I was prepared to throw it out.

She suggested making it into a bar table. I immediately loved the idea.

So I went out and bought sandpaper and wood stain and got to work.

 The wood stain:

Before:

After:

 

Picture by Linda Adolphson

 

Picture by Linda Adolphson

 

Picture by Linda Adolphson

This corner of the living room is looking pretty good, I'm so pleased! And so is my honeybunny(whose spirits it is) ;)

Picture by me. Why yes, I do suck at photography.

Hairpin lace

This is so easy!

The green loom in the pictures was my mothers, she taught me this technique many years ago, but I haven't done it for a long while.
All you need is a crochet hook and a hairpin lace loom. The green one is old fashioned(my mother used it in the 80's), nowadays you can get the ajustable, grey and blue one.

Historically, a metal U-shaped hairpin was used, from which the name originates.

                                                   This picture is borrowed from livingwell231.blogspot.com

Hairpin lace is formed by wrapping yarn around the prongs of the loom to form loops with knots between them.

 

This row of crochet stitches in the center, is called a spine.

The resulting piece of lace can be worked to any length desired by removing the bottom bar of the loom and slipping the loops off the end. You produce strips that you later put together.

Examples of what you can make are scarves, shawls, hats, baby blankets, afghans, and clothing. It can also be used for decorative purposes in other projects. Take a look around the internet, there are some really talented peple out there!