Stitches and Thrills

Having been at a Twin Peaks party a couple of weeks ago I realized that my life was missing a log pillow. (The hostess of the party had one!) So I was thrilled to find the free log crochet pattern on the Club Geluk website ! The pattern is in Dutch, but I will explain some adaptation I made, and as a bonus: how to make it into a pillow. I used 100 grams of light brown yarn (it was actually a variation yarn, but that worked well). 50 grams of beige and 50 grams of dark brown yarn. All yarn DK / light worsted (usual advice would be needle size 4). I used a crochet needle 3.5 mm to get a close firm stitch. The recommended 43 chain stitches (light brown yarn) cast on gave me a circle of 9 1/2 cm diameter. I closed the circle and knitted 55 rows to get a 39 cm tube. I did make a small change to the pattern in the 2 end circles of the log (beige yarn). As recommended I did cast on 8 stitches in a magic circle. And then increasing each round following in the pattern. However: I did...

Last winter the Dutch shopping chain HEMA used a lot of knitted items in their holiday season promotions. There were knitted champagne bottles, a cat, food, yes, even a ham. All this was knitted by Club Geluk (= Club Happiness). On their website the actual items are for sale, but also Christmas NYE cards and a spicy calender. But most of all, a big hooray for the Dutch knitters, the knitting patterns are now available in a book: Club Geluk Boek I didn't get the book yet, but a friend of me bought it and confirmed it was full of patterns that were unlike anything she had seen before. On the Club Geluk website you can also find free crochet patterns (in Dutch). Among those a crochet log. The pattern suggests using a cardboard roll as filling. But I made a pillow filling for it. Which will be DIY December Day 9, otherwise I'll never catch up ;-)

After last years success Imke from LoveJohnny organised another #creasint . This is a social media celebration of Sinterklaas. About 50 creative Dutch people exchanged handmade gifts. In the weeks before nervous tweets and updates started to appear on twitter and facebook: What to make? Do I have enough time? Will she or he like what I made? The Sinterklaas celebration is on December 5th, but lot of people celebrate it with family that evening. So we opened our gifts on Friday December 6th. My "creasint" turned out to be Daan of maandagdaandag ! She gave me a wonderful hand printed teapot with a text from Where The Wild Things Are. She added some delicious herbal teas as well. And on top of that she gave me 2 fabulous handmade stamps. Can't wait to use that strawberry with my fabric paint. I'm surely very spoiled! The person I made gifts for is Marike . I made her a mobile inspired on the movie UP! (see the bottom of this page for a basic tutorial) ...

A couple of years ago I bought a Logitech Headset ClearChat Style. The set was a nice little price and perfect for Skype. And after a few years the headset still works fine. However I did get a problem with the soft ear cushions falling apart. "Easy to fix" I thought, I'll just buy some new ones. Alas: these are not available! A friendly guy at the electronic shop helped me trying if other brands would fit, but we couldn't find the right ones. So I got in touch with Logitech, asking which replacement ear cushions they would advice. But they couldn't advice beyond whether or not the warranty still would apply. I knew my purchase was too long ago for that. But I didn't want to discard a complete headset, just because I couldn't find new foamy ear cushions. So it was time for a creative solution:I made my own ear cushions from organic cotton. Here is the crochet pattern for headphone ear cushions: Material: Big organic Cotton (I used Linea ...