Stitches and Thrills

I treasure my interchangeable circular needles. They are easy for adding needle length when knitting large shawls. And you always have all needle size/length combinations at hand. My circular needle set is from KnitPro , but there are other brands who carry them, like HiyaHiya. The only size that didn't work for me was 3mm. The wooden tips kept breaking. Steel points are better for me when thin needles are required. But for everything 3.5mm and up I am very content with Knit Pro. Keeping the needles loose in a basket was not an ideal storage solution. I needed to keep them out of reach from our cat Dita as she has been caught stealing wooden crochet hooks and sock needles before. But searching for a pair of the same size in the basket became a bit of a nuisance. Google brought me to the blog Life According to Missus Vonkysmeed . She posted a sewing pattern for a needle case. I read the whole pattern description twice to make sure I understood all the steps to take. For ...

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...

Jersey used to be my "Fabric Enemy No.1". On the floor of my wardrobe there was an ever growing pile of t-shirts that needed revamping, but all previous attempts to sew knitted fabrics had failed miserably. Some people told me I would need an overlocker to sew jersey. So I when I came across Tilly And The Buttons' online workshop " Learn to sew jersey tops on a regular sewing machine " I decided to give it a go. In the additional video's Tilly explains all techniques in detail. (Thank you, Tilly!) And all questions in the forum are answered quickly. It was also nice to see everyone's shared results. The Agnes top pattern is so versatile: you just want to make more and more tops! A few tips I took from the course:   - A running foot might be very handy for my sewing machine if I want to sew more jersey. - The moment I was thinking: "yes yes, I know, Tilly, I have to check that my seam allowances are not folded" I noticed the ne...