Carnival costumes

Tomorrow is "Fasching" (carnival)! My daughter, N., needs a costume for the Kindergarten. At first it took her a while to know what she wanted to be, but in the end I managed to make her stop on the butterfly-idea ;)

 With cardboard, felt and elastic bands I made the wings, the hairband is covered with a spool-knitted string and the antennas are made of pipe cleaners. I was quite happy to find out I had matching-ish colours!
It was a fairly quickly made costume and we are looking forward to her wearing it tomorrow!

Her brother, T., does not go to the Kindergarten and therefore does not require a costume, but I thought it rather unfair to only work for N., so I made him (in less than 4 hours!) a dinosaur costume!!

 I worked without pattern, just from ideas picked/seen on Pinterest. The cape with hood is less then a full circle and attached with a velcro band. For the hood part, I traced my pattern around one of T.'s current jacket hoods. The "spikes" are made of fleece (two layers). It was quick, it was easy, it was fun! After discovering the costume, N. also asked if she could have such a tail, but so far she hasn't asked again. So I'll just wait a bit before making another one!

Then I decided to make something for myself as well. I have always loved dressing up so I really could not let the occasion pass ;)
Mine will be a little more permanent.
Four years ago my mother-in-law had given me fabric + bust part from an old Dirnl dress (you know the bavarian style dresses?). Four years ago I had made a very quick transformation to have a medieval-ish looking costume to gain free entrance to a castle fest day:

 

I had not touched it since. This time I thought I'd make it better looking. White satin like fabric from old bedlinen, white stretchy velvet like fabric from my stock accompanied the original brown fabric.

First the skirt

My little helper. He loved putting needles in the fabrics!

I made an awful mess with the zipper, trying to make it invisible!

 Then I added sleeves. The bust part was far too open at the back, one could really see my bra which is something I really feel uncomfortable with.

I also made myself a mini-crown from a toilet roll with golden paint and an elastic band:

 I added a veil for good measure and good (?) looks. And here is the final result:

It is a little tight at the waist, I will need to loose a little bit of weight in the next years if I want to be able to wear it again. The sleeves are a tad short, so next year I will probably add a little bit of lace or something.

On the whole I am pleased with all three costumes and I find it almost a shame that the Kindergarten has not invited parents and sibblings to their party ;)

Black&Red

Two years ago I started a project for my mother-in-law but I didn't get round to finishing it. This year I finally did! Woohoo! And I think it looks prettier than what I had in mind at the time.

Using a flower loom I spool-knitted three large tubes and then plated them to make a scarf.

 With two beads and two pompons to finish it, I think it looks very decorative and festive.

Then the loom was back to its proper us: making flowers. I made one big flower out of the same wool as the scarf and attached it to a bought plain black hat.

 And finally, still in red, I embroidered two hearts on the back of the matching black gloves.

Made with love, that was the Christmas present for my mother-in-law. I hope she will enjoy wearing them as much as I enjoyed making them!

Spool-knitting with a 3,5yo

My 3,5yo daughter and my almost 2yo son really like trying their hands at what I am doing. So the big game is sometimes to use scissors and cut all sorts of threads into pieces, or glue stuff, or thread beads, and so on and so forth.

 Some time ago I was spool-knitting and N. asked if she could try too. She found it difficult with the small knitting mushroom, so I made her try on my flower loom. She could not hold it too well as it was big, so I had to find an idea on how to set it up. Look what brilliant idea I had ;)

 The toilet paper roll was the perfect size to hold the loom AND the hole in the middle was just what we needed to let the knitted cord go down.

N. was very pleased with herself but she got tired of it pretty quickly. She still managed to obtain enough loose cord to make herself a small bracelet :)

 

Cakes, carrots and more...

Three years ago I acquired a mechanical spool-knitting tool. It is just brilliant, you turn the handle at a regular speed and you get a long cord to do whatever you want with it ^^. Back then I got a little carried away and made meters and meters of cords. I still now haven't used all of it!

Last week I decided to finally use the orange one to make some carrots for the children's kitchen. On top I added some green felt. I managed to make four which is enough for now.

Last week still, I got on trying to finish the felt set that my sister asked for her daughters. Here are the two small cakes (6cm diameter, 6cm height):

And just because I really like my tiny strawberry, here is a close-up of it:

There is a lot more to come, but I am waiting to be finished and to have sent everything before showing more pictures. 

While watching me work for her cousins, Little N. has been begging me to make her:

- a cake
- a pizza

- strawberries

I need a little more time before I get round to doing this for her, but in the meantime she got:

Mini Sponge-cakes

Small chocolates (I replaced the real chocolate by cardboard and then glued the paper back!)

N. ran to her kitchen on getting those cakes and put them straight in the oven. Then asking for more!

A set of four fish.

N. and T.' s kitchen is starting to be rather full of various ingredients. It is fun to watch them use them all in different ways. Sugar cake is N.'s current favourite, while T. likes to use the frying pan.

Keep an eye on the blog for more felt food soon!

Fingerless Gloves

Another experiment with knitted cords... Fingerless Gloves (the idea was taken from that book which I received for my birthday). One of my sisters is a big fan (or at least was two years ago...) of fingerless gloves, so I seized the occasion of Christmas to make her a pair. I just hope she does not find them too horrible. Even if she does not like them, they can be useful as Baby N. loves when one moves hands around while singing! So with those colours she will be over the moon.

At first they were plain but then I thought it would be nice to add a little something on top.

 

They are not completely identical, I tend to find the left one better shaped. So in the future I will need to improve the cylinder I used to make them (a piece of cardboard) and to be really careful to have the same thread tension everywhere.

Still not getting many feedbacks... What do you think of them?

Weird Octopus

 Some weeks ago I came across a nice blog "En Direct de la Fabrique de Crevettes" and really liked this toy, so I decided to make one as well. I made it a bit different though. The head isn't round, the eyes are big and strange and it has not mouth!!

Two old socks sewn together to make the head, inside some wadding and a rattle. To cover the ugly seam in the middle: a small white ribbon (it also gives something soft and silky to touch). One eye is orange fleece, the other is green printed cotton with underneath a plastic paper to make a bit of noise. And 24 knitted cords of various sizes and colours for the leggs. Baby N. already loves grabbing them and trying to pull them apart!!

I have to thank my mother-in-law for helping me with the eyes, Baby N. being quite restless these days, I did not have much time to finish the toy.

NOW!! We are waiting for names' suggestions from all of you!

New Toys!!!

Last month was my birthday and I got (asked for) the knitting-mill. My mother also made me the surprise of giving me interesting books on 1) how to make your own patterns 2) how to learn to sew with the sewing-machine (it gives good tips to help improving) 3) spool-knitting creative ideas. This third book is quite good and I got loads of new ideas but I did not have the appropriate tools for everything so I bought this sort of loom which is supposed to be used for making flowers but is also perfectly adaptable for spool-knitting. And since I was at it, I also ordered pompon-makers. Those were not necessary I suppose but well... ;)

 

I can forsee loads of lovely creations coming up in the next few months!!

Guest post from Isabel, Spain

Last week I exchanged a couple of emails with a spanish friend, she told me I had inspired her to get back to spool-knitting. Here is what she wrote with two pictures to illustrate:

"Dear Fred,
I am reading your blog and love it! It's great seeing someone so much interested on sewing and knitting. In fact, this summer, after you showed the spool-knitting purse, I started remembering that I used to do it when I was a kid, and ended up buying some wool and making a scarf. I thought it a bit short.

Anyway, I'll explain what I did: I just took four balls of yarn (all in different greens) and knitted each one separately. Then I braided the four and added the fringe, as the person I made it for said she wanted it (plus, the truth is that the whole thing was quite short).  I ended up doing my own instrument out of the base of a kitchen paper roll.There are two cardboard tubes. I ended up using the one with the toothpicks because, even though I did not tighten the thread, the "battlements" bent. I didn't use the two discs for the scarf or the fringe. I used almost all of the yarn, but some of the cords were a bit longer, so I ended up creating a pompom.

The scarf is about 1.5 m, though since it is braided, it ended up being shorter. It took me about three or four afternoons (not complete; I only do this stuff when I'm watching TV)."

I don't know about you, readers, but I really like the idea and I will most probably get on making similar scarves as soon as I have a bit of time (and my other projects are finished)!

"I ended up doing my own instrument out of the base of a kitchen paper roll"

"The scarf is about 1.5 m"

Winter will soon be upon us...

I know that currently we are enjoying a late (very late) summer-like weather but I know that at some point winter will come. Therefore I have taken on my spool-knitting tools and my crochet and I made two hats and two scarves for my two little brothers (ok the older one isn't so little anymore but nevermind).

The scarves are my very first crochet experience. I had never done it before, thinking it was too complicated. In the end it was not at all and I quite enjoyed it. The only thing is that I must have missed some stiches along the way and my scarves ended up being curved. That's not really a problem. I fixed a press stud to keep them closed nicely as they are not long enough to make a knot.

The hats are made of spool-knitted cord.

Surprised by the size? No my brothers are not that small, here is the explanation:

My father-in-law often builds small wooden characters (about 30/40cm high) and when my family came to visit this summer, he made two with and for my brothers. Those two characters represent them and since they are meant to be standing outside in the garden I decided to have a little bit of fun and make them some garments.

Here is a last picture to give you a better idea of the size:

 Wishing you all a good day!