Winter Roses

I've been playing around a bit with Blogger today... do you ever get bored of your current layout and try to find something different that matches your current mood or taste or whatever? That's what happened to me. I just felt it needed a bit of a change, but I'm not 100% pleased with it yet. So... don't be surprised if you stop by for a visit and it's changed again! :)

Also--I've been a bit AWOL from here.  A bit like my silly camera which is still missing (I hate it when store things away so well I can't find them!!!) Not away from your blogs, I always read them, even if I don't always comment. I've been in a bit of a blue mood--matching the beautiful color of the sky, as we still haven't had a glimpse of Winter around here. Chilly when the sun sets, but barely a cloud in the sky and the sun always shining. So I should be perky... right? 

Though not blogging much, that doesn't mean I've been idle. On the contrary. I had to borrow a camera to take a few pictures but here's one of my latest works and one that pleases me a lot.

It's the Holden shawlette, made from a gorgeous hand-dyed and handspun wool I got from Rosário of dona maria blog. Isn't it the prettiest yarn, with all these shades that range from pale pink to a slight peachy color and deep red? A true bunch of roses! And I'm really excited to see the new yarns she's been spinning--next weekend I'll be going to a Spin and Knit meeting in beautiful Sintra, a group of yarn fans happily gathered around a table with tea and cake :) 

I probably should have used a bigger number needles to get a lacier look though this way it's warmer too. Next time I'll know better! :)

Did you notice the lacy, embroidered and crocheted white thing peeking from under my shawlette=

When I went looking for something white to make these colors stand out I picked a linen bed sheet I had stashed away in the bed linen drawers. It was in my mother's layette (or is it Trousseau?) and she handed it down to me, to cherish and love and... not dare use it! 

It's a beautiful, light, gorgeous linen fabric, hand embroidered with silver and pink silk flowers and with a wide crochet edging along the top

Can you see how tiny each one of these little wheels is? I placed a 1 euro coin next to them to put them in perspective.

Hundreds... hundreds of tiny little wheels, attahced to each other one by one, making a foot wide edging for this bed sheet. I can't imagine having the patience to make one of these bed sheets... Plus the embroidery all over it!

So... have you (re)discovered any handmade treasures lately?

Hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

xxx

Happy New Year!

Hello my dear friends!

This will most likely be my last post in 2011, as the end creeps up on us so fast (and my holidays sneak away so fast too, *sob*). I will try to show you later on my Christmas presents--just a sneak peek here.

First, and above all, let me tell you how WONDERFUL you have all been cheering me on through bad times and good times, and in a way nursing me back to health. These have been 2 complicated, rough years healthwise and it has been fantastic to read your blogs, visit your gorgeous homes, gasp at your fantastic crafts and ideas and find new friends while sharing the little things I started creating again. Your messages have been truly appreciated and if sometimes I don't reply right away I always try to do so at some time.

I want to THANK EACH and EVERYONE of you for being here for me and hope to have many more wonderful days spent with you in 2012, which definitely will be a good one--no more treatments and total recovery, yeahhhh!!!! Just check-ups every 6 months :-)

This year has brought me new friends.

I was lucky enough to have met personally one of them, Carla of Simply by Carla who is an amazing quilter and patchworker--have to take pictures of the fabulous sewing / crafts bag she gave me for Christmas! It looks like a jigsaw puzzle but she says it's not as difficult as it looks. Right. As if I believed her :-)

Then there's Marjo of Marjo's Cosy Corner, a sister in arms as she had to go through the same ordeal I did this year. From knowing what the other one was going through I believe we were able to give each other some comfort and strength--I know she did / does to me!--and I'm truly glad we met this way. Hopefully we'll be able to meet personally in the near future, as Belgium is not so far away from Portugal!

Even though distance is a bit of a problem for meeting personally, there are other fantastic people who are always here to leave a kind word and share a smile--Meredith, Marilyn, Carol, MemeRose, Crissi, (hmmm... what is it with the M's and C's?!) Valeria, Susan, Jo...among so many others! (Please make sure you visit them too, you'll love their work!)

I wish you all and each one a Happy, Wonderful New Year full of joy and love and above all health--and hope to meet you here again soon :)

You're the best!

XXXXX

Crochet purse handles tutorial

Hello my friends!

Some of you may know I have a Pinterest profile--it's hard not to get addicted to that place! I've discovered so many gorgeous things to craft, so many talented people... but above all, I've been creating a sort of "box of favourite crafts" I can get back to when I get the time and the opportunity to try something new.

On my dwellings I found this image of crochet purse handles, and a link to the blog with the tutorial.

The blog is Roberta Crochet & Cia and the tutorial is written in Portuguese... so when I saw someone asking for a translation (sorry, I can't find the original request!) I offered to do so.

Here's my translation, hope it's clear enough (it really is very simple!)

Crochet purse handles

Step 1

Make a chain 140 stitches long (approximately 90 cm long) and make 4 rows of sc (single crochet). Slip stitch the top and bottom rows together to form a tube. Join both ends of the tube, to form a circle. Reinforce these stitches to make sure they don’t come apart.

Step 2

Make a chain 35 stitches long (approximately 20cm) and make 8 rows of sc. Form a roll around the tube you made in step 1 and slip stitch it together, top and bottom row of your crochet strip.

Step 3

Chain 3;

Row  1: 3 sc;

Row 2: 4 sc;  

Row 3: 5 sc;  

Rows  4 to 16: 6 sc;

Row 17: 5 sc;  

Row 18: 4 sc;  

Row 19: 3 sc;

You can make it wider or longer if you’d like; work with crab stitch or single crochet around it to finish off . Make 2 to secure the purse handles onto the purse itself.

Please refer to Roberta's blog to see all images, I only added one for each step here but she has a step by step tutorial with more images. Thank you Roberta, for your very clear tutorial!

Hope this is useful! 

Have a wonderful week :)

xxxxx

A flower from Belgium :)

Hello my dear friends!

This has been a crazy busy time for me... a lot of stuff going on at work, and recently I've started a round of training courses for my colleagues that will last until mid December. It's kind of amazing to think that only 2 or 3 months ago I was home resting and now I hardly have any time for myself... 

I thought I'd post a short note from my hotel room before I do a bit of knitting (does that sound silly...?) and go to sleep to get ready for tomorrow's classes. A post promised long ago, with a picture I've wanted to share of a WIP finished a while back (to make things worse my camera decided to go AWOL again and is nowhere to be found... so this one was taken with my cell phone camera, sorry it's not the best quality!)

This shawl was made with 100% laceweight linen (natural color), with the half circle shawl pattern and I have to confess I'm truly happy with it. Though this yarn is really different from the one shown in the pattern, it turned out really nice and light and pretty (promise I'll show it off better as soon as I find the missing camera!)

But what makes the biggest statement is the crochet flower I adapted from Marjo's lovely gift--found a button in my sewing box that looked like it had been waiting all its like to be used here, added a pin to the back et voilá! A beautiful flower brooch that adds the perfect touch here.

See... I have managed to keep up with my crafts! And there are a lot more to share, as soon as I have a bit of time... and a decent camera :( Until then, back to my needles and yarn to finish off a couple of Christmas presents.

Miss you all! Have a wonderful week :)

xxx

Hello, my lovelies!

I've been a bit away from here... but not completely! In between striving to learn some new skills and getting reacquainted with work schedules and replanning "silly stuff" like grocery shopping (which can be fun if you have the time to do it off of rush hours and at your own pace but is completely annoying when everyone else is trying to do it at the same time as you) I'm still managing to maintain some sanity... with some yarn around my fingers :) Hopping on over to check out what you're doing, leaving a comment or two here and there and staying in touch by mail and phone with Marjo and Carla...

Not much time for nice pictures, yet... but let me tell you I've finished off a few WIP's, yeaaay!!! The one I'll be sporting tomorrow (and hopely getting a pretty picture of) is a shawlette where I've pinned one of Marjo's beautiful flowers   and let me tell you, it looks wonderful, if I may say so myself. 

Right now I'm finishing this cowl and about to move on to the hat--I'm not really a hat / beanie type of person but I'll give it a try, the colors are so yummy!

 Tempting, this little sweater, isn't it? I've been trying to control mysel... making a few things for Christmas gifts  and not all for myself lol!

And before I take off... for those of you who are granny squares fans... here's a great easy and fun idea--it would look awesome with a black turtleneck under it! A total of 6 granny squares, 2 large ones for the front and back and 2 smaller ones for each sleave.

(All of these are patterns by Katia, made with their yarn Darling and are in their Fall / Winter magazines)

I'll be back soon, hopefully with pictures of my own work :)

Oh... and by the way, hop on over to visit Marjo's Cosy Corner, she's feeling a bit under the weather and at the hospital right now and needing a lot of good wishes!

XXX

Teresa

Guincho or Cornwall?

Hello! I hope you are all doing well :)

We all have a special place we dream of going someday... right? 

Let me tell you a (not really) secret... this is the place I've been dreaming of.

It's Cornwall, in the UK.

Maybe motivated by the countless romances I read of King Arthur and his Knights, Lady Morgan and the druids, the mists and the centuries old trees... I've been dreaming of this for a long time.

We do have some places that call out for me just as much--Guincho, near Sintra (not so far from Lisbon)

It even has the mists hoovering over it most of the time, with the sun shining through 

Or Porto Covo, further south...

When I started to make my Japanese Flower Scarf I noticed the color pattern resembled so much these colors I love in these places.  (Yes, it turned out to be a flower scarf instead of the granny square version... It was so much nicer!) 

The deep blue of the ocean, the teal / turquoise of the closer waters, the sand, the grass and even the darker stone cliffs

So that was the name I gave my scarf: the Cornwall scarf, but it could easily be the Guincho scarf as well

Over my bed cover... hmmm... can you tell how much I love these colors?! :)

This yarn is so wonderful to crochet with a 2 mm hook. 

It creates random patterns as the you go through the various shades in the yarn... And it becomes faster to make!  The Japanese flowers are wonderfully easy and nice to make! I even got to read while making them, a new, wonderfull book written by my dear junior high school friend Maria Cristina Becho, called "Cantos da Casa" (Corners of Home). 

I am not a fast crochetter.

 I work slowly, but this flower is so agreable  to make and the color changes are so pleasing to the eye that I made it in less than a week--that's amazing for me! The flowers are small, about the size of my palm, so I made a total of 54 flowers for this shawl, 12, 13, 14 and 15 flowers in each row.

This is me, modelling it over my t-shirt as it's still way too warm to wear anything else... and my favourite pin holding it in the front. 

I can't wait for it to get cooler to start wearing it!

Another project completed before I go back to work... I'm happy!

What are you working on? Any new ideas or patterns? I need to start something else now :)

xxx

Leftover yarn

Hello my dear friends!

Like most of you, I hate leftover bits and bobs of yarn too... they make me want to buy more to make something else and to buy more yarn (because what I have isn't enough...) which really is not the point!

So... just hang in there a bit longer and I'll show you what's left of the 2 cushions :)

And make sure you check out MeMe Rose's version of the slanted edging, it's real nice!

Be back later :) have a wonderful wednesday!

XXX

Slanted edging, anyone...?

I always feel flattered when someone asks how I made something in crochet--you know, I'm a self taught crochetter and knitter because I'm lefthanded and back when I was a child eager to learn (and most people thought using the left hand was not polite) nobody knew how to teach me otherwise.

So I'd position myself in front of the other person working and tried to copy their work from the reverse side--your right is actually my wrong!--and in the end it would come out exactly the same.

 When MeMe Rose asked how this edging was done I thought it was a good opportunity to help out! Everybody comes up with such gorgeous projects, I'm glad my simple ones can be of use and inspiration :)

I'm sorry if I don't use the right terms, aside from being lefthanded I'm still a bit at a loss with the terminology in English :) so I'll try to show you instead...

This was the itty bitty sample I made for the baby blanket tutorial--ripped the last row appart and  made a single row of short stitch instead.

 With a different color yarn to make it stand out more, I attached it to the corner stitch and made 3 chains (you can either use a different color or just continue with the one you're working with)

...then skip 2 or 3 stitches (depending on how flat or frilly you want it to be... I find myself  using 3 stitch intervals most of the time, alternating with 2 stitches whenever I feel it's becoming too taut) and make a double stitch. You get a triangular shape and you'll be using this double stitch as the basis for the little sideways square on the edge.

 Make 3 more chains and crochet 3 double crochets on the slanted one. There's your first slanted square...

When you finish it you'll be making another one that is going to attach 2 or 3 stitches further, creating another triangle union. See?

Keep going all the way to the end of this side--to the corner stitch again. You may find you don't have the right amount of stitches (I do, as I'm not one to follow patterns too closely!) so then just ajust the distance by increasing or decreasing a stitch between the "legs" of the triangle.

Now the corner...I've tried this several ways, but the one that seems to work best for me is to make a small skip (just 2 stitches) before and after the corner, and just work exactly the same way you've been doing, as if it were round.

 It looks roundish here, see? But then the sample is merely 5inches long so it's difficult to get very square... And you can see the back side of the cushion with the same edging.

Just keep working, all the way around (looking a bit pointier here...)

 Until you reach the end of the road and poke into the last / first hole of the border. You want this to look  perfect, right?

So here's how I do it--it doesn't mean you can't join differently, but this worked out perfectly for me. 

I just make the 3 chains (that correspond to the 1st double stitch) and 2 double stitches instead of 3, and bind on that little corner up there so that this first "leg" of the edging triangle makes up for the missing double stitch.

There you go... all set to bind off and tuck in the tails!

Now... that was easy enough, wasn't it? Please let me know if this helped at all... and if you have trouble understanding my very unprofessional instructions, please yell out!

Have a wonderful weekend (it's going to be a rainy one here, it seems...)

xxx

Cushion duo ta-dahhh!!!

Hello again  :)

Last night it rained cats and dogs--I do love that expression! Does anyone actually use it or is it just something we learn in school...?--and we had promises of a nasty day for today, lots more rain and hail storms all over the country. What a way to go, August!

The first day of September woke up yucky... I could hear the boat horns on the river as the day broke and decided it was too grey to get out so soon (still at home, as you can see...) but when I called it quits and opened the shades the sun was shinning yeahhhhhhh!!! Just perfect to take a few pictures to show off my latest productions :)  The two cushions are ready!

They started out by being one--front and back--and then I decided I would need at least another one for the sofa and split it in 2... that's when I called out for your help, remember?

The front...

...the former back...

...and the new back for both, made out of some former baby curtains...

Joined together by making a blanket edging on the fabric (is that what it's called?) and then a small crochet edging in a matching color, pink on one and white on the other.

Do you like them?

And now... of course I needed a new WIP...

So this beauty 

...just arrived at the right moment! Hand dyed by Ana Cerveira, who has the blog Mãos de Sapo e Pés de Pato (Frog hands and Duck's feet :) ) a Portuguese girl who dyes yarn and wool for spinning and has the most beautiful yarns and rovings you can imagine--hop on over to pay her a visit, I just noticed she has some new beauties available! And they come wrapped in red tissue paper with these little cards and a nice word (she also takes custom orders, I believe)

A mixture of summer and autumn shades that make me all warm inside...

 I can't wait to start to knit a new scarf! Or cowl... or... whatever it is, it will make me happy! I'm all set to welcome the crispier weather :)

So... what are your current projects?

xxx

Meet my little friends...

Have you ever made amigurumi?

 According to the Wikipedia, Amigurumi is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. The word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, andnuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll.

The funny thing is, amigo means friend in Portuguese, so I prefer calling them little stuffed friends.

Meet Ducky and Shelly.. Shelly is my son's (he loves turtles... even lopsided ones like this :) ) and Ducky is mine, for the time being... 

See how little these guys really are?

Angie is even tinier. My friend Natacha was upset a while back and she said her guardian angel must have been on a leave... so I made her Angie to carry around with her and to remind her that her guardian angel is always around.

And this is Mr.Pinpin. The first time little A took him to school he said he had a request for me... 7 more penguins for this schoolmates! 

Amigurumi are fast and fun to make. Just another fun way to use up little scraps of yarn... But there are much larger ones that can be wonderful friends too, like Marilyn's Bunnie Fu Fu and her lovely friends :)

Have a wonderful week!

xxx