I Love Christmas

I love Christmas. I love the music. I love the smell of our Christmas tree. I love mustard herring. I love the giddiness of my children the night before Christmas Eve and the morning of Christmas Eve. I love gingerbread cookies. I love how brown sticks (my favourite Christmas cookie) are hard on the outside and chewy on the inside.

I love “Let’s get drunk and watch some porn”, my favourite line from Love Actually. I love having discovered “Rare Exports” this year. I love spending time with family and friends. I love the crackle and sizzling of the fireplace. I love the silent aftermath, when our kids have fallen asleep. I love a glass of cava. I love turrón. I love resting my feet on the table.

Merry Christmas!

The initials tag hat {hm2}

Inspired by fabrickaz’s use of leather on homespun linen coasters (I think her work is stunningly beautiful in all its simplicity, and I intend to be inspired, lift and steal as much of her style and technique that I can! There, I said it, it’s out there).

Anyhow, since I saw her coasters this spring I’ve had this idea of using leather tags with initials on hats, mittens, scarfs, well any kind of knitted goods. Actually, you could use leather tags on just about anything, purses, bracelets, tea cozy’s… I am bursting with ideas right now, and rambling…

In September when I had a little mom-alone-on-vacation-once-in-a-life-time in Barcelona, I found a beautiful old store that sells leather and leather tools. I bought leather scraps by weight in different colours and one set of leather alphabet stamps.

I have been itching to try them, and now that I have a stash of knitted hats, I can’t wait any longer. This is my first attempt, and honestly, I was not that happy with how the leather tag turned out. I had thought the stamp on the leather would be more pronounced, that it would leave more texture if you know what I mean.

I did some googling and youtubing, and found out that I hadn’t cased the leather, which means that you have to moisten the leather with water before you work with it. Next time I’ll show you what happens when you case the leather first.

Do yu want to make your own leather tag? Here is a tutorial

Forest friends {hat marathon part one}

Hello there! And hello December!

We had a minor November set back. Sick kids and sick grown-ups. After a week of stuffy noses and bad coughing here they are, the two first hats in a set of six knitted hats so far.

Both hats are knitted in Drops Lima, which is a four strand sport yarn blended with 65% wool and 35 % alpaca. It is a hard wearing yarn and perfect for children’s and outdoor garments. You can se the details in my Ravelry notebook

Knitting hats (or other small garments) with Drops Lima on 4mm (US6) sized needles is a hedonic pleasure and gives instant gratification, because it is so fast to knit. It is also a perfect last minute Christmas gift.

Despite colds, we have spent time in our neighbourhood forest and I made sure not to miss the opportunity to take photos during day light of these two sweet hat models.

Fortunately, they were more than willing to be taken photo of, as soon as I tossed the word “model” into the sentence.

I wish you all a nice week!