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!

Hat marathon intermission

I wanted to show you the two hats I knitted since last time; but guess what? I forgot to take photos while we had day light this weekend.

The days are so short now that when I am home from work there is not enough light. Wintertime forces me to plan my posts and photo taking rigorously (good-bye spontaneity).

Now I will have to wait until Saturday to take photos and show you the first two knitted hats from the hat marathon.

Instead of hats, today I’ll share photos from our apple-pealing, cutting and baking day a few weeks ago.

Look at how concentrated she is while peeling and cutting those apples.

We picked the last apples from our trees and made apple jam together with mini-pies.

after an hour of peeling and cutting

we could finally begin making the pies

We shared them with our neighbours who loved both the evening surprise and the smell of cinnamon and fresh from the oven apple pies (yes, we are those kind of neighbours...although to my defence, it is merely an altruistic return for all the times we have received either sour dough bread, Indian oven baked aubergines or apple crumble pie… Did I mention I LOVE my neighbourhood?).

The pies disappeared in a “swoosh”. The jam on the other hand, will be enjoy throughout the winter. Either as jam or as apple compote with Vanilla sauce, which is our favourite made-in-no-time dessert.

Hat marathon 2013 begins

“Hat marathon 2013” begins. I have lots of newly bought yarn to knit up before Christmas.

This one is inspired by the colours of our stairs, the mushrooms in our garden and the yellow leafs from the birch outside our kitchen window. It is one of my favourite colour combinations this fall.

I am making the pattern as I knit along and writing down what I do, in case I like the result and want to repeat. I tend to regret it if I forget to write down how I made something. Someone once told me that it’s better to regret the things you do than the things you don’t. At least when it comes to knitting and writing down patterns I agree.

I like my hats to be tight, snuggly and warm around the ears, and then what happens after that depends on the mood and the current inspiration.

What kind of knitted hats are you in the mood for this fall?

Colours of fall

I am collecting inspiration from my garden and my doorstep. I absolutely love the colours of fall.

Our garden I full of these mushrooms. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about mushrooms. I know that fly agaric is very poisonous, and I have a darning mushroom that looks like a fly agaric, that’s about it.

I wish I did know more... imagine if these are delicious eatable mushrooms? I could make mushroom pies and invite the neighbours. Imagine what we are missing every single fall for not knowing enough about mushrooms.

How are you mushrooms skills?

Do you know what kind of mushrooms these are, and if they are eatable or not?

Wish you a nice weekend!