Tearing down the walls

I´m currently doing something I´ve never done before so I´m tearing down the wallpaper in my entryway. I´m not sure yet how I will style the room but I´m thinking of white walls and a closet to hide jackets and shoes

I have been spinning a little lately, This top is merino from a local craftstores outlet ( Panduro) and the other three are from Rain City Fiber Arts bought at Serial Knitter a local yarnstore somewhere close to Seattle. The fibers include yummies like yak and silk

And yesterday I started a new knitting project. I saw the cute cardigan from favourite designer Nygårdsanna in a magazine and picked the Holst yarn cone up and started knitting

333 444 or whatever....

I´m really obsessed with wardrobe planning and on the PR weekend in Barcelona Vibeke talked about the 333 challenge, to only use 33 items for three months including shoes and accessories. I put google to work and found out that you don´t have to count lingerie, atletic wear, lounge wear and jewelry like wedding rings... After googling a little more I found that you can really make your own rules... I will have to rework my list tomorrow. I have a lot of clothes and a lot of clothes that don´t fit and that I don´t want to wear. The worse part is that my limited storage space is full of stuff that I don´t use. No more!! Now my storage space is empty and my appartment is filled with bags of clothes...I take it as a new start and the thing is that I doubt that anybody will notice becourse I wear only a fraction of what I have. The wardrobe includes the two things I started after Barcelona, the half circle skirt and the drape top that Paco Peralta gave us as gifts...The cut on both are really clever and I´m using a rayon knit from Stof och Stil

Less is more

Lindex is a Swedish kind of H&M chain but a little more grown up style wise. This poncho sweather was found there

and after my restyling it looked like this:

SIP- Spin in Public 2012

We had a SIP this year at Form

I´m giving you a link to the english page. It´s in the middle of Malmö and really beautiful and inspirational This is my rock, it´s a Kromski Symphony and I have to admit I have not used it a lot the last year but after the SIP I´m at it again

This is me, Anna-Karin ( who tought me to spin)and Åsa, we are trying to get Åsas rock to spin, it´s an old rock that I think was her grandmothers, and it still worked

I´m wearing a vest from Zizzi with the back in croched and the front in fake fur and some trim and buttons, I had plans for making myself a fake fur vest but could not find the proper fur so Then I saw this one i bought it.

Look at my hair, this is how curly it is now after chemo! Oh and I almost forgot...The chairs are called "spin" too

One size fits all

I´ve not been sewing so much lately, and I have spent a lot of thought on why. One reason is that I can´t find the fabric I want so lately I started to buy clothes on thriftstores that have the potencial amount of fabric to be reused into something else and the proper content of natural fibers. It´s so hard to find rayon and cottons in nice pattern and weights. I´m also loosing weight and are going through my wardrobe and making different piles of stuff I want to keep and might use tha fabric, things that are to small now but will work in a couple of weeks etc. I´m also putting away summer clothes but since I´m going to Spain in a couple of weeks I have to save what I will wear then... I´ve been knitting a little. This cardigan from Drops has a beatiful kind of celtic braid in front,

I decided to do the borders mirror imagswise and missed

So using an old Yarnharlot tip I redid it

and now it´s perfect or at least as perfect it can gets pre soaking, I´m currently on the second sleeve, the yarn is a OOS superwash yarn bought from a colleage´s wife who used to have a yarnstore and still has some stock left

Missan has some favourite spots, one is behind my back when I sit on the couch, the white stuff is a crochet bedcover, croched in one piece with a swan pattern by my paternal grandma and used on my bed growing up.

October breast cancer month

So it´s time for the annual pink ribbon campaign. This year the ribbon is designed by Dagmar A swedish three sister act named after their paternal grandma. They do a lot of knits and have some interesting cuts on their clothes

Zizzi copycat

Zizzi is a danish clothingcompany for plus size women and I spend way too much money in my local Zizzi store.... One of the things that I´ve stocked up on is their tanktops that are kind of lingerish... I wear them under a blouse or tunik for modesty and/or for letting the lower laceborder peep out under the hem as a little detail. It´s a very simple pattern so I just layed the top out on tissue paper and made myself a pattern from it. I have plenty of lace from bramaking but for my first copy I had a hard time finding straps and something to decorate the top front with, finely I settled for satin ribbon, the tangerine to the right is the original and the left my homemade

I used rayon jersey and have some more for more copies I even found a large butterfly to use as decoration and fold over elastic that matched a brown fabric in my stash

McCall 6359

I bought a lot of patterns last spring and I think this one came into my home then

I´ve been wearing a lot of sleeveless lately and I can see myself wearing all of the models several times. I had to scoop out at the armcycles at front and then I think about it I have a RTW top that I bought recently that might need that too. The patterened fabric is from Paris and the matchinh linen a remnant from Hvidbergs in Copenhaguen

The back looks like this, cross over straps on the bra might be good here

Last weekend I spent with Åsa who you might know from PR. She arranges sewingcamp each year there you sew from 9 in the morning to 10 in the evening, split the cost and responsibilities for the meals. This is the only thing I started and finished this year, I might have been a little disorganized packing, but I have a really nice dress that I bought lining for the other day and that I will finish after washing it

Haruni

Emily Ross did the pattern, it´s free on Ravelry and 6414 Harunis has already been knitted and the pattern has been translated into several languages including swedish

Mine has 20 rows of leaves and I used something called fyberpath lace yarn and it was bleeding a lot while soaking so I´m surpriced it´s still green....I used 55 grams of the yarn so I have almost half of it left

I´ve already started next shawl, not for me this time...and I´m using a pattern from Nancy Bush Knitted lace of Estonia called "Raha" That means money. In the book this is a one repeat scarf but I saw a shawl knittet with multible repeats on Ravelry and think it´ll be perfect for my friend

Not only do I like to knit lace on 2mm needles, I like to wear it a lot.

Toile and samples

At the LW expo there was a room with some samples of toiles

and how the finished dress looked

There where also a lot of sketches

and soma samples that you could toutch: The one at the upper right on the lower picture is silk chiffon embroidered with peacock ( price unknown....)

Gaiters

across from my dentist is a Wolford shop and in the window the other day I saw this:

It´s the little stuff she wears on her ankles you should look at! They are according to the swedish webshop ( there I stole the pic from)called gaiters and I actually thought that it was something to draw attention to the window display and asked the sales lady who was opening up if it was a joke...it was not...

A basket for every purpose

I have quite a few baskets for storage, some of them show really nice workmanship and some are just ordinary cheap stuff In my livingroom I have 2 for yarn, one for wool, one full of blankets and quilts, 1 for trash, 3 for UFOs... I have baskets made from different roots, bark and straw and I have one that´s painted Today I went to watch a exebition of baskets at the museum in Landskrona This is a french yarn basket, have had a lining of fabric

This is a french potato basket, they really know how to do it in style...

And these are called Brigitte Bardot baskets, I did not know that but apparently there are some pictures of her using one of these as a handbag

back pack is made from bark from birch, something that you could make a lot of things from like shoes

Fish baskets, remember these from readin Donald Duck as a child

There where also some new baskets made by people from England, Denmark and Sweden and probably some other countries. The museum shop had some baskets for sale too.

Kriss skirt fix

I have some issues with Kriss clothes but my mum likes them and I think Heidi would say matrony... I found this skirt on a fleamarket a few weeks ago and saw some potential. It has elastic waist and multible ruffles and was not maxi lenght

I simply cut of the two lower ruffles and hemmed the lining and added a little lace at the hem since it will be showing a little bit since the hemline is a little lower at front due to ruffle design

It took me less than 15 minutes to fix this and then I repaired a side seam too. I think this skirt is fun and flirty and I will be able to style it in many ways

Lars Wallin 2

Of course there where bridal This simple yet so nice dress

belonged to Patricia Borg

and this more "more" dress with atouch of cupcake to Amanda Elmander ( please dont ask me if her husband plays fotball or hockey....)

Here a "live" photo

There is a little bit to much going on in this dress for my taste but I really like the hemlines....

Olive

640 people have done this design on ravelry and 64 of them used Holst yarn. This is a Helga Isager design ( Amimono ) and part from being easy to knit as well as fast I took time to read some project notes and started the yoke at it´s lower edge using a crochet chain and casting on in the back bows, worked to top and making it fewer stitches as the rows went by and ended with a very tight cast off. Then I picked up the stitches at the bottom and made some shortrow stitching to get the front lower than the back. I also did long sleeves

The original sweather has different colors on each row of the yoke, I used the same, here you can see a lot of really good use of variegated yarns. T made the largest size and used 4,5 balls of Holst and maybee 0,5 of the pale pink, this sweather does not weight much

It+s my first project using Holst and it looks kind of weird before soaking....then it gets fluffy and soft and nice to wear.

Lars Wallin Couture

Lars Wallin is together with Pär Engsheden the most famous couturiers of Sweden. Per made the Crown Princess´s weddinggown and Lars have dressed a lot of swedish celebrities as well as margarine ( I didn´t know that but apparently you can eat your sandwiches in style using "Flora") Last year where was a big retrospective exibition in Stockholm with his work and some of that are now touring Sweden and is until november 4 in Kristianstad at the museum with free entrance!!!Then it will move to Västerås ( my ex hometown that´s rather close to Stockholm ) There where a lot of dresses as well as shoes, jewelry and margarine boxes... and there was a room showing some toiles and a couple of garments they led up to. And you can send your letters in style using a stamp with one of his dresses on. The clothes where mostly displayed behind a net and sometimes I got a better shot at the net

These are costumes for Alcazar singing "Not a sinner nor a saint" click here for a link to the video This is one of my favourites, like the double bodice of this

and this coat is in Silk organza, There was one coat in this style too but short made in see-through plastic with big swarowski buttons, really cool idea for a raincoat

I think it´s this dress that´s on the stamp

I got more photos and will show more later

The blue dress

This is the blue dress based on the ottobre pattern

I changes the sleeves like this

buttons from stash

and chopped the dress up and made side panels, longer bodice pieces, the closure is on straight grain and I´m really pleased with the result. All the seams but the princess seams are made french and then topstitched

French seams are my new favourite. I sew the pieces together 1 cm wider than finished result laying the pieces wrong side to wrong side, then I trim the seam, press it open and turn right sides together and sew 1 cm from the edge and the seam allowance is included. It can be left like this or topstitched.