Cute embroidery of a chicken carrying some lovely plants.
On of the first kits I purchased when I restarted my cross stitch craze was one called Kip met de planten or ‘Flower Bustle’ from Andriana. It depicts a white chicken with an apron, running around with two plant pots with the leaves trailing behind. I thought it was very cute and since Monsteras are one of my favourite plants, I didn’t think I could go wrong with it.
I started it a while ago, in February, and have been working on it intermittently. There are a lot of different colours and it also requires stitches made with one strand each of two different colours. Which means that the colour gradients are even prettier and more subtle. The size of it did mean that I had to reposition my rectangular embroidery frame a few times, since it was not big enough for the whole picture in one go.
This was a really fun one to since you could see the leaves grow bit by bit. I did make an adjustment in the apron because didn’t like the red detailing at the bottom. So I replaced it with green and left out the triangles. All of those details were made with backstitch and this means that the reverse of this is an absolute disaster. Luckily you don’t have too see the backside to enjoy the front!
I made a hat, it’s lovely, I’ll show you some other day. For that hat to be put on the blog though, I needed a hat stand of some sort. Cue me attempting to put the hat on Paper Head, and remembering that Paper Head is much larger than my head. The hat didn’t fit. So to remedy the issue, I made a new, smaller paper head.
The original paper head has a 60 cm circumference. My head is about 53.5 cm (now that I’ve cut of most of my hair). So following the instructions that came with OrigamiTemplates Low Poly Head, I multiplied that number by .6 and found that I should print the pattern at 89% (I rounded down 89.133…%). So I did precisely that, kept my fingers crossed that it would work and set out to glue it all together. It turned out very decently.
Next to the end results with just a few glue smears on the outside, I only have a blister. I really enjoy putting these sorts of things together, even if I dislike the cutting step because of the blisters and somewhat sore hands. But I do now have a new object to model stuff like hats and earrings on. Double win: fun and practical!
I haven’t yet found a ‘Ravelry’ for cross stitch. There’s Pattern Keeper, where you can store your patterns and mark which stitches have been completed, but you can’t mark when you started (or finished). That seemed to be the type of information I also found very useful in Ravelry so I started a spreadsheet.
It took me two months from purchase to start but only two-ish weeks to finish the project. Pretty decent going with only three colours. I did the heart first, then the skeletons and then completed the bodies of the faT-rexes. I made two changes to the original pattern; I didn’t do one stitch on the bottom of the left foot of the right dinosaur, since it didn’t seem to belong there. On the right foot of the left dinosaur, I made the bottom toe-bean black and didn’t make it stick out below. I really like how they turned out, but endless black did become a little bit of a chore.
Sometimes you just want to make little things with leftover yarn. Right?
Meet the Alien Mob! A collection of 7 knit aliens in different colours, all made from the same pattern: Mini Alien by Barbara Prime.
There’s Blue (from this sweater), White (from this sweater), Yellow (from this cowl), Turquoise (from this sweater), Mottled (from this shawl), Grey (from this sweater) and Green (from this project).
Knit in the round, very few stitches, quick and easy. They have antennae from different offcuts of the Cowlopus leftovers. There are 7 mm safety eyes and a tiny mouth from the Highland Tea Cowsy. It was fun to just make some tiny bobbly creatures and not worry too much about them.
Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif.
While deciding what to do over the winter break, I was browsing Ravelry to see if there was a fun Mystery Knit along. As we’ve discovered, I like mystery anything-alongs and knitting fits in too. The last mystery knit along that I participated in is still not done, the clues had too many stitches to keep up with in the last three sections, so it’s now a travel project. But that wouldn’t hold me back.
There’s a forum called Upcoming MKAL/MCAL Calendar that lists MKALs that are going to start. There I found Tales of the Tundra Cowl (Knit) by Mary P. Hunt. The MKAL was set to start on the 25th of December, promised daily clues and 12 installments. I figured cowls aren’t enormous, and the other patterns that Mary P. Hunt has made are very cool, so this was setting up to be a good one.
It required three yarns in DK weight with good contrast between A (main) and C (background) and some contrast with B too. I didn’t really feel like dyeing, so I dove into the hoard to find some yarn. I settled on Ultra DK in turquoise dyed in August 2023 for the main colour, Ultra DK with yellow spots dyed in September 2023 as the background and some DK 115 in orange from February 2025 as the contrast.
The pattern included some links to tutorials on colour dominance and jogless rounds and basically set us up for the project. This was super useful to just have in the document itself to refer back to.
Then the first clue dropped and we started knitting. The first section is corrugated ribbing, something I don’t recall having done before. However, it’s quite fun once you get into it. I got to use my relatively newly acquired skills with knitting left-handed to keep the yarns from tangling.
The second and third clue involved some pattern work where we made a cute design – it felt Scandivian inspired to me? And once clue three was done, we broke the B colour and continued with only two. I kept the blue in the left hand and the yellow in the right. I didn’t really see what was appearing as I was knitting it. I discovered the mountains from clue 4 and 5 only once I saw them in other people’s pictures on the forum.
I was also convinced for a while that the snout was from a bear, although it became clear along the way that it was actually a wolf. I guess the pattern image was a good hint towards that. Many people decided to duplicate stitch the eyes in a different colour, but I think that would make mine demonic looking, so I left that off. At some point, a paw print appeared in the sky too. Once the ears were done, the last three clues were almost mirrors of the first three.
This project was great. I had a lot of fun discovering the pictures every day and most of the time there were only 7 rows to complete, which is totally doable. I did have to pay attention and count (not my strong suit), but with the help of the line tool in Adobe Reader, I managed to keep track of which row I was on. I’m definitely planning on joining more MKALs if they seem as doable as this one.
Two baby gifts, a stuffed duck and some spit bibs.
Some time in the past, I was asked by a friend if I could reproduce her sister’s stuffed duck that had seen some wear. So I looked around, found the Crazy Duck Sewing Pattern and thought I could make it work. She was very happy and asked me to make another for a new family member that should be arriving. So I asked for preferred colours and we settled on yellow with orange details. Since it’s for a young baby, I didn’t use safety eyes but embroidery to create his face.
I also found some precut slobber cloths or spit bibs in my hoard when I was reorganizing. I figured I should put them together and they could make a nice set. So I located some white terry cloth that I had no idea existed and cut out the triangles. They were sew together and the snaps were added. I had some leftover triangular terry cloth, so I also made the mice one. That one I’ll keep for future additions. I love these, such quick and fun projects.
I hope babies necks are about the same size as my dinosaur’s..
New bags to keep the smell in my roller derby gear to a minimum.
My old set of de-stinkers for my roller skates and gear were starting to get a bit grubby and not work as well anymore. So I got to work and made some new ones. I’m also planning to wash and refill the old ones so there are some in stock.
I wanted to make three sizes, a small one for in elbow pads and wrist guards, a large one for in knee pads and a long one for in my skates. I chose three different coordinating fabrics in black and white, so I could also see from the pattern which ones belonged together. S is circles, L is drops and Long is diamonds.
I ripped the fabric into different width strips (literally ripped, it was fun!). Those strips were put through the overlocker to create the bags. I filled them with silica cat litter, folded the top edges in and sewed them closed with my little chain stitch sewing machine. They’ve been coming along in my gear for a few weeks now and it still seems to work!
I wanted to make a small gift, and I figured that some fingerless mittens might be fun. Ravelry provided a fair amount of options and I settled on Houndstooth Handwarmers by Ellen Gill. With favourite colours being blue and orange, I first thought of making them in those shades. However, I couldn’t bring myself to do it because it would be a bit much. So I added white instead.
The white was leftovers from my striped sweater, and the blue was self-dyed DK weight merino yarn. The houndstooth pattern isn’t too hard to do, but it did mean I had to continually check the instructions. There are four rows that repeat, and I chose to do them mirrored for one of the mitts as suggested by the pattern. The mittens benefitted from blocking a lot, as the houndstooth is a lot less lumpy now. All in all, decent pattern, and fun knit. I’m happy to report that the recipient enjoyed them.
A couple of months ago, I was walking one of the ‘Kunstroutes’ or Art routes organized near me. Throughout the town, there were expositions of people displaying their art. From paintings and sculpture to clothing and quilts, so many interesting things to see. It was great! One of the things I went to were two people displaying their knitted items and there was a lady spinning yarn. We had a chat and she told me that there was a spinning group nearby. So I got added to the mailinglist.
It took a couple of months for me to find the courage to join, but I’ve been a few times now and it’s great. I’m learning to spin yarn! I started with some white stuff that I’ve made into very lumpy thread. After that I went on to spin some of the fleece I have from 2010. I had washed a portion of it at that time and attempted to card it. Then met with a colleague recently to use her carding machine to card all of the washed stuff. I seem to be unable to do it with the hand carders that I have, so this saved a lot of frustration.
I’ve now produced about 100 grams of brown yarn. I’m so proud! Next step: knitting it into something…
I saw the # 18 Top down Pullover by Lana Grossa as free pattern on Ravelry and immediately fell in love. Too bad the free version was only in German and this pattern was quite difficult to understand. I became so obsessed with making it that I went online to find an English version of it and ended up paying for a whole stack of printed paper of all the patterns in the magazine it was published in. We’ll see if I make any more of the included items.
For the yarn, I dyed some MCN DK, a dk weight yarn with Merino, Nylon and Cashmere in a grey/brownish tint. I also used two more skeins of that yarn but undyed and two skeins of Tibetan DK, with Merino, Yak and Silk for the thin stripes and hems. I purchased the yarn bases way back, based on their listed gauge, before I even got hold of the English pattern. That’s how much I wanted it.
When I had my pattern and my yarn, I got to work. I believe I followed the instructions pretty faithfully up to the transition from dark to thin stripes. I messed up a little there but I think I managed to hide it pretty well. The pattern uses spiral stripes to get those thin stripes, which is such a cool technique. It did take me a bit to figure out how it worked though, so there are some increase errors in one of the raglan areas.
I followed the pattern until separating the sleeves and even a bit further, put it on and thought it looked like a tent. So I frogged a whole bunch (also super interesting with spiral stripes) and separated for sleeves a lot sooner. I also didn’t add as many stitches in the underarm and I decided to continue the one raglan pattern p, k7, p down the body and the sleeves. I thought that was a fun little detail. Then it was on to a whole lot of stockinette knitting, three at a time. The separate balls of yarn were in the sweater which was held closed with safety pins. This worked really well.
For the bottom, I chose to do a 3×1 rib so I didn’t have to do a fold-over hem. I didn’t have enough yarn to make it in the same colour as the top, so I used the yak yarn for that. Seemed like a wiser choice than white cuffs, especially for such a klutz like I am. I did hours and hours of research on bind-offs, chose one, did it wrong and decided I liked it better than what it was supposed to be, so I left it. The final touch was hiding all the ends and stitching a little cross in the neckline to mark the back. I don’t own much brown clothing, but I do really like this thing. I hope it is as soft to wear as it is to touch!
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