more rescued items

more stuff from my friends clean out. corn husk dolls; i love the way the mother bends down towards the child. it looks very real.

two small linen bags - sewn and printed by my friend as a child.

five boxes of fuzzy felt made a huge success with my daughter. i don't think you can get those anymore in the toy store.

in my friends opinion, all of this was trash. i haven't yet decided whether i've rescued some cool items, or if i've just added to our own mountain of unnecessary stuff..

i love my mailbox

not always, but these days, for sure!

i ordered these postcards from lovely photographer liivia in finland. look, the shoes looks 3-dimensional, as if i put them on top of the cards. i think i will have to make some kind of art with these, i don't want to send them away...

she's a fellow lover of handmade envelopes, too. look at that blonde beauty stretching out all over russia.

thank you, liivia!

new knits

{she's always so serious when modelling for me, so i tried to make her laugh}


i finnished the catastrophic sweater a little while ago. i simply repeated the stripey pattern several times to make it longer, but had i not been such a lazy knitter, i would have unraveled it and done it differently. i probably would have unraveled all (i already did re knit the sleeves); the two (!) times she has tried it on, i've heard yarn ripping.... it clearly exceeded my skill level.

i've also done some knitting for a newly arrived baby girl; a bib and a vest. the vest is knit with some wool that i plant dyed with rowan leaves a year and a half ago - actually the only piece of yarn that i've dyed all by myself. (the sticks are lavender to make it smell nice).

the baby is also getting these wonderful, soft leather mittens that i found at the thrift store.

and i've made myself a new pair of socks.

heia mamma

...which means: go, mom!

this was a gift for a dear friend of mine, a hard working and great mom, and a Crafter with capital C, i'm just sorry she hasn't got her own blog going yet.

this was the project i enjoyed most making this yule; a card wrap. the envelopes-out-of-old-childrens-books was something i hadn't done since i myself was almost a child. inspired by kimberly at anemone, and it was really fun making.

i made some cards out of left over cutout scraps.

the little black book is for addresses, and the smallest pocket is for stamps. i added a tiny ballpoint pen in the address book pocket. and i made another one for myself:

looking forward to seeing some of your crafty gift projects!

still according to plan

linen pants and dress, blouse made from old bed linens.
even though i love sewing, i've learnt most of it by doing and still am. i seldom make something without mistakes. like the dress: hurry hurry, new pattern, hm...seems so small... ah, the pattern says 'elastic fabric'. yup. let's put some extra ('wedge' shaped..?) fabric in there...
the blouse i made without a pattern, just by trying to copy one of my daughter's blouses. i didn't get it quite right, so i've bought a proper pattern. working on it. taking it real slow :)

according to plan (green skirt)

i told you i got carried away....

{skirt made of thrifted vintage bed linens}

the plan

i've had some time off from work lately, and look what happens.



magic.
i'm turning to my home again. this is just a tiny bit of a huge amount of fabric/scraps that i've been collecting for years, but seldom had the time to do anything about. now i'm planning to cut into the stash, and actually make something.

so i made this blouse/dress thing out of my grandma's old shirt. i'm not sure it will be my daughter's, as it is a teeny bit too small - it'll only last for a couple of months before she'll need wool underneath and that'll probably rip the whole thing.

but it was fun taking pictures, though.

i guess i got a bit carried away....

Green animal pants

Here's what the thrifted green damask tablecloth turned into - or some of it, that is. I still have plenty of it left to make something matching.

She loved the trousers, but try taking her picture when she's not up to it, and this is what you get. An animal, I swear. It's a wonder she hasn't been the biting type.

Oh, cell phone wonders...

... for without, I wouldn't have been able to get this photo of my daughter in the car as she hurried into her new pants from the thrift store before I could even blink my eyes. She's good at that.

So, I've been thrifting again, for the second time in less than two weeks. What's happening?!?

Well, it can hardly be called shopping. We drove by the thrift store to deliver some stuff. As I was running out of the car and into the store with the bags, I passed these pants which looked just her size, and some lovely fabric and then some more... all in less than 3 minutes. Back in the car, I showed her the pants, her father stopped by the grocery store, and while I was looking at him entering the store, she was quickly into the position you see here. And so we discovered that this was not a size 6 y/o pants, but a size 9 y/o short pants.. Oh well, who will notice? :)

What else I bought and what I did with it will have to wait (so will my 30 days project), as I'm off for Oslo for almost two weeks now. But I can tell you that it involves this fabric:

Oh yes

I hardly ever go thrifting. When I say that thrifting is the way I shop, this is to be understood in one way; I never shop. I hardly ever buy anything. OK, food when the fridge is empty, tape when the tape is out, thread when thread is out, paper for printing - you get the picture. I wear my clothes until they fall apart (literally), and then - I shop. Out of necessity. And I hate it. My feet and back aches, and I'm emotionally torn to pieces from looking at my body from five different angles over and over again trying to find the right pants (because it's always pants, isn't it).
But just for the fun of it?
Never.
It's just not on my priority list, and probably has something to do with money. We have chosen a simple life with more time and less income, so that's a natural limitation to shopping sprees. It just so happens to coincide with me not being a shopping girl. Good for us.
But suddenly, I found myself having a thrifting date with a friend. She's a single mom to three boys, and had one of those rare weekends-all-by-her-self only two steps away (she's about to have one of her twice-a-year experiences, and chose to go thrifting with me? We are weird...). Then, at the hand of some mischevious force that seem to be having great fun every now and then, one of her kids break an arm and another gets a bad cough. (Last time we had a date, she ended up in the hospital with one of her boys).
So what happened? The thrifting spirit had already paid a visit, that's what happened. (Oh, I'm not worried about her kids. They'll survive anything :) ) Over the next two days, its presence grew stronger and stronger and in the end there was no other option than to acknowledge its presence in full - and go thrifting alone. I spent two hours in one salvation army shop. I must have spent 3/4 of it trying to decide which textiles to bring home and which to reluctantly leave behind. I hadn't brought enough money, so I actually had to leave behind two sets of bed linens from the 70's. (I'm glad I'm not a shopping girl. I wouldn't have been able to find my kids in all the stash. Because I am the kind of 'oh, that might come in handy' and 'oh, I could sew something out of this' girl.)


So, what did I buy? Not the dolls, that's for sure. Things are not that welcome in our house. But a beautiful huge green damask tablecloth, a small yellow tablecloth with embroideries (but bought mainly for the hem - is that the word?), a brown/pink cotton and several embroidered handkerchiefs. All going to be cut and made into something else. And you know what else? This incredible bird embroidery set - look at them! We have a whole family of these bullfinches living in a tree outside our livingroom window. I try to get good shots of them every now and then, but then - they are small.
The set came with needle, thread and everything, but I don't want to fill in these lovely thin lines with thick woollen thread. As a matter of fact, I like them just the way they are.
I came home with a couple of old frames as well. All for less than 16 pounds, all packed in this quite cool plastic bag. It says 'thank you'. Thank you for shopping second hand, and for helping us helping others.
You're welcome :)

The reluctant African elephant

Forgive me, for I have sinned. I bought my daughter this PJ for yule - at the mall...
I usually don't buy clothes (we all have our issues, don't we? The clothing industry is one of mine). I hate shopping for them. Really. (Yes, I AM a woman :) ) (although, I admit, shopping for my kids is different..) And when I do, I usually go for second hand, for a number of reasons. We used to live in a students home for students with kids, where i arranged for a permanent swapping room - a room in the basement where people could leave behind stuff they didn't use anymore, and take with them things they needed. Mostly kid's clothes and stuff, but also adults clothing, books, furniture etc. It was brilliant. When we moved a year ago, I found myself at the mall buying children's clothes. Not often, but still... But I have to admit, the retro trend in kid's clothes right now is very appealing. And when I saw this PJ, I just couldn't help it. It wasn't even organic (the cheap-organic-clothes-at-the-mall trend finally hit this country too).
But somebody has to be laughing when the kid just won't wear it. After a series of 8 blurred pictures or so, trying to capture my very annoyed daughter (talked into) wearing it, I managed to get this. She made sure to lift the glass to hide her face, as she - naturally... - won't be seen wearing it.
Sigh..