Soft Pink Teddy Bear

It is teddy bear time!
As I was browsing trough my patterns I found this very cute teddy bear, and since I got a lot of fur fabric in different colors from my husband for my birthday I finally found what I was going to do with it (beacuse I wanted to make something really nice). For this bear I chose a pale pink fur fabric and since the fabric was about 1,5 m long I only used about 30 cm width! That means that I have almost 1,5 meter width left ready to be used for something else.

The whole body is one piece, the only separate pieces are the nose and the ears which I have sewn by hand. The instructions were not easy to follow when it came to the nose area since the pictures were very dark and authors used dark brown fabric. In the end I just got a bit frustrated and I made some own decisions and it came out good. I usually is quite impatient with patterns and if I don't understand right away I just do my own thing and hope for the best. However, this time I really pushed myself to understand for a long time but it didn't work out. I think the result is good and I will stick to my own routines if I do more bears of this model. The pattern I found for this bear is coming from the same book I used for the Soft Toy Elephant.

Happy sewing everyone!

  

Purple Knitted Mittens

In Sweden we are starting to get closer to winter time, and this morning we had -11 degrees Celsius. It is the perfect time to curl up in the armchair under a cozy warm blanket and knit mittens.
This model is borrowed from Drops Design Studio's homepage and you can choose your language in the menu at the right under the picture in the pattern.

If the thought of making your own mittens have crossed your mind once or twice my advise is "Go for it!", because it really is easy once you understand the pattern instructions and it really feels great to put the finished mittens on your hands and be able to say "I made these" to all of your friends and family :) Maybe you even surprise someone with a great homemade christmas gift <3

Since I always do "my own thing" with patterns I find, I just made stocking stitch for these mittens and used two purple colors to lighten things up a bit. I really like the type of ending in the top, it turned out very good. I hope my friend feels warm this winter when she gets this gift :)
Happy knitting everyone!

Ink Drawing Susy

As I told you in the post when I draw my sister in law Liselotte I have really started to like the ink pencils I bought some time ago. This drawing of my friend Susy took about six hours which is quite long time but I was really satisfied with the result. This time I tried to use the light colors more and be careful with the dark brown color in the hair. I think I nailed her eyes and those are very important to make it look like her, so I think this one turned out pretty great. 
I start with a light lead pencil to make all the details and then I use the ink to fill it with color. It is fun but a little scary to use ink because you can easily make a mistake and then it is hard to fix it. 

  

Knitted Orange and Brown Wrist Warmers

I am very into knitting right now, probably since I got large amounts of yarns for my birthday but also because it is getting colder and soon it will be winter here in Sweden. I found a very nice and simple pattern for these wrist warmers on Drops Design Studio homepage, and you can easily change the language right under the picture to the left in the pattern :)

I will definately save this pattern for the future because it is great for both wrist warmers and ordinary mittens. The thumb increase is easy to understand and the only thing you do differently to use it as a pattern for mittens you don't bind off the stitches for the thumb, just saving them on a piece of yarn for later to make the thumb.

Happy knitting! :)

 

Ink Drawing Liselotte

The last couple of days I have had thoughts of starting to draw pictures agian. I really love drawing, especially human faces because of all the opportunities faces give, and I looked into my boxes with pencils and other drawing eqipment I have. I bought some Indian ink pencils in beige and brown colors a year ago but somehow I never used them. Today I used them for the veryfirst time and this drawing is my first attempt to make a Indian ink drawing. I made the first contours with ordinary lead pencils and then I just used my feelingshow it should be and colored as I went.

The girl in the picture is my sister in law Liselotte. She has a very unique face with strong details so it was fun to try to make the drawing look like her. I think I nailed some parts but for next time I will try to dare more with the colors around the cheeks and the nose because then I think the similarities with the original will be better :) I am really overwhelmed with these ink pencils and I will keep on using them in the future. For this drawing I only used four pencils: one black marker, and three ink pencils in light sand, dark beige and brown. I will buy some new colors, maybe some grey colors and white to get more possibilities. 

Raspberry and Blueberry Muffins

On a grey Monday afternoon a batch of lovely berry myffins can make the sun shine! 
I found this recipe in the golden "Swedish cakes and Cookies", a Swedish classic baking book. If you would like to buy this book you can find the swedish edition here and the english edition here!

Happy baking!

12 Raspberry and Blueberry Muffins
100 grams of margarine or butter
1 1/2 dl sugar
4 eggs
5 deciliter flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar powder
1 deciliter milk
1,5 deciliter frozen berries, I chose raspberry- and blueberry mix

How to...
1. Put the oven to 175 Celcius.
2. Stirr the room temperatured margarine with the sugar until you get a white and homogeneous mixture. 
3. Add one egg at the time and stirr carefully. 
4. Mix bakingpowder, vanilla sugar powder and flour in a bowl.
5. Alternate between adding flour mixture and milk to the margarin/sugar/egg mixture little by little while stirring carefully until you have the final smooth batter.
6. Distribute the batter into the paper baking cups.
7. Use your fingers or a spoon to poke down the berries deep into each cup with batter. Make sure to spread the berries.
8. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Blue Knitted Mittens

I took a glance into my basket of yarns and found some unfinished business. A half-finished sad little mitten was hanging around with the yarn balls thinking about if it ever would be a real mitten someday. Actually that mitten has been laying around ever since last winter when I thought it would be nice to knit mittens for my husband for Chrismas. However, I had too little time back then and I decided to give him something else.
Well now the half-finished mitten is finished and so is his brother :)

I combined two patterns for these mittens and that is because I started making a model were every finger is individual but I found that it was too hard for me so I found a pattern with only the individual thumb. Here is the free pattern for mittens with individual fingers and here you find the free pattern for the mittens with only individual thumb.

The yarn I used is acrylic and it has its positive and negative features for sure. The positive features are the strong bright colors that is not very common in cotton yarns or wool, at least not where I live. The negative features are that the garment you make will almost always get uneven on the knitted surface unlike wool or cotton who will stay firm amd smooth.