Week 3

I have finished the mittens for my dad from last post:


Took them to the post office yesterday to send them to him and on the way back I realized that I forgot to take a picture of them!

So nothing to show off today...

But they look like the one to the left here:

Photo from Hlýjar hendur facebook page.

I also sent the sweater to my grandmother:


She doesn't know it's finished so she'll get a surprise pack in the mail! I love getting surprise mail :)

Now I can't wait to get home from work so I can start my next knitting project. It is a traditional woolen sweater for my boy but I put together a star wars pattern for it and can't wait to see how it turns out!

Week two

When I set the goal to post once each week I though maybe it wasn't really a challenge. Then the week passed and I realized that to me...this is a real challenge.

But here I am, in another week, writing another post :)

I went on my computer yesterday to find pictures of what I have made since I was last posting. I usually take pictures of what I make, so the list is pretty long...but if you make it to the end of the post I need your opinion on something at the bottom...


I made this small shawl from herb-dyed laceweight Icelandic wool yarn that my mom gave me. She had bought it from the artist that spun and dyed it but her dog had gotten into it and created a big mess out of it.

She gave it to me and I untangled it and have kept it for about two years now. Last winter I wanted to try knitting a shawl from a traditional Icelandic pattern, and this is my version. I used the pattern Litla Hyrna Huldu. And I have a lot of that yarn left...any ideas on what to use it for?

These are bean-bags that I made for my son.
This is him wearing the Superman-Batman sweater that I made for him. I used a pattern that I bought from LilBlueBoo. Used a Superman T-shirt and made the Batman logo on the sleeve using freezer paper and fabric paint.

A Newton Heath hat to match the scarf that I made for my husband's friend. He got the hat for Christmas.


This is a Christmas sweater for a dog. I made it for my husband's grandmother's dog but I never took a picture of her wearing it. Hopefully I will when she wears it next Christmas!

This was also a Christmas present last year. For my mother in law. The pattern is called Rjúpa.

My daughter turned 13 in February. I made 5 pillows like this one with different JB pictures on them. She was a true Belieber back then...apparently that was ages ago ;)

These are mitts that I made with yarn and pearls that I got in a knitting swap.

My woollen sweater. Made from unspun Icelandic Lopi and laceweight wool that I got on a huge spool from my great grandmother. She used to use it on her knitting machine to make undershirts for her family.

This is a hat that I made using a pattern that a friend of my mom's gave me. It was a hat that her grandmother used to make but I had never seen how the hat looked before I knitted it.

I made this sweater for my father in law for his birthday. This is my husband modeling for me ;)

My baby girl turned one on June 17 and I made her a rainbow cake.
She is the one to the right, making the silly face :) The one on the left is my niece, she is two months younger. They are wearing dresses that my mom knitted for them.

I sewed this coat thing that everyone is wearing here in Iceland. The grey thing in the middle is attached to the coat and can be wrapped around the neck for a better closure.

And here is another sweater like the one above, only with brown instead of grey. I knitted this one for my grandmother. When I came to visit her last spring she asked if I would make her a sweater like mine and I just finished it two days ago...wish I could have finished is sooner because it is such a summery sweater, but she can use it next summer.
I bought the brown buttons yesterday and I have yet to put them on. I'm not sure if I should use them or if I should get white ones...what do you think?

Yesterday I started knitting this pair of mittens for my dad. It was his birthday yesterday and I hope I will have them finished before he comes for a visit.

So that's it. All I have made and taken pictures of since October last year. I better be more efficient from now on if I'm going to have something to talk about every week!

Super Excited!

For the first time ever, I am participating in an international swap!

It's the rainbow swap over at the Bolo Heads blog.




Gotta love the rainbow, especially in fabric!

I'm also participating in a knitting swap and I'm very excited about that as well. It's hosted here in Iceland and we get an assigned friend to send something knitting related, but actually my friend lives in Denmark so I will be sending two exciting packages overseas ;)

It has been almost a year since the last time I posted on this blog...sorry about that...I guess any of you who were reading this blog have given up ages ago.
I can see that this happened last year as well. Maybe I only post in the fall...fall is when it gets cold outside and you cuddle up inside and start knitting and sewing...and blogging about it...

I have been using my blog to link to all my favorite blogs and reading the updates almost every day, but I rarely post comments because I'm so embarrassed to be linking to this zombie of a blog.

It's so great to be able to post information on the projects I finish and have it all in one place.
This is why I have decided to bring my blog back to life.

And this time I will have some motivation because I decided to set a goal for myself.
The goal is to post on the blog at least once a week.

It's nothing major...only 14 posts until Christmas! :)

But it will keep me motivated with my work as well because, let's face it, if I don't do anything in a whole week I won't have a post on my blog.

I do have a full time job that does not involve anything handmade and three kids I get to spend time with after work so there are a lot of weeks that can go by before I finish anything.
But this will not stop me. I will post a blog every week.

And if I can post every week for a year...I will get a prize (or not) ;)

Finally crossed off my list!

This is the apron from my to-do list:
I finally finished it and I am really happy with how it turned out. I made the bias- tape myself and it looks very good :)



The photos are terrible though...it's just been really cold and not very sunny.

This is an apron I made two years ago. It was made for a friend's son as a Christmas present but that year we didn't exchange gifts because they went abroad and we didn't meet up before they went, so I put it in the closet and forgot about it. But I recently found it and decided to let my son Tryggvi have it. He really loves Cars, especially Lightning McQueen.


It is not as well made as my new apron, but it is fun and he likes it.
We both wore our aprons the other day when we made these:
Some were decorated with spiderwebs, other were aliens-themed:


And a few were just plain old messy:
I always think they look the best that way ;)

I knitted this hat on Wednesday and Tryggvi wore it to kindergarten on Thursday. I took this photo on the way home on Thursday, but since then I have added a fleece lining and some ties. I also made him fleece lined mittens that he took to kindergarten today (but forgot to snap a photo first) and now it's snowing:)

Not perfect - but I love it!

I started this Christmas tablecloth in 2008 and finished piecing the top in October that year.


It is a really beautiful design by Guðný Valgerður Ingvarsdóttir and made with wonderful fabrics that I got from Bot.is



I never finished it because I didn't like how it went together, and actually thought that I was no good at piecing...until I found out that my sewing machine doesn't always start with the needle in the middle, sometimes it is 1/8th of an inch to the side, and that can make all the difference when putting together a quilt!
It has imperfections (see above photo) but I decided to finish it anyway. It was my first big piecing project and now it has also been my first machine quilting project. I had machine quilted around all the red stars and two flowers when I was comfortable with my machine quilting, so I picked up all the stitches and did them all again!

I absolutely love it and I do hope that the imperfections are not too obvious...now I can't wait until Christmas to show it off!

Drawstring car sack

Here is a little sack that I made for my boy to keep his cars in:I made it from the legs of a pair of jeans that had been turned into shorts and a cool car fabric I found at Virka, the local quilt shop. The "T" is just sewed on with raw edges. I'm hoping it will look cool once the edges start to fray. It has a lining with the car fabric as well and the drawstring is simply 3 long strips folded lengthwise with right side out and braided together.
Tryggvi loves it so... Mission accomplished!

First attempt

This is my first attempt at free-motion machine quilting:
It is one of five flowers in a Christmas tablecloth I made two years ago, but I never finished it because I wasn't sure how to quilt it. Now I have been teaching myself how to machine quilt and I decided to stitch in the ditch. It was really hard, until I got myself a pair of quilting gloves.
These seams have all been removed now because I was sewing too small stitches, very often went out of the "ditch" and I do not like this multicolored thread on this piece since the white on the red background and the dark on the light background makes it look sloppy.
I will show you the final quilted tabletopper when it is finished :)