liebster award

We have been nominated by Tracy of "Crochet Happy" (thank you!) with the Liebster award! We haven't done this before, but since it's a way to socialize with our friend bloggers....!

it seems that the rules are simple:

• The Liebster Award is passed from blogger to blogger. 
• It starts with us revealing 11 Random Bits of information about ourselves. 
• Then we have to answer a series of 11 questions set up for us by Tracy. 
• Next we create 11 questions of our own and nominate 11 blogs, with 300 followers or less, for the award.

long post ahead!!!! 

soooo 11 random bits about us:

1. we are sisters (dah)
2. Marietta is a year older than Panagiota
3. untill the age of 11 we didn't had a tv at home! and we don't own one now either...
4. our grandmother was a knitter, marietta's godmother was a fanatic crocheter and knitter, our aunt is a crocheter (and sometimes a DC's contributor), our mom has knitted some sweaters in the past and knows the basics of crochet, our dad is an expert on untangling yarn, our younger brother knows the basics of knit and crochet, our older brother has often, bought us hooks and yarn and crochet books as gifts. (it's in the family) 
5. we have a relatively big and messy stash
6. the latest addition to our hooks and needles collection was a no20 crochet hook and a pair of no20 needles (for crocheting/knitting rope? huuuge)
7. we have a huge drawer with works in progress (both crochet and knit)
8. we both plan to move out of Athens at some point.
9. we used to have a Crochet Club , but since we both plan to move out of Athens we are dreaming of developing two "sisters" Crochet Clubs (imagine that!)
10.  we have to thank "the last minute" cause, as it was read somewhere, if there wasn't "the last minute" a lot of stuff wouldn't have happened....! 
11. our mom is our mentor and in her color expertise we trust! 

and now let's answer to Tracy's questions.

Who inspired your love of crochet? Panagiota thinks it was something that came gradualy, we've been raised in a family of crafters and it is the love for handmade and crafts that lead us to rediscover crochet and knitting as a true love! But Marietta has to admit that she was making fun of Panagiota about 5 years ago while she was knitting....little did she know that she would fell for the same hobby. 

Do you prefer natural fibers or acrylics?We prefer to use natural fabrics with a mix of acrylic, in our products. But we love good quality acrylics though! When it comes to washing them, they are really easy going (hallo washing machine). However always a good natural fiber (alpaca, linen, merino) makes our fingers itching to crochet!!! Both, natural and acrylics, have several interesting textures, and it is amazing that we have sooo many options.. Panagiota also beleive's it's better to work with acrylics when teaching newbies 

Do you offer your crochet works for sale or adorn your friends in free fibery goodness?
Both! We started out by gifting everything! it was really nice and then somebody told us "why don't you sell them?"  So now we offer our works for sale, and it's in our future plans to start an online shop. But of course, we still give a lot of handmade crochet and knitted gifts to friends and family.

Do you follow other blogs? Yes we do, it is very important for us to keep up with the blogging community. It's really interesting and inspiring. You can check some of our favorite blogs on our Daily Reads page.

How do you follow other blogs.. by RSS feeds, email or blog readers?
With bookmarks, bloglovin and blogger's feed. Marietta used to use RSS feeds but at that time the number of blogs she followed increased way too much and it was overwhelming to catch with everybody up. Nowadays oddly enough, we mostly remember our favorites and just write their url adress on our browsers. 

Do you follow patterns "to the letter" or approach them more as "guidelines"?
Well somekind of both, some well written patterns are ok to follow to the letter, but when something is not so well explained we like to do "our things". It's not uncommon thing that we change a pattern a lot.

Nightowl or Morning person?
While Marietta is more of a nightowl, Panagiota is a morning person.

Books or Nooks? (if you don't know the difference, pick the first option)
For Marietta is mostly books, but nooks are pretty fine!!! For Panagiota is definatelly books, she is a book lover, she likes to hold them, touch them, smell them, it's not just about the story but the whole book, the cover, the pages everything.

Would you rather have a Steak Dinner or a Lobster Fest?
nom nom, anything that is well prepared and well served. 

Do you like to challenge yourself with difficult projects or work a lot of quick and fast items?
We are both lovers of challenges but we always like a quick and fast item with a nice outcome. When we worked with teams we strongly adviced them to start with  little projects so that they had more courage to take up to a big and difficult project as they learned more.

How often do you visit the yarn store? Once a week? Once a month?
Once a month :) but we could live in there...  

ric rac via pugly pixel


and here are our 11 questions:

• What relaxes you most, after a busy day?
• Who is your favorite artist?
• Who is your favorite person?
• Why do you have a blog?
• Why do you think people visit your blog!?
• What is or what was your dream job?
• Do you ever feel like your job is getting too much into your hobbies' field? and if yes, bother or love?
• Photography is extremely important when blogging, how often do you carry your camera with you?
• Does fashion affects the way you blog? or you prefer to keep on your personal style?
• Tell us 5 stuff that describes you best!
• Which magical power you have? or would like to have....

and here are the ones we nominate:

*Christina at Scrapbooking, Magnolias and Music

*Vivika at The Wandering Deer

*Cristina at  Karmology Clinic

*Clio at The Muse And The Lady Bug

*Kalipso at A Be Ba Blog

*Margarita and Eirini at Fashion Reactor

*Teri at What Happens in Fashion Stays in Fashion

*Marielle at Magical Day Dream

*Manolis at Imaginary Rooms the Blog

*Chryssa at A Dog's Dream

*Bexx at Anchored Ivy

:)

so that was it
phew!

M+P  

History Review: a knit kit

Happy Sunday everyone! The other day I came across this kit (in Panagiota's drawer) and decided to make a post about it. It's a gift that was given to Panagiota around 2007 (or maybe 08?), by me!

It was definitely my non-crocheting period, unlikely Panagiota was knitting and crocheting a lot. This knit kit by Benetton, included this plastic yarn holder, 125gr of yarn, and a pair of 10mm wooden needles. (I didn't find the 10mm needles, but instead you can see, in the photo below, a huuuge pair of 20mm needle pair Panagiota bought lately...waaant!!) By the way , the wooden 10mm needles were not that regular to find in a yarn store in Athens, at that time, so I had to buy it for her a)because the kit was cute b)because she would love a pair of rare needles!

the needles are just for fun here, nothing knitted is shown.....

As you can see, she had chosen not to knit! but to crochet instead (just saying) although now that the yarn is refound she said that she will finish this (forever!)wip... by knitting it, this time!

The texture and the color of the yarn is lovely, and as for the quality of it, was described at the tag as "red mélange wool with a blue streak" soft soft and soft once more! I say that this yarn is pretty ok for a soft and bulky scarf, and obviously this non breakable yarn holder is doing its job. Well done Benetton, I once liked your gift idea , and I still do.
kiss kiss
marietta


[p.s. This was the first (official) "history review" post, a new feature over here at Double Crochets, that will mostly be about yarn and craft stuff from our past.... !]

a flash photo shoot at my school

Just before Christmas, I brought some Double Crochets's products at my (current) school and had a really quick and spontaneous photo shoot with some of my classmates! So apart from some new DC's products, you'll be lucky to meet some future fashion designers...
enjoy:

a big thanks to Konstantina, Katerina, Aggeliki for modeling, Niki for styling, and my teacher Teri for her tolerance! So what do you thing? 

marietta ♥

In my little corner of the world

  While Panagiota is away on Christmas holidays, I'm here trying to organise my post-Christmas life! Dude time flies! You might already know that I was not "ready" for this year's Christmas (hehe) with all the stuff I had in my mind, I didn't even realise when December hit me. So in the mid of December I started re-arranging our craft studio (cause cleaning up is obligatory for the New Year's arrival), I did a great progress, but there are still a lot to be done.

After that, we had the Christmas bazaar, I did my best to maintain the Christmas spirit and then I got sick for about a week and a half. Thank God now I am good as new, and holidays were super relaxing and fun. My new year's resolution is written down, Double Crochets' also, and now I am ready for the new year...contrasting my messy craft supplies bookshelves.

Regarding crocheting, I've crocheted 4 shawls, in the last months, and one more is already a wip, (one for my mom, one for my sister, one for me, one for a friend) it's super addictive! I'm not sure, yet, for the best way to style and shoot them , so for now you can only see a pile of them... Lot's of stuff need to be photographed, and much more were sold or gifted without having them on photos! I don't worry though, cause it's a sign of creativity!

 maybe putting everything on me? ...donno.

 Right above you can see a side of my desk at the moment...

So that's some peeks on my post-Christmas life. Is anybody out there as messy as me?
At the moment I am studying for my school, that starts tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!

big kiss
marietta ♥

New Year's resolution: 2013

  I am posting today for reviewing our last year's resolution and putting up some new goals! 

so let's see 

2012:

1. CHECKblogging more frequently.  Maybe do a blog makeover also? Spending some more time on our blog is something we both wish to do, although it can be so tough with the everyday routines!
   Pretty tough goal!!! Although we did better than 2011, we didn't blog thaaat frequently. anyways I'm counting in this one..
2. CHECKkeep having fun and dancing more.  We both adore dancing and we are proud members of The Rollin Foxes, the rock 'n' roll dance company of Athens!! All we have to do is keep on rollin! 
   Panagiota did this, while I was not such a dancer this year. Wow dude, how things do change!! I mean c'mmon, of course we still love to dance,  but Blue Fox and its dance group isn't on our weekly routine anymore. One can say it's a pity, but peoples' lifes change, (my best friend moved to another country, I'm mostly at Chalkida instead of Athens because of my fiance) and at the moment other stuff are more important than just having fun. Although we'll always love the super cool memories we have from that bar!
3. CHECKdo more collaborations.  Yes! we have so much talented friends that would be a pity not to work with them on fun and creative projects this year...
   Yeap Yeap!!! We did that, and we have already some more collaborations planned out...
4. do more outfit photo shoots for our blog.   mmmm yeah okaymmm yeah okay for sure. we didn't do that.
5. set up a Double Crochets online shop. At the moment all of our creations are made exclusively for gifts and friends, it would be nice to do it for more professional reasons, too.
   We are still working on this! but we have made a lot of important steps!
6. CHECKdocument our crochet meetings.  We already do this, but sometimes we get too obsessed with what we do and forget to document it! 
   Yes we did that , at least for as long as we had a crochet club! Unfortunately life has its own rules, and since we had small (or bigger) difficulties with our crochet club, we no longer have documents of it either.
7. "spread the thread"!!  This is the tagline of  our blog and the main reason we started our crochet club, to teach more people how to crochet/knit and spread the love for needle work!! 
   Still willing to work more on this!
8. organize a yarn exhibition.  With pictures of our favorite crafts and crafters, and some actual crocheted/knitted objects.
   nope, didn't do that.
9. CHECKparticipate in a local craft bazaar. There is the Vintage and Crafts bazaar organized by Les Broderies Anglaises, happening at our favorite district (Exarheia), and we really love it, it's a dream of ours to participate to a bazaar of this kind. 
   Y-e-s sir!!!
10. CHECKcrafting more.  crochet more, aaaaaand more, and more, and more!!!! okay some more knitting,sewing,embroidering would be awesome, too! Make do and mend more....  
    Definitely YES!!!!!

6/10 great score may I say!!  yay!

so for 2013!! (great combo of numbers by the way) we have some goals:

1. Be a better blogger (will need: planning ahead, read more blogs, document more,shoot more photos, writing down, or sketching (why not), a journal for keeping track of the blog posts)
2. Keep collaborating and connecting with people who share the same passions! 
3. Set up an online shop (yes I'm putting this again!)
4. Never stop crafting and learning new things! (a 365 project will help for this, but I have already tried "making an origami crane every day" on 2009 and I only made to 2 months. On the contrary when I tried a weekly project "Sunday's time reviews" for which I was posting, photos of my week, every Sunday for a whole year, I made it through)
5. Be thankful to people who support us (thank you people who support us!!!)
6. Stay united, no matter how far we may be next year!
7. Manage to develop both and each of us, her own unique style on Double Crochets' products.
8. Organise our studio, our craft supplies and our stash.
9. Do a blog makeover, develop new packaging and bring new, fresh air on Double Crochets online.
10. Stay happy ,free and creative!!! 

Things learnt: a) Imagination and creativity are important skills, don't waste them on people that don't deserve them. b) It's important to fortify your own brand/creations/ideas no matter how insignificant you might thing you are, but don't mind the copy-cats, they will not last c) Sometimes being a bitch is necessary, and the word "no", too.  d) Don't take anyone's shit e) As long as you are passionate about something , you will make it run!

yes that was it....
joy and hapiness to you and to your families!
♥ marietta

a knitting lady

{(Are these Christmassy, festive photos over at Double Crochets, at last? But wait! is Christmas gone already!? eeeeh nevermind!)} There is this little knitting lady of our childhood, that our grandmother along with my godmother had bought us, that takes a battery and moves her little hands like she's knitting. We always put her out with the Christmas tree, because she was concidered to be the wife of Santa Claus! I'm not sure, but I think we had a couple of them!

We hope everybody had a great Christmas and we wish you a very Happy New Year!!!!
come over again, tomorrow, for our New Year's resolution for 2013~

♥
Marietta of the Double Crochets