Folky Eggs

Hello  my dear blogger friends. Hope you all are doing ok :) Been busying myself recently with some knitting and crocheting. Wanted something folky for the house decor so I knitted these:

Five knitted eggs with floral a motif :) I used the knitting pattern from Arne & Carlos book Easter Knits.

Originally it meant to be only 3 of the eggs -a red, orange and a yellow one. But they are highly addictive and I ended up knitting a pink and a blue one too!

I used Norwegian yarn to make them: Heilo and Falk of Dalegarn. These yarns are always a pleasure to knit with as they are 100% natural wool and they are good for smooth knitting and ironing.

I'm very pleased with how they turned out. Particularly I love their whiteness and freshness. Lots of Scandinavian artefacts features bright colours, white being most of them. 

Good weather and sunshine put me in a playful mood with a camera :)

Eventually I attached the crochet chains to the eggs and now they are decorating my seasonal tree :)

In the meantime I'm having a go at my first fair isle knitting on flat needles. It feels so different to DPNs I'm so used to. I'm knitting a cosy for one of my gadgets.

It is slowly coming on! :)

Have a good and creative week. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a trace behind. Always pleasure to hear from you. Love x 

Martha

Knitted Easter balls and eggs

Hi all. There's more Easter craft of mine I'd like you to see ;) I'm still fascinated with Arne and Carlos' Easter knits so for Easter this year I made the 4 new Easter knits:

In fact I knitted the "shells" for these eggs / balls last year but couldn't get motivated to finish them off so they had to wait all year to be finished off this Easter. I steamed them, stuffed with polyester and attached the strings. Ta-dah! Ready to join my knitted Easter decoration :D

They are all knitted with double pointed needles and Dalegarn yarns: Lerke, Heilo and Falk :) I just love how these colours come out in knitted patterns. Very eye-catching, I must admit. The stripey egg is my first own designed pattern :)

In the next post I'll show you my Easter tree with knitted eggs and balls :D

Have a good day and thank you for comments x 

Lerke of Dalegarn

Hi all.
Half term break midweek now. The weather is either snowy or rainy - truly miserable. Just look:

I'm staying indoors. The house is a too comfy and cosy place to leave right now and with a cuppa next to me I'm enjoying my knitting and other crafty adventures plus I read a lot too :) and it all does feel sooo good, I'm telling you. :) 

Bookwise, just finished reading The Pianist - a very sad but also a moving story about a Polish Jew desperately trying to survive in bombarded Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Books like these always leave a mark on heart and I like to call them "books with the content" as opposed to the books you read, filter through your mind and nothing is left after a month or two.

 Now moving onto The Piano :) - a Victorian love story in exotic scenery of New Zealand

I've seen the film adaptations for both books and I can recommend them with all my heart.

Back to crafty matters. A new type of wool has arrived recently at my doorstep from kidsknits.com :) it's a fresh supply of yarn for my Easter knitting. This time I decided to try out Lerke - a mix of 48% of cotton and 52% of merino wool for some of my Easter eggs. 

The parcel came all the way from the USA after about 3 weeks and I couldn't wait to lay my hand on its content. Lerke turned out to be a lovely yarn - soft and cosy to the touch with a smooth "stringy" feel. When I asked about the colour cards, Mary Ann of kidknits.com was so kind  that she presented me with a bunch of them for free! They are brilliant to quickly find the right type and the right colour of the wool. I was so chuffed to have them as I've been looking for these Dalegarn shade cards for a while and they help me identify my yarn very quickly. When your wool stash grows and the skeins become mingled in your knitting bag, then finding which one is which becomes a challenge!

I'm delighted how many shades Falk has got in its array. I'm thinking of substituting the colours I miss in Heilo array with the Falk shades.

At the moment I'm working on one of my Easter balls, - a sunny yellow "jumper style" ball with a decorative blue hens band. 

It looked like this not long ago..

A few minutes later, it is off the needles :)

Easter knitting in progress. More balls on the blog soon!

Arne & Carlos: Easter Knits (1)

For the past few days I've been busy knitting away some Easter-themed balls and eggs.  The first two balls have been finished. I loved the patterns so much that I had to knit them as my first Easter balls. They are a sunrise and sunset duo. Their original names are Morning Red and Evening Red. I used original wool that is Heilo. It's got some beautiful colours in its array.

 
A teal and pumpkin coloured ball was my second - love this colour combination!

 I've also knitted a sweet cute egg in pastel colours and hearts. Cheerful as Easter itself.

This green egg has just been taken off my needles. I used Daletta yarn and 2.5 mm needles to see how small a knitted egg can be. 

And these are all my Easter knits so far :)

Last Thursday a small packet made my day - a fresh supply of Dalegarn yarn. Yay! This time it's not Heilo but Falk. I missed some juicy greens in the Heilo colour array so I ordered some Falk. The best thing about it is that it came from an online shop in the UK! - Dragon Yarns. This is a great news for me as it means that Norwegian wool is gradually making its way into the British shops and possibly in the future there will be no need for buying it abroad. At the moment, a wool like Heilo is impossible to buy in the UK and needs to be shipped from somewhere else. 

Being in a stitchy-knitty-gritty theme, yesterday I spotted this magazine in Tesco with a fab set of sewing-themed stamps! I've always wanted some like these! The vintage sewing machine, the scissors, the mannequin... Run to the shops if you want one! :)

I'm also buying provisions for the future Easter :)  Tim Holtz Alterations - Easter bunny die cutters and folky birds die have arrived today at my doorstep and I'm on cloud 9. Finally my Easter cards will be getting some shape and personality :)

Joining hand-made Monday today at Hand-made Harbour. Do join in and have some blog hopping round the blogs full of crafty creations.