Sewing fair in Älvsjö

Last weekend I went to the sewing fair in Älvsjö, Stockholm, which resulted in me buying a crazy amount of yarn, some pretty quilt fabrics, a seam ripper (a luxury I've been without since I left my parents' house, thus also leaving my mother's sewing room), some patterns for the yarns and garter webbings in size 6mm.

I also bought some gifts for my mother, who due to the foul weather was unable to come and visit me. The original plan was that she would come to the fair with me, as she enjoys fabrics, yarn and such as much as me. Hopefully we'll be able to go together to the next one. :)
What's in it? I'll show you tomorrow.

Love,
Ellinor

My camera

As you may have noticed, the pictures I post here are no longer taken by the webcam om my laptop... I got this camera from my family at Christmas, a Nikon D3000, and I simply love it! I'm still learning, and mostly I just point and click, but the pictures turn out pretty good anyways!

When you read this I'll be on a bus to visit my family. I'll stay with them until Wednesday next week, and there will be a lot of just hanging out, sleep, and playing games. There will probably be some knitting done as well...

Love,
Ellinor

Beanie

I eventually gave in and tried QuickKnitting, which I as a knitter actually found incredibly difficult. It's kind of ironic, as QuickKnitting is designed for making "knitted" stuff without having to knit a single stich. Having watched the QuickKnit frames in the local craft store for ages, thinking things as "*real* knitting is much better, we *real* knitters don't need that kind of stuff", I now have to admit myself defeated. Yes, it's designed to be simple even for non-knitters, and yes, I've been knitting since the age of 8, but yes, I did have trouble with it. Anyways, I finished a beanie, which I must say turned out both warm and kind of cute, despite it's not knitted... ;)

Love,
Ellinor

Hat

I love old fashioned clothing, 'typically female' as well as 'typically male'. As much as I would've enjoyed wearing dresses like the ones Scarlet O'Hara (of "Gone with the wind") wears, I would also love wearing things such as high hats, waistcoats and shirts with flounces, to go with a nice walking stick and a pocket watch. Enough dreaming for now, I can do that when asleep (which I should be for a couple of hours now)...

Anyway, when watching "The assasin of Jesse James" the other day (a beautifully made movie btw), I got really inspired to crochet a hat, although one of the more 'female' ones that looks like they are made of straw, and usually decorated with flowers, fruits, ribbons or other corny stuff. And it would be the real size of a hat. I think I'll have to get back to that thought though, because as I sat down with some yarn and a crocheting needle tonight, I got the idea of a really small men's hat, balancing on my usually quite fluffy hair. The result can be seen in the picture above, but it's taken with my webcam in quite lousy light. Perhaps there will be another pic later.

Anyway, I'm kinda happy with the result. It's stuck to my hair with hair needles, and I can't wait to really fluff up my curles and wear it someday. What do you think? Crazy idea?

Love,

Ellinor

Ps. Valentine's day today. It ruined my (actually existing) plans of asking someone out this weekend, as I found the prospect of asking someone out on Valentine's much more scaring than asking someone out in general (which is scary enough). We'll see when I manage to get myself together enough to ask, and not get hung up on ballyhooes ^^'

Knitted sweater

During the winter vacation from school I did plenty of crafting (even though it was not visible here), and so I thought that some of the things I did then can be uploaded sporadically now, when I don't have anything else to show you.

I do apologize for my absence,
(and some day I might even give you an explanation).

The knitting of the pieces to this were actually finished sometime during autumn (and before that I had almost forgotten about it, doing other projects), but as usual, I left them lying in a shelf for ages because it only was the most boring part left (in this case putting the pieces together). I finished it while visiting my grandfather and his housemate (Sv. word: sambo), which was kind of epic, because it was also there I started it, almost exactly a year earlier. But as I said, it was definitely not an entire year of working. (*trying to maintain some of my reputation as a crafter...* ;)

But, after all (If I may say this myself:) I love it, and I think it turned out just great.

Love,
Ellinor

Peda 20

Congratulations to Peda, one of my roommates, who has his 20th birthday today!
We (as in I and Rebecka, my other roommate) tried to surprise him as he got home from school, and I think we succeeded.
When we sneakily asked him what kind of cakes he likes a couple of weeks ago he said "anything with marzipan and custard would do, possibly something with meringue". So, we decided to make an ordinary princess cake, slightly adapted for him: it should of course be blue, no question about that, and also include both raspberry and blueberry jam. Several cursewords and a slightly bluer kitchen later, we decided to make it monster-style, as we in no way could make the marzipan cover the entire cake without it breaking everywhere. So, we patchworked the marzipan and turned the failed marzipan rose into eyes and a mouth...
There had been many discussions about what gifts to give him, as turning 20 is not an ordinary birthday. Nerds as all three of us are, Rebecka and I soon tried to find ideas on the net, in forums and webshops. Almost every suggestion included being incredibly mean to the one having his/her birthday, for instance picking up a piano from eBay (apparently they are often given away as long as you come and get it yourself) and leaving it outside his/her door, for the birthday person to get rid of best they could...

We ended up giving him this: a scrapbook with pictures of actresses he has mentioned he thinks are hot, an orange tie (he's studying physics, and at our school their colour is orange), a t-shirt with his name in binary, and a fanfic written especially for him. This last thing was particularly interesting to make, although both me and Rebecka have read and at least sporadically written fanfics for a couple of years now, we found it extremely difficult to write about someone we actually know in person. We had never co-written anything like that before either, and decided that in the future, any cooperative fanfiction-writing between us should only include slash...

Last, there were lots of cookies that we made last week. It turned out quite a nice evening, with lots of sugar and some giggling and blushing on mine and Rebecka's part, as Peda read the fanfic. There's a very good reason for why those are usually published at least somewhat anonymously.

Love,
Ellinor