Pink and Barbara

Happy Halloween or All Saints...

I love Halloween with the pumpkins and the witches so I decorated out porch yesterday afternoon.

 

I also hung my little witch. She hangs from a string  and when she spins around sitting on her broom you can look under the skirt and see her naked butt...it is so funny...

At the moment I am working on finishing the latest Pink and Barbara Patterns, so the will be printed at the printer on Monday. Also I will have new cards printed, it is so exciting. All the Pink and Barbara pattern sheets have been professionally re-done.

So when all this is done I will have one full week off the rest before I leave for my big trip to Holland. I am so excited about that! I have some projects that I would love to finish to take with me to Holland.

First I am knitting a pair of felted slippers. They are so cute. This is the test one.  

Here you can see them. The first picture shows the big slipper. You then wash it and it gets smaller and thicker...

The second project are a pair of mittens called Podster. You can find a link here. They are wonderful you can remove the flap so you can use your fingers and stick out your thumb so you can operate your ipod. I love them, and they knit up so fast...

Here is a picture of the original:

They are great christmas presents as well!

And the last project is my dream project. I know there is now way that I can finish on time but I am dreaming about it. It is my Laminaria shawl

She is turning out so lovely and I am hoping she will come with me on the trip...but...I need to do some serious knitting if I want to make that work in  a week..I will let you know how it goes...*smile*

Tonight I am having some guests over so I am making something called Croustade aux Pommes for desert, which was featured in the latest County Living Magazine.(UK)

Oh before I forget..I made a little quilt for Quilt-it and Dotty's Doll quilt Club . Here is a sneak preview of the fabrics I used. This will be this months quilt.

 

Have a great Halloween!

Testing one, two, three

I fell in love with this pattern...The fountain pen shawl from Interweave knits

So I bought the magazine:

Some wonderful yarn:

And then...nothing...it wasn't pretty at all...so I redid it in thicker needles, smaller needles, other yarn and so on...

So after 3 days of trying all I got is this....

Such a lovely plan....but sorry to say...it isn't working... So time for a new project....

It's a book!!!!

If you are wondering why it has been so quiet the answer is : IT'S A BOOK

My book is called Mijn Quilts in Dutch. It will be launched on the 14th and 15th of February on the Patchwork and Quiltdays in Rijswijk.

About the book:

We quilters are a generous kind of people and give a lot of things away. So this book is a way to record your quilts, projects and your swaps. It is a great book to keep track of your projects in which year you made something and why. And maybe it is a good idea not just to record your projects for yourself but also for your loved ones.

So that is why it has been quiet for a while. I will be in the booth of Quilt-it & Dotty.

Stop by and say hi if you are coming to the fair. I will be also launching some new stitchery and bag patterns. (see below)

Hope to see you then!

P.s: If you are not going to Rijswijk I will be releasing the patterns in my etsy-shop as well soon!

 

3 skirts and a swatch

Hi!

Yesterday and some part of Monday-night I made these 3 skirts:

You can't really see how pink it is, but it is, It has a fringed bottom. This is the white linen one:

A close-up:

This is the blue one:

Nothing like some pictures of yourself to remind you what you really look like...*jikkes* But you might be wondering what that is in my hand...well I said I wouldn't but I bought some new yarn. The scarf is driving me loopy so I will finish that another time but need something during that time. So I swatched for my cardigan:

I also got some mail yesterday. I got this lovely package from Sasha as a surprise. No special occasion she just saw the book and notebook and thought of me...which makes it even more special!

Oh before I forget I have a small tip again. If you are like me and you like to sew clothes from the thin-thin fabrics but have a hard time cutting it this might help. I hang it up on my designwall and hang it under tension with needles on the outsides and insides. If you fold the fabric in 4, like I did here you will have 2 skirt pieces at once and all sides match up!

Tonight the Swedish girls are coming over to have a litle show and tell with the bags from the swap. I hope to do some knitting before then!

Bye!

Bobbins, Bobbins, Bobbins

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I had the girls over on Monday to have lunch with me, and we had a little mini Bee. They reminded me of a quilt we are making for a friend of ours who had turned 50. The blocks were due today. I had totally forgot about it! You know how sometimes think you'll have forever and you will do it later...and then it is later and you are stressing to get it done.

I also did a friendship block for this quilt. We swapped all these fabrics to make these blocks. I didn't really contribute since I didn't have these kinds of fabrics. The edges of this block will be cut of to make a square block.

On Monday I showed you a picture of the stitchery I have been working on for the bag exchange. I was looking for a embroidery floss I knew I had bought but I couldn't find it anywhere. I normally have all my floss organized. A local craft shop was going to stop selling floss so they sold all their DMC for half price! I hadn't organized them and in that heap somewhere was the floss I was looking for. So now I have been winding and winding and winding bobbins...

Suzanna on my mind....

While I am sitting here I am still not quite sure what to write about...

To start with I was thinking about keeping myself working on a more limited number of projects and start with this goal list I told you about in the last post. Can I just say HA! That was a good plan and it lasted almost 2 whole days.

It started with getting my quiltmania magazine in the mailbox. I loved this quilt in the magazine and found myself not being able to think about anything else. So I have now selected some fabrics ..don't know when I will start..but the fabrics where picked out.

Then I thought I would save myself some money and go back to the knittingstore in our town and return some of the wool I have leftover from a project I never completed. HA! I am now working on my new knittingproject and spend 3x as much money as I got back. It is hopefully going to be a shawl. It is so much fun to make, this is the swatch I made:

I also started working again on my Girls Day Out quilt .  The start:

On Gerda en Ingrid's blog I read about a easter-SAL. I have been working on a easter-quilt for a couple of years and will maybe join so I might get it finished. It is a Robin Pandolph Design:

Okay...enough for today...

My new SBS quilt

As I wrote before I started my SB'S over. This is how it looks now. It has a brighter white background and a dark pink sashing. I am happy I started over and am now happy with how it looks...

Last week I got a really nice package in my mailbox. I just love getting mail!

I am also making this...can you guess what it is going to be?

Okay going to keep on knitting now. I am almost halfway .....

Pincushion

When I went to Holland in December I showed Gerda some pictures of quilts and we started talking at Petra Prins. We were talking and I offered to trade some special scraps I had, which were just scraps and no problem at all. But she was so sweet and gave me this great tray with goodies, far beyond what I had imagined. I have been thinking what to do with the lovely things she gave me and used some of the fabrics for this pincushion. I am thinking about making a bag or something out of it as well.

I made this pincushion yesterday and it turned out really cute. It has the pincushion part.. 8 pockets for thread spools and then a thread catcher under. The pincushion pattern is from Kristel Salgarollo, the thread catcher is an other old design I had and just combined it.

Weronica and Cathi made one as well...

I am still quilting my diamonds quilt. I hope that I finish it tomorrow and can put the binding on.

Barbara