Hanging pockets

I've been saving old jeans for quite a while for a future project (stay tuned), and recently saw some picture on Pintrest that sparked an idea. It has been done lots of times before, just google 'jeans pocket hanger'. Here's mine, quick and dirty hand sewing but very handy to hide/organise clutter.

Crochet shell curtains

We have a nice big window in our bathroom. Unfortunately, it looks out onto a blind wall.

Adding curtains or blinds would take the light away, but having it bare didn't feel very cosy. Our local DIY business offered some cheap easy cut & paste frosted film, but this too, seemed to take away quite a bit of light, so we only applied it to the bottom half of the window. For the top half, it was crochet to the rescue ;-)

Using a fishnet like stitch, I crocheted 3 panels, to mimic, you guessed it, fish nets. They can be moved out of the way individually, allowing to maximise the amount of light entering the room. To finish it off, we attached sea shells (carefully collected when I was a child and subsequently forgotten in a box somewhere) to the bottom edge. Window makeover, nautical style...

Another paper light shade

Just as a quick side note, before the origami light shade, there was Jimbo:

Jimbo was originally going to be the new light shade for the bedroom, but turned out a bit heavier than expected. Rather than testing the strength of the ceiling suspension, Jimbo and an old uplighter were recycled into a 'paper palm tree' like structure. It sounds funky and it looks it too. I still don't know if I actually like it, but I couldn't quit discard the hours of gluing hundreds of triangular paper strips onto an old paper light shade (idea from here).

Origami light shade

After seeing some interesting light shades that looked DIYable, I hit Pintrest and found one that looked simple enough to make but complicated enough to have a bit of a wow factor. There are various tutorials out there resulting in a similar light shade, here's just one of them to get you started if you're interested.

Briefly, I used 5 A2 sheets of drawing paper (lengthwise), folding each one first, punching holes in the top & bottom, then using clear tape on the inside to attach them to one another into the round. Next, I threaded a piece of string through the holes in the top, and similarly another one for the bottom. This construction was then hung over an existing spherical light shade and the strings tightened to form an origami sphere covering the existing shade.

While it took a bit longer than it sounds, it wasn't particularly hard and it's definitely worth it in my opinion. Much better than the bare bulb that was there the previous couple of months! It gives a lovely indirect light, though you could get more light by not tightening the bottom string. For comparison, here's Habitat's £20 version & £35 version. I know which one's my favourite!

Fingerless gloves

Bye bye sunny holidays and hello cold winds! Time to crochet a set of fingerless gloves for my favourite computer geek...

The pattern is really easy and you can adapt it to fit any hand size. I used 2 strands of DK yarn held together and a 5 mm crochet hook, but really, anything goes. The pattern starts from the wrist up. 

First chain an even number of stitches large enough to fit around the/your hand and join in a circle (careful not to twist the chain). For the pictured gloves, that was 36 chains. 

Chain 3 to serve as the first double crochet (dc, American terms), then dc into each of the following stitches (36 stitches)

Repeat the line above till you're happy with the length. This is the portion from the arm/wrist up till the hand. The increases in the next few rows will create the extra space for the thumb. Increase as many times as you like, I used 4 rows:

17 dc (first one being a chain 3), increase (2 dc in same stitch), increase, 17 dc (38 stitches)

18 dc (first one being a chain 3, you got it by now...), increase, increase, 18 dc (40 stitches)

19 dc, increase, increase, 19 dc (42 stitches)

20 dc, increase, increase, 20 dc (44 stitches)

In the next row, we do chain 3, 17 dc, skip 8 stitches and another 18 dc (back to the original 36 stitches). This creates the thumb hole.

Keep adding rows of chain 3, 36 dc until you're happy with the length of the top of the glove (to the knuckles, halfway up the fingers, your choice)

Et voila, superquick fingerless gloves! You can add a contrasting colour trim (here in red) or other embellishments to your liking.

Sun hat

Work and health issues have kept me quite busy/distracted till recently, but due to the arrival of hot weather and a mini-holiday it seemed a good idea to crochet a sun hat. 

I based mine on a pattern by Jessie, especially to make the crown. The brim doesn't have any 'holes' in it to optimise the amount of shade provided, and is kept stiff by 2mm garden wire crocheted into the last row. The hat band consists of 2 pieces: a chain threaded through the last row of the crown which can be tightened to fit the hat and a second chain with flowers threaded through the first chain purely for decorative reasons.

The yarn for the hat is DK pure cotton in off-white/ivory, the hat band is made from an acrylic light blue DK. Hook size for both was 3.5 mm. A lot of it was crocheted while travelling; it's a great take-away project! Not all sun hats can boast they have been partly created under the sea (i.e. in the Eurostar) :-)

Alpine rugs

Long time no write! This is partially due to Real Life commitments, but the size of my latest project probably accounts for something as well. May I present, the Alpine rug (on top of the shiny newly sanded and stained floor):

This project started as the works on the floor began. Taking out the carpet to reveal the old floorboards and give them new life seemed like a great idea... but what about cold feet? How about 2 bedside rugs? Maybe I can make them myself? It's a lot cheaper and I will have full control over colours and patterns...

Hook, line and sinker.

It was a lot of fun coming up with the concept and colours. The rugs are based on, and are meant to evoke, holiday memories from the Alps. So a chevron pattern for the mountain peaks was pretty much a given from the start. It wasn't easy to settle on colours, but in the end I picked 15 'alpine' shades of Stylecraft Special DK based on pictures of mountain landscapes.

White (1001) - Cloud Blue (1019) - Denim (1302)

Turquoise (1068) - Aster (1003) - Royal (1117)

Meadow (1065) - Khaki (1027) - Bottle (1009)

Parchment (1218) - Mocha (1064) - Walnut (1054)

Silver (1203) - Grey (1099) - Graphite (1063)

I used 2 strands held together and a 5 mm crochet hook. There are a lot of different variations of the chevron/ripple pattern out there, depending on how sharp/rounded and small/high you'd like the ripples to be. I used a variation of this one using 7 instead of 3 double crochet stitches between the peak (3 dc in one) and valley (3 dc together) stitches. I did 2 rows in each colour, 80 rows / 40 coloured stripes in total. The order of the colours probably took way too much time to decide upon :-)

After weaving in the ends, it was time for blocking! Because this took several weeks to complete (Real Life and all), it needed a bit of help to look more like a rectangle. I would usually spray it wet, but this thing was so thick I actually had to use the shower! 

Finally, I sewed part of an old fleece blanket to the underside of the rug for extra warmth/protection from dirt and attached a rug liner. These sewing jobs can be undone fairly quickly to wash either the fleece or the rug if necessary.

It took ages to complete both rugs, but they are totally worth it. Seeing the Alps as soon as your feet touch the floor, there are worse ways to wake up in the morning!