Melted

When I saw the doll that a friend had made for her daughter, I melted. These days sitting on the couch, doing some crochet and avoiding complex thinking, are best for me. But I'm not experienced in crochet at all. Apparently that doesn't matter with this free pattern. You could give it a try too! And mind the other ones, that are great as well! Everyone who knows Ravelry, knows these dolls. But I didn't untill now...

This one is a birthday present for L.

M and make up?

This locker is hanging on M's bedroom wall in order to organize nail polish, hair elastics, etc. It's a present we made for M's birthday last summer, but never showed it on this blog because the green edge had still to be crocheted. Now it's like it was in my mind.

An unused locker of Ikea is used. I covered the front and the inside with a leftover fabric of her tree and a mirror was mounted on the front. Because the locker had to close properly it turned out a quite precise job to do. But we managed.

Here you can see the different stages of mounting double sided adhesive foil to the fabric, cutting, folding corners and finally sticking to the front.

On the bias

Are you still curious after this post? To be honest, this dress was planned for L's birthday! Only the borders to go, I decided to quit this knitting to be continued after those busy days. A good exercise to let go!

Looking at the final result I was afraid L would refuse to wear it, but pfff, she loves it! She's wearing it now three days in a row. She may. It took quite some time to make it and you never know whether my youngest self-assured daughter likes or not, so I'm glad.
Thanks Saskia for the nice stay in your small shop and for inspiring me. Browsing through different kind of knitting books I really fell in love with this dress in this book. I used this affordable yarn. But my bag was filled with more...

Some changes I made: the description for the borders was way too complex, so I decided to do it my good-old-way. And I changed color on an even number of rows to take along the waiting thread and thus to avoid weaving in ends. Here I found the perfect rose pattern...
In my opinion the dress is a tiny bit too long right now, but she'll grow!

Solving a 'problem'

Yesterday L turned 6! But today she was invited by her 3-days-junger best friend Gaia. We were a bit in a hurry to leave for her birthday party due to a discussion of mother and daughter about choosing cloths. I wished her to wear her new checkered dress, but L had problems with the waist width. Very quickly solved this (during my morning coffee) by crocheting a chain.
To achieve the desired color with available materials, a thick dark pink and a thin red thread were mixed. Mmmm, pink with a touch of red.

Garland?

Hi! Nice to be back again. Just like last year, we combined cycling and camping during our holidays. Not so many kilometers a day, because L (5) persisted to cycle herself. I so love the forests of the Veluwe in the central part of the Netherlands. Near Putten, you really should go to see the huge and fairytale beech trees!

And the beautiful heath fields nearby.

The weather wasn't great, adults said. But kids, especially mine, loved to be in the rain and took advantages of the situation!

What better to carry on a three weeks cycle trip, besides a tent? Right, a crochet hook! This is my work on progress, an ode to my all time favourite crochet lady: Emma Lamb. These motifs appeared to be a nice play element during camping. L loved to sort them in all possible ways.

What the final result will be is not yet landed in my head :). Keep you posted about it.

Taking some rest

Packed my holiday present. I'm ready for it.
Wish you all a great summertime and like to see you again in a few weeks!

Update: Suddenly saw the color similarity with my header :).

Pif

When M and L were newborns they wore this very cute hat in a beautiful green color. A former colleague did crochet it. Kristel of Vlijtig is another former colleague. She paid this hat at least 20 times (!) forward to several aftercoming babies.
Making a crochet piece of work myself was probably more than 25 years ago! But I wanted to pay it so much forward to one of my nowadays colleagues, who's becoming a father of a little girl. The other one will be given to some other sweet newborn in the future. The blue yarn appeared to be a very fine crochet yarn, but really every yarn will suit you. For today I like to posit following thesis: everybody older than 8 can make a hat like this. So if you like to pay it forward too, get started with an average crochet hook like 4,5 mm. Find a similar pattern via this link.