WAISTCOAT NUMBER ONE Poor as I am, I cannot afford to buy presents. But the children’s birthdays were coming up, so I decided to get my fingers moving and knit something. But what? For Christmas I made socks for all three of them, hats and neck warmers for the grandchildren, so what now? If I…
The knee-high socks are knitted on 3 mm double-pointed needles using Alize Forever crochet thread. That was one big mistake: the thread is slippery and the needles keep falling out. I had to unravel and redo so much and pick up so many dropped stitches. It immediately reminded me that in Soviet times there used…
A lacy summer dress, hat and knee-high socks for my dear granddaughter.
Finding all sorts of ideas and exciting tutorials still gets me ridiculously excited. And these butterflies arrived at exactly the right time. I had just been wondering what final little keepsake I could make for my colleagues. My plan had been to make each of them a silk handkerchief with a crocheted lace edge, so…
I’m writing this down while it is still fresh because I forget things terribly quickly. I really needed this pattern and the instructions were in Russian. I asked a Russian woman to translate them, but she only gasped and said she could not translate such specialised text into Estonian. So I copied bits from the…
For the soles I bought faux leather and used a shop-bought boot insole as the template. First I cut out the soles and sew around the edge with buttonhole stitch. I try to keep the spacing very even, but my eyesight is not brilliant, so… I leave the soft furry side on the inside and…
My niece’s birthday was coming up and I had no present at all. I considered all sorts of interesting little things, but finally settled on a bag I found online. It looked simple and, as I had managed to do absolutely nothing for quite some time, there were only a couple of days left. If…
I have quite a serious little obsession: if something is hand-knitted or crocheted, the buttons have to be handmade too. I hate fiddling about making buttons and, whenever possible, make things that do not need them, but… this time I had to. I took white yarn and wrapped it ten times around an ordinary pencil,…
Clearly there is something wrong with my judgement, because I decided to sew myself a fur coat. Not a cushion cover. Not a skirt. A fur coat. In faux fur. The sort of thing sensible people politely stay away from, especially when their experience consists more or less of being able to hold a needle…
