Ratties

I heard a rumor that May Britt wanted to see pictures of my rats. :) So here they come;


In the blue fleece house (made by a friend of mine named Ingrid, who lives in Trondheim) and from the left, we have the nose of my black berkshire dumbo (for those who're into standards, colors and markings) the eldest rat Pytteliten (also known as Pyttis). The name means something like really tiny (because she was really really tiny when I got her). In the middle (or left side-top) we have Igor - the hyperactive little rattie-baby. She's irish silvered black. And last, but not least, to the right we have Swiffer, who's agouti rex. All of them are girls - although the names might be a bit misleading. :)

A picture of all three of them, doing their usual thing whenever I open one of the cage doors - trying to climb out and come to me for a pat or a treat (I think they prefer the treats..). In this picture you can see more of the blue fleece house Ingrid made, and also parts of a hammock I've made (the black thing with blue insides), and you can even see a small part of a blue tunnell down to the right of Swiffer's foot.

And last, a picture of Swiffer and Pytteliten enjoying one of their comfy hammocks. This is how Swiffer sleeps from time to time - on her back with her feet in the air. Cute!!! I envy them when they're all bundled together in the hammocks and houses like that. It looks so cosy. :)

Spoiled ratten?

I got this idea today, how to make a new kind of hammock for my rats. Well, it wasn't completely my idea, I've seen examples of how others have made them - hammocks with hiding pockets, but today at work I started to think about how I would make one. Boring day at work? Not really.. I jus think alot when I do the same thing for several hours at the time.

I got a piece of fleece and some fabric with funny jungle animals - I especially love the pink crocodiles and little frogs, and I don't even like pink! - and cut a fitting piece of fabric. Sew the fabric together with the fleece, made some hoops for fastening on the cage walls, a seam here and a seam there - and voilá!



Cute, aren't they?

And now my rats are even more spoiled then ever - if that is possible, I mean. ;)

Finished bag.

Well, I finished my bag on Sunday - or almost.. I need to find a clever way of closing it in the top - otherwise I'll be sure to lose my wallet the first day in town.. :/

Sunday was the perfect day for my sewing machine to get all cranky too.. it refuses to make buttonholes - and so I'm waiting until we're friends again to make some kind of closing arrangement on the bag.

But, it's all done, except for that, so here comes a picture. :)


You don't see the insides, but I found only one (or was that two?) fabric that I had enough of to make the insides. It looks kinda cool - there's a jungle and lots of wild animals. :) My Grandmother gave me the fabric to make hammocks for my spoiled little rats, but I never got around to use it.. mostly because my mother gives me hints about fabrics with bright colors and funny animals which they have at the store where she works. ;) Very handy, I must add, very handy indeed.

An angel from the past.

After seeing May Britt's redwork angel, I couldn't quite stop thinking about my angel. So after a bit of tidying and searching, I found a shy but pretty angel in my box of "quilts without a place on the wall" (aka homeless quilts).



Makes me smile just to look at it again. :) It was really fun to make - and I like the result.

A productive Sunday

This Sunday started early.. more or less been up since around 4 am, but I've experienced before that I work well when over-tired.


I began taking the drawer with my Halloween and black based fabrics out from my handy dresser (IKEA, gotta love it). I've collected Halloween fabrics for about.. oh, I don't know.. 10 years? now, but rarely use any of it. How unusual. ;p

I spent a good two hours selecting, cutting and sewing, until I ended up with this;


This is the top - or outside part - of a bag. I found the pattern in a book - and I've been drooling over the idea to make one to use at work, and finally had the time and the inspiration to sit down and start. The wide black part is the bottom of the bag, and the squares are the front and back. I knew I didn't have enough of the eyelash-fabric when I started to cut, so I changed the bottom to a pure black fabric, and exchanged one of the stripes (the middle horizontal one) with a black fabric decorated with a shiney, metallic firework print.

I have to wait a few days until I can continue. I couldn't find a thread I liked in town yesterday, so my mom sent me a couple in the mail today. Plus I need to plan the inside. I like to have many pockets - for my wallet, keys, cellphone, a pen or two, and other things - and I still haven't decided what color to use.

My back is not happy after spending almost 4 hours in the kitchen (better light and space to sew)..

My quilting and patchwork books.

I decided to make a list of all the books I have, covering the theme of quilting and patchwork, so that I can easily see which books I have and which I can buy (there's a sale in one of the book clubs now). I'm not listing the books I've borrowed. I'm not _that_ sneaky. ;p

Lise Bergene; Lappegaver - raskt, morsomt og enkelt (Cappelen, 2003)

Lise Bergene; Lapper - stort og smått (Cappelen, 2002)

Joyce Mori; Native American Designs 2 (2005)

Sylvia Trygg Voudrie; Tiny Amish Traditions (Chitra Publications, 1994)

Tove Fevang; Min jul (Cappelen, 2002)

Tove Fevang; Applikasjon (Cappelen, 2001)

Tove Fevang; Søm med overlock (Cappelen, 2003)

Celia Eddy; Quilt - abc for quilteentusiaster (N.W. Damm & Søn, 2004)

Kristin Pollen; Fargerike lapper (Kom forlag, 2002)

Kristin Pollen; Dekorative lapper til hjemmet (Kom forlag, 2003)

Linda Sandstrøm; Engler (Cappelen, 2003)

Marie-France House; Gøy med lapper - for nybegynnere (Cappelen)

Jentenes egen hobbykveld (Cappelen, 2005)

Grete Gulliksen Moe; Lapper til hygge og nytte (Cappelen, 2004)


I'll edit this list when I get new/more books. For now, these are the ones I have.

(Added new books 01/24/2007)

Shopping!

Ah.. Saturday - and finally an opertunity to sleep until I wake up by myself - something that happened aroud 08:30.. typical.. Managed to doze off for a couple of hours, but eventually my back started to hurt (dunno why) so I got up.

Decided to go to town today, shop a little. Had some stuff I'd been thinking about for a while that I wanted to buy, plus the "Love is.." annoyed me a bit.. Just the looking for the correct fabric-part that sometimes bugs me.. Why can't the quilt shops have the fabrics and colours I've pictured in my head?

Anyway, I started off by taking the train (trikk) down a couple of stops to this big Narvesen kiosk. I've had some problems with my Lotto-card (I haven't recieved my winnings from last year yet, and needed to check which account it was registered to - it had to be the one I closed in September, of course..). Well, got that fixed, jumped on the fist bus that came and drowe it down town. Went to the farmacy (Vitus Apotek) and bought this step counter I've been drooling on for some time - a real fancy smancy little thing. :) My mom has the same type and she says it's working well.

I went to Panduro too - a kinda large store focusing on different hobbies, and came back with a coupon for 50,- (if I buy for 200,- in February they will give me 50,- in discount - now I have two of those ones!) and these little things;

The embrodery treads are from Tilda. My mom has them too. The colours were not something I'd normally buy, but I guess I feel like trying something new. :) The stamps on the left are small garden faeries - I thought they were so cute! The mice (or rats, since I have pet rats) are actually Christmas stamps from Tilda, but Panduro had a 50% sale on almost all Christmas items. Me like!

Then I took the train (trikk) again up behind the castle to Katrine's Quiltestue. I was looking for fabric to finish my "Love is.." and after talking to the girls who worked there, they finally understood the direction I wanted to go, and finding the fabrics ended up taking about 10 mins. :)
Both of these fabrics are from the Moda series "Chocolat". I think they are different from what I'd normally use, but very pretty.

I also managed to find the last Bareroots borders book they had! Had to look through most of the bookcase, but I found it! :D


I also bought two buttons (in wood) to use for the bag I'm planning to make (actually I want to sew it RIGHT NOW! but I'm tired from spending all day walking in the crowded streets..) and four miniature patters (all pre-printed on fabric)! They were so adorable! They had many many many more, but I fell in love with these four - and didn't look too well at the ones with Christmas themes, because Christmas is.. over? for now - I want spring and flowers (and allergies?) again. But Easter first - my birthday is just past Easter and Pytteliten's birthday too.

My UFO's

These past few days have gone by in a flash. Seems like all I've had time to do, is to plan and dream about the things I'm going to sew..

But! Atleast I have managed to find the time to take some pictures of my UFO's. :)



This is a picture (but unfortunetly not a very good one) of my whole quilt in progress. You can barely see the parts I've quilted - alot more work is waiting.



This is my Valentine's quilt. All quilted and ready for the last bits of the closer. Strange.. I've forgotten about this one ever so often, and suddenly stumbled upon it while cleaning. It's.. prettier now then when I made it. I guess it grew on me. :)



My ABC-sampler from Bareroots. :) The mixture of stitching and patchwork is what made me fall in love with the Bareroots designs.


This is my snowman quilt. It's not very big - perhaps 20x20 centimeters - and I have planned how to finish it. I found the pattern for this one in the Christmas magazine from NQF about a year ago, I think. I still have the magazine. I made it like a mirror image from the original pattern - and stitched it in blue instead of red. But he's still cute. ;)


And finally, my "Love is..". I've stitched the blocks on a kind of brushed cotton-like fabric, without adding bedding - I tried, but it got too hard and stiff to stitch.. Also I decided to applique the hearts insted of filling them with flat stitches (is that what it's called in English?). Now, I have thought about how to finish it, and decided what kind of fabrics I want, but I guess that depends on wether I can find the ones I've pictured in my head or not. I'm thinking about an old-fashion dark or burgundry red fabric - red on red - and a light fabric with dark or burgundry red patter, alternating around the blocks, with a small rim of the light one around the whole quilt - finishing it with the closer in the dark red. I think it might work out..

Now.. it's weekend again - hopefully I will be able to do some sewing and quilting these days (I'm dying to do a bag to use for work), but must also find time to see a friend of mine and relax. I need to relax.. or was that sleep? No.. no time for that. Can't sleep - sewing.

A change of direction..

I decided, after not really using this blog for some time, that I needed a fresh use for it. So, I decided to make it my creative-blog. And so I will start using it to show what I do, and not only things I've written.

So what am I working on right now? Well, Christmas is over - and the presents I made have been handed out. A pillow to my grandparents, pulse-mittens to some of my girlfriends, and that was about it for hand-made presents last Christmas. I'll try to do better next year. :)

Right now I am looking over my UFO's. Or, I don't think the more experienced quilters would call them UFO's. My mother doesn't. I have 3 UFO's - or unfinished buissness, one might call them. The first one is a wholequilt I started on after Christmas a couple of years ago. I'm about 1/4th done with the quilting. The second is a snowman I stitched from a magazine I get from NQF (Norsk Quilteforbund). It was originally in red, but I decided to make it in blue. I have to quilt it - and sew on some shiny beads - plus the edge, and then it's done. The third and last "ub" is a Valentine-quilt. My mother was going to teach me a new patchwork-technique about a year or so ago, and the hearts I made, I dew together to this little wallquilt using pieces of valentine-fabrics. Now, I've done the quilting, and all that's missing, is the edge, but it won't finish itself. Could you believe it?

The last thing in my little heap of quilts and the like, is the quilt from the Bareroots-pattern "What Color is Spring?". I've done two of the pillows - one I gave away for Christmas - and I've been working on the quilt for about.. almost 3 months now. It's coming along really well. :) Pretty colours, nice little details.. I have no idea what to do when I'm done with it.. make another one? Don't think so.. I generally prefer to make just one of the things I do. Rarely I will make more then one, but then they're presents. This quilt is a keeper. ;)

I'll try to get a nice picture of it, and post here. Actually I have a picture of it, from before I did too much stitching. It's the one posted in the beginning of the post. Pretty, isn't it? I sure think so. :)