Halloween 2022 - Revisited

Apparently I had prepared a post right after Halloween 2022, but never got around to post it. So! Let's revisit the ghostly day/month. 

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I've gotten hooked on knitting socks (I guess it's taken over as the tagalong-project instead of dishcloths) and fun yarn means fun knitting!

I mean, just look at these colours? (There's even two Christmas-themed yarns in the bottom picture.) 

Acid green, glow-in-the-dark orange, candy stripes and glitter, oh my!

I've mostly been knitting short socks (half-socks?) which gets done pretty swiftly! 

Updated from January 2023: The purple yarn with glitter in the top picture and the Christmas yarn with glitter in the bottom picture is "knitted up" into four pairs of socks. 

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I ordered some new (compared to the antique ghostly fabric I have in my stash) Halloween-fabric after receiving a coupon from a store. Look at those yummies! (And these are just six of them, there's still three unused.)

These were used in one of the blocks for the #focuscuttingsewalong on Instagram. The shape for 2022 was kites, which - when sewn together like this - turns into a hexagon. 

Speaking of kites.. Last summer whilst visiting my mom we came upon a box with a epp-project with - you guessed it - kites. These ones were to be joined into triangles. I have no idea how long it's been on pause, but I brought it with me home and started to finish it. Very cute, delicate colours and soft fabric. 

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This is Halloween, this is Halloween..

Our faithful windowmonster reappeared this year too! (Hubby made him, I think, the first Halloween we lived in this house, and it's still going strong.) I like to hang him up behind our blinds, so that when the light in the kitchen is on, he hangs around and looks both cute and scary. 

And like every year there were pumpkins! This year it was hubby and A who designed and carved them. They do look pretty cool with their lights in the darkness of the October nights. 

The rest of our entrance, with bats, another pumpkin and a little ghost. 

As long as the porchlight is on, and the clock is past 5 PM, there's an almost constant stream of dressed up kids (and their parents) riniging our doorbell. (We've thought about counting the kids, but you'd really have to be more than one person at home to do so, and one of us i usually out trick or treating with one or both of the kids.) 

This is my block for week 3 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec ❤️ Pattern matching 😅 The first one in a new shape.

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Almost embarrased to reveal - A new finished object

As the headline says, I'm a little bit embarrassed by the thought of how long this project has been on hold.. I actually had to do a little digging in my blog archive (thank sewing for that!) to fin the exact year, but I knew it was before my eldest was born (he's thirteen this year). 

*dig* *dig* *dig* *scroll* *scroll* *scroll*

Aha!

In May 2007 I posted that I was finished with the stitchery! I started working on the borders, but about halfway through it came to a halt. Don't ask me why... 

So, the pattern is from Angels in Disguise, and I think it's called "Wash day" - but I'll have to see if I can find the pattern to confirm this.. I tried to see if AiD is still around, but I cannot seem to find much news about them. A blogpost from 2010, and some random patterns here and there. 

I had begun sewing on a checkered border in yellow and red (dark burgundry, with some kind of flowers printed on), and there hadn't been much change since it was put away. (How peculiar..) 

Anyway, I'd had some sense when putting it away to keep the left over fabric I'd started to use on the borders with the stitchery - meaning that it was really not a big job left when it came back into the light.

And here we are - January 2023. 5 years and 8 months 15 years and 8 months later. It is done! Borders sewn on. Quilted. Bound. Labelled. Finished!

Another project crossed off on my list, and we're ready for a new (old) one. 

This is my block for week 2 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec ❤️ Sections is a fun way to play 😄 Looks almost like a (red velvet?) waffle to me.

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A little early, perhaps, but I know where my next advent calendar is coming from 🥰 Absolutely blown away and sew happy with the 2022 calendar from @stepbysteppc ❤️

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2023 has begun (and a little ending from 2022)

With 2022 ending, my blocks for the #focuscuttingsewalong from Instagram has been sewn together (notice the two lonely blocks at the bottom). I used triangles in dark blue between each block, and I have to figure out a solution to join these two blocks with the other ones. And then, how to finish the top (and then! quilt and bind it). This year's sewalong started a couple of weeks ago, and this year we are playing with honeycombs. 

My Christmas Day cast-on (I finished a scarf on Christmas Eve) was the "Slow Shawl". I'm using the yarn I got in the 2021 Advent Calendar from Værbitt. Here's the first four colours knitted up. I'm using approximately half of each skein (mini skeins) for the beginning, and I'll see how far I get with that strategy before I decide to use the rest of the yarn too. It's finally making sense, after a few (many..) repetitions and increases, and I can now more or less knit it by memory (with the help of a ton of stitchmarkers). The yarn is Finull, which is 100% wooly wool. Very nice to work with. 

Two of the first finished projects for 2023 were these project bags from previous years from the Norwegian quilting association (NQF) from Bergen and Tromsø. These kits were my mom's, but she'd had them stored for quite some time, so I asked if I could make them. I'd like to make them again, perhaps with another stitchery (or with a motif fabric). The front one was fun to make, but the one in the back was way easier to make. 

Last year we upgraded our Christmas tree - from a 140 cm one to a 180 (I think) cm one. Finally we were able to get some air between our ornaments! And Hubby brought out some of the ornaments he got when he was little. It's a fun mix of vintage and old ornaments, handmade ornaments - and ornaments made by the kids in kindergarden or at school.

We spent New Years Eve home just the four of us. None of us changed into pretty clothes, but kept the comfy clothes on. (A little unusual, but quite nice.) We met up with some neighbours to see some fireworks earlier in the evening, and both kids stayed up until midnight to watch the big fireworks go up. This was A's fist time staying up this late - and shen enjoyed herself very much. 

Just before Christmas my Nebula returned from the quilter. I sent it to Lappemor, and Anne Heidi did a wonderful job quilting it. It's so enormously huge it's covering our entire floor! 

I even signed the label and sewn it on the back. I had to go back in my photo archive to see when I made the first block - it was back in January 2021 - and the last stitch of the binding was sewn December 11th 2022. I'm now ready for a new Tula Pink BOM - I've signed up for the Queen of Diamonds, starting Summer 2023. 

Around Christmas, small projects, stitcheries and decorations seem to appear all over our house. This is a section of the dresser in our hallway. I love to swap the mini quilts and stitcheries on this board. Sometimes I'll add postcards or photos.

The first weekend in January brought a ton of snow to our little corner of the world. On Thursday they cancelled all of the buses around in our area - and we shuffled snow three times! And Friday came with even more snow and shuffling. The roads were not prepped when the time came to pick up A from school, so I waded up there (snow up to my ancles) and we both waded home. 

A managed to build a tine snowman family (we had to buy carrots for the first time in ages). Unfortunetly, the very next day the rain melted the snowmen and only the carrots remain. 

I'm continuing my plan from 2022 to finish as many started projects as possible, and have copied my list of projects over to my new planner. I'm happy to report that more than one of these projects are now completed. *yay*

This is my block for week 1 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec 🐝 2023 - the year of the honeycomb. 🍯 Hello! My name is Tonje, and I live in Norway. 🙋🏻‍♀️ I work as a document manager, and have a background as a librarian. I’ve been crafting, sewing and knitting since forever. 🤔 Love movies, TV-series, books and music 🥰 This is my 5th year participating in the sewalong. 🗓️

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And here they are - all the blocks for the #focuscuttingsewalong 2022, hosted by @naomialicec 💙 I have begun to sew them together, returning to the layout I used back in 2019. Loving the colours and fabric used throughout the year. 🌈

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Happy New Year 🎉

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1 year and 11 months (first stitch 16.01.2021 - final stitch 11.12.2022) and my Nebula is completed! 🥳🥰 Masterly quilted by @anneheidis @lappemortynset ❤️ @tulapink #nebulaquilt

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This is my block for week 51 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec 💿 Here’s to rocking into the Christmas days with a little help… from the snowman’s top hat 😉🎩⛄️🎄🎅🏻

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Make one - make four

This year I've had three advent calendars (which A thinks is a bit unfair). One is for each Sunday in advent - with parcels from both my mom and my MIL. The remaining two are from StepbyStep - a quilty calendar - and from Værbitt, - a knitters calendar.

I'll write a post about the calendar from StepbyStep soon, but I'm over the moon excited about it - and I will (if they make one) buy one next year too.

So, from Værbitt comes one parcel every odd day in December - from the 1st to the 23rd - and a bonus parcel on Christmas Eve (which is THE BIG DAY in Norway). The contents are a nice mixture of handdyed yarn and stitchmarkers - and this year's ornament. Yup, they design a new ornament each year, and include both pattern and kit for making these in the calendar. 

This year the ornament came on the 9th, and was a gorgeous little bird, decorated with glass beads and feathers, and two different coloured yarn, so you could decide for your self which colour you wanted to ues.

I made the first one in the greenish-blue yarn and thought it was a cute little guy, which came together surpricingly easy.

So I decided to see how many birds I'd be able to make with the yarn provided in the kit. The answer? Four. Two greenish-blue and two orangy-pink. 

They've fund their places in our Christmas tree, surrounded by both handmade ornaments, old and new, and some more vintage ones (from when hubby was little). 

I have a couple of ornaments from Værbitt that I havenæt come around to make yet. I bought these patterns some time after they were published - so no kits for these. They're on my to do-list, with quite a lot of other things. Perhaps they'll be finished for next year's tree?

Det skal godt gjøres å lage bare én… 🥰🦜 @varbitt

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Memorial quilt

I rarely make anything for others when asked to. I can make stuff for people and gift them, if I get the idea myself - but I've avoided custom work. Mainly because it feels like whenever something is something I have to do, it's a real dread and all my motivation and will to craft goes down the drain. 

Until now. 

A friend of ours sent me a message a couple of weeks ago, asking if I'd be willing to help her help a friends of hers, who's just been through a devastating experience in her life, by making a t-shirt quilt for her. 

 I told her I'd never done that before, and wasn't sure if what I would be able to do would be good enough - but also that if she really wantet, I'd give it a try.

She came by with a bag of t-shirts and a fleece blanket, and I started to think..

First I demolished the t-shirts to see how large pieces I could get from them - and ironed on stabilising fabric to make them more manageable. 

This is the first layout. Trying to save as much of the designs on the t-shirts that had designs on them.

Checking to see how this layout would work with the fleece blanket. I moved some of the blocks around to get a bit more air around the designs.

And finally spray-glued to the fleece blanket!

I quilted it with straight lines following each seam, and cut the sides of the fleece down to 2". Folded the edges in twice before sewing it down. 

I didn't get a ood picture of the finished quilt, but our friends was very happy. The imposter syndrome is great in this one, so I'm still aftraid I've messed up..

This is my block for week 50 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec 🎄 Christmas and pattern matching. Gingerbread houses it is!

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This is my block for week 49 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec 🎄 Christmas , Advent - and waiting.. lighting candles, and more waiting.. 🕯️

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November roundup celebrations for the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec ✔️ Lines are completed - ready for December and Christmas now 🎄

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This is my block for week 48 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec 🎆 My block looks a little like fireworks ❤️ I’ve loved playing with striped fabric this month!

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This is my block for week 47 of the #fussycuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec ✔️ Lines, horisontal. This striped border fabric might stretch the thele a little, but still works. 🤓🌱🌿

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This is my block for week 46 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec ➖ Lines. I found a piece of this ancient fabric, which fits perfectly both the theme and the «season» with tiny bows (like on gifts)🎁

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