Pencil Warmers

As if I hadn’t known it all along: there is a tremendous amount of pleasure in valuing the simple things in life!

Jostrong’s pencil warmers based on Jesszy’s pencil sleeves just brightened my day. The warmers are knitted flat, the sleeves are worked in rounds. Click on the links for more detailed instructions.

If you’re more into crochet go ahead and crochet those little sleeves and if you like to knit a warmer for your favorite crochet hook even an iCord might work. The possibilities are unlimited 🙂

the warmers
the sleeves

COMPLETION (the day after):

As J was absolutely fascinated by the idea of having pencil warmers (and totally disappointed that those on the pictures weren’t ours but “only” pictures) I knitted one when he was in bed and put it secretly in his pencilcase 🙂 …

pencil warmer
blue pencil warmer for J

… before I forget: don’t start making those … its truely addictive and you may not be able to stop …

And then there were two ...
And then there were two …

To Thread a Needle

When locking myself out, I know how to open the front door with a hanger. I still manage to carry my 9 yr. old (4.9ft., 64 lb.) inside the house and upstairs to his room, every time we come home late and he has fallen asleep in the car. I can even do a three-point shot in basketball if I have to.

But all of a sudden I’m having a hard time threading a needle.

No big deal. Something that happens to most people my age (my age?!), says the doctor while prescribing progressive lenses. It feels weird though.

to thread a needle

Knit the Bridge

No time to actually write a blog post, but I happened to come across some pictures (looking for something totally different – the web is weird) that I must share with you!

The Andy Warhol Bridge in Pittsburgh was yarnbombed into (supposedly) the US’ biggest knitted grafitti ever, made by 1,847 artists with more than 600 blankets. A “jaw-dropping endeavor” says Huffington Post and I could not agree more.

warhol

Knit the Bridge has its own blog and a Facebook page with loads of pictures and information. Enjoy!

cristina saucedo

Yarn bombing on the Andy Warhol's bridge in Pittsburgh

There will be a party on the bridge on Sunday – if only Berlin was closer to Pittsburgh … 🙂

A Happy Ending?

Well, sort of a happy ending …

Some of the elementary school students may have liked the Bobble Wrap but others – probably elder students – obviously did not. Someone was successful in unraveling some of the bobbles. And if that wasn’t enough, the aggressor tried to tear the whole thing off.

Less than a week after I had put it up, I found the pole’s wrap beaten-up and distorted at the bottom of the street sign. (Sorry, no picture.)

So I took it off (swearing like a trooper), fixed it and now it’s back up. But no longer down the street but at the gas lantern in front of my house, and next to all other yarn graffiti that’s been there all along.

My house will have an eye on it. See those angry eyebrows and that mean look of the 2nd floor windows?

yarn bombing

PS: Yes, I remade the flowers and leaves too. Rain and sun had taken pretty much all colors away.

The Sky Scarf

Thank you Knitted Art for introducing us to conceptual knitting and a very cool project! Here is what it is, copied from Lea Redmond’s homepage

“A Sky Scarf documents the weather outside your window. Each day – rain or shine – you will knit a stripe in colors that match the sky. It will be lovely to see how our different climates result in different scarves! I started mine in the springtime in Northern California and loved watching the colors evolve as the seasons changed. (…) The free pattern includes detailed instructions to make a five-foot Sky Scarf over the course of one year.”

If you need more inspiration, there’s a knitters’ pool on flickr showing all different scarfs, wraps, and blankets and I am very tempted to to a “Berlin Sky Wrap” starting January 1, 2014. It may have plenty of grey though for the first 90 rows …

However, if I had already started it, today’s colors would be blue. Blue as blue can be. Not a single bit of white.

Leafcutter Designs has quite a few other (free creative art) projects that really inspire me to light that “sense of whimsy and adventure” within me 🙂 Maybe I’ll do the Mood Scarf (see picture below) and the Sky Scarf.