Merry Christmas! meet Christmas banana...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody!
Just had a blast decorating my bright red plastic Christmas tree with friends & family. This image shows one of my favorite Christmas ornaments, Christmas banana (?). I'm also the proud owner of Christmas -corn, -melon, chili, -hockeyplayer and of course you must have your Las Vegas wedding picture, mounted on a red shell, in the tree.
It's CHRISTMAS!

The Christmas "gift of the year"

"The gift of the year" became homemade hangers of wire and beads. Not plastic 50's jewelry as I thought before. I really hope that my mom isn't reading this before tomorrow now :-)
(In Sweden we celebrate on Christmas Eve, the 24th).
I'd love to make a templet & description and post as a PDF here, if you want to try and make one. Just leave a comment here if you are interested and I will fix a tutorial right away.
Thank you for your interest in my hanger-pattern. /Kind regards Inger.

Hanger tutorial pdf printable version (1,64Mb) and a screen version (pdf, 87Kb)

We made some tiny ones for Barbie as well! Have fun :-)

Bags for little party girls

Came across these photos that I've taken of two bags that my 4,5 year old daughter designed (I sewed) for her friends birthdays this year. Loves the way she picked the different beads an decided were they should go and the way she choosed to combine letter-beads with gold/pink/turquoise lace is just fabulous. I want one for myself.

Christmas shopping & Café at Mingla Design

As you already know I'm a freelance webdesigner/programmer. Made a new Christmas front page for Mingla Design yesterday, with a late invitation to their ultra cool Christmas shop with Café in their showroom every Friday until Christmas.
They are selling both Mingla stuff and from other desingers.

So, if you are in the Stockholm area on Friday, drop by at Hälsingegatan 12 and have a glögg (traditional warm wine drink with seasoning) or coffee and find the last minute gifts.

The Mingla design site is the 'mother ship' of all the sites that I have made. It's huge and contains a lot of information and great images. Visit the temporary Christmas-version website and admire all the beautiful textiles & trays that they make.
Information on the first page is in Swedish but the rest of the site is in English. You need Flashplayer to be able to see the site.

Wardrobe Refashion #1

Made my first post over at Wardrobe Refashion today.
Mannequin is showing a tribute dress to a Golden Retriver dog named 'Musse'. A boring yellow silk dress that I made in the 90's and in a desperate need of some Wardrobe Refashioning. With some large wool cross-stitch of a dog's wonderful face, it's saved :-)

Can you go over the top with Christmas?

Today my big bright RED plastic Christmas tree arrived. I'm so happy! Hurray! I will post a photo when it's all dolled up and kitsch-fantastic.

This loveable guy moved in to our house

Look at this guy! He is fabulous! It's a birthday gift from my friend who is a designer at Tough Love Design.

Soft punch

Some years ago it was hard to "make some noise" with textile in Sweden. During my Art University years we were a tiny group who worked alone. I am so happy that has changed now! It's the comeback of textile - and "with a vengeance" :-) I love it!

I'm so glad to be a part of this great community of crafters.

Found these pair of boxing-gloves that I did at Art University.... they speak for them self about how I felt back then :-)

Velvet boxing-glovers with traditional Swedish folklore embroidery. The stitch is from the province of Blekinge called Blekingestitch (Blekingesöm).

Floral necklace

My old friend "Mosquito" had her big birthdaybash yesterday. Made her a necklace out of vintage jewelry-parts from my stash. It became a bit 'Hawaii in the 50's'....I long for the summer..

UFO sightings

Today's UFO-sighting (UnFinished Object. Anna's expression) is this pair of socks that had only the threads to fix - but at last - They are done!

Hurrah.

Wallpockets - excellent storage

Wallpockets out of vintage cotton fabric and transparent plastic pockets with ribbons from my stash. Wallpockets are my favorite storage in the wardrobes for all the little things lying around everywhere.
They where very difficult to photograph with all the glitter&shine.

Wardrobe Refashion

I took a pledge with Wardrobe Refashion for 6 months. I rarely buy anything anyway:-) It's fun to try it and maybe make some odd stuff like knitted wool pantyhose, shoes and things you usually don't make for oneself. I hade to buy a stash of nylons though..

I'm mostly going to "Redo" instead of making from scratch (shoes for example). Redo is very fun - take old ugly stuff and make it beautiful.

You can read the plede here.

Easy now.......easy..

The Christmas Extravaganza was great! The SewJunta "Les femmes tricoteuses" where all there, Anna from My Knit sensations and many more.

Annika Huett the author of "Cross-stitch in a new way" (only in Swedish unfortunately) kindly gave us embroiderymaterial, thread & needle and we all started with our cross-stitching. All the girls are so lovely, I just embroidered away talking and having coffee. It ended, of course, with that I got my embroidery neatly sewed to my pantyhose (!?) Sadly this is not the first time... :-D

Annika's book takes the traditional old-sayings-cross-stitch to a new and very funny level. I started one of hers that was saying "nice and easy" but due to the stocking-incident I only got 'easy' done and ended it with an exclamation mark :-)

Crochet & knit Christmas Extravaganza

Tonight it's a crochet & knit Christmas Extravaganza at Stockholm Kulturhuset (Culture house) .
The SyJunta (free translated from Swedish: sew junta) and some knitterfriends are coming. If you are in the neighborhood: this is the link to what's happening. (link in Swedish)
See you there :-)

More hairclips made of vintage plastic

I had to start with my Christmas presents. Made more hair clips out of vintage plastic flowers and wire. Try to get a 50's feel to them.

Every year I seem to give the same gift to everybody - maybe this is "the gift of the year" :-) haven't decided yet. They are very fun to make.

A project for a nightowl - crocheted wallpaper

I adore bright colored patterns (and I like to mix them). In the back you see my beloved bedroom wallpaper. A flea market find from Amsterdam. It's a vintage kitchen wallpaper, presumably from the 60's or 70's. It is my favorit pattern of all. Suddenly I thougt it looked little like a crocheted old-fashioned beadspread - and then that night was spoiled:-) I had to make a test. Traced it and made a sketch, found the right colored yarn in my boxes and started to crochet after the traced flowers.

This is how far I came with the project for now. I'm not sure if I like the big flower. Going to try a couple of other ways to solv it, less three-dimetional.

One-man textile factory here...

I'm starting my own Etsy shop in December. Made more flowers this weekend. I thought they would be nice to sell in the shop.

Crocheted winter brooches

My friends will recognize these brooches which I have been selling for a couple of years now. This time I changed them a little with an orange ball from a ball-ribbon and embroided yarn knots.

Rally knitted rally mittens

They said on the weather channel -"It's going to start snowing". Oh no, I had to rally knit a pair of mittens for my husband and crochet a cap for my daughter.

Haven't knitted mittens for many years and didn't have a pattern, had to invent along the way. Second mitten was all about counting and comparing with the first one. Knitted while talking all day first at a café with my friends, later with the parents at my daughters gymnastics training and while watching TV at night. Really late last night when I looked down on the finished pair of mittens I saw with horror ........two right hand mittens........ just to rip and start over...

Finished Rally knitted Rally mittens - now with one for each hand :-)

Granny squares, with texture (1)

Working with granny squares and experimenting with the texture using different thicknesses and some effect yarns. This one became very bulky, but I like it. Will se what I do with it later... have crocheted 24 so maybe a bag.

Visit my friend Annas knittingblog at My knit sensations, she has the most fabulous color sense!

More homemade gifts today

Made some hairclips out of vintage plastic jewelry flowers from the 50's using thin iron thread so nothing pops off. Knitted a brooch, shaped as a bow, in white cotton. Using a pattern from Rachael Matthews as a base but I change it a little. (all knitted in ribb *k2,p2*) Made longer & thinner ribbons, smaller band over the bow and knitted the bowpart in one piece insted of two. Put together on a piece of cardboard with nice turquoise fabric - Voilá! Congratulations Eve!

Color on the wallpaper - Färg på tapeten

Tonights book releaseparty was for this lovely book about wallpapers. Look at the yummy front and inside! It's made by my friend AnnCharlotte who is a fantasic interior stylist and textile/product designer. She is also one of the designers at Mingla design. Check out their website (I have made the site).

Textile flowers for a book releaseparty

I'm attending one of my multitalented friends book releaseparty tonight. Made some homemade crocheted and sewed flowers.

It's nice they will keep for a very long time!

Glamour for cold feet at kindergarten

The autumn is slowly getting colder here. Kindergarten is located in an old beautiful building. Only one flaw... draught... Crocheted these slippers for tomorrows games.

The flower is built up of standard leafs sewed on one-by-one (point out) and a ball, cut from a ball-ribbon, in the middle. Anti slip á la glamour with soles of metallic gold yarn.

Flower petal: chain of 7 turn, 2ch, 3dc, 2sc, 1sl st, 1ch, turn and crochet back on the "underside" of the chain; 1sl st, 2sc, 4dc, last 1 sl st in the first ch. Leaf: same but with chain of 10. (=7dc).

Birthday gifts for a craftLover

Look at my wonderful birthday gifts from friends and family! I love the crochet cuckoo clock! It's from Amsterdam. Some of the books I got is from YesAsia.com which I can recommend. It's safe and fast to order - it only took a week from HongKong to Sweden.
A box filled with yarn! What more can a girl want ?

Craftblog with mixed media

I'm a craft freak and have been since I was 6. With this blog I hope to come in contact with my fellow crafters of the world.

Despite my blogs name (the first name of the blog was; crochetcouture_craftblog), I'm not only working with crochet, but i'ts my absolute biggest love amongst the crafts. I work in all craftrelated techniques; knitting, embroidery, sewing, drawing. My new love is amigurumi and softies.

If you want to know more about my background - look under my complete profile.

Welcome to my blog!

First post. It's my Birthday!

click the image to enlarge

This is my first post. I want to get it done before midnight because it's my birthday today.
Big 40.
Now I have to change the name of my comic.