Spice up my hooks!

When I started crocheting I used some old crochet hooks my grandmother and my mother-in-law had given me a long time ago. I didn't think about 'good' or 'bad' hooks. It was just a hook, wasn't it? But one day I needed a hook size I didn't have in my stock and so I went to our local yarn shop to buy a new hook. It was a Clover with a soft grip. 

What a DIFFERENCE!!!!

I couldn't believe how easy it suddenly was to crochet even for several hours. The next day I searched the Internet getting more information about the world of crochet hooks. You can get very cheap ones and ones that cost more than the yarn you need for a blanket. I immediately fell in love with these wooden hooks.

Last year my siblings gave me this set as a birthday present. I was so happy! It is very comfortable to crochet with them, I enjoy it a lot but sometimes I just need a thicker handle. But I have so many crochet hooks already, I don't really want to buy more of them. I just can't throw things away that are still usable. I love to repair, to renovate and to find a different usage for something no longer suitable. I wear trousers, shoes and shirts that are more that 15 years old, our furniture is a mixture of old family heirloom and flea market finds.  We always keep things that might be used otherwise. And things we do not keep, we try to give to someone who still could use it.

 I just don't want to be part of the throwaway society though I am aware that it is not possible to escape entirely from it. 

Back to the hooks... What to do with the simple metal hooks that do not feel comfortable to work with? Do you also have quite a few of them lying around?

The lovely lady in my local yarn shop told me about the possibility to make a handle for hooks using polymer clay, here in Germany called Fimo. You can get it in all different kinds of colours and I chose red and white just to start with. My daughter was enthusiastic about helping me and she couldn't wait to start.

First we put some white Fimo onto the hook. You have to knead it a little until it is soft.

We decided to mix the white and the red to get some kind of polka dots.

You really have to roll it for a long time to get it soft and smooth. Finally we were able to cut pieces. But I already realised that the inner circle was not really round. So maybe no polka dots?

But we put the pieces enthusiastically around the white handle until it was completely covered.

Once the hook was covered, we use our hands to gently roll the hook, squidging all the clay so it sat evenly around without any seams. No, no, no, no round polka dots, but we didn't mind, just taking the next hooks to try. 

 That afternoon we made four handles, trying different methods. When we finished them they had to be baked in the oven. I put them into a mug filled with black La Gomera sand (oh holidays, where art thou...) and put the hooks head down in the sand.

That's how they looked like after baking. The left one was our first. The next one is a polka dot hook now. We just put little white dots on the red clay. The other two were made by my daughter. Very creative indeed! And she got hooked on spicing up even more hooks! A couple of days later I had to buy green and blue clay and we started again. 

This is the result:

Three more hooks that are wonderful to work with and they look wonderful, don't they? I really love to crochet with them! All in all we embellished seven hooks, here you can see them in all their beauty!

 And though it is just 13 degrees above zero, no flip-flop weather, no homemade ice tea and sunbathing in the garden, we still enjoy German strawberries that I have bought on the market. The ones in our garden are still far from getting red...

I LOVE THEM!

Dark chocolate brownies topped with mascarpone cream and strawberries is a treat you can enjoy in all weathers.  

I hope you also have something to enjoy this weekend. 
Back to crochet!

Viola

Remember me?

Gracious me! Is it really that long since my last post?

Time is flying by.

I thought I should get in touch with you again.

Say a big, big.......

HELLO!!!

I have been lost in the fog somehow... 

In the fog of lots of activities (first) and lots of illnesses (second). We have really been knocked down, one by one, by colds and stomach flu. I am surprised how much it has taken hold of me! I feel like I have been ill for weeks! But being a mum it is impossible to spend a few days in bed to be completely cured and as a consequence I ended up with a bronchitis. Now life is really slow, I'll try to prepare for Christmas but one by one. The kids are alright again, thank goodness!

I haven't been to blogland for such a long time, so much has happened since last time and I am really sorry that I couldn't find  time to share snippets of my doings here with you.

But I'll try to catch up now and I think it's best to do a little overview:

At the beginning of October I won a give-away! I got this gorgeous pattern through the lovely blog of Annemarie. Aren't these petits fours cute and look delicious? I do love them so much but unfortunately I haven't tried the patterns until now. I got 17, yes, it's right, seventeen! patterns as an Ebook and I will definitely try them as soon as life is running in normal pace again. Thanks a lot for your generous give-away, Annemarie!

 About one week after I won the fabulous petits fours crochet patterns I won another give-away! Can you imagine how astonished I was? I was swept off my feet because usually I am not the winning type of person. I got this wonderful Drops yarn with a pattern for crocheted wrist warmers. Thanks a lot Anne from Crochet between two worlds! I will make something very nice from this yarn, I have already worked with it, it is a wonderful yarn, a mix of cotton and merino and very soft.

 
Then Autumn school holidays started, two much needed, lazy weeks for the peewees. And it was my mothers birthday! I gave her the granny hottie I crocheted not long ago and a light crocheted dragon shawl. For that shawl I used a soft merino yarn, light but snugly.

I do love the pattern a lot, maybe I will crochet one for me, as well.

  Then there was another birthday to celebrate! 

 My daughter turn 10! 

 It was a significant birthday for her, she just loved getting her first "zero". I was a little nostalgic and reflective as I realised that now my both children have turned from small children to almost teenagers. Our life will definitely change. On the one hand I really appreciate them getting more and more independent because it allows myself room for my own interests but on the other I will miss them being so close to me. 

On the morning of her birthday Little E was very excited because we promised to visit the Harry Potter exhibition in Cologne. She is a great Harry Potter fan, she's read all the books for several times, we just couldn't stop her. She is able to recite whole passages of the books and sometimes I have the feeling that for her the lines between the "Potter world" and our world are blurred. J and I and even Little J have read the books, as well, so we were all exited about this exhibition. And apart from the horrendously high entrance fee the show was very interesting and the kids were fascinated and delighted.

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My Little E got a magic wand as a birthday gift and the next days thousands of magic spells filled our house. We are now so well protected, no dark magic will do us any harm. I fell save and well-protected with such a skilled daughter in the house!

Of course, we did organise a birthday party for Little E at home with all her friends. As it was a girls' party, it was no problem to find something to keep them busy. I bought some horses, elephants and dolphins from papier-mâché and the girls had a lot of fun decorating them with decopatch papers. 

They were sitting around the table, working with their hands chatting and enjoying each others company. And after a good 1.5 hours they were very proud of their results: 

  There was a lot of cake and cookies, as well:

Little E's own style of lemon cake. 

 Some Americans... (how do English people call them?)

 ... and some brownies.

On St. Martin's day we were all not feeling too well, therefore we didn't participate in any St. Martin's procession. But we spend a peaceful afternoon baking 'Stutenkerle' and enjoying a wonderful 'Kaffetrinken'. 

J (on the left, before it was getting hot for him in the oven... and he really got more and more voluminous during baking) and me (on the right)...

 













Little J (on the left, the red spot is nothing poisonous, he just tried some Haribo bears on his Stutenkerl) and Little E (on the right, the one without raisins...)
 

Then another surprise waited for me. Elizabeth from Mrs Thomasina Tittlemouse sent me a set of rings and lights to crochet a lantern. This is how hers looks like:

Isn't it gorgeous? I have already started with mine but it is nothing I can show you at the moment. I will do it soon, promised! I want to light mine at Christmas, I have already chosen the window where I will put it. Thanks a lot, Elizabeth! I really appreciated your parcel a lot.

I hope that you will forgive me my past silence. November is a difficult month for me and I was feeling too unwell to express myself in English. But I promise that I will show you soon my crochet works of the past. I am so behind with the things I started early in September or October. But I did a little Christmas crocheting. Want to see?

And at the end of this post - if you had the patience to read it until the end - I 'l come back to the fog...

Nach Martinitag viel Nebel sind, so wird der Winter meist gelind'... (If there is a lot of fog after St. Martin's, the winter will get mild). 

See you soon, großes Indianer-Ehrenwort! 

(Indian Scout's honour???) 

Stay healthy, 

Viola

Back home

Where has the summer gone?

It is our first weekend home again and it starts with raining. The sky is full of clouds and it hasn't stopped raining since I opened my eyes this morning. It would have been so nice taking the first cup of tea to the garden, sitting outside, feeling the sun in the face... But everything is wet, wet, wet.

So what to do? I went to the kitchen, checked my supplies and decided to bake plum muffins and an apple cake. Now the house is filled with the delicious smell of baked goods. All of a sudden the day feels much better.

While I write this post I will have a cup of tea with a warm and fluffy muffin. Who cares if it's raining?
The cup I just use is a souvenIr from Concarneau. I just love, love, love it.. It has the ideal size for my morning tea and sets a smile on my face every time I look at it.

For the queen of mothers!



First I wanted to write a little bit about all my crochet projects I started, finished or continued during my holidays but now I decided to write this post about mandalas.

Who can escape the mandala hype? It seems that everybody is in love with mandalas this summer and I have to confess that I have fallen in love with them, as well. Everywhere you go you come across the most gorgeous mandalas and meanwhile I have stored more patterns that I will ever be able to try. Yesterday evening when I was reading some blogs I like, I saw so many beautiful mandalas that I was itching to start a new mandala by myself. But I decided to finish one other project first.

The fist time I came across them was when I found the wonderful blog of Alice from Crochet with Raymond. Her mandalas are just fabulous, her combination of colours and her neat fine work just grabbed me. I had to try her pattern immediately and this is what I did first. A rainbow mandala that is still in use on our small cabinet. One day I will make a second one but in a different colour scheme.

And of course I just could not stick to one single mandala, instead I went a little overboard. I started using Lucy's pattern (Attic24) for small mandalas and experimented with them. I told myself that I was doing a real useful job producing all of these little addictive mandalas because I discovered how helpful they are as coasters. Every time I drink a cup of tea I use one of these little mandalas and even my kids love them. They lie on our kitchen table and are in daily use.

I'll stop now. My family wants to try the muffins and the cake, as well. And the cream of the crop is that my husband just came back from shopping and bought me some flowers. Actually the day's not that bad...

Hope your day will show some rays of sunshine, as well.
Viola