whoo August 2013

August flew by in a hurry, it's already September, can you believe it? How was your August? Did you spent a nice summer?

1. Something beginning with N: kinda like Nutella but better!! believe me

2. Incomplete: my second Barney, which never received some eyes, sadly enough, he lives in a box meanwhile, I do admit I have a little problem with WIPs, but I'm working on it, I swear

3. Skyline: Berlin, the skyline as seen from my balcony

4. Fresh: drip drip drip

5. Early: the sun is rising, I miss summer mornings

6. This means a lot to me!: my balcony, my plants, life

7. A sign: batman, nanananananaaaa, batman, as seen in Frankfurt (Oder) which isn't the place to expect batman ... nananananaaa

8. Peek-a-boo: clowfish saying Hi!

9. 2 o’clock: late dinner, with pasta, so I did it the easy (which means fast) way, and Pasta never does me wrong, luuurve ya!

10. Beverage: oh this is cool, Banana Milkshake. I've always made this with banana and milk in a blender, but ever since I met Jay and he made it with yoghurt instead of milk I love it so much more. the sour taste of yoghurt really gives a kick to my bananas, yumm!

11. I love doing this!: drawing, sketching, doodling, it frees my mind and I can be productive and creative at the same time

12. Macro: bread, a close-up

13. Fast: we spent the afternoon in Pankow, a district of Berlin in the north, where planes cross the sky like crazy, and so low you can feel the earth move, crazy!

14. Trash: all the yarn ends from my flower granny blanket

15. The best: ups, forgot to take it, but I guess green beans could have been my August-Bestie, yummmmm

16. Cooking: and there we go, soup made from green beens and yoghurt, so good for hot summer days, very refreshing

17. Exercise: my first time at the baltic sea this year. Even though I was working there I couldn't miss the chance to swim. At 6 am I walked through the silent morning and enjoyed the atmosphere and cold water

18. Someone you spoke to today: my sweetheart ♥

19. Lost: a cookie .. I already made a "lost .. in translation" picture with a quick snap of the dictionary, as I couldn't really think of anything else, until I made a walk through the park and found this, I wonder if the kid (as I believe a child lost this cookie) might have left the cookie were it was on purpose, what do you think?

20. Stairs: very typical for Berlin..

21. Slow: snail mail

22. A room: can be found everywere, even in trees

23. Yellow: we spent the evening in the park, sun, deckchairs and sunny drinks

24. In the background: of a lake there is a chapel

25. Culture: reminding me of the "good old days" back when I was at university and studied biology and spent most of my time with bacteria and their cultures

26. Entrance: to my kitchen. Why there is an elf sock you wonder? because I forget to put away one single piece of christmas decoration every single year..sigh

27. 10 minutes from home: I'm leaving town

28. Corridor: I'm again traveling, this time to Neuruppin, what a beautiful place this is!

29. Lucky: I'm one lucky girl to wake up here. so so pretty, and the spa area, oooh I can tell you, to start a day of work in there was worth skippping breakfast

30. Cluttered: a day at the zoo, in Berlin, and this lovely sculpture can be found there too. some icebears all over each other ^__^

31. Dangerous: and a very sad moment this month .. spending the day/night at my boyfriends place is always a little tricky, I guess it would be tricky for every girl. You don't have your normal bath area and all the stuff you have in the right places so you squeeze everything into one tiny bag. This tiny bag also contained my makeup, and to do my makeup I place this bag onto the closed toilet. So, that day my bag collapsed, it fell down to the floor, and some rolled under the bath-tub, which is what you can see here, the dangerous place under the bath-tub. My m.a.c blush also rolled under there and was never seen again. Do you see the white pipe? there is a ginormous blush-eating hole under there .. I'm still sad looking at this picture

hope to see a few lovely days in September as well, which I'm positively looking forward too ^__^

Diana

I'm on the edge..

the edge, the edge ... *sings*

so I'm almost finished with my dahlia granny blanket. So exciting! To choose a nice edging (and to crochet it) took quite a bit. Quite a bit of thinking, researching and finally crocheting. The latter one eats up time (and yarn!). Before finally showing you my finished new favorite couch blanket I thought I'd share how I made my border. When searching for nice patterns for edgings/borders on crocheted blankets I didn't find a lot of posts out there in the interwebs. I did find a few lovely pictures though and that I liked very much. Simple and plain, not too lacey and yet clear and solid. I thought that might fit my blanket quite nicely. So I started and here we go:

I first added one row in a classic granny stitch (*dcx3, chain1*) all around to have a nice base to start from, than I added simple chain (*sc1, chain3*) to start the next round from in the same color I used on the flower centers:

next I added 4dc in each of the ch3sp for the next round, in the corners I made (dc3, ch3, dc3):

again I added a chain-round of *sc1, ch3* all around to build the base for the next dc-round. In the corners simply contiuned that way *sc1, ch3*:

and so I continued for another couple of rounds, in total I made 3 dc-rounds in the base color of the afghan, followed by 2 rounds in the same color I used for the flowers and ended with another round in green/mint. To finish worked one more chain round and added to that a "chain round" in mint/green. For this last round I simply went *sc1, sc1* all around and worked the single crochets into the stitch below the brown chain round. I think you can see it pretty clearly in the picture below (even though the crappy flash light and photoshop did help to loose a bit of the lovelyness of the blanket)

what is your preferred crochet edging for a blanket? do you go for tassels or lacy edgings?

crochet hugs, Diana

kinda like on drugs

this granny square thing!

although I was thinking: one blanket will be enough for a while, quite a while! these squares will bore me soon. they aren't! not at all, I'm thinking about another blanket, a whitish one, I know how weird this is (again!), these squares are addicting! I have a silk yarn on cones, that I was about to through away since it was rock hard when washed and didn't knit properly as well. it was sitting in the corner of my living room, for months! and now I look at it and see it crocheted into squares, tons of squares, all different, except the color, all beigy...and to fulfill my plan I ordered pattern books..

so far I've just peeked through all the books and already found a few squares I like, I do see this blanket in my mind already, although it will be an on-and-off-project for the next couple of months because I also see a few amigurumis in the near future..
are there any squares you recommend? anyones you tested and found to be amazing? would you like to have some sort of crochet-along with me? like sharing the squares we've made throughout a week or a month?

let me know,
♥ Diana

I have a weird happiness inside me

My granny blanket is coming to an end - and I feel a weird excited happiness inside me. I grin all the time looking at the squares all laid out on the floor waiting to be crocheted together. And it's kinda handy I still live on my own - I can lay all eighty squares right onto the floor of my living room, where nobody would could walk now (I jump) so no squares would get into a mess. Arranging them took a couple of hours and one or two nights to let the final arrangement settle on me before I finally started to join them.

and what's making me grin even brighter is, I finally found a way to crochet them all together so nobody would realize, and make it look like a ginormous square that happens to have some flowers on top .. *doing the happy dance*

do you do this too? the happy dance, I mean
crochet hugs, Diana

p.s. I plan a video tutorial on my "invisible joining"

good bye July

wow, times flying, can you believe it's already August?

let's see what July was like

1. Happiness is…: fresh fruit when you're sick, at the beginning of the month I still was chesty .. but meanwhile it's all good again ^__^

2. Shoes: my favorite summer sandals, fit perfect, bring a smile to my face, love the color

3. Cold: some ice cream, what else? summer heat slowly crept upon us in Germany and living in Berlin you can't not eat "Florida Eis" which is a local brand and not as sweet as other ice creams .. plus they have a huuuuge range

4. Red, white or blue: now that I read "OR" this would have been a lot simpler, but (and I wasn't the only one) read "AND" so...

5. Love: this is one of my very first pair of earrings. Haven't worn them in ages (at least twenty years .. woah I feel old now)

6. Fave smell: all things lemony .. YUMM!

7. Where you are: in the bathroom .. joined by rubber ducky

8. Path: I missed this day, don't know why

9. 3 things: a crocheter needs: a hook, yarn cutter and sewing needles

10. Smooth: apple pie!! heaven .. I spent the day with a beloved friend (Hi Jana ^__^) and we had a very yummy piece of apple pie

11. I wore this!: earrings, again. but These I wear regularly, I love them, very simple, they go with everything and match my eye color

12. A bad habit: sweets .. anyone who is without sin please cast the first stone.

13. 4 o’clock: on my way to Switzerland and on the train

14. Edible: my first breakfast in Switzerland, I ate the sweet chocolate filled bread role at the banks of Lake Geneva (now you might start to wonder what I was doing there? wait and see)

15. Outside the window: I was in Lausanne to see the Montreux Jazz Festival and this was the view from my hotel room, which had so beautifully working air condition and a super comfy bed

16. Bottle: first night at Montreux Jazz Festival .. I've seen Prince and he did marvelous!!!

17. Inspirational: music

18. Number: after being to the festival and on my my way home I made a stopover to see my boyfriend. He was working near Stuttgart that week and the doorway next to his room had 1/1-1/11 written on. The minute I saw the numbers I thought "how cool, only 1's" but didn't realize that todays challenge also included numbers, so I asked him to take a picture for me and he .. well he forgot .. so I just wrote them down, I kinda like the dairy thing that this challenge brings

19. Building: my very first thought and my final picture .. a smurf house. I love smurfs, have collected them being a child and always wanted to crochet one amigurumi-style (I even blogged about this plan years ago)

20. Hot: not yet, but soon, chili pepper on my balcony

21. Fave food: now this really depends on the season, but summer, especially July it MUST be strawberries in all shapes and sizes

22. Grey: the floor at a car park and my car

23. I drew this!: some mushrooms .. again this kinda refers to my plans to crochet smurfs, the need houses, like mushrooms. I drew these sketches a couple of months ago, but still haven't started a single stitch

24. D is for…: me ^__^ and donuts

25. Ground: all the grounds I came across that day, the last one was my favorite .. home

26. The everyday: crochet these days is something I do everyday. And here I finally found a way to join my granny squares more or less invisible .. I felt so damn proud that day

27. Black + white: simple and plain

28. This is new!: sunday, finally seeing my Jay again, and he brought me a little new friend ^__^

29. Perspective: a bench along the way

30. Friendship: can you believe I painted my fingers? friendship is so important and keeps happy and healthy!

31. Workspace: throughout the whole day I was trying different car pictures, the opened trunk but I never liked any of the pictures, then watching the news and the weatherman I remembered a picture I took a couple of days ago .. a bumble bee at its workspace ^__^

have a wonderful August everyone!!
maybe you like join us? come see my instagram

huh blogger?

my blog looks so weird lately, all grey and no side bars or even top bars. Not even a comment box, I didn't change anything. So is this just my computer or does anybody else recognize this problem as well?

it would be very very helpful, if some of you might try to give me feedback on this, while I check google for a report on this subject.

so in case you don't see a comment box as well

twitter

instagram

google+

ravelry

hope to read you soon again, Diana




Edit - so I hope I fixed this issue, but it would be very helpful to see if anyone else is seeing the comment/top or side bar sections :)