Sara Lechner's blog

A long term project that shouldn't take too long...

This is the beginning of the throw I will need this winter in Alicante.

They told me it gets cold in January and February so that I must finish it before that!

I'm using an acrylic yarn I found. It isn't usual to knit or crochet with wool here and it is a little bit unusual for me but I like the way it's turning out to be.

I found this African Flower at Ravelry.

For the ones who don't like to crochet or haven't learned how to do it (yet) there is an interesting project called Moxycrochet in South Africa using this pattern.

 

Enjoying knitting and crochet...

I found lots of cotton yarns in variegated colours. I did this shawl I found at Ravelry with the name "Haruni".

 

 

I haven't blocked it and you can see that, but my pins haven't arrived. I'm still waiting for the box from home!

 

 

Another thing I did were these two necklaces:

 

 

I needed some kick for my little (long) black!

Knitting

I'm spending some time with knitting. We need some clothes for the winter and we haven't brought much because I intend to use my wool while being here.

This is Sophie wearing some pieces I did.

This one I found at Ravelry

and this necklace was inspired by one I found in the net.

African Flower Hexagon Pot Mat

As a small good bye to Austria I did this pot mat using the great tutorial from Heidi in South Africa.

I used an acrylic yarn with needles Nr. 6mm/US10 and it turned out to be about 6-7"/15-20cm.

 

I punched a circle in pink roving with the embellisher. After that I punched the hexagon from the front to the pink circle.

 

After punching quite good the  pieces together I did a short punching from the back so as not to pull too much pink into the crochet.

At last I punched everything from the front once more.

This is a lovely gift to make!

Own design vest

I finished the vest I was knitting with my self dyed wool.

  

It is made of three parts and you can see the difference in the dye.

 

This is the front and the difference between the part to the left and the one to the right is that I immersed the already knitted piece in the dye. The right one was dyed with the same colours on the skein.

Here you can see that the colours are darker and get brighter as the piece grows.

Now you can see the one piece from the front to the back. It is the same skein but the dyes penetrated the skein differently.

On the back I made a small embellished triangle on top.

 
This is the detail I like most. I did a small curved piece to finish the vest.

"On Handwork" - Renate Hiller

This video can be found in many blogs in the internet. Anyhow I thought I will embedd it here just in case you didn't see it.

It's so fantastic...

Folk cushion

Today I almost finished the cushion. I only have to do the sewing of the back but - because I would like to continue embroidering Bookmania - I upload the photos of the finished surface.

 

I began doing the crochet with the spike stitch pattern but when the moment came to stitch the 9 circles together I thought of my embellisher and the piece took another turn.

I was very much influenced by the wonderful Hemslöjden magazine I talked about in a recent post.

It is going to be a folk art cushion for my living room.

It was a real recycling object at the end. I used 2 old pullovers for the backing!

Playing around

I don't know why I have a creativity bug at the moment. Instead of preparing my suitcases I seem to catch any opportunity to play around with new things.

Today I discovered the wonderful blog of Suz and I joined her Ravelry Group of Spike Stitch Lovers.

I just had to do a cushion with the pattern!

I used some of my recently dyed wools.

Recycling UFOs

This morning I found 5 granny squares I did some time ago lying around (you could find a truck load of things lying around in my studio...).

I thought I could punch them to a wool roving surface for doing a chair mat.

I punched 4 of them to a wool roving I carded and was lying around too...

After that I cut the 5th square and punched the pieces to the surface in the middle of 3 squares and in the middle of the mat.

I punched a thick black wool yarn around the squares and around the middle of the 4th square.

Voilà!!

(I absolutely LOVE the embellisher!!)

Now you can buy the pattern at my shop if you like!

I offer the pattern at Ravelry (where there is an automatic download and you can pay in US-dollars) or here  in my shop where you can pay in Euros and I send it as soon as I read the mail.

It is such a nice necklace to wear with summer dresses or t-shirts because it's made of cotton yarn (you could use any other yarn like viscose, linen, etc.)! I have it on all time and everybody asks me from where I have it.

Because it is my first pattern, please feel free to contact me if you have any problems with the pattern.

Necklace for the summer

This is a necklace I designed for my new dresses.

Because I will stay in (s)Spain (/s)a while I'm sewing some summer dresses for the hot weather and I need some cotton necklaces to match. I'm so used to have something around my neck that I feel naked when I have nothing...

I was thinking about writing the pattern and sell it for a small amount in the shop (I also have to prepare my finances for Spain...), would you like me to do that? I don't know how many of my readers do knit. It is made using short rows so that it hangs nicely and very easy and fast in the doing.

A very huge bag

My friend Marion from the FUN Magazine was staying at my place last week and I got inspired to wet felt a bag. She felted some beautiful things in the meantime but I really wanted to do a big bag for my trips.

I already had 4 flaps I weaved and embellished some time ago so that you can change the appearance of the bag as you wish.

I can change them with these buttons.

And I put my watermark!

I'm not a wet felter and it took me 2 days to finish the felting process.

Finished scarf

I found in Ravelry the "Swinging Rope" from Yumiko Alexander

and had to give it a try.

Here a detail:

I did a crochet insert and one of the ropes also in red.

It's a nice pattern to knit and would recommend it if you wish to knit in front of the TV because it's a very easy one!

The little lamb was calling...

...and I had to do something for the little lamb section of the blog.

 

I actually saw something similar in Stockholm and it took me a day to figure out how I could do the bumps!

It's not exactly the same thing because the one I saw was done by machine and had hundreds of bumps but I like the surface. Also using socks wool helps to concentrate the colors in sections.

It takes a while to knit because you have to knit much more on a row but I find it's worth the extra work!

Léa's bag

I am a great admirer of Léa Stansal and I have her book Poches Pochettes. It is a book for crochet beginners and advanced and she makes the most funny and special bags.

I always wanted to try one of these baroque/gypsy/French constructions.

I wasn't disappointed, it was fun to make and will be fun to use. It is a very busy thing but when you wear it has such a big charme, like an Asian folk piece.