Crocheted Wine Charms

DROPS Crocheted Wine Charms

Hmm, first I don’t think much of wine charms and now two tutorials in a short time ;-)
Well, I thought that it’s soon New Year’s Eve and you have possibly a lot of people there who must be able to tell their glasses apart and then the crocheted ones are quite nice.
I think ;-)

 


Links:
You can get Crocheted Wine Charms in three ‘formats’:
American instruction: Crochet DROPS flower to decorate a glass in “Cotton Viscose”.
English instruction: Crochet DROPS flower to decorate a glass in “Cotton Viscose”.
German instruction: Kleine DROPS Rosen für Gläser in “Cotton Viscose”.

Here at unikatissima:
Wine Charms
wine glass identifier

Knitting Lifeline

HeartStrings FiberArts Knitting Lifeline

That’s a brilliant idea: when you knit lace (but not only there) thread from time to time a different coloured, best slick thread through the stitches as lifeline.

If you have to frog, this thread makes sure that the stitches won’t frog further and I think that it should be easier to pick up the stitches, too.
But also, if you loose a stitch, it can’t go further than the lifeline.
I’m amazed! :))


Links:
The Lifeline

Blocking Lace

unikatissima Blocking Lace

You can find many hints in internet on how to block knitted lace, I wanted to show you how I did.

 
    You can see the Advent calendar shawl on the picture:

  • I still had two aluminium rods (1) of 5 mm diameter and 2 m length at home, which I threaded through the edge stitches.
  • Then I thoroughly soaked the shawl in water and hang up the upper rod (2).
  • I hang up weights (3) with S-hooks,…
  • …where the weights where little plastic bags with paper tissue packages (4).
 

unikatissima Blocking Lace

    Here the details again:

  • (1) is the lower rod,
  • (2) are the edge stitches where I threaded the rod through,
  • (3) is one of the S-hooks and
  • (4) the weight: the plastic bag with the paper tissue packages.

This way both rods are pulled apart and the shawl is blocked.

 

But the technique isn’t perfect: I’d have needed rods for the short sides of the shawl, too, that should have been attached to the long rods, but I didn’t have the time.
That’s why the short sides of my Advent calendar shawl are slightly worn out, but it’s not soo bad.

unikatissima Blocking Lace
In a similar way you can do this with a triangle shawl: I threaded the same aluminium rods then above (1) through the holes I’ve knitted at the edge.
Then I added an S-hook with the weight in the last hole to really drag the points down.
I soaked everything in water and placed it on the ground.
The weight of the water drags down the center so that I didn’t need any weight there and it didn’t wear out as much as the rectangular shawl.
By the way, I covered the ground with a plastic cover because I didn’t want to wade through puddles ;-)

 

To see how others block their lace, simply search for blocking knit lace or stricken (spitze OR ajour OR lochmuster) spannen in German (results not so good).


Links:
Google search result for ‘blocking knit lace’
Google search result for ‘stricken (spitze OR ajour OR lochmuster) spannen’

Here at unikatissima:
Advent calendar shawl
Note: After Christmas I will offer it in just one file ;-)

Buffing Polymer Clay

unikatissima Buffing Polymer Clay

Recently Kokopelli had the problem, that she made a faux Lapis Lazuli, but that it was too matte and looked only half as beautiful as it could have done.
Here on the picture you see beads that I presented before as skewer beads and made following a ‘jade recipe’, but with orange.
Before I pulled the beads from the skewer I buffed them for hours with a soft cloth while watching tv – and you can see how very shiny they became.

I admit that it is much more difficult to buff smaller and/or round beads, but I think that you can get good ideas about this at glassattic.


Links:
Buffing Polymer Clay (BUFFING)

Here at unikatissima:
Faux Lapis Lazuli
Polymer Clay Skewer Beads

Kokopelli’s comment in the German blog