knitted smartphone case

After holding out for the longest time among my friends, I finally caved and got a smartphone. In my defence, I didn’t actually buy it, it was second-hand from a friend who didn’t need it any more. My friends are delighted that I finally have WhatsApp.
For me the draw of course was that I got to dream up and make a case for it. I knew I wanted to knit, not sew, one this time and thought about how I was going to do it, make it one rectangle or two, how it would look when I joined the seams and so on. And then I thought ‘duh, I can just make a sock for it and it won’t need any seams at all!’


I used some coarse natural wool I bought years ago, knitting two strands together to make it even thicker.

A super easy, quick project and somehow I love the rough natural look in contrast to the sleek and shiny phone.

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harvesting and knitting and dyeing

The tomatoes keep on coming.

I grew four varieties on our balcony this year. The sweet and tiny red one are easiest to grow in containers whereas the Green Zebras and Black Plums were a bit disappointing. The tastiest is a pink beef tomato from Spain, the seeds coming from the brother of a friend’s own garden. It produced only a few fruits but they were very good!
My mom grew them in her garden and when allowed to root deeply these grow into the hugest tomatoes ever.

She’s picking them to ripen indoors since the weather has turned cooler.

Speaking of cooler weather, I’ve picked up some knitting again that got cast aside in spring. This pea green cowl in seed stitch turned out to be almost done, it just needed joining and weaving in the ends.


The dress I’m wearing is years old and was originally a dark grey. I’ve always loved the fit but hated the color, so I decided to try dyeing it in the washing machine. It was that or putting it on the donation pile. The dyeing turned out to be the easiest thing ever! Here’s a before and after:

Now I can’t stop thinking what else I’d like to dye! I dyed an old blazer as well but unfortunately it didn’t take the color much. I should have looked at the fiber content first…still, it’s a bit better than before:

The fall sock knitting is progressing nicely too. A couple more nights and these should be done.

Recently I’ve been digging out old books again. Some of the books you read as a child always stay with you I guess and it’s lovely getting back into the old stories. Some of these are quite old and were actually handed down to me by my mother.
One of my favourites is a story about a young norwegian girl leaving the isolated area she grew up in to live and work in the city, going through many hardships but finally achieving not only a school diploma but also starting her own business. A simple but heartwarming story and quite modern considering it was published in the 1950’s and is set sometime in the 1930’s and 1940’s! In fact, there are only a few passages that clearly date the story (for example when the protagonist gets pregnant and everyone she announces it to insists on downing a bottle of bubbly with her!). Apparently these were only published in german and scandinavian languages, but if you can read either, look up the author Berte Bratt for the “Anne” trilogy.

craft fair finds

Here the weekend has arrived again already! It doesn’t feel like the past week happened at all, at least I didn’t really register it between being home sick and then trying frantically to catch up at work. But I am getting better every day thankfully, though that cold really was very nasty!
Time to show off my purchases at last week’s craft fair, yarn and buttons and kitchen stuff!

This pan which was actually pretty hard to photograph, is a handmade from black iron / carbon steel / black steel, whatever you call it. I actually googled the material quite a while to find out its name. Anyhow, this is the material vintage pans were made of, it’s nonstick and needs to be treated like cast iron (but contrary to cast iron it’s very light), meaning seasoning it, not using any dishwashing liquid on it and keeping it dry. I still need to “burn it in” and then we will use it for pizzas and pies.

This is gorgeous handspun Wensleydale yarn. I bought two skeins and I am still deciding what to make with it. I’m thinking a triangular shawl like Amber’s beautiful one or another cowl (never seem to get tired of those!). Or maybe a nice 1930’s beret.

And, of course, new sock yarn! It’s a wool / bamboo mix and handdyed in lovely shades of steel blue with a hint of green and dark gray thrown in. It’s already on the needles 🙂

And last but not least six of these handpainted buttons went home with me as well. I have no idea what I’ll use them for yet, but no doubt I’ll think of something!

Quite a successful trip I should say!