Fawns and Deers Collection

© Sybille Sterk

Available as tote bags and cushion covers in my Envelop shop soon. (I'll post a notice when the designs have been approved).

© Sybille Sterk

Available right now as prints, posters, card, framed and canvas prints, iphone cases and iphone and ipod skins, ipad and laptop skins, baby and kids clothing, adult clothing (hoodies, tees, baseball tees, organic tees, girlie fitted tees etc), and stickers.

Get the prints, tees and iphone/laptop skins and cases here:

My Redbubble Portfolio

My New Society6 Shop

Get the tote bags and cushion covers here 

(as soon as they are approved) 

Envelop Shop

Cold and Cold

When will this infernal weather stop? I am soooo tired of the cold, the rain, the snow, the sleet and the grey skies.

Been draped over the sofa or snuggled up to the radiator by the PC for the past few days with a cold. So no pictures of all the finished projects yet, especially as it's raining today, so not enough natural light to take some pictures.

However, I have finished:

• my Green Blossom scarf
• my Black and Teal Flapper hat.

My beautiful Thorny Rose bag is still a little damp and needs a little TLC after the rough felting in the machine, however, it's looking good and I can't wait to show everyone.

I've also started a pair of dark red lace fingerless gloves. Maybe not a brilliant idea with a stuffy head and a cold as the pattern is quite fiddly, especially the increases for the thumb. However, the first one just needs the side seam sewing up and hiding all the lose threads. And, if I feel a bit better later I might start the second one.

Hopefully, I'll have some pictures in the next couple of days.....

New Banners

With three projects almost finished I needed to do something else. LOL Odd that. Sometimes it's hard to let go off a project and I find myself extending the time it takes to actually finish it by starting something else.

• I've got a wonderful green scarf that just needs blocking and some ribbon adding.
• Then there's the black hat that just needs a couple of leaves and all the roses and leaves sewing on.
• Finally, there's the gorgeous Thorny Rose handbag which needs a little blocking, sewing, felting and then that will be finished.

Oh, and there are the pictures I will need to take of all the stuff that IS finished....

Instead... I've been updating my Etsy Shop banner and my blog banner.

Comments appreciated. :-)

Finally - The Raspberry Sorbet Jelly Clutch Bag

It took forever and a day since the original post of the jelly yarn bag, but - after waiting for the second ball of yarn (due to customs and slow shipping), unraveling and re-knitting and waiting for some beads to match the gorgeous colour of the yarn, here it finally is:


The Raspberry Sorbet Jelly Clutch Bag


This new design is still similar to the original design but I've changed the front and side panels, which gives it more rigidity and pizazz. The little plastic berry beads are vintage and they've been sewn onto the bag with illusion cord to make sure they stay where they are and the thread isn't visible. It also allows the bag to be gently washed in soapy water.


Since there was some yarn left I thought I'd add a little purse, either for money or makeup or an MP3 player.



The perfect bag to take out on a night in town. Nobody will have one quite like it - total glamour. :-)


If you want to make something with jelly yarn, here are a few tips:

• Use the wipe that comes with the yarn regularly, it makes it a lot easier to knit/crochet the yarn if it's not sticking to the needles/crochet hook.
  
  
• If you make something with a regular shape (rectangle, square, triangle etc), pin the item onto some cardboard and gently blow dry it with the hair dryer set to its hottest setting. This will have the same effect as blocking with knitted/crocheted garments and straighten out any irregularities and give you nice straight edges to sew together. Leave to cool before sewing together.
  
  
• Knitting/crocheting jelly yarn is tough on your hands, so make sure you take breaks now and again or your hands and fingers will be really sore.

And here are a couple of links:

To order or buy it in the UK, I Knit London.

To order it at the manufacturers in the US: JellyYarns.Com This page also includes some free patterns and info.

News:

My raspberry seacell and merino shrug is also nearing its completion. :-)

Knitting Bag - Sari Silk

Here it finally is - my knitting bag!



I wanted something to put my knitting in whilst I wasn't working on it as I often work on more than one project at a time and needed somewhere to keep current projects safe.

It's a story and a half and took much longer than expected. I got the recycled sari silk from an online wool shop but only got two balls as I wasn't sure how I'd like it. It took forever for this first lot to arrive (2 weeks) due to holiday and supposedly to problems at the post office, and when I finally started I realised pretty soon that 2 balls of wool wouldn't be enough. I ordered more and it took another week and a half for that to arrive. Normally, I'd put a link to the wool shop here but I can't honestly recommend this shop. Although the wool is fine and pricing okay, the delivery times are just not up to scratch for the UK. It forever surprises me that some internet shops don't realise that their biggest disadvantage is that customers pay and then have to wait for their order to arrive. The quicker the order arrives the more likely is the customer to order again. Two to four days is reasonable, I believe, for the UK. A week and a half or even two weeks is not reasonable.

However now it's finally finished. Sari silk is fairly easy and fast to knit and I love the effect of the different colours. It's almost like an abstract landscape. However, it's also fairly heavy (the sari silk for this bag weighs 400g). I'd not use it for much apart from bags and possibly hats.

The bottom of the bag has been crocheted in the round. I then took up the stitches with a knitting needles to make up the body of the bag. Along the top is a row of button holes for the ribbon to go through. I used lace weight rough silk (double) to create the crochet lace around the button holes and along the opening rim of the bag. A pale blue silk ribbon and needlefelted flowers in pale blue and red finish the bag. It's quite large so will hold all my needles, crochet hooks, wool and bits of paper with patterns on it.

Below is a close-up of the felted flowers.



Here's the ribbon against the lace at the top and the knitted sari silk:



Here's the crocheted border at the top.


Below is a detail shot of the knitted sari silk. You can see all the different strands that make up the yarn. They are the loose ends of saris, collected in industrial mills and spun into yarn.