My new love!

I don't know how long it will last. Maybe it will be just a short affair. Right now though I'm madly in love with almost anything kawaii but especially these little guys:
Happy little mushrooms. In this case filled with lavender to make someone's closet smell nice and to keep moths away.

A while back Torrance had a post on her blog with some of her favorite things. I really like posts of that sort and I think I'll do something like that soon too. The little mushroom definitely puts a smile on my face and there are so many more "things" that will do so as well!

ETA: The felt I used is Rainbow Classicfelt from the Kunin Group. I love this stuff. I think it's a very good quality, you can machine wash and dry it, it's fade resistant and it's made with ecospun (100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles). Pretty cool, huh? In Germany you can get lots of colors here.

Pin Cushion No. 1

I saw a lot of pin cushions like this one on various blogs during the last months. I think they are just so cute and puffy! I really wanted to know how to make them and found a link to a tutorial by accident on flickr when I was looking at all the great coloriffic pictures (but that's a whole other story). Then when I saw Erleperle's beautiful pin cushions I knew I really had to give it a try. I think it came out very nicely but it still has some flaws (for example I should have used even more polyfill). I will definitely make a couple more improved ones. First of all for the birthday of C's grandmother.My pin cushion could use a couple more pins, don't you think? I just have to find them. They are here somewhere...

What's up?!

Last Monday I had my very last exam. I'm done now! Wow, I can't believe that myself.
I had so many plans for the time after the exams. So far I only accomplished to sort my ribbons by color. Here is pink:I think I'll show you the rest once I bought more of those jars at Ikea. I actually need them in a bigger size. I didn't realize before that I have quite a lot of ribbon in pink and red! And there are still so many more ribbons out there that I NEED to have.
Blue and green will fit nicely into this size. Cream/beige and unbleached linen are not represented the way they should be! More... I need more... And you know what's the worst? I have a hard time parting with my ribbons. Am I weird?

I love red!

Putting together color themed swaps is probably going to be one of my favorite things!

The year is off to a good start!

My Winter Wonderland Coffee Swap package arrived today! My upstream partner is no longer a secret. It's Karin from KnitRMusic. I think it is usually kind of hard to communicate with a swap partner as long as one of them is unknown, but I didn't have that feeling with Karin at all. She sent really nice e-mails the whole time and even thought of my birthday and sent a very cute e-card for that.

Both of us were kind of shocked when we found out how much we'd have to spent on shipping. I figured that it's all the coffee's fault, so I suggested to Karin to leave it out and send something lighter, but she said she "had to include coffe since it is a coffee swap". I think she is right there and I love her choices (Kahlúa Vanilla Creme + Cinnamon Hazelnut) as well as the way she compromised by sending those cute small packages.
Now here is all I got:

A falafel mix, soy nuts, two 100% ethically traded chocolate bars, a cute note card, an issue of adorn and two skeins of Maizy!
For real! I'm now the proud owner of Maizy yarn. The colorway is called Night Shades and I think it's perfect for some winter socks. Karin was kind enough to include a pattern for some ruffled socks and I might give those a try (they look very cute, but a bit complicated too. I'm not sure if I can knit them...)
The Adorn magazine is so cool! My favorite project is this stocking. I'd love to try to make one in time for next Christmas. I hope I don't forget about it. Cute, isn't it?
Now this is actually just an advertisment, but I still like it so much. Great fabrics! I'm glad we don't have them here or I'd want them all. But wait a minute... I actually saw the one in the middle at Charlotta's a while ago. Maybe she could get me the others as well?! Oh, I'm just kidding... no, I think I'm not, but I could MAYBE restrict myself to the matryoshka fabric...
Thank you very very much, Karin! What a very nice package!!! It really made my day!

Oh and by now I can also tell you who my downstream partner was, because she got my package and the little teaser already as well: Anne of The Bag Lady and The Pro.
Swapping is just so much fun for me these days and I really have been so lucky with all my upstream and downstream partners. Any other swap I could join? I need to check!