A quick and easy knitting project

As a quick and easy knitting project I made a small pouch.

I used large knitting needles, size 10 (millimeters), and I started knitting with 6 wool yarns.

For the colors I chose 1 turquoise (which was clearly thicker then the rest), 1 grey one, 2 white ones and 1 black one.

I knitted one wide piece, which I folded in the middle and sewed together. The yarn at the end I braided together into a small loop. The end of the loop I fastened of (unbraided) into the work.

Because I didn't have a needle with me (I did this in school) I sewed this pouch together by using a hairpin.

I didn't define a purpose for this pouch, I only put bags of candy into it and gave it to a friend.

It would have been easy to add a button or a zipper, but because I didn't have a needle I left them off, at least for now.

DIY: A Spindle for spinning Newspaper-yarn

When I was thinking about what I could make with newspapers, I stumbled upon the idea of newspaper-yarn. I didn't know yet what could be done with this yarn, but I still knew immediately, that that was something I wanted to do.

So I made a (very) crude spindle. I knew that I was going to use this spindle only to make newspaper-yarn, so I didn't have to think about the weight, balance or other such things of the spindle.

There are endless possibilities regarding the used materials and the end result when making a spindle and you can use creativity.

For the project you need:

- a hook 
         - the hook can be replaced with various small objects, which have a curved element
         - you could use for example:
                   - a bent nail
                   - stronger wire
         - I used the wire of a clothespin
- a longer stick (or something like it)
        - a stick
        - the handle of a paintbrush
        - a knitting needle
        - I used a part of a plastic coat hanger (I snapped it)
- glue
- a smallish round object
        - the lid of a jar (for example one made out of plastic so that it is easier to make a hole in it)
        - a CD
        - I used the lid of a candy jar

The phases of my project:

1) Gathering all the needed material for the project (the glue, the coat hanger, the clothesspin, the lid of the candy jar, (yarn, spray paint) & pliers, a knife and scissors)
2) Snapping the coat hanger so that I could have a "stick". I left the round part on the bottom intact (just because) and later I noticed that it was useful as a stopper for the newspaper-yarn.
3) Making a hole into the candy jar lid (with a knife and the scissors).
4) Putting the "stick" trough the lid and gluing then together so that part of the "stick" stays above the lid.
5) Forming the wire of the clothespin to a hook.
6) Attaching the hook to the "stick". For this I used glue and because the coat hanger I used was hollow, but the whole wire didn't fit into it, I also wrapped yarn around the bottom part of the wire, so that it would stay in place during the time the glue was drying and I left the yarn in place.
7) I spray painted the whole thing black.

See also my instructions about making newspaper-yarn.

I love DIY -projects

Since primary school I have enjoyed handwork and now while studying in a university of applied sciences I still do diy.projects. My idea was that I would create a blog for my diy-ideas and projects where I could collect them together abd share them. The idea is that
1) one could get from them inspiration later on
2) they could all be found in one place
3) the writing of a blog could motivate me to finish my projects.

I love to start new projects, but the ld ones might for example have stayed without the finishing touches. Writing a blog about diy and in that way keeping an eye on my projects could help me in this.

Below there are images of a little older project from where I was still in high school. In that project we made a model out of the top of our hand in our wanted position with plaster gauze. Plaster gauze is a roll of plaster, which can be directly used. It has to be out briefly into water and after that the pieces are positioned on the hand that is covered in Vaseline. You can get plaster gauze for example on Amazon. It was a very simple project, where the pieces just were positioned on your own hand. The difficult part was that you could only use one hand and the other one had to stay in the same position. At the end of the project we took pictures of our model.

Pictures from the project: