September is here. I’ve got to catch up with a month of heatwaves, stress, lack of vacation, swap mania and crochet. Officialy it’s the end of summer, unofficialy the weather is still hot here in Greece. In a few days I’ll be leaving for my 10 day vacation in a mountain region of central Greece.

Until then let’s write a small review for a small and adorable book full of zakka!.

This one features mainly crochet projects and a couple of knitting ones.  I’ve tried many of the items and they work up fast, they are perfect for a quick handmade gift to your loved ones. Last month I did some Ravelry swaps with handmade items and this little book from Ondori helped a lot. I also made something for me too, a happy orange cotton/linen hat. I love it!!!

1. Happy Summer Orange Hat, 2. Linen Coasters, 3. Small Box, 4. Olive Green Dishcloth, 5. small pouch, 6. Blocking, 7. yarn, 8. Linen Coasters, 9. Olive Green Dishcloth, 10. small pouch, 11. Happy Summer Orange Hat, 12. Linen Coasters, 13. small pouch

I told you I needed at least three variations of this dress. And luckily I found some time to sew the last dress for this summer. I used the same pattern from the japanese book “Dresses with Straight Stitches” (ISBN: 4309280196). I used a japanese cotton with letter print, I found at reprodepot.com.

Seeing this last picture reminded me of the new craft love-slash-fetish I got. Habu textiles yarn! Oh, the colors, the quality, the texture. Texture is something most yarn manufacturers forget. Or they add texture in the form of fugly novelty yarns. Habu yarns seem to have a texture dictated by the fiber not just for the sake of it. I could rant for rows and rows of blog space about habu yarns, but I won’t. I’ll just say this scarf is made with 3 skeins (28 gram each) of Aresco cotton tape yarn with black/mustard blotches.

(detail)

I have searched the internet and was not able to find a single crochet project made with Aresco yarn! So I decided to use a scarf crochet pattern for tape yarn I found in this book. Aresco yarn has these beautiful blotches of color and  creates a chunky 3D effect all by itself. I think this simple pattern was a good choice for it.

I shouldn’t forget my crocheted cat. He already took the plane to his new home somewhere in Alberta, Canada. Here are some photos the day before his departure where he is resting with one of my cats, Fulman. (pst, Fulman didn’t like him much and she was glad he went away…) Pattern is free from a japanese site, translated too. Found it via Ravelry, where it is very popular. link