Category Archives: Life…

Last day of summer holidays…

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Yuli| Leave a comment
 
Today been last day of school holidays… I can’t believe that 5 weeks flew by. I’m going to miss late morning and routine free days…
 
Tomorrow is the beginning of 6AMs rises, lunch boxes, driving, waiting, homework and all of that back to school business. But on the bright side…we still have great weather for afternoon beach & walks and of course more creative time for me!
 
Kids school bags packed, uniform all clean & ready, hair been cut, bathed, bedtime story read and they nicely tucked in beds…Phew!
 
I’m almost finished in the kitchen… just need to bake 2 loaf of Ciabatta for boys lunch…it was an order ;) P.S. – I’m not super woman))) I have bread machine ;). It helps a lot.
 
So while bread in the oven…I have time to catch up with my blog and share something with you.
 
Few months ago I went to building store to buy some stuff for Peter and rustic looking yarn/rope caught my eye… and it was only R10 a ball. Yes, please.
 
It was lying in my stash basket and I couldn’t think of anything I could do with it. And during summer siesta time I looked at my stash and Ta Da…I knew what I want to do this this yarn… It will make perfect summer sling bag with bright flowers. It took me 2 day (well, I meant 2 siestas) to make it.
 
 
I post this picture on FB page and got so many likes and complement…thank you.
 
It had such a positive feedback, so I would like to give something in return – my Free  Sling bag pattern. Enjoy!
 
I didn’t include flower patterns, I thought you would like to do your own thing… just let your creativity flow ;) Possibilities are endless…
 
To download this pattern in PDF, click on link bellow.
Free Crochet Sling bag patten
 
Sling bag
 
Size 24cm x 22 cm
 
You will need:
- 120g chunky cotton or any other chunky yarn;
- 5,5 mm crochet hook
 
Abbreviation (American):
ch – chain;
sc – single crochet;
dc – double crochet;
sl.st. – slp stitch;
tog – together;
 
Note:
3 chains in the beginning of every row as a replacement for dc.
 End each round with 1 sl. st. in 3rd ch from beginning of round.
 
Directions:
 
Crochet base chain: 29ch + 3 ch and work in rounds (around base chain).
 
Round 1 – miss 4 ch from the hook and crochet 1 dc into each of next 27 ch; 3 dc in to last ch; Now work on other side of the base chain: 1 dc in to each of next 27 ch, 2 dc into next ch and sl.st into 3rd ch from beginning of round. You should have – 3 dc on each end of base chain and 27 dc on each side of the base chain. Total = 60 dc.
 
Round 2 – ch 3, 1 dc into same space, 1 dc in each of next 27 st, 2 dc in next st, 3 dc in next st., 2 dc in next st, crochet 1 dc in each of next 27 st, 2 dc in next st, 3 dc in next st. Sl.st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 68 dc.
 
Round 3 – ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 67 st. Sl.st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 68 dc.
 
Rounds 4 – 6 – Repeat 3rd round.
 
Round 7 – ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 31 st, 2 dc together, 1 dc into next 32 st, 2 dc together.  Sl.st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 66 dc.
 
Round 8 – ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 30 st, 2 dc together, 1 dc into next 31 st, 2 dc together.  Sl.st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 64 dc.
 
Round 9 – ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 29 st, 2 dc together, 1 dc into next 30 st, 2 dc together.  Sl.st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 62 dc.
 
Round 10 – ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 28 st, 2 dc together, 1 dc into next 29 st, 2 dc together.  Sl..st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 60 dc.
 
Round 11 – ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 27 st, 2 dc together, 1 dc into next 28 st, 2 dc together.  Sl..st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 58 dc.
 
Round 12 – ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 26 st, 2 dc together, 1 dc into next 27 st, 2 dc together.  Sl..st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 56 dc.
 
Round 13 – ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 25 st, 2 dc together, 1 dc into next 26 st, 2 dc together.  Sl..st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 54 dc.
 
Round 14 -  ch 3, 1 dc in each of next 53 st. Sl..st into 3rd ch from beginning of the round. Total = 54 dc. Done, but don’t cut your thread yet;)
 
Round 15 row (Edging and strap) – *ch 1, sl..st, * 3 times, then chain 250 ch for stap (or as long as you want your strap to be) and sl..st to the other side of your bag 33rd  dc from beginning of the round.
Turn and crochet 1 sc into next 250 st, sl..st into to bags edge. Turn your work and again crochet 1 sc into next 250 st of your strap, sl.st to other side of bags edge. One more time turn your work and now sl.st along your 250 st strap, sl..st to the bag and carry on along bags edge with *ch1, sl..st* to next strap; sl..st over base of the strap and continue with *ch1, sl..st* to beginning of your round..
Now you can cut thread;) Weave in tails on inside of the bag.
 
Your bag is ready to decorate as you wish…
 
Let me know if you have any problems… mistakes are possible, I’m not perfect ;) And please don’t forget to share your finale result with me…would love to see it.
 
My bread is baked and I’m ready for bed…tomorrow is early start ;)
 
Keep well…Love, Yuli xx
 
 
 

Posted in Crochet & Knit, Life..., Tutorials

Tagged , , , ,

Happy New Year and Ojo de Dios Mandala

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Yuli| Leave a comment

Hey hey and Happy New Year!!!

I hope you having a great time with people you love and New Year will bring you luck, light and hapiness!

2013 Moto

~ Live Now ~ Be Kind ~ Share ~ Enjoy ~ Create ~ Smile ~ Laugh ~ Help People ~ Love ~


Its summer here and my boys on school holiday!!! LOVE IT… we having such a great family time… We trying to stay at home, especially this time of the year…people everywhere and its gets a little too crazy for us. Thankfully we live in small holiday village and beach closest to us is huge and it’s doesn’t get over crowded, enough space for every one.

For a last 3 weeks most of our days been in this order:

Sleeping in! Well mostly me, I’m not a fan of early morning and I have to wake up at 6 am most of the year… so this is what my body needs and its getting it))) My boys are early birds… they up and busy from 6 am, but they so good and independent…always keeping themselves busy, making breakfast and letting mama sleep a bit;) Lucky me!!

Beach twice a day…salty hair and lots of vitamin D. We make our way to the beach at about 9ish…before its gets cooking hot; and second session at about 4ish… warm water and gentle sun. Our house only few blocks away from the beach, so we only bring our towels and water to drink…simple. Times of big beach bags with kids goodies, snacks and other things that we mite need (and hardly ever use) is over! Yay!

Mid day siestas! Its too hot outside… we keep ourselves busy around our house  playing, reading, drawing, baking, watch movies or just taking easy and enjoying lazy time!

In the evening we make braai, South African word for BBQ; yummy meal around the fire with sound of waves and night sky.

Life is Good and I feel hugely grateful and blessed! So nice to know that it’s still another 2 week of holidays…Yay!

My creative side also been on holiday, I hardly touched my crochet and my head and hands deserved a little brake ;) I have whole New Year ahead.

But there is something that I made with yarn and would love to show you.

I love mandalas and was searching for crochet mandala patterns on the web…instead I found this – Ojo de Dios or God’s eye Mandala!

Love it! That afternoon I got my colorful yarn and kebab sticks (love to work with what I have at home, no need to go and buy stuff). It was very easy to follow tutorial and I found it very meditative & calming, which is always NICE! So here is my Mandalas:

 

 

Our friends invited us for braai/BBQ on New Years day and it was perfect little gift to give as thank you and Happy New Year!

I’m looking forward to make more Mandalas with deferent colour and patterns!

If you wish to make one or more…here is a links to Ojo de Dios tutorials

Tutorial in English:

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/how-tuesday-weaving-a-complex-ojo-de-dios/

Tutotial in Russian / Мастер Класс на русском:

http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/3909035/post132913811

http://bestia-wm.ru/handmade/50-santimetrovaya-12-luchevaya-mandala-master-klass.htm

http://oberegi.blogspot.com/2009/09/ojo-de-dios.html

Big Thanks to amazing people that made & shared Ojo de Dios tutorial with us!

And Big Thanks to you for visiting my blog and reading my post;)

Happy New Year!!!

Love, Yuli xxx

 

Posted in Handmade, Life..., Tutorials

Tagged , , , ,

‘Love’ crochet necklaces

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Yuli| Leave a comment

Hello))

In about a month time summer officially will be here…I can’t wait for hot days,  ice cold lemonade, sandy toes and colourful dresses…

Summer dreaming inspired my latest work  …’Love’ necklaces – crochet with cotton & beads in a variety of colours.

Woudn’t you like one?! I hope you do

For more info and to order… please email me (yuliya@yuli.co.za) or visit my FB page for more info

Posted in Crochet & Knit, Life...

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Goodbye 2011 and Hello New Year!

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Yuli| Leave a comment

Hi and Happy New Year!!!

I hope you had a lovely time celebrating and relaxing with your family. I also had very melow and happy time with my boys and now ready  for new chapter, adventure and fun. I wish this year will be a great and amaizing one for all of us!

Here is some of my highlight in 2011:

I made quite a few orders for local shops…so excited to have my handmade stuff in Bloemfontein, Pretoria and KZN. My Laska dolls traveled to few countries in Europe, U.S. and Australia! And I made couple of fun projects for friend’s birthdays.

Didn’t write many posts (sorry its my biggerst low light); Started using my Flickr account; Was more active on Yuli handmade FB page and managed to gain few fans!!! Yay!!! And of course got some inspirations and wasted sometime on Pinterest;)

Had few requests from local online shops, but still thinking about it. Maybe join couple of shops this year.

Once a week I gave crochet lessons at local wool shop…it was a great fun and got quite a few ladies hooked. I’ll absolutely continue with classes this year!

And stated to give crochet lessons to local ladies from small underprivileged community…hopefully we will continue this year and create opportunity for extra income for them. Just have to learn some basic Afrikaans, not may of them speak English…so its get confusing and funny at some times.

One of the big projects of 2011 was my first crochet blanket for my god daughter …

It’s took me 4-5 weeks to finished it, but I think most difficult of all was to chose and arrange colours. So to make it easier and see it in the big picture I played with colors on my laptop and ended up making colour combinations for flower center of the motif in Power point. It was a great help! I could see how will it look together and how may blocks of each colour combinations I need.

First I made all flower centers

Then I worked with green colour around each colour and my mother in law volunteer to help to hide all the threads…I’m so grateful for that, with 168 blocks it a huge job and not a fun one.

And the last stage was to work cream colour around each square and connected them as I went in planned sequence. And here it the end result…I called this blanket “Forget Me Not” – Photographs by Jenya Zhivaleva

Little Anna was so happy with her present…first time she saw it she start pointing at all different colour flowers and had a big smile:) Her mom told me that she gave it a name and takes blanket everywhere they go!

 

So you see I had good and exciting year and I’m very grateful to everyone who was part of my creative journey in 2011!

And thank You my friend for visiting me here and readyng my post xxx

Did you had a good year and I would love to know what your creative plans for a 2012…

Look forward to hear from you!

Best wishes and love,

Yuli xxx

 

 

 

 

Posted in Life...

Tagged , , , , ,

Granny square cushions

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Yuli| Leave a comment

image

image

image

I finally made something for our house. It’s fun and easy to crochet granny squares, but my less favored job is to work in all the little threads. My mother in law come to the rescue, thank you! Here is pictures of two finished cushions and one in progress.
And yesterday very dear friends of mine gave me new phone – HTC wild fire!!! Woo hoo! What a fancy phone, well at least for me… It’s like mini PC! I’m sure it will take me a few days to get to used to it… quiet a busy toy. But at the moment I’m cooking Mac&cheese for my boys and writing this post. How awesome! I hope my new little gadget bring more post and pics to my blog…
Cheers:)

Love,
Yuli xxx

Posted in Life...

Our petite ♥ vegetable garden

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Yuli| Leave a comment

  In November last year we started with our vegetable garden… we were given about 10 bags of manure and I bought some seeds from our local shop… and look how wonderful it grows! We didn’t have much of the summer this year – lots of mist and rain, but it so lovely for our garden!!! 

When I was growing up in Kiev, my family and grandparents always had fruit and vegetable garden… I have lovely memories of pick fresh stuff for supper or fruits for jam. I’m glad that my boys can do same thing too. 

Because it was my first time of been gardener/farmer I had few mistakes… I plant too many seeds together and way many plants for such a petite space… Peter has to pull some plants out… ouch. But I have learned and will try not to do it again! We planning to extend our patch soon, I would love to plant some new stuff and see how it turns out. So watch this space xxx PS – we already are eating our cucumber, beans and herbs… I made pesto other day… yum! 

Posted in Life...

Tagged , , ,

Little fairy…

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Yuli| Leave a comment

Look who came to visit my little garden… isn’t she gorgeous!!!  I wonder if she sprinkled some pixie dust!? We always need a little bit of fairy magic;)  don’t you think so…

Faith, trust and pixie dust!

     

    

      

Laughter is timeless…Imagination has no age… And dreams are forever!

Posted in Life...

Tagged , , ,

Happy Birthday Ladybug and SweetP

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Yuli| Leave a comment

  I always want to crochet dress for little girl, I even start making one while I was pregnant with my second child and of course when we found out it was a boy I  lost interest and put it away:( Don’t get me wrong – I love my boys, but I always thought I will have little girl so I can make lovely girly things… and teach her how to knit, sew and all the crafty stuff that I love… 

Year ago my dearest friend Claire gave birth to little girl on the same day as Peters (my beloved young one) birthday – double YAY!!! So this December we celebrated 2 birthdays together – my special man and 1st birthday of the very special girl Anna… She is the cutes thing ever… xoxoxo and what a great excuse to make a summer dress… 

 Party was lots of fun and just look at this birthday girl xxx 

    

   

   

  

   

I LoVE this photo… Peter and kids had so much fun with that car…you can see it on Max’s face (; 

 

It was fun to make this dress and I think it came out really nice (; It’s my own pattern… I crochet top with Elle cotton, at the back I have 3 heart buttons and skirt of the dress I made with lovely cotton fabric and “country” lace that I brought from C T.  

    

Me just want to make few more… and if you want me to make one for your little lady let me know… 

Love, 

Yuli xxx

Posted in Crochet & Knit, Life...

Tagged , ,