Brightening up the home made home

There are many reasons why I love the house we moved into last month, but the interior decoration is not one. The house has been recently redecorated and majors on unexciting neutral colours. Its a bit of a contrast to the bright colour we chose to decorate our last apartment in.

As a complete repaint is out of the question for the moment, I've been doing my best to brighten up the house with some home made touches. Flying off the needles, of both sorts, this weekend were

The exciting looking monster on the top of the pile, is me finally giving in to the ghastly tradition of knitted loo roll covers. Although with a modern twist. I felt in need of a quick knitting fix on Friday night, and this pattern popped up on a raverly search. The pattern, available here, uses chunky wool and large needles, the happy combination that makes a quick project. It is knit in the round and is about the size of a small child's hat, the legs are made using i-cords. They are all different lengths, and taking the advice of another ravelry member, I've put pipe cleaners into the legs so they can be manipulated. The wool is some Iceland Lopi wool, I found in a charity shop a few years ago, and the buttons are from my enormous button box.


My second, even quicker, project was new covers for the sofa cushions. Although I'm very fond of the cushion covers I made last year, I feel they don't really suit the new sitting room. So a quick rummage in my fabric stash and I turned up this lovely brocade like material. The covers are simple and really quick to make and you can get two out of a meter of fabric.