FRIENDSHIP BLANKET: The start of something new

In my OUTGOING: August blogpost, I mentioned sending Louisette a granny square for her friendship blanket. I was so charmed by the idea of a friendship blanket, that I immediately felt my hands itching to start working on a friendship blanket myself. Well, 'working'...because you guys do all the work and I have an awesome puzzle once I collected enough grannies for a blanket.

So two weeks ago I posted a picture on Instagram of the gorgeous granny square Louisette sent me back as a thank you, asking people for participating in my very own friendship blanket. And seriously you guys: I have been overwhelmed by the response of people I don't actually know in real life, but just through letters or the internet. It's just heartwarming, I have no other words for it.

A combination of crochet and snailmail: what is not to love? I am going to post about my friendship blanket progress on my blog every now and then, and I decided to post a small granny square request here as well: 

Dear, dear reader of my blog, are you a lover of crochet and snailmail, and would you like to contribute to my friendship blanket? Please contact me at 365daysofsnailmail [at] gmail.com or through Instagram. I prefer cotton grannies (this will make it easier to join them eventually), but other than that I have no special wishes. Go crazy with colors and patterns, I am looking forward to receive your creative outbursts in my mailbox!

And obviously, you will receive a granny square back :-)

Love,

Anne

OUTGOING: Strawberries

Last month I started writing with Ingrid, whose awesome blog I have been following for ages. We decided to start an abc-snailmail project, which basically means we send eachother themed snailmail following the letters of the alphabet. So, I kicked off the project with the letter A, then Ingrid sends something back with a theme that starts with a B, etcetera. Such an easy idea, but it boosts your creativity like crazy!

Picking a theme with the letter A was easypeasy: the dutch word for strawberries is "aardbeien", my fav summer fruit, so strawberries it was! I was looking forward to trying some new things and materials, let me take you through some pictures of the mini-package I sent her.

Let's start with an overview of my strawberry mail. I like making my own writing sheets, using various kinds of decoration. For this snailmail, I kept it simple with some red and green watercolor and a black fineliner: hello strawberry stationery. Tied together with my all time favorite baker's twine. I also made Ingrid a blank strawberry postcard. I used some scraps of kraft paper and small dots of glue to create a 'weave'-pattern, and on top of that I glued some mini strawberries cut from paper. And then for the red mystery package at the bottom...

...this strawberry garland was inside! These days most of my letters seem to include some kind of crochet project, I can't emphasize how much I love crochet. I cut some strawberries from red paper. Well, at first they looked like a three-year-old's attempt of cutting hearts, but once I drew tiny seeds on them and crocheted the garland and crowns the red shapes started to look like strawberries ;-)

My masterpiece! I made a felt strawberry envelope! I was super excited about this, since it pretty much turned out like the picture in my head. Take into account this was my first time using felt, I gave myself a small pat on the back. It took quite some time to stitch it all together (how do other people make this seem so easy?), but I discovered two major benefits of felt as an envelope: 1) it's super light! So no worries about sending heavy creative snailmail. This whole package, including letter and bits and pieces weighed 42 grams. And 2) it survived its journey very well. Ingrid already wrote a blogpost about it, the envelope made it in one piece.

Now let's all dig into the last strawberries of this summer, enjoy!

Love,
Anne

OUTGOING MAIL: Handmade with love

Next to snailmail, I am a huge fan of crochet. I crocheted some larger projects, like blankets and bags, but (as many crocheters will recognize) I also have TONS of unfinished projects, piles and piles of granny squares and tiny bits and pieces I found on Pinterest and wanted to give a try. So I thought to myself, why not combine those two granny hobbies of mine and send some crochet around the world?

Oh yes, I do admit: no crochet in the picture above. But, when I was going to send some yarn in an envelope, the writing paper had to match, right? Probably the most lazy form of cross stitch in the history of embroidery, because I guess even my friend's 3-year-old could poke holes in a piece of paper and pull some colored thread through, but still! I like the effect of brightly colored thread on kraft paper.

As you can see, I did a simple cross stitch in pink, and an arrow 'pattern' in lime. I also used one of my favorite hot pink pens, it's a Pilot Choose in color 07. Go get one of these, they write like a charm and come in yummy colors.

Back to the main topic of this post: crochet. I glued a pink crochet flower to a kraft label to send as a tiny gift. Granny squares also make great envelope gifts; they're light in weight, and I have seriously never seen a granny square that didn't look cute. For this one, I used this pattern I found on Ravelry once, it looks harder than it actually is. Don't let the long text with sl st's, dc's and sc's scare you! Oh, and I made an envelope out of light blue "Made with love" paper, thought this went pretty well with the 'theme' of my letter.

And that's it! A light-weight letter with pretty accents, hope you like it! I sent this one off to my new penpal Jane, I am looking forward to her response!

Love,

Anne