Lilinette Crochet

In Buddhism, compassion always goes with wisdom. Compassion without wisdom is not understood to be true compassion and wisdom without compassion is not true wisdom. Likewise, in Christianity, love is accompanied by justice. Love without justice is not regarded as true love and justice without love is not true justice.   Masao Abe - Buddhism and interfaith dialogue No matter what your beliefs are, is this not a life lesson to keep close to our hearts and minds? I believe it is and I believe we need more of it in our world. So it inspired me in my design for this meditation cushion.   Designing this cushion took me a long time. Not because of the complexity of the crochet stitches or the difficulty of keeping the circles flat. No, I think that everyone, including beginners, can follow this pattern and make this cushion. The difficulty I experienced was in finding a way to have the wisdom side of the cushion merge with the compassion side. I wanted to use a new technique,

I love ponchos. They give me that comfortably warm 'I don't mind the winter'-feeling. You can wear them inside, over a simple shirt, as well as outside when the days are fresh but not freezing cold. After designing the Secret Paths and Hidden Daisies-Poncho this winter, I practically wear it all the time.  But there is one thing that bothers me when I wear the poncho, and especially when I sit still, typing away on my laptop all day... my arms get cold... I figured I needed to do something about it. Of course, I could just add sleeves to the two sides of the poncho and have it over with. But the problem with sleeves on a poncho is that it limits me when moving my arms around. I prefer the freedom of having a separate pair of arm warmers. A pair that I can take off when I don't need them. And even more, arm warmers that I can wear with other garments as well. Did you happen to crochet the poncho and have some yarn left? Well, I advise you to t

This is my first big crochet project to share with you. Yay! It has a loving history, Let me tell you a little bit about it. Last December, I crocheted a beautiful shawl designed by Johanna Lindahl of Mijo Crochet . The shawl was called Secret Paths, and you can find the pattern here . I crocheted this shawl for my grandmother, who has just turned 92 years old. She is a wonderful inspiration in my life. A woman who knows how to move from adulthood to old age with grace, dignity and loving kindness. And it so happens that my grandmother loves pink! So I set out to collect some colours and made her the pink shawl. As these things go... I had yarn left and wondered what to do with it. The shawl was fairly chunky with all the thick yarn and doubling of strands I used. It made me think that it would do great as a poncho as well. But Johanna never designed a poncho and had no plans to do so either. Happily I like a challenge... Plus, it would give me the chance to design it wi