Frozen

It has been a really mild winter here in the Netherlands. As you can see we still have roses! They even survived the frost shown on the picture. It will however get colder next week. Good reason to keep on knitting! (lets focus on the positive side of things. I have to admit that I have enjoyed the mild weather - makes dressing three little ones so much easier!)

Despite the colder weather coming our way I hope that I can plant spinach in February. In coming weeks I also want to do a inventory on last years seeds and order some  new organic seeds from here. They also sell in UK, Ireland, France and Germany.  I have been very pleased with their products and service in the past and look forward to browsing their catalogue again. If only I had a bigger kitchen garden to fit everything I would like to try! That would be fun especially when making plans for the coming season. Maybe not so when trying to get rid of the weed :)

Knitting

January 15th and I have my first finish of the year! Wool socks for my 3-year-old. The first sock for my daughter is also done.

Three weeks ago I was certain that I will not pick up knitting again. I learned to knit at school and it is the only type of craft that I did somewhat regularly outside of school when growing up. But I never managed to make something I really liked. I was always trying out something without a pattern and then getting frustrated because it did not work out. Crocheting on the other hand was something I wanted to try again and I asked for crochet hooks for Christmas. My mum included a whole set of knitting needles to the package and before I knew it I was knitting socks. I had not knit for ten years but apparently it is like riding a bike. And if you do have a pattern and the right sort of yarn for the project, you can actually make something useful.

I did some research on knitting and learned that there are different methods how to knit. I seem to be doing it the continental style with a special kind of technique for the purl stitch. I learned all that from here. I'm knitting with bamboo knitting needles and love them! They feel nice and warm, make less noise and prevent sliding. I will never go back to the metal ones again! When I have finished the socks for my daughter I want to try something new and make these type of socks for myself.

Goodbye 2011 Hello 2012

Dear 2011, you were really good to me! Even if I did slow down this year I was still sewing, gardening, baking, hand printing and embroidering. I even added knitting to the list at the very end of the year! 

And Hello 2012! What a beautiful beginning with sun and snow. 

I wish you all happy and joyful new year!

Quilt for My Little Girl

Every quilt has a story, right? The moment I discovered quilting  I knew I wanted to sew my daughter a quilt - a very girly one with lots of her favourite colour pink in it. For inspiration I got some quilt books by Kaffe Fassett from the library and we looked at them together. I made my own design using some ideas I got from Fassett's books. I was already a fan of Heather Bailey, so Nicey Jane by her was an easy choice. I also add some other fabrics from her.

I tried to work in a manner I thought was the wise thing to do - cut the pieces first and then make the blocks. Turns out that is not the way I like to work. I noticed half way cutting that I had made a mistake with the measurements. Frustrated I stopped and did not pick up the project until after months. This time I decided that I just want to have some blocks and started sewing, but after repeating the same block for the third time I could not take it any more, so boring. I was also not happy with the quality of the sewing. Funny how it shows when your not enjoying what you do.

Now what? I decided that I will not care about the mistakes, bad sewing or any of that. I'm just going to carry on no matter what. I changed the design as I went on, add a star and a small house and had fun!

When it was time to quilt I named the quilt "just do it" quilt. No ripping for the smallest mistakes, I was just going to have fun. It was my first time machine quilting after finally purchasing a walking foot (highly recommended!). The stitches are not perfect all around and I did need to do some ripping here and there but all in all the quilting was fast and fun. The binding is wider on the back. The sew line of the binding completes the quilted squares on the edges, so therefore I decided to machine sew the binding.

It took me a whole year but the quilt is now finally finished and  I love it! My daughter still loves pink and is very happy with the quilt (I was a bit worried she might change her favourite colour before I finish the quilt:). It is not a technical master piece, but it is made with love to honour everything that is girly and pink!

Wildlife Paparazzi

We have some amazing wildlife in our small garden. We enjoy regular visit from frogs, a Robin, and a Blackbird couple to name few. We also have lots of butterflies. I'm especially happy about the butterflies. The butterfly population is struggling partly because people have less flowers in their gardens. I happily make our garden butterfly-friendly by planting flowers, but we also have other treats available for hungry butterflies:

I was not in time to harvest these too figs but after seeing at one point five Red Admirals enjoying the rotten fig I stopped worrying about it. Lazy gardening makes a wildlife friendly garden!

The sunflowers have also been a joy to watch. The bigger ones were popular amongst the green Rose-ringed Parakeets. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first time saw green parakeets flying around here in the Hague. Apparently once upon a time some of them escaped from their keepers, and really liked it here. Now there are thousands of them. 

We also had smaller sunflowers that were very popular among small birds like Great Tits and  House Sparrows. I didn't get even a blurry picture of them, they were just too quick to me. 


The only thing I have done intentionally to attract wildlife are some butterfly friendly flowers. The rest has come naturally by growing lot of eatable things and not having the time and energy to keep the place too tidy.

The Making of Baby Blanket II

I was inspired by the beauty of the spring season and wanted to catch some of that on fabric.

I used contact paper to make some stencils.

Getting ready for printing at my little "home studio" at our dining table.

Test prints on a piece of muslin

Work in progress on a white organic jersey

I hand quilted the blanket along the lines that you can already see on the previous picture if you look closely. The lines where drawn with a HB graphite pencil. I assembled the quilt  in such a way that no binding was needed.

I finished the quilt the night before my baby was born.

Here it is wrapped around my little boy this afternoon

Harvest Time

I have been a very lazy gardener this year but I still have some harvest news to share. 

The fig tree has been very active and is producing more fruit that I can handle. The fruits are gorgeous but since it has been raining here a lot this summer (and still is) they are very watery. So far I have cooked them a little and mixed with yoghurt. I will try that again soon using my own yoghurt and by adding some spices to the fig confiture. ( I bought a yoghurt-maker and we are now having fun trying out different yoghurt cultures.)

The below picture makes me a bit sad. I had these wonderful green tomatoes and I was looking forward to making this excellent jam of them. After picking the tomatoes I didn't get to the jam making on that same day. Two days later when I finally wanted to start the they were all covered with some nasty brown stains and I had to throw them away.  What a shame.

Luckily we are not even planning to make wine of the grapes. We eat them as they ripen and nothing gets waisted. They are very sweet and tasty this year, which surprises me since we have had so little sun.

We also planted some borage to improve the soil (no idea if it works). I really love the small blue flowers. 

They are especially beautiful in the evening light. Below an attempt to capture some of that magic.