Time for an Update

I'm sure that you are all wondering what ever happen to the socks? And what about the garden? Anything going on there?

But first I want to share my reading. I read....War and Peace! All the 1440 pages, although my e-version did of course not have any pages and without it I could have never done it because I physically could not have carried it around with me like I do my e-reader. That said it was an easy read, it really was. Again Goodreads has a great review of the book, although unlike the reviewer I did like the first epilogue, but would also skip the second one (although I did read it just to be able to say that I read all of it).

I did enjoy the book although not nearly as much as Anna Karenina. I did realise reading the book, that when I was younger and reading books like crazy, the stories where about people older than me and what the characters where experiencing was something that might happen to me in the future. Now my life is at that point where the characters will end up at the end of the book. When did that happen?

I just started Elizabeth Gilbert's the Signature of All Things and my first thought only after one page was "she has had some much fun writing this!" and then I got a link somewhere to this interview and about the first thing she says is how much she enjoyed writing it! And then I stopped watching and will watch the rest after I have read the book. 

So that is all on the book department. Moving on to the socks. 

I did manage to finish them with dozen little errors. I already started a second pair with the different set of instructions, but the heel remains a mystery for me. I do not get it how I'm suppose to pick the amount of stitches from the sides the pattern calls for, so, again, I must do something wrong. I'm thinking of unraveling these and start again with yet another instruction. I want to be able to make socks with little effort watching TV at the same time (in fact that is what I'm doing now as well which might be part of the problem). I love woolen sock and wear them all the time and everybody I know likes them too, so it would be great to be able to do these and give as gifts.

The garden has been a disaster this year, nothing wants to grow except the jerusalem artichoke, which is a pretty plant I must say with is yellow flowers. We harvested it this Sunday. With child labor so readily available it was a piece of cake. 

Now I have to cook, puree and freeze them. But I want to grow other things as well. I thing I need to replace the soil entirely to get there. Better luck next year and I'm truly greatful that my family is in no way depending on my gardening skills for food.

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And Keep Calm Craft on

Baby Quilts and Strawberry Pirates

The cake dilemma - do you go for a taste or the looks? My oldest son turned 5 and has been for the past six months tormented with the question: pirate cake or strawberry cake? Luckily I could find fresh strawberries and a giant marsipain strawberry and this is how I solved the dilemma:

This one was so tastey that I did not have time to take more pictures before it was eaten. I made a standard cake with this recipe: 6 eggs, weihgt them, add 0.7 x the weight of the eggs sugar, beat until very firm, gently add the same amount of flour as you added sugar. Let bake in 175 degrees for 40-50 minutes.

For the filling I let frozen strawberries and raspberries to soften in the roomtemperature just so that I could puree them and mixed with 200ml suger. I filled the cake with the berry puree and whipped cream and let it stay in the fridge for a night. Whipped cream and strawberries to decorate and done! So simple and so tasty!

In September I did a last minute decision to make a baby quilt for my friends baby. Last minute because I started on the day the baby was born. I was inspired by Rachel's Pixie Churns quilt but after making five Churn Dash blocks I had no desire or time to make more of those. So the rest of the blocks are improve blocks made around scraps that I had from the Anna Maria Horner sleep sack. The are voile and I think it might be quite nice for the little baby fingers to feel the difference of textur.

Attempt to free motion quilt. It was fun but I do need some kind of quilting table from my machine. 

From Gold to Gray

In October I spent a week in Finland visiting family. I can't remember the last time I have been there in October and I was so glad to enjoy the last faces of the autumn foliage. All the red had already fallen but the golden still stayed. Combined with the October afternoon sun it was magical. Between running after kids and spending time in shopping malls I sneak out to the forest one afternoon and tried to catch some of the magic with my not so great phone camera. The results are quite bad but after some tweaking I still want to share them. The sun was so bright but the pictures are so hazy. Finnish artist Anna Emilia has some great picture from about the same time on her blog.

On the other side of the world Ara Jane has made a beautiful blog post of October that looks like the fall here in the Netherlands. What a lovely month it is! After the cold spring I wasn't expecting it at all. I thought that we would go straight back to the grey after summer so this has been a really lovely suprise! Now if I only could be able to find the beauty in November...

When I was dragging my children to a walk in the forest my oldest asked me why I always want to go there. I told her that I'm actually a troll that went to live with humans when I was a baby. She didn't believe me. But if that had been the case I would have lived around the big stone seen in the last picture.

My Space

I'm of course talking about my sewing space. Because I'm lucky that way and actually have my own table in a small attic room that I share with my husband.

For some time I have been avoiding that space. As I share it with my husband, I was conveniently blaming him for it. Like he keeps the space so messy that I don't enjoy being there and that kind of stuff (very mature, I know). After visiting a friend who just had created the same for herself - her own space - and being really exited about it I realised how lucky I am to have that space and it is up to me to make something of it. Laura's post at little and lots was also very inspirational. Celebrate what you have!

I'm a complete coward and do not have before pictures. All I can say it was messy, unorganized and ugly.

The thing most bothering me was the desk being so unattractive. Now it is covered with Anna Maria Horner's laminate and I feel so much better! I want to cover the desk with it properly but that is a bigger project since the desk is attached to the wall. This works however surprisingly well.

I also put my little precious stash on display so I can see it and enjoy it. All the unfinished projects and fabrics that I rarely use went to the storage under the roof.

The most surprising realisation for reorganising my creative space was that I feel more peaceful if non-sewing related administrative stuff is easily accessible. Before I had all binders tuck away on the lowest shelve and if I needed them it became an instant mess because I had to go through a pile of unfinished projects that were piled on the same shelve. It is so much better now when I can just pick up a binder, do what needs to be done, put it back and continue with the fun stuff.

Heels and Waves

I had such a grand knitting plans for the summer holidays. I brought with my knitting back planning to finish the second sock for my husband and after that start a new one for myself and maybe finish the whole pair. And then I got to the first heel and argh, frustration! It really should not be that difficult but either the description I'm following has a fault in it (I doubt that) or I just don't get it. I did managed to make a heel to the first sock but it did not go smoothly. I should try to find another explanation and see if it makes more sense to me.

As I tend to knit or read I managed to read quite a lot. I read Alex Munthe's The Story of San Michele and enjoyed it. I also read Dancing Backwards by Salley Vickers and it was nice but maybe a bit too light. Maybe everything feels light after reading only classics. What I was suppose to read was Waves by Virginia Woolf, but I just can not get through it. I read somewhere that you should read it like poetry. That would explain it since I have never really learned how to read poems. I guess I don't have the patience for it. Maybe one day I will get there. Tackle the heels and the waves.

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Quilter's Block

Lately I have been suffering a serious case of quilter's block - or maybe lack of blocks in this case? I bought these super pretty fabrics some time ago and have just been looking at them too scare to cut. Do you ever get that? I have tried to look for inspiration but I'm just getting intimidated by all the perfectness in the quilting world.

To get my self started again I signed up for Rachel's Penny Sampler online class. I have promised myself that I don't have to make the whole quilt. My goal is to learn new things and made blocks to be used later. But who knows, maybe I will end up doing the quilt after all.

.......I started writing this blog post already a week ago and can now report that it worked - I'm back to sewing and finished the first project although I did not made a pillow out of it. Or maybe we could call it a flat pillow. Or oversized potholder perhaps? The Dogwood petal shape is not quite my favourite so I decided to just practise with this project and use thrifted fabric that has been lying around for quite some time.

I do think that the fabrics go well together and it looks kind of nice...and hideous at the same time. That is always my reaction to beige and I really should keep away from it.  The sketch stitch that I used to applique is not really the right choice for this one, but since I wanted to practice it I gave it go. I kind of rushed through and I know that it shows (like the petals are not really correctly aligned) but at least I'm back in business!

Knitting and Reading

Funny how writing down things reveals a pattern. From time to time I have talked about the books I love and  now I notice that most of then have one thing in common - the story takes place in the writer's childhood environment. That is true for Lucy Maud Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables (my favourite book ever!),  Rudyard Kipling's Kim and to my latest discovery Willa Cather and the two books I have read from her, O Pioneers! and My Ántonia. I suspect that there is something special in the way you are able to describe the surroundings where you spend your first years.

I get a serious travel fever when reading these books and after My Ántonia I have been a bit obsessed with Nebraska. Few years back I visited Jane Austins house in England and it was fun to see where she lived and how the world looked liked when she lived. Would love to make a trip like that to Willa Cather's home.

I have been reading so much the last year and that is all thanks to the e-reader I bought. It makes reading so easy. I don't like to buy books because I don't know what to do with them after I have read them and since I live in the Netherlands I can only borrow books in Dutch and I prefer reading in English. Also Dutch libraries are not free!

One other advantage of e-reder is that you can't really see how big a book is. So I read Anna Karenina (downloaded for free) by Tolstoy. If I had seen how big it is I probably would have thought that I have no time for it. It was so good! And for everyone who thinks it is only about the love story - it really isn't. There are other, in my opinion, more interesting stories and characters in the book. And then there are whole chapters about mowing. I can see how some people dislike that but I loved it and I think I will be rereading just those chapters.There is a review on goodreads that perfectly describes how I felt about this book.

Moving on to knitting. It is has been so cold here that it really feels like autumn (13 °C, 55 °F!) so I guess the best thing to do is to make a cup of tea, crawl under a blanket and knit. I started knitting socks to my husband that I promise to make him along time ago. Nothing too exiting but still fun to make.

Officially started...

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