Oh Google, why did you have to leave me. As you probably know they will shut down google reader. Luckily there are a lot of other providers and I decided to move my bloglist to Bloglovin. You can Follow my blog with Bloglovin and of course with all the other providers. I just had to add the link to claim my blog.
Moving on to something more interesting. We had our second Double Dutch quilt group get-together, this time with a mystery swap! I have never taken part in any swap thinking that I would get way too stressed out and insecure about my sewing skills. But this time it was a lot of fun and it did of course help that I knew the person I was making the suprise for.
Eva-Marie from zusjeb wanted something she can use. I have been so happy with my Makeup roll and use it almost everyday, so that was an easy choice. You can buy Rachel's pattern here. I think (hope) Eva-Marie liked it. (I don't get paid for linking to the pattern, I just love my makeup roll!)
Lately I have been knitting and I hereby present you with a child like enthusiasm (look what I made!) my new wrist warmers and my new cowl:
Here you can find the pattern for the wrist warmers and here for the cowl (on the website of the honey cowl you see a picture of the longer version, I made the shorter one).
The wrist warmers are made of Lana Gorssa MEILENWEIT sock yarn. I love the colour but I'm not too crazy about the yarn itself. They where fun to make, kind of meditative since I really had to concentrate. Every time my mind started to wander I made a mistake. No watching TV while knitting these!
The cowl is made of cotton. I really like the texture of the honeycomb stitch and I was able to work on it without too much thinking. I stopped half away and made my own version of the cowl by adding two buttons. I love the combination of yellow and turquoise, a new discovery for me!
Before these master pieces there where two serious failures. The pink cowl was my first attempt of making the honey cowl. Does not quite look the same, does it? I somehow misunderstood the directions and started adding stitches. When I noticed my mistake I just tried to make something of it to only discover half way that I had managed to twist the whole thing.
This poor sock will never get a pair. I really liked knitting lace but combining it with making a sock with heels and such was a bit too much for me. I decided to forget about the sock and made something else instead, hence the wrist warmers.
I turned 34 this month. On my birthday we went to Rotterdam and after visit to (the playground) of Maritiem Museum we had coffee at the Bijenkorf, a fancy Dutch department store. I do have a thing for fancy department stores, they remind me of my grandmother. There was however another reason to go there - Jean Paul Gaultier was celebrating the opening of his exhibition in Kunsthal by signing books there. I read about it a day before in a Dutch textile blog that usually talks about embroidery and history of textile, and since we were anyhow going to Rotterdam I thought why not. I did not stand in line to get a book signed but I did get a glance of him. It was fun.
On Tuesday I headed back to Rotterdam to see the exhibition. I do not follow fashion or read fashion magazines, but Jean-Paul Gaultier is one designer who definitely has influenced me. I was eleven when Madonna had the Blond Ambition tour and I think I still could dance the Vogue. Jean Paul Gaultier was of course the designer who designed those corsets. The movie Fifth Element is one of my favourites, I think it is just entertaining. Jean Paul designed the costumes for it.
I notice that lot of the audience were women that would have been my age around the time of the Blond Ambition tour. I'm very curious about what their connection to Jean Paul is. Do they just follow fashion and art in general, or do they also have memories from the back in the day? And in 20 years, is there anything that would stick with me from this time? I have really hard time to think of anything, I have no particular interest to any of the popstars and celebrities that are IT now.
Some of the work reminded me of what I have seen in blogs and got me thinking what a revolution this is. In 1989 Madonna sent Jean Paul a letter describing what she wanted. In the 1990 we only could get our inspiration from TV and magazines and only from people who got their work on TV and magazines. Now everybody can express themselves and share it with the rest. How amazing and wonderful! So maybe I don't know the latest hits but I do follow the grassroots and love it.
I have had really slow start of the year what it comes to sewing, expect for one very exiting news: I'm part of a real life sewing group! And I kind of started it as well, although I must say I just really took the first step by contacting lovely Muriël from Hopfaldera and after that it has been a complete team effort. The group is called Double Dutch and you can find us onFlickr. We have met once and are planning our second meeting.
The night before our meeting I kind of panicked about what would I do and came up with design using yellow, orange and pink. I have noticed that I don't like to work with too detailed plans, so below is my "pattern"
And here are some blocks I made during our meeting. So easy and fun to make, now I just should keep on going with this. And finish my blanket and couple of other things. Oh well, I will get there. At least I finally got around to blog and that makes me always feel better!
When I first started to think how 2012 has been nothing special came to my mind, only a big stack of unfinished projects. It felt like nothing worth mentioning had happened the whole year. After few days I luckily started to see everything more clearly.
Going backwards the last six months or so has been a bit of a blur. As the baby got mobile and started to wake up during the nights it has been kind of hard. The whole house is a mess all the time and I'm constantly having too little sleep. Sometimes during the last six months it felt like everything is falling apart even though in reality it was only the laundry basket. This being my third time I knew what was coming and I know it is just a phase, but I still didn't manage it very well. Many people find the baby year the hardest but for me it is the age between 10 to 18 months. Nature is very wise though, at this very age they are also so damn cute!
For two years now I have chosen a word of the year. For 2011 it was trust and for 2012 joy. At the beginning of the year I thought that I still was not done with trust and maybe not quite ready for joy, but it turn out to be exactly the right word for 2012. Noticing and feeling the little sparkles of joy scattered around the everyday mess.
2012: * I started to read novels again
* I participated in a quilt show
* It was the last year for us having a baby in the house and the last time I ever be nurturing one
* I finished 4 quilts and one quilt top
* started some other projects that I love but are not quite finished yet and failed miserably with most of my knitting projects
2013
My word for 2013 is confidence. I'm hope the year will be filled with creating, making, sharing and connecting.
Since we are copying American holidays like Halloween, why not Thanksgiving? Sounds like such a positive holiday and it involves food - perfect! Here are some random thoughts I have been thinking about lately. Its the little things, right?
A big upside of adopting Halloween are the pumpkins. I love the look, the taste and the Dutch word for it - pompoen. Doesn't it sound funny? Our local store sells organic pumpkins which are super delicious and not too big. Yesterday I roasted a whole pumpkin in a oven and made pumpkin bread. Yummy!
Thinking of pumpkin recipes, the first time I prepared pumpkin was when I lived in Sweden (I studied there) and Tina made it on her show. She is my favourite TV chef ever!
After experimenting with Twitter some years back and quickly visiting Pinterest, both mediums that did not work for me, I really like Instagram! I'm piecesoffab there. It is visual and delightfully imperfect full of shots of peoples everyday life. Celebration of the little things in life I would say:)
I found myself yelling to the kids (not that I would never yell to my kids...) "if you don't have anything nice to say then say nothing" when one of them was criticising other ones drawing. What a great advice for me too! Like something? Enjoy it. Don't like? Move on. This is a practice for me since I feel we are taught to think that being critical is being clever. Complaining and criticising is oh so very easy, but it does not really brighten up my day I must say.
So I will try to focus on what I like and am thankful for, take some picture of it to remind myself and share them. Here is one your:
Even though it still feels that I have not got anything done this autumn, there is some small progress. I almost done with a scarf for my son. It is the most basic thing that you can knit, just straight knit stitch. I have some more advanced projects in making but it has been hard to find time to work on those because I need to think when knitting unlike with this scarf. Also on both of my other projects I have made some mistakes and really dislike the idea that I have to unravel and correct them. I have a long history of not finishing knitting projects...
There it is in my little do-to-box
I have also been working on a Alabama Chanin skirt. It has been a very interesting process and I'm just so fascinated by Natalie's work. It is so simple but due to the level of detail also kind of complex. In her books she describes every single tool they use and it really does matter. For example I did not have the right kind of thread and now I finally found something similar that she uses and it really makes a difference. She does sell all materials and tools on her website which I think really is great concept. On it best the process has been almost a meditative experience and at its worst very frustrating, but the frustration usually kicks in when I try to rush things.
I also want to introduce you lazy gardeners two best friends, Jerusalem artichoke and mangold. The first one was gifted to me at the beginning of the summer. You can just pull them out at the beginning of the growing season and plant somewhere else. I had put them in a bucket of water, forget about them for a whole week, and finally in a hurry planted them in the corner of my kitchen garden. I was sure they will die, but no, they survived, had beautiful yellow flowers and produced enough for a big pan of soup! The mangold is a old favourite of mine, you just plant it and you can cut from it the whole summer (I just learned from wikipedia that when the tempature hits 85 F / 30 C the season is over. Lucky me, it didn't get even close to that here this summer).
