Busy like a bee... sometimes i feel like that. To much fun things to do... but not enough time to do it all next to household chores. And we've been away quite a lot, doing loads of fun things like familyday (a few years back we decided to stop visiting all the birthdays of nieces and nephews, and pick one day each year we organise something fun with my brothers sister parents and all the kids) with a BBQ and a BIG swimmingpool for the kids) and we stayed a few days at my parents.



But i did finish some crochet projects and started a new one ;)

my owly cushion cover, and a zig zag one. The brighten up our sofa :) also made a rainbow one, but that still needs to be finished..

And then i read something about the tour de france, and that made me think about the tour de fleece, an anual event on ravelry. It's a challenge to spin every day during the tour de france. There are all kind of groups one can join. I've been teamcaptain for the team malloit orange a few years. But now i'm just a participant.

But thinking about the tour de fleece, got the spinning bug active i guess, so i got some beautifull roving i bought at the breidagen (a wool/fiber/knitting kind of festival) it's from adrianart. It's a 50/50 blend merino tussah silk. I love those muted colors.

So i started spinning, aiming for a thin 3 ply navajo plied to keep the colors together. But suddenly i realised, i have a very boring spinning wheel. It's a Louet Julia, bought second hand. A wonderfull spinner, but i'm not that fond of the louet look i'm afraid.

But hey i can change that.... so i got some paint and brushes.. and i really like owls... soooo...

I'm soo happy how it turned out! Much more fun and happy. And it matches my owl cushion!! Now if i could only find the perfect big project bag with owls...

And i did finish my roving! 100 grams and 580 meters of 3 ply, nice and soft...

owls and other finds

I was browsing ravelry the other day and found a great design of an owl granny square!! And as it happens i love owls!! The design was with american definition fo the stitches, and i only know the english version. And yes i was to lazy to look up so i just tried to copy it. They are quite easy and soooo much fun to make :) I do have to make some more and then i will have enough for a cushion cover!

I also made some small turtles for my girls, easy and quick project.

We had a lovely time at the river bank enjoying a picknick, watching boats passing by, waving at them, and my oldest even made a drawing of a boat, offcoarse with her name on it! It was beautifull sunny weather, it almost felt like we were on a holiday, and that only 15 minutes by bike from our home!

Oh and i wanted to show you this find at our thrift store.. only 80 cents, a handpainted glass bowl with mushrooms on it. Isn't it cute :)

ceramics festival

Last friday we all went to the cermics festival here in our city, an annual event! With artists from all over Europe, showing their designs. We try to go every year.


here's a little impression

Our girls both tried it to, there was a place where to could play with self hardening clay and our oldest even tried a potter's wheel! She really really liked it!!

And offcourse we bought some items, i got a small ceramic flower, for in our happy tree. And we bought 2 beautifull plates, in amazing colors with a crystal glaze. Aren't they wonderfull!!!

love lemons and polymer clay

Oooh we had such a lovely weekend, saturday the girls and i met my parents at the trainstation, and went to the zoo in Rotterdam! It was such a lovely day, we all enjoyed each others company and had loads of fun!!

But that wasn't what i wanted to blog about...


Last week it was warm and sunny weather, really lovely. And the perfect time to make lemon lemonade :) But not with sugar, this time i used stevia powder, you know the plant from wich the make sweetner? First i grated the zest of 5 or 6 lemons, then juiced them. Put the zest and the lemonjuice in a pot and added a cup of water and boiled for a few minutes. After cooling down i added 2 small teaspoons of steviapowder. And shaked it very well. Then put the lemonjuice in the refrigerator.

Personally i like it most with sparkling water, i use 1part lemonjuice 2 parts of sparkling water... soooo refreshing!!

And now for the polymer clay part. When i started crocheting, i bought some cheap hooks, but i found my hands didn't like these very thin hooks. I did see, thicker needles but why buy more if you already got them?? So i deciced to try and make them thicker myself withpolymer clay. Fitst task was to locate the clay, i hadn't used it in ages. But finally found a few little pieces. It was HARD to get it smooth and workable again. But i got the clay a bit warm...

Then i just mad a flat rectangle moulded it around my hook, added some decoration, made from canes from wich they slice very thin layers used to decorate nails. I'm not a nails decoration person, but i do like those canes for all kinds of things ! And finally baked my hooks for half an hour in the oven. And now no more cramp in my hand!!

And i made a start with my ripple blanket !!

Have a nice day!!

am lucky

Last mondaynight just before getting to bed, i noticed my wallet was missing.... oh no!!! I turned the whole house upside down, bit it was nowhere to be found. So it was either stolen or lost... next morning i went looking, went to the store i visited last, i called the bank to block my accounts. I hate the feeling of something is lost, i keep looking untill i will find it. But in this case i couldn't find. Out of frustration i started cleaning out my kitchen cupboards. But suddenly the phone rings, and there is a lady from cityhall, asking if i lost anything? A man found my wallet (in the middle of the night!!) and brought it there. Even my 10 euro's where in it, all my cards, my driverslicence!! It made me sooooo happy and thankfull for that honest person!


Later that dat my knitting friend came by with her husband, they asked if i could make a orifricehook for his spinning wheel. I made 3 different ones on my lathe, so he could choose wich one he liked best. I'm afraid i forgot to take a picture, so i can't show you!


But while my friend was here, my package arrived. My tax money returned so i thought that was a nice reason to buy some more stylecraft dk yarn. And oh a wonderfull BIG box arrived from this webshop wich sells this yarn cheaper then other shops i found. But it's even more fun to have a friend around when you're opening a box full of yarn!! And oooh all those colors!!!

Oh and the roses we bought on the market, opened lovely... and i finished my little flat circle...

And i really like the idea of making a crochet blanket, i really like the ripple design of lucy from attic24 but before making a whole blanket, i started with a cushion cover.

And easy to take a long on fishing trips :)

And yes that did catch fish, loads of little small ones, a few snails and little critters from the water. And had loads of fun!!


So with all that new yarn i am definitely going to make a blanket for on the couch. But first i need to finish my cushion cover!


Have a nice weekend everyone!!

Seaglass

I remember reading about seaglas online, i was immediately interested! I admit i'm a bit of a magpie, i love to search for colorfull things. The idea you could find all these colorfull pieces of glass on the beach made my heart jump. When the girls and i visited the beach a few weeks ago we spent quite some time looking for nice shells and we would have loved to find seaglass, but i don't think we have it here...


So i was very happy when i found out there were several etsy shops selling seaglass finds. My daughter and i searched, and we ended up at this shop i ordered small pieces, seafoam colors, a bag of brown ocre colors and greens. They arrived very quick, send on saturday and it arrived on tuesday! Oh and opening those packages was so much fun... a lot of oooh's and aaah's.. there was also an extra bag with colorfull pieces as a gift! I have some great ideas with them.. but for now we enjoyed all the pieces, admired them, stacking them...

And then we got some oil and rubbed that onto our seaglas, even the youngest helped with this special job!! And now it really looks like little pieces of crystal!

I time i hope i can make the ideas i have with this glass pieces, found some great ideaa on pinterest. For now we enjoy the pieces and dream about the future, when we hope to spend a vacation in the united kingdom, hopefully close to the seaside ;)