Greenland 2016

Greenland was, if you pardon the pun, pretty cool.
Finally, we had icebergs. Lots and lots of icebergs.
We had them looking out of the window of our hotel room in Ilulissat

Or on tours we took on a small boat toward the Epi glacier. 

 We had them during the day in bright sunshine

 And under the midnight sun.

 Very, very cool.

Iceland 2016

This was my second time to visit Iceland. First time was in 2009, when we drove the Road No. 1 once around. We did, like most tourists to Iceland, skip the West Fjords, so this time we knew we'd be going there.
The West Fjords are mostly about nature. There's loads of bird, some waterfalls and ... well, fjords.
Some pictures below.
At he cliffs of Ladrabjarg about a million birds breed every year.

Black Guillemots

Northern fulmars

And Puffins!

We also saw Terns

 And not to forget, waterfalls (this one is the Dynjandi)

500 - 10 - 50

This post is my 500th post.

I've been doing this for almost exactly 10 years (my first post was on July 14th, 2006).

And, since about a week I'm 50 years old.

Surprisingly little has changed in the last ten years. 

I'm ten years older, but I'm still single, and still work as an engineer in the semi-conductor industry (in fact, for the same employer). 

I still live at the same address in the same town. 

I still travel a lot (I just came back from my vacation in Iceland and Greenland).

I've started the blog as a mean to keep my family and friends updated on my activities and also to keep a record for myself of what I've been working on at any given time. Sort of like a semi-public diary. I'm happy I managed to keep up for all that time, and sometimes it's a great reference.

Being 50 is no different than being 49. At least I haven't noticed anything different. I'm not getting younger, that's for sure, but I don't exactly feel like being 'old'.

As a friend told me: “Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.” (a Joan Collins quote)

I'm still sifting through the 3.300 pictures I've took on my vacation. If you want a teaser, just go back 7 years in my blog. There are some Iceland pictures when I was there the first time in July 2009.

And a short teaser for Greenland:

All Adds Up

The trellis scrappy quilt is done!
Hurray!

As mentioned before, the quilt is big: 180 x 210cm is the final size. It took two of us standing on a small ledge and raising our arms high to show it in all its glory.
The quilt is for most parts made from scraps (they are still scraps if you buy them in a scrap bag, right?). The grey fabric is from a layer cake I bought half off some time ago; only the white fabric is yardage I bought specifically for the quilt. Both are Kona Cotton, the white is 'Snow' and the grey is 'Ash'.

The back is also very scrappy, and completely from my stash. It's not very noticable, but I did an off-center 'Trip Around The World' layout with log cabin blocks, cross blocks, four patch blocks, 25 patch blocks, pure, wild scrappy blocks and nine-patch-in-a-four-patch blocks.
For batting I got some cotton batting, which quilted up great. Nice and lofty.
The main quilting is in-the-ditch left and right of the white stripes (which involved quite a bit of fabric wrestling), with added flowers in each grey square (I made a stencil and marked each one with a Frixion pen before FMQing). There were quite a few ends to hide, but totally worth it.

Finally the binding is a black print (Science Fair by Robert Kaufmann) with a white piping.

The quilt is desitined for my bed. It's the perfect size.
I really, really like how this came out. I love that it's scrappy, I love that I used stash scraps for the back, I love the batting. The quilting turned out just perfect. The binding works great.
Yes, for this quilt, 'All Adds Up'

More Coasters

I did another set of coasters. I used felt, a heart-shaped cookie cutter (you want a simple shape for this...), a scalpel, and, finally, a sewing machine.

 Cutting out the hearts is what takes the longest and is the most tricky, but the outcome is nice. The coasters were well received by the new owners.

 On another note, I basted the Trellis quilt today (or, as I start to call it, the MONSTER). This thing is big. In the end it will be 215 x 180 cm.
I didn't exactly fancy a crawl on the floor, so I used a method I saw in a youtube video by 'Man Sewing' (link is here)

 I bought those clamps to hold the whole sandwich to the table and it worked like a charm.

There seem to be now obvious wrinkles, though in the end it comes down how it will behave once it's in the machine. 

This will be "fun". It doesn't help that I used a fairy substatial and fluffy cotton batting, which adds a lot of volumn and also weight.

Orca-stra

At my vacation 2013 into Yukon and British Columbia, we took at little excursion to Skagway, Alaska. There I came across this great quilt shop (Rushin' Tailor). I bought a couple of things, among them a kit for Orcas diving at a cliff all done in batiks.

The name of the kit is 'Orca-stra' by Pine Needle Designs.

Last weekend I found myself between projects. My great Trellis quilt top is done (I'm waiting for some more curved safety pins before I baste is). I finished the Blue Sands Cardigan (need an opportunity for some photographs. Preferably when it's not too warm). I have started a new cardigan, but there's no urgency to it.

So I thought, something quick, with some instant gratification would be great.

There was plenty of fabric in the kit, so I had some choice in picking just the right bit for just the effect I wanted. Working with batiks offers so much color and variation. Also, as it's usually more tightly woven than normal quilting fabric, it's less prone for fraying and thus ideal for raw edge applique.

The quilting was all done free motion, with a wavey braid at the border (I did stitch in the ditch using my walking foot at the inner border)

Only thing left to do is adding a sleeve in the back for hanging and a label.

Double Upcycling

A few years back (in 2010) I did some experiments with knitting and fulling stuff in the washing machine. One of those experiments was a bag I'd knitted using Cascade 220. I finished the bag (sort of), but never was really happy with it, or actually used it.
A few weeks back, that old bag fell into my hands, and I thought about giving it - or at least the fabric - a second life. As coasters.

I cut out circles and thought about doing some stitching on the borders, but then the remnants of another project fell into my hands. It was my first attempt on a rug for my bathroom from last year, using old t-shirts I've had braided into a long cord. I still had a couple of meters left, and as I used rather narrow stripes back then, the width of the cord was almost exactly equal to the thickness of the fulled material from the bag.

I hand-sewed the cord to the circles I've cut out from the bag and got lovely coasters for my summery drinks (which, by the way, is my home made rhubarb syrup - super yummy. I definitely need to make more)
So these coasters are using material from two old projects, one of them already an upcycling project. Hence double upcycling. Or upcycling the upcycling ...?

Close Up

I've got a macro lens, and I'm not afraid to use it ...

 

I've always been quite fond of dandelions (quite tricky to take photos of, though)

 Last one is the centre of one of my orchids. Almost like an abstract painting ...

Printing on Fabric

Last Sunday I tried out a couple of different methods to apply colour to fabric. I've got some fabric paint left overs (from way, way, waaaaaaay back) so I didn't even need to buy new materials.
I used some cotton bags I bought at the Swedish place (you know which one ...). I washed them before hand to get rid of any treatment still sticking to the fibers.
Bag 1: a stencil I bought years ago. I used a coppery color with a bit of sparkle.

Bag 2: easiest of the lot, really. I used toiletpaper rolls, folded them a bit to get a heard shape and dipped the ends into the paint. The yellow paint was a bit on the thin side, but I don't think it's a problem.

Bag 3: I uses some rubbery material which I cut into shapes and glued to a piece of pipe I've got lying around. After one round, the color was almost all used up, so I filled out the last bits with a brush. I think it would be better with a longer piece of fabric.

Bag 4: For this one, I wrapped some course twine around a bit of rubber and used this as a stamp. Fun, easy and I love the effect it creates. 

 

Bag 5:  Here I used masking tape to create a simple stencil. After each round of paint, I let it dry, then moved the masking tape to open up another bit. This one took the longest, but I really like the result.

 Finally, I iron them all for a couple of minute with the iron set to hot. Hopefully this fixes the paint. I use a couple those bag for potatos, onions, ....
Great fun, need to get more bags to try some more.
I still get plenty of ideas.

Night at the Museums

Last weekend, forty museums in and around Frankfurt opened their doors for a night of enterainment and education. We focused on three of them.
We started out at the Museum for Criminology at the police headquarter in Frankfurt. The museum is normally not open to the public (though you can arrange for guided tours), so it was something you don't see normally. There was a demonstration of the the K-9 unit every hour in front of the building. Though I didn't understand a word of whatever the guy who guided the demonstation, it was still quite interesting.

 It took a moment for us to find the stop for the shuttle bus, but we eventually managed to get to the Senkenberg museum (natural history)

The musuem always has been one of my favorites in Frankfurt and I've been there a couple of times before, but it was new to M.

Inside they had a Mad Scientist Quizshow and a couple of interesting demonstrations.

Next stop was the Experiminta, a Science musuem, with tons of interesting stuff going on.

When we got out of there, we realized that it was getting on to midnight, so we stopped there (even those there had been a few more museums on our list).
Our feet hurt and it was very cold.
Still, I quite enjoyed the whole event.

Braided Baby Quilt

The baby is in due in August, but I couldn't wait so long.

 I've used a half jelly roll with batic fabrics for the stripes, leaving out the purple ones. Green and blue went in one direction, yellow, orange, and red into the other.

Every stripe is quilted with a different free motion pattern. I fought quite a bit with my sewing machine over tention with this. Some stripes are more or less perfect, but on others you can see either the background color or the front color peek through at the other side. On one of the stripes I actually pulled everything out and did it again. Now I wonder if my choice of sewing thread is at least partially to blame for this (I just took any which sewing thread I had in my stash for this and didn't buy special quilting thread)
Well, it's too late to change now.
For the back I found this great print with dots, which matches color wise almost perfect with the front. Binding is a simple blue stripe.
Now only the baby in question needs to make an appearance, so I can make a label with the critical statistical data. But no hurry.

London - Street Art

On our last day in London we had a pretty cool tour on the local street art in Shoreditch.

 One of my favorites is by 'Invader' who's using tiles and puts them up on the most inaccessible locations

 No idea who this artist is, but I really likes this one.

 And another one I really liked. This one more simple, but really, really expressive.

 This one is by an artist who goes by the name of Stik. Also really simple (he always only ever does those stick figures), but they do hold quite a punch, I think.

It's really amazing what you can find in this corner of London. Whereas all form of graffiti and street art is totally illegal in the rest of London, this little corner kinda tolerates it. Of course, you still get a lot of crap this way, but also a lot of really cool and amazing stuff.

London - The Harry Potter Experience

I'm a big Harry Potter Fan for quite a while now, so when Warner Brothers opened 'The Making of Harry Potter' a couple of years back, I naturally wanted to go and see it. My nephew was willing to go with me (always good to have a kid with you, so you don't look too weird).
After a short introduction movie, the doors open to the great hall. Set tables are on either side and behind the teachers' tables are the glasses for the house points.

 Among floating candles, Dumbledore is welcoming the muggle tourists.

The next big room is full with costumes and some of the smaller sets, like the boys dormitory, Hagrid's hut, Dumbledore's office, the Weasley's kitchen (including self cleaning pots and pans, and the magical knitting blanket).

Behind that room is platform 9 3/4 with the waiting Hogwarts Express.



There's an open to the sky set with Number 4 Privet Drive, Knight Bus and a cover bridge (which is were we enjoyed a cone with Butterbeer Icecream)
The last three rooms are for Diagonal Alley, the special effect / creature shop, and finally a huge model of Hogwarts.
Sadly (or maybe luckily) we ran out of time, and I hadn't much chance to look at everything in the souvenir shop.
The visit and the tickets are not exactly cheap, but I enjoyed it still a lot, and could have done another hour at least (we had about three).

London Calling

Last week I've went on a short trip (five days) to London. We (that is my sister, my nephew, and I) went to see a couple of shows ('Mrs. Henderson Presents', 'The Book of Mormon', 'Lion King', and 'The Play That Goes Wrong')

Of course, we also did the touristy stuff.

The London Eye: 

 Tower Bridge:

 Changing of the Guard:

 Leadenhall Market:

We also went to 'The Making of Harry Potter' at the WB studios. More of that next time.