Castle and Blossoms

Yup, spring is here, There's no denying it.

 This wisteria grows at the side of the Pompejanum in Aschaffenburg (or, as we in Hessen call it: Aaaaschebersch ;-))

Aschaffenburg also has a lovely, not really that small castle.

 And the town has some interesting little corners.

Well worth a visit or two.

Butterflies and Flowers

I have some stitching.

I got the kit in Sweden, but swapped out the included Aida against an evenweave. 

The kit is called 'Butterflies on Flowers' and is made by Vervaco.

This got me into the mood for some more stitching ...

Home Decoration

After eight year living in my appartement I thought it's about time I redecorated a bit.
I moved some furniture around, the DVD shelf went to another wall, the dinning table now sits closer to the middle of the living room (and I found a great lamp to illuminate the previously little dark area)
After moving the shelves, the wall they stood against retained their image - or in other words, the light blue wall now showed a bit different blue than the rest of the wall where the shelves had shaded it from the sunlight.

 Luckily, that's what paint is for. I opt for a darker shade of blue (called sea blue) and started painting.
Three layers later I finally had a uniform surface (and let it be said that watching paint dry, can actually be kinda exciting - will it be uniform this time, or not?)
I had quilted the swans in Sweden in February and lastly I added a tunnel in the back for hanging.

 I'm very, very pleased how this turned out.

An Old Promise And A New Start

A while ago I promise a friend to also make her a kindle cover. As she 'named' her kindle 'Hawkeye' (like the character from the Avengers), it was clear early on that the color scheme would be black and purple.
Hawkeye is a sharp shooter, so a crosshair target was the obvious choice for the front side. On the back I applicated the mask he's wearing in the comics.

From her reaction I think it was right on target.

A few years back, on vacation in the US (or maybe Canada, I'm not 100% sure) I bought about 1kg of cheap yarn with the intention of making it into a blanket one day. Yesterday I finally pulled it out of hiding and started making half square triangles. 

A nice, easy, portable project.

I Have Knitting

Finally some finished knitting stuff.

'Off for a walk with Charlotte' was my Olympia project. I did cast while watching the opening ceremony and did cast off at the closing. In between I had a false start, as the pattern I picked originally just didn't work with the yarn.

The yarn, a Blue Faced Leicester by Fleece Artist in the colorway Nova Scotia, had been a birthday present a few years back.

The second project was looooong in the making (I think I started in September). A summer cardigan made from Wollmeise Lace in the colorway Admiral. The pattern is called 'Chance of Shower' is a pretty cool construction and very well written. Still, I made a few changes, mainly in the lower body part, where I ended up making fewer increases than the pattern says.

 As you can see, it's currently blocking and I hope it will fit well once it's dry.

Animals of the West

And as the weather is still spring like and sunny, we went to the 'Alte Fasanerie' (an old park - pheasantry -  with animals close to Hanau)
The wild sows just about had their first bunch of little piglets.

 In the falconry we watched the flight show (always impressive). I always loved the eagles and the eagle-owls (though Athila, the mascot of the Frankfurt Football Club 'Eintracht Frankfurt' was not in today - I think he had to support the team ...)

 There was a group of lynx.

 And finally, the have two groups of wolves. The more local gray wolf (canis lupus)

And a group of arctic wolves (canis lupus arctos)

 Isn't he/she an absolute beauty?

Animals of the East

Last weekend - with wonderful early spring time weather - I went to the zoo in Dresden.
Lions, ...

... koalas, ...

... and giraffes, oh my!

 Following the zoo, I also went to a flower exhibition in the palais in the Great Garden (think New York Central Park, only somewhat smaller and more barock).

Sweden 2014

By now it's almost a tradition that I visit my sister in Sweden during the Olympic Games. A good excuse to spend time with her and my nephew, who, this time, even had a birthday to throw in (and I made a big birthday cake for him ...)
As the first attempt for my mom's table topper ended up a bit on the large side of things, it now went to my sister.

The pattern is called 'Lone Star' and is waaaaaay easier to do than the 'doves in the window'. For one, you start simply by sewing three stripes together and then cut them at an angle. The eight points are identical, so not so much chance to mix things up.
And, if I may say so, the result looks pretty cool.

Swedish weather was pretty mixed, but at least one day was bright and sunny, even if it was rather windy, so I grapped my camera and made a few pics.
The Swedish coast:

 Proof I was in Sweden:

 And the very first spring flowers peaking through.

Doves in the Window

A few weeks ago, my mom asked me to make a table topper for the little table in her room. She also said that I should use scraps (I have plenty, so no problem there)
My first attempt turned out to be waaaaay too big (80 x 80cm for a table 45 x 42cm), so I started attempt number 2 using the 'Doves In The Window' quilt pattern.
This is a fairly traditional pattern (there are actually two different pattern with the same name ...), but I saw a more modern interpretation on a blog I follow, and thought to give it a spin.

I love the finished block, even though the sewing bit was a bit painful. I kept mixing up the order of the little pieces, ALL THE TIME! Then I started using a 1/4 inch (0.75cm) black border, but that didn't look right, so I ripped all the black bits off again and used a 1/2 (1.5cm) border instead. 

Only problem now ....

It's still too big for the table (it ended 50 x 50cm)

This week also saw the completion of a long term project (started March 2013)

The blackwork sampler chess board.

There are 32 different designes, which I pulled from all over the place: books, magazines, the internet, ...

I'm not 100% sure if I call is finished, though.

I'm thinking about adding some gold accents, oooooooor even to mirror all the black fields in gold on the opposide side.

What do you think?

Box-In-Box

On Friday was my friend Steffi's birthday. And as currently EVERYBODY gets something quilted by me, she got a smallish blanket made.

Pattern is sort of kind of my own thing, though I might have seen something similar on the interweb. The final blanket is 125 x 150cm and the backside is fleece, which makes it extra snuggly.

 The whole thing is free motion quilted and I even managed to sneak in my name, Steffi's name and the date. Not sure if you can see it in below picture ...

Composed Mitts

Not my mitts, sadly.

At our vacation in Canada, my friend saw the kit for those mits in the Beehive in Victoria. I knew she would like those, but she was hesitant. So I said, if you buy them, I knit them.
Last time I saw her, she said, she would knit them herself, but had problems with the bobbles. I said, I take a look. But after I started, I just couldn't stop.
Sorry, about that.
The patten is 'Composed Mitts' and was originally published in Interweave Knits, Fall 2007. The kit used six different colors of Frog Tree, Alpaca Sport, a very soft 100% alpaca yarn.
It had been a pleasure to knit the mitts, though weaving in the gazillion ends in the end, was a bit less than fun.
Biggest problem now .... I will have to hand them over sooner or later.

Iceflowers

My bedroom is underneath the roof, and when I wake up in the morning, I'm looking up through one of the roof windows into the sky.
Though, when I woke up today, I saw something else.
Iceflowers - or, rather, ice feathers.

 When the sun rose a few minutes later, she added the most amazing gold color to the whole thing.

Sometimes, nature is just amazingly beautiful.
And a sneek peek for my next quilting project. I'm dabbling in free motion quilting once again, and was maybe two thirth through the quilting, when I ran out of thread. I thought 300m would be plenty.
Obviously I was wrong.

Socks (I'm sure you missed them ...)

Within the last three weeks I finished three pairs of socks.
First pair was the longest in the making (I started them in July). No idea why it took so long, only that other projects always seemed to get in the way.
The pattern is Dazzler (freebee pattern) and they are knitted in Wollmeise, color 'Wasserratz' (I love that color!!!)

 Second pair went to my mom for X-mas. Pattern: Chutes-N-Ladders (another freebee) in Hot Socks from Gruendle. One leg pooled pretty cool, the other refused to pool. Ah, well.

Finally, finished just yesterday, stinos ('STInk-NOrmale Socken') following my standard sock pattern in Superba Bambus by Rico. I'm happy I managed to match the two socks almost perfectly.

Happy New Year (2014)

To all a Happy New Year!
A couple of friends and I went to Runkel near Limburg and had lots of food, a good movie and fun.

At midnight the fireworks started.

To all health, happiness and may all your wishes come true.

Swans

The swans are finished. Well, at least the top is finished ...

The pattern is from from 'Burda Patchwork - Quilts & Applizieren Sommer 2013'. The swans are paper pieced, while the water and the rest is all free form patchwork.

In order to make the wall hanging a  little smaller than the original design, I took out some of the water, moving the swans closer together and taking out some stuff on the top and bottom as well. It still comes out almost at 100 x 100 cm (original is about 20cm bigger)

I used up a ton of my blue scraps for this.

Some detail of the left swan's head:

This and That

I got a new pillow for my sofa. I saw a picture of one like this on a blog and reverse engineered the cable pattern.

Yesterday I made some last minute x-mas presents: strawberry-cranberry jam (from strawberries I froze in June and fresh cranberries - it's very yummy)

For the entree at Christmas day's dinner I prepared a terrine with rabbit (we used to make this in my familie many, many years ago, and luckily we managed to dig up the recipe once again. It smells great)

 My swans are making progress, though I haven't had much time to work on them lately, being busy with about a million other things to finish before christmas.

Christmas Cookies 2013

This year I told anybody who asked I wouldn't make any Christmas cookies. Last year I made more than 4 1/5 kilos and even though they were very nice, this was really over the top.
Hence my decision not to make any.
But then I came across this adorable little cookie stamp and as I had to buy it, I also had to make cookies with it.

I used the recipe for Heidesand for this (one of my all time favoriete recipes) and am very pleased how they turned out. They look super cute, have a nice, crispy texture and taste sweet and buttery.

Last week my mom asked if I could get some marzipan as their store had run out. I bought more than I thought she might need and took the rest home with me and made Bethmännchen (a speciality from around Frankfurt)

 So much for not making any cookies this year ...

Design Wall

Yeah, I'm going all fancy with my quilting. Not only has it taken over the spare room / guest room in my apartment, no, I now also have a design wall.
And I have to say, this is very useful for the whole quilting process.
Case in point, a quilt, which would have driven my mad if I hadn't had the wall (which is just two boards of styropor glued together on one side and then covered with white fabric)
Thanks to the wall, I managed to catch a couple of mistakes before they would have been a real problem. I'm sure I've made much less mistakes to begin with.

 The current project is a paper pieced pair of swans from 'Burda Patchwork - Quilts & Applizieren Sommer 2013'.
So far, there's only the left swan. But the wall helps with keeping track (and can be used to store some of the scrap stripes I'm using)