Winter Impressions

I'm enjoying the wonderful Winterwonderland here in Germany and wanted to share with you :-)

Hach... herrliches Winterwetter! Ich liebe es!

Back again... and sooo many ideas for crafting...

Hey there!

Did you have a nice summer? Or are you looking forward to the upcoming spring?

I've just arrived from a wonderful trip to Spain, where the main part of my family is based.
We had a great time and fantastic late-summer weather. Here are some impressions:

Da bin ich wieder! 

Hattet Ihr einen schönen Sommer? 

Mein (Spät-)Sommerurlaub ist gerade vorbei und der herbstliche Alltag in Deutschland hat mich schnell wieder eingeholt. 

Wir haben ein paar wundervolle Wochen in Spanien bei meiner Familie verbracht. Hier ein paar Bilder aus dem schönen Galicien im nordwesten Spaniens:

And as always I planned to craft some nice little things while being on vacation and again those ideas entered the long and annoying list of unfinished projects. Do you have such a frustrating list, too? 
Sometimes I think that it's becoming longer and longer while the projects that I accomplish are really rare lately  ( I would say for 1 1/2 years now... wait a moment, when was little Lucas born? ... ;-) )

Usually I proudly present the results of the creative process, but today (and, to tell you the truth, because I have nothing to share with you yet, but wanted to connect with you again...) I will show you some of the unfinished work that is haunting me:

In Spain I had a really really nice sewing place, didn't I? My mother even has a machine that I could use:

Wie immer habe ich mir für die Urlaubszeit einige Projekte vorgenommen und obwohl ich einen wirklich schönen Nähplatz hatte, habe ich die Kindergartentasche, die ich nähen wollte, nicht fertig bekommen. Ich habe nur das Schnittmuster zusammen geklebt und den Stoff zugeschnitten. Ärgerlich bei begrenztem Gepäck. Da hätte ich statt des Stoffes doch besser noch zwei Blusen eingepackt.

And this is what I wanted to sew: a nice cute kindergarden bag. But all I did was to cut and glue together the pattern and cut the fabric (the cute fabric, by the way):

This summer I started a furniture-makeover. This is a filing cabinet which would be nice for some crafting devices. So I started polishing but never got to paint it. Now it's waiting in the basement to be finished. But it's not waiting all alone... it has the nice company of two dressers which I saved from the garbage truck and which are waiting for a makeover, too. 

Und so geht es mir immer wieder. Kennt Ihr das auch? Diese ellenlangen Listen mit unvollendeten Projekten? Ich zeige Euch mal eine kleine Auswahl meiner "geparkten" Projekte.(vor allem, weil ich nix habe, was ich Euch zeigen kann, aber Euch nach der langen Zeit mal wieder ein paar Zeilen schreiben wollte.) 

Diesen Sommer habe ich begonnen ein paar Möbel abzuschleifen. Darunter auch dieser schöne Aktenschrank. Leider bin ich vor dem Urlaub nicht mehr dazu gekommen, ihn neu zu lackieren. Jetzt steht er im Werkzeugraum und wartet auf sein weiteres Schicksal. Aber nicht allein! Er ist in Gesellschaft zweier alter Kommoden, die ich vor dem Sperrmüll retten konnte... Das werden zwei schöne Stücke, wenn sie mal fertig sind :-)

Another never ending project is our staircase. Months ago... I think it was in march (!) and in an attack of blind activism I started to draw picture frames on the wall with a little pencil. My plan was to paint fake frames on the wall to make sort of a gallery where I could show family portraits or other fotos, images and paintings that I like. But half a year later my staircase still looks like a kid scribbled colouring book!

Ein weiteres Projekt ist unser Flur. Im März (!) habe ich in einem Anfall von blindem Aktionismus überall Bilderrahmen an die Wand gekritzelt und angefangen sie mit Farbe auszumalen. Es soll eine schöne Galerie mit Bildern, Fotos und Postkarten werden... Tja...wenn's fertig ist, aber seit sechs Monaten sieht das Ganze so aus:

And what about this half-finished Mucha painting which I began years ago?

Und wie findet Ihr dieses Mucha-Bild? Ich weiß gar nicht mehr vor wie vielen Jahren ich begonnen habe, daran zu arbeiten. Nachdem es monatelang in irgendeiner dunklen Ecken ein trauriges Dasein fristete, habe ich es trotzig in den Flur gehängt und dort wartet es jetzt auf bessere Zeiten...

Finally I ended up hanging it in the hall. Waiting for better crafting times to come, ...

And do you remember the sneak-peek from the last post? The little dresser? I worked on it, yes. But it is still unfinished and will need many more hours of work. (Do you get an idea of what it will be, by the way?)

Und erinnert Ihr Euch an das kleine Schränkchen vom letzen Post? Ich habe zwar schon einige Stunden Arbeit investiert, aber ich bin immernoch nicht fertig. Könnt Ihr schon erahnen, was es wird?

 

 

But you know, one day.... one day I will accomplish all those projects !!! Yes, I will! And all those sewing ideas I have in mind, too. Some day my huge fabric pile will make sense. I will sew day and night until every little peace of fabric is used up. And then... after all the sewing and crafting... I would have freedom and peace and I would have nothing else to do and... I would feel an almost forgotten feeling: boredom... oh wait,... no,... that's not good... I better go and buy some more fabric... ah... and there is a flea market going on right now... perhaps I'll find something nice to restore...

No! Boredem would be the worst thing ever... I prefer the annoying Unfinished-Projects-List!!!

Aber eines Tages... ja... eines schönen Tages werde ich sie alle vollenden! Ja!... Ich werde einfach meine komplette Liste abarbeiten!... Und die vielen Näh-Ideen umsetzen! Dann macht auch endlich mein riesiger Stoffvorrat Sinn. Ich werde einfach tagelang nähen, hämmern, schleifen, streichen, sägen, sticken... Und dann ist die Liste Geschichte! Jawohl! ... Und dann bin ich frei... endlich frei und könnte mich mal wieder so richtig... oh... moment mal... ich würde mich mal wieder so richtig... langweilen?... Och nööö,... Langeweile ist blöd. Um dem vorzubeugen geh ich mal lieber schnell noch ein bisschen Stoff kaufen, da gab's neulich so 'nen schönen... da kann ich mir mal, wenn ich Zeit hab, ne Tasche oder so draus nähen... Und 'n Flohmarkt is hier heute auch... Vielleicht mach ich ja ein Schnäppchen! Die haben da manchmal so herrliche alte Möbel... die müsste man nur ein bisschen aufarbeiten...

Denn Langeweile geht gar nicht! ... Dann lieber 'ne ellenlange Liste mit unvollendeten Projekten!

Back again!

Ok... help me out... when did I write the last post again? What? Are you kidding me? In august? ... 1,2....3 months??? No way! ... What did I do all this time?

hmmm, let me think about it...

At first we went on a large summer vacation to Spain and presented little Lucas to his great-grandparents and to a huge amount of relatives and showed him the beautiful forests, the beaches, the sea... This project took us almost four weeks.








But wow... this seems an eternity away. What did I do after that? Oh... yes, I remember. When we came back there was a lot of work waiting for us, all above for my husband who had to travel a lot. So I was two weeks alone with the baby and was busy mastering our daily live.

And in between I was really lazy and didn't create much. I made a wedding present for friends, but forgot to make a foto of it...*facepalm*
But some days ago I made some autumn-decorations which I hope to show you soon.

But now that the days are short, the weather becomes worse (although we have a wonderful autumn with 20°C at the moment) and I'm joining a new sewing class on monday I hope to get some things done.

So... I'm looking forward to share my projects with you again and would love to have some feedback, ideas, inspiration, critics or just some chats with you guys.

I'm looking forward to a crafty autumn or rather winter ;-)

Idyllic Austria!

Hey there!

Given that my husband had to go to Graz/Austria due to his work, we decided to make a little family trip out of it and found a really picturesque austrian town, which was the european capital of culture in 2003 and whose historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
What is really fascinating here is the fact that you can find classical arquitecture of the habsburgian era next to vanguard buildings.

I hope you get some impressions from this pictures:

Practicing an ancestral ritual

I don't know if I did mention that although I was born and raised in Germany my family is from Spain, better to say an almost unknown part of it: Galicia. Some of you might know it because of its Road to Santiago. And this little spanish region calls itself the land of witches (terra de meigas). Here it is:





You wanna know why they call it like this? Well, Galicia has celtic roots (the national instruments are not castanets but bagpipes!). Many people believe in witches, evil eye, magic - short to say, mysticism is still alive and especially the power of nature is a basic element of this believes.
As the days around Midsummer are the longest of the year where nature achieves its maximum strength the galicians have developed many rituals to acquire this special force of nature.
At St. John's Eve (June 23) they collect medicinal and aromatic plants, but also such that repell the evil like witches, deseases, maledictions etc., put them into water (at the best water from seven different fountains) and let it stay all night outside (in the moonlight). The next morning they wash themselves with this magical water for protection during the whole year and because of its great medicinal properties. Then the plants are dried and hung up in the house to protect it from tempests.
There are also traditional bonfires and even a special punch - all to purify and protect oneself from evil.
So... I know those rituals from my holidays to Spain and I really love this mystic atmosphere. And as an ethnologist that I am I love to observe this rituals. And I find one of them especially beautiful: I love to collect those plants and to put it into a bucket of water. So I decided to try my best to find all those plants here in Germany. There are many, many plants and I found most of them on a walk this afternoon: St. John wort (of course ;-), roses, ferns, walnut leaves, mallows, chamomile, common mullein, common yarrow, ribwort, elder, blackberry leaves, ... And in my garden I found the other ones (the more mediterranean): rosemary, thyme, bay leaves, lavender, mint, oregano, rue, verbena, catnip, foxglove, lemon leaves and more roses.
I'm really proud, you guys! This are almost all plants they collect in our galician village (you got to know that each region has its special plants but all agree in the basics). And you can't imagine how good it smells... I put the bucket outside and tomorrow I will wash my face with the filtered water. It will be like the best natural fragrance ever. :-) And look how nice it looks. I love it:



And for those of you that have this debility for ethnological contents like me, I'll post some more pictures of the St. John's night. But at first the Wikipedia passage (I think it gives a great overview):

"Midsummer tradition is also especially strong in northern areas of the country, such as Galicia, where one can easily identify the rituals that reveal the pagan beliefs widespread throughout Europe in Neolithic times. These beliefs pivot on three basic ideas: the importance of medicinal plants, especially in relation to health, youth and beauty; the protective character of fire to ward men off evil spirits and witches and, finally, the purifying, miraculous effects of water. What follows is a summary of Galician traditions surrounding St. John's festival in relation to these three elements.

• Medicinal plants: Traditionally, women collect several species of plants on St. John's eve. These vary from area to area, but mostly include fennel, different species of fern, rue (herb of grace, ruta graveolens), rosemary, dog rose(rosa canina), lemon verbena, St John's wort (hypericum perforatum), mallows (malva sylvestris), laburnum, foxgloves (digitalis purpurea) and elder flowers. In some areas, these are arranged in a bunch and hung in doorways. In most others, they are dipped in a vessel with water and left outside exposed to the dew of night until the following morning (o dia de San Xoan -St. John's day), when people use the resulting flower water to wash their faces.

• Water: Tradition holds it that the medicinal plants mentioned above are most effective when dipped in water collected from seven different springs. Also, on some beaches, it was traditional for women who wanted to be fertile to bathe in the sea until they were washed by 9 waves.

• Fire: Bonfires are lit, usually around midnight both on beaches and inland, so much so that one usually cannot tell the smoke from the mist common in this Atlantic corner of Iberia at this time of the year, and it smells burnt everywhere. Occasionally, a dummy is placed at the top, representing a witch or the devil. Young and all gather around them and feast mostly on pilchards, potatoes boiled in their skins and maize bread. When it is relatively safe to jump over the bonfire, it is done three times (although it could also be nine or any odd number) for good luck at the cry of “meigas fora” (witches off!).It is also common to drink Queimada, a beverage resulting from setting alight Galician grappa mixed with sugar, coffee beans and pieces of fruit, which is prepared while chanting an incantation against evil spirits."

And here are the pics:

A big bonfire in the city:


Its dummy:


The Queimada-punch:



And a bagpipe band: