Three Years

Wow. My third Hedgefairy anniversary!

I think of a blog as a very interesting project. Not only can I use it to show the world who I am – or who I’d like to be -, but also is it fascinating how it changes and evolves over the years, together with its writer. Sometimes I go back to my first posts from when I was 19 and wonder if I have changed notably for everyone else, too. As we rarely see change when we’re dealing with the changing person or project every day after a while…

As for the stats I’ve got roughly a 40 views average a day, in my first year it was only 6! My overall views for this year, however short it might be are about double of the overall views of my whole first year, 2009!
Which can only mean one thing:
There are actually people who are interested in what I write. Yay!

So: Thank you, all of you, my dear readers, for three years of Teaparties & Fairytales. May it grow during the next twelve months even more, and may you still be reading it when the title announces the next anniversary.

THANK YOU.

P.S.: AND this is my 401st post! So many reasonst for a giveaway… so you better watch out!

Postscriptum, a.k.a. Giveaway

If you liked the illustrations of the “Baby it’s cold outside” post yesterday, rejoice!, as I’m giving them away!

The set consists of six inked and coloured drawings, 12×10 cm, aquarelle colours on watercolour board in natural white, 220 g/m². So much for the technical details.

All pictures are drawn by me, signed and took an overall four hours to complete (I guess, maybe more. I didn’t look at the watch much during the progress). Each one shows a coat of arms matching one of these themes: baking, reading, house-cleaning, tea, warm clothing, bathing. The cleaning one is my personal favourite. ^^

So if you’d like to win this giveaway, just post in the comment’s section of this post until next Sunday, December 11th 2011. I’ll then draw a winner from a hat, either real-life or electronically. ^^
For a second lot, just mention the giveaway on your blog, link back to it and tell me in the comment’s section so that I won’t overlook it by any chance.

Good luck!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Today will be full of work, but that’s okay. I’m not only sewing my first apron today but also making some steampunky combs and going through the copies for my assignment. Oh, and there’s a drawer (Irish tarraiceán) in the castle’s kitchen that has to be finally repaired (who says that a princess can’t be practical?).

Bambi and the Satyr are both abroad today and so it is a little bit quiet around here. Maybe I’ll bake some muffins later, to fill the emptiness… ;)

Surprisingly, baking has always been something to earth me. When I’m flying off the handle, baking helps. I thought about a new category for the blog, Teaparty, to write more about the castle kitchen and its production.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit,

Bonnie (today in green)

What I did during the last two Weeks

Remember that I told you about the lucky bag swap? The parcel arrived yesterday, only one day after I took it to the post office. SleepingTime, the recipient, liked it and so I think I’ve got the permission to finally post some pictures here.

The Lucky Bag itself.

I took stars as a theme, nautical ones, to be specific. Not only do I like this motif very much but also SleepingTime mentioned her love for stars of every kind and fashion in her swap profile.

Card and sweets.

I love to follow a certain continuity with colours, symbols and writings. The sweets are raspberry sherbert bonbons called chuckle pellets and match the red I used for the flowers and some of the content.

Buttons.

These were the first things I made for this swap when I was still very weak and bedbound. SleepingTime wrote that she liked stripes and the colours red and turquoise. We are a crafts forum after all, so I decided to draw needle and thread, too.

Bookmark.

The needle-and-thread theme again, this time with the same flowers as on the card and scissors. And stars, of course.

The bag was the “large” thing I made for the swap. Strangely the colour matches SleepingTime’s medieval dress nearly exactly, at least this is what she told me, and I didn’t even know about this dress!

I really like how the embroidery turned out. The yellow parts are three layers of different yarns each and the turquoise tendrils are not only striped with the lightest yellow bead yarn but also decked with glass beads.

The design is meant to be quite medieval inspired but I think I’ve inserted quite a lot of my own hedgefairy style.

I used the same thread for the bookmark, also with these glass beads sewn around. The embroidered stars are simple pentagrams with stitches at the crossings of the lines in a slightly darker yellow.

Finally, the last project for the lucky bag: A leather bracelet and matching earrings again with nautical stars, twines, flowers and read thread. I kept the pattern I made for the wristband so I will be able to make one of these for myself. The leather is quite thick and soft at the same time and was very easy to pyrography as soon as the soldering iron was hot enough.

I hope that SleepingTime will take pleasure in these things for a long time and am really glad that she likes them.

I should really post more about crafts here.

Grim(m) Shirts and Paper Subjects

Today I went to see my tutor for Celtic Studies to discuss the subject for my assignment. It will be Crossing Cultures in the Welsh Marches during the Middle Ages which is not the exact title (that’s not set yet) but at least the matter. I also got an idea what to write for my bachelor degree, but that’s not really ripe for decision by now as I still have five semesters to go until then.

I also came up with a T-shirt design for myself when I was standing in the bathroom, brushing my teeth. It is a pretty known fact that I love fairytales and the P&P roleplay Grimm.

It features several themes from Grimm’s Fairy Tales and a matching writing. I’m not too sure about the Rotten King thing yet, maybe I’ll put it on the back, maybe not. I did the colouring with my pad and found that working with the computer at this point can be indeed great fun. I’m not very good at digital colouring (this page above is my third try at all), but for scribbles it’s quite ideal. The page is not the design itself, by the way, more of a brainstorming for the T-shirt.

The present for Bambi’s birthday in March is progressing quite well, but I can’t show it yet in case that he unexpectedly stumbles by here… I can only tell that it is related to a computer game of which’s soundtrack I’m rather annoyed by now although I really liked it in the beginning.
On Wednesday there will be a handicraft bee here at the little white house in the green lane and hopefully I’ll finally learn crochet. I’ll report about that on Thursday.

I should really be doing something for my Latin certificate right now as I can’t participate in the compact course due to my illness. I hardly could walk to university (that’s about ten minutes) and stay there that long, how should I bear a 8 to 1 seminar, then, for three weeks? Fortunately I’ve got a good friend who’s taking the course, too and keeps me informed. Well, plus six years of Latin lessons can’t be lost labour, there’s still lots of that knowledge somewhere in my head.

But now I’ll be heading of to our department store for some yellow felt, some long sleeves and a plain T-shirt.

So long!

The Secret of Kells

Once in a fortnight, on Wednesday, I visit an extracurricular study group called Celt’s Reception. The term used by the students is mostly Trash Movies concerning Celts, which is quite as true, but they wouldn’t have get a room for the group with that name.

The tower of Kells Abbey

By now, we’ve had:

1. Vercingetorix aka. Druids. Christopher Lambert with the most ridiculous hair and mustache ever and Teutons with hair colours ranging from bright red to pink.
2. King Arthur. I didn’t like Keira Knightley before and the film didn’t make it any better. Goth, the picture was a shame, you could even see the modern screws that held the swords together. And by the way, there weren’t any Romans in Britain at this time, anymore. Good laughs, anyway.
3. The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg. Celtic Power Rangers. Do I need to say more?
4. Roar. Heath Ledger mayherestinpeace as a celtic prince with a dead-at-the-end-of-the-pilot-episode girlfriend with modern-day gowan nightgowns. Well, at least the protagonist looked quite good.
5. Hellboy – The Golden Army. Old Irish-speaking half-undead 1000 year old elf nobility with the greatest spear fighting skills I’ve ever seen, steampunky battlefields, Abe Sapien, books, great costumes, Hellboy’s girlfriend being way less annoying than in part one and toothfairies. Oh, and did I mention that the elves spoke quite good Old Irish? No trash at all, just great entertainment.
6. Excalibur. Did you ever want to see Patrick Stewart in tights again (after Men in Tights)? Or a glowing-like-it-had-been-thrown-into-radioactive-waste sword? Then you could like this film. Well, it’s finest 80s trash. And very funny.

It may seem that those films except of Hellboy 2 were pretty horrible, and indeed, they were, but watching them is quite fun and some of us were rolling on the floor, especially during the episodes of Mystic Knights.

Yesterday we had the most beautifully made 2D animation film EVER. Brendan and the Secret of Kells is a story of freedom of mind, imagination, good books and white cats. The design, with more than a hint of the illustrations of the Book of Kells and medieval painting in general (lancet arches in the trees!), reminded me somewhat of the art of Rima from The Hermitage. The picture language in general is stunning and I think I’ve never seen something comparably expressive before in an animated picture! The lines are indeed quite simple and so are the figures, too, but this just means that the illustrators could focus more on the backgrounds and the colours that are stunning. And the details! There are even snowflakes in the shape of Celtic crosses and knots!

Aisling and Pangur

The white cat comes from an Old Irish poem of which the first lines are as following:

Meisse ocus Pangur Bán
cechtar nathar fria saindán
bíth a menma-som fri seilgg
mu menmae céin im saincheirdd

[I by myself and Pangur the White
Each of us with his own art concerned
His spirit usually aimed on hunting
My own one on my own special craft.]
(This translation might be a little bit free and it doesn’t rhyme, sadly.)

As I mentioned before, the artwork is lovely, the soundtrack catchy and touching and the story cute and heartwarming. I can just recommend this film to everyone who is interested in the Book of Kells, Celtic design, good stories, the wee folk, monasteries and scriptoriums, the art of writing and illustration and those who just love white cats.

This is the official website of the film where you can also hear one of the songs from the soundtrack as background music.

So, if you get the chance to watch it (it didn’t air in Germany at all, for instance), do so! It’s great, beautiful, delightful, a little bit scary when it comes to the Vikings, cute, dreamy and in every point a good movie.