Off to the South for the Weekend

In about twelve hours I’ll be at Lilibeth’s house after a journey by train together with Jules and maybe a little sightseeing tour – I just don’t know where.

We’ve got an awfully stuffed program (it will be splendid, though) including museums, photo sessions, crafts, a picnic and long walks. Oh, and we’ll meet Noctua, too, an event I’m really looking forward to!

I would have loved to travel with my two old cardboard suitcases as my luggage, but I had to pack so many things that they simply were not the most sensible choice (my backpack is way easier to carry, too). Maybe for another journey.

Sadly I won’t manage to finish two sewing projects of mine before I’ll leave. But maybe I can convince Jules to another photo shoot when we come back and he’s visiting his prince charming here in Marburg next time.

Things I packed as I considered them essential for this journey of four days (of course I stuffed in some clothing and everyday needs, too):

• Hare: My stuffed animal of choice.
• Nightgown: Lilibeth made it for me as a birthday present last year, and we don’t have decent photos yet! Besides, I need something to sleep in.
• Secret Sewing Project: To be revealed when I’m home again.
• Pencils and drawing paper: Because I made up my mind to draw more.
• Toothbrush: Why, it’s essential.
• Old-fashioned badminton bats: To play a very lady-like game of badminton now and then.
• Laptop: To pre-write some posts.

So good-bye now, no posts until Sunday.

I hope you’ll all have a splendid weekend!

Dear Blogs

I’ve been tagged! Teli named me as one of her dearest blogs and I feel really honoured (the next part will be in german as it is a german award).

Hier die Regeln:
- Erstelle einen Post, indem du das Liebster-Blog-Bild postest; die Anleitung reinkopierst (= der Text den du gerade liest).
- Außerdem solltest du zum Blog der Person verlinken, die dir den Award verliehen hat; sie per Kommentar in ihrem Blog informieren, dass du den Award annimmst; ihr den Link deines Award Posts da lassen.
-Danach überlegst du dir 3- 5 Lieblingsblogs, die du ebenfalls in deinem Post verlinkst; die Besitzer jeweils per Kommentar-Funktion informierst, dass sie getaggt wurden und hier ebenfalls den Link des Posts angibst, in dem die Erklärung steht.
Liebe Bloggerinnen:
Das Ziel, dieser Aktion ist, dass wir unbekannte, gute Blogs an’s Licht bringen, deswegen würde ich Euch bitten keine Blogs zu Posten, die ohnehin schon 3000 Leser haben, sondern talentierte Anfänger & Leute, die zwar schon ne Weile bloggen, aber immer noch nicht so bekannt sind.

Ich konnte keine drei deutschen Blogs finden, und den Award an Blogger weiterzugeben, die kein Deutsch verstehen, wäre eher sinnlos. Daher nur zwei, und zwar (jetzt wieder auf englisch):

* * *

My dearest blogs in the category “german writers” are…

Lilibeth with her blog Princess for a Day – Or the Rest of Your Life? who is not only a fellow Steampunk and Lolita but also my very dear pen friend. Her blog and writing style are so classic and sophisticated and she’s quite a real princess in her habits and manners. I admire her style and the way she keeps her own mind.

Jolly Rotten with her blog of the same name. Jolly is one of my favourite artists, her skills are admirable, not only in drawing and painting but also in sewing and knitting and sculpting and making little steampunk accessoires. I’d love to meet her in person one day and I hope she’ll make her way as a wonderful illustrator and comic artist!

So that’s it for now with my favourite blogs. Now, off for new adventures!

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Give-Away Results

I told you I hadn’t forgotten about the give-away, and that is absolutely true.

When I came back from my mother’s house where I went right when the give-away entry deadline was set, I indeed found some lines there from several kindred spirits who wanted to participate – three, to be exact.

I think I mentioned it before that this rate dampened my enthusiasm and self-esteem a little, but there was no point in being sad about it. I’d rather take it as a chance, and it gave me the opportunity for my final decision.

Which is: I’ll take all three.

Reason is that I couldn’t just decide which hat to pick, they all held a certain challenge for me! But to illustrate that I think it is the best thing to let you read the descriptions yourself (note: I translated two of them from German, so if one of the original authors isn’t okay with this, please tell me!):

Wolfskind

[...] A really dreamy exemplar! Not romantic but rather wildly moony, a hat that by design would not be worn by a human but maybe by someone from the “fair folk”,  a leprechaun, pixie, gnome or even a dryad. The colours probably be earthy which means brown, maybe darker green but also spots of other colour just to match the wee folks likings, whether  violet or bordeaux or what ever they like best at the moment.
The hat would never grow boring, one would always spot small details that had been “lost” there, whether faded writing or buttons that were found somewhere else. Maybe one of the creatures once got lost in a workshop and purloined a coppery shimmering piece of metal as it seemed to the creature like a real treasure although it’s only scrap to the humans.

I really could feel what Wolfskind meant by her description, and immediately my thoughts formed pictures of this hat. I simply had to do this, and if it was only for the challenge of the variety of possibilities!

Jules

A chocolatier top hat.
Spirally striped in mint and lemon.
At the hat band made of raspberry coloured silk taffeta and white tulle, looking like raspberry cream and sugar frosting, one can find polymer clay pralines and matching forks.
Everywhere on this top hat there is a shimmering and sparkling… Everywhere there’s  something new to discover, and everything is edible (or at least looks like it was)!
I want Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory on my head. ^^

Even though Jules will get a top hat anyway someday (he has this incredibly ice prince project at the moment, and the idea of making a hat for one of his costumes appealed to me in the very same second), I liked his idea so much that I took the challenge, too. Apart from that, the hat is (as far as I know) obviously meant for his Steampunk character Dorian Siskins who is in fact the eternal foe and rival of my yet-to-be-named “sweets, pies and fairy cakes” girl. Again, it’s a case of “I simply have to do this!”, at last because of the spiraling.

Lilibeth

A hat for the Peacock Queen

A hat for the Peacock Queen would have a black base. The adornment would consist of black cock’s plume gleaming in shades of iridescent green and peacock’s feathers.
In the front a filigree brass colored emblem would catch the eye. A hatband of dark green taffeta would be draped around it and fall down in two long ends at the back of the hat.

Lilibeth’s idea was totally different from the other two. Very classical and – in comparison – minimalistic, it is the total opposite of Jules’ and Wolfkind’s hats and every bit as sophisticated as my dear pen friend herself. And I know how hooked up she is with peacocks, at least since her splendid birthday party. Somehow I think this hat is the hardest challenge here as it is the most precisely described of the three. I’m thrilled of the thought what I can make of this setting!

You see, the decision wouldn’t have been easy if I had made one. So, the fact that I had only three participants gave me this chance – with at least four or five I would have been forced to pick a winner. But as it is, I’ve got three winners, which is somehow even better, I think.

Working on the hats will be grand, I know it. And you can be sure that I’ll keep you informed about the progress, as well!

So, off to be a mad hatter once again,

Yours truly

Hedgefairy

P.S.: The blogs of the three winners can be found here:

1. Wolfskind
2. Jules
3. Lilibeth

A Visit Southern

Well, as you could read from the Peacock Queen post, I visited Lilibeth last week. She lives near Heidelberg with her parents, her younger brother and her dog in a quiet village that’s  not too far from a Rhine island where we took a walk on Sunday.

Their house is full of self made clay things, dragons and gnomes, spheres and pyramids and they have a garden so tidy and neat that I’m sure I’ll never see such a thing so perfectly done again. The first notice I got about the garden was that I was offered lovely sweet cherry tomatoes when I stepped though the door. But one thing that is really impressive is the bed full of hibiscus plants, all fully abloom.

But I think the thing I liked most was the pond with a school of gold-fish and koi. They came to nibble at my fingers with their toothless mouths whenever I put my hand in the cool green water. And they’re so incredibly cute, too!

Lilibeth’s bedchamber lies right under the roof and is really lovely with a great ceiling fan lamp and a comfortable bed where I was kindly allowed to rest in, too, during my stay.

A wonderful habit of Lilibeth’s family is to have breakfast all together at the patio with fresh rolls and delicious cheese and cold meat from the Italian grocery.

The arbour/ veranda, completely covered in wine and grapes.

I arrived on Friday by train. There’s one that goes all the way from Marburg to Heidelberg in two hours that I took, and Lilibeth picked me up with her mother’s car at the station. We spent the rest of the day on the veranda where we had mozzarella-and-tomato salad for dinner and then went upstairs to watch Anne of Green Gables – The Sequel, but we didn’t even get through the first DVD. We planned to watch the rest on Saturday or Sunday, but it wasn’t to happen so I left the film at Lilibeth’s for her to watch. I know it by heart, anyway. ^^

Saturday went by with preparations for the party and the party itself and I found it quite admirable how much effort Lilibeth and her parents put into it. But it was worth it, definitely.

On sunday we took a short walk at Lilibeth’s kingdom – the Rhine island – together with Cedric the German Shepherd Dog. They had adorable wild pigs and I would have stayed at their enclosure much longer, but Cedric didn’t get along well with them.

Sadly we had not so much time as I had to catch a train but maybe there’ll be a sequel of this visit with more time to wander about and a little more sightseeing, too.

The Peacock Queen’s Masked Ball

Yesterday in the afternoon I returned from the more southern parts of the country where I visited Lilibeth for her birthday party, which was simply splendid!

I arrived at Heidelberg central railway station in the late afternoon on Friday to help a little with the preparations as the party was to be celebrated on Saturday evening. Lilibeth was the sweetest host ever with just the theme being great: A Masked Midsummer Night’s Dream, inspired – if I recall it right – by Were the World Mine a little.

On Saturday night her garden was decorated in the fanciest way with balloons, garlands of light and sheer shimmering fabrics everywhere, the small stream at the pond with the goldfish and koi murmuring and torches lighting the way though a red curtain into the fairy realm. Dinner was also fantastic – colourful pasta and rice with wild salmon, fluff pastry in green and red and fresh, exotic fruit suiting to feed an elven king.

Everyone exerted themselves for the costumes and it was a splendid sight to view all those well-dressed people wearing the great masks Lilibeth made before.

My mask was the only black one, but as a kind of Puck the all black costume was well-chosen – I loved playing the fairy butler.

As for the title I’ve got to show you a picture of Lilibeth’s costume which was simply awesome:

(And I think everyone knows now that I love to play with Photoshop…)

She also did a great tribal dance – it’s amazing how a body can move – for her guests, even including fire.

Improvised toilet paper torch. It worked really good, though.

I also met some other fairies from the Natron & Soda community at the party. Ladies and gentleman, it was a great pleasure!

From left to right: Vampire Gherkin (aka. knaxgurke), Gruftmuffel, me and Djendja (aren't his horns great?)

I had to add some sort of title to this, it looked too much like a comic front page.

As you can see, my outfit wasn’t to flattering for my legs, but I still love that dress, anyway. The picture above was taken through dinner were I shared a table with some of Lilibeth’s tribal dancing and laboratory colleagues.

Once again the fairy flock, with our beloved queen.

The party continued deep into the night with dancing around the burning torches, the tinkling of fairy jewellery and jolly conversations, but afterwards we fell into bed like dead. I guess that’s just like to case of the dancing princess with the worn out shoes. ^^

There were more masks than guests on the party, so Lilibeth gave me some for Jules and the Scoundrel (he mentioned which of the masks he liked best, before, when I showed them to him at Natron & Soda), too (they were awfully happy, thank you, darling!):

One for Jules...

... And one for the Scoundrel.

Jules and I even decided to use the masks as decoration items for the Steampunk con! But now there’s everything told about the party and I’ll surely tell you about the rest of my journey to south in another post.

Bloomers and Bites

Neck bites, to be precise.

Yesterday I finished sewing my first pair of bloomers.

I made them mainly for the Steampunk LARP that’s finally coming up in a month, but also to proceed a little bit with my attempts with Lolita. I’m awfully nervous about the con and today I’ll start sewing my real dress.

The bites are from an aspiring young opera singer named Mona, leading Lady of A Vampyre Story. That’s a point-and-click adventure concentrating on Mona’s try to escape the castle she’s hold captive in by an awful, stupid Vampire named Shrowdy. She’s accompanied by a bat named Froderick who’s never too tired to give a comment.

Mona and Froderick in the castle kitchen together with Pyewacket the Cat.

The design is really great. I’ve got to admit that this is the first thing I look for at a new game, just followed by the story. Presumeably that’s the reason why I love point-and-click so much. At some parts the game is really tricky, but it’s fun, anyway.

Tomorrow I’m going to visit Lilibeth! I’m incredibly excited, not only because I get to see her again but also ’cause he’s going to have her birthday party on Saturday. Her theme – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – will be opulent, great and lovely at the same time and you can bet that I’m going to take some pictures.

So, have a lovely time! I’m going to bed now, there is a huge load of work waiting for me tomorrow due to the con and I didn’t any packing either for my trip to Lilibeth.

Good night!

Tagged Again

This time by the lovely Lilibeth.

1.What is your favourite flower? The wild rose. I love the scent, the colour, the fruit
2. What is the first thing you get rid of when you come home? Probably my backpack.
3. Have you ever read a book more than twice? How often exactly? Oh. I don’t know anymore, but there are books I’ve read about four to six times. Life on Seacrow Island is one of them.
4. If movies were real in which you would like to take part in? Maybe an adaption of a Jane Austen novel or Anne of Green Gables… or a historical inspired film with lavish costumes.
5. Do you have anything like a talisman you always keep with you? I guess the amber that looks like a honeydrop around my neck counts…
6. What is the silliest purchase you ever made? Oh, I really don’t know. Maybe that jacket that I wanted to alter later (which I didn’t, obviously). At least it was on sale. ^^
7. What is your favourite style/music of/for  dancing? That’s a hard one. I like dancing as a whole, so it’s pretty much every music I can dance to.
8. What is your favourite gateau? Marble cake doesn’t really count, does it? I think it would be something with amounts of chocolate and several soft, spongy layers.

This time I won’t tag anybody else. I think there’s been enough tagging lately here.

Tagged by Tilliel

Yes, I’m pretty hooked up with those tagging questions lately, but anyway. Tilliel allowed me to be tagged, so here we go:

1. Do you play an instrument? Yes. My father is a musician, so it was quite natural for me to learn to play an instrument. I decided to go for the piano after my grandmother had already taught me to play the recorder and kept it for four years. Then I went to a grammar school with a specialisation on fine arts where we had to learn an instrument each, and I took up the concert flute. I had lessons for six years until I left that school. Plus, I’m an autodidact with the accordion.
2. Gramophone record, CD or MP3? Gramophone record, of course. ^^
3. Who is your childhood hero? Pippi Longstocking, Grace O’Malley, Klaus Störtebeker and Caoilte Longfoot from the Irish fairy tale of the same name.
4. Are you able to cook or bake? Yes, quite well (I’ve been told), but not so much during the last months as the Scoundrel and I have an agreement that he’s more a spring and summer’s and I’m an autumn and winter’s cook, so it will be my turn when the leaves turn red.
5. What was your childhood dream job? Knight or tightrope walker, later archaeologist or book author.
6. Your favourite book? Life on Seacrow Island by Astrid Lindgren.
7. Are you doing sports? Yes, both martial arts, both quite unknown outside France: Canne de Combat and Savate.
8. Have you got any pets? No, but when I was younger I had a rabbit, black and white, with a mane like Beethoven and four wonderful guinea pigs. They all hat quite unique characters and got very old for their species. Now Bambi has two rabbits, Kajal and Abigail, who are really cute, too.

If I got this right I’ve got to come up with eight questions by myself and tag several people… right?

Here are the questions:

1. What’s your favourite fairy tale?
2. Have you ever been on stage? Theatrical or musical?
3. If you could have choosen your own first name, what would it be?
4. Water, fire, earth, air: In which order are they in your person, most present first?
5. What’s your favourite drink in this hot summer?
6. What’s your favourite ice cream flavour?
7. Three favourite words (any language)?
8. If you found a treasure chest, what would it contain?

And I’ll tag…

…Lilibeth from Princess for a Day

…Jules from Crown Flower’s Garden

…waldspinn from Haselhexenhaus and

…La Forcenée

…Luna (I don’t know your blog URL anymore but I trust that you’ll read this)

(My answers to my own questions can be found in the first comment, by the way. ^^)

Nymphean Blood Fairy

What type of Fae are you?
(Hey! That’s a request to take the quiz and comment! ;))

Well, seems to fit, at least a little bit. I stumbled across it on Lilibeth’s blog.

Farina and Riversides

As I didn’t tell you yet about the Sunday of Lilibeth’s visit, here it comes: Part II.

It was really hot outside, so after a nice breakfast in my room we decided to go to the river Lahn where I wanted to show Lilibeth some of my favourite places, anyway. There’s a wooden way leading over sandstone fragments near a meadow to enchanted places down at the river, where the tides play with the boulders and stones accompanied by the noise of the nearby weir.

I’m a kind of tomboy, I fear, so it was not avoidable for me to take off my shoes and wade into the river to collect stones and shells and feel the flow while my toes entangled in the hydrophyte grass under my feet.

Lilibeth stayed on save land and kindly took some photos. ^^

Oh, and yes, the hem of my skirt got wet. What a surprise. ;)

On our way back I collected some elder blossoms and got myself covered in farina all over but what’s this small sacrifice for good tea?

Well, soon after that (but not before I’d made a lasagna for lunch) Lilibeth left, not without the promise that I would return the visit next month. I’m really looking forward to it!