Knitted and Sewn

I’ve been rather productive yesterday.

First, I finally finished a pretty mori-able loop scarf I had on my to-do list for ages (or at least one year).

The wool was something my bother bought at least ten years ago, it’s some kind of wool/ acrylic blend, but rather scratchy for the latter. I don’t mind, it’s definitely a piece that will go over my collars, not under.

I also finished a project that I startet two weeks ago, but couldn’t really do earlier due to space problems (in terms of “working space”). It’s a bag for Scoundrel’s boxing gloves as his old one was torn after a year of use.

I used one of his discarded cargo pants as fabric and some leather I had in stock.

And I finally got to try the fabric crayons I bought a while ago.

I also used them for the “label”, my usual ones and the rose hip stencils seemed a little to soft and feminine for a Scoundrel’s bag.

The button holes are hand-stitched and I also made the cords myself.

I decided to fully embrace the used look of the fabric and made the hems the drawstring cover. The lining is linen, by the way.

I’ve got so many more projects, I hope I’ll just stay as productive now!

Birthdays are great

I know this because Monday was my birthday, and as a good lifestyle blogger I’ll show you some pictures (and maybe even give you some notes on them. Oh well, of course I’ll comment them.).

Birthday Breakfast

This is the birthday present I got from Scoundrel, a book on fungi from 1919, including coloured illustration cards. I had been staring at this through the window of the used bookstore for month and not dared to go inside. When the book wasn’t there anymore one day, I got a little suspicious, but Scoundrel assured me quite believably that he had nothing to do with it… And now there it is!
He usually hides my presents somewhere in my room and I’ve got to find them. This time he only replaced one of the flower illustrations over my drawing table with one of the mushroom pictures, and I was incredibly happy when I found it!

I got two of the accompanying books for the Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Toni DiTerlizzi from my mother and grandparents, Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You and Care and Feeding of Sprites. They are wonderfully illustrated (the main reason why I wished for them as I haven’t read the actual books yet) and the latter even came with a large glow-in-the-dark poster.
The other book is the Steampunk Bible, a compendium that just came out this year. Nocker gave it to me wrapped in prints of a Steampunk Uncle Sam poster, and he also acted as a proxy for Constantine who couldn’t come as he’s in Ireland for the next Semester.

The felted flower hair clip is from Teli (self made, of course) who also made a blog post with better pictures about it. The wonderful leather pencil case with its contents is from my father and meant to accompany me for at least the rest of my university life, but probably longer.

The wrapping paper my father used.

In the evening Bertie turned up, too, and we went to the African place just around the corner. Sadly I took no pictures, but they placed us in the tent-like part of the restaurant which is lit by torch-like lamps and has a thick layer of fine sand instead of usual flooring. We’ve been there before, but we didn’t even know of this part! And of course, the food was great, too.

I’d actually say it was one of the best birthdays I ever had.

Closing picture from left to right: Bertie, Nocker, me, Scoundrel, Teli.

Cherry Blossoms

Dear readers!

I’m sorry about the recent lack of the weekly features! But I’ve been feverishly lying in bed last week, only able to sleep and read for more than five minutes at the screen made my head ache. But my cold is over now, I still have to hold back a little when it comes to training, but at least I’m able to move again!
But this week there will be a Porcelain Sunday and a Matching Monday (well, that’s next week), and I hope some other posts, too. I’ve been working on two swaps recently and the deadline is coming up, so I’ll be able to show you the results quite soon!

As for the cherry blossoms, the Scoundrel gave them to me and put them into my still-wet hair when he came to pick me up from training yesterday. Today it’s been one year since we’ve found each other, and I’m still glad that it was him who found me and nobody else.

Presents from the Scoundrel

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

Well, it was neither on the first day of Christmas nor was it a partridge in a pear tree, but an old cookie box filled with old things he knew I’d consider treasures and three volumes of a comic we both love.

When he came back to our fairy tale town after the holidays he had spent with his family, I had to leave the room for a few minutes after I gave him his presents, and he hid his gifts for me so that I had to search for them.

I love treasure hunts, and the first one was even found rather soon. It was an old, little bit rusty cookie tin box, adorned with pictures of medieval Nuremberg (where the original gingerbread that was delivered in this bin came from), a craftsman and his workshop and a pocket watch, as the craftsman was a clock maker.

My favourite picture from the gingerbread tin.

When I looked inside, I found pieces that other would call “trash”, but I consider it treasures. Old metal washers, a button, a small door bolt, a wrench, copper pipe parts and best of all, a heavy, massive old plummet.

I think I’ll fix the bolt at my old, crooked door to finally be able to shut it properly.

The second gift was way harder to find, as the three volumes of Elfquest perfectly blended in with my university files and folders.

Elfquest! How long it had been that I’d read about Cutter and Skywise, Leetah and Rayek and especially Nightfall and Redlance! Redlance the treeshaper is my Scoundrel’s favourite character and Nightfall, huntress and his mate, is mine. It was quite a coincidence when we discovered that we both loved this comic when we were younger and spent whole afternoons in our respective public libraries reading trough their adventures in the world of two moons and that even our favourite elves were one of the most unusual couples of the wolfriders (or “Manowar elves”, as Teli calls them).

Redlance and Nightfall.

I was really, really delighted, he couldn’t have thought of a better gift for me. And I’ll get a fourth volume of Elfquest for our anniversary. ^^

Presents for the Scoundrel

The things about the Scoundrel and presents are:

1. His birthday is two days before Christmas which means that all the ideas kind of have to come at the same time.
2. He has neither an affection for silly, useless things nor a “heraldic” animal or something like that. Giving is way easier with people like Bambi (who mostly gets something that is related to fawns or self-made game merchandise) or the Imp who is a great pianist and has a thing for zombies or Tristan who likes tigers…

So I decided he’d only get things that he’d find useful. Which is kind of difficult for me as someone who loves to make little things that don’t actually make any sense but look cute… This was also a problem that I had with his advent calendar as he doesn’t like sweets (just imagine!). I substituted them with spices as he’s not only very fond of rosemary and cinnamon and pepper, but also a very able amateur chef.

My first thoughts were too large to be realised until the end of December of 2010, so I had to find something smaller. I finally came up with a solution: While we were playing at the same RPG rounds, he hadn’t any dice and worst luck with those he borrowed from Bambi, the Elfin or me. So he got a pack of dice in every variation for his birthday and a dice bag, too.

 

I wanted the gift to still look personal, so I wrapped the dice in my favourite packing paper.

They look like old-fashioned sweets, and even the wire of the jar matches the paper and ribbon!

Of course there has to be a Happy Birthday card, too.

So much fo his birthday. For Christmas it was the dice bag. But to be honest, this was not enough for me. I had to think about something special, and so I came up with the “wrapping”.

Yes! It’s a D 20, made of felt, embroidery yarn and acrylic colour. The numbers are in the right positions, too.

This was definitely not the last time I made a die like this. I think it’s a great gift for all role players, and it’s only a two-hours-or-so work.

But now for the dice bag, the actual present.

 

The bag is made of thin leather with a felt application in the middle displaying the Scoundrel’s sign.

I can't help but thinking of jewels...

I was happy how the presents turned out and that he liked – and also was able to use – them.

Of course I got wonderful gifts, too, but that’s another story.

Starting With Fire

A Happy New Year to all of you! I hope you survived the last night rather unharmed in soul and body and had a good time.

I myself had, celebrating the coming of 2011 together with Bambi, Bertie, the Scoundrel and a fellow firebug of his. As it’s becoming some kind of tradition, we blew up Berties’s architectural models he had built during the last year and it was as fun as last year, but way more creative. We started with two backpacks full of fireworks and still have some left!

I like the effect of the fireworks behind the bare trees.

Most of the photos I took didn’t came out as I wanted them to, but anyway, here are some pictures.

Bambi during the preparation of the fire fountain

There it goes.

As you see the pictures are quite blurry, so I spared you most of them.

Fervent Fermenters

Two days ago, after a visit at home, the Scoundrel brought me a preserving jar with something that looks like a pickled pancake in vinegar.

Actually, it was a Kombucha culture.

Kombucha – for those of you that don’t know – is a kind of yeast fungus that “feeds” on tea with sugar while fermenting the brew into a healthy and refreshing drink. The Scoundrel predicts that someday it will jump out of its jar and eat us all, but I don’t think so. ^^

For this first time I made brews of

• Black tea with Tigerente (that’s a “character” from German children’s books) herbal tea
• Black tea with peppermint tea
• Black tea with raspberry and strawberry tea
• Flavoured green tea by the name “Chinese Love Dream” (that tastes really good, by the way)
• Flavoured green tea that’s called “The Eight Treasures of Shaolin”

I’m really curious about the results!

There’s my witches’ brew for the moment, five jars, about three litres of tea and not even half the original mushroom I got from the Scoundrel’s mother. That’s another great thing about Kombucha: you don’t need much of it as it will always grow on and on, producing new layers that you can “harvest” for new fluids. The first harvest will presumably be in a week or so – I’ll surely keep you up to date.

Treasure Hunt at Weekends

Yesterday evening I walked Jules to the station after a really great (but a little bit exhausting as I feel quite ill since Saturday) weekend. He arrived at Friday afternoon and we took him to Early’s, a small-but-nice bistro near the Institute for Physical Exercise. We continued the evening with watching Elisabeth (the musical) while I took the last stitches on his final birthday present.

Saturday began with Canne de Combat free training. First, Jules was not to eager to participate but grew to like it quite much when our trainer made him take part. After the showers we went to an optician as Bambi’s glasses were broken (and I still need a new pair of them – but I think I spotted some really nice frames there). After that Bambi disappeared and I started to give a birthday present to Jules – a small card, burnt edges, writing on one, a small drawing on the other side.

The first card led him to the old graveyard where he found a pair of spools of silk thread.

The second one showed a hint to head a fountain where he found a moon of his own, just like the princess in the fairy tale. ^^

Station 3 was settled at the market place and had a little unicorn as a gift as Jules adores Charlie the Unicorn, for what reason ever.

It’s a small soft plastic toy, pierced with a hot needle on a thread that was spun by me from embroidery floss and sparkling metallic thread, both in raspberry pink.
I’m sorry that I don’t have a picture of the next present to show but all the photographs turned out to be blurry… Well, it was a mint-and-chocolate scented soap from Italy that matched Jules’ love for After Eight perfectly. I think I can say that his eyes were gleaming when he smelled it… ^^

As a little break and to compensate the really, really sunny, warm weather we had some ice cream, double chocolate and nougat for me and After Eight, strawberry and marzipan for Jules. After that I successfully lured him to the Religious Studies building where on the archway the next gift waited for him: A small bottle of gold.

Then we headed for the castle, for the garden, to be exact where Bambi waited for us with a strawberry tart and Lewis Carroll’s poem of the matter, wearing a silly hat that quite suited him.

After all, we went down to the Botanical Garden again where the Scoundrel waited for us with a picnic and where Jules got his final present, but I think I’d rather tell you about that tomorrow.

Kittens and Catkins

I’ve been absent again, due to my assignment (which is finished, I’ve got my life back, eventually) and the fact that I’ve got no aethernet at my mother’s castle in the marshlands and in the time between the hand-in and my departure I was way too busy with celebrating the end of the term, cooking with and for friends and looking into blue eyes with golden coronas in them.

When I came home at my mother’s on Friday she told me that our neighbor’s cat had kittens, one black and one like a wildcat. They’re absolutely cute and fluffy. The black one has got a new home already when he will be parted from his mother in about two weeks, and the wildcat – well, I don’t want to talk about it too much, but Bambi wanted a cat anyway…

I also took a long walk though the glens with my mother and got some plants for the garden and – maybe the most important thing of all – had a long, hot bath while watching Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Green Gables – The Sequel (the DVDs arrived just in time shortly before the hand-in).

Spring is really coming now and spring fever is likely to break out as I’m definitely not  getting that big, glad, radiant smile off my face. :)