This moment

Friday ritual …

Works in progress

:: Future Salad ::

:: Shetland Tea Shawl ::

:: Sourdough Bread ::

:: Lacy Baktus ::

:: Quilt top ::

:: Jasper Diamond Hoodie ::

Vermont

Last Sunday we decided to take a little trip over to Woodstock, Vermont. What a good decision it was. We had a really fine day! First we spent some time at VINS Nature Center, admiring a lot of beautiful birds, three baby ravens among them. The people there really do a wonderful job taking care of injured raptors. It was very educational. While this very knowledgable guy was showing us a barn owl, we could see a wild bald eagle circling high up in the air and a crow harassing him. Fascinating!

Afterwards we stopped at Quechee Gorge which is basically right next to VINS.

With the baby taking a nap and his daddy watching him, I was free to take a little walk through Woodstock, enjoying the sight of historic buildings and peeking into a few very nice shops.

I especially liked Noushka, a fabulous store offering all kinds of  Waldorf-style toys, books and art supplies. They also had very beautiful but crazy expensive organic baby clothes. I also could have spent a lot more time in a little store named Who is Sylvia. They offer very beautiful vintage clothes, linens, hats, gloves … I came home with a couple of very sweet hankies and some doilies that will probably decorate pillows or bags someday. The folksy linen towel came from the Antique Mall in Quechee.

A trip to Vermont is probably not complete without a little maple syrup and cheese … We did some sampling at Sugarbush Farm and added this to our pantry. There was more cheese – a very yummy sharp cheddar. Already gone!

Spring’s here!

I just love fresh leaves! And flowering trees … and a perfectly blue sky!

Fix-it Friday: Where I repair our digital kitchen scale

I instantly thought this was a GREAT idea! Although it gives me a lot of pleasure to repair things, I have not done it very often in the last years. In the house I grew up in, there was a lot of repairing being done. My dad is very good at this. He had a very messy garage. He fixed appliances, cars, toys, tools, you name it. Even today you find tiny screwdrivers lying around and parts of devices he is taking apart … I was able to bring my sewing machine to him for service. I miss that a lot, now that I live some 3700 miles away.

When I read about Fix-it Friday, I felt the urge to immediately look for something I could repair. Not difficult. A couple of weeks earlier my husband dropped our nice little kitchen scale and not surprisingly, it wasn’t working anymore. I already looked at kitchen scales at the store but didn’t like how they looked and how much they cost! Apart from that I really liked our old one because Christian’s grandparents gave it to us for our wedding 6.5 years ago.

The button doesn’t work. You can’t turn it on. The little display inside is loose.

How to get to the inside? No screws, but some strange slots where you can get the weighing tablet detached, after minutes of poking and prodding.

Finally.

Due to crashing onto our stone floor the button inside did not line up with the button outside anymore. Fortunately, I don’t have to mess with the electronics!

It was very easy to put the panel back into the right place. But how exact will it measure??

Hmm. Was Green&Black generous?

And Dale of Norway not so much?

I think it works well enough for my purposes. I am very happy that I don’t have to buy a new one!! Figuring out how to open it up was well worth it.

This moment

Friday ritual

Stitching for decorative purposes

When I saw this post, I immediately fell in love with these oh so perfect letters. It made me want to do some embroidery right away. So I did. I started spelling out my favorite name. The blue is pretty much the color of his room.

After I was done with the letters, which came out a little more wonky than I had hoped, I wondered what I could do with this. I decided to put a few things on that represent some of Johann’s first words. Since I did not want to embroider all these items, I opted for appliqué. Stitching around those shapes was a lot of fun. I took it up here and there, put it down again and picked it up a couple of days later.

I went on and put in brackets how Johann pronounces his favorite words. How he says things changes so quickly, I figured it would be nice to have something that reminds me of his sweet baby talk. My husband wanted me to include a beaver because our son is kind of obsessed with them. That seemed too hard to appliqué and I did not want to cross stitch it, consistency, you know? So this is what it looks like now:

In case your baby German is rusty: nach = nass (wet), tutu = Auto (car), heich = heiß (hot), duckie = Ente (duckie), wauwi = Hund (dog), moir (my absolute favorite, it always cracked me up because it sounded so French) = Möhre (carot), bo = Boot (boat).

I really enjoyed doing this. I am sure there is some more embroidery in my near future, considering that I’ve won some very cool patterns.

I am still not sure where to hang it, since the room is barely furnished yet …

I have won something!!!

I was a very happy camper this morning when I found out that I won the giveaway on Soulemama! The prize is a $25 gift certificate for Follow the White Bunny, an etsy store that sells BEAUTIFUL hand embroidery patterns. I think the designs are so lovely! I especially love the Alphabet tree and the Princess and the pea design! What a nice Easter surprise!

I made an “Osterzopf” (Easter braid) this morning to take over to our friends’ house, where we were invited for a delicious lunch. I used this recipe and it came out pretty yummy.

This moment

Friday ritual.

New old shoes

A few weeks ago I bought a pair of burgundy red flats at Goodwill. They originally had two small tassels on each shoe but one was missing. See:

(Sorry about the sucky lighting in this one!)

So I tried to come up with a crafty way of sprucing these up a bit. I was thinking maybe fabric flowers? Or bows! So I chose a fabric, some velvet ribbon … Et voilà!

I am not really sure if this is not a tad too cute for my taste. But at the same time I somehow like it.

Time will tell how much wear these will get. If it is not enough to justify cluttering up my house, they can go back to Goodwill. Only a little prettier now.