go red

On Saturday Rani passed on a colour challenge on her blog. Her colour was orange. I have chosen red. My favourite colour is green, but it seems read is sneaking into my house without me noticing it until now. What is you favourite colour? If you’d like to take the challenge: Go green, then pick a colour to pass on.

PS. I’d love to know if you took the challenge so I can see you photos.

mille bolle blu

Since Astrid began kinder garden I have had more time. She comes home completely exhausted with all the activities and impressions. I make her dinner (She is a good eater and so far there is nothing she doesn’t like - knock on wood). We play for a while, I read her a book or two and she begins to touch her earlobe which is a safe sign that it is time for bed. After a short stop in the bathroom for a quick wash up and some tooth brushing it is off to bed. In less than a minute she has stretched her arms above her head, sneaked her left foot outside of the cover and fallen asleep.

This has freed time for some crafting. I am knitting again. And I sense an urge to stitch pink crosses. It is weak, but growing. In the meantime let me show you what I began stitching earlier this summer before went on holiday. Once again it is a motive by Hiroko Ishii, but his time I altered the design a tiny bit by making some of the balloons in fabric instead of stitching them. I haven’t taken a photo of the final result yet, but I will.

chocolate & raspberry on a rainy saturday

Hope you had a nice weekend everyone. I surely did. Saturday turned out rainy. It poured down for hours and hours so I enjoyed spending it indoors baking a chocolate cake for a friend’s party.

Nigella’s old fashioned chocolate cake with my own raspberry whipped cream twist. Resist it if you can. I couldn’t.

I also began a new mini embroidery project. The motives are from Hiroko Ishii one of my favourite embroidery illustrators. Wish I could draw like her, but I can’t. Luckily she keeps on making these incredibly cute illustrations for everyone to embroider.

napkins and family visit

This coming week will be a one of short posts to show you what I have made in between all the cleaning and nostalgia. First project to be showed off are these napkins that I made before visiting my three cousins MJ, M and D in Madrid. Astrid and I arrived last Friday to stay for the weekend at MJ’s (my oldest cousin) house. Besides being Astrid’s Godmother she is also a super woman and a saint.

She had come home from a business trip in Paris the day before I arrived, her husband was stumbling around on crutches after a painful knee operation and she hadn’t seen her two sons for several days, still she received me with a big smile and lots of energy. And she kept on without a break during the whole weekend. She bought groceries, prepared baby food, showed me her village, whipped up a delicious sea food barbeque and the list goes on and on (…only wish she would have let me helped her a bit). As I already said: super woman and saint.

The napkins were for my cousins’ children in other words Astrid’s second cousins. I met three beautiful boys, Miguel and David the sons of MJ and third, Juan the son of D, MJ’ youngest brother. He became a father to his second son Pablo at six o’clock Sunday afternoon. I missed that by a few hours as my plain left Madrid at seven. Altogether Astrid and I had a wonderful weekend.

french sentiments

After last weeks pep talk from you my crafting mojo is completely back and I have begun cross stitching French sentiments that will go on the sides of the coloured squares.

I’m using a nostalgic alphabet from this French cross stitch book that I bought a couple of years ago …Love it when I find small pattern treasures in my own books.

Since the book only contains the alphabets and not the sentiments I needed to write the letters together into the actual words to see if they would fit into my strips of pink linen. To do this I downloaded a free trial version of PC stitch 7. This is a software that allows you to design your own cross stitch patterns.

Actually I downloaded several free trial software to do this, but of the four different softwares I tried I would recommend PC stitch. It was easy to understand and use right away. I also liked that I could decide the size of the “canvas” both in stitches and in inches, and most importantly the software lets you centre your motive (perhaps the other programs do too, but I never found out how). Centring the motive helps you know where to start stitching which is nice if you have a predefined size of fabric to stitch on.

If you do download PC stitch you should know that the free version will not let you save or print your motive. But if you do a couple of print screens you can save and print as many motives you like for the free trial period. I actually ended up buying the standard version since I have several cross stitch projects in mind for this year.

Now I’m going to stitch some more. Have a nice week end everyone!

Necessity is the mother of creation

A couple of weeks ago Marie-Louise suggested a small fabric, trim and button swap. She did this because she had noticed that there was a certain fabric I had fallen in love with (ehem... I just went back to find the link to the fabric and I'm embarrased *blushing* for how many times I have made comments on it...), and she had some of this fabric to give away. Anyhow, as I was putting together fabrics and combining trims and biased tape I realized that I don’t have any cool buttons. I only have a few buttons that has been given to me on earlier swaps (and which I don't want to part with), but no big box, glass or jar with buttons to combine with fabrics for giveaways. Now I couldn’t send off the fabrics without any button. Instead I decided to make my very first embroidered button thinking (and hoping) that one handmade button would equal several bought non-embroidered buttons.

To make it a bit more interesting I took an extra look at the main fabric I had prepared for the swap and sucked in inspiration from it before I drew my first embroidery design. Nothing fancy, just a plain and simple design to go with the fabric. For someone that has always dreamt of being able to draw (but never found the talent) this was a big step. Usually I am always looking for images that can be used for embroidery, whether it is in magazines, newspapers, milk cartons, adds or pattern books, to make up for my lack of talent in drawing. This time I drew one myself. Necessity is the mother of creation.

Birthday buns and a baby bib

I told you I was going to reveal more of what I made last week as soon as the birthday party was over, and here it is. I haven’t taken a photo of the upper part just because I didn’t finish it until the very same morning it was being given away. But what you are not seeing is the 70’s biased tape that I used on the “neck” part of the bib + some more on each side to tie the bib. It was my first attempt at biased tape and I learned that I need to practice a bit more before I master the this task completely. If you are unsure about biased tape angry chicken has made a hilarious and curse free tutorial that I recommend.

Ohh and I couldn’t resist posting some photos of all the deliciousness we got served at T’s house. Her vanilla cream filled buns are just so “ammpfffhy” good (dreaming of one right now together with a big glass of milk) and the three layered chocolate cheese cake is lethal!

Little red ridinghood headband

I finished the stitching this morning and with it made my first headband. I hate it when my hair gets in my eyes especially when I'm taking off makeup, so this is my new "removing makeup" headband. With a summer motive it would be perfect for a day at the beach too. For those days when you want to let the sun warm your whole face. This was fun to make. It's easy and lets you use small pieces of fabric that you have left from other bigger projects.

dancing nisser - part two

Here are the rest of my cross stitched nisser. Aren't they cute? My very favourite is "ms. single" dangling from a tree. Not because being single is such a great thing (all though it can be), but because she looks feisty and so full of life. She is dancing and having fun all by herself.

The nisser are stitched on danish linen that I received as a gift from a danish exchange student we housed more than ten years ago, when studying in Trondheim. I still have enough linen left in case I get inspiredto do another set of these nisser.

On another note...This is the night before the night "little Christmas eve" or "lillejulaften" as we would say here in Norway. Tonight is the night when we decorate the Christmas tree (after untangling the lights from last year) and when we put all the parcels under the tree. Today Christmas officially begins in our home. We will eat ginger bread cookies and drink "gløgg" (something similar to glüwein) If you want to read more about our traditions for this day you can read more here.

Today is also the day when both my brother and Mr. Life in Yonder comes home. It will be the first time my brother meets Astrid as he has been away this fall and I can't wait for him to meet her. Ohh, and toda is Astrid's two month day b-day! I'm so in love with her.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!

Dancing "nisser"

How are you all doing? Have you manage to get everything ready for Christmas? Since I finished all my "have to does" last week, this weekend I have been able to begin some stitch work on the Japanese cotton/linen blend I showed you on Friday. I would have loved showing you photos but as you know they turn out crappy with the winter light, and today on the Norwegian west coast (where I am) there is a storm like no other. Mountain roads being closed, wind making the windows bend inwards, lightning, thunder, and rain, rain, rain. Skies are dark, dark grey, meaning even less light than usual.

Anyhow since I can't show you what I'm working on right now I thought I show you some cross stitch I did many years ago. I have cross stitched seven small linen squares with "nisser". I don't know what the squares are called in english, but they are used to put in between the first course plate and the second course plate. Both as a decoration and so that the plates don't scratch together. I found the motives in a norwegian craft magazine from the 80's. My plan was to make two of each but so far there is just one set. I have posted three photos now, and I'll post the other four later. Have a nice day!