In the flow

You know when you spend months looking forward to something, have big plan and then it suddenly sneaks up on you? That totally happened to me this time. I am going to the Medieval week in Visby next week and my dress is anything but ready. In fact, I have been sewing madly for the last two days in an attempt to get it ready. I love being stressed for things like this. Not always, not even regularly but sometimes it is good to remind myself that when crunchtime comes, I have untapped reserves of energy and motivation.

Crochet carpet made from tshirts - a recycling project

Remember June 2012, when I cut up an old top into yarn? And how about November 2012, when I tried and failed to turn it into a carpet?

I finally succeeded and turned all that yarn, that I have been collecting over the last couple of years, into a carpet! I have used old tshirts, shorts, tops, a dress and fabric scraps. Any type of jersey left over went into it.

It will keep my feet nice and warm in winter. I love how this project finally turned out. I especially love that apparently my wardrobe is so colour coordinated that it all nicely fits together. ;)

Gipfeli, your friendly neighbourhood giraffe

Ladies and gentlemen,

may I introduce you to Gipfeli, your friendly neighbourhood giraffe.

Gipfeli will always listen, always have a hug and never run out of patience. He acquired his name when my little sister pointed out that he had "two horns, like a croissant (=Gipfeli, in swiss german)". Can't argue with that.

Gipfeli is about 20 cm high and worked from these instructions. I stuck pretty closely to the pattern but I think next time I would make the back of the head somewhat rounder.

In a couple of days, Gipfeli is moving to a friend who needs cheering up but until then he makes me smile every time I look at him.

The tea party

The tea party was a full success. Sunshine, cakes, good friends, tea, hugs, fruits, lemonade and laughter combined to make a wonderful day. I was incredibly busy the last two days, trying to get everything ready.I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed it, from the baking to the decorating. Maybe I will do it again next year.

A little gift

I gave away a few hand made Christmas presents this year. The arm warmer and Alice band set seen here was given away as part of a secret Santa, for which I received some amazingly warm socks in return. The technique of combining two small pieces of fabrics into a big one, leaving the edges open, was new for me. After some failed attempts with small pieces of fabric I picked a large piece of black fabric, sewed on the irregular strips in green and then cut it off just next to the seam. That worked much better than before!

New chair with old life

20 minutes with a piece of sandpaper, 30 minutes with a tub of paint and 10 minutes with a fabrics, hammer and nails and the chair is as good as new. I really like how it came out. I almost left it in its natural wood but after I discovered how easy it is to sand it down I decided to risk it.

I quite like how it fits into its dedicated corner as well. Now I just wish I could do something about that floor. And those walls. And the lightning. Basically, can I have my own flat please?

New life for an old chair

I found a chair! Next to somebody else's recycling bin, half hidden under a pile of cardboard. I figured it was fair game to take it so I carried it home. My housemates looked at me like I am crazy but I think with a bit of tender loving care, this chair will be as good as new.

Once it is done, I am hoping it will replace that wonky stool in the picture. Home decorated chair in front of self-built desk? Yes please!

Speaking of advent calendars

Just like last year, I made advent calendars for my three housemates but instead of boring you with all of them, I will just show you the one I made for the Mister since he got the most elaborate one.

I went a bit crazy with the content this year. My housemates have a small sweet and part of a short story every day but with the Mister, I got somewhat overexcited and split a 1000 piece puzzle into 24 little piles. That way, he gets a hand full of pieces every day, as well as the story and the sweet, and we can do the puzzle together as Christmas approaches. Fingers crossed I didn’t loose one somewhere.

Crafting fail

Remember how I was all excited about the crocheting? Well, I don't really know how to crochet so I just looked up some things and started. Once I got into a rhythm, it worked fine but there is one main problem with my piece so far

Exactly, it doesn’t lie flat. The edges and the centre bend up…

It turns out that I was using the wrong kind of stitches so I opened half of it up again. *sigh* I guess I should take this as a reminder that it pays to do things properly…

Belt & What I wore

The sun came out, the mister was at hand and I managed to take some pictures! I’m quite proud of myself I have to say, I have been trying to do this for days. Anyway, this means I finally get to present the new belt I made to you.

The belt is inspired by one I saw on a market in Bangkok. It is basically just this long strip of velvet, slightly thicker in the middle, that gets tied in a know at the front. It’s brilliant for wearing over loose dresses like the green (don’t know what happened to the colours) one in the picture.

I wrap it around twice so I have the narrower bit lying over the wider part. The look reminds me a little of the Japanese Obi’s.

This is a pretty standard outfit for me. I wore: Dress and Scarf from H&M, Cardigan from GAP, Tights from Boots, Belt handmade and shoes from somewhere in Switzerland.

Still crafting

I’m sorry it’s been a little quiet on the crafting front lately. I have made some things but some of them, I can’t show you yet. The two things I have been meaning to show you still haven’t been photographed properly, thanks to the weather outside. I’m working on it.

So the only new development I can show you is the new crochet hook I bought. Look at that colour! Have I mentioned that I really don’t know how to crochet?

On chocolate cloud 9 (7)

Did you know that the expression “being on cloud 9“ also exists in German, but that the Germans are “on cloud 7” instead? I guess that’s one way to avoid overcrowding. ;) Linguistic oddities aside, I finally got round to making this family favourite for the Mister, after I told him about it for only about two years. It’s super delicious but really easy to make. I will try to type up the recipe for you in the next few days but for now, I’m just floating off happily in chocolate cream heaven. Please excuse me while I stuff my face.

My first quilt

This project has been a seriously long time in the making. I started with this quilt even before I moved out to go to university. At the time, I just patch worked the pieces together. Later, I added the rim and bought the wadding and the fabric for the back, before tossing it all back into another corner for two years. I am proud to announce that I finally finished it!

In the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing special. I have seen so many splendid quilts lately that I’m actually a little embarrassed to show this one. It has a very simple pattern and there are more mistakes in it than I am willing to think about. But, it’s my first quilt and I really enjoy the feeling of sleeping under a blanked I have made myself.

The quilt already contains quite a lot of memories. One of the dark green fabrics is left over linen from a medieval dress I made for my sister. The light green material used to be curtains in my old room, the stripy fabric was left over from making some pillow cases. I actually died the really dark green fabric by hand, many years ago, when I was making a hobbit costume for a friend of mine.

Little apple pies

 

I’ve been on a bit of a baking and cooking streak lately and while some of it really didn’t work (my custard curdled :( ), these little apple pies turned out absolutely perfect and they are quite easy as well if you use store bough pastry. 

 

MINIATURE APPLE PIES

For the apple sauce:

1.2 kg apples

1 tsp cinnamon

1 unwaxed lemon

75 g brown sugar

3 tbsp water

 

For the pies:

1 pack puff pastry or make your own following this recipe

some flour

1 egg

icing sugar for dusting

• Make the apple sauce by peeling, coring and chopping the apples into small pieces. Put the apples in a frying pan and add the sugar and cinnamon, as well as 2 tbsp water. Slice the lemon into thick slices and add it to the apple. Cook the apples over a medium heat for about 10-15 minutes or so until they are soft but try not to turn them into a complete mush. Take out the lemon sliced and leave the apple sauce to cool.
• Roll out the pastry on a floured surface ( or just buy pre-rolled pastry like I did) and cut it into rectangles that are roughly 10x20 cm big. Break the egg into a cup, whisk it and brush the edges of your rectangle with egg.
• Put a big spoon full of your apple mixture onto the rectangle and fold the edges together, pressing them down firmly to seal the pies. Try to put as much apple mix into your parcels as possible otherwise they will be mainly filled with air in the end.
• Put the pies in the fridge for about 15 minutes, then brush them with the remaining egg.
• Bake the pies in a preheated oven at 200 C for 25 minutes.
• Dust them lightly with icing sugar and serve while still warm if possible

 

Girls and their Toys

I would like to introduce you to my robot. This is a Lego Mindstorm NXT 2.0 and yes, it’s a real robot, programmable and all. The Mindstorms are a set sold by Lego that includes a collection of Lego Technic pieces, three motors, four sensor and a “head”. One can then use these parts to built an endless number of machines. Once on has built the body, the head can be linked up to a computer for which Lego provides a simple program to write programs for the robot. These can be downloaded onto the head and off it goes. The four sensors supplied are a touch sensor, a microphone (above the head in the picture), a light sensor and an ultrasound sensor to measure distance (the “eyes”).

I had entirely forgotten that I had taken this set to London but when I came across it a few days ago, I just had to built something. Since I didn’t feel like doing a massive 3D puzzle, I settled for one of the designs provided by Lego to get back into it. Two motors control the right and the left wheel respectively and the third one opens and closes the grabbing arms. The touch sensor is linked to the crossbar in the front, the light sensor is installed behind it pointing down and the microphone is above the head.

This is a simple example for the sort of program supplied to it. Each block stands for a particular action. The green blocks control the motors and the orange block deals with feedback from the sensors. I wanted to start with something easy so I wrote it a program to go around and avoid obstacles. This is what I actually told the robot:

Turn both wheels forward indefinitely (first green block) until the touch sensor is pushed (orange block). Then stop and backtrack one full turn of both wheels (second green block) and turn slightly to the left by turning the right wheel forward by two turns (last green block). Repeat indefinitely (the orange box around it all which represents a loop)

Want to see this particular program in action? I made a little video for you which doesn’t want to be embedded for some strange reason. Just click the link, which should take you to YouTube. Can you see how the robot responds to the crossbar being pushed when it comes up against something?

At some point I really want to get an infrared sensor. That will allow it to detect heat and I am planning on using this to make it chase peoples feet. Nothing like having your own pet robot chasing your guests around. :D

 

PS: I’m in Germany for the weekend so I will reply to all comments when I get back on Monday!

Finding the Foam and a note on London's diversity

What you see above is not a hat even though it would probably dispute this claim if you asked it. It is in fact my camera case. I do admit that it is less than ideal for a camera case so I have been meaning to replace it for ages. I wanted to make myself one of these well padded versions you can buy in a shop but I had one serious problem with that plan. For the life of me, I could not find proper foam to use as padding. I’ve been checking art shops and craft shops for months but this morning, I stumbled across a market stall selling foam in all varieties for upholstery. The only downside is that they wanted 10 pounds for a fairly large piece. I didn’t want to pay 10 £ and I didn’t want that much foam either. Some haggling later, I walked away paying 3 £ for some pieces left over from cutting something else.

I love Shepherds Bush market for that kind of thing. It isn’t what you would expect from an English market at all as it caters mainly for the Middle Eastern Community that lives in the area. It sells pretty much anything, from giant pots for cooking, gaudy wedding dresses, five kilogram sacks of rice all the way to goldfish. I think it is generally great how multicultural London is. The supermarkets are a perfect example: Just the other day, Tesco (one of the biggest supermarket chains) sent us a “Ramadan special offers” leaflet. When I went shopping there yesterday, I stumbled across 10 kg sacks of Chapati Flour, produced by “Tesco Everyday Value”, which is the supermarkets own cheap brand.The “foreign food” section includes one with Polish food, the meat sections sells Halal produce and buying things like Plantain, water spinach or Yam is possible every day. It really shows just how normal variety is here. I love it.

Phoney embroidery

Do you remember the little cover for my phone that I made myself a few months ago? Well, I remember it quite fondly  but unfortunately I have absolutely no idea where it went so I need a new one. While I really liked the simplistic style of the last one, I wanted something a little more elaborate this time.

I remembered seeing some absolutely gorgeous embroidery with buttons somewhere on the internet a while ago, which I really wanted to try out, so I grabbed a piece of dark blue velvet, some buttons and a white ribbon and just went for it. I have a sneaking suspicion it isn’t going to last long in the hard life of a phone cover but even if it’s only a few week, I think it’s worth it.

Since I started this I can’t get the though of a black corset, elaborately decorated in this style, out of my head. You have been warned.

More yarn!

I think it might be time to curb my enthusiasm for this type of yarn, preferably while I still own some t-shirts to wear. It might also be time to actually think of a project where I can use this type of yarn. Any ideas?

Recycling old shirts

I know you have probably seen this everywhere but I’m a slow girl and only just got round to trying it.

When putting away the laundry this afternoon, I found this top. I’ve worn it plenty but now the hole in the front is getting a bit big and it isn’t really in a great place to fix it. So I decided to make some yarn out of it and keep it for future projects. Yarn? Yes!

First, I cut of the hem and the top part with the arms. All that was left was a sort of rectangular tube which used to cover my stomach. Then I grabbed some scissors and started cutting it up in a spiral, making one looooooooooooooooooooong strip out of it. I just cut right across the seams which do seem to hold together well.

Then all I had to do was roll up the resulting yarn and store it for future projects. Next on the list: Learn to crotchet so I can actually use it.

sugar overload

Thank you for all your lovely comments yesterday. I did have a pretty good evening. The Mister and I took a long walk in the sunshine along the river Thames, had a drink and met a friend on the way home. Later that evening, we celebrated with copious amounts of Sushi.

Unfortunately, I'm not entirely done yet with uni. I have five exams between the 22.5. and the 1.6. so from now until then, I will be revising hard. To make carrying all the suff I need a little easier, I have sewn myself two drawstring bags. Nothing special in terms of sewing but look at that fabric! It's got cupcakes on it, and hearts!