MOONSTITCHES

Hiding

At least as long as I'll be using this book cover, there will not be any chance of forgetting this here

I got my first, most amazing, Paeckchenzirkel package from my dear friend Karin. The most exquisitely composed package, filled to the brim with things that make you do lots of enthralled noises while you're unpacking it... Just a little preview for now, more fotos to follow!

In straight tiny-hedgehog-with-mushroomy-hut-by-the-way crafting manner I let survive the far travelled wrapping paper its putative final journey - the one to the waste paper container. I am doing that way too often - saving things from the dustbin, but this time I don't have to be ashamed of being so weak, I think. I like this book cover.

Do you use book covers? I don't. Normally. My books are to be used not to be preserved. When I read them I don't intend letting them look like new after being read. No need for extra bookmarks (always as many potential dog's ears as there are pages in a book!) and of course no cover to cover the cover... where is the point in something like that?! (of course ZAKKA style book covers may exist, but their purpose is just to be cute or beautiful, not to actually  cover)

But this time it is different. I am going to read "Possession", by A.S.Byatt - I might be the last one to discover this book, I know, but I didn't know the movie either until a few weeks ago.  I purchased the book in that edition because of the cover, and I do not like to carry around the book for the very same reason. On the one hand it is showing Jennifer Ehle and Jeremy Northam, evoking impressions of the of their good performances in the movie. It is said that the movie would do great harm to the book, but there surely are some parts in the movie, which seem to be shot  more or less in accordance to the novel (I quickly looked up some scenes as soon I got my copy) - for instance the last five minutes of the movie which always let me shed a tear.

On the other hand the cover is unfortunately dominated by a picture of the actors who play the contemporary characters... well, the meant to be Victorian part of the movie may not be portrayed properly and the focus of the movie may be set wrong, but still enjoyable to me due to the nice acting... but the part that is taking place in our time...! Even for me who hasn't read the book yet, many scenes appear to be just ridiculous, dull, absurd. And while I manage to blind out myself during the contemporary part of the story when watching the movie in order to enjoy the whole thing, I find it hard to read a book with that misleading, totally improperly chosen picture on the cover. Sets the wrong mood whenever grabbing the book. Besides, I do not wish to be seen with it. Which I will, since I read on the train a lot. But that's okay now.

Some nice embellishment that was added after opening the package for custom clearance, and some embellishment by me using Karin's interesting fabrics.

More pictures here

WIP, Win, a hundered times

Print by Westfalenstoffe

Well, I may not have WIPped a hundered times, neither did I win as often over at whiplash, but today I am posting for the hunderedth time.

Many changes since the beginning. Moved twice, discovered international blogland, began crafting little things, fell in love with felt, neglected my sewing machines, almost forgot my daughter's closet. Got to know many talented, interesting, inspiring and very nice crafters from all over the world.

Took the plunge and switched to writing in English, too, found new readers, became too lazy to write bilingually and am very happy that my faithful German pals are still with me.

Das freut mich sehr, meine Lieben! Dankeschoen.

As for the WIP, the next star is cut out and I started with the 1mm stitches... meanwhile I got much time to smile about winning a  prize  in whip up's bag competition.

Thanks for all your nice words about my first quilt to be... Your support helps letting grow my love for this project again. Of course I knew it all the time, the stars ARE beautiful, playful and fresh and very ME, but sometimes one has to be reminded of the obvious...

The End Of Downsizing

This image is downsized, you may click on it to see a larger
version of tiny hedgehog and his mushroomy hut

A bit quiet here these days, isn't it? Did you hear the bang in the meantime? No? Me neither. Luckily before that big explosion of mine could take place I took a deep breath and started thinking.

Thinking about my choices what to craft. Alison has asked her readers about the reasons for making things recently and I must say that lately most of the times I find myself rather letting off some crafting steam in order to prevent a major outburst of the not so crafty kind of type than being crafting thoughtfully.  I have always numerous things in my head that I would really love to do some day. And as much things I actually have to do (like all the wardrobe for Dagny since I normally don't buy anything for her).  Sometimes I wish I could concentrate on bags or sewing clothes, or patchwork, or making things with felt, or knitting. I am glad I definitely am no crocheting person, so I don't have to worry about finding time for that as well. There are never enough hours for crafting and so I always  feel a bit sorry for all that gorgeous  material I have hunted down and brought home, added to my collection of idea representing pieces of fabric.

So, despite the fact that I am crafting just for the fun of it, from time to time I experience quite some pressure while considering what to craft next. Feeling torn between the different projects, normally afraid of committing to one of the rather time consuming ones like a quilt or knitting something for myself, it seems such a big thing to me to decide to spend a rather great deal of time on only one project.

But before I'm getting serious about anything new I am doing a big tidying up of my studio (since nobody but me uses that small room of ours I refer to this area now as my studio - which could be bigger and nicer but after all it's all mine!) has to be done amd there the downsizing drama begins... Dismanteling all those piles I am doing day by day, putting everything back into the shelves and drawers normally leads to some totally unreflected, hurried, little crafting with things I accidentally discover while cleaning. I think is has to do with the intention of mine to plan what to craft next while feeling the urge to actually do something with my hands.

Without sitting down, or even worse, sitting down in the middle of a horrible huddle of unfolded fabrics, clusters of trims, magazines and such I start crafting right away, forgetting all my good intentions of dehuddeling before going on causing chaos.

This is how this hedgehog got his hut on the lawn...

While cleaning up finding a water bottle cap on the ground... intuition of my first bottlecap pincushion using some of Marianne's felt... Doing it right away, standing at the ironing board. Later on, while cleaning, feeling te urge to knit. Flipping through some magazines, finding a nice pattern, looking for suiting wool, gauge swatch... the knitted patch itches like mad, that yarn will never become a pullover! Intuition of making felted bags from it... test felting of the patch, growing a beautiful lawn for that mushroom - what a lucky coincidence that this wool was green! Go on tidying, getting that hedgehog fabric into my hands... why not make a wee pillow doll?! And there we were... A bunch of tiny craftings done in very short time. Downsized crafting due to being afraid of commiting to the big things... By the way, did you read Courtney's entry on Downsizing? I found it very interesting since we seem to live pretty downsized here in Japan... not bad at all but sometimes I just wish I had more than two stove tops and an oven that's big enough to put in a chicken in one piece... 

What was following that night were three attempts to knit the proper sized bottom of a buttonhole bag with the result of at least having satisfied the urge to do some knitting... And then, finally, I felt chilled out enough to think about the things I really would like to do next. Like finishing my first quilt. So far I did eleven blocks, all handsewn, following patterns from NHK's oshare kobo, a monthly magazine on crafting of all sorts.

I started this quilt enthusiastically a year ago and must confess I did not like it lately. After discovering contemporary, fun, simple quilts like those of Fun Quilts I had strong misgivings about that traditional star patterns. But I rethought and came to the point that it might become a really nice quilt anyway. So I took the blocks back on the wall near the desk where I can see them best most time of the day to play with possible combinations of fabrics - as before each block shall be made of fabrics from different countries. Originally the next block would be the final one. But since I don't have any use for quilt hanging on the wall it should be a bit bigger to cover a bed and so I plan to make up three additional blocks. I hope it won't be too difficult to think of three stars that will fit in...

Also decided: I will knit myself a sweater! Biiiiig thing for me.

I had to do some big frogging already but anything big seems to be alright to me at the moment and I am confident some progress can be shown very soon.

Ahh, feels good having escaped the teeny weeny trap for some time!

all sorts of things

First of all I want to say thank you to all of you for leaving such flattering comments on my bag. It's quite exciting that this *ugly duckling of mine has found so many friends! Thank you.

We had a very long weekend here and were out every day, so there was no chance for catching up with answering your comments or emails, but we're back to normal now and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
If you have not checked out the entries over at whiplash, do now. There are a lot of great things to discover!

Yesterday I made some mochi from shira tama ko, topped with an absolutely favoured flavour of mine, kuro mitsu (dark brown sugar syrup)... Good opportunity to present a lately on-the-street-found (that's not thrifted, is it?!) dish. That was a left over from the left overs that were sold at a neighbourhood noodle shop that had closed recently. I never went to that shop to eat so I obviously could not go there when it was shut to see if any interesting goods were being sold... luckily (I could say afterwards) I got some terrible headaches the night after the final sale and went on a walk at around 2 am to catch some fresh air... and found a nice collection of dishes and a vintage carving tool set (perfect for rubber stamps!). Embarrassed to get a bit greedy, grabbing all I could carry at once, but I just had to...

Some of you know that last year I had to decide about a lot of my and my family's belongings - whether to keep or not, where to keep... and a lot of great things were given away or just went to the garbage.
I know that it is not easy to give up a place and so I really felt sorry for the owner of the restaurant that night, going through his things...

But I thought, hopefully, that maybe some of our things found a new home, too.

Regarding last week's WIP... fortunately there was NONE! I finished the bag on time, as you know. But on Sunday I started playing around with some neutrals and blues...

Which led to these coasters - inspired by those, by the way. I could hardly stop making them.

Finally I want to send lovely greetings to Marianne and Fritz, the second offspring of our nameless family member , joining Hans . So nice to welcome another of this cute species! One more of them and I will actually set up a Flickr group (even if this seems very high-flown at this point of time with only three known specimens) to give these guys some place to play with each other. Instructions soon to follow!... maybe this could work:

• 7 cm wide 17 cm tall
• 40 stitches wide
• change color every 4 rows, 4 times
• face is 12 rows high
• for the hat again 4 rows red, 4 rows white, 4 rows red
• bind off
• The stitching to form the parts of the body is done symmetrically

PS: I uploaded some more photos of my lately purchased Japanese craft magazines to my Flickr site.

*ugly duckling

Every summer starts at a certain point of time. For me the sign that summer has come is either seeing the first lizard resting in the sun or having to do my first jumpy moves around a cockroach that is going for a walk after a long winter.

Last year apparently we had a very short winter since my very first contact with one of those summer signs happened to take place in early March: I met a big, dark, ugly cockroach in front of a supermarket. But this cockroach had been fallen too early out of bed - despite this outing it was rather cold and its moves were very slow, which meant that I hadn't have to be frightened to the usual *Alex-meets-a-cockroach-level* and could easily escape.

Still, I took that event as a bad omen for 2005, which wasn't unfounded as I later in the course of the year had to see.

This year started perfectly: April. A lizard in the park, dozing on some stairs that were warmed by the sun. I can't help it, I am superstitious and seeing this lizard made me happy.

Before I moved to Japan I didn't have much experiences with cockroaches. There are some in Germany (surely more than I'd like to know of), but Japan with its extreme heat and humidity during the summer and moderate temperatures in winter (at least in most parts of the country) is just perfect for those creatures and they are very, very common. Fortunately living in a rather new house on the third floor usually prevents us from  hosting these unwanted guests. They don't bother us. They are no threat. I could look at them like at any other insect with great interest and even fondness since insects come with amazing details which I just love.

And still, it seems impossible to me to approach cockroaches with the same attitude as the other richly detailed creatures of any kind. I find them ugly and disgusting. Their moves are so unpredictable, they can run very fast, climb any surface and even fly! Once I was standing on a train which just held at one station, doors open, early evening... cockroach coming in, by wings, landing on my chest...! I was so horrified and embarrassed at the same time, as this cockroach, resting on my body felt like a stigma - nobody wants to be connected to cockroaches!!! (But apparently most of the people are, since the amount of weapons against the unwanted visitors sold in drugstores is overwhelming)...

But despite of this deeply felt rejection against them, year after year I experience feeling pity for these creatures, which are surely no cute bugs, but at least a bit bug-alike, have some fancy sensing device on their heads and, after all, what harm do they do to me?!

I am thinking they just suffer the same fate as the Ugly Duckling of the Brueder Grimm.

Wandering for the whole summer and fall, being unwanted everywhere, must fear for their lives, going back into their caves and by the early end of winter still being alive, lingering around in front of the supermarket intending to scare superstitious Alex and maybe hoping for a better year, just like me.

So, being in the middle of an so far smoothly developing year without any bad surprises yet, I think of this bag as a sign of peace and dedicate it to all those lovely, tiny and not so tiny, generously detailed  creatures. All of them. Even the just bug-alikes.

I used one of my most favourite fabrics, Fortune Flowers by Junko Onishi, ramie and wool. A zipper closed pocket inside with two smaller pockets on top, train ticket sized (I always put my ticket into the back pockets of my trousers which means they are totally soaked by the end of the ride and not usable at the automatic gate when leaving the station). Candy Pop handles, available at Kitty Craft. Ah, I almost forgot, the flower is detachable.

Edit: The upper, woolen part and the printed part are machine quilted, the middle part where I handembroidered (splitstitch) the insects is lined with some strengthening, iron on material. The top edge is decorated with piping. The bottom of the bag is supported with strong, flexible plastic for keeping the shape.

Edit#2: Big excuse to everybody reading this blog via Bloglines... this text needs constant editing. Writing tiredly in the middle of the night leads to interesting results ;-) (Maybe writing in the Morning after having no sleep, too.)