MOONSTITCHES

time to think

Washing the dishes, doing the laundry, those are the times I see my mails and blog entries written, unfinished craft projects progressing, new ones  laid out. Fabrics combined,  parcels packed... even my craft room is tidied then... mundane moments give time to think and  I highly appreciate those  opportunities  to let my mind wander.
But having to catch up with enormous loads of laundry as well as dish washing last week my mind was a bit too well endowed with idle moments and went from wandering to jumping nervously, unable to focus, having too many ideas, experiencing restlessness. When the week was almost over I was desperate to let some creative steam off and engaged on a kind of hamster wheel crochet project... a wee dull, going round and round and round but fortunately having come to a rather pretty end this morning and now being blocked.
Ahhhhh, I feel much better now!

Still I don't remember who inspired me to make this cake though... please, if you are reading this and know it was you, tell me. The cake was one fine piece of matcha delight.

Besides this marbled matcha cake a lot more lovely green things were happening last week, my old green Liberty friends got some new playmates, Paula sent me off to vintage button heaven and the first, freshly picked green tea of 2007 was drunk... if only I haven't had so much time for thinking, it could have been such a nice week...!

Stay tuned for the hamster wheel and some lovely vintage haberdasheries, hope I will be back tomorrow.

c, k, l, o, o and w

These players will be on the bench next round.

New, fresh ones are coming in to join the team on the field.

I is sporting some gorgeous vintage buttons Paula once sent me, they really make perfect owls eyes.
I thought this might be a good opportunity to finally show you what a great treasure  I was given by Paula last September... almost half a year ago... oh my, time is flying, don't you think?!

Along with those precious buttons the most beautiful vintage fabric came to me. I just love the pattern, the colours and the texture.

Once again, Thank you so much, Paula, for this generous gift.

Some words on the enthusiastic reception of my woowls...
First let me just say a word I rarely use since I don't like it too much but in this case it seems to fit pretty good. So I give in and say: WOW.
Believe me I had the greatest pleasure during the whole owl project (and still have), it is one of those  very loooooong stretched moments of pure bliss. From the initial urge to play with my wools till the photo shooting I was actually smiling, feeling a bit childish though but also very thrilled by knowing these woolstrucked owls were only the beginning... there are so many possibilities in them!
It's so good to see my joy with the project jumping over to you. I already saw some owls popping up in your blogs - maybe you could leave a link to yours in the comment section of my last post so we can all see them?

There have been questions about the pattern... I replied I could not pass it since it is copyright protected and was thinking of a way to give some hints for making those owls but as I saw today, a very similar pattern is already out there... 

The last week I hadn't much time to craft or reply to all your nice comments, so there are just these three new owls and a Big Thank You today.

Have a good start into the fresh week (I wrote that a week ago... this blog appears to be a weekly blog these days...)!

Me, Queen of Procrastination

Before writing the heading for this post I checked the phrase on the internet and saw there are quite a lot of gals claiming for that title... maybe we all tend to paraphrase our failure with some florid language to play it down?!

So, without any flowery words:

I missed the deadline for a swap with three fellow bloggers. The packages were due last summer but I had a hard time coming up with ideas for that little crafted item which should accompany  five fat quarters... just a little thing... Obviously I cannot think of three original ideas at the same time. I got totally stuck.

Did a lot of compensating crafts in the meantime because being idle meant "Think!".

Last October I finally gave in, let go the aim of doing something original and decided to make similar things for each of those girls to finally get those parcels on their journeys. I did sew three quilted crafting aprons, even used a real pattern from NHK's Oshare Kobo and told afterwards what I've been doing here on the blog...  and there came the next flaw...
It was not my intention to lie about the aprons when I told about them. I guess I must have been so relieved  about finally having made something for the swap that I was kind of  happily dazed when I posted about the aprons. Because it totally slipped my consciousness that the aprons had no ties yet.
And you know when I finally made them...

I am sorry. Your swap packages will reach you soon, I mean it.

Interestingly, once started, working on the aprons was fun, they are a great project for playing with scraps, even so much fun that I made three more aprons. One for me (shown above) and these two for girls who are in the lucky position of not knowing they'll be receiving them. After all, as unoriginal these aprons are, they seem to be a decent gift to me. Next time I try not to trip myself up and just do something. Anything. On time.

Take care!

22 Hours...

Phew, only 22 hours to go till the new year starts and sooooo much to catch up with...
2006 will end without having done many things I wanted to do but now it's really too late to worry about that. The Long  Overdues which were begun in October are still waiting to be continued... next year.

What I'd like to tell about today is a parcel that Nic and Sabine have sent us. It traveled a while but reached us just in time... look at all this fabulous wool felt - the green and red one were perfect for the mittens!

I am such a lucky girl that Sabine of Farbenmix was going through her stash and thought I could use that gorgeous yet not machine washable wool felt for some not to be washed items...

If I try very, very hard, I might come up with some (more) ideas... ;)

Thank you so much, Sabine!

Echt, Sabine, der Filz ist herrlich und wird ueber die Jahre (ja, ja, so lange wird's wohl dauern, bis der weg ist!) mit groesster Freude verarbeitet werden.

Bist ein Schatz.

The other, very lucky girl here is Dagny. My poor girl that is still waiting for fitting clothes... She got a new dress! Nic who is writing Luzia Pimpinella, one of my favourite blogs because Nic is such a lovely person, extremely busy, creative and inspiring, instantly thought of making Dagny a dress of a certain fabric she had on her stash when she read that orange post of mine back in October...

And indeed, the dress would have fitted so well... and it actually is fitting well!

That's my happy girl...

Once again I am thrilled how wonderful people are out there.

Nic, thanks a lot!!!!!

Und auch mit Nic spreche ich immer noch Deutsch...

Mutter und Kind haben sich sehr gefreut, der Sesamstrassencharme ist ganz nach unserem Geschmack - und Deine Liebe zum Detail sowieso!

More pictures of that sweet dress here and here.

PS: Dagny needs new sweaters... ;-)

All Things Sweet

A quick muffler scarf (thanks for the proper word) for keeping me warm. Not really the Denyse Schmidt-ish one, but inspired by it anyways.
Oh, I love, love, love my Liberties! I know many of you do, too. Does anybody of you know if there is a kind of library somewhere out there where all the pattern's names are listed? I do like to know the name of my babies ;-)

Isn't it just perfect?
It came along with these... mmmmh!
Lovely and very gifted quilt artist Kristin made it for me - thank you so much!

Matcha.
Sweet and hot and creamy.
Heaven - if you like green tea.
Love it.

EDIT: I found the missing names of the pink and green fabrics that went into this scarf:

Millie and Parsley.

"Millie" was lingering around with some other "Classics" on the Japanese Liberty site, and that lovely herb "Parsley" that I thought could be dill was spotted here. What a nice name, a Libertytheque... it exists! Well, kind of... appears to be dormant... maybe it needs to be fed?