Quince jelly / Quittengelee

As I was NOT preparing for the market, I cooked quince jelly (-jam, -marmalade, -…?). I got some quince from my mother-in-laws neighbour, kept it for a while because I like the smell and had even less time to cook, borrowed a steam-juicer from my husband’s colleague and finally made it, just cooking the juice and a good amount of jelling sugar:

Then I printed some nice freebie-labels from eatdrinkchic and voilá: the finished loot:

Da ich mich ja mitunter NICHT für den Markt vorbereitet habe, habe ich unter anderem Quittengelee gekocht. Von Schwiegermamas Nachbarin kamen die Quitten, die lagen eine Weile so rum weil ich den Duft mag und noch weniger Zeit zum einkochen hatte, der Dampf-Entsafter wurde geliehen von einer Kollegin meines Gatten und dann war’s soweit: der Saft mit genügend Gelierzucker zusammengekocht, gratis-Etiketten von eatdrinkchic ausgedruckt und voilá: die fertige Beute.

The mysterious workshop: silkscreen printing! / Der rätselhafte Workshop: Siebdruck!

In April, when Anny and I passed the marathon, we were on the way to a silkscreen-printing-workshop. We were welcomed by Meike, owner and patient tutor of the course at frohstoff. The class lasted two days and it was packed full of fun, insight and slightly intimidating knowledge/equipment.

Here is the office where we refined our sketches and artwork to be printed:

Then we went to the basement, where the screens were coated with photo-sensitive emulsion, dried and exposed. This is the cleansing
of the exposed emulsion:

Here the blurred photo of my screens:

And then we spent most of the time printing (and drying the prints):

Im April, als Anny und ich am Marathon vorbeikamen, waren wir auf dem Weg zur Siebdruckwerkstatt. Wir wurden von Meike, der Besitzerin und geduldigen Kursleiterin bei frohstoff begrüßt. Es waren zwei Tage vollgepackt mit Spaß, Erkenntnisgewinn und leicht einschüchterndem Wissen/Ausrüstung.

Zuerst das Bild von dem Büro, wo wir die Skizzen und Druckvorlagen verfeinerten. Dann ging’s in den Keller, wo die Siebe mit lichtsensibler Emulsion beschichtet, getrocknet und belichtet wurden. Man sieht, wie die Siebe mit dem Hochdruckreiniger gewaschen werden. Ein verschwommenes Bild meiner Siebe ist auch dabei. Danach verbrachten wir die meiste Zeit mit dem Drucken (und Trocknen).

Labels / Etiketten

Just as I was getting desperate because I was running out of labels, there was something in the postbox: new labels from namensbänder, for a professional look.

Gerade als ich anfing zu verzweifeln weil ich keine Etiketten mehr hatte, war etwas im Briefkasten: neue Etiketten von namensbänder , damit’s professionell aussieht.

Well, this was summer ‘09 – in short

Today I restocked my DaWanda-shop, for about the first time this year, um, and, well, umm, I guess I should also restock this blog, humph.

iPhoto is opened up and I try to pick up the thread I lost somewhere this spring: Easter was sunny and yummy:

Then I visited my sister who lives in Ljubljana in Slovenia. It’s really lovely there, a tiny country with a great variety of landscapes and atmosphere:

One of the following weekends my friend Anny and I went to a mysterious workshop that I’m going to blog about later on. But we passed this on our way: Hamburg Marathon:

This summers weather was – in Northern german terms – excellent, only an uncommon hailstorm in June brought down our rhododendrons bloom:

On weekends, we made short trips to the Baltic Sea …

… as well as to the Baltic Sea ;-)) (Actually ‘Kieler Woche’, the most important German sailing regatta turned festival):

Of course we went to the ‘let’s pretend we’re in the Wild West’ Open Air theatre again:

And then it was time to say Goodbye to that messy staff-room at my now former school:Yeees, I decided to start teaching at another school, closer to home, before I get too old to make new friends among the colleagues and make it sort of home. New place is nice, staff is nice and I save lots of time and fuel not commuting that much anymore, but still… it’s hard.

Well, then it was time for summer vacation. We spent two weeks on Sylt, an island in the Northern Sea, which is considered the German Hamptons:

A beloved young man, wetting his pants, other way up ;-)) and later hiding behind the orange sail:

There are some more compromising pics with me fighting the elements, because this was a mother-son adventure thing, learning windsurfing, but, no, um, they are compromising. me in a wet suit. elements. like wind and water. We survived, not least because the loving Dad and husband sometimes booked a table in our favourite beach-bar-lounge-restaurant-thingy Wonnemeyer, where the webcam once showed the world how four hungry teachers and their breed gnawed off a delicious fish, had too much wine and got the fishbones on their new jackets. It’s good to have friends to share the more compromising moments in life. ;-0! Well, this is the path that leads there:

And if the northernmost point of Germany, List, doesn’t attract tourists with its architecture, it sure offers something:

but hey, the landscape is impressive:

Back home I immediately set off to turn some inspiration into reality, e.g. I made this bag (actually two, one for my sister and one for me) after reading Seams to me on the beach:

My mom came for a week and then it was time to prepare the next year at school, to settle (still settling), and even to teach sewing for the first time in my life. I have absolutely no professional training in that subject so I was and still am excited and quite nervous about this endeavour.

And, last month, it was time to welcome a new member of the (extended) family, this is Amy (and the other young one):

This young Lady is mother-in-laws new dog (Laila passed away late spring), must have lots of Dachshund in her, galvanizes the elder Lady.

Now it’s really late at night, and you can see the first leaves turning yellow in the picture above, so we reached the present, I have problems tiping tiny little words like ‘the’ (teh,eh,teth,..) because of yawning too much, it’s time to finish this post. No promises. But more things to post about. Crafting and sewing related. But not today….

Hi!

No, this wasn’t meant to be an experiment if anyone still reads while I’m not posting… but, surprisingly, some do! Thanks!

I’m sorry, nothing seriously happened, I just ….no, I don’t want to bore you with lame excuses, let’s just say life goes on in all it’s bounty and obviously blogging is not top priority, well, precisely finally tiping into the the computer what I already thought out as a blog post is not top priority, the monologue to you out there is a fixed part of my personal stream of consciousness…. And if there is a condition called fitful blogging-bouts, I have it. I feel like tiping in what I had in mind the last two months…

So, let’s just pretend last post was 2 days ago…ish: I had a quiet Sunday afternoon, son visiting a friend, husband somewhere downstairs recovering from last night’s party ;-)) and after reading some favourite blogs and answering some e-mails I felt like writing again, but first I had to enjoy a latte macchiato and strawberries with calvados-cream (it’s Mascarpone whipped up with icing-sugar and calvados). Mmmh! Nein, das war nicht als Experiment gedacht, ob noch irgendjemand liest während ich nicht mehr schreibe… aber überraschenderweise gibt’s noch wen! Danke!

Tut mir leid, nichts Schlimmes passiert, ich habe nur …nein, ich möchte niemand mit lahmen Entschuldigungen langweilen, nur soviel: das Leben geht in all seiner Fülle weiter und offensichtlich ist das Bloggen nicht höchster Priorität, bzw. das Eintippen bereits gedachter Posts ist nicht von höchster Priorität, der Monolog an Euch da draussen ist ein fester Bestandteil meines Bewusstseins-stroms (gibt’s diesen Ausdruck auf Deutsch?)… Und wenn es stoßweise blogging-Anfälle als Leiden gibt, ich hab’s. Ich fühle mich als ob ich zwei Monate gedachter Posts tippen könnte…

Also, lasst uns so tun, als ob der letzte Eintrag 2 Tage her ist…oder so.: Ich hatte einen ruhigen Sonntag-Nachmittag, Sohn bei ‘nem Freund, Mann irgendwo unten am erholen von der Party gestern Abend ;-)) und nachdem ich ein paar Lieblingsblogs gelesen und einige Mails beantwortet hatte, fühlte ich mich wieder nach Schreiben, aber zunächst musste ich einen Latte Macchiato und Erdbeeren mit Calvadoscreme (Mascarpone mit Puderzucker und Calvados gerührt) genießen. Mmmh!

☀☀☀ Happy Easter! / Frohe Ostern! ☀☀☀

Sometimes inspiration is in a book: this book is meant to inspire: Vive la fête by dutch designers FriedaMaria. I had seen excerpts and though I don’t understand Dutch I ordered it. It consists of various ideas for decorating and celebrating different festivities, like Easter! I like its atmosphere, the raw, unfinished, improvised yet clever and sometimes quirky look which makes me think of my sisters style. She doesn’t live in a roomy, spacious loft like the one the photos were taken, no, it’s a tiny one-room apartment in Lubljana, Slovenia. Her style is deliberate and cheerful but never really perfect, always unique. And because of all this I made a little Easter-gift for her and her boyfriend, compare original picture and my fake: 

Manchmal steckt die Inspiration in einem Buch, dieses Buch ist zur Inspiration gemacht: Vive la fête der niederländischen Designer FriedaMaria. Ich hatte Ausschnitte gesehen und obwohl ich kein holländisch kann habe ich’s bestellt. Es enthält viele Ideen um die verschiedensten Feste zu feiern und zu dekorieren, wie auch Ostern! Ich mag seine Atmosphäre, den rohen, unfertigen und improvisierten und doch schlauen und leicht skurrilen Look der mich an den Stil meiner Schwester erinnert. Sie lebt nicht in einem großzügigen Loft wie auf den Fotos, nein, in einer winzigen Einzimmer-Wohnung in Lubljana, Slowenien. Aber ihr Stil ist durchdacht und fröhlich, wenn auch nie wirklich perfekt, immer einzigartig. Und deswegen habe ich ihr und ihrem Freund dieses kleine Ostergeschenk gemacht, vergleicht Original und Fälschung:

Bloggiversary

Sooo, it’s been exactly one year since I started this blog, there were times when I had a lot to write about and times when nothing mentionable happened and also times when so much happened that I didn’t find the time to write about it. 

Initially I planned to celebrate this date with a nice banner, but as I’m in one of these too much happening to write phases now I’m also too busy to create the banner I’d like this blog to have. Instead I give a short impression of things that kept and keep me busy:

Guess what I did last week: 

I wasn’t alone, along with me were 38 15+years-olds and 3 colleagues, we had to call for the rescue-heli twice (phew, the injuries turned out to be not too serious), fought with a stomach-bug making its rounds and with an underage-binge-drinking-attempt. But the sun was shining, the Alps still had snow and at least we could skip the boring monthly staff-meeting, we were in a good mood most of the time and got a nice suntan, envied by the colleagues at home.

While I was away in Northern Italy/Southern Alps, DaWanda somehow failed to post my absence-notice, so my poor husband had to handle the shop, e.g. mail the customers that they had to wait for me, and my nice, patient customers all did. Well, from Sunday on the washing machine and the sewing machine took turns in getting my attention. Only Monday morning was a break, while I was at work. Too late, it seems, for that Lady Bernina, she got a very bad migraine and had to be taken to the sewing-machine-doctor. Jep, she broke down yesterday, making unfunny noises and unruly stitches every 20 cm or so, and it got worse. Finally I gave up, fearing that I’d increase the damage and took her to the repair-shop, there she’ll stay for a week or so. I still have to work on the orders that came in last week, that’s why I dedusted a very Mid-Century-Modern model: 

Lady Retro

And, as I had planned on a nicer, customized banner and also being curious on how to doctor nicer pictures and probably make some designs I can use next weekend (more about it next weekend! ;-)) I downloaded Gimp and experimented a bit, but I have to admit that it’s far more complicated than I had expected for this graphic-design-untrained me. If I ever have more time I’ll try to get the hang of it, but I guess it’ll have to wait a while. 

Ah, and before I forget: we also bought a new used car, right after taking a shower when I came home from that 18 hours coach-ride back home we went to the car-shop and signed the contract. Now I’ll have to get all the papers and the keys on Thursday, then we’ll take the car home after Jens’ work. 

Bed-time for me, german translation about to follow in year 2 personal blogging-time.

❄ Angels! ❄ / ❄ Engel! ❄

Well, now it’s the second day of Christmas, I’m in full blogging-swing, and therefore I show you this year’s angels. Plural. Last year we didn’t have a tree here with a landscape and an angel, last year we celebrated with my Mum and the extended family in her home in Freiburg. When Marcel and I went to the shop where they sell these angels, we couldn’t decide on one, and retrospectively chose one for last year, too. It must have been about half an hour later when Jens secretly went to this shop also, but the owner, with whom we’d had a chat before, told him that all angels were sold out (we know that there were at least 5 left). We think that he guessed that this must be the Dad and husband of the angel-buyers before and saved our Christmas-surprise with this little lie. 

Nun ist der zweite Weihnachtstag und ich bin voll im Blogging-Schwung, und deshalb zeige ich auch noch die diesjährigen Engel. Plural. Letztes Jahr hatten wir keinen Baum hier, keine Landschaft und keinen Engel, letztes Jahr haben wir bei meiner Mutter in Freiburg mit der erweiterten Verwandtschaft gefeiert. Als Marcel und ich zu dem Laden fuhren, indem diese Engel verkauft werden, konnten wir uns nicht für einen entscheiden und wählten rückwirkend für’s letzte Jahr auch noch einen aus. Schätzungsweise eine halbe Stunde nach uns war Jens heimlich in diesem Laden, und der Besitzer, mit dem wir ein Schwätzchen gehalten hatten, sagte ihm, dass alle Engel verkauft seien (wir wissen, dass mind. noch 5 Engel da waren). Wir vermuten, dass er sich dachte, dass das der Vater und Göttergatte der vorigen Kunden war und unsere Weihnachtsüberraschung mit dieser kleinen Lüge gerettet hat.

✵✵✵ Our tree / Unser Baum ✵✵✵

As its Christmas all around the world by now, it’s time to show you, family and friends and all you unknown visitors, especially those via the Christmas Traditions Exchange, our tree. As usual, I spent the best part of yesterday decorating, so, when the Churchbells rang for the Childrens’ Mass in the afternoon, I was still in baggy jeans, curlers in hair, vacuuming after the mess I’d made. That’s also part of our tradition.

Da es mittlerweile überall auf der Welt Weihnachten ist, ist es Zeit, euch, liebe Familie und Freunde, wie auch allen anderen unbekannten Besuchern, besonders denen vom Christmast Traditions Exchange, den Baum zu zeigen. Wie immer habe ich den größten Teil des gestrigen Tages mit Schmücken verbracht, so dass ich, als die Kirchenglocken für den Kindergottesdienst läuteten, noch immer in Jeans und mit Heizwicklern bekrönt hinter meinem Chaos hersaugte. Das ist auch Teil unserer Tradition. 

Because: We always have a big tree. We buy a collectible angel every year and hang them all. We light twenty real candles on our tree. And have countless stars made of straw. As well as a collection of old and new glass-ornaments. And it’s my job to put it all up. That’s the quick and easy part. Then comes the messy bit: The ‘landscape’ under the tree. The aim is to make the ugly protective plastic-sheet under the tree invisible. I could just use a nice table-cloth. Ha! That’s way too easy. I try to make a nice surrounding for the gingerbread-house, display all our scallops (we’ve got lots, they’re just soo delicious!), also clams and all our nicer findings from the sea, fresh flowers are added, and the soft-trees everyone made two years ago as well as the singing wooden figurines are displayed. The rest is covered up with logs and moss. We don’t have a crib, the one I made as a child is part of my Dad’s ‘landscape’. One year he went as far as not having a tree at all but only a landscape. And my Mum and her husband mixed traditions by using his family’s crib in her landscape-building. 

Denn: Wir haben immer einen großen Baum. Wir kaufen jedes Jahr einen Sammelengel und hängen sie alle auf. Wir zünden zwanzig echte Kerzen an. Und haben unzählige Strohsterne. Wie auch eine Sammlung alter und neuer Glaskugeln. Und es ist mein Job das alles aufzuhängen. Das ist der schnelle und einfache Teil. Danach kommt der chaotische Teil: die ‘Landschaft’ unter dem Baum. Das Ziel ist, die hässliche Plastikabdeckung unter dem Baum unsichtbar zu machen. Ich könnte einfach ein schönes Tischtuch nehmen. Ha! Viel zu einfach. Ich versuche, eine schöne Umgebung für’s Lebkuchenhaus zu gestalten, alle unsere Jakobsmuscheln zu zeigen (und wir haben viele, sie sind einfach zuu köstlich!), auch Venusmuscheln und andere Schätze aus dem Meer, frische Blumen gehören dazu und die Stoffbäume, die jeder vor zwei Jahren gemacht hat, wie auch der Lichterbogen und die Erzgebirsmännlein. Der Rest wird mit Holzscheiten und Moos abgedeckt. Wir haben keine Krippe, die, die ich als Kind gemacht habe, ist Teil der ‘Landschaft’, die mein Vater baut. Einmal hat er sogar ganz auf den Baum verzichtet und nur noch eine ‘Landschaft’ gestaltet. Und meine Mutter und ihr Mann mischen die Traditionen, in dem seine Familien-Krippe in ihrer ‘Landschaft’ eingebaut wird. 

☆ Merry Christmas! … and a tutorial… ☆ Fröhliche Weihnachten! … und eine Anleitung…

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas-time, good company, good food, lots of laughter and time to relax. And a well-decorated home ;-))

If you want a matching table-decoration or if you are in need of a nice little present (and still have 15 mins. sewing-time), here’s my first ever tutorial: 

How to make a tealight-cozy

Cut two squares of fabric, edge length appr. 15 cm (6 inch), and pin right sides together: 

Sew along edges, leave a gap for turning in the middle of one side, clip corners: 

Now turn and press: 

Choose which side you want to be the in- and outside, the later inside is what you see here. Fold your square halfways, mark the middle of the short sides with pins and sew from about 1 cm (1/2 inch) off the folded side towards the pins (take a close look at the photo, then you know what I mean):

 

Now fold the remaining two sides halfways (sort of), pin and sew: 

You end up with something like this: 

Time to switch off your machine, you’re almost finished. Just turn, 

and fix the corners with a few stitches (or glue, if you’re really in a hurry), like this: 

To elevate the tealight, fill in inflammable fake snow or glass-pebbles, even sand will do: 

Add the tealight and tadaaa! it’s finished and nice on your table, window-sill or wherever you want to have a little tealight-candle: