Home again..

after the trip to Berlin with Baking DD. Lovely stay at the Hampton hotel, gorgeous sunshiny weather, great sights, beautifull artifacts at the museums, good company....what more do you want?(although I could do without the sore feet after constant walking/strolling around town! We were completely knackered after our return!!)

The cute trafficlights in the former east

 Medieval citywall

 Quaint streets

 Bernini inspired fountain

 The church (can you believe it was built in 1998???? It was there before, bombed in the war and rebuild later)

 Views from the top of the church

Postdammer Platz

 Jewish memorial

 The wall

the most beautifull piece at the Neues Museum: statue of Nefertiti, my personal highlight. The pic is not mine (not allowed to photograph her) but picked from the internet

 

and much, much more......

Old school..

Hmm, 3 sundays in a row with a blogpost; i'm beginning to see a pattern here...Ah well, better than blogsilence!
I got a question by email about how I handsew the Farmer's Wife blocks. I do them old school.
Print the templates, glue them on sandpaper and cut them out. I then draw each and every patch that is required for a particular block and cut them out. Not with a rotarycutter but with scissors.

 Oh, I also punch a hole in the template where lines connect, mark those points and connect the dots to get my excact sewing line.
Minimal waste, very timeconsuming and very relaxing...

The best part? All the corners match,

 each and every

 time, again and again...

This weeks update:

 and the last, the farmer's puzzle block that I tweaked a bit. it looked like a swastika and I didn't want that. It was ugly.

Another conversation I had:
"why do you have so many pincushions?"
-because I love making them, they're cute, quick to make and usefull-
"but you need only one"
-???-
"wait, what?  you change your cushion with seasons???"
-uh, yep-
"you're weird...."

So this week I went from summer

 to fall...

I'm weird..

Gifts!

I was a lucky person last week :) C returned from her looooooong holiday in the US and she brought gifts

I do know these a meant for Halloween, but in MHY (my humble opinion) every day is a good day to wear witchy socks.

I also got some rulers I've been wanting to try for HST's (and they're not to be found here!), fun fabrics (love a good polkadot) and a new JoAnns bag. Not that I will ditch the old one; the handles are not totally gone yet.....they are going to last a bit longer..
Thanks C!!

Remember the old iron with the missing plug? A friend came by and gave me one! He restores old motorcycles (among other things..) and likes my love for Featherweights and old irons. He found a vintage plug somewhere among his stuff and thought of me :)
Porcelain and bakelite, just what I wanted.

 I've been dying to see if the iron stills works and...tadaa..it does!

It takes a while to get hot, but it also cools slow. Added the fact that it is extremely heavy: perfect for Farmer's wife blocks with gazillion seams that will not go flat. I'm going to buy vintage-looking electrical cord coming week.

Next, my other neighbour came by and asked me if I was interested in this:

It's an old dustbin, the kind I remembered so well from my childhood. Ofcourse I wanted it!
I also made me think about how little waste my Mum had with a family of 5. Once a week the bin got emptied. A big car came by for the job and the noise was deafening with all those bins lifted up and down.
Now we have huge plastic ones that are emptied every other week and that sometimes wasn't enough with my own family of 5...

Last but not least my Farmer's Wife update:

Again 7 blocks added to the pile!
C wants to sew along too. She'd better get started :)!

Sunny summer weekend!

And so we thought summer was over. Dreary grey days and rain almost every day. Untill this weekend! Sunshine all day, great temperature...and i enjoyed every minute:)
DH and I did long overdue chores in the garden and took coffee and lunchbreaks outside with sun on our faces. Best thing is that this weather will last coming week!
Playing with plants was on the to-do list too

There was also stuff going on at the sewing front. My wooden boxes multiplyed (now how did that happen??) and the latest addition has the perfect size for my farmer's wife blocks.

 How great was my epiphany to sash-as-you-go. Sashing the 14 blocks I already made, was boring and took a lot of time.
Here are blocks 15-21, sashed and all!

=========

 

Baking DD spent 2 days in Berlin with school. I found out she knows absolutely nothing about the city, nor the country, nor the language. I wonder where all the money for her eductation went LOL.
So we decided to go to Berlin together during autumnbreak, as a present for her 25th birthday. I'm sooo looking forward to that trip! First time Baking DD and I go together, just the two of us ánd Berlin is a great city with lots to see. Only 4 weeks to go! ( that's 28 FW blocks haha!!)

I kept my promise...

...and cycled to work every day (except on fridays when I do my groceryshopping) Downside is, that the minute I step out of the door, it starts to rain. Sometimes just drizzling, sometimes it poured. So I also got wet every day:( So I bought a raincoat and sweatpants. The coat to wear on the bike, the pants to change when stepping out of soaked jeans after I get home.
Another promise to myself was to sew a farmer's wife block a day.
First week:

 and last week...

While sewing, it came to mind, that it might be a good idea to sash-as-you-go. Otherwise I'll be adding sashing for ages. I've been told that there are 198. Organising is a good idea as well and an excellent excuse to buy another matching wooden box to keep sashings and cornerstones. I plan to cut these a bunch at a time. 

One box for templates, one for sashings and cornerstones...Looks good to me!

 

And for something completely different and for Whovians only: Look what DD and I came across in Birmingham!!!!

 

 OMG the Doctor IS real! He parked his Tardis at the BBC for safe keeping while out on an adventure, probably saving the world. By the looks of it, he really needs to get going again to get rid of all the dust..

 We also saw a Dalek. Though the sign said it was old, it was scary nonetheless.
Luckily the blue light didn't light up and we didn't get exterminated.....

Yep, both DD's and I LOVE Dr Who and we cannot wait to watch the first episode of the new season TONIGHT. Must say that I'm still not thrilled about Peter Capaldi being the Doctor, but that's no surprise after Matt Smith and David Tennant (my fav).

End of summer



Harvest time again. We had an early spring storm that blew off all the appleblossom the minute they opened, so I had no high hopes this year, but look!

It is an actual vintage "apple pick basket" that's pretty big



Now, what to do with this loot, knowing all my childeren will come to visit?

 



 First one of the year. It tasted delicious, take my word for it :)

Next thing is the new project. I found the PERFECT crate in the deep and dark ends of my sewingroom.

Good size too and to top it off, a smaller wooden box to hold all the templates in bags.



So far, I'm sewing a block a day and I agree with every " Farmer's Wife": it's very addictive.....

 Today block 10 "box" and 11 "bowtie" are on the list.
Time to put the warm slippers on, get my little crate within reach and select fabrics.

New additions...

My fav jeans didn't fit anymore. In fact: everything I wanted to wear became a bit tighter. The scale confirmed what I already knew...I gained some weight :( The eternal struggle! So, time for action and time to stop shoving things in my mouth without thinking. I managed to loose the extra pounds, jeans fitted again (hurray)but I decided to go to work on my bycycle again, instead of taking the car.
After all, it's just a 10 minute ride! (ridiculous to go by car anyway)
My bike is almost 30 years old and I transported the world on it in the days I did not have a car for myself alone. DH had already warned me that the rear wheel was so rusted, it could literally collapse any moment.
So, today I got a brandnew bycycle!

 The model is, just like my old one, the "old Dutch" and that's just what it is. Here people call it a "granny bike"  When  my kids were small, they called it the mummy bike..but with my new status-to-be, this will be a real granny bike.
Ofcourse I dressed it up with polkadots. Easy to spot in a sea of other bikes. (there are always loads of bikes parked everywhere here!)

Next addition is a book. (grrr, flipped pic!)

I always wanted to make some sort of sampler, but I can fret endlessly when choosing blocks myself. "isn't this a tiny bit nicer than that one?' I do like the Farmer's wife as a whole, and now I can just make the blocks as presented and sew. Don't think, but make.
It'll be a longterm project and I will sew by hand again. At least, that's the plan!