Crafting

I love mobile, I had a pretty big colection back home, now they are spread between my parents home and some boxes in Zurich.


It looks like babies love mobiles too so I had a great excuse to do some craft around.

For the first one I used this paper gems templates from Mini-eco (a blog worth a visit) and
turned them into a mobile.


I used paper, a metalic white hoop I found in Cood Bau+Hobby and nylon thread. The worst part was asembling the paper gems but after 4 it gets easy :-)

 

The second one is still in progress. A while ago I found this Etsy seller who makes this beautiful (and affordable) mobiles and fell in love with them. So when last Saturday walking around Zürich I found a little origami for dummies kit I felt destiny was telling me to do something similar on my own. 

How? Youtube my dear. 


Until now I have a crane, a giraffe, a rabbit, a butterfly fish and an elephant (that doesn't look very nice) I still need to think how to build the mobile but origami is not my thing, the next time I'll buy it allready made :-P

Don't forget to check Kidivist store in Etsy !

Proud Mama

Mmmmm.... getting rid of some of my 2 tons of leftovers...

I know the sofa covered with a sheet is not very nice but someone threw up on the nice grey cover we usually use. Yes Sona I'm talking about you!!

DIY haging hats

If you don't know where to put your hats, here is a good, cheap and nice loking idea for A beautiful Mess. 

You just  need some clothes pins and removable adhesive strips, and hats of course!


I've done this at home but my camera is broken so... no picture to prove it!!!

Perfect match

I finally received this nice book, Printing by Hand form Lena Corwin, I guess now you know what I'm goint to do this summer... or at least try!


The firts tip is "don't start until you have everything you need", I was so excited I ride my bike to the closest Coop Bau+Hobby but they had just a few things :-( I didn't matter I stilla managed to print myself, the kitchen table and some pillows.

They don't look very nice but at least match my cat!

Cotton cravings....

One month ago I started to control my expenses with the easy and friendliest version of a personal finance software I could find, the cute little EEBA envelopes.

Too easy? Its perfect for me, and I tried 3 different things before. Marc Albert loves  Quicken  but I don't need that much now and spanish banks don't allow to download its data as it happens in USA so we can not enjoy many of its features. The same hapopens with its little brother Mint. 

My "hobbies" envelope allready has destiny, its pretty bad than the 1st day of june I allready know that part of my budget is goind to disapeaer so fast!  I'm bad :-(

Oh If you use Ravelry, here yu have some patterns to crochet things like the ones above: 1, 2, 3

Picture credits: here.

Back again

I feel like a ping pong ball. I just came back from Barcelona, the weather in Zurich is just amazing, 4 days of wonderful sun, its a pitty I have to work!! :-(

During this two weeks I met my friend first child Nicolas, so cute and quiet. I also manage to finish this! He is too small for it yet but they grow really fast so its perfect.

Now I need to finish the presents for my two new cousins! argh!

Baby fever

So, my uncle got two babies in Christmas, they were pretty small but healty :-)  and my friend (the frist one of the bunch to decide to jump into the motherhood crazyness) got his this wednesday. 

So I've been pretty busy knitting my first baby stuff.  I have to admit its really nice, I bought a super sweet Merino yarn and the pattern knits super fast. 

Now I need some help to sew it all together and knit the collar.(some = mum)

Then one will travell to Santander (with another thing that I'm still working at) and another one will travell to Barcelona!

Wreaths for eveyone!

I allready showed you the wreath I made using some stuff from Migros and Ikea. The truth is that I wantes ot use oine from Ikea, the snövita wreath.

I bought two and I realised all my ideas looked like shit. Until now! This weekend I finished this. I used some felt stash I had at home, scissors, tons of glue and paper and a pen to draw the figures.

Honestly I'm satisfied with the result I think is quoite cute. I made one with Sankt Nicohlaus for our place and another with the 3 Magic Kings for my parents.

Cultural note: the 3 magic kings (Melchor, Gaspar and Baltasar) come on the 6th of january, they bring gifts and stuff. At home each one of us had a special king that left us notes (little feedback from our parents about our behaviour - I remember taking them really seriously even when I knew thei were written by my parents-).

I have to say I like them better than Santa Claus and othe rtraditions that are coming from other countries,I'm really old minded for Christmas stuff.

I want traditional food, stay with my family and old friends... I have the whole year to be subversive!

Busy girl

I have the firm intention to start 2011 with a small stash of yarn. During years I'm been buying yarn without knowing what to o with it just because it was nice, not in 2011. 15kg of yarn its a lot of crap to move from Spain to Switzerland so its time to clean up.


The problem is to find the right project to use the 4, 3 or 1 skein of wathever I have. This weekend was the turn of 4 keis of Rowan Country, a nice bulky yarn I had for 2 years smelling like poo ina  plastic bag. Some yarn smell like real wool but this one was going on a trip to a farm. Not nice.

2 years later the smell is gone (Uxim in not happy with that, she like poo) and I've been busy doing une berret and 2 cuffwarmers. With the left overs a made another funny hat.


Its Christmas, I'm thinking I could make something to give it away to a lucky reader but I'm not sure I have one!!!

Christmas wreath

We had one at home but in the 2nd moving (he one to Switzerland was the 3rd one) we forgot it haning on the door. It looks like here is mandatory to make your door look nice for Christmas so:

1. Natural pine wreath from Migros CHF 14,90.
2. Red raffia, also from Migros CHF 3,90.
3. An assistant that doesn't work a lot but its cute.
4. A christmas ornament from Ikea (no idea of the price but it was cheap)



And here is the result! It doesn't look really good on pictures because of the grey door but I like it and it smells good.

I'm still here!

Busy and frozen but here :-) I'm getting close to the big number (30) and there are 3 babies of close firends and family coming so I've started to get in touch with the universe of crochet and knit patterns for babies.

Everything is so cute and small... the problem is that I have no idea how big a baby is... maybe I'll use Sona as a model, she weigths 6 kilo, thats a fat baby so it can work!

These last months I've been busy  doing house-warming stuff getting ready for the winter, I'm a proud of the result!

Tie dye!

My fingers are green and yellow and Plaicd is not very happy with the new colour of his old t-shirts but who cares!!

August

Usually I don't knit during the summer. I'm a lazy knitter so I tend to use chunky yarn, and knitting with chunky yarn is not very nice in the middle of the spanish summer.

In Zurich this wouldn't be a problem, summer comes and goes every 10 minutes, I dress like an onion everyday.

These last months I've been crocheting pillows, don't ask me why, its just stupid I know, in two days they will be covered by my cats fur :-(

I finished!

The pillow I sarted here is finished. The filling is a little bit small, I forgot the good one in barcelona :-(

Working on it...

Since I saw this pillow in Design*sponge I've been stealing old sheets, shirts and cheap pieces of fabric.

I started in April while I was in Barcelona, I have a box full of yoy-os ready there, and now thanks to the sacrifice of some old shirts and a dress of mine I think I have enough of them.

Next week I'll be in Barcelona again so I'll see if all this fabric murders were useful!

Making friends

Some days ago, I wrote about the different things I am doing in order to meet new people here in Zurich and to avoid becoming an hermit.

One of them was to get in touch with the Swiss Knits group in Ravelry.com and spend a Thursday evening knitting and drinking coffee (or something else, I don't like coffee...).

It was just like a blind date. You are in a public place to meet someone but you have no idea how does he/she look like!

I went to the Starbucks near Central Station and walked around its 3 floors looking for someone knitting (its an open group, they meet allways in the same place/day and everybody can join, usually people post in the group forum whether they will come this week or not, that day we where supossed to be just two people), SHIT! I found nobody!

The previous day I had a fiasco, I went to the Ateneo Popular Español to get a free yoga class but there was nobody, even the teacher was missing!

So I thogut I wasn't going to miss another day and I decided to get a driknk and stayed there for a while and work a little bit on my scarf.

Waiting for my drink I noticed the girl in front of me wearing a colorful shawl suspiciously original .... mmmm it smells like handmade stuff here ... YES! that girl was my date for that evening, Katrin, a nice German girl, just engaged with an amazing pair of socks in her needles.

So for more than two hours we talked about differents things while her pair of socks and my scarf were getting done, next Thursday again!