home sweet home

I spent the last week walking around London - being very very gratefull for my trainers - the first half was all fun and touristy and the end was a bit more stressfull running around the Book Fair, that is really really tiny if you are used to the book fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig.

I'm not really an airplane person - my choice of transport usually is the train because buses are so slow ...

I took a local train to meet this one at Frankfurt main station to take me all the way to Brussels ...

... where I had a lye ring with butter and egg for dinner (I probably need to do a post about lye rolls at some point in the future) ...

... then I spent a lot of time looking at things - like the cellar in the Guild Hall ...

... and wandering through backroads in the city - much more beautiful than main roads ...

... and then I got back on the train on a beatuiful un-British sunny day changed the trains a few times saw some strange people - made luggage friends and enemies (I don't travel with the smallest of backpacks). And came home at night to a fabric dream ...

... part of my great aunt's sewing supplies - fabrics, threads, buttons, zippers and what-nots ready for me to inspect and decide what to do with it.

Löni

crazy days

While most of the town was busy getting drunk and watching the "Fasenet"-Parade on Rosenmontag I took the second best refuge after leaving town and hide out the days and celebrate the way I'm used to from home. Link to more pictures of madness

 

  I decided to put in some hours ... I'm with the blue group at the back hiding in the orange masse 

getting some radio relais and atenna stuff set up .... the reason for a late lunch ... and today it was back to papers and the usual stuff ... missing home a bit and did you know Lent starts tomorrow? maybe I will have more time for sewing skipping chooclate breaks, and less excuses for not doing hand sewing while eating chips/crisps while watching TV.

Löni

first day of the holidays

Well ok it's probably more the second day - I spent the first one cleaning up and doing laundry and packing and cutting fabric ... After an unusually uneventful train journey I did dive head first into sewing ...
Ok it did take me a while to set up the sewing machine - the old Lady is a bit well, let's say she sometimes has her own mind. I should probably introduce her to you at some point - it's an old PFAFF machine, and probably the grandma of my main machine and mother of my heavy duty machine ...

Anyway I did get some sewing done yesterday - as I decided not to wait on the last bee that is hmm ignoring me and went ahead and assembled the top.

ehemm yeah I folded it over night - you will see the reason in the next picture - and didn't iron it for the photo shoot

In the evening I went for a puzzle - while watching, or rather listening to an Austrian movie I knelt on the floor arranging and re-arranging and changing and ... I'm really glad my mum has such a large free space in the living room .. I'm sure to spend some more time arranging and re-arranging in the next few days.

Today I spent most of the day in the garden, planting a rose and some other perennial things, and a few strawberries that are of the early kind, and I got the wood I need to fix the wood-shed roof ...

Tomorrow is for visiting the park I worked at for a year, getting tea and some fresh meat and tinned sausage, and catching up with old friends ...

The Ladies - very headstrong ---- the meat is the kids, nieces, nephews

the drying beds for herbs and in this case flower petals for teas .. 

Löni

Volkstrauertag

This is a somewhat hushed up topic in Germany - know it but don't talk about it. Wikipedia tells you a bit about its history 

It's officially the day to remember all those who were victims of war (soldiers and civilians) - the picture is very incomplete as there is officially no research allowed on German ground, though there are war graves suspected. And as Germany is not officially at war all those deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan or elswere are not seen as fallen soldiers, so they won't ever get their own dot on the map.

Größere Kartenansicht

Following all the blogs over the last year, the patriotic quilts you make, the quilts you donate to soldiers' families or veterans made me realize once more we have a pretty messed up view here ... On the one hand we are ok with our military doing peace keeping missions on the other hand we do our best to ignore their existence.

"soldier cemetery 1914-1918" on the city cemetery in the middle of my home town

our mountain cemetary with the graves for the 2nd World war

the memorial

and the 400 something graves

There won't be any new soldiers' garves - Germany is officialyl not at war (just doign peace keeping missions) and per definition we can't have fallen soldiers and therfore need no cemetaries for them.

Leo

Allerseelen

I thought I could start with sharing some culture things (that is how I grew up to do it, that means a small catholic village in Swabia (southe west Germany)). You probably all figured that I do not do Halloween simply because it does not exist here. And even though there is the 31st of October which is Reformation Day for the Protestants and there is Allerheiligen - All Saints' Day on 1st of November.

More personal is Allerseelen - All Souls' Day on the 2nd of November, the day we remember the dead, by visiting the cemetary and lightening candles. I won't be home this year - bu I  might simply light a candle in the window.

Leo

The usual suspects that I link to

enjoying the holidays

I am having a fabulous time, doing nothing. May I introduce you to my holiday enemy, I haven't quite figured out how to walk through the "string curtain" without getting my glasses caught in in.

A little snack in between - the green stuff is sour and I really love it (and yes I'm sure it's edible), it was a long walk from the back of the garden to the kitchen, not many of the raspberries survived. Oi and today was a very nice and sunny day again, after some gray cloudy days. Hmm my ears don't really look flattering on the shadow picture, next time I will try another hair style.

And that is where I will walk to now, with a bottle of  apple juice and a good book. Watch some frogs, listen to the neighbours having a bbq I think (I can only smell the smoke). And write some "I am on holidays and you not, I feel soooo sorry for you"-postcards and letters.

Leo

The usual suspects that I link to

the holidays are over giveaway

I'm joining in for the - well I find it a rather dpressing reason - back to school give away blog hop that Michelle from the Quilting Gallery is hosting.

I laways enjoy entering give aways but I do feel a bit guilty doing so wihtout offering a chance in return.

So I still have holidays, sort of, officially, in a way ...  which means at the moment having even less time to do the things I wanto to do. So I didn't make anythign myself for this one.

Anyway - what do I have on offer - nothign special really, it's an embroider your own shopping bag kit. It's still in it's original wrapping, so all the parts are still together. I'm not much of an embroiderer myself, I only go as far as to stitch my lables by hand. Ohh and some chocolate if you want, I was home recently and I couldn't resist a trip to "Ritter Sport" and now the fridge is full of chocolate .. dark mousse au chocolate, winter crisp, crisp flakes, white nut ... molten chocolate still tastes like chocolate - for all those in still warm parts of the earth.

the white wrapping means try out chocolate varieties for the winter season

The rules etc  (I really enjoy making up rules)
* the one loop you have to jump through I would like to know a traditional dish for the area you come from (I think that is fair)

* and as usual a second entry if you can give me a convincing reason (sorry following me on FB doesn't count I don't have a page there)

* international entries are welcome

* the give away runs from post publishing date (I can't be bothere to find out what time noon EDT is in my time zone) until September 2nd late evening (I'm leaving for a trip on the 3rd and I wouldn't want you to hang in the dry for days not knowing who made the draw)


Leo


For more give aways head back to the Quilting Gallery:

holiday update

I spent the last few days visiting a friend in Trier doing a little detour driving home.

just the "flower market" with a  lovely church in the back yard of a few old houses

"Kaisertherme" - emperors bath - a left over from the Romans that established the town (ehhh) many years ago.

the city is in the Mosel valley, they are famouse there for their wine - that you can see growing there

almost feels like home with all the mountains and lots of trees - but they do talk strangely there

Leo

The usual suspects that I link to

holidays

I'm saying good bye for a few days ... well actually over a week

 

my first stop will be that town to have a late birhtday celebration with my sister, movies and pizza

 

and then I'm off to that lovely town that will always be home - and a lot of gardening

I'm thinking about taking part in Sew Mama Sew's give away, so let's see if I can get a post done.

Leo

St. Patrick's Day giveaway

Any excuse for a giveaway is a good excuse. Those that read my blog know that I just moved, so I'm still a bit unorganised and still have unopend boxes. But I wouldn't want to miss a give away. I got rid of some old calendars making envelops, and being a postcrosser I went through my "to send" postcards and found some that might be interessting for crafters. And some more flowers (I didn't know they still existed, moving can have its good sides too). The pink flower would have been perfect for my last pink givaway  (no need to click on the link it's over).

So to the pictures and details:  as the St. Patrick's Day colour is green how about the green(ish) envelopes.

The two hand craft related postcards (or more if I find some more)

and one flower or two if you can give me a reason

The small print:
* You don't need to be a follower to enter just tell me  what you would want for your birthday if you were a 13 year old young Lady?
*To my (few) but dear readers I think I will let you get a second entry - just to reward you, or rather thank you for sticking with me
*Open internationally
*The give away starts when I post the post (so if you can see it it's open) and lasts until March 23rd noon Berlin time (GMT+1)

Visit the other participants in the party 

Löni

the 5th season

Realising that tomorrow is Ash Wednesday made me a little homesick, but it's just 4 more nights ...
I missed what we traditionally call "Fasnet" (Fastnacht), which is a lot of celebrating and eating and generally having fun. We start celebrating on the 6th of January by digging out the costumes and masks ... then there is a break of a few weeks until the Thursday before Ash Wednesday when the true festivities begin. There will be prcessions, there will be a lot of food - as traditionally all the food that could go bad (meat, eggs, lard .. ) had to be used up before the time of fasting. The official end of "Fasnet" is at midnight, with the traditional burning of a straw man (depending on who you believe, the straw man depicts the winter or all the sins)
You wonder what all that has to do we fabric - the costumes of course, there are so many and many of them, wonderfully sewn, so I though I would show some of them.

I searched the WWW for some nice pictures of the myriades of different costumes - as the villages and towns wach have their own costumes.

If you need to use up large amounts of solids:

"forest devil" c NetCurLi

Or would you rather use up your scraps? maybe in combination with some appliquee?

c B. Sasse

c Mühlheim Tourisitk

Schantle c www.neuangekommen.de

something easy for the beginner, and something for our embroiderers

 

details c H. Hölsch

 "port jester" c Peter Sikora

Just to show that there is some hard work included - those bell belts usually weigh between 10 and 13 kg and in order to make them ring nicely you have to hopp slightly.

c H. Hölsch

unreliable postal services

I send off a packet about 5 days ago to my partner who lives in AUSTRIA. Today I was curious who on earth would send me a packet - and I had to discover that said packet was sent back to me with the reason "not enough stamps on it to go to AUSTRALIA", now my hand writing isn't that bad. I really hope I can manage to get the packet sent off again in time to be in Austria by the 14th. Valentines SWAPs should arrive on Valentines day. I decided to print out the address this time. No chance to mistake my handwritten AUSTRIA for AUSTRALIA - however they did that.

Leo