New finishes

I have many projects just waiting to be finished. It is always so fun to start something new, but when it takes a long time, the enthusiasm fades away and the project finds a place somewhere, usually a bit out of sight, and is forgotten. This box of embroidery floss is a perfect example. I have inherited, received as gift and bought embroidery floss over the years, and tried to keep them in one place.

As you can see, the place is an old shoe box, and my system is not very organized. I was thrilled to find these plastic bobbins online, and when they arrived at the beginning of last year, I started to organize my collection.

It was a very slow project, I found more fun doings, and the floss was forgotten for a year. Then I decided to finish it by working for an hour a day with the floss and bought another box as I could see one box would not get me very far.

Dear daughter spent last week with us, and on Thursday we sat together and organized the bobbins by colour. The DMC colour chart was not useful as I have embroidery floss from several manufacturers. Therefore we decided to use our intuition and just tried to please the eye.

Doesn't is look delicious?

My other finish was this Paper Lanterns quilt designed by Loft Creations. I made the quilt top five years ago, and this year I plan to quilt as many as possible of the tops I have waiting.

My blocks are slightly larger than in the pattern, and I used a dark background to make the lanterns glow in the dark night. This reminds me of a late Summer night when I was about ten years old. My eldest sister was coming home after a year in student exchange in the USA, our parents were meeting her at the airport and they were coming home very late in the night. We hanged paper lanterns in trees and on the washing line to welcome them.

In the photo the binding is only pinned on the backside but today it is sewn, with label and all. Two months of the year are behind, and I have finished two quilts. I hope to finish one again before the end of this month. 

Organizing

New home, old mess. I'm trying to organize my crafty things in some way that makes sense, and the basic idea is to have just one address for each category of hoarded material. Like the quilt backing fabrics in this cupboard:

Embroidery floss kept popping up in different project bags, shoe boxes, and pouches and bags with my mother's unfinished projects. I had no idea how much of that stuff I had, and what colours. Now I'm working my way from this mess

towards something in this direction:

One way to help with the organizing problems is naturally reducing the amount of material to organize. Using up yarn rests is my favourite method.

Still some light grey yarn left, so I started knitting this pair in a smaller size. I ended in a vicious circle and had to buy more light grey...

... and so there was yarn left and therefore I had to knit these mittens to go with the Little Knight  hat for our grandson. The pattern is for a newborn baby, I just used heavier yarn and more stitches.

 

Munich, a touch of Spring and a happy end

After the weekend in small towns and at the fly fishing event, on Monday morning we took the train to Munich. The weather was warming up and the sky was blue. Here is the Cathedral, Frauenkirche, built in 1468-1488.

 

 

 

We were walking in the city centre, Marienplatz, originally a market place. I zoomed my camera to look at  one of the many gargoyles on the New Town Hall building. New is a relative word, it was built between 1867 and 1907.

 

 

Here is a picture of the building, and you can see how many people have taken their coats off as the day was getting warm.

 

The Glockenspiel was playing, life size figures of people and horses. You can read about the plays in the link.

 

We were not just tourists looking at attractions we had seen already, but we were on a mission: I needed some red (304) DMC embroidery floss. We looked for it in the big department stores, some of which actually had a fabric and hobby department. But all they had was Anchor floss, and no conversion chart like this link I later got from Melanie: http://www.willowfabrics.com/shadeconverter.shtm. We looked into shopping arcades in hope to find a quilt shop, embroidery shop, anything. No luck. Such a big, big, city, and they don't have a quilt shop where one could find it and have some fun, and they don't even sell red floss. And that was almost all I really wanted!

 

 

Then we walked past the Fishing and Hunting Museum, another familiar place we already visited twice.  

 

This time I didn't dare go in, the exhibition was about life with Wolpertinger! You can see how awful they can look. (Yes, they are all different.) They may have a hare's body with antlers, feet like a waterbird and maybe even wings.

 

I have learnt at the museum that they specialised in eating "North German soft sculls", and one can't be sure how well they know their geography. Finland is even more in the North than North Germany! You can imagine how I was scared when I saw this creature through my kitchen window just after arrival:

 

Brown and white hair falling out, and the ears look a little like antlers when you are scared, don't you think? Originally the Wolpertinger were made in the 19th century by taxidermists from parts of actual animals, as a joke to fool tourists in restaurants and inns.

 

After coming back home I went to Hyvinkää just 15 minutes away by car, and bought the floss I needed. For those who should need Anchor floss, the nice lady at the shop had colour charts and conversion tables both ways! I packed my new floss in my new kit Melanie made for my birthday, and it was packed full with a matching project bag, scissors, ribbons, pins and needles.

 

 

Pincushion, needles book and scissor holder.

All holders with stitched names.

Some of the books she brought - I have read one and I'm reading two at the moment. The most gorgeous mug for my tea. I feel all girly!

 

Now I'm prepared for the next row of Kaaren's Happy Scrappy Spring next week. Happy End!

 

 

The snowdrops were in bloom when we came home, and now most of the snow is gone too.