Little feet

When our little girl next door was born I wanted to give her something self-made. On several places on the internet I was triggered by these little booties and this link. When you go to Flickr you see hundreds of exemplars to inspire you. So it's a piece of cake! Nevertheless I tried to be original. If you look closely you'll notice I used in color changing DMC yarn.
The joke is that for this healthy baby the booties were made to small. So I made a second pair and the first pair is now belonging to Zusje, the doll of L.

Hard to stop

I stopped doing it for too many years. It's so relaxing, lining up all stitches. I'm talking about knitting: I started again and just like former times can hardly stop again.
Last week I shortly searched the internet for sheep wool and coincidentally the same day I passed by Wernerkinck in Delft, selling beautiful woolen yarns. I prefer natural materials and colors and looking around in this shop, which actually looks like an old loft, is a feast to the eye. Sadly I can't link you to the shop because they have no site, but here you can find online the yarn I used. I even like the ball of wool as an object.
I feel like exercising for grandmotherhood, because they are going to be blankets for the sleeping dolls of my daughters. I decided the blankets should be as simple and pure as possible and off course finished before wintertime!

Collection

Since we don't hang our baby clothes on these little hooks anymore as you saw here, I use them for my collection of necklaces. The everybody-has-it shelf of Ikea we painted in the same color as our lightbluegrey wall.
On the shelf you can see the framed birth announcements of our daughters. What a happiness to design and make them!

More motherlove

Just after birth I loved to embroider these baby sheets for M and L.

Uterus

Long time ago when M was born I sewed this felt cradle for her (without a pattern...). Actually it's just a simple rectangle or cube, with a bottom of thin plywood board between the two felt layers. I used two wooden sticks and felted cord (that we attached securely through holes in the sticks) to hang it. Sizes are about 80 to 45 cm.
In my opinion a newborn baby doesn't need very much, but warm and save surroundings are important. Our house is very open and the windows are large. For little L we found a temporary solution: in a corner of our bedroom we made this nearby mini nursery by surrounding the felt cradle with quite a thick felt curtain on a circular rail. I love the properties of felt very much: I punched little holes into the curtain and cut butterflies that seemed to be flying away... so beautiful when the sun came through!

Finishing touch

Last night I wrapped a little present and finished it this way. If you like to try this yourself, just go to this link, that I found long time ago in this blogpost. Thanks again, K!

Walking the dog

Over a month ago we had a lovely 'Welcome home' festival in our neighbourhood. M spent a long enjoyable time to make her first animation movie out of her own drawing.
If you like to do something like this for a birthday party, you should check this out: Studioplus5 of Femke Hoying.

Falling in love with rope

In Rotterdam we have a quite old-fashioned, but great shop 'The Ropehouse'. Here they only sell a lot of ropes in a great variety. Natural or artificial materials, thick or very thin, black or colored, you name it. I love to go there. Last week I just fell in love with pictured rope that I noticed behind the counter. It looked like it was on that shelf for ages and yelled at me: 'Buy me!' Although there's no need for it at all, I took it home.
Today I cut it for the first time: to hang the beautiful violins of our daughters. We like the view (especially the little 1/16th) and studying violin will cost less energy from now on.

Yemen

About 15 years ago we left home to go and see the world. We travelled around for a long time and I'm so glad we did before mobile phones and internet were born. Our house is exposing little souvenirs we carried in our backpacks.
This heavy silver necklace is one is them. I loved it right away at that time, and I still do. I cherish the included memories of fairytale Yemen.

Under lines

This year I was tired of buying a new expensive duvet cover again. I don't know why, but we wear these out in no time! I decided to buy thick quality cotton (yes, lightbluegrey, and yes, I love this color for this purpose too), and decorated it partly at the top. I used non-saturated colored yarn, like olive, charcoal and warm grey.

The result is quite subtile, but I like it. Unfortunately the price was as high as in a shop... I'll report how long it will last.