50!

The very first of our friends is reaching 50 years! A is a dear friend for 25 years already. Tomorrow we will be attenting his birthday party, starting with a cooking class followed by a dinner.
My other dear friend A and I decided to buy ànd to make him presents. This very beautiful book, which is totally designed and written by Yvette van Boven, is what he will get for present when published in a month. Tomorrow he's getting two booklets: this winter edition and this same-sized and same-styled booklet that we made. About all we know about him, all we share and how we love to have him around. It's hard to express incredibly precious things like that on paper, but... I hope and secretly think he likes it!

The making was great fun: to work in a team with A, to layout the booklet and last but not least to design the cover, inspired by the very beautiful paper cuts of Yvette. Btw, in this case there was no paper cut at all, but the cover grew out of scanned handsketches, that were composed in Photoshop and in the end provided with a digital shadow.
For those who want to know: we had it printed and finished with a hardcover right here (just like these books).

Our afternoon

 Making these the traditional way...

... by punching tiny holes, blowing the content out of it, breaking some when doing this, cleaning afterwards the egg yolk from the terrace, painting, dropping one, decorating and dropping another just before hanging them. Fun!
Just wanted to say: happy Easter!

To wrap a baby

My friend R became a mother! Of course I love to bring her baby boy something when I'll go to see him. This little man needs warmth, being just out of a warm belly, I thought. So this knit was made, inspired by this knitting on the bias. The used yarn is as pure as possible, as if straight from the sheep.

The cotton yarn you saw before. It was just added randomly like I saw here some time ago and still love. I used needle EU 8 and 500 gr of yarn. The pattern is so easy and great to do, as if climbing and descending a mountain.
Do you want to try this blanket of about 80 to 80 cm yourself?

Then cast on 1 st
row 1: kfb
kfb, k till the end
repeat.
When you're halfway:
k2tog, k till the end
repeat
last row: 1 st, bind off.
Done! Simple as that.

Come in!

My former colleague David is studying photography. He asked me if he could shoot the interior of our house for a study project. I love the shoots so much, that I want you to enjoy with me. But doing so is rather exciting too, giving some privacy to the www...

About the one above, this is really one point of view in our house: from our play floor into our - one could say - home office on the left and back to the kitchen at the right side. Sitting behind the computer, you can look down into the kitchen as well. Behind the wall in the middle is a storage from floor to ceiling, filled with playthings (games, puzzles, etc.), nicely hidden behind sliding doors.

In the past I often made pictures in our house, but the view of a visiting photographer appeared to be fully different. That's why the series are surprisingly good to me. I think they look promising!

Made in school

Look what L made in school!

A wooden cooking spoon was turned into a puppet theater doll.

And she's (and we are) so glad with her creation!

Look at her!

I actually don't know why there was such emptiness on this blog. I mean, I don't know why nothing came out of my hands. I've no excuses, but only want to say: hi again!
And yes, finally I'm knitting again. About that later. First of all my daughter: she can do it! I'm so proud. And believe me, about 15 years ago there was a neighbour girl riding an unicycle. From the moment I saw her, there was a secret desire in me: to have an unicycling daughter.
And this weekend it became truth! So happy and to see her happy.

A bridge?

Yesterday M celebrated carnival in school. The theme of this year was 'Rotterdam', the city where we live in. So, I said to M, you may choose: do you want to be the Euromast, the KPN building or the Erasmusbrug? Full of enthusiasm she told me that she wanted to be the bridge! No wonder, because she is connected to this icon, passing it by bike every day a few times. But there was a request: mama, please make of photo of me by the bridge. And here she is. It's the evidence that a person can turn into a bridge! (What you see on her cheeks are some matching birds I quickly drew this morning.)

This week she worked hard every spare time she had: she designed, drilled, painted, fixed the cables and fixed the cars. Of course we wanted to be able to use the cars again afterwards, so we came up with a good idea: for each car two holes under two diagonal wheels were drilled. Then an elastic hair tie up through the holes and around the wheels. The pylons were made out of a double layer of light weighted foamboard and painted in our lightbluegrey wall color (now I realized that we have the color of the bridge at home!). The deck was made of thin plywood, that M finished in blackboard paint. To 'wear' the bridge M had to step in and then turn the bridge 90°  around her body. This way she could carry it on her hips, but we added two shoulder straps as well.

After school we partly took the metro back home. M was very attractive under the ground as well as above; she got a lot of compliments of passers by! That's probably why she preferred to walk all the way back home from the bridge.

These are some pics at school and going back home.

Look at these creative Rotterdam buildings (Euromast, kubuswoningen, Potlood)!

For those insiders who are interested in L as well: she wanted to be a cleaner (to be more precisely: ours, called Maria) once again.

From now on I'm hip!

These were born one year ago. But apparantly still are discovered and wanted... A while ago I was asked to contribute to a hip Dutch magazine. But I'm not hip at all, my objection was. Being published in Kek Mama will increase your 'hippigheid' (degree of being hip) at once, Diana assured me.
So there they went for a photoshoot. If you're curious like me, just buy the newest item that is available in the shops now. For those new visitors on my blog, here you can find how to make the stick horse that is published. Go ahead and enjoy!

Wash your hands!

Let's talk about the smallest room in our house for a change. And washing your hands in there. I like to show you another cabinet that was designed some time ago, but that we enriched recently by adding some diy-music! Can you see it?

This basin unit was created in order to collect all needed items in only one piece of furniture, an all-in-one.

The inlaid mirrow above is as wide as the cabinet. The kind of used wood, birch plywood, is applied more often in our house, as you saw here, here and here. The wall lamp is this one. It's bigger brother you saw here and here already.
(Pics aren't fabulous, but you know it's wintertime...)

No time for crafting

Last weekend we lived outside... on the ice! Look at this Dutch scenery, we enjoyed it so much!
Well done, M, on your new 'noren'!