Tag: craft

the sock saga

one day, we were walking around tavira when we stumbled on a sign on a clothes shop that read “knitting club”… and despite being in college the last time i knit anything, i immediately wanted to sign up for that. knitting is a bit of a solitary activity, but with company it transforms into something so much better. besides, i’ve always been more of a hands-on learning person, so i was hoping to be able to absorb some knowledge through watching the group knit.

when i joined the ladies there were doing socks, so socks it was!

of course, i had never knit anything but scarves and badly made hats, so i must have started these at least 20 times…

but eventually kept going, helped by the kind encouragement of the group and some youtube watching. doing the magic loop allows you to knit 2 socks using just one circular pair of needles, which i had never tried before but is brilliant. for weeks, i knit on long rides and while on the phone with friends and family. slowly but surely, the socks grew.

and now, here they are! perhaps a bit tight and wonky, but i’m so super proud of being able to do this with my own hands. i’m already planning the next pair, and a weather scarf of 2018’s temperatures. :)

just life

the craftsroom

for a while now, i wanted to have a place to spread my crafts stuff, all the postcards, paper, tape and rubberstamps that i love, but which have to go back to the drawers at the end of the day, so that my work desk doesn’t permanently transform into something like this:

the dread i felt at the thought of putting everything away at the end though was enough to postpone whatever crafty endeavor i had dreamed up, so this wasn’t working.

luckily, we have extra space in this house, including an office bathroom that we never use, and which has been claimed as storage space from day one. what if…

voilà! a switched off water connection + a solid board cut to size to cover the sinks, and we have a new crafts~~bath~~room. :) it looks very tidy at the moment, but give me some time — i promise it’ll soon be delightfully messy!

in germany just life pretty things

stempel-medina

twice a year, in a quiet isolated hostel in the middle of germany, a group of 50 women comes together for a long weekend. they drive in from all over the country and have been doing this pilgrimage for years, way before internet and facebook-organized events. some heard about it on local shops, others through ads posted on newspapers… they responded to the initial call and just kept coming back. in their daily life, they quietly nurture their common passion on the side of their jobs and family life. but on these special weekends, they load their car trunks to the brim with all sorts of magical tools and drive here, for uninterrupted me-time with their hobby. they’re passionate rubber stampers.

i received an invitation from the meeting organizer earlier this year, and have attended two of these events now. on the first one i was stumped… so baffled in fact that, despite being familiar with the concept of stamping, i did not touch a single rubber stamp the whole weekend. instead, my mind reeled with questions… who were these people? and what universe was this, filled with speciality inkpads and ink sprays, textured paper, calligraphy nibs, embossing tools and sharp scissors that cut through glue without getting ruined? my mind was overwhelmed, as if i had stepped into a different world altogether, one i knew nothing about. i felt like richard discovering london below for the first time.

they welcomed me, the stranger with bulging eyes and raised eyebrows, and told me it was normal, and that i would come back someday. sure enough, a few months later, i was packing my own suitcase with my meagre stamping possessions and taking the train down to bielefeld. this time, i came prepared – i had questions, ideas, and a better grasp of the german language. and so we stamped, we talked, we crafted, we laughed. i’ve learned a thing or two about rubber stamping, but especially about how life is about these smaller moments when you get out of your comfort zone and embrace mysterious new worlds. now, i guess i’m a rubber stamper myself :)