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So we´re back again. I wanted an adventure. And I got one :-)

No, I didn´t reach the UK. That was due to Ronjas lack of a passport. See, we planned the whole thing pretty impulsive. I booked the ferry, and the other day we had to take it. I wasn´t prepared for Ronjas passport not being where it was supposed to be.

So, I tried to get another, temporary one, but the town hall clerk wouldn´t hand it to me without my husband being present (...) and of course my husband was working and couldn´t manage to get out of his meeting. And then the town hall was closed, and we had merely hours left, so... we simply decided to go anyway. I mean, we´re all Europeans, and nobody in France, or Belgium, or the Netherlands wants to see the passport of a six year old girl.

Well - the British officer wanted. And he wouldn´t let her in without one. But no problem, by then I had made a backup plan I had allready fallen in love with - staying in France, alone with Ronja, so at least the others could cross the channel and have that special experience, being on a ferry and seing the cliffs of Dover appear. Only flaw in the plan - I took my passport, but I left my wallet at home. Well... yeah. That´s how I roll, sorry.

So, Tim, who had to board the ferry with Eva and the twins a few minutes later, handed me 200 Euros to bring us through three days in France, we kissed Goodbye, and off we went - right into our adventure.

If you want adventures, Ronja is the person to go with. At home, she annoys me on a daily base, but there, in France, she was a gift from heaven. She saw beauty in everything, even in the flowerbeds next to the traffic light. She thought the cheapest, tiniest backpacker motel was heaven, and she doesn´t mind living on a tight budget at all. I bought her a kite, though, which she spent hours with dacing along the beach. We collected shells, lived on baguette and cream cheese and apples, and we took five hour walks along the beach during which she chatted happily and sang, loud and out of tune in her high pitched tiny voice. We looked at every cobble in Callais, collected seashells, and I taught her her first sentences in French, and almost forgot I waited 14 years to take that ferry again.

Seriously, I´m a sucker for Britain, but Callais was so open, so full of possibilities, and those three days were simply... magical. I should do this more often, just go... somewhere, and spend time alone with only one of my kids. We didn´t have any books, or toys, except for that kite, we only had very little space in our motel, and we had Callais. So we explored the city, talked, and sang, and played games with paper and pen, and told each other stories out of our heads. It was nice meeting the others again three days later... but I could have done without them for another few days just fine.

Want more adventures? When we just had all kids crammed back into the car again, we found out that someone left the door open, and the battery of the car was completely empty. Zero. So, I walked into town, all garages being closed, and knocked on several unknown doors, until I found two nice men who could help us. Imagine a really ancient VW bus, yellow and rusty to the core, and two laughing, friendly Frenchmen, and all my kids in the back though I just told Ronja about hitchhiking and my experiences with that, and yeah, of course no carseats, who needs those? Believe it or not, I loved all of it. I loved managing the situation with my limited french, I loved that old car and those people who instantly helped us without knowing us, I loved hugging the strangers who were our friends for thirty minutes, when the motor finally roared again. I felt unbelievably free.

We camped in Belgium, two very small tents for six persons, ate Eclairs, cooked outdoors and swam in the sea.

And now we´re home, and this was a damn long post without any picures. But at least I´ve got music. Isn´t this one amazing version of an amazing song? To me, this sounds exactly how this song should be sung, even better than the original. I want to swim in this song.

This...

is not...
Britain.
But I don´t mind. At all. It couldn´t be sweeter. Just me...
and my poetic wildchild, Ronni.

Off to... ENGLAND!

Oh how I love the United Kingdom, and every once in a while I can convince my husband we really need to spend our money on a trip across the channel. Yesterday was such a once in a while, so we just booked our ferry, asked his brother if we can camp in his garden in London, borrowed his parents car, and in two days, we´re off! Yay! I wasn´t expecting any holiday this year, as we just bought our house, but apparently, it isn´t as expensive as we thought it would be, and what the heck, we always plan quite tightly knit. I´m going to England, I´m going to England, dumpty dumpty dum!

Yeah, I know I sound demented. But I just freaking love it, it´s so spontanious, it might end in a catastrophe, with all kids crammed into the car for hours, but we just jump right into it - this is how I love my life! I´ll post pictures, promised. And now I have to go look for my childrens passports, and pack our suitcases, and plan games for the long hours in the car, and... wow! This is just too cool!

But what´s a blogpost without a photo?So that´s the friend I visited last weekend, and her son, who´s actually named after my husband, no, really, and I can´t stop laughing about that. As she probably still can´t stop laughing about the fact that Tim and I ended up having four children before being 26, well, I guess that´s fair :-)
She took this one off me and Ronni, having fun at the CSD:

My music for today is something I probably allready posted last year. But some of you might still not know it. And it´s just too magical, so... here we go: This piece never fails to touch me, in whatever version. Don´t know why.
See you next week,
Hugs,
Helen!

Felting like a maniac :-)

So this is my second pair of cuffs, or fingerless gloves, or... I don´t know. Actually, I´m only posting this pic to show off how absolutely gorgeous they turned out. Wanna see how I made them? Click here for the tutorial on wetfelting the cuffs, and here for the tutorial on needlefelting the pattern. But I´m really in need of a proper word for them. How do you call them? I wouldn´t mind you leaving a suggestion in the comments :-)
While I´m felting, my kids are too, of course. Ronja made these... dishes, she actually calls them: Can you see the little flocks of soap in the fibre? Sure you can :-) Eva made lots of dreads for a hairband, it´s not finished yet, but in case it will be, I´ll show it to you. The neighbourhood girls came over, and the other day, my friend came over, felting is such a communicative, messi activity, I love it! Sun shining through our kitchen window, everyone getting wet and not minding at all, loud music playing all the time and everyone singing along... hmm, this is life at its best.
My sweet music for today is both music and art:Watch her dance in the colorfull light, really. So beautiful. This song contains piano, a melodic female voice, lyrics containing the word "gravity" like my other three favourite songs, and to top it all off a stunningly gorgeous video. Ahhhh...

Handfelted cuffs, the needlefelting part

So, yesterday I explained how to wetfelt cuffs in part one of this tutorial, you can read it here, or you just scroll down :-) Now, let´s apply some red swirls, okay? This is all you need: That´s a sponge, or some other foam to insert into your cuffs, wool, and a felting needle, one with little hooks. And your cuffs, of course. You insert the sponge into one of your cuffs, like so:Now you´ve got something to poke your needle into, so it won´t break off, and you won´t accidently poke your leg. Felting needles are sharp, and remember, they have hooks. Pull a thin strand off your red wool, and fixate it by simply poking it onto your felted cuff: And keep on poking and pinching. This process will tear the wool fibres, so they can connect. The more you pinch, the more your red wool will connect to the felt below, and you´ll see that you can shape your strand, according to where you pinch. Does this make sense? I´m no native speaker, and explaining this process really is a challenge :-) So you just keep on poking... Inventing patterns... It takes a while. I think it´s faster than handstitching, though, and a lot easier. The only hard thing is to know when to stop: Felting both cuffs and creating a pattern like the one above for one cuff took about four hours. It took another six hours two finish the pattern, as it is in the post below. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments, and I´ll use my limited vocab to answer them :-) And tomorrow, I´ll show you what my daughters felted, while I made my cuffs, so, see you :-)
And my music for today is:Story of my life. I´ve got my memories... always inside of me... and this is home :-)And since my favourite song yesterday was "This is war" - isn´t this so much sweeter? I haven´t seen the Narnia movies yet, I´m not sure if I ever will. But I´ve read all the books, and I´ve read them to my daughters, too. Fine books, they are :-)

Handfelted cuffs, or garnets, or whatever you call them, tutorial part one

Like these?I mean, it´s far too warm to wear them right now, but it´s never too early to start thinking about christmas presents, right?
These are made combining wetfelting and needlefelting, so let´s first focus on the wetfelting-part and gather our supplies for this:Wool. Only black and red, for these, of course. Well, colors you like. I bought mine here, I don´t think they´ll ship internationally, but I bet you´ll find a way to get some nice, soft, unspun wool for felting. I bought several colors, because I want to make tons of cuffs. For everyone. But let´s go on:You´ll also need warm (or hot) water, soap (olive soap is very good, but I think any will do), something to quicken the fulling process like bubblewrap, or a bamboomat, or a towel, an area that can get wet and this black plastic strip you see on the left of the pic. That´s for shaping both cuffs, and I cut it from an old placemat. The size is a little bigger than both your cuffs should be. Any plastic that´s thick enough will do, but don´t take cardboard, it will soak. So, no you take your wool and layer it on your plasticstrip: See, on the left and right side, it needs to verlap a little. I tried to describe the process of how to tear the wool in this post, and now you simply take those "feathers" and layer them, until one side of your strip is fully covered. Looks like a friendly, fluffy dog, right?Now gently sprinkle everything with warm water. Felting is all about being gentle, if you work too fast, you´ll get holes and clumps. Take your soap, and like washing your hands, make lots of bubbles. Then, still very gently, process caressing your wool, only with your fingertips, until you feel that the surface solidifies. Is that a proper word? Well, it should look something like this: Take it, with the plastic strip still in place, and flip it around. Fold the overlapping, wet wool on your strip, cover the whole thing with wool, like you did before, and repeat the last steps on this side. It doesn´t matter if it looks a little uneven, like this: Because wool is a natural product, and it´s supposed to behave a little strange. Just proceed felting, until you get the feeling everything is in place and the wool won´t shift when you move your piece. Make sure you also felt the sides. When everything feels fine, remove the plastic strip, and place your work on a towel: Wrap it, make it nice and cozy:Pour hot water on it. Make it very, very soapy. Roll it, knead it like dough, flip it, until you can feel the muscles of your arms. Sweat. Any spare agressions? Put ém here. We´re done with the gentle. Your piece will tighten and shrink during this process, how much depends on a) how long you work and b) the characteristics of your wool. Felting is a lot about trial and error, that´s why I like it. Open your towel and try wearing your piece:
This still looks a little loose, so I worked a little more until I was satisfied. Then rinse it and wring it out,cut it in half like this, trim the edgesand wear :-)
This was probably the longest tutorial I ever put up here, so, I split it up.
I explain the needlefelting here.
And in case you´d like to see how they can look in violet, click here.
I hope I´m still in time to link this to my favourite linklist, .
And as this was such a long tutorial, I´m glad my favourite song today is a long song, too, so I don´t have to push F5 too often:I admit it´s a little corny. But hey, I like corny.

So, my fellow ladies, I do indeed appreciate contact, feel free to leave me a comment below. Hugs, Helen

Printing shirts

Yesterday, I bought a bunch of white undershirts for 2 Euros each, and a pack of T-Shirt print paper for 5 Euros, and we had a nice afternoon designing fashion :-) It´s quite simple, and lots of fun, so if you haven´t tried, just dare to. I let the big girls photoshop their own design, using those old digiscrap kits I collected on my harddrive:Yeah, our living room´s pretty messy... well. There are plenty of scrapkits on the web, so you can play around for hours if you want to. Mehmet and Miro chose elephant pics from google, and I let them type in their names, to make it nice and educational.
For white shirts, you need to mirror your finished design, for black ones you needn´t, because the transfer process is different - well, best check the printing instructions. We printed our desings on these:Then cut them,placed them on your shirts and ironed them on. Easy peasy. The girls ironed themselves, the boys were proud when they were allowed to peel off the paper and could admire their brand new elephant shirts. And as it was cinema night yesterday, I made myself these two beauties: The "Imprinted" design is from All things thrifty, and Expecto Patronum is written in the free font "Parry hotter", you get it here. I´m pretending this qualifies as a tutorial and link this to:
My music for today is this one:I´ve been following the music of Dustin Prinz for a while now, and I believe he´s exceptional. And the part that starts around 2 minutes into the song - if the book I wrote ever became a movie, I´d want this to be on the soundtrack :-)

Tomorrow, we´re heading off to Münster, meeting two friends we now know for about 15 years, which means half of our lives, and I´m really looking forward to this. They´ll bring their kids and partners, and we´ll meet them on Saturday, three o´clock, at the big sandbox in the city, just across the bookstore. If you happen to be a friend of us living in Münster, too, you might just want to join the party?

Boys and cricket bats...

See this calm, peaceful scene?Well, ten minutes later they walked out into the garden, Miro took the cricket bat in a brave attempt to save his brother from a wasp attack and hit him on the head. Bam.
It was just a laceration, but still Mehmet and my husband spent about 5 hours in emergency, waiting, to check if his skull was okay. Well, apparently it was, as Mehmet was bouncing around five minutes later allready, and the bleeding stopped pretty fast. But still... boys...

On a nicer note, I began teaching Eva her first chords on the mando: So now she knows about as much as I know :-) It helps that she developed enough power to push down the strings through her violinplaying, I tried to teach those chords to Ronja, as well, but it was a lot harder for her.
And speaking of strings, and what some people can do with them, did you know about Rodrigo y Gabriela? Can´t belive I missed them until now:
I mean, merge Metallica and Take five, and a thousand other influences, and make it sound so goddamn awesome? Wow!

Fruit, owls and enchanted alleys.

Last week, I realized there are actual apples growing on the trees behind our house. I mean, that´s something to be expected, right? When you plant apple trees, you´ll get apples. Still, every fruit that grows in our garden, all by itself, is a wonder to me. Now I only have to keep my boys from shaking them off...And no, these fruit didn´t come from our garden :-) But we had fun making fruit sticks together, and within the last weeks, the girls developed a strong interest in cooking. As this week made me take some time off from my writing that kept me busy for the last 18 months, I find myself with lots of free time on my hands I can use to entertain the kids, with projects such as making these paper owls: If you remember this post, you know about Ronjas love for owls, so when I found these awesome, downloadable templates, I just knew we´d had to give it a try, and it went really well. She did it all by herself, and now the result is proudly being displayed in her tiny, chaotic bedroom, with all the other myriads of owls. And doesn´t Ronja have the most beautifull blue eyes you´ve ever seen?
Speaking of beauty - we´ve found this "secret" passage" to our street, just about two weeks ago. My kids call it their "mystery way", and everytime we pass it they find something else - black currants, dead decaying birds, little barking dogs, and yesterday night even fireflies.
And yes, I know this calls for a certain song, but I think I had that one before (at least the Sam Tui-Version, and I don´t like the original). So, my music for today is this piece: My sister in law recommended Regina Spector quite a while ago to me, but when I first listened to her music, it didn´t convince me. Maybe I wasn´t so attuned to celli, back then. I´m still not sure if I like her other songs, but this one´s amazing, don´t you think?

Entering...

Sunday bliss! Today we rented a car (we don´t own one) and took our kids to a big playground, or small theme park, something along those lines.
We spent all day climbing,sliding, pouring,digging,floating,exploring,and of course ended up half naked, sun tanned and wet again.
My music for today is this song:
For almost no other reason than it being one damn awesome song. Well, maybe also because I have an almost pathological obsession with this whole album. And I´m pretty good at pathological obsessions. Go. Click on the video. You know you want to listen to it. It´s been so long, right?