Surfing and sewing

Last weekend, we had really nice Couchsurfers. Again.

 But this family, we had in fact been expecting for quite a while - Eva and their eldest daughters have been penfriends for more than a year now, I wrote mails with their mum back and forth several times, we even phoned, and, funniest of all, we always seem to send each others Couchsurfers - many travelling families first stop at their house and then come to us, or the other way ´round.
But until last Friday, we had never met.
So, just as was to be expected, we hit it. Our seven kids formed a really nice group, and they were very similar to my kids - it just felt very natural being around them.

Especially Eva was happy - this had started out as her connection, and the to girls got along very well.

 But they also had little boys, and that was a sweet match, too:

 I suppose Monique and I could have talked on and on and on, about homebirth and the educational system and sewing and crocheting and books and songs and ecovillages and our various mutual CS friends.
We got really lucky and found, accidentally, a sewing workshop, where you could make this bag:

For free. Cool, huh?
We just strolled through the city, and I pointed out, hey, look, in this store, you can buy nice fabric, so we went in for a quick look - and apparently walked into a big promotion for a sewing machine that features all sorts of weired stitches:

 We were offered cake and juice and even champagne (which I, of course, refused), and they gave out the material for free and let us play with their supercool sewing machines for approx. 2 hours, during which my dear husband was so kind to entertain all seven kids on the playground.
So, the weekend really was a treat - though I´d never buy such a super-high-tec sewing machine - I think I´d hardly ever need to sew my stitches like fish and flowers and hearts, I feel pretty comfy with my good old straight-stitch and zig-zag.
None the less, it was so much fun playing! They even had a foot to insert wool:

 ...and I could see projects using this... hmmm... but I think I´d rather spend the money for a sewing machine like this in train tickets to Holland.
We in fact allready planned our next meeting - a Fantasyfair, where we´ll wear costumes of our favourite Fantasycharacters... and I´m really torn between now making some nice black Shadowhunter gear for myself, or just wearing my red wig again, and pretending to be Molly Weasley. 
I don´t think I can pull off Tyrion Lannister convincingly ;)
Mehmet and Miro are surely set on wearing their Star Wars costumes, Tim will wear his boring old monch-robe again, but for us girls, it´s a tough decision :)
Ah, we´ll see - our next meeting is only in April!
Music for today:

I had in mind to either post a nice Mumford and Sons song, or a Raccoon song, because Raccoon is a fantastic dutch band, and I listened to them a lot during the last week, but... then this video just popped up in my subscriptions, and hey, when there´s my favourite beatboxing cellist, that video immediatly becomes high-priority :)