Celebrating neighbourhood

Last Saturday we had some special guests at home, our neighbours and my favourite radio station Funkhaus Europa.  That radio station plays music from all over the world, covering global and local issues concerning migration and culture. 

It all began with me, listening to that radio station one morning last week hearing them looking for the most international house in the area. Without much thinking about it I wrote an email telling them about how we live in this rented house with six apartment with seven nations under the same roof. There is us, a Ugandan-German family, a Romanian-Iranian couple, a Turkish family, a Russian couple, some Germans about to move in and a family from Peru living on the top floor. The Funkhaus Europa Team somehow liked what I told them. Unfortunatly for them I hadn't given them my number, just an adress and they tried to contact me with all means, email, Facebook etc. But by then I had decided it all was a rather bad idea, I hadn't even talked to my neighbours about it and they would  maybe not want to give an interview anyway. Well, that reporter did not give up and showed up unannounced at my doorstep on Friday. He was very, very friendly and so happy with what he found I agreed to join in the adventure. 

Together we talked to our neighbours and invited everyone for the next morning into our apartment where the broadcasting would be happening. The turkish served us coffee as soon as they opend the door and invited us to their sons wedding the following weekend but because of that wedding they would not be able to join the show, some neighbours were not home but the Russian lady and the guy from Peru came downstairs the next day.

Shanli, the reporter to do the interviews showed up an hour before with croissants and we all sat and got to know eachother a lot better than we had before. It was so, so nice and Shanlis questions made it even more interesting. (So far we had only known eachother briefly through lending tools or an egg, saying good morning while passing by. ) Now we found out, how all of us (except me) had simular experiences coming to Germany without speaking the language, struggeling with offices and work. The guy from Peru, Edwin, and Nathan found out they both love football, chess and chinese food, a new friendship has started.

Of course Aaron enjoyed our guests as much as we did, he served "tea" and even said "Hello" when Shanli talked to him with the microphone...

They gave us a Bocce game as a present for the whole house to play together and t-shirts but most of all they made us talk to each other, feel more connected and enjoy our community. Thank you so much Funkhaus Europa! 

You can find some more pictures taken by Shanli on the Funkhaus Europa website here.

Photo taken by Shanli Anwar, Funkhaus Europa

Celebrating Fiber

First, of course, I want to wish all of you mums a wonderful and happy Mothers Day! 

Since I gave birth to my son I realize how I have started to find a deeper and more intense connection to the rhythm of the seasons. In nature and our home. I really want to show him all there is, this earth is offering us in plenty and I love to watch him while he discovers his world step by step.

There seem to be so many beautiful things happening around us every day if we just find the time to stop and appreciate them. Having started writing this blog and especially reading how you fellow bloggers live the seasons has added to this feeling even more. In the last weeks I have read some blog entries about sheep festivals and I was filled with excitement just by the thought of such a great event. 

A festival for fiber... I so wanted a tradition like that to be a part of our seasons too, just like I read this morning on Rhythm of the home. But I was sure, I would not find anything like a sheep festival anywhere near Cologne. Until my lovely sister, Aarons Tante Auto, a great spinner, asked me yesterday if we wanted to join her today to go, exactly, to a sheep festival. Did we want to go? You can imagine my joy...

The festival toke place in a very pretty open air museum, a small village that showes how people have lived in that area in the last centuries. You can watch all the old crafts, the farming, the living and today, plenty of sheep and other farm animals. Let me take you on a tour if you don't mind:

Here they are, the sweeties, still sweating with all that wool on there bodies...

... here they get undressed. It was a hilarious sight to watch this big ram sitting on a small stage, very patiently in a position like this, getting warped very naked. A wee bit like a peep show...

They had very many different breeds to show, this is a black German Heath, with very impressive horns.

A very smalll German Heath, a fully grown up dwarf version, so cute but very serious...

I just wanted to sit down and join in if I had only brought my wheel.

So much yummy stuff. I really had to hold close to my wallet.

The older kids could join in all sorts of activities, like felting, spinning and other crafts.

Hey, watch out for Lotta. She is a very cute Llama, everyone totally loved her.

And are those little fellows not extremly cute with their colorful knitted hats?

Even at times when there is no sheep festival this museum is definately worth a visit but today was just perfect, the weather was mild and sunny, everything was so very, very fresh and green, exploding with life.

Oh yeah, this little man enjoyed our outing too, very much indeed.

Did you know the very uncommon chameleon sheep ;-) very hard to find some...

My tour has ended now, but of course I didn't come home empty handed. What I toke home is plenty: a happy, very tired child, many images on camera and in my head, wonderful memories, lots of new information and, well, some wool for spinning:

The grey wool is from a Gotland Sheep, the very white is Wensleydale and the stuff with the dreadlocks is freshly warped today from some unknow (it came from a huge bag with different fleeces) but very soft sheep. That stuff is fanstastic it contains so much lanolin you can cream your hands just by holding it.

One last things I got, for free as a sample, is a garden fertilizer made from sheep wool. What an interesting product, I will have to find out more about that soon. If you speak German and are interested too, you can find out more here.

After this beautiful day I am sure, joining the festival of fiber will definatly become part of our anual way to celebrate the seasons. Oh yes!

Now, if you please excuse me, I have to get back to my wheel for a few more minutes ;-)

I hope you all spent a wonderful Mothers Day, just the way you needed it. 

Sunday of Plenty

Some days just feel so much larger than others, larger as in so much more stuff fits into that day than into an average one. I really don't know how that happens. If it all depends on the way you start your day? Possibly starting the day with freshly bakes scones helps? What do you think?

A walk after breakfast with some brought in lilacs (?) might also do the trick...

A day like that certainly needs a lot of yarn, yummy colors, maybe some dyeing even, no harm in that!

Definately giving some extra special moment to your enlarged day will be having a good chat with your Papa under a blanket without Mama to see you. Papa needs lots and lots of soccer on telly on a day like that and some running during Aarons nap time.

Mama needs this:

Yes! Enjoying my new spinning wheel, at the balcony, so much! With a cute little boy discovering his toes showing out of his new summer shoes, how weird...

And anyway, sunday living at the balcony, never to be underestimated! Ooops, there's been a road accident... (no hurt feelings here, we have done the chalk drawings way earlier, I don' think he even recognized that stickmann, so it just looks a bit evil in the picture).

Some late spring seeding of Physalis... (late, since I forgot the seeds in the freezer. Because on the package it said to give them two weeks of frost, it might have been a few more, I hope they survived...)

Of course a day like that needs good, fresh food. We had some asparagus-potato salat with chives, olive oil and a little salt. Sooooo yummy!

Knitting? Sure there has been a wee bit of that too. (Never mind my toe nails need some up doing...)

But even a day full of plenty like that comes to an end. Too bad I can't take my wheel to bed with me, so here it is once more. I am so in love :-)

How has been your weekend? I hope to see you over at Amandas for Weekending!

Edit: happyly joing in Woolly Wednesday this month too. 

Yarn Along - Mama Sambona enjoys life

Knittin and reading. My favourite things to complete a perfect day. So I am joining Ginny on Wednesdays for Yarn Along to share my passions with you. Come and join in if you like!

My holidays are over. Two great weeks have been spent with lots and lots of Family, Knitting, Spinning and Dyeing. The coming weeks working call for some easy to-go knitting projects again. Stuff I can knit on the train, in a meeting or in a waiting room of a doctors office. Oh yeah, with my clients I usually spend a LOT of time at those places, not the worst places to work at when you have some knitting. In fact, its the best thing to do to pass time and whilst knitting I can still pay all the nessesary attention to my clients.
In my tea break I often spend some time in one of my favourite cafés, today I went to "Cafe Eichhörnchen" a very small and wonderful Belgium café, fortunatly just near my todays clients place. There is nothing better for a break than some french music, a tea or coffee and some knitting, right?!

I picked up one of my UFOs as an easy project to-go. It`s the babys kicking bag I started a while back and got stuck with because I ran out of yarn I had dyed turquoise with easter egg dyes. 

Now I finally bought another skein of organic yarn. Because I was very sure I would not manage to dye another skein in exactly the same colorway I decided to go for a completely different color instead. This orange is what happend...  I frogged a lot of what I had already knitted to start with the orange earlier. What can I say, color really makes me do it. I am so exhited about how the combination of colors is working out so I started knitting like crazy and am almost done by now. I will never again knit such a simple, call it boring, project again in only one color because I will never finish it. Mix in some more colors and the stitches are flying away... you just need to know how to outsmart yourself.

Oh and there is this wonderful book I found in a book store and have enjoyed so much already. I am not sure at what age I should read it to Aaron but I am sure I will. There is no English translation so I wil try to tell you the story here:
The lady you can see in the picture is Mama Sambona. She lives as a queen on the Island Ukerewe in Lake Victoria in East Afrika (part of it belongs to Uganda btw.) Mama Sambona is very old and Dead has plans to take her "home". Problem is, Dead is only allowed to try and take someone home three times. Since he knows Mama Sambona will not be an easy play, he sends his rabbit first but Mama Sambona is nowhere to be found: Her neighbour informs rabbit the queen went to Uganda to buy some hunting dogs. Rabbit does not like hunting dogs and runs off. Dead is angry with rabbit and pays his own first visit to Mama Sambona. Dead politetly asks her to finish her tea and join him on their way back to the ancestors but Mama Sabona excuses herself because she still has to help her granddaughter with her homework. Dead knows he can't let somone die as long as that person does something good for a child so he leaves in vain.  The second time Dead come for Mama Sambona, she can't join him because she is harvesting millet for her granddaughter. The third time Mama Sambona has organized a big festival so Dead believes she welcomes him with music this time to say good bye to her people. But Mama Sambona asks Dead for a dance and Dead enjoyes that dance so much he completely forgets what a he came for.
That is why Mama Sambona still lives on her Island Ukerewe and drinks her tea with pleasure. She gave up smoking though... :-)

Happy Knitting!

P.S.: I found a spinning wheel, or rather my sister did. It might  be with me by next week! I am so exhited!

Flying Visit to Holland

When I am at my parents place, my dad and me have this wonderful tradition of always trying to squeeze in a short day trip to Groningen, a city in the north of Holland, about 1 hour drive from where my parents live. I have very early childhood memories of fantastic days spent in that city based on some shopping, watching the laissez-faire lifestyle of the dutch people and enjoying a dinner at a chinese restaurante. Somehow nothing of that has ever changed much...

I guess living on one of these boats looks far more romantic than it actually is but I love sneeking a look here and there, trying to find out what kind of people would lead such a life. And I am telling you, there  are much more romantic boats than the ones I can show you here, we just didn't see any that day. Imagine a beautiful container garden on a boat roof...
One of the very early tradition of our dutch day trips is eating some "Hollandse Nieuwe" (mild, salty herrings), sorry, yes it looks rather gross, especially if you eat that fish the traditional style, hold it up and "suck" it in... but seriously, if you like fish, it tastes great!

Anyway, one of my favourite activities in Holland is to discover pretty and interesting bikes. This time I  only spent about half an hour taking pictures of bikes and this is what I found:

Isn't it just fantastic? So much love for a bike!
This time I fell especially in love with the front carriere style of those bikes, the baskets, and boxes and the strong carriere itself and I really wanted  one like that for my grandfathers bike. And, I was very, very lucky and found one in a second-hand store for very cheep and like new. I was dancing through the streets!

(I fixed it to my bike in our bed room because it was raining outside...) 

Now I just have to find a nice basket to go with it...

I also bought a typical dutch style front kids seat but I want to attache that to a ladys bike,I am too scared to ride that mens bike with Aaron on it. I can't get on and off fast enough.

Maybe a little inspired by our trip to Holland I dyed some more yarn with easter egg dyes, only this time I used tablets for hot water instead of cold, turns out the colors are MUCH stronger and vibrant. I was kind of shocked to see my yarn turn alarmingly yellow and orange. Now I call it my dutch Oranje yarn since orange is the national color of Holland ;-)

Well, after the first shock I did have an idea what to use it for. I will show you on Wednesday for Yarn Along. Hope to see you there!