Weekending in the rain

Today I am joing Amanda from "the habit of being" for weekending

Somewhere I read today is the 15th of July. I had to read it twice and still can't believe it. It is raining and raining and raining and the temperatures stay around 15°C/ 60°F. So coats, wellies and the like are in daily use. Aaron has not complained about it yet, he doesn't mind if he plays in a puddle or a pool. So I guess I am the only one being unflexible here...

I adjusted by starting to crochet. Little blossoms agains the disaster in my little outside garden (even the mint has drowned!) Finally I know how to use up all my bits and pieces of handspun yarn. Both yarns are made from the fibre I dyed at the workshop the other weekend (yellow with onion skin, red with madder). If you like I can send you a handfull, just let me know in the comment which color you'd like or if you want a mix of both. (I will choose a winner randomly if more of you are interested ;-) )

One of the blossoms I used for another project of this rainy weekend, the birthday crown of my friends daughter Lola (the one you see playing with Aaron in the first picture) Aarons crown is also in the making, his birthday is coming up end of August... My idea is, to keep the crowns rather simple this year and add a little extra detail to it each birthday so by the time they are grown up they have a fully decorated crown with lots of memories of every single birthday. That should be a lovely family tradition I hope.

Besides the usual playground outing we did a little extra trip yesterday and went for a visit to Cologne Airport. A great activity on rainy days! Some half hour train ride, long indoor corridors to run in freely, lots of cafés and a terrace to watch the planes landing and starting. I can really recommend this outing!

I already mentioned the playground visits, but did you ever see a playground with kids paintings pinned to the trees? Isn't that a wonderful thing! How generous and creative, just what I needed to complete this wet but somehow perfect weekend.

I hope your weekend was less rainy and equally fun! I would love to hear about it!

Yarn Along - Knitted Landscapes

Knitting and reading - my favorite things to complete a perfect day. So I am joing Ginny for Yarn Along today to share my passion with you. Come and join in if you like!

Last week I had around five lucky minutes at the liberary. One of my favourite founds was this inspiring read about Yarn Bombing. I posted some yarn bombing pictures that I had found in Colognes streets a while back and I always feel lucky when I find another piece somewhere in the streets. It hadn' really crossed my mind though to create my own piece of knitted streetart. Not until I picked up that book. But the chapter that inspired me most was the one about knitted landscapes by two dutch artists . That's what I feel like I want to try myself. I have been in love with the land art by Andy Goldsworthy for a long time now. Adding knitting to a landscape just seems to make sence for me.

And what better use could there be for all those small amounts of experimentally colored handspun yarn that I have, than transforming it into knitted land art? So far I only knitted up one simple square and sewed it around a stone I had at home.  It was funny, how that knitted square fitted around that unusal shaped stone very smoothly.

I can think of a great spot for my knitted stone, but I didn't manage to go there yet. Next time we'll spend at the shores of our river I will take it along and place it in the landscape. Hopefully this weekend the weather will be ok as we want to go and celebrate St. John's  and a little belated Solsitice with a bonfire on Sunday. I know, Solstice is today, but it is raining badly around here and I have to work late so we postphoned it to the weekend. But, of course happy Solstice to all of you! I hope we will at least see a little bit of the sun today at one point...

On the road again

I grew up in a small city called Oldenburg in the north of Germany, not far from the border to Holland. The people in Oldenburg love their bikes, just like the dutch people and they have the same bike style: old fashioned, solid, very beautiful "dutch bikes" Riding a bike in Oldenburg is not for fitness, its a mean of transportation. Its the second thing kids learn after walking. During my childhood I rode my bike everyday to school, 6 km in the morning, 6 km in the afternoon and some more to go shopping or visit friends. It made me very independed even before I had a driver's licence. 

When I moved to Cologne for my studies I didn't give up cycling, despite the greater distances and the big traffic. 

Until I got pregnant... At one point I just didn't feel safe on my bike anymore with that belly and later, with the baby, there was never the right time to start it again and my bike was broken, then stolen.

But, last year my grandfather gave up his bike and he past it on to me. Since then it has patiently waited in the basement, unfortunatly with flat tires.

The last days I felt it coming. I promised myself no more springs without cycling. Boldness hit me though and I wanted to fix those tires myself. I spend all morning (like 5 hours!) with that bike. And a solid bike it is, very strong! I had a hard time and in the end my boyfriend did have to help a little but I did it, and was very, very proud to cycle to work in the afternoon. 

Aaron thought I had put up a new toy for him... He loves his own small bike (with four wheels) so much already, I think he's got that "oldenburg-blood" in him :-)

I took some pictures before I acctually started to unscrew the whole thing so that I would get it all back together again in the end...

... only to find out the chain was too short when all screws were back in place, so, like with some bad knitting, I had to do some "frogging".

In the end my hands looked like this and they still do (under the nails, if you have any idea how to remove that crazy stuff from under my nails please let me know!)

I put Aaron in that basket just for fun, not for riding. I have a kids seat for the carrier acctually but I am not sure if I will fix it because I have no idea how I will get off that mens bike if there is a kids seat at the back. I hardly get on that bike on my own...

So, in the afternoon on my way to work, I celebrated my first bike ride in almost two years, with some flowers. Have you seen a flower vase for a bike before? A friend of mine gave it to me but I had never really used it before, now it was the right time! I just love that vase, such a great feeling to have some flowers whereever you go. There is a crazy potter in the north of Germany who came up with that idea. He likes "bike vases, the arctic, pottery and pencils", sounds like a great chap, right?! You can get the vases here. (German site) And there are some wonderful pictures of bike vases on his site as well.

Have a wild weekend!!!

Schaufensterbummel - Window "Shopping"

 

Knit-Street-Art

I have always been in love with all kinds of street art, be it graffiti, stickers, wood, tapestry, painting, (some) tags, etc. To discover a new, great piece of art at some grey wall or dark corner can really make me happy. In the last month I discovered yet another streetart media: knitting! Lamp posts are suddenly wearing colorful scarfs, traffic lights are showing off the hottest yarn left-over pieces and chains pretend to be soft and cosy cowls... Discovering the latest street fashion is so much fun! Thanks, secret knitters!
And this is what I found today, walking through the streets of Cologne:

Some, not so secret knitters, the Collectiv France Tricot show their street art work here. Unfortunatly (for me) most of it is in french, but the street art pictures don't need any words to impress.