Urchins

This morning I hopped on my bike and rode to Surfers Paradise to check out the Urchins.



The Urchins are two large crocheted sculptures, designed by Choi+Shine Architects and made by 80 Australian crocheters. They are part of the Festival 2018 that is currently held at the Gold Coast as part of the 21st Commonwealth Games.



I first heard about the Urchins when a crochet blogger that I follow, Snakewood and Grace, announced on her Facebook page that she had been asked to contribute to this project and shared the process of making parts of the Urchins. They are made of 3mm nylon cord - it's called extreme crochet!





The installation can be viewed in Appel Park in Surfers Paradise until Sunday 15 April.



I was very impressed and can recommend a visit if you are in the area!



Meanwhile my own crochet project, the Lone Star Blanket, is slowly growing:



I am crocheting a lot while watching the gymnastics at the Games - mostly on tv, but I also made two diamonds at the Coomera Indoor Sports Centre, where oldest son and I watched the men's qualifications and team final on Thursday:



(This was during the break between subdivision 1 and 2 - there was no arm room to crochet when the competition was on!)

Here be dragons

Yesterday I took a short break from crocheting to make this pencil case for my middle son Ernst. It was his 13th birthday on Tuesday and he got (as requested) a set of 24 coloured pencils (and some other things as well, obviously). He asked if I could make a case for them. Of course!



He loves dragons, so chose this fabric from my stash. I think I bought it in 2016 for his Big Dragon Cushion, but didn't use it in the end because it didn't go very well with the other fabrics.



Ernst loves the case. Here is the first drawing he made with his new pencils:




Speaking of dragons, today this crocheted dragon popped up on my Facebook feed. It's a pattern by Crafty Intentions, available on Ravelry. I showed it to Ernst who begged me to make one for him! So I've ordered the pattern although I'm not sure if my crochet skills are up to this level yet...



And speaking about making things for my sons - we've had a few moving companies come in this week to check out our stuff and give a quote for moving us from Sydney to the Gold Coast in January. A lady from one of those companies saw my sewing machine and the quilts hanging on the walls, and exclaimed that it was a shame I did not have any daughters to make things for...!

Ernst Denied Computer Privileges

A few days ago my middle son Ernst received a parcel from New Zealand. In it was this gorgeous mini quilt, called Ernst Denied Computer Privileges! It was made by Mathea Daunheimer, an American textile artist living in New Zealand, who, like Ernst, loves dragons and is working on a series of small pieces featuring 'inner dragons'. The series was born when her son called the first dragon Mummy Without Coffee (read more about it here on her blog). Knowing that Ernst loves dragons, she asked what released his inner dragon - well, not getting to use the computer usually does that!



Here is a close up photo of the dragon. Mathea first 'draws' the dragon on the fabric using free-motion quilting and then colours it in using textile paints. On her Facebook page you can follow her dragon-making process.



Mathea and I met online in 2009 and we finally caught up IRL in April, when I was visiting my Dutch friend in New Zealand. Thanks again Mathea, for this wonderful gift!

Holiday impressions

We are back from the Netherlands! It was a holiday with ups and downs - one of the ups was this castle we stayed in for Christmas, and another one was the snow (on the 27th of December), which the boys loved! Here is my youngest stepping on a frozen puddle - first time he encountered one of those!



The biggest 'down' was my middle son breaking his arm on Christmas Eve. Here he is looking quite happy with his orange cast (he got this one the day before we left Holland), but of course it wasn't fun when it happened, and with the original cast he couldn't swim, which was a shame as we stayed in a holiday park with a subtropical pool later on during the holiday... And it's still no fun, as the fracture isn't healing correctly so he will have an operation tomorrow to insert a wire :-(



A big 'up' was meeting some new members of our family  - the two nieces I made quilts for in the last 2 years, and this little fellow who was born just before we arrived in Holland. He got a quilt too but I can't show it here yet... (it's a project in the March issue of Down Under Quilts)



Another highlight of the trip was my eldest son Hugo (the gymnast) meeting his hero Epke Zonderland, World Champion and Olympic gold medallist on high bar, and watching him at his training:



Apart from being with family and friends I really enjoyed strolling through the old cities and photographing the houses, bicycles etc.



On my photo blog you can find a few series of photos taken in Maastricht, Aachen (Germany) and Zutphen (where the photo above was shot), and also a series of black and white photos made during our visit to the Efteling, a famous Dutch attraction park inspired by fairy tales and fantasy.



We had a two-day stop over in Jakarta, Indonesia, where we visited the old Dutch part of the city (the former Batavia). It was fascinating - some of the buildings and structures the Dutch built are crumbling and rotting away, while others have been restorated and used for new purposes:





More photos of Batavia are here.



In the Netherlands we had a few lovely, quiet days in a holiday house on the Veluwe, in the centre of the country. In our garden squirrels and birds came to enjoy the peanuts. I love robins!



On my husband's birthday we visited the Kroller-Muller Museum which was nearby. It has a large Vincent Van Gogh collection - I really liked this painting called Tree Trunks in the Grass:



Look at that detail!



I also liked this painting by Armando, called Der Zaun:



So much inspiration in this holiday! I may post some more photos in the coming weeks. For now I'll leave you with this one, as I catch up with work, get ready for the new school year that starts next week, prepare for my son's operation tomorrow and let all these impressions settle in my mind :-)

St Martin's Church (Martinitoren)

Lately the Wordless Wednesday photos are all there is on this blog... I'm busy making lots of stuff but can't show it here yet - so frustrating! Well, I'll just show you something someone else made. Ali made this gorgeous lino print for me - it's inspired by a 1950s photo of Groningen, the city in the Netherlands where I went to university and where I lived for 12 years.



Ali blogged about the process of turning this photo into a linocut here and about playing with the lino prints here and here.

Thanks again for this precious print Ali, I will treasure it!