Holiday impressions from Rome and the Netherlands

We're back in Sydney, after a wonderful holiday in Europe. As promised, here are some photo impressions.
We started with a 4-day city trip to Rome, where we stayed in an apartment very close to the Vatican. It was my third visit to Rome, but the boys' first, so we did all the things you have to do in Rome, like Saint Peter's Basilica (above) and the Colosseum (which they loved of course):



I remembered to look down every now and then and saw some great sewer lids - I wished I'd brought my Shiva paintsticks and some fabric!





I'd looked up places where we could find some street art, but they were far from the city centre and sadly there was no time to go there. However, I did spot a few pieces of street art:





Of course we threw some coins in the Trevi Fountain to make sure we will return to Rome. I'm looking forward to my next visit, when I will just skip all the touristy things and discover other parts of Rome!



More pics from Rome on my photo blog here, here and here!



Back in the Netherlands we stayed for a week in a holiday home near the National Park the Hoge Veluwe, where we visited the Hunting Lodge St Hubert, designed and built by the famous Dutch architect H.P. Berlage in 1914-1920. He intended it to be a gesamtkunstwerk and also designed the interior, the gardens and even the furniture - it was all part of the whole work of art.





I thought it was very impressive! More pics, also of the interior, here.



Living in Australia makes us want to see some really old buildings when we are in Europe, so we visited a few castles - the one above is Castle Doorwerth near Arnhem. Its oldest parts date from the 13th century (more pics here). And the one below is Castle Hackfort (oldest part from the 14th century):



My mother-in-law works as a volunteer in the castle gardens and took us for a walk through the gardens and the surrounding woods (more pics here):







When my husband had gone back to Sydney for work after two weeks, I took the boys to the island of Schiermonnikoog. I have often been there when I was young and really wanted to show them this beautiful part of the Netherlands:



Schiermonnikoog is a small island with only one village, where you can find beautiful old houses:



You can't bring your car to the island, but you can hire bicycles to get around!



We stayed for four days and had a great time - I wish we could have stayed for two weeks!
More pics of Schiermonnikoog here.



When we got back to the mainland I took the boys for a short visit to Appingedam, the small town where I grew up. (More pics of Appingedam here...)



Then we drove on to Groningen!



My favourite city in the whole wide world! We stayed with my BFF Hylkia and her family for a few days. It was so good to be back there!



I discovered an interesting work of street art:







We went shopping and found a yarn shop:



Hylkia took this photo of me there ;-)



And of course we had to go to the market...



We had a wonderful time in Rome and in the Netherlands, and I hope you have enjoyed these photo impressions.
Now back in Sydney I am working hard on my new crochet skills. I'll show you the results soon!

More socks - and a granny square!

A few days ago I finished my second pair of socks! These are a belated birthday present for my sister-in-law - back in February I promised to make her a wall quilt, but I've gone off quilting a bit lately, so when she admired my first pair of socks on Facebook and casually told me her shoe size, I asked if I could knit her a pair of socks instead. That was okay, so I told her to choose her favourite yarn from Stray Cat Socks, ordered it and started knitting.
Stray Cat Socks is a yarn shop in New Zealand and they have the most gorgeous self-striping sock yarn! My sister-in-law chose Set Adrift and I ordered some Peacock yarn for myself. The yarn comes in an adorable box:



For this pair I used the same pattern as for my first pair: Kate Atherley's Basic Ribbed Socks, a free Ravelry pattern. This time I knitted the heels and toes with a matching solid colour (also available from Stray Cat Socks):



They are being modelled here by my youngest son - I will present them to their new owner tomorrow. Yes, the boys and I are still in the Netherlands (sadly hubby is already back in Sydney, he had to go back to work after two weeks), but only for two more nights - we fly back to Australia on Friday.
We've had a wonderful holiday in Europe - I will share some impressions here when we are back home, but in the meantime you can find pics from Rome and the Netherlands on my photo blog.
We are currently staying with my mother-in-law, and she has taught me how to crochet!



I've just finished my first granny square! The pattern came from this book, published in 1972:



There are some hilarious photos in it:





This is the granny square blanket (I'm not planning on making one, just wanted to learn the basics):



I'm so glad that I finally know how to crochet - there are lots of projects I want to try. To be continued...

Oven Mitt - Tutorial

Only three more sleeps and then we are off to the Netherlands! I can't wait to be back in my home country, see family and friends again after 2.5 years, speak Dutch all the time, ride a bike everywhere without a helmet and eat lots of Dutch cheese and licorice!We will also take the boys on a city trip to Rome for a few days, that is going to be so much fun!!

We will be staying in a few different places while we are in the Netherlands. I thought that it would be nice to have some small, handmade gifts for our hosts, so decided to use some of the Australian fabrics in my stash to whip up a few oven mitts. They're quick and easy to make - I took some pictures along the way to show you how. They make great seasonal presents as you can use any fabric you like (Christmas oven mitts? why not!)

I found some Insul-Bright heat resistant batting in my fabric cupboard (from when I made a tea cosy in 2013), which of course is great for oven mitts. I added a layer of cotton batting to get nice and thick mitts. If you don't have any Insul-Bright, two layers of cotton batting will also work.

You will need: 
- two 8'' x 12'' (20 x 25 cm) rectangles of your chosen fabric
- two 8'' x 12'' (20 x 25 cm) rectangles of Insul- Bright batting
- two 8'' x 12'' (20 x 25 cm) rectangles of cotton batting
- two 8'' x 12'' (20 x 25 cm) rectangles of lining fabric
- matching or contrasting thread
- 24'' (60 cm) ribbon or double-fold bias tape
- sewing machine (a walking foot is recommended for sewing through multiple layers)
- safety pins
- binding clips



1 Use one of your oven mitts to create a template, by placing it on a piece of paper and tracing around it, adding a seam allowance of 1'' (2.5 cm). (If you don't have an oven mitt, trace around your hand with a 2'' (5 cm) seam allowance) Cut out the template.

2 Make a fabric sandwich from the following layers: the outer fabric on top, right side up; the Insul-Bright next, shiny side up; the cotton batting next, and the lining fabric at the bottom, wrong side up.

3 With the walking foot attached to your sewing machine, quilt the sandwich in horizontal and vertical lines:



4  Make a second sandwich in the same way and quilt it.

5 Pin the template to the front of one of the fabric sandwiches and cut it out.



6 Flip the template over and pin it to the front of the other sandwich. Cut it out.



7 Place both parts of the oven mitt right sides together.

8 Cut a 6'' (15 cm) piece of ribbon, fold it in half, and place it 2'' (5 cm) from the bottom edge of the mitt in the side seam between the two parts, facing inwards with the rough edges aligning.

9 Use binding clips to clip the two parts together. (pinning through so many layers is really hard!)



10. Sew all around the edges, leaving the bottom edge open. Trim the seams where necessary to reduce bulk.



11. Turn the mitt right side out. Fold the remaining ribbon around the bottom edge and sew it in place. Use one or two binding clips to keep the ribbon from moving and replace them as you go. Fold the last 1/2'' (1 cm) in for a neat finish.



12 Admire your finished oven mitt!

White Winter Scarf

Today I finished my White Winter Scarf. It's so soft!



The pattern is the Irish Hiking Scarf by Adrian Bizilia, a free Ravelry download. I used 4 skeins of 10 ply merino from The Australian Wool Store on Etsy.

My First Socks

Today was a dreary, miserable day here in Sydney (oh, how we miss Brisbane...), which meant that a lot of knitting was done. See here the result: I finished my first pair of socks!!!



I love them, they look great and they are so comfy!
I found the pattern (Basic Ribbed Socks by Kate Atherley, a free Ravelry download) very easy to follow and the yarn (Zitron Trekking XXL) a pleasure to work with.
And I had a ball making photos of the socks while wearing them!



Of course I have already started on a new project: a white cabled scarf, to go with my new black winter coat. The pattern is the popular Irish Hiking Scarf by Adrian Bizilia, also a free Ravelry download (gotta love Ravelry!) The yarn is a lovely soft merino from The Australian Wool Store on Etsy.



And here is the Sydney Temperature Scarf with the month of May added - which had the first day this year where the maximum temperature did not reach 15 degrees Celsius:

Sydney is off to America!

Sydney is going to the US! I heard today that it has been selected to be judged at the World Quilt Competition 2017 and will hang on display during the event from 17-19 August 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire. After that it will tour the United States and be displayed at the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza in September; at the Pacific International Quilt Festival in California in October; and at World Quilt Florida in January 2018.

I love it when my quilts go to places I've never been!

Melbourne

Last week I was in Melbourne for the National Gymnastics Championships - my eldest son Hugo competed in Level 8 Under 14. Hugo did well and his team won gold, so he was very happy.



I stayed in South Yarra and spent quite a bit of time photographing the beautiful art deco buildings in this suburb:





More photos of these buildings on my photo blog.



I wouldn't normally go to McDonald's without the kids, but I took the bus to Clifton Hill to have lunch here. Isn't this building fabulous!



Afterwards when waiting to cross the road these two beauties passed by!



Of course I had to quickly check out the street art in AC/DC Lane and Hosier Lane:



More street art pics here on the photo blog.



I also found a yarn shop: Morris & Sons in Collins Street.



I bought some self-striping sock yarn and a beautiful screen-printed project bag:



I spent a lovely day with a Dutch friend and her little boy in St Kilda - more art deco, and, of course, the Luna Park:





This was my sixth visit to Melbourne - how come I never noticed the building with the café wall illusion before?



A few years ago, when I made my optical illusion quilts, I planned to make a café wall quilt. It didn't happen and now it probably never will... I would like to make an art deco quilt though!

Classic Lone Star pattern now available on Etsy

I'm very happy to announce that the pattern for my favourite quilt is now available in my pattern shop on Etsy.



I've called it the Classic Lone Star Quilt to distinguish it from my Modern Lone Star Quilt pattern - and because that's what it is of course!



I love this quilt! It keeps us warm every night - winter is coming Down Under, and it's rapidly getting colder now here in Sydney (we miss subtropical Brisbane...)



Just a few more pics...



Such a good looking quilt... ;-)

Socks

After knitting two pairs of gloves in the round, I felt I was ready to tackle socks. So when I read about this gorgeous self-striping yarn (Trekking XXL by Zitron) on one of my favourite knitting blogs (in Dutch, but worth checking out), I decided to give it a go. I ordered the yarn, bought a set of 2.75 mm dpns, and found a free Ravelry pattern that looked doable (Basic Ribbed Socks by Kate Atherley). The first sock is almost finished now, and I'm surprised at how much I am enjoying it!



The Sydney Temperature Scarf is also growing, and as you can see it's finally getting colder (yellow means 15-20 degrees Celsius):



Exactly ten years ago, on May 15th 2007, I started this blog. We had arrived in Brisbane only a few weeks earlier, I had been making quilts for less than a year and was waiting for my sewing machine to arrive from the Netherlands. In that first post I talked about an alphabet quilt I wanted to make for my boys - that quilt got made eventually (in 2011, and not with paper-pieced blocks as I had originally intended but with Spoonflower swatches of my calligram designs), as did lots of other quilts. Lately it's mainly been knitting, as I seem to have lost my quilting mojo a bit, but I'm sure I'll get it back at some point.

I have enjoyed the journey so far and I hope you have enjoyed reading about it. I plan to keep blogging, if only for myself, as I like having this online journal of my creative endeavours. To be continued!