etsy love : belle and boo

Happy Monday!  I'm in Copenhagen having a long weekend, attending a wedding (yippee!) and generally having a delightful time.  Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with some photos to share.  In the meantime, here's some etsy love for you.

A couple of days ago I was looking through etsy and I came across "Belle and Boo", a beautiful shop run by artists Mandy and Kate.  They currently work out of Mandy's flat in London and design prints, postcards and pillows (!) that are influenced by vintage children's books.  Many and Kate also have a really cute blog called Belle and Boo.  I'd love to get my hands on one of their prints, would be fantastic on the wall of a little person's room, or perhaps mine.  You're never too old, right?

Images from Belle and Boo

Copenhagen

Thanks for all the suggestions about my crochet dress on Wednesday.  Much appreciated - unfortunately I think there is no going back with the dress.  No matter what belt and which-way I try it, it just looks frumpy.  Better luck next time...

Beside there are much more exciting things happening this weekend.  I'm off to Copenhagen this morning. Yippee!  A friend is getting married this weekend in a gorgeous manner house an hour from Copenhagen.  Doesn't the setting look amazing?  I have my fingers and toes crossed for sunny weather.

See you all on Tuesday!

you capture : vehicles

Vehicles of all shapes and sizes, but all of the miniture kind.  Found at what is fast becoming my favourite flea market in Berlin - just across the way in Freidrichshain.  I had grand plans to take all sorts of pictures of vehicles this week, but the heat got to me and I ran out of time.  This one's a little on the grainy side - showing the limitations of my camera in not the greatest of light.

To see what other people are up to visit here.

a poem on thursday: the bridge

The Bridge by Russell Edson

In his travels he comes to a bridge made entirely of bones.
Before crossing he writes a letter to his mother: Dear mother,
guess what? the ape accidentally bit off one of his hands while
eating a banana. Just now I am at the foot of a bone bridge. I
shall be crossing it shortly. I don't know if I shall find hills and
valleys made of flesh on the other side, or simply constant
night, villages of sleep. The ape is scolding me for not teaching
him better. I am letting him wear my pith helmet for
consolation. The bridge looks like one of those skeletal
reconstructions of a huge dinosaur one sees in a museum. The
ape is looking at the stump of his wrist and scolding me again.
I offer him another banana and he gets very furious, as though
I'd insulted him. Tomorrow we cross the bridge. I'll write to
you from the other side if I can; if not, look for a sign . . .

I've started using Madeline Bea's Sunday Creative as a word prompt for a poem and digital mixed-media piece each week.  Seems as my thoughts are drifting on somewhat of a tangent lately, and the word is acting more like a springboard to another place than as a theme in itself.  

This week's word was connect; 'connect' means to unite, join or be associated.  Bridges connect.  And so I initially set about finding a poem about bridges and I stumbled across this curiosity.  Russell Edson is a contemporary American prose poet.  I'm drawn to his writing, it has a dream like quality that reels you in and yet there is something profoundly disturbing about it.  This poem makes me think of dreams and the line we sometimes walk between sleep and wake, psychosis and sanity, life and death.  And so to my mixed-media image.  A letter home, a tangled dream, a place where reality and dreams collide.

a creative flop

Not so long ago I posted about how I was planning on turning some simple t-shirts and dresses into beautiful crocheted masterpieces.  I crocheted with fury and if truth be told I'm actually quite pleased with how the crochet turned out.  I then bought what I thought was a cool shift-dress from H&M - it's only problem (or so I thought) was it being a little on the transparent side.  No problem, a bucket of nautical blue dye later fixed that issue.  All that was left was so sew my cute little granny-squares onto the hem of the dress and I was done.  As with most things the whole process took a little longer than I anticipated, but I finished it off last week and quickly tried it on.

Let's just say that the finished dress didn't exactly live up to the masterpiece that my mind envisaged.  I was imagining cute summer shift-dress with unbelievably adorable granny-square hem.  What I ended up with was a blue linen sack with an adorable granny-square hem.  But who wants to wear a sack, even if it does have a cute hem?  Not I.  If I had a sewing machine and knew how to sew I could perhaps fix it with a dart at the back to give it some shape.  But I don't have a sewing machine and even if I did I'm not sure if I'd know how to dart.  Gaagh!  The granny-squares are coming off, the dress is being relegated to nighttime attire and I'm back to the drawing board on how to successfully turn my t-shirts into crocheted loveliness.

this is who I am : the good and the bad

This week over at Diva's and Dreams our challenge was to think of two positive aspects of our personality and one negative aspect and play with them in photos and words.  For more details visit here.

My words were:

Quick

Passionate

Peppery

What I most love about myself if that I'm passionate and quick

What I most hate about myself is that I'm peppery

Now a sentence with them all together:

A quick and peppery temperament allows me to embrace my interests passionately.

Let's make a negative a positive...

The good thing about being peppery is that I rarely hold a grudge against people and grievances are quickly forgotton.

Being peppery is great because it creates a drive and motivation to explore new things, interests and continue to learn.

scenes from the weekend

Germany has been experiencing somewhat of a heatwave in the last few weeks.  After the coldest winter on record we seem to be destined for the hottest summer.  With no air-con in the apartment, we, and almost every other Berliner headed for the water.  We cooled off, played cards, read the paper and I even got some knitting done.  It almost felt like we were on proper summer holidays and not just pretending for the day.  The best bit was renting one of those cute little 'boxes' for the day - they're typical German 'beach' affair and keep the sun off when it's hot and the protect you from the wind when it's a little bit chillier.  Perfect.  What did you get up to this weekend?