Spring!?!

Are you waiting for the spring? I am! I am longing for more colours outside. To see the hills coloured in different shades of green! It is so beautiful to see the trees dressed in their very new and bright green coloured veil. And they are all so different!
One of my favourite flowers for spring, are tulips. That's why I had to put tulips on my spring tablerunner I made few years ago! Haven't used it the last couple of years, but gave it a new chance this week-end, because I needed to see some fresh colours!When I designed this tablerunner, I thought I had measured well enough, but I realized it would be shorter than it was meant to be. This I found out after I put the binding on! I had to think quick, because I wanted it to be done before our guests for easter arrived! So I made two small coffee-placemats and attached them to the runner with small hooks. I am quite pleased with it!
Have a nice day!
May Kristin

A New Year

When you step into a brand, new year, you often have many different thoughts in your mind. How will this new year be? What will this year bring to me? To my family? Opportunities? What kind of opportunities? Happy things? Sad things? Will there be big changes, or small changes? Will I meet some new people, make some new friends? Well, you can make your list as long as you want, but you don't know the answers. You can make plans, but you never know if things goes exactly the way you planned! I am so happy we don't know, the only thing we have to do, is to dream a little and live!
Many of us makes resolutions for the new year. I have made plenty of them, earlier. Did I manage to stick to them? NO! Have I made any this year? May be, but I won't tell! They are my little secret!
But I managed to fulfill one! I managed to tidy up my sewing-room! I couldn't start the new year in a sewing-room that was a total mess! And I mean TOTAL!! You could hardly find a place to put your feet! I just couldn't show you any "before" photo's, it was to bad! So the only you get is "after" photo's!

I am dreaming of many nice hours up here, where I can be myself and create what I want! Yes, I do have some plans. I want to finish up some of the things I am working on, I want to start some new things. I have patterns and fabrics just waiting for me!

But first I will make the Winter quilt for my swap partner in the Four Seasons Quilt Swap! And winter means blue fabrics? I haven't made anything yet, it is all in my head. I will show you as soon I have made something!
Finally......
Until next time, take care!

May Kristin

Midohioknitter

On my surfing tour this morning, I found this blog. She is having a giveaway, so pop over to MIDOHIOKNITTER and leave a comment! May be you'll be the lucky winner of a Allspice Tapestry charmpack by Fig Tree Quilts!

I'll doubt you will be the winner, because I am!!! LOL!

Enjoy!

Something "old"...

I don't have anything new to show you today. The week has been quite busy! And I am not working more than one day a week! But this week I have been teaching a class at my local quilt shop, Kreativ Quilt, and I had a lot to prepare before the class. And I have some homework to do before the next class! I have only done this once before, and it is many years ago! The purse I showed you in the previous post is one of the things they are making. The block is based on a pattern designed by Jan Mullen, an autralian designer. She has many fun patterns and books using her crazy cutting and sewing methods!

But the quilt I am showing you today was made during a couple of hot summerdays in 2006. I was staying outside in the sun ironig and cutting fabrics one day and sewing the quilt next day! It was fun, easy and quick! I need some quick machinepiecing projects between and during my slow handpiecing projects! It is a "Turning twenty" pattern. You make your whole quilt out of 20 FQ. You have nothing left, you use every inch of the fabric. Well, you might have an inch or two left, but not more than that! It also works great with 12" wof pieces (30cm) (very common in Norway), but then you will have more scraps!

The fabric choices has its own story. I went to visit my good friend at her shop. She had just received some new fabrics, and she could not remember why they had ordered them, or by the way, ordering them at all!! We went to take a look at them. After a while I said; wait a minute, they are not that bad! And then we started picking fabrics to match these two. And voila, we had fabrics for a whole quilt, and they looked gorgeous!!

All the fabrics left the shop with me(how strange!) And so they did with her! I added some fabrics from my stash (clever girl!) When I was working on it, I realized that something was missing, and what was missing was the colour green. I went back to my stash, picked some green fabrics, and ended up with only one green fabric, and it was perfect! I called my friend to tell her. She had come to the same conclusion! She told me what fabric she had chosen and I started laughing; but that's the same fabric I choose!! This is not the first time this has happend and will not be the last!This is how my quilt turned out to be. You can see her quilt here. They are selling pattern and kits for the quilt.

PS. If you think they should update their website, they are working on it! But they have had some serious web problems for a long time! As soon as that is fixed, you will see a lot of new photos in the gallerie, and new patterns in their webshop! But it is still possible to order the patterns you see in the shop! DS

I will show you photos from the class later this week, if the ladies allowes me to take pics of them and what they are making!

This'n that

It has been some busy days last week. All kids have been home from school because of the fall break. I have been working. And my parents came last thursday to spend the week-end with us!
It is allways nice to have visitors, and my children love to have their grandparents to visit. Our son has also been at home. He got his drivers license a few weeks ago, and are now happily driving when he is allowed to and the car is free for him to use! No, he has not got his own car, he has to buy himself a car when he can afford to buy one and pay for the gaz, insurance and all taxes that is required! And that will take some time, I guess! He went back to school yesterday. My parents drove him up to the school, which is a boarding school more than 400 km away from home!
In an earlier post I wrote about my trip with "Hurtigruten". I have a little more to tell. No no, this will not be as long as the other post was! I hope!
Before we left, I thought by my self, on this trip there will not be any shopping, and definately no fabricshopping! Hmhmmm, what is this?????? Ehm, it looks like fabrics, or ......... Yes, it is fabrics, and I found them in a shop in Honningsvåg! I was only looking for embroidery floss, and came out from the shop with the floss, yes, and fabrics! And I have no fabrics at home!!! Haha!
The box you see in the photo is bouhgt in Kirkenes. It is made by russians (I was told) and is made of the bark from birches. Isn't it cute? It thought I should use it for small handsewing projects.
When you are cruising like this, you need something to do. Yes, you can sit and watch (read sleep), like many did! But I need some more, so this is what I was doing while sitting in the lounge looking out at the nature!
I never got bored! My husband went to his classes after an early breakfast. I slept a little longer, had a late breakfast, and then found a chair in the lounge. We met for lunch, he went back to his classes and I went back to the lounge, or we went off the ship to have a walk etc.
It is so funny, when you are working on a quilt in public, different people are stopping by and talk to you. I had two older english ladies who where very interested in my quilt. One of them was embroidering a beautiful tablecloth, and the other one was working with hexagons, english paperpiecing. She told me she got lots of bags with unfinished projects from other old people, wanting her to finish them for them! Clever lady!
A danish lady stopped by, wanted to have a look, and told me she was making quilts, mostly by hand! And she told about a quiltshow held in Aalborg, Denmark this fall, which was great! I was planning to go to that show, but was not able to find time!
And there were another lady from the US, she told that she had been teaching how to make quilted jackets and vests all over Minnesota!
And, I'm not done yet......there was a german man sitting next to me, he was reading and I was sewing. I guess he was in his fifties or sixties. I felt he was looking at me and what I was doing. At the end of the day he finally said, I love your quilt and your embroidery! Wow, I thought, I've never heard that from a man! And then he told me that he loved to do embroidery himself! He was mostly doing cross-stitches, tiny tiny ones! Isn't this fun?As you can see, I was sewing, reading, listening to music, knitting..... I really enjoyed my vacation!
Each day they had a new saying on the informationboard on the ship. Now an then I will share them with you, and you will have one today!

Friends are like stars,

you cannot always see them,

but you know they are there!

Yes, now I'm done!!

"Yes, I did it!"

Housework is not my favourite thing to do, but it has to be done! And vacuumcleaning is a part of normal housework. When your vacuumcleaner is working ok, you never think that you will ever miss that thing. But when it is not working and you really desperately need that thing, something strange happens, you start to miss it! Thats weird, I think!
Here the other day, my oldest princess and I were cleaning some drawers in the kitchen. We were also using the vacuumcleaner for this job. When it wasn't in use, it was only lying there on the floor because I was going to do the rest of the house when the drawers were done. Then my little princess found out that she also wanted to take part in the housecleaning, so she grabbed the vacuumcleaner and worked a little bit here and a little bit there.
Well, sometimes she is allowed to sit on the floor in our bedroom to watch TV. I heard that she went in there with the VC, and after a while we heard a happy voice saying "Yes, I did it!" Oh, that's great, I thought, she did it! Hmhm, did what?? We rushed into the bedroom! She had definately managed to clean up. For some reason she had brought a cup of old milk (lousy houswife and mother!) into the bedroom and managed to spill the whole cup on the floor. (Luckily it wasn't on the bed!) And she had managed to clean up with the VC! Yeak! That would have been ok if the VC was ment to be used with liquids as well as dust, which it wasn't! Luckily the hose(?) was 10 m long, the milk never reached the machine, unluckily, how do you clean 10 m long hose(?) ? I had to bring it outside and use the garden hose so that water could flush through and clean it up inside, and.... then let it dry for some days! No more housecleaning that day! But I have really missed that thing, and today I couldn't wait any longer! I desperately needed to clean up, and I did! (too!) No milk this time!

This'n that

I've seen lately on different blogs, quilters showing their sewingroom. And those sewingrooms allways are neat and tidy, well almost allways tidy. Well, some are actually showing all the mess! Honour to them! I shall spare you the sight of my sewingroom ( for now), because it is a complete mess, actually, it is not a mess, it is creative clutter.............
Why is it allways like this, I clean up my sewingroom, fold my fabrics, all bits and bobs are in the right place, and I am enjoying my tidy room. Then I get this great idea, I start pulling out fabrics, thread, pattern etc...... and my room looks like a complete mess again, no I mean, filled with creative clutter, again.... I wished there was a kind of fairy that was flying aroud and allways kept my sewingroom in a tidy condition so that I allways could find what I need when I needed it!
I think my mom is feeling a little ashamed about me! A couple of years ago, she gave me this sign which now is hanging in my sewingroom. Some months ago my husband and I went on a trip, an my parents came to look after the children. My intention was to clean up my sewingroom before we left, but in some way I ran out of time.(Like I allways do!) My room was a complete m....

When we got home, I found this little note sticked to the sign........! Do I need to say more?
( I did the room quite quick!)

I am sorry that this post turned out to be "a complete mess"! I am so tired I can hardly think clearly!Finally I want to give you a sunset where you can rest your eyes......PS. How can I expect that my children will manage to keep their rooms tidy when I'm not able to keep mine.....? Hey, I really need that fairy.............! DS