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… but I have never seen more than a few cherries. The birds always get them before we do…
I’m spring cleaning. In fact I have been cleaning since Sunday and I’m not even half done. I’m almost done in the living room now, but I want to have the kitchen and the hallway done by the weekend.
Actually it is not spring that sparked my cleaning activity at all. It is a big birthday coming up. My oldest girls turn 18 next week. Their birthday is on Wednesday (the 6th), but we start celebrating Sunday with my in laws, then Wednesday with my family and than Saturday they have a little party with some friends.
(Quite a lot? Well, I’m trying to ignore Mother’s day ( the 10th), my birthday (the 16th), final exams (starting the 18th) and more stuff happening this month).
Every year around this time I suddenly feel the house is far from spotless and not ready to be seen by outsiders (this year it’s worse than ever). I have been wondering where this came from. I have had this sudden urge to get things right every year since they celebrated their first birthday.
And today I suddenly realized it could have something to do with their birth. We didn’t have a home at all then, you know. We were renting an apartment but that was being redone by the owners. Meaning the kitchen was torn out, and they were putting in pipes for the central heating throughout the house. I was in the hospital at that time and my husband had fled to his parents because it was unlivable.
We were buying a little house and had hoped to close before the twins were born, but stuff happened (me being hospitalized didn’t help).
So, instead of bringing my sweet little ones home to a house that had been made ready for them, they were still in the hospital when I had to leave (on the 8th day after birth). We closed on the house that same day and we moved the next day. Luckily we had a lot of help, because I was not well enough yet to do anything.
Than Theo had to return to work and I had to cope with a house that didn’t feel like mine yet . When we got the wee ones home (when they were 18 days old) their room was clean, there were cribs and everything, but the house was not (yet) the happy, bright, colorful and warm, homely place I had imagined it to be.
I have to admit, looking back I’m thinking: why oh why didn’t I take those days when the little ones were still in the hospital to clean, rearrange, paint and make stuff ? But hey, I was very young (just turned twenty) and had a post partum depression. Trying to make things better had to wait until much, much later…
I think that’s why I try to make things perfect for their birthday every year. And this year in particular. How can it be eighteen years ago already?
Oh well, so much for remembering and musing about the past. Back to cleaning. On to the kitchen!
And another finished project. Two actually. I had 27 squares and simply had not enough yarn to make more. So making a blanket was just not possible. I decided to make bags instead.
The big bag is made from a pattern I found a year ago. I love how it looks and it’s a good size for shopping.
I had not enough squares to make another one and not enough yarn to make more. So the second bag is a different one.
I found inspiration for that on Craftster. I had one square left, so I divided the bag with it.
So now I have nothing “in progress” anymore (knit or crochet that is, there ’s still that quilt to finish).
Time to really start digging in those boxes and find new projects. I think there might be more of those bags (especially the top one) in my future. I’m hooked.
Yes, here it is! Four months of sticking to it and finally some result. Although it is a bit tight, it does look kind of nice. I think I will be wearing it (in colder weather).
Before sewing it up:
And after:
Me wearing it:
It looks like I will have a little harvest in a few months! Seeing these flowers reminded me of this post.
It was kind of scary to read it. How can you write things like that and than forget about it, starting the whole process of mourning a life style you will never have all over again? Stupid me! Luckily I have my blog to help me remember these things…
Had to take off the top layer of tulle and put it up higher. But I’m finished now. Again.
Yes, I know. You’re all eagerly awaiting the green dress. But I was preoccupied with another dress these last few days.
A red dress.
One of the daughters is going to a fantasy fair every year. Last year we made a dress from scratch. She promised to use it again this year since it was a lot of work and quite expensive. But… now she’s going with a different group of girls. And those girls want to pose as the seven sins (don’t ask me why, but they’re all around eighteen so I have nothing to say about it). My daughter is to be “anger” and she told me she needed a different dress. Bigger and redder.
We didn’t want to go through the whole process of making one from scratch again (we had a lot of trouble to fit the bodice and I have so little time lately), so I was very happy when I found this evening gown for only twenty euro.
Of course it was just not “big” enough, so I added 10 meters of tulle, in three double layers. It was not easy to get the whole thing through my little sewing machine, but I did manage to sew everything on.
So there it is. Big and red.
We live in a rural area. All the land behind us and our neighbors belongs to one family. It used to be a very big farm (for dutch standards). We and our direct neighbors are newcomers. All the other people near us are from that family of farmers. Most of them are old, the youngest is 75, I think.
One of our neighbours is a single woman. She lives in a small bungalow on the land that was once her father’s. Her health is not very good, but she still takes care of herself and about eight cats. And of her garden. She loves her garden.
We have lived here for four years now and every year she brings me plants for my garden.
So that’s why I found these cute flowers in one of my buckets when I got home yesterday.
She instructed the kids how to plant them, but they said I would know. I do, because she has instructed me a lot of times.
“Don’t plant them like the citygirls would, pouring water on the poor plant. First you dig a hole, than you fill it up with water and than you plant it. You will do it like that and the plant will survive.”
They all have. And they all are the type of plant that is strong enough to take over the garden, so it does not make my work easier (gardening is one of the chores that is easily forgotten about here).
But when our neighbor sees an empty spot somewhere (like this time: I have been working in the garden this weekend) she immediately brings me something to fill it.
And I wouldn’t dare not to plant it, since she does check up on her babies every once in a while…
I am supposed to get them out of our garden of course. But secretly I love those funny yellow flowers. I’m kind of glad that they are still going strong here.
Funny fact: we call this a “horses flower” (paardenbloem), but I don’t know why (do horses eat them?).
It used to be spelled as paardebloem (no n in between), but after the latest spelling reformation (yes, we have those, do you?), it was changed into paardenbloem.
I usually have to do some research to find the english name of a flower. I found a lot more about the names of this flower here.
While I’m finishing the green dress (yes! just the seams left to seam) and am nearing the end of the yarns I choose for the granny squares, I’m already thinking about the next project. I guess there will be some hats or something similar small first.
This is my “temporary” storage for my yarn. It has been stacked in my bedroom like this for three months now. Although I’m not really liking the plastic containers, I do like the see-through effect. I see those yarns daily and I’m loving it.
That is a good thing, since I think it will be there for a few more months!
See that picture on the right, by the way? That’s me! A fun cartoon Ernst de Vogel made of me sinking in to the mud while photographing for the newspaper.
