Busy weeks

It has been a busy couple of weeks.
Tons of stuff to do at work and a lot at home as well. I nearly forgot a lecture I was giving at work and had to prepare at the last minute, I was in Stockholm with work and back home again everything had just piled up. An endless amount of meetings…. My husband was away on a business trip so I had to manage the whole “household thing” on my own. My car was due for its annual check up and one of the cats is constantly throwing up all over the house. Yuck! Just as the eldest daughter was well and back to school the youngest fell and broke her arm. The right arm this time. She broke the left one last summer! She took it very well though. Just cheerfully asked the doctor whether she could have a pink cast since that was what she had last time……As I said a busy couple of weeks but I managed to squeeze in a crayfish party ay my sisters (Swedish tradition),


visit to dear friends in Stockholm and a “dinnerdate” with a friend and her lovely eight week old daughter. For a minute or two I was thinking of having a third child my self but soon thought better of it. Diapers and sleepless nights all over again? Nope not me! But she is such a cutie!

Have you been wondering what’s happening with the renovation?
Well, not so very much at the moment. We had to slow down the renovation pace when our vacation was over and are mostly doing little things around the house. And we always have time for lunch out in the sun

and afternoon tea in the living room sitting silently together looking out over the fields.
We wanted to start laying the board for the second floor but had to order the board especially because the ones we wanted wasn’t standard size. That slowed us down a bit but last weekend they were delivered and carried inside with the help of family and friends.

Other than that our major task has been to figure out what kind of fire place we want. The winter is soon to be here and it’s already colder inside than outside so a fireplace is what we need to survive the winter….

My husband has done an awful lot of measuring and thinking and I have been looking through tons of catalogues. I want it to be modern so it will be a nice contrast to the old interior.

I am still infatuated with my house. When I drive down the driveway my heart leaps with joy and when the weekend is over I don`t want to go back to the city. I love the fact that we live so close to the nature. The leaves are turning red and soon the landscape will explode with colors.

As I mentioned before the house is close to a wildlife protection area with rare frogs like the tree frog, different hawks and golden eagles. I try to visit the protection area with my camera as often as I can and I have wanted to see a tree frog from day 1 but have never had any luck. Today I was walking trough the woods minding my own business when suddenly I felt like someone was watching. I turned around and stood face to face with a gigantic bull. He looked like a Belgian Blue!

Jeez I almost wet my pants! And believe me I didn’t linger to find out if he was a friendly sort of bull or not! I took a quick photo and ran….

When I got back and parked the car in the front yard my husband suddenly shouted for me to come and see. Wow! We had tree frogs right in our own front yard!!!! Oh joy! I wanted to get a closer look so I captured one of them and put him in a glass jar. Poor bugger! He looked like he was screaming – “Let me out”!

Naturally my heart bled and I had to let him go.

He jumped so fast and I was crawling after him with my camera trying to get a good picture. I must have looked so silly!

Yep I did! ( My husband took a photo with his cell phone)

Creative? Not me!
I haven’t been too creative these last weeks. Not for lack of wanting but for lack of time.. ..

I made a felt for my dear friend in Stockholm

and I finished a felt for my youngest daughter that I started making in July for her birthday. Sigh!

I also wanted to finish another inchie but managed to drop everything on the floor and now I can’t get it back together again. I was so angry I had to put it aside. Maybe another day....

But sometimes it’s good to be out of time! At least it works that way for me.Longing for some creative moments on your own but having to be satisfied with just thinking about creating instead. Then my head gets full of ideas and I just can’t wait to get started! I hope to be able to show you some of it soon.

Until then take care!

Jeanette

Inchies

Some evenings I get totally caught up in the world of blogs. I start by reading the comments on my own posts. Then I read the comments on the commenter’s posts and then I read…..and suddenly two or three hours has passed and I am so full of inspiration and joy over the amazing artist out there who share their creative life with us on their blogs. And very often I want to go back to a blog that felt special and read more. And then ….Oh bother! I can’t find it again. So now I try to write down the Url as I go along but more often than not I forget when I get caught up in the reading.

On one of my evenings I stumbled over a blog called Sarah`s Stitchery Saga She wrote about inchies and challenged her readers to try it out. Inchies is just what it sounds like. Small pieces of quilt or embroideries that are 1 x 1 inches or 2,5 x 2,5 cm large or small in fact. I was intrigued. I have never done anything that small before and I wanted to start at once. Unfortunately my life has to contain other things than felting – boring things like going to work in order to get food on the table - so I had to postpone my inches for a few days.

This weekend I finally got started. Oh it was great fun but harder than I thought. I decided that I wanted to do a flower – a poppy. My favorite flower. So I wet felted a background in different shades of green and cut it in 36 pieces each piece being 1x1 inches. Then I laid a puzzle of the green squares and started to build the red flower by needle felting color to each tiny piece. That’s when the hard work began…..It was difficult to see the shape of the flower when I was felting so I had to step back all the time and look at the result. Finally I did the felting standing up and bending over my work table which was good for the felting but not for my back. But what don’t we do for art ….


What is this sweet sleeping cat doing here? Let me tell you that when he wakes up he is a inchie destroying monster!!

After long hours of hard work I was done. I was really satisfied with the result and stood at my worktable admiring it when one of the cats jumped up and pushed all the tiny pieces down on the floor. Arrrrrrghhhhh! One hour and a lot of teeth grinding later the pieces were back where I wanted them. And I quickly felted them on a brown background before the cat came back…..

So here I proudly present my first inchie !

What do you think Sarah ?

Autumn love

Autumn is my favorite time of the year.

I love natures beautiful colors.....

.....watching the farmers harvesting

.......and feel the sweet smell of honey from heather in full bloom.

And I love the fact that the beaches are empty and I don`t have to wear a bikini until next year.... and by then boy will I be skinny !!!

Autumn is when I get a strange urge to take evening classes in pottery or glass fusing. Or when I plan to write that book I always wanted to write. Or when I want to learn a new language. Or redecorate my home. Or move…. Autumn is the time for long walks by the stormy see or out in the woods to pick mushrooms, acorn or chestnuts. The crisp sunny days when the sky is so blue it hurts….Oh joy! My autumn obsession is mostly a September thing. Come beginning of October my second obsession kicks in….Christmas! And is far worse! I absolutely LOVE Christmas. The candle lights, the decorations, the present makings, the looking for the perfect tree…. Well you get the picture! And you will defenitely SEE pictures here in my blogg.

Autumn colors inspired me to make this little felted piece. The text is a iron on transfer and It`s part of a poem written by Elsa Beskow.

So fall all our leafs, fall soft and light

We are weaving a blanket so warm and tight

We are weaving a blanket for the ground

Slow down

I’ve had a lot of time to think lately. When someone is very ill you tend to think about life and what we are here for. I think we are running away from life. We run from point A to point B in a constant chase to catch up on all the must do and should have done and in the middle of it all we live only a half life. Life isn’t a Hollywood movie where Life part 1 is automatically followed by Life part 2 - The Sequel. Life is here and now! You never know what awaits you around the next corner or at the next crossing. Slow down! Take a break! Smell the flowers, listen to the birds singing, feel the raindrops on your head. Tell your loved ones everyday just how precious they are and how much you love them.

Life is too short to always be in a hurry!

People very seldom sit at the retirement home regretting the fact that they didn`t work more overtime. So slow down and figure out what you want to use your only life for!




Inspired by my thoughts I made this wet felted picture. I call it “Slow down” For me a snail has always symbolized a slow pace so I used one of my photos and made a iron on transfer. It’s the first time I have added a iron on directly to the felt. I wasn’t quite sure it was going to stick but it worked.
This is the picture close up. I am not really satisfied with the pictures sharp edges. Is hard to get it to blend in with the background. But it was fun to try something new and I will try to make it “softer” next time.



I plan to put this felt on my office wall right next to my computer. That way I won`t forget to slow down and let life have a chance to catch up with me!