Doll making

My last post, my nativity scene for 'this week I saw',  disappeared miraculously. But repost a nativity scene after Christmas is as we Dutch call it 'musterd after dinner'.  Christmas was wonderful though. We did some skating on Christmasday, and really, nothing in the whole world can make me happier than skating with my family! Although my two sons playing christmas songs on their guitar comes close.

I'm making a lot of plans for crafting again! Making dolls is something I love to do. I made Molly, a rag doll for Lauren, she still love to play with. I made dozens of doll's clothes and I made some dolls similar like my Snowwhite. I did it without a pattern, adjusting by 'trial and error'. When we were in New York, I visited Purl Soho, a wonderful craft's shop. And there in the windows I saw this little doll from Mimi Kirchner. Made of woolfelt and quite smaller than my dolls use to be, but a bit similar. Purlbee, the blog of Purl Soho even provides a free pattern! I tried it and made this little doll for my niece Livia. I made her also a box with a little matrioskha on it. I didn't had enough felt out of one piece to make the dress, but nevertheless I'm satisfied with the way she turned out.

Snegoerotjsjka ornaments

Inspiration is such a beautiful thing. Rahel posted these Etsyfinds on her blog, and I really loved them and then Hetty showed us the ornament she made for a friend. Put one and one together, add a little inspiration and you get my little ornaments. They're made of woolfelt, some leftover beads, chainstitches and french knots and about the size of a praline. The lovely girl is Snegoerotsjka, the snowgirl, a painting from Michail Vroebel for a Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov opera. My own snowgirl just came in with the deepest red cheeks I've ever seen... Tomorrow the children will get their skatingdiplomas. I was a very proud mother when I saw my sons doing 'pootje over', the proper way of skating the curves. We're ready for Christmas since we're doing the 'grand tour' this year; seeing both parents and inlaws. There happens to be ice near to my parents in law, so we'll  probably do a little skating on Christmasday!

Sometimes a happy childhood can hit you in the face

What a start of their schoolvacation this is. These three boys are always together. The two on the left are Casper en Valentijn, our sons,  and the one on the right is the boy nextdoor, their best friend. Sometimes it strikes me that I'm watching their childhood memories. The children are on a skating course, as always in their christmas vacation, and I skate along with them, so there won't be a lot of drawing and crafting to show you. The hours after skating are filled with sleighing, snow fights and drinking a lot of hot chocolate. It's just plain perfect! I wish for all of you the same thing!

Deze week zag ik/ This week I saw

This week I saw a good friend returning. Snow makes me happy, no matter what! It's living the fairytale. This is my first contribution to DWZI van Roos en Daan, inspired by Jill's Today I saw. Actually I feel a little obliged, at least to myself, to draw something, but I liked this fairytale picture I made so very much. So I try to do a drawing next time.

St. Lucia

I love traditions, even if they're not my own. Today it's st. Lucia's day. In Sweden, the youngest daughter, dressed in white gown with a red sash is the Lussibrud (Lucia bride). She wears a crown with candles on her head and serves saffranrolls to the rest of the family. I can't help wondering how this was done when they hadn't electric candles. A lot of beautiful long blond hair must have gone up in smoke, I guess. We didn't send Lauren to school in a white dress today, nor gave her any saffranrolls to treat. Two tangerines is all she's got, festive enough for a tradition which  isn't ours. What are your traditions in the period of advent, I love to hear...

Waldorf traditions after all

When I was growing up my parents were very involved in establishing a Waldorf school in the place were we lived and everything that came with it. Once I became a teenager I got very annoyed by everything concerning antroposophy. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. To me antroposophy was associated with stale sourdough bread, men in handspun sweaters, women in dyed skirts (we're talking the seventies) and damp cloths as a medicine for almost every illness, all covered with the heavy smell of arnica,which I still can't stand. My parents weren't like that at all, I must add. And then I became a mother.  A lot of routines and traditions from the Waldorf school seemed pretty nice to me, actually...So today, Joseph and Mary, very waldorfy indeed, are making a long yourney trough our livingroom before they arrive at the manger. They are made out of woolfelt and silk. I've whipped them up myself, but you can buy kits like this overhere. The cardboard christmas tree is our adventcalendar from the Wiener Werkstätte. The blue picture is a cyanotype which I bought from etsy, waiting patiently to be framed. And to complete this tour: the rowing man is my husband, on a drawing I made him when he got forty.

Christmas is unfolding...

It started all with some trees the children made. And once you've folded several reindeer, you're close to the whole ensemble...It was another late night to get it all  hanging and a lot of not so peace-on-earth-like words to accompany the process, but here it is. It was quit another process to get it on picture.  I tried different backgrounds and different types of 'snow'. Then heavy hail made me turn on all the lights, but now it has a dark wintery glow which probably goes along very well with the scene. We bought the wooden shelf with the lovely carved tree on the side a long time ago to serve as a season's table. In a few days it will be a manger. For now we enjoy Santa on his sleigh. (I even made tiny little origami presents...)

christmas yarn star

 Bye bye Sinterklaas, bye bye winter, for now. We had so much fun saturday, but now it's wet and messy all over. Since I'm red-nosed myself the last few days, I can just as well show you the christmas star I made. These stars are really easy to make, following this tutorial. You can do it with your children, following this tutorial. Getting the pins in is the hardest part. From that point you're only five minutes away from a selfmade ornament. Minimum effort, maximum result!

Gift tags

A friend asked me for gift tags. I want to show you an example or two from a series I made for her. Just by copy/past you can use them too if you like. Unfortunately I can't use them myself because these drawings are all over our house. I like the strophe of a Tjitske Jansen poem "het moest maar eens gaan sneeuwen" , but for now I wished it stopped snowing, because I want to do some heirons and pick my children up at school. I settle for walking, going by bike is not the smartest thing to do these days.  

Last minute crafting for Sinterklaas

Just a few days till 'pakjesavond', the night Zwarte Piet might drop off a big bag of presents. In the meantime our sons are having other concerns. Valentijn is measuring the thickness of the ice (in a forgotten vase)  in order to be prepared when it comes to skating. The Friesian genes are strong ones, apparently. When the temperature outside gets below zero (Celsius), we're getting  feverish! We all love to skate. It's such a typical Dutch thing to do (social historian again...), that I have no words in English to describe this ice fever. As much as I love blogging, if the frost is here to stay, there's just one thing for me: the 'schaatsforum', to check the spots for reliable ice to skate on.

For all of you who might be less dedicated to all the goodness winter is bringing us, I show you some -very bad- pictures of the paperdoll we made last week, Valentijn did the purple and green one. I used old magazines for the pink one. The sleeves and trousers are in fact buildings. We totally forgot to add feathers on the hat, so we let  Picnik do it for us. We used this template and laminated it afterwards. We'll always have Paris, to show you how it works.

First advent

And in the middle of all excitement which Sinterklaas arouses, it's suddenly the first sunday of advent. And what a great day it was. We are living near the dunes, and we did some deerspotting today. We saw stags with huge antlers and a lot of other deer. I don't want to walk around with this huge and heavy camera all the time, so the pictures are taken with my phone. Despite the poor quality I love the silhouette of my three musketeers!

After the long walk and a rewarding pancake afterwards, we were invited to a birthdayparty. I made two more pillows for the two brothers, a soccer player and a baseball player. Again this turned out to be the perfect gift...

Though we'll wait until the 6th of december to open the first doors on the adventcalendar, we do lit one candle on advent's wreath. We decorated it with a blue ribbon, which is actually the colour that belongs to this period. Usually my father makes them, but because it's the second advent before we see one another again I did it myself this year.

I felt like a real editor, changing my blog's lay-out for Christmas. If it wasn't the biggest cliche of all times, I'd say it's the most wonderful time of the year. December 6th I grab my Frank Sinatra Christmas album, and off we go. Time for "Kerst met Linus" (a Swedish televion series), The Polar Express, playing christmas carrols on our terrible out of tone piano, the whole shebang. I love it. More is more. But decorationswise I like to keep it simple. White, green and a little red, it's christmas after all.

Surprise

Yesterdat the boys spent their afternoon making 'sinterklaas-surprises'. I feel like a social historian or something, explaining our traditions all the time, but on the other hand; I like reading about someone elses too. When you stop believing in Sinterklaas, that's when the real thing starts. Making surprises (pronounced in a sort of French way) and writing poems that are meant to tease the receiver.  A surprise is a crafted funny package to put your present in. For instance, a paper mache horse for a classmate who's all over poneys. Not seldom made of paper mache.Off course that's all I can say about it now, though I've no illusions whatsoever about nine- to twelve-year-olds reading this blog. 

I was asked quite a few times whether I make this drawings myself, well indeed I do. The blue one is in my favourite style. But I also did a charcoal drawing. Quite bishoplike don't you think?  (Sinterklaas, or St. Nicolaas, was in fact a bishop).  

Origami Christmas

Ever since we've been camping next to a Japanese group who wanted to climb the Eiger Nordwand in Grindelwald, I love origami. The friendly lady in the tent next to ours made me an origami boy for my poetry album, obviously because she thought I was one... Well, I was about eight years old and my hair was conviently rather than fashionably short. My mother bought an origamibook and a lifelong love started.

At West Elm in New York I saw this little porcelain origami reindeer. Mine now! Off course I had to try this at home. It took me a lot of awful coloured origamipapersheets, which I tend to use for such purposes,  but I succeeded in the end. The trick is to get a sheet that's a little big bigger (at least 20x20cm). The diagram I used is from this book . I used an A4 sheet made square. Although it's a bit thick, the result is quite sturdy. So happy together, I think I make some more.

Note: Since all three of my children wondered how the picture was taken, let me tell you: it was in our yard. We definitely don't have a christmas tree yet!

Zwarte Piet

Maybe I should have been writing this post  in Dutch, readers from abroad might think we've gone crazy overhere. Whereas Santa has his elfs, Sinterklaas has his  Zwarte Pieten (Black Petes). In the weeks previous to December 5th, children place their shoe at the fireplace and in the night, when Sinterklaas rides his horse over the rooftops ("trippel-trappel"), Zwarte Piet goes down the chimney to put a little present in their shoes. The fact that he's black, is not because of the chimney, but because of his Morish origine. There was a lot of discussion whether this might be insulting for coloured people living in Holland. In Amsterdam they experimented with all colours for the Pieten, but honestly a Red Piet or a blue one, it just not the same.

For all of you who love this politically incorrect but yet adorable tradition, here's my Zwarte Piet as a doll. If you''re interested in making one too, please let me know.

Good times

Just back from a wonderful trip to New York.  But since sjoe sjoe and noeksblogt recently lured us with their posts about this incredible city, I'll leave it to that. (Although I've never read about Kiteya Soho, a great japanese shop, go visit it when in NY). We had a great time, that's for sure. In the meantime, all things exciting were happening overhere. Sinterklaas made it through terrible weather, and it was heartwarming to hear our daughter tell about the diary that was in her shoe the other morning (which off course I picked out for her before we left). So let the good times come, I'm totally ready now! Just another two drawings to warm you op as well.