Project bags

These are birthday presents, but, since the birthday girl doesn't read my blog, it's safe to put them up here:

 

I made the bag in two different sizes.

Trying to get a decent picture was a challenge again. The ones taken inside were just plain bad, no matter how much I fiddled with PSE, it wasn't until I dragged everything outside, that the colors became true. 

The fabrics came from my embarrassingly large stash of Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

The pattern can be found here. The free tutorial is for the smaller version.

Sock bag

I've been sewing project bags this week - pictures to follow soon. Yesterday, while surfing, I came across a pattern on Craftsy for a sock sack for people who knit two socks at once. That's not me, so this one will find a new home soon.
But, the idea is just brilliant IMHO, you sew a bag with a divider inside and two little tabs just above the divider, thread your yarns(s) through those and - voilà - you can knit two socks at the same time without getting your yarn tangled up.

From the outside, the bag looks cute, but not that special.

Fold down the cuff and it gets more interesting. That's also what you're supposed to do to stabilize the whole thing when you're knitting.

Here's a closer look at the divider and the two tabs. Brilliant, right?

Crocheting scarves, cowls and an afghan

One of us went a little overboard with this pattern ................

Details to be found here.
And just to prove that I'm not a one trick pony, here are a couple of other things I crocheted:

Again, the details can be found on ravelry (I love that place).
And here's my big project, I worked on this for months, used up quite a lot of yarn and it hasn't made a dent in my stash at all:

This one comes in quite handy in the evenings now. The days are still warm, very warm even, but the house doesn't warm up any longer like it did even a month ago. So, a lap throw like this is perfect.

Berries - a photodump

Wow, three posts in one morning. That's a record for me. Nothing for weeks, sometimes even months and then I decide to spend my morning in front of the computer, phone in hand to send all the photos that have accumulated for ages.
My husband decided to trim the shrubs on one side of the deck and I couldn't let him do that before getting a few shots of the berries on those shrubs:

Playing tourist

No, we did not go on a balloon ride, we visited Sonoma instead, one valley over.
This time around, we did not spend all of our time walking around the plaza (window)shopping.
We started out visiting the mission. Any California 4th grader will know a lot more about the missions than I do, that's what they study in 4th grade. I did pay attention, though, while visiting here and remember that Mission San Francisco Solano (the official name for this mission) is the Northernmost mission and the last one built. It was built of adobe and covered with a whitewash made of crushed shell. Originally, there were 2 churches, but the larger one fell into disrepair and the townspeople used the building material for other projects.

What's left now, is the building you see in the front and the original wooden church which was rebuilt later on. The outbuildings in back and the larger church on the right are completely gone.
And this is what it looks like today:

The church is not being used as a church today, unlike other mission churches. Still, I always feel like I'm doing something wrong when I take pictures inside of churches. But there was a sign saying it was okay, just no flash photography.

Here is the veranda on the outside and following are a couple of pictures of the underside of the roof:

The fountain in the courtyard, a very peaceful and relaxing place.


We visited the barracks next, no pictures, sorry, not terribly photogenic and hard to photograph anyway. I do remember one detail, though: every solder had to have, among many other things, 6 horses and 1 mule.

Next we took a break for a bit of shopping and lunch before driving out to General Vallejo's house. According to wikipedia, he and other members of his family owned vast land holdings and lost most of them when California became a state. Legal wranglings with wealthy Americans and immigrants and the high cost of court proceedings.

The avenue leading up to the house.

The house itself, according to the ranger, shipped out in kit form from the East and built on site.

The tiny guesthouse.

And the barn which now serves as a museum and giftshop with an amazingly well-informed ranger on duty.
There is also a hermitage up the hill a bit, behind a huge pond with koi and turtles, but the path was blocked off with a sign warning about rattlesnakes.
It was fun doing touristy things for a change, we don't do it often enough and we have plans for more.

Balloons

Balloon rides are a popular thing for the tourists visiting our valley and even after 16 years of living here, we still stop and watch balloons landing.
We are lucky, quite a few of them land in the field behind our house. It used to be a vineyard when we first moved here but the vines were pulled out a few years later and the owner didn't replant. So, it's perfect for landing balloons.
Here are a few pictures I took over the last few days:

I took this one Thursday morning, two more balloons landed later.

This all happened this morning:

Four balloons this time, not such good timing. I wasn't quite ready for the day just yet, having just finished my bike ride (in the garage) and getting cleaned up.

One more coming in for a landing.

And here are a couple of shots of the support cars/trucks. One truck to haul away the basket and the balloon and a van to take away the passengers.

The last pair of Poofy Pants

For the time being, this will be my last pair of Poofy Pants. After all, how many pairs of pants can one baby wear before she outgrows them. I've made them in two different sizes, but still ........
So, here is the last pair for a while:

 And the inside: an interesting batik with farm animals.

I've mentioned before and again how much I love this pattern. Today, I checked the clock: it took not quite 75 minutes to sew these. Cutting out time was extra, I did that several days ago, but even that didn't take long. So, I think this is about as close as it comes to instant gratification.
I am linking up with randi of i have to say for Show 'n Tell Tuesday.

More Poofy Pants

This will be an (almost) wordless post. I've been busily sewing Poofy Pants (details can be found here.

Blue puppy dogs.

Green birds.

Sock monkeys, from my stash.

Owls.

Red puppy dogs.

Cuff detail.

This was meant to be the inside.

Floral flannel.

I love this pattern, the pants were a lot of fun to sew and I can easily see myself sewing many, many more. But how many pants can one baby wear?
I am linking up with Randi of i have to say for Show 'n Tell Tuesday.

Still translating

A long, long time ago - I often refer to it as BC - Before Children - I worked as a translator in a large engineering company that designed and oversaw the construction of projects pretty much all over the world. The ones I remember well were the plant for spirally welded pipes in Italy (tubificio alla saldatura ............ (forgot the rest), a sugar factory in Biafra (yes, that long ago) and plenty of projects in Russia. The two Russian translators had the largest office, they needed two typewriters and the ones for Russian were kind of prehistoric, huge and manual. Can you imagine, a manual typewriter? The rest of us had electric ones, those old IBM Selectrics to start with.
I spent many happy hours chained to my desk and my typewriter surrounded by dictionaries, typing away. The norm was 1 page an hour for translation, 4 pages for typing. There were no computers. I translated bids, specifications, contracts into both German and English, with the odd French letter thrown in.
When my first child was born, I spoke English only with her, not wanting to stick out in any way. When the second child came along, I felt more confident and spoke only German with him and it was quite cute hearing the little guy speak German. But, when he started pre-school, his English language skills were behind those of his peers and we switched to English only immediately. Bad decision in hindsight. As a teenager, he made sure to let me know that we should have toughed it out because, according to him, it is so much easier to learn a foreign language when you are young and even for a teenager it isn't easy. Really? Try that in your 50's - that's when I took Spanish classes.
Anyway .......... trying to get back on track here. I now have an adorable little granddaughter and sorting through all those children's books I had saved, I found our all-time favorite:

It's in English, but I remember well reading it to Henry in German with him cuddled into my side. I remember his little face lighting up when that book came out. So, I translated it into German this morning and sent my daughter the file (she has a copy of the book).
I happened to find another favorite book, this one in German and plan on translating it into English later today before sending everything off to Colorado.

Funny, I seem to have come full circle with the translations. And I have to admit, I enjoy translating children's books much more than those dry technical papers I used to work on.

Solder hearts

Bumming around on pinterest this morning, I found a link to a tutorial for making hearts out of solder. It looked interesting and it works, although, I adapted it. I used my torch instead of the soldering iron.
I admit my hearts are definitely rustic, organic and definitely not beautiful, but it was fun to make them.

They are easy to texture and it's possible to stamp on them and I see them being used dangling from a bracelet. As usual, I made components rather than a whole (bracelet or necklace).
The tutorial can be found here.
And I apologize for the slightly fuzzy picture on the bottom.