Settling into a new rhythm

Hello everyone!

I can't tell you how nice it has been to catch up with all of your blogs in the last couple of days and to come home to so many lovely comments on my monday's post about my dress. Thank you SO much! I came back on wednesday night from 6 days in France, visiting one of my sisters I hadn't seen in over a year in Amiens (north of France) at the weekend and staying at my parents for 2 nights near Lyon on my way back. It was lovely to see my niece who had changed so much in the last 12 months!

She is still a cheeky monkey and a bit of a handful at times but I loved spending 3 days with her. I also met the latest addition to my sister's family...

...an adorable 3 months old kitten who runs riot around the flat! It was so funny to see my niece and the kitten play together and I must say that I admire the latter's patience! The weekend was spent clothes shopping (I needed a "working" wardrobe and France is so much cheaper!) and spending time at the farm where my sister keeps her horse.

My niece isn't 3 years old yet but you should see her with the horse...fearless! She has been coming to the stables since she was 2 weeks old and is therefore lucky enough to be growing up surrounded by horses, dogs and other farm animals. My sister goes to the farm every weekend to ride the horse and this is my niece's favourite time of the week. My brother-in-law has also started a little garden on the farm so we spent some time collecting vegetables and walnuts that had fallen from the walnut tree.

I started my new job in Bern on Thursday and am yet to adjust to the 6am start and the 4 hours of daily commute. This aside, things are going well and my colleagues seem a friendly bunch. My new research project is exciting and I look forward to learning more about the applied veterinary science side of my work. As I struggle to adjust to a new rhythm, I have been feeling tired and a bit lazy this week end. The weather hasn't helped, autumn is on its way in la Suisse too. I will try and be a bit more proactive today and put the finishing touches to a few crafty projects so that I have something to show tomorrow on Handmade Monday.

It has been so nice to chat with you again...although it is nice every now and then to spend a week away from the computer, I have missed catching up on all your news!

x

African dress

Happy Monday everyone!

This past week has been busy sewing-wise with my first ever attempt at sewing a dress for myself!! I have been filled with mixed feelings of excitement and sheer frustration. Some of you may remember my last attempt at sewing a dress for a teddy bear almost ended in tears...if you don't, come and read about it here. I did not start this project feeling very confident...

I came back from my four months working tour of Africa with yards of beautiful waxed fabric. The fabric had been sitting in a cupboard for over a year now, waiting for a special sewing project to come along. I love the fabric so much that it almost pains me to cut it, so I wanted to make something special with it. The problem is that no special project ever came along (I never looked and it wasn't going to appear out of nowhere) and I felt bad everytime I opened the cupboard to see tens of yards of fabric unused. So I bit the bullet and decided to actually make something with some of it.

Knowing my limited sewing abilities, I had in mind a simple skirt with an elastic band waist. I had a pattern for such a project but it required stretchy material which this African fabric clearly isn't. My neighbour (and sewing tutor) Heather had just the right project. She had bought the August issue of Sew magasine in the UK and it came with a Simplicity pattern by designer Cynthia Rowley. She was confident I could make the dress despite my slightly worried face when I opened the pattern and realised I could not understand a word of it. I mean it was written in English but none of the terms made sense to me. At least, there were drawings...

It turned out that the dress was a lot more complicated than I had hoped my first big project to be...This meant that it took me a while to complete it (probably 12 hours) but that I learned a lot of techniques. The bodice is made up of darts (above) and I had to gather and pleat the skirt top (below).

The bodice was by far the most complicated item to make, especially since it is lined on the inside (which I must admit does look nice).

Two new techniques for me were inserting the invisible zip and sewing an elastic into the back casing.

The dress turned out much better than I could have hoped and I am very pleased with it. I also feel more confident in tackling intermediate sewing projects now. I would like to say that it was fun to make but I found it a bit tedious, mostly because the pattern was so hard to understand and I lost a lot of time wondering what the next step should be...

So here it is, one last time because I am quite proud of my little achievement!

Go and check out on Handmade Monday what other crafty bloggers have been up to!

Exciting times

A quick post before I am off to catch a train to France where I will be spending 6 days visiting my family. I start my new job in Bern next Thursday (which I am very excited about) and wanted to spend a bit of time with my folks before life gets a bit more hectic in la Suisse.

Mr T and I also went to Brügg last night to go and visit our new home. There is still a lot of buidling work to be done but we love the place as much as we did the first time we viewed it. Brügg itself is quite different from Meilen (less bankers, more normal people) and I am looking forward to discovering more of the old town.

Bridge leading to our street

We will move on November 1st so October is going to be a quite busy (and expensive month). We will have to buy a lot of furniture for this place including a table to put in my own craft room!! I can't wait!

No photos of the inside as it is not finished yet but here is a peek of our big (shared) garden. Bet Alf is going to be happy there!

The garden and house overlook the river Aare and we are going to have splendid views from our living room.

Right, better go to the station. I hope I will have some photos from France to share with you although I may be too busy enjoying myself to remember to take pictures. Life may be a bit hectic once I start working and commuting again so I may not be able to blog as often as I did in the past. I just have to wait and see how I settled into this new phase of my life in la Suisse.

Until next time...x

Card making

Some of you may remember my post back in April about how I conquered my fear...of cross-stitching!

Easter was long gone by the time I finished this sample so I kept it tucked away in my craft box to be put to good use next year. In the mean time, my lovely friend Vic sent me a couple more of these cross stitch packs (I think she buys them from Hobbycraft in the UK) and I completed this little fella:

I think I managed OK on both and decided to turn them into cards that I can send people for special occasions (Easter or a gecko birth?). I bought some plain cards and envelopes from Migros and put my thinking cap on.

All I needed to do was to split one of these cards in 2 and make a frame out of each halves. I glued the corner of the cross stitch sample onto the front of another card and carefully stuck the frame on top of it.

It took less than 10 minutes to make these 2 cards and it is nice to see that these small crafty bits are put to good use!

What do you think?

Beach bag

IKEA has a good choice of fabric. I had never realised IKEA sold fabric until I started sewing and must admit that they have some really original designs at an affordable price. Last time I went to IKEA in Glasgow before moving to La Suisse, I bought a small offcut of their seaside-themed fabric (I forgot what the actual IKEA name of it is) with the idea of making a toiletry bag with it. I bought a similar-sized blue waterproof fabric to line the inside of the bag (they have big rolls of waterproof fabric to make outdoors table clothes with).

Forward one year and I still hadn't made the toiletry bag... in an attempt to reduce my (small) fabric stash, I decided to use the fabric to make a beach bag instead. Easier to make and most likely to be used on a regular basis in our house. I decided to buy 2 meters of white rope to make handles with to stick to the sea  theme (I guess in my mind the rope should have been more like a boat mooring rope but I had to make do with what my local Landi sold).

Anyhow, 30 minutes on the sewing machine and for a total cost of around £8/10CHF, I now have a new beach bag! The inside is waterproof so I can throw my wet towels and swimming suits in it without worries.

This bag won't go on many outings to the beach this year as summer will draw to an end soon but it is ready for summer 2012!

Come and check the wonderful 1st Unique Gifts Blog to see what other peeps have been crafting this week in Handmade Monday :-)



A busy weekend

Grüezi mitenand!

Although we have well and truly started September here in Meilen (D-10 until I start my new job!!), it still feels like summer. The sun is shinning, the lake is warm and a delight to swim in, and we attended 2 lovely events in Meilen last night and this afternoon.

We kicked off the weekend with a walk around the "autumn" market/fair last night.The fair was much bigger than the last one we attended there (and in which I almost got arrested posing for a photo on a police motorbike). There were dozens of stalls selling various products from home-made jams/preserves...

... to Swiss farm meat and dairy...

... with quite a few craft stalls like this one selling those funky bird sculptures!

I did not come home empty-handed (to Mr T's dispair!) and bought a pretty wreath and candle to make a centerpiece with this winter.

It still feels too early to think about winter and Christmas but I am rather excited because we are going to be moving soon into a bigger (and closer to Bern) casa Made in Suisse and my mind is racing with ideas on how to decorate the place etc... so I had to buy this wreath for the new place! The move is planned for early November when we will become resident of a little town called Brugg. We will miss our fantastic lake view and Meilen but Brugg seems like a nice place and we will be living in the old town, next to the medieval tower, with great views of the river. The commute to Bern will be a lot more manageable from Brugg too as it takes 4 hours a day to commute between Meilen and Bern.

Anyhow, regressing... Apart from the market stalls at the fair, there were games for kids such as abseiling down this house!

And of course, there were plenty of food stalls to choose from, although we settled on our old favourite. The local fisherman sells battered fresh fish from the lake and it is delicious!

The second event of the week end related to these, that we have growing all over the place in Meilen:

We are very lucky to be surrounded by vineyards where we live in Meilen and it has been very nice to witness the changes taking place in the vineyards over the seasons. Today, 15 wine producers from the region gathered in Meilen for a wine tasting event and, the wino that I am, was quite giddy with the prospect of having people pouring wine into my glass for free. I have a soft spot for one of Meilen's wine producer which I have already told you about back in May : Herman Schwarzenbach,  whose family has been cultivating grapes in Meilen for five generations now.

Back in May, I sampled a few of his red wines and decided today to sample a few of his whites! Herman produces beautiful wines. My favourite today was the Räuschling, made from a variety of grapes only found today around Lake Zürich.

The day ended with a swim in the lake to sober up cool down

Hope you are all enjoying a summery weekend where you are :-)

Plum cake

We have a farm shop 5 minutes down the road from where we live, and by that I literally mean a farm/orchard that sells its produces on a stall on the road and displays a price list with an honesty box. I am pretty sure that this system would get abused and not last long in most other places I have lived in (honesty box in Glasgow anyone???) but here in Meilen no one thinks twice about it!

We have been very lucky with the amount of fruits already growing in our garden (gooseberries, redcurrants, mirabelles) but when I spotted plums in the farm shop the other day for 3CHF/kilo, I had to have them. Eating fruits is nice but eating cake is even nicer so I looked up a recipe for a plum cake and found this delicious one at http://allrecipes.com/

The cake is very light because you have to separate the egg whites from the yolks and whisk them up.

The egg whites are then carefully incorporated into the cake batter (butter,sugar,yolks, flour, lemon zest and bicarbonate of soda).

Pour the cake mix in a dish and spread to have a roughly even base. Cut the plums in halves and put on top of the cake batter.

Bake at 375 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 40 minutes et voilà!

En guete! (Swiss for Bon appétit)