Last weekend it was finally time for Winter market at Landhaus Freeman a very nice and popular restaurant here in Kalkum, Düsseldorf. It is so nice of the owner to organize these great cute and well attended markets, normally one market each season. I am very happy to participate at these markets and they have made me more and more confident to be there and to show and sell my products.   This year I brought with my hats and I had made some new for this season. I would say that the fabrics and patterns I have bought this year at a craft fair here in Germany are more earthy tones. I don´t want to fall into the grey and beige trend because I believe in colorful especially for children. I hope I did I managed to stay colorful I hope but I will pay extra attention on this next year.  I also brought my hairbands and scrunchies. My Christmas gift bags made out of fabric was very popular this year that I almost sold out. I also sold postcards and prints of my Düsseldorf motive. ...

  Kids with friends have watched Ghostbusters and yes decided to all get dressed up as Ghostbusters this year. Our friend Ange is a master in creating costumes and made great Slimer costume for herself and made ghostes for me and Loren. The Halloween celebration in our area here in Düusseldorf is well attended and organized since it lives a lot of expats in our neighborhood. 

  I have been creating some new hair-bands from different fabrics and patterns. It is so much fun to make different style hair-bands and they are such useful accessory. Mila helped me to modell them for me under our beautiful maple tree. I am already getting sorted for the open-air Winter market which is coming up here in Düsseldorf end of November and first of Advent.  Which pattern is your favourite? 

  Talking about Autum-break here comes a few pictures from our break. We had a great combination of calm country-life at Lundsätter our country-house and Stockholm with my sister Sofie and my mother.  Seeing friends and family, enjoying the forrest and the beautiful October weather with clear sky and bright sunshine charged our batteries. We are so lucky that the kids have good friends to play with while we are home and extra extra bonus is that we have stable and pony to go to.  In Stockholm we did a couple of cool museums which we can very much recommend - Paradox Museum   -Museum of Natural history 

I love autumn and this autumn as been so nice and sunny. German autumn-break was beginning of October and we had a great break home in Sweden. This illustration is very much inspired by autumn and all the beautiful strong colors this season offers. Illustration on A4 akvarell paper and watercolor

Lena Andersson is a Swedish children's book illustrator and author. I am brought up with her books, pictures and the characters Linnéa and Maja. I loved her stories and I think mostly because her characters are close to nature. The books are educational about trees, flowers, the different seasons but also one very poetic book about the alfabet. One of my favorite pictures from Maja's Alfabet is P as in Peonies. I don't know how many times I have tried to draw a copy of that house on the peony leaf. I also think that the flower peony is one of my favorite flower. At our country house I planted peonies 10 years ago or maybe even more. The past at least three years I have missed when they start blossoming. That magical day or couple of days when the peonies big buds bursts into a beautiful flowers. By the time we have gotten summer-break and flown from Düsseldorf to Sweden the beautiful flowers have became so heavy and laying down full of ants. But this year my dad decided to ...

In this post I will present another one of my creative summer crafts. Before summer I started making earrings first from foamy clay and after that with a Fimo clay copy. I decided I wanted to try the original Fimo clay and my first impression was that is has a different texture and is a harder clay. I found it a bit harder to work with in the beginning but at the same time more possibilities to create more things. I might try to buy clay softener to make the clay easier do form. Fimo needs to be baked 30 min in the oven after done. I also bought long pins in different thicknesses from Fimo for creating your own beads. It was fun to try on these neon colored clays which I bought as a contrast to all the pastel colors I had made prior to these. Here is a few examples of what I made this summer och have bought more colors here in Düsseldorf so I will keep coming up with new designs and create more.  I will shortly show you more and I will bring my earrings to the markets I will do her...

This summer I did have a lot of creative ideas but looking back I was mainly knitting and created hair-bands out of my knitted strips. Inspired by a friend of mine I bought recycled t-shirt yarn in Panduro as soon as I arrived to Sweden. They had a pack of 10 differenet colors in small rolls of yarn, barely enough for one hairband - but I managed to stretch the strips to make them fit to cover the whole hairband. During the summer late evenings I was up knitting to relax. T-shirt yarn was fun to knit with it goes fast because it's pretty thick. I keep it simple knitting garter stitch because thats I all I can at the moment.  At the end of the summer I attached the colors I liked the most with a hot glue gun onto the hard hairband I had brought with me from Düsseldorf bought on Amazon.  I asked my dad in the beginning of the summer if he could help me - to build a rustic cool stand for my hairbands. In the garage I found branch from a Juniper bush that my dad had collected and ...

 I was doing so well doing my weekly update about my creative work. And then schools summer-break happened. We left as soon as the school was out here in Germany to Sweden and stayed there all six weeks of vacation. We had a great vacation. Both warm sunny summer days spent on the beach but also cooler and cloudy summer days spent in the forrest. We managed to spend good time with family and friends. Travelled down south and also had time just chilling home at Lundsätter our country house.  Apart from swimming and fixing around the house I did manage some creative project so - I will catch up on that over the next posts and then hopefully be back on track doing my weekly update. 

I got asked if I wanted to have a stand at Kiwifalter Summer fest this week. Kiwifalter here in Düsseldorf is a family center which organizes gymnastic, dance, art classes and many other courses for all ages. I was happy to be asked and decided that even with super short notice I think I can get my stuff together.    It was a super super warm day +33 degrees but all went well and most popular was my hairbands Happy to bring my new earrings and Mila was a great helper  Some time ago me and a friend was planning a better display for my hats and found this pegboard in Ikea and together with a easel to hold it upright. I am very happy with this display so much nicer to see the hats then having them laying down. 

This weekly update is going back to when my dad came and finally could visit us again after two year of  covid restrictions on and off here in Germany. Kristihimmelsfärd a bank-holiday weekend end of May. We had a very nice and relaxing time week together. The weather was good but not too hot. We went biking a lot to our stable, to Kalkum castle park and Kaiserwerth our small historical centrum only 10 minutes bike ride away. In Kaiserwerth we checked out the old imperial castle Kaiserpfalz  which dates back to before year 1016 and was once owned by holy roman Emporer Frederick Barbarossa. Strategical great position at the Rhein riverside to defend and protect the city from invaders. King Barbarossa during the 12th century introduced taxes for using the river waterways for transporting gods and could keep good track of the traffic of the river from the castle. Nearly all the ruins which can be seen today is from Barbarossas time.  Over the following centuries many groups...

It started with a big pack of foamy clay in mnay bright colors that I had bought for the kids. One day Mila had made a big pink round thing with different colors and shapes on top of it and I thought it looked super cool. That night I was laying thinking that maybe I could copy Mila's idea just to make it a bit smaller and make earrings. I used to make earrings many years ago so I still have all the equipment and some earring hooks left so next morning I started working with kids foamy clay  These earrings below are the first earrings I made. The foam clay dries in the air and are super super light. Actually that light that when I used mine and it was windy outside they nearly flew out of my ears. So I figured out that it would be better to fasten these typ of material on a stud instead of hanging down. What I also come to think of was to add a layer of lack gloss to protect them from from melting in water ( I always shower with my earrings so they need to resist water)  I sta...

Ever so often I need to reorganize all my stuff, thoroughly clean and move furnitures around before I get a peace and inspiration to create. Thats all been done downstairs and upstairs. Now my tall working table is facing out to the balcony and the Grüne Mitte park it looks cute and great view. I have filled my table with parts for creating new hairbands. Cutting fabric strips, sewing, braiding and then mounting them on a satin headband. Very satisfying work and yes I do like the result. What do you think of my new braided bands? - I will try to get some pictures to update of when they are worn. 

So how is it going with Covid- 19 in Germany - North rhine-westphalia ?  To be honest I am not following things that much as in I have no clue about the amount of infected or treated in the hospitals for a very long time. Maybe it is not even being reportered anymore now when we have the war to report about.  When it comes to restrictions in our everyday lives the restrictions have been easing up more and more during the spring and mainly after Easter. When we came back from Easter-break in Sweden we didn't need to show proof of vaccination or quarantine to enter the country.  Also during April the mandatory face-masks in supermarkets was lifted ( the rule started I would say April 2020 and been constant through the pandemic)  First time I entered the shop without mask here in Germany was end of April and I felt like a rebellious anarchist and I was sure someone would tell me off for not wearing a mask because honestly 98% of the people wore masks and also they do li...

 I prepared for Lorens trip to Canada and US some colorful summer gifts to hie relatives and close colleauges family