Coup de coeur

Came across this brilliant photographer, Sacha Goldberger who decided to take his Grandma (Mamika) as the subject of his photos. It is witty and just brilliant (worth going on the website, she speaks French, English and Hebrew on it - very funny). You can find him at the Wanted gallery in Paris. Everyone needs a Mamika in their lives! Although I am not sure my Grandma would be willing to do what Mamika does, then again I have never asked...

Home Inspiration 13

A Friday post rather than Thursday. Was sent to Paris for work Wednesday and Thursday(someone has to do it!)

And here it was, what i knew was true for a long time, all over the magazines - wool (that is knitted wool) is totally in!

I am feeling really trendy right now! All these hours of knitting are clearly well worth it (should remind M of this tonight - he has a very trendy wife!). Very exciting stuff.

Anyway, back to home inspiration... I found those little gems from Korea (made by KamKam). The 'dressed-up furniture' is, literally, furniture dressed with felt that is decorated with clothing elements such as belts and buttons that are used to close the cabinet doors. the series consists of four items: a dressed up stool, cham cabinet, cham bench and belt felt.

The grey cabinet can be closed by fastening felt belts. an inner magnet fixes the door shut,that can also be rolled if one wants to leave it open. Because it is 'dressed' with felt, the shape of the furniture has a soft appearance.

the upholstered 'dressed-up stool' has a storage that can be closed with three buttons - much like closing a shirt or jacket. the door can also be fixed by rolling it up using a magnet that is built within.

I love the grey cabinet, it would really soften the atmosphere of a room, those colours would also brighten any room - just very clever designs.

Day 1 - Destruction

Bad, bad, bad pictures (really should give up on taking pictures from the blackberry), but you get the idea of my visit of the house last night after one day of work... Slightly nervous about what I have just signed up to...

New starts...

Today is a very important day. It could be because in a month's time it will be my birthday.. Good reason, but no that's not it. Or because I have fed my addiction to Harry Potter and feel satisfied that I have seen the Deathly Hollows Part I film the best one so far, but no... It may be because my Christmas present number 2 is well on its way (it is much more advanced than the picture suggests).

No, no, no... Today is the day when the builder start ripping out our new house. Gone will be the hot air heating system, gone will be the 70s kitchen and gone will be the walls downstairs (and the bathroom, and the purple/lime green colour scheme, and the artex ceiling).

Gone will be the corridor (behind the right-hand side wall is the kitchen that will be no more)..

And we are hoping that light will come into the living room.. M is looking particularly tall, it is clearly a bad picture, he can fit no problem in the house...

This is really exciting today, but not sure how long I will last... I hope I will be able to post progress soon...

Home Inspiration 12

Another very clever website - the Victoria and Albert Museum Patchwork Pattern Maker. At the site, you can upload a photo and turn it into your own quilt pattern! You can also look around the gallery and see what others have done. Print out your pattern, choose your fabric and you are ready to go.

There is one pattern from the gallery that really stood out for me. Here is the original picture.

Here is the patchwork pattern version (which in fact I prefer to the original picture):

Pretty cool, right! I am wondering if you could not use the pattern for cross-stitch too... Here is another nice pattern (well I think).

Free software + easy to use + more possible crafts = a very happy creative me!

And one Christmas present blocking...

Not so long go I discussed my Autumn project, the shallowtail, and the lovely yarn I was using. Here are new pictures of how I got on!



I knew I did not have enough yarn, probably from the start, but add a left over skein from M's scarf. It adds a bit of drama I think... right up my Grandma's street.


I have made a fw changes, made the budding lace repeat longer (17 repeats), made te lily of the valley border smaller (6 rows of nupps instead of 5 and 5), and made the lace border one row longer. You may be able to see what I mean below. I love the colours!

Home Inspiration 11

I am sure you have all looked (bought?) some of Caroline McGrath posters. I thought that was such a clever idea - so new, so beautiful!

All the interior design magazines I read (and believe me I read many) featured the prints. Can you have too much of a good thing? Well I am ashamed that the novely worn off a bit. It is still great, but it felt that everyone had the print..

However I found out a very cool way to have my unique word cloud. Wordle explains that it is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.

The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends

Here are some of display on the website

All I need now is to find my favourite text (I am considering the song my parents wrote for my wedding - yes, they decided to sing in front of all the guests, and boy did I cry!). What text would you choose?