Taos

After Espanola and Santa Fe, Taos was the third stop on our route through New Mexico.



The Native American Taos Pueblo is considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the USA and a fine example of traditional adobe architecture.



Beautifully surrounded by mountains.



The tiny town of Taos has a lot to offer for the art lover as we found out in one of the galleries: "Gary Fey's Good Thunder Batik Gallery".



Specializing in the 2000-year-old fabric dyeing process Batik.









We were shown the step-by-step process of layering wax and colours.



The magic ribbon box



awaited Clara in this store:









She could pick one ribbon.





In that street we also found a yarn shop,



appropriately called "The yarn shop" (link here).







And even if it was a very hot day in June and I wondered who would knit in this weather, I was assured by these knitting ladies that it really gets cold in winter, it's a ski resort.

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Fruit: watermelon, grapes, apples, kiwifruit

Veg: leek, cucumber, potatoes, onions, Romanesco broccoli (also called psychedelic broccoli in my cooking book), corn on the comb, cherry tomatoes, green and yellow zucchini, yellow bell pepper, king oyster (that's a mushroom!)

Nesting

For the first time in my life I bought home magazines this week...
What I found out:

- shabby chic is the state of the living art now
- everybody in those magazines is some kind of designer or works in a creative space (often shown in their home stories)
- as such a creative person you basically live on little cakes, pies, meringues and rose petal cookies (recipes inside)
- pink is good
- everything is clean - or at least a creative and intended mess
- children?
- when you travel you know all the insider tips for vintage shops, flea markets, kind-of-etsy-stores, artsy places and cafés for those little cakes

That reminds me very much of this song (without the naked parts...)
So by and large I am in the target group.

For Baby

Yum.

For the changing September days.
For the hopefully golden October days.
For the long & cozy November nights.



For the last three months.
For relaxing, winding down, getting ready, being conscious, full of love, anticipation and patience. 1170 metres of wool.



Before we welcome her.
To welcome and warm her.

My Cup of Tea

"Tea is a cup of life." author unknown

Lately I have fallen in love again. With tea. All kinds of tea.
The cooler days are coming and my desire to slow down and relax is growing like my belly. It started with Jasmin tea, which I really love to drink in Chinese restaurants accompanying my meal. I found an organic variety at our local supermarket and then reached out to the speciality tea shops of the city. Rose green tea, gourmet herbal tea, decaf Earl Grey, spicy chocolate black tea. And soon raspberry leaf tea.



That is just the tip of the iceberg.


Some tea paraphernalia.

And now I ordered my designer teapot.
It will not be pink.
(not available)

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As I was away on Saturday for a yoga workshop (to Bremen again...),
my dear husband was so nice as to unpack, arrange and photograph the fruit & vegetable box.



Local German produce: cucumber, turnip, carrots, apples (called Summerred), mini plum tomatoes, mushrooms, batavia lettuce, beetroot, chard, cauliflower, tomatoes, red hot peppers, garlic, pears, potatoes

Italian: red bell pepper

Ecuador: Fair Trade bananas

Lower Saxony Vegan

After being to L.A. and being back in not-so-vegan Oldenburg, I used to daydream about all the vegan places you could go like "California Vegan" on Sunset Boulevard , "Truly Vegan" on Hollywood Boulevard or "Real Food Daily" on La Cienega Boulevard... or shopping at Whole Foods...


at California Vegan (actually enjoying the food a lot, despite the face)

My husband and me used to joke about a non-existing restaurant here called "Lower Saxony Vegan" (Lower Saxony - or Niedersachsen in German is the federal state we live in) where we could go for lunch.

Last week "City Veg House" opened on Nadorst Boulevard (ok, it is a street), international vegetarian and vegan cuisine, run by couple of brothers from Amritsar/India. We have been there a couple of times already, having delicious Indian, Thai, Greek and Italian food.



... one less reason to move to L.A.

After the Doll Party

While one doll really needed a beauty bath and a some relaxed drying (especially after traveling through the dusty deserts of the American Southwest), yeah, you can really wash a Waldorf doll!...



... I wondered what to do with all those doll clothes that have come to us during the last months (knitted, crocheted, sewn, given, bought and thrifted). The living room floor hardly can be the best place for them...



We found this beautiful folklore-style doll wardrobe on a flea market in Oldenburg on our first days back home.





Lots of stylish space!

New Findings

Overseas

Time for traveling overseas again - even if it is just a thirty minute ride on the train to Bremen to the Übersee-Museum (Overseas Museum)! After the museum time at home last weekend we decided to beat the clouds and rain with traveling activity around the globe.

The Overseas Museum Bremen is actually quite fun for children with collections of material on natural history, trade and ethnography from the South Seas, Australia, Asia. Around the world in 80 minutes!

Due to inexplicable circumstances I suffered a severe kind of camnesia during our visit to museum, so there are no exciting photos to show... How great would it be showing you a smiling Clara in front of smiling buddhas, a Japanese tea house, a Chinese temple, a Mongolian yurt or a Bollywood billboard in the Asian section... or in Africa with giraffes and zebras ... or in front of the skeleton of a dinosaur in the evolution room...

All I can really show you is the single two pictures I took of Clara on her own request - in front of a statue of the Bremen town musicians at a well-known global coffee shop franchise.



We can't say we hadn't fun (and even some sunshine).

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Fruit: grapes, apples, kiwis

It really is veg season!
potatoes, hokkaido pumpkin, cucumber, kohlrabi, parsley, leek, rocket, three sorts of tomatoes, batavia lettuce, red bell pepper, turnip

Bis in die Puppen

... And after a good party with singing and dancing the dolls are very tired and need to be put in their beds (on the living room floor, please don't remove!)... Clara claims her room is too small for all her things, I call it: "Ausweitung der Kampfzone".

Summer inside out

You wouldn't believe it was a warm August weekend with lots of play outside, parks, garden, friends and family if you saw what Clara was up to in the little time she spent inside the house!



a "puzzle museum" with all her puzzles spread out on the floor
(please don't remove!)



and a doll and cuddly toy party!

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Today just a picture from a different angle:

Santa Fe

Let's go back again to the holidays (rain again around here...), where it was hot & dry and actually not the perfect knitting weather but great for traveling and discovering.

Santa Fe in New Mexico was the first city we went to after the Summer Solstice Kundalini yoga festival.



It is known for its adobe architecture and a bustling art scene. They also have a great Georgia O'Keefe Museum who used to live and work in New Mexico later in her life.


(that's not the museum though...)



Of course it is easy to rely on www.knitmap.com, but I preferred using my inner knitting radar. And was successful. This was the first knitting shop I found on our trip.



TUTTO (website here)



I was pleasantly surprised to find two men working there, eagerly discussing a mistake in a knitting pattern. But they only work there on Saturdays, they said. Interestingly they have been to Germany two years ago for the knitting fair in Cologne. They loved it, they said.



The shop had also some German wool on offer, Opal sock yarn and Schoppel Zauberball. A lot of Danish yarn like Isager, too.
Good choice overall.



My little choice - some pink needle protectors.

Still hungry and not fed up with yoga food we went to a great vegetarian restaurant - Annapurna's.



Authentic ayurvedic Indian cuisine - delicious and healthy.



Hippie-style interior design.



Annapurna is the visible deity in the form of food. She rules the five elements of nature - earth, water, fire, air and sky.



I just love this kind of worshiping and praying!

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Fruit: apples (Jamba and Cripps Pink), pears, bananas, grapes

Vegetables: potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, cucumber, fresh onions, mushrooms, batavia lettuce, beetroot, red bell pepper, kohlrabi, parsley root

child: Clara
She really wanted to be in the picture.
And then she also wanted to take one:

First Day back on the Mat

When I came to teach my first prenatal class after the holidays, this little crochet graffiti at the entrance of the birthing home really cheered me up!



Thank you!

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The fruit & vegetable box is back! And it also marks the end of the holidays for me. Two amazing months of sunshine, travel, family & friends, yoga and great food. What will fuel the next week for us?



A whole cornucopia of fresh goodness, that doesn't even fit in the picture.

fruit: blueberries, nectarines, summer apples, watermelon

vegetables: carrots, potatoes, zucchini, fennel, onions, leek, (cherry) tomatoes, cucumber, corn, lettuce, red radishes, parsley

Some Summer Sewing II

A birthday bag I actually already made in May (here). For my mama. From the vintage fabric she gave me... The pattern comes from the German book Designbuch Nähen.

Lots of space in it for her stuff and I even sewed in some inner pockets for her purse and cell phone (why did she mention she could put stones in it?) and it seems to fit into her garden. What you don't see in picture - the Baltic Sea is just a couple of miles away. That is where my mama likes to collect stones. To put or hang in her house and garden (in the picture).