Offshore and Offline

... for another week.
Sea breezes & family feasts.
Wishing you a couple of glorious dog days.

The Pink Stripes

At home with the babes,
no kindergarten anymore, no school yet... summer holidays... long days.
What's going on?



a mermaid swimming through the living room sea



Clara completing her Frosch (frog) swimming course



staging a doll performance



a fairy in her untidy (play-in-progress) room



my sumo-baby wearing a mokomini in hot weather



and in baby Tuina massage class



having friends with babies over

drinking in summer



Mama-Me: very tired at the end of the day (no picture), but thankful for the beautiful and peaceful moments that occur now and then (and having someone to help with the cleaning, Thank you Siri Shakti!)

Crafty Camp and Vegan City

Crafty moments of last week.
Five hours in the car -



... the backseat situation looked like this during the best moments of the drive.

Or some quiet knitting minutes while Carolina had an afternoon nap in the tent.



And I was not the only crafty Mama in the family camp.



We met Madame Jordan, who was making yo-yos with one of her little daughters.



As I found out, she is a pro - she has her own label Madame Jordan, complete with store in Berlin, dawanda shop and blog, sewing beautiful children's clothes and baby carriers.





Talking of professionals -the other vegan Mama in the camp, Juli, runs a vegan supermarket with her husband in Berlin.





After escaping the wilderness of the camp (stomach flu going round), we spent two more days in the wild, wild city. We had a vegan Sunday Brunch at Veganz.



Raw vegan lime-avocado-coconut-cake.



It is a lot about the people you meet when you go to new places, isn't it?

Wild Life

We are back from the woods! We went to a family camp near Berlin (if you ever wondered about the whereabouts), at a Wilderness School called Drei Eichen - Three Oaks (their website here).





Together with a bunch of other young families it was not so much about survival, but more about living in a clan-like situation and trying out what could be appropriate for the human species and their little ones, (artgerecht in German).



It was organized by Nicola, a journalist and mother of two, who writes a blog about these questions and topics, especially about diaper free babies, breast feeding, co-sleeping, carrying and child care.



But it was also about just hanging out together, meeting like-minded people, stretching your comfort zone and breathing in as much fresh air as possible.

The weather was mostly like this:



And sometimes like that:



Interesting things happened. Clara was not seen for most of the day, going on adventures with her new friends.



The words boring or TV were not mentioned by her, she was more into feeding the goats.



Or drawing on wood with charcoal.



It took her about one minute at night to fall asleep.



Carolina was a total sunshine girl, enjoyed being outdoors, being in her Papa's and Mama's arms all day long, peeing in the grass, sleeping in a tent and exploring the world on all fours.



This can not be plastic.



More fantastic crafty impressions to come...

Offline

Off to the woods for a couple of days, near one of these cities.
Which one will it be?

See you back in about a week!

Round and Round

What goes around, comes around, that's what I thought, when I found pottery I had made about 13 years ago, that had been laying in the basement for the last 4 years.







Some more recent flower/circle-themed things in our house:



a new dress



fabric for a new dress



last-weekend-thrifted doilies (embellishments for a bag or some pillows?)



pink Washi Tape



If I had known that the tape would be imported from Hong Kong and it would take 2 months to get here to Oldenburg/Germany, I might not have ordered it. But now it is here - came around.

Cover Girl

Carina came to me with an ugly grey cover to protect her beauty and functionality from dangerous dust.



Even when it looks quite minimalistic in the picture, the cover is not really beautiful in real life. I wanted a pretty catcouch-y cover.



I took the measurements of Miss Carina Comfort and drew a simple sketch for the design, basically just a long rectangle forming the front, back and top, and two small rectangles for the side, plus seam allowances.

I don't know where I made a mistake (I mean at which point of my thinking, because I know where I was while I figured the measurements out - on the floor playing with baby Carolina), but when I pinned the pieces together to start sewing - a couple of centimeters were missing. I had already ironed on the facing to the fabric and it was close to midnight, so I just added some matryoschka-fabric in-between.



Then sewing was a breeze and I was glad that I had just recently practiced lining up edges with the door stops.



Quite happy with the outcome - interesting case of vision distortion in the picture above, considering the fact that all the angles of the cover are 90°.



When I looked at Carina's new cover I had the feeling that something was still missing...





... the icing on the cake!

Yoga Fan

A Kundalini Yoga student of mine is moving with her family to Norway for the coming three years. For nearly the last three years she has come to first my prenatal classes, then Mama & baby yoga classes and has been one my most dedicated regular students. As I don't know what the Kundalini yoga scene in Stavanger looks like, I wanted to make her a little yoga gift. With some sewing involved.



I discovered the Kundalini Yoga Fan at the Yoga Festival in June. It is a great tool for putting together your own yoga practice, with dozens of wonderful yoga sets and meditations like Creative Energy Kriya, Meditation for Strong Nerves, Your Infinite Energy or Balancing the Depository System (which I taught in class last night). And it includes a mini-CD with mantra music. All arranged in a ready-to-take-anywhere-with-you-fan. I am a fan of the fan already - I got my own one too.



The fan is wrapped in a tea towel - that is, in a Fold and Tie Case, an idea by Maya Donenfeld (from maya*made) from her new book Reinvention, which I first saw on Betz White's blog (here) in May and wanted to try ever since. So easy (no cutting), yet so clever and practical.

Alt Godt, Sharon!