Hopfaldera

It's give-away day!!

***comments are closed now***winners will be announced tomorrow, I'm off to sleep***

Hey, hey, it's Give-Away Day!

Welcome, everyone who came here through Sew Mama Sew! And welcome everyone who visits here regularly and came again today!

On this special day I will be giving away...



two prizes:
each winner will receive
* a fabric heart ornament handmade by me!
* a Chinese 'button' bought in China by myself
* three half meters of ribbon: turquoise flowers on white, blue Dutch windmills, and Little Red Riding Hood with the Wolf

To have a chance at one of the prizes I would like to ask you one thing: Please visit my Etsy shop and determine which item you would be most likely to buy if you were to buy something from my shop. Then leave a comment on this post to tell me what it is. Thanks for helping with this little marketing research!



This Give-Away will be open until midnight (Western European time, because I am in Leiden, the Netherlands) on Sunday May 31.
I will let a random number generator pick the winners from the comments on this post. Make sure that you enter your email address in the appropriate field with your comment. It will not be published, and I will only use it if you are a winner.



Good luck everybody!
Visit my shop here or at one of the links above or in the sidebar. Thank you!

Breakfast

Look at what I had for breakfast...


Wednesday


Thursday


Friday


Saturday


Sunday


Monday

I wonder what I'll have tomorrow...

A little advance notice: Wednesday will be Give-Away Day in the crafty webworld (organized by Sew Mama Sew). I will also have a Give-Away! I will be giving away something handmade and a bit of craft supply. Be sure to come back for that!

Look at my tomatoes!

Some colorful tomato happiness!

We received these so called wild tomatoes today in our weekly organic vegetable and fruit bag from Kievit. They made a great salad with some balsamic vinegar dressing, yum yum.

What's going on?

Norway won the Eurovision Song Contest, with a cute song. The Netherlands didn't make it to the final again.

I didn't watch the Contest on Saturday though. The four of us went to see the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, as a surprise for Damaris' birthday. She was so excited when we surprised her with the tickets. And we really enjoyed the show. It was colorful and marvelous! I could have looked at the costumes and stage attributes for days.

On a sadder note, I got another infection in my leg. So I am on a new track of recovery. I don't know what else to say than that I hate these infections and I never ever want to get another one. Did everybody hear that?!

Douze Points

My name on Flickr is Doucepoints and my Etsy shop is also called Doucepoints. The name is an expression of both soft and sharp, cultured and rough. Those are things I always see in my work, and I wanted my webname to express that too.
But Doucepoints is also a pun on the term 'Douze Points', twelve points; the highest score a song can receive in the Eurovision Songcontest. Points are always announced first in English and then repeated in French. The Douze Points have a magical ring to it.

Since forever (probably since ABBA) I have been a fan of the 'Songfestival' as we call it. And I'm always looking forward to it. Tonight is the first semifinal and on Thursday the Netherlands will be represented by the Toppers with the song Shine in the second semifinal. Both the group and the song would definitely not have been my first choice. But I hope we'll get some points and maybe, maybe we'll make it to the final.

With this song (that I voted for in the national contest) the Toppers would have had a better chance (my humble opinion):

The last song that the Netherlands won with (when I was 5, and I still keep hoping, talk about hoping against hope):

And finally some ABBA:

By the way, what is Douze Points in Russian?

Slouch, slouch, what a funny word...

I finished the slouch bag from one of the Japanese books that I got.
I want to show it off, so here it is.







I really like it!
The attachment of the handles was quite hard to understand in the book. Frankly, I think they explained it incorrectly. So I had a couple of hard thinks, and then did it in my own way. Instead of somehow attaching the top band to the bag and attaching the handles last, I attached the handles to the top band first and then I encased the ruffled top of the bag in the handle/top band combo. It worked out! Now I'll have to think about a good occasion to use the bag.

List update

Here is an update on the activities I had on my list and not on my list.

I have been working on the Friendly Birds from Alicia Paulsons kit. In the photo you can see my progress.



I made a bag for the summer. From fabric designed by Anna Maria Horner and from a pattern I designed myself. I will make one for my shop as well (coming soon).



I bought fabric for the back of that pieces quilt.

Some of my ceramic birds are for sale in my Etsy shop.




And I sold two of them to a fellow ceramics course participant. Thanks Ita, for supporting me!



Of course I worked things that were not on either list (/no-list): A patchwork teapot mat (in my shop soon) and a Slouch Bag (for myself) from the Japanese books.

Playing with a dress and some buttons

I got this basic dress at the Hema.



It looks a bit boring so I was thinking of adding some buttons and beads.



Or more buttons.



Maybe some glitter.



Or maybe I'll cover some buttons with fabric and add those.



I'll show the result soon...

Koninginnedag 2009

Yesterday we were having a wonderful, sunny, musical Queen's Day in Leiden....

Then somebody ruined the party in Apeldoorn by trying to kill the Royal Family. He did not succeed but did kill 5 innocent bystanders and himself in the process. And he ruined a wonderful  and unique holiday! They say it wasn't an act of terror, but if a whole country is upset and unsure that they will ever be able to have a great Queen's Day again, I call that terror.