10 on the 10th - Summer memories

This is not something I usually do because I'm just not very good at it, but when I read that Marsha from Marsha in the Middle chose the topic "Special Summer Memories" for "10 on the 10th", I figured I would be able to do a bit of nostalgia.

Sooo, let's try this. There won't be any particular order, I'll just put the memories down as they come to mind.

1. The first one coming to mind is the birthday of my best friend when we were kids. Our birthdays are about a week apart, mine end of June, hers beginning of July. She used to have around ten or so kids at her birthday parties and one of our favorite games was "vampire" which was basically a variation of hide and seek, but the "victims" were put into time out for a certain period of time in a small storage room on the first floor. That wasn't as bad as it may sound because they had a little basket on a string which they let down through the window to have it filled with cherries from the garden by those who hadn't been caught yet (they were so good!). We were very proud of that game idea ;-)

2. This one also has to do with birthdays and fruit - my birthday and strawberries. When I was a kid, there were a few times (probably not as many as I seem to remember because that's how those things go) when my grandfather would go buy strawberries with me and my grandmother made a strawberry pie with them for my birthday.
This year a family member brought me some strawberry pie for my birthday and the memory popped up once again.

3. While we are at birthday memories, here's another one. I have been a fan of Jane Goodall ever since I got one of her books as a gift when I was about 12. She's absolutely amazing and of course her portrait is on my fan wall.
Some years ago, there was an evening with her in Munich which is about 125 miles from here. A friend, knowing how much I admire her, but also that it would have been hard for me to organize this by myself, turned up with tickets and an overnight room reservation.
It was truly an experience to remember, hearing Jane Goodall talk, then spending the rest of the evening in the small self-service bar at the hotel talking to some other guests and driving home the next day not via "Autobahn", but through little towns and villages, stopping here and there like at a field full of poppies.

4. There's nothing like a sponteanous field trip, don't you think?
There is one I remember especially well. A friend called me very early in the morning asking if I wanted to come on a quick trip to the source of the small river Lauter to hang our feet into the water. It was a very hot August that year, the night had been very humid, and the idea sounded great.
The Lauter source is a small spring surrounded by nature. You walk there from the church, through the woods, birds singing. There are only a few houses and a historical inn and except for a couple taking a quick peek, we were all alone, talking, laughing, enjoying the water.
Then all hell broke loose, just rain luckily, no thunderstorm. We are both no runners, but it really didn't make a difference because we were soaked through to the skin within seconds, anyway. We laughed all the way back to the car (and luckily my friend had extra tees in the car which was better than nothing).

5. This memory is as stereotypical as it can be. When I was 13, I was invited to stay with an aunt (actually she was probably more some kind of distant cousin) for a few weeks during summer vacation. As luck would have it, a cousin of mine (we had the same great-grandparents on one side) lived in the same little town. He was my age and so were his friends. My aunt said I could use her old bike, and from then on, we were out there all day and came home in the evening very hungry and full of stories what we had done. As the only girl I even got an honorary nickname and for a while we even sent one another letters after the vacations were over.
Had we been looking for a body instead of mushrooms, it would very much have been "Stand By Me".

No pictures exist of our adventures, so my needle felt/embroidery mushroom will have to do.

6. My last trip in 2011 was to Cambridge in the UK. I loved it. I loved the town, the museums, the atmosphere, I didn't even mind the other tourists. The weather was a perfect mix of sun and rain. In the afternoon we just sat in the lounge for a while and had a cup of tea while reading.
The special memory has to do with breakfast, though. We tourists love our breakfast and this one had so many choices, we could have eaten all day. What was the biggest fun about it, however, was that they didn't have an ordinary toaster back then, but what I called - for lack of a better word - a "toaster tunnel". You put your toast on the conveyor belt which ran it through the tunnel, and at the end - voilà, nice browned toast. I was actually amazed how well it worked and could have just made toast all day. I know, I'm such a child.
The hotel got a complete makeover in 2018, though, so that huge breakfast room has changed a lot, it seems, and the toast tunnel is gone :-(
Now I wish I had taken a picture of it.

7. Although I'm not a summer person, I have to admit that sitting outside somewhere quiet in a warm summer night can be wonderful. Being next to a body of water is not the worst thing if it's hot. For me, that was the only reason to join the ex and family members for night fishing although I am a vegetarian and don't fish (not that chances of catching fish were very high where we went, anyway).
A comfy chair, a cooler bag full of goodies, and a book for the evening when there was still light - and once it got dark, just listening to the rustling in the bushes and trees behind us (joking that it was bears when it was probably hedgehogs and other small animals), the waves in front of us and the muffled curses of the men when there was another missed bite, and relaxing until it was time to get ourselves home again.

Sorry, we never took pictures, so you have to make do with one of my handmade fishes ;-)

8. July 27, 2018 was the day of the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century, and a lot of people were really excited to see that one, including my friend and I.
We drove around for a while to look for a good spot and finally ended up on the "Aasrücken" (literally "carrion back", I have no idea why the vantage point near our local mountain, the Hohenstaufen, has that name) in a farmer's almost harvested field (he was still working on it at the far end) with hundreds of other people. Some had huge telescopes and loads of photo equipment, others set up rich picknicks for the whole family. Although it got rather cool eventually, my friend and I were among the last few who sat it out until the very end and didn't regret it. It was rather magical.
Again, no pictures, but here's a time lapse video (not from our area, though).



9. Fleamarkets are not restricted to summer, I know, but this memory is about a very special June fleamarket. One reason it was special was that my American friend was there for a visit. We had met her via Steiff and no matter which country, a fleamarket had always been a favorite activity of us. This particular one was a city fleamarket that only took place once a year and it spread out all over city center.
We usually did one round and then sat down somewhere for a drink and some food, then did another round.
I was always slow at fleamarkets and usually relied on the "hunting master" to find the good stuff, but this time it was my friend who called me to tell me she had found a Barbie case with contents and she thought it was old.
One glance at the case and the two dolls in wedding outfits and I asked for the price without even knowing what else was in it. The price was so incredible that I almost fell over. All I could say "Sold, just let me get to the bank." as I had very little money on me. I was very glad the bank was nearby and the lady put the case under the table because others had shown visible interest when I had looked at it.
Only when we took our usual break, I allowed myself to take a closer look. While I had been looking through children's books, my friend had found a real little treasure for me. I still feel as excited now when I look at those finds in my collection, for example this sweet pink and black outfit called "Atelierfest".

10. This isn't really just one special memory, but more of a mix of all the summers my best friend and I hung out in the woods and had "adventures" - I think making them up ourselves doesn't take away from us having a lot of fun being out there with the bikes, picking wild flowers, pretending to be in a jungle, solving cases or re-enacting our favorite books.
I'm not saying these were better times in general, but we had some great times which I'm looking back on fondly.

If you really made it down to here, all I can say is thank you and you definitely deserve to get yourself a stiff drink and/or some chocolate now ;-)
My summer memories may not have been what you expected, but I sure had fun remembering all of them.
Happy Summer everyone!

Summer, sun, sun flower

When our challenge mistress from the Jewelry Artisans Community chose sunflowers for our new challenge, my reaction was that I was all "sunflowered out" because I had made several in the years before.

And then, in a sudden burst of productivity and supported by the 80s charm of Richard Carpenter's "Robin of Sherwood" for background noise, I started making a pair of earrings.
Don't get excited, this is just another example of two earrings magically turning into one pendant.

I bead embroidered the two centers first. How could I not notice that added petals would make these into very large earrings?
Well, actually I did notice and still decided to keep going. I have always been a fan of wearing big, fun earrings myself.

After starting on the happy yellow petals - I really remembered my childhood love for yellow again these days - it quickly became clear to me, however, that I would not be pulling this through. So many petals! One row of brick stitch petals, a slightly smaller one in herringbone stitch and a third small one as an edging for the center took me much longer than I had anticipated, like so often.
Just thinking of having to do this a second time made me revise the earring idea.

One hidden bail and a cute little lampwork bee later ... tadaaa.

A little hedgehog in the garden

I have never seen a hedgehog in our garden before. Maybe there has been one, but if so, it didn't show itself to me.
Today, however, we had a little guest, Geppo (Geppo is named after the alleged founder of my hometown Göppingen who was an Alemannic chieftain).
He had to be carried from spot to spot because it was hot and it's very hard to walk long distances or even climb something if you are not even a full 1 1/2 inch!

The first stop were a few succulents, but Geppo quickly became bolder and wanted to go higher and higher!

Next stop - Mt. Angelhead!

Impressed by his own courage, Geppo's next goal was Mt. Lionhead. "I'm afraid of no lion!"

You are not impressed? Well, how about now?

After that our little hedgehog was tired, very hot and very thirsty, so a trip to the birdbath was in order.

And here are a few flowers which were too shaky for Geppo to sit on, so he had a look at them from my hand.

For those who don't know, like my other hedgehogs Geppo is a miniature crocheted from copper wire after my original design. None of my hedgehogs ever looks exactly like the other. Geppo, for example, has bronze coated hematite eyes and a sparkly crystal nose :-)

The HeatherCat shoes - Part 4, Summer Dreaming

For those who missed the first three parts - which you can find here, here, and here - and those who don't know the HeatherCats yet, here's a little explanation.
"Heather is a friend of mine, a painter from New Zealand. I met her on deviantART and got to know the Essencestudios. I couldn't even tell you in what group it was, but among her talents Heather has a talent for bright, whimsical paintings, many of which are cats, so how could I not be fascinated the moment I saw the first one?" This is from the first blog post I wrote about the HeatherCats and in which you will find the whole story how it started.

I hadn't expected to finish the last part of the shoes so quickly. With the holidays and vacation days, however, and nothing else to do (that I wanted to do, at least ;-)), I concentrated on binge watching - or hearing, rather - crime shows and beading.
Oh, and some crafty documentaries which show in detail how someone is making something, a hat, a wooden inlay chessboard, a barrel or a church window, for example.
It may sound silly, but if my brain refuses to shut off, it helps me to pretend that I'm in one of those documentaries and someone else is watching me. It makes me concentrate on each stitch, each bead even more, the sounds of the thread going through the denim, the snipping sound of the scissors. It doesn't always work, but if it does, it's perfect.
It helps me to calm down and shut the outside world and its problems out for at least a while which is something I really need at the moment.

Back to the shoe, though.
For this side I had chosen another sleeping cat. Now I have three sleeping cats under blue sky and only one caterpillar, but they were so perfect in size and they all have their own charm. Maybe I'll have to get high top sneakers next time, so I can use Heather's vertical designs as well.
"Summer dreaming" is a white cat sleeping on a fence. The position reminds me a lot of the way my Merlin and Greebo liked to sleep which makes me smile every time. I can also imagine that this is my White Dude sleeping under a California sun before those crazy people dragged him off to Germany (if you don't know the story, it was for his best, really).

Just like the caterpillar, this little fellow was not easy to fit onto the shoe. I think I tried the pattern three times before I finally found the right size and position to get his tail on there and still not lose one of his legs to a hole. The sun wasn't as lucky, it had to squeeze into the corner.

If you wonder, by the way, what happened to the rest for my hands, well, I found that I happened to have one tube of the color that is still on backorder after all, so I couldn't stop myself. It went surprisingly well most of the time.
I mislaid the some of the blue for the sky instead, but I ordered so much that that didn't matter. Someone also ordered much too much brown, no idea how long I thought that fence would be. Maybe watching Tom Sawyer's famous fence painting scene had confused me.
So I guess I'll have to think of a design in brown, blue and white now. Any ideas? ;-)

And here's our cat now. I bet he's dreaming of chasing mice and his favorite treats!
I even managed to clean off the blood that had been shed. My friends told me to see it as blood sacrifice to the bead goddess. She has to be really happy because I sacrificed more than once, not to mention all the needles that gave their lives for this project.

This is what the shoes look like worn. I have been asked if I am going to wear them outside, and I keep joking that I don't even know when the chance will come up again with Covid around. Let's say that I won't wear them on a regular basis to avoid dirt and damage, but I will definitely show them off eventually.

Sorry that I couldn't take better pictures, but it's hard enough to get my big feet into a picture - they are a EU 43 which translates to a US 11 1/2 and a UK 9 ;-)

Now what will be next?

Oldies but goodies - Summer sun

This week the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge was inspired by the summer sun. Sun, beach, the ocean ... because I'm late with this post, I'll save you the talk and give you my little selection instead ;-)

1 RioRita
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 My Bijou Life
4 Cat's Wire

Oldies but Goodies - Summer is over

Summer is over in the Northern Hemisphere, and to honor it a last time for this year, it was the topic in this week's Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge.
This is a selection of what participants chose to enter. You'll see water, summer colors and flowers - a worthy homage to summer, I think.

1 and 8 Ganison Atelier
2 and 6 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 and 7 Cat's Wire
4 and 10 RioRita
5 and 9 Bijou Bead Boutique

Oldies but goodies - Summer

No worries. You haven't lost a day. This week I'm one day early with the Oldies but Goodies Challenge at the Jewelry Artisans Community. Tomorrow you'll know why.
The topic this week is summer. What comes to your mind when you think of summer? Sun, heat, beach, ice cream, bright colors, dresses ... ? Let us know!

These are some of the pieces that remind the JAC members of summer. Hopefully they'll get you into summer mood as well.

1 Jewelry Art by Dawn
2 Cat's Wire
3 RioRita
4 Studio 9665
5 Violetmoon's Corner
6 The Crafty Chimp