top!

Dear S.,

my latest sewing project- a top for myself. I used plain ikea- toile for the whole piece; in the front, I layerd a lace- fabric on top of it.





oh and here are Charlie and her neighbour boy sweetheart, tiger:




I'm having a bit of a rough time uni- and lifeplanning wise atm; so I'll keep this post short and simple and not moan all about it. Maybe I'll do that in my next post, who knows :p

LOVE! m.

copycat

Dear S.,

post n°100- yay!

Two sets of photos for you today.
I am in Austria right now, for a week, during a part of my Easter holiday. (which is not actually a holiday for me, writing on my Ba-work, an Ma-presentation and so on.. also, I fell ill, my throat is a field of horror. Also, all my family members are wanting to see me at least once, but if you have a huge family, that is a looot of once's.)

ok, but here are some images from my home town:






I spent some wonderful hours with my dear friend H. We just spent 7 hours talking- I loved it. Time with friends is vital.
Yesterday, I picked her up and we watched the sun set from a hill/mountain (for Belgians might consider it a mountain :p). This is what you see on the pics, obviously.

And now the second set of photos:
The result of my copycat-action some time ago.
I've always loved your short black dress with the press-buttons in the back. I've worn it all the time when you left it with me while you were in Portugal :)
So I decided to make one myself.





Quite happy about it, it is one of the few home-made things I actually wear a lot!
my dear, my writing sucks today, I feel a little feverish- I'll leave it with this

love,

m

would wood?

Dear S,

Last time I posted some fabrics with large wooden patterns. The question was: would wood go totally tote?
Now I found I way to work it:
"wooden" tote bag pour moi meme. last time I made one for myself was two years ago, this was really necessary.




Now I feel like making many more of these... anyone intersted?

Love, M.

P: pants, progress.

My dear S.,

I finally have my own sewing machine, juppie! It's a Christmas present from my parents. I chose a rather basic but trustworthy Singer machine. Of course, I needed to try it out directly. Right now I'm finishing my copy of your little black dress. It is almost finished, the seaming still needs to be done, plus some other details. Photo will follow this week! I feel that I'm getting more and more insight into the whole sewing stuff, makes me happy :)
So much for the progress part.
Now for the pants (which also count as progress, since they are the first pants I ever made for myself that are actually wearable):
Last year, I decided to make a skirt. It was awful. So went to J. and M., who had a god laugh at me and my awfully bulky skirt. Then they took the fabric away, and schnipp-schnapp cut the pattern for shorts out of it. I didn't touch the bag with the fabric any more until about two weeks ago. Then I made the shorts. And here they are:







I am so happy with how they turned out!

Uni has started again. The first week is always exciting, since I don't really like being in the classrooms of our Uni... so far, it was ok. This semester I have an entire course on Samuel Beckett- looking forward to it!

A small sententence from a fantastic book I just finished, Michael Cunningham's "A Home at the End of the World":

I was vaguely ashamed and lonely, yet pleased with myself simply for being alive; for surviving into the future.

just that. randomly.

Love!
m

cylindric!

... or something the like, at least ;)

well, here's the cylindric-y pencil case for M. He bought the fabric ages ago but I kind of forgot about the request until now. I made a small owl embroidery on the side, I hope he will like it as much as you did, my dear S.!




M.

Dear S.,

hello from the graydays. I am so glad January is done by today. February promises more peacefulness, somehow. I don't quite know why, but it feels like that. January was just wild. Yesterday I looked outside the window at 6pm and the sky wasn't yet fully dark.. a small moment of joy, I tell you! I miss my home these days. After being in Austria for a whole month, it can be hard to be back here. N is extremely busy, as always. It is such a miracle how people can have such different values and goals in life. At the moment, there is no Uni, so I have time.
But what on earth do I do with it?! phhh. not much, really.

Ok, I'll stop with my lamentations. Here are some pics



Buchteln! a kind of brioche dough filled with berry jam or prune jam. So nice! This is the first batch I ever made, and they were lovely

Here's Charlie with a little promise of spring: She ADORES apricots. no idea why, but she goes totally crazy about them. Here she tries to catch mine. Her latest trick: she always sleeps on the working table, and when she smells or sees something she wants to have, she yawns and stretches her paws *accidentally* right on to the object of desire :)


same trick with the cheesecake N and I made yesterday evening:



button projects! one for the wall, one to wear:






And here are some of the birdies I made as decorations for my very plain white bedroom curtains.




Now I will go on with sewing. I'm trying to do a cylinder shaped pencil case for M., it takes me quite some brainsqueezes to figure out how it will work ;)

love, M.

another foggy winter's night

Dear S.,

Another foggy winter's night.



(view from my room)

Today I went to downstairs to my grandma's. It is so weird to see all her things, smell her perfume.

I took her old sewing box, glued the broken parts, tightened the screws, polished the wood.




here are some of the treasures from the box. (click the photos to enlarge them!)

this is how my grandma kept her buttons:


I still remember how I used to play with them and sort them by colour and size when I was a kid.

Here's a real curiosity: mending thread for nylon panties! Do they even still sell this nowadays?
The pretty black folded paper contains high quality stitching needles.






some of the most beautiful buttons. I love the tiny irregular ones, the slightly damaged ones. Also check out the three round see-through buttons- they are made of glass!

And here, a beautiful assortiment of mending wools, mending needles and other old stuff. I especially love the "Alpen Stopfwolle" :)


This is it for today. I hope the foggy times will clear up a bit, soon. For all of us, especially for J.

Love,

M.

PJ

Dear S.,

here's my latest sewing project! my very first pyjama pants + shirt with applications, coming in a travel bag- a Christmas present for N.







sadly enough I don't have any time for sewing right now. Uni work is keeping me busy, hours and hours a day. For my master courses, I don't have any exams but I have to write papers. The first one of 19 pages is done, 2 more tasks to go. After a week of almost constant uni work, I am really tired and don't feel like working at all. the winter sun is shining into my eyes right now, as I sit at the table in my room. I feel like going for a walk or drinking coffee with friends or starting a new sewing project or reading a book or just being lazy and watch tv all day long. sigh. Need to start next paper, it's only a short one, 1500 words, but it needs a lot of research, deadline tomorrow evening. need to start next paper.

Lots of love, dear S.
I am looking forward to all of us being back in Antwerp. I miss all of you, I miss my own house, I miss Charlie Mew. But the air here does me good, I was able to work good for uni, and I think my family kind of needs me now. So I'll still stay, for a while.

kisses,

M.

some decemberism

Dear S.,

quite some time has passed since the last post.
You still don't have any internet at your new place and I have been busy with all kinds of things.

My beloved grandma is gone. I went to Austria to say goodbye to her. I spent three overly busy and tiring days together with my fanily inbetween two days on the train.




sigh.
On the way back to Belgium I had a slight obsession with the electricity cables of the train, it is so strangely fascinating how they move to each other and part again...





Now I am back in Antwerp for 6 days, packed with Uni research, Christmas preparations, seeing friends and so on. And sleep of course, 9hrs is what it takes.
N. and I have made some patchwork decorations for the holidays:





I will use them as table decoration on the Holy Night dinner. The rest of the decoration I still need to buy/ make today. Also, Mum and I discussed about Christmas tree decoration: we've had a blue and golden tree for the last few years, this year we're probably going to decorate it in red and with straw stars- very traditionally. I'd love to include the beautiful old porcelain ornaments of my Grandma.

It might seem weird that I am so busy with all that Christmas stuff in these sad days, but it helps to go on. After seeing my family in such sad circumstances, I am really looking forward to a calm and beautiful Christmas celebration with them.

My dear S., that's it for now.

Love, M.

Freitag

Dear S.,

friday afternoon. I'm sitting at my table, staring outside. Charlie captured my lap half an hour ago, so I'm bound to sit here. Actually I should be working for Uni, but there are too many things taking my thoughts off.
Hm. I'm discovering Roland Barthes at the moment. I really love "A lover's dicourse: fragments". Here are three small excerpts:

"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it)"


"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure. "


"Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits."

so, here's some thinking material for us :)

Ok, and here are some ongoing projects:




my future winter scarf. I should speed up knitting it, it's utterly necessary already!


tea mixture: camomile, apple and cinneamon


drying apples above our heating.. mmmh!



make-up bag for N. Her colleague singers started to laugh at her because she used to keep her make-up and toothbrush in a deepfreeze- plastic bag. Not any more ;)

My dear Frederike, I'll go on with other blury business now. And see you later tonight, for spaghetti. Maybe even at your new place?

M.

sneezy

Dear S.,

I'm really impressed with the engagment around the Castor transports in Germany! It is so utterly dumb to just ignore the obvious dangers of these final nuclear waste storage plans.. Come on, you just need to apply a little logic to see that their plan sucks! -->

Yet I find it such a great sign to see that (some) people do actually still care. And some political activism really suits you! you should do that more often. and take me with you. The last political activity I joined was an anti-fascism demonstration last year.

ok, now something about what I've been doing today: sneezing.
and some sewing works around that topic, ziezo:







I just got tired of the view of the tissue box and packs lying about. So I covered them :)
And I discoverd, that sewing 3-D corners is not easy at all.

Yesterday I also crafted a little something to organize my working place. It is a sort of ribbon you can pin paper on to, including some holders for pens and stuff. I'm afraid it's not all too visible on the picture, as it is black on dark wood.



See you later, for some "festive" activities to celebrate St. Martins day! (I'm completely ingoring the fact that today is a public holiday in Belgium. )

yours,

M.

Von Nähkästchen usw.

Dear S.,

back in Antwerp, both of us. Good. Good to have you here.
The last 4 days were so immensly turbulent and it really struck me now that I am in my masters too. It is so interesting and intense, but also such a difference to bachelor studies. hard. 2nd thing that struck me: autumn. As you said today, you only notice the change of the seasons when you travel outside the city. The only difference here is that it's grey and colder.. the heating is on.

I really like your new atelier, and I do envy you, I want such a room too! Unfortunately literature students are not considered worthy of their own atelier.
I do have a working spot at home though that I really like, here it is:




This crappy old table includes garden view and a kitteh that decided to make it its own. Always when I sit down and work on my table Charlie goes to sleep on her blanket on the table. Once in a while she bites my books, tries to drink my water or catches my pen. (when she noticed I was taking a photo she was embarrased to be on it asleep and started a whole show. she is currently searching for a kitty boyfriend, you know).
What else is on there: cheap purple plastic flowers from my mum, a part of the art-wall in our kitchen, my beloved Ikea lamp, crafting projects, books. and a reflection of our brick wall. I really should stop taking photo's at night :)

Writing this and taking a closer look at it, I really notice that I should take more care of my working spot.

A few weeks ago a got a great Charleston-inspired H&M dress as a present. I love its softsoft rosy color, and I really wanted to wear it for my brother's prom ball. So I collected all kinds of accessories to complete the outfit:



The shoes were a real bargain, I found them in Austria for 8 euros. The long pearl neclace comes from a flea market, the pearl bracelet is a heritage from my aunt. what I still needed was a fitting bag- so I made one. The broche is also a DIY thingie.

And here another random photo, because it fits the colours of the dress pic:
Charlie having herself a little tea-party with the beautiful tiny rose service we found at the second hand shop.



My dear, there is an old saying that claims that the state of a girl's sewing box reflects her state of mind("wie es im Nähkästchen eines Mädchens aussieht so sieht's auch in ihrem Herzen aus" or something like that). I always found this saying true for my own room, and now it is true for this entry and myself. I'll borrow the words of Virgina Woolf to end now and explicate my state, kind of. It is a little dramatic, I am aware of that ;)

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?

Love,

M.