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Apples galore
Fashion
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31 Augustus 2010 | 10:27:52
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Now that I've entered the land of 'shopping for kids' (always happy to enter any new shopping land! ;)), I've noticed a few things. The most noticable one: most of the baby and children's clothes available are fairly ugly (though my boyfriend always says I shouldn't say that: 'The fact that you don't like something doesn't mean it's ugly, people just have different tastes.' Oh well, how wise...). In a way that's a good thing for me, cause if everything was so lovely I would buy probably even more for this little fashion-unaware baby than I already do (if you look carefully there's still plenty of good stuff to be found!).
In general I think the problem with a lot of children's clothes (especially the girl's section) is that they put way too many ideas and fiddling into one small piece of clothing: ruffles and bows and embroidery and different patterns and prints and what else more... Personally I think the key word for nice children's clothes is simplicity: a kid doesn't need that many bows to look cute!
The clothes of the Spanish brand Bobo Choses are a nice example of this simplicity that I think works very well. Wouldn't these apples, clouds and donkeys look good on any kid? ;)
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Super seconds sale
Things I make
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28 Augustus 2010 | 23:17:59
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It's probably the pregnancy hormones that make me start to feel a bit nervous about all the stuff in our house, or maybe it's just the reality dawning that there'll soon be another messy -and probably even messier- person besides me in our house... But whatever the reason is, I've started a big tidying up thing today. In these next few months I'll be selling lots of favorite vintage ceramics, boots and dresses in my shop, but first I'm starting with a very lage SUPER SECONDS SALE of all the ceramic pieces with small and larger flaws that are currently occupying my cupboards. I've already put some teapots online, but there's a lot more to come (mainly plates and platters). All sell for a very much reduced price, which is probably especially interesting for Dutch (or maybe European) buyers, because the shipping costs overseas will often be more expensive than the actual item costs (which I always think is stupid!).
All items have real flaws, some very small, some larger, but this is always reflected in the prices that are reduced up to 80 percent. I'm hoping this helps me making some room here, while at the same time enabling people to buy some of my ceramics with small imperfections for a very affordable price. So keep an eye on the shop, because I'll be updating much more in the next few days, and I may also reduce prices of items that aren't seconds!
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Design Torget
What I like
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26 Augustus 2010 | 15:53:18
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A nice chain of design shops in Sweden is Design Torget. They offer an interesting collection of contemporary Scandinavian design items, mainly small and practical (and therefore relatively affordable) stuff like cool printed teatowels, trays, books and other fun things for home and garden. I can imagine the shops are a bit middle of the road for the real 'indie design incrowd', but for tourists like us it was a nice starting point to see what's currently available in Scandinavian design (Did I just say 'us'? Well, of course I meant 'me', since Helmut quickly ran to the nearby book shop, cause apparently looking at books he couldn't read was still far more interesting for him than Scandinavian product design!).
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On Scandinavian design and being a bit naive
About me
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25 Augustus 2010 | 21:08:55
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Of course the beautiful landscape wasn't the only reason why I really wanted to go to Scandinavia: I was pretty curious to see all this famous Scandinavian design in it's native place too! And okay, maybe I was a little naive: I guess deep down I hoped to find all kinds of unknown treasures, preferably for hardly any money. Yeah, I guess in a way I had this fantasy image of Scandinavia as one big open air vintage and design shop... So of course I just had to be disappointed!
It wasn't that I didn't find any interesting thrift or design shops: especially the Swedish countryside is filled with small thrift shops and flea markets, often in old barns and farms, and in Denmark there were charity shops in almost every village. But I quickly learnt that those shops (and the stuff they were selling) weren't very different from the ones we have here: maybe I just have to face the fact that there is no country in the world where people bring loads of the most beautiful vintage design stuff to the thrift shops... In fact there seems to be a big similarity when it comes to what people bring to charity shops, and in general that isn't beauty!
I did see some beautiful Scandinavian ceramics and design in specialized vintage shops, but of course the sellers over there were very conscious of the prices they could ask, and prices of about $100 for a beautiful piece of tableware were no exception. So I just enjoyed looking at the fine selection of some of the expensive shops.
I was hoping to see many new and unknown things, but I guess blogging and maybe this commercial/design globalization thing in general have spoiled me a bit, cause when it comes to design I hardly saw anything I'd never seen before. Besides the vintage ceramics hunting I was for example also on the lookout for cool new children's clothes, but to my surprise the interesting and more exclusive children's boutiques almost all carried the same 'hip Scandinavian brands' that are also popular here in the Netherlands: Katvig, Molo, Dun's, Smafolk, Moon Kids... And the prices often seemed even higher than they are here! I did do some good shopping at Polarn o Pyret though, and I did find some more, so I'll probably show you my 'shopping harvest' soon...
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The most ordinary miracle in the world
Belly & baby
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24 Augustus 2010 | 15:14:44
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Though it always makes me feel a little itchy when people talk about their pregnancy or baby as 'our little miracle', 'our little bundle of joy' or something like that, I do have to agree that in a way being pregnant is a miraculous thing. Though on the one hand it must be the most ordinary miracle in the world, on the other hand it still feels sort of sci-fi when you think of it: another human being that's growing and moving inside your own body, I've always considered that pretty bizarre!
Long before I got pregnant myself, already as a kid, I remember being pretty impressed by this idea of a brand new person growing inside someone else's body. My mother got pregnant with my younger sister when I was seven, and I kept reading this little book on the development of pregnancy that my parents gave me, with all the embryonal stages and interesting information such as 'the baby's weight now is the equivalent of two packs of sugar'. I just couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a baby growing inside of you, and that amazement always stayed with me when I thought about pregnancy.
So when my sister got pregnant about two years ago, I kept asking her: 'What is it like, isn't it completely bizarre, aren't you in constant awe of the fact that there's a real human being inside of you?' Her answer (that you often forget about the fact that you're pregnant, that it gets pretty normal and that the process at times can even be pretty boring) at that time sounded pretty unbelievable to me, but now I have to admit that she was right. Somehow the sci-fi element quickly becomes normal, the kicking and moving inside of you is pretty funny and amazing, but also becomes very normal, and though I think I'm pretty conscious of the whole process, I also completely forget about it many times a day. Like we also completely forgot to take any belly pictures while on holiday, though you should think we've had plenty of time for it during all our relaxed hanging out on campsites... So in the end these pictures we took on the very first day of our holiday (at almost twenty weeks pregnancy) at a Danish beach are the only ones that show me & my belly, after that I apparently got more impressed with the miracle of the Scandinavian landscape than with the miracle of my belly... ;) I'm now 23 weeks pregnant and the belly has already grown a bit more, so I'll try to do another update soon!
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Sweet dresses
Fashion
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24 Augustus 2010 | 12:21:38
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In a fun shop in Larvik (Norway), that was a combination of a coffee shop and a shop for handmade products, I saw these sweet and simple girl's dresses that immediately caught my eye. A nice vintage fabric and a good pinafore design, isn't that the perfect recipe for making a cute toddler look even cuter? Unfortunately I couldn't buy one since Helmut said stop (it was almost the end of the holiday and I had already bought a ridiculous amount of baby clothes), but these dresses are quite similar to the pinafores I've been making in the past, so I got inspired to make a few more ones after returning home.
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A holiday without swimming just isn't a real holiday
About me
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23 Augustus 2010 | 21:08:52
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When it comes to holidays, I don't have such specific needs: I like a bit of comfort (but I did survive the camping adventure in a way that you could almost call glorious, at least that's what I like to think! ;)), I like enjoying a lot of good food and drinks and I like being surrounded by beauty and nature, but on the other hand not being too far away from the civilized world with it's cities, shops and restaurants. But there's one thing I'm pretty specific about: swimming is an essential part of being on holiday! And then I don't mean doing all kinds of complicated crawls, but just the possibility of diving into some fresh and cool water, whether it's a small or large swimming pool or a lake or the sea.
I already knew the possibility of being surrounded by water shouldn't be an issue in Scandinavia: Sweden probably has more beautiful lakes than land, in Denmark you're never far from the sea and in Norway we would go and see the beautiful fjords. But unfortunately a proper temperature for swimming in those beautiful waters was less guaranteed. So in the end I only swam in one of Stockholm's lakes once and one more time in the beautiful Sorfjord that you see on the image below (which I have to say was one of the most beautiful waters that I ever swam in). And since that was a pretty disappointing score for a 3-week-holiday, we spoiled ourselves with a visit to a luxurious spa with lots of delicious hot baths on one of our last days in Denmark...
By the way this was the view from our tent at the campsite in Norway, so beautiful! |
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Moln
What I like
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22 Augustus 2010 | 22:02:11
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I guess I'm sort of back home, and I haven't made up my mind yet to which extent I'm going to bore you with my holiday stories and pictures... As soon as they appear here you'll know!
For a quick start I wanted to show you some of the very nice (and in Sweden probably super well-known, cause you see the design in almost every children's and design shop) Moln products by designer Gunila Axén for Färg & Form. She already created the design in the 1960s, so I guess quite a few generations of Swedes grew up with this simple but strong cloud pattern somewhere in their homes.
You can buy quite a few products with the Moln pattern, but I thought the baby blankets were the best, and hey, aren't we expecting a baby? So we bought our baby the green Moln baby blanket, which combines pretty well with the green color in the flower pattern of the nursery's wallpaper. I hope she'll have happy dreams sleeping under that blanket!
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A Danish hello
About me
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18 Augustus 2010 | 15:08:18
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For those of you wondering what on earth happened to this blog: you'd probably already guessed that I'm only on holiday. We already traveled Sweden and Norway and we're currently enjoying the last stages of our trip in Denmark. I hope to meet you here again within a few days!
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A fritidshus
About me
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26 Juli 2010 | 08:56:27
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When we'll travel to Sweden I expect to see a lot of these beautiful Swedish holiday homes. I once had a Swedish art teacher who told me that most Swedish people who live in the city have a holiday home or fritidshus. Those houses are often situated somewhere in the middle of nowhere, so that you can spend some very quiet weeks there during the summer and other holidays. Apparently those holiday homes can be relatively cheap, which makes it possible for lots of Swedish families to own one.
A while ago I saw this link to a Swedish real estate website on Tiger's blog, and ever since I can't help but browse it every now and then to see what amazing holiday homes there are for sale. I think I could spend such happy and peaceful times in a house like these...
Do I spot a hot tub in the garden? Oh my, I think I want to live here!
In fact during our Scandinavia holiday we'll also spend a few days in a Swedish family's holiday home: a Dutch friend of Helmut has Swedish friends who own a lovely holiday home in the Dalsland area, and with great hospitality they offered us to stay in their home for a few days. A few days ago we saw a video of the place, and it looks just the way you'd hope a Swedish holiday home would look... What a good thing to look forward to!
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18 and a half weeks
Belly & baby
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25 Juli 2010 | 10:33:01
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Still happy with all the extra belly I can get! ;) I really have a hard time understanding these women with an average belly-size who already start complaining about how they look in this stage of their pregnancy: 'Oh, don't I look fat? I feel like a whale!' I read this book about pregnancy in which the writers explicitly tell the fathers-to-be that they always have to say 'No, not at all' when their pregnant women ask them if they think they look fat. Come on, you should look fat, this is the time for it!
There also seems to be a lot of complaining about what to wear during pregnancy, but so far I find I even have more options than usual: I can wear almost all my normal clothes (like lots of dresses) with some small adaptations, and also the new pregnancy stuff that I bought. But maybe that'll change when my belly reaches a more serious stage... Anyway, so far I'm still enjoying it, but I know I'm not even halfway!
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Keepers aren't losers or something like that...
Things I make
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21 Juli 2010 | 15:02:50
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Though in general blogging in English isn't that hard for me -I probably make lots of mistakes, but in the end I think I usually manage to say what I have in mind, and I hope that message reaches you too!- every now and then I find myself being completely convinced of a certain expression that turns out not to exist at all. So I guess 'keepers aren't losers' is just my own version of something like 'finders aren't keepers' or 'losers aren't weepers'...
Anyway, I thought it was a pretty adequate expression to describe the fact that I'm happy I kept these two dresses that I made almost two years ago. A few years ago I loved to make children's clothes, that I usually gave away to children that were born to friends and family (like this and this dress for little Lena -who by the way will soon be a big sister to a twin brother and sister- and this jumpsuit and these onesies for Kasper). But these dresses I somehow wanted to keep. During the one and a half year that I was trying to get pregnant I often thought: maybe I should give them to someone else, it may just as well take ages before I get pregnant, or I may never get pregnant at all... (or, which of course would be an even more serious disaster: I could have a boy! ;))
But now that we'll be welcoming a little girl, I can't wait to see her wearing these in summer! (by the way so far I haven't made anything for her yet... Should start with that real soon!)
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Still here
About me
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21 Juli 2010 | 09:14:26
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Oh I'm still here, but at a very, very slow pace... So the blog will probably be pretty much as slow as I currently am during the next weeks!
Meanwhile I'm dividing my time between my thesis, the swimming pool at my mom's, buying tiny dresses (I couldn't resist: I bought the baby her very first Petit Louie dress this weekend. Though Helmut keeps warning me that he doesn't want the baby to become one of those little fashion dolls. Oh, I agree, I completely agree... Let's start with that regime tomorrow! ;)) and taking care of a painful hip joint (while I still only have a very small belly... how unfair is that!). Oh, and of course I'm preparing for Scandinavia... not so bad!
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Soccer and a pink wall
About me
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14 Juli 2010 | 17:46:44
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I guess there are certain questions you best shouldn't ask when you don't really want to hear the answer. Or when you already have a too specific idea of the kind of answer you'd like to hear (but probably won't get)...
A few weeks ago I asked Helmut if he already had any ideas or dreams about what he wanted to do with his future kid. And okay, to be honest I already knew what I hoped he would say: something like: 'crafting', or: 'baking cookies', or: 'working in the garden together'. Knowing that he likes none of those things in particular. And knowing that we don't even have a garden...
'Playing soccer,' was his answer.
Which was a little bit too much for me, especially given the fact that the soccer terror of the world championship had already been haunting our house for weeks.
'Oh come on,' I said a little pissed, 'is it really so hard to come up with something better than that?'
'Why is that wrong?', he replied. 'I think most fathers have this fantasy image of playing soccer with their son, don't they?'
'Oh I can't believe what a cliche that is!' I angrily answered, while we were quickly approaching a state of serious argument about something that should have been a nice conversation subject, 'and apparently your fantasy image of having a child only includes a son?'
'Oh, I will play soccer with my daughter too,' he happily assured me.
Well, okay then...
The fact that we had no idea if we would be having a boy or a girl didn't keep me from already buying lots and lots of clothes for the baby these last few months. Which wasn't that hard since I'm not particularly fond of this super-girly pink or boyish blue stuff anyway, so I just specialized in Scandinavian-style jumpsuits, colorful HEMA onesies and other rather unisex stuff. Perhaps in general it all was slightly more 'boyish' than 'girlish', but what could be wrong with dressing a girl in blue? (or a boy in a dress, there were a few that I just couldn't resist!)
So while not knowing the gender of our child didn't cause that much trouble when it came to the important task of plundering all kinds of (web)shops and department stores, it did leave us lazy people with a more pregnant question: could we leave the pinker-than-pink English flower wallpaper on the walls of our future nursery or did we need to look out for some new wallpaper? (you see I'm all pro 'avoiding the stereotypes' but this wallpaper really is too much for a boy's room... Maybe for a girl's room too, but like I said: we're lazy!) And since we're pretty curious as well, we planned an ultrasound at seventeen weeks to have a look at our baby and hopefully hear the gender.
So I'm happy to announce that we'll be having a girl, that will be dressed in slightly boyish clothes (and an incidental pink dress) and that will play soccer with her super proud father, but that will probably sleep in a room with some ridiculously romantic pink wallpaper, thanks to her lazy parents...
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Uppercase magazine publication
About me
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13 Juli 2010 | 12:51:50
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A few months ago Anna Denise came all the way from Brussels to visit my studio and do an interview. She also took some beautiful pictures in my home & studio. We had a lot of fun (but also some serious conversation) which resulted in a lovely article that Anna Denise wrote for one of the coolest magazines I know: Uppercase Magazine.
Uppercase Magazine really is so beautiful! In fact it's more like a regularly published design book than a magazine: the graphic design is stunning, the illustrations are beautiful, the content is interesting, inspiring and not the middle-of-the-road blah blah you usually read in magazines and the magazine is printed on beautiful heavy paper. It's really a magazine to keep, instead of throwing it away after flipping through it.
If you want to flip through the current issue online, you can do that here.
Thank you Anna Denise for creating such a nice article, and thanks to Uppercase Magazine for making me part of your beautiful magazine! You can subscribe to the magazine here (and psst... if you have a birthday or something coming up, I really recommend you to ask for Uppercase's most beautiful book on Camilla Engman! I have it too and it's simply one of the most beautifully made books I've ever seen!).
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Large & beautiful
Art and design
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12 Juli 2010 | 09:01:36
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One day I'd love to own a really large and beautiful eyecatching painting. Though I really love small works of art, somehow some of these very large paintings can have such an overwhelming impact. I recently discovered the work of Anuli Croon in an old magazine, and I think it would look so impressive to have one of her beautiful paintings in your home!
Anuli Croon also designed these beautiful windows for an apartment building in Rotterdam. Look how beautiful the light and colors are reflected on the wall!
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The studio before it became wrapped in a big plastic bag
In my home
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06 Juli 2010 | 21:23:49
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Work hasn't been great lately: new obstacles seemed to arrive each time the previous one was out of the way. After my crazy production flow of january and february (as a preparation for being etsy's featured seller) I first needed some time off to relax and reload again. When I started to feel inspired and ready for making new things again I became pregnant and was tired and sick most of the time. And when that started to get a little better, I started to experience troubles with a very persistent and nasty technical issue: it turned out that the cover coat (varnish) that I use for my decals wasn't good, which ruined almost all of the decals that I had screenprinted earlier. A terribly frustrating thing, because everything I put in the kiln seemed all right before firing, but after firing almost eeach piece looked terrible. And if it wasn't hopeless enough already, today the renovation of our apartment reached my studio, so we had to wrap the whole place in plastic and now I'm hoping for the best while those rough and not so subtle construction guys take over the room to replace window-stills and stuff like that.
I really hope I'll be able to make new things soon, but when I can start with that is still a little unclear. I've decided to close the shop for a little while till everything is a bit back to normal again. You won't believe how terrible living circumstances currently are here...(oh I think I already said that before!) They're replacing and painting all window-stills and doors of our apartment at the same time, which creates lots of mess and dust, not to speak of the constant presence of lots of workmen all over the place and their terrible taste in (very loud) music. I'd never heard of 'Radio Hollandio' before, but I think the Dutch among you can guess what kind of music that is...
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