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The sunday bonnet # 1: a bonnet on a ribbon

Posted on July 24, 2011 by festotu

On this post I want to open a new section for this blog: Sunday bonnets.

I love bonnets and to make them. And now that I have a lovely model, I like it even more (although she does not keeps still neither a second letting me take the pics..).

I will be posting a new bonnet every sunday and at the end of the month I will post a tutorial on how to make the one that gets more comments (so the one that you like the more).

At the same time I will be featuring bonnets from other blogs. Those of you that want to submit a bonnet, please feel free to contact me by email or by comment.

So lets open this Sunday bonnet series!

This Sunday I present the bonnet on a ribbon:

It is a really easy to crochet bonnet, a one afternoon project. As a detail, you can change the ribbon according on the cloths your baby is wearing.

And the results are awesome!

Don’t know how much pictures I had to shot to get this few pictures more or less OK..babies..

Hope you like this new section and remember: Every month I will post a tutorial on the bonnet that gets more comments!

PS: The pull my baby is wearing on the pics is made by me as well!

I am publishing this post here and here.

firma The sunday bonnet # 1: a bonnet on a ribbon

Posted in The sunday bonnet | Tagged baby, bonnet, crochet, sunday, tutorial, yarn | 2 lovely comments

Visiting our neighborhood

Posted on July 22, 2011 by festotu

We are new to the neighborhood, to the city and to the country. Wow… So we try our best to keep on visiting new places so we can go on knowing better the new country where we have settle down.
** This is a view of the building on our condominium, it was an old fabric reconverted, the houses are pretty new and really comfortable **
Well, sometimes it is a bit hard since we don’t know yet the language, and although most of the people speaks english or any language we do speak too, it is like having a target on your forehead: A foreigner.
** We have a big and beautiful garden really close to our home. It is full of big old trees, it has a little lake and also a fence with some goats **

** Here the goats. They are from a race I have never seen before, they are pretty small, just arrive to my knees! **

I know, swiss people are really really friendly and welcoming, but I will feel better once I could maintain a little conversation on their own language.. (well I am doing my best..but german is any thing but easy…and if at least they where speaking german..). I feel it is kind of irrespectful to not to speak the language of the place where you are living.

** A beautiful tree on our neighborhood, it is not the only one which I like, I think I will take my camera with me more often and will make a post just on beautiful big trees. **

Anyway I feel really well on this beautiful country so nothing to complain about if it is not my slowness on learning my new language.

** This is my husband and my baby, happy to be together. I love you both, so much! **

Posted in Garden | Tagged baby, goats, trees | Leave your comment

Yummy yummy Mango cheesecake

Posted on July 20, 2011 by festotu

Last Saturday meanwhile my husband was sawing the project I decided to make something with half a mango I was saving on the fridge. So I remembered I wanted to make cheesecake and that I was having all the ingredients and decided to make so.

Before you continue reading, I have to say that I made the best ever cheesecake!

Here it go:

{Ingredients for 8-10 persons}

{For the crust}
- 150 gr all purpose floor
- 1 egg
- 50 gr brown sugar
- 75 gr butter

{For the filling}
- 750 gr of quark (or equivalent cooking cheese)
- 125 gr cream
- 300 gr brown sugar
- 2 full spoons of all purpose floor
- 4 eggs
- The juice of one lemon

{For the top}
- 2 gelatine leaves of 2gr each
- 100gr brown sugar
- Half a mango
- 25cl water
- The juice of half a lemon

{Cooking utensils}
- A 30cm diameter baking tin
- 2 large bowls, one small bowl
- A cooking scale
- A mixer (I used a whisk and works wonderful)
- An oven
- A saucepan

{Preparation time and cost}
- Preparation: 30min
- Cooking: 1h15min
- Cooling: 4-5h
- Cost: about 7 CHF

Preparing the crust:

Preheat the oven at 180 ºC (360 ºF). Mix well all the ingredients. Butter the baking tin so the crust does not gets sticked. Spread the crust in to the tin making a thin layer and pick all the surface with a fork to avoid bubbles while cooking. Put at the oven during 20min or till you see the borders became browner.

Preparing the filling:

Mix well all the ingredients with the mixer or the whisk till it has a really smooth texture. Fill the tin. Put on the oven at 220 ºC (428 ºF) during 15 min. Then change the oven to 90ºC (194 ºF) and let it during 35 minuts more.

Let it cool a bit (lets say 1h)

Preparing the top:

Put the gelatine leaves on a bowl with cold water.

Put the water, the lemon juice and the sugar on the stove on a medium temperature. Let it boil for about 3 min, mix from time to time. Move the saucepan out of the fire, let it cool a bit and add the gelatine, mix well till smooth. Let it cool a bit more (10 min).

Dice the mango and spread it on the top of the cake. Pour the gelatine mixture carefully. Put the cake on the fridge during 4-5h (or till the top has set, I let it overnight).

That is all! You have a fantabulous mango cheesecake that would be the delight of your full family!

I hope you like it, please let me know if you try it!

I published this post here.

Posted in Recipes | Tagged cake, cheesecake, mango, recipe | 7 lovely comments

Tutorials with the family #1: How to make a thread rack

Posted on July 17, 2011 by festotu

Finally I have my studio organized! I have still some boxes to unpack and have still several things to classify. But it seems that I am coming back to normality (besides I lost my lace bobbins, uf.. what a pity! they have not reappeared yet and I get nervous every time I remember this fact..).

To be able to sew things for my baby I bought on ebay some thread spools that are safe for baby clothes. Really beautiful colors, but a bit too thick so I have problems with my sewing machine..a pity,..but at least they where quite cheap..

Well, back on the tutorial. Suddenly I got plenty of spools and no place where to keep them. So I started searching on my inspirational source (internet) and found this post, which I loved: The reel thing...

I showed it to Gustavo and soon we decided we must do it: first because the spools can no more be on the table and second because it would look wonderful on the wall on the studio.

{Used Material }

- A massiv wood board measuring: 31.5×15.75×0.7 inches (80x40x1.8 cm)
- 3.15 inches (8cm) nails
- A Jigsaw
- A drill and a 3mm and 12mm wood bit.
- 4 dowel
- A hammer
- An file
- Varnish and a brush
- Wood glue

{Working time}

- Approximately 5h

{ Project cost}

- Board: 8.6 CHF
- Nails: 4 CHF
- Varnish: 2 CHF

Total: 14.6 CHF

{Steps}

Step 1)

The board was plastic wrapped, so I sketched the design we wanted to do. Then I outlined it with a pen, pressing hard, to mark the wood (without painting it). Finally I outlined the wood marks with a pencil (so later on we could erase it).

Step 2)

Gustavo has cut out the shape with the jigsaw.

Later he used the file to remove all the splinters.

There where two extremes that where not fitting on the board, so we cut them out from the remnant of the board and using the dowels we glued them to the main piece.

Step 3)

After the glue has completely dry (in reality after lunch,..), I draw the dots where I wanted the nails to be placed. Gustavo has drilled every dot, making 7mm deep holes (some mm less than the deepness where we wanted the nails to be placed). To do so it is really useful to use the drill’s guide.

We marked all the nails at 1 cm from the tip, so at nailing them with the hammer, when the mark disappears we know they are at the correct deepness.

Once all the nails are on place, we have made the holes for holding the rack on the wall. To do so we used a 12mm bit and made a 10mm hole with the drill. Inside the hole we made a 5mm perpendicular hole with the 3mm bit ( this holes will fit the hooks on the wall).

Step 4)

I varnished the board, starting from the front and then turning it (as it has the nails, we can do both sides at the same time).

We let it dry full night.

Step 5)

We resume step 5 as: hang the rack and enjoy placing the stools on the preferred order. On my case I been looong time making color gradations.

At the end we sit down and patted our backs to celebrate a good job!!

Hope you liked! It is easy, useful and beautiful, what else can we desire?

Some more pics of this beauty:

I published this post here and to Skip to my Lou.

This post has been featured here.

firma Tutorials with the family #1: How to make a thread rack

Posted in Tutorials | Tagged decorative, easy, idea, thread, tutorials, wood | 37 lovely comments

tutorial: from fabric to yarn- make your own yarn

Posted on July 14, 2011 by festotu

On this post I am going to show how, on a really simple way, to transform fabric into yarn you can work either crocheting or knitting, or however you want.

{Material}

– Fabrics
– Scissors or ruler and a rotatori cuter.
– Needles

First, you have a resume on the next image:

Step 1)

Fold the fabric longwise. Align the extrems and pin them with needles. Fold again the fabric longwise, but let it at 2.5cm from the extrem (observe figure 1). Pin the fold with needles.

Depending on the use you want to give to the yarn or if you really need straight strips, use scissors or a ruler and a rotatory cutter to cut the strips. DO NOT arrive to the extrems, cut till 2 cm of the extrems (look at picture 1).

Step 2)

Once you made all the strips, unpin the fabric and unfold it. It should look like that:

Step 3)

To get a continuous thread do as follows: take the scissors and, beginning from one extrem clip the strip till one extrem. Next, follow the strip till the other end, you will see you must cut the second strip, so to go on forming the continuos stri. As a resume, the process is: on one extrem cut the 1st, 3th, 5th,.. strips, on the other extrem cut the 2nd, 4th, 6th,..

Step 4)

You’ve done!

Hope you liked it! It is really really easy, isn’t? I use it to make crocheted rugs. I will show it on future posts.

If you try it, I would love you show me oor send me the pics. When I will have some, I will publish them!

PS — Check this useful trick on how to convert t-shirt into fabric!

firma tutorial: from fabric to yarn make your own yarn

Posted in Tutorials | Tagged fabric, how to, turorial, yarn | 2 lovely comments

Here is my garden, and here my heroins, ladybugs

Posted on July 10, 2011 by festotu

As a city girl, plants world is far away from my knowledge. Nevertheless, I’ve been trying to have some plants around on the last years: aromatic plants (basil, mint, sage, chive) and cactus. I have never been really successful.. Have to say on my benefit, that I have never had a balcony or terrace where to have the plants, poor them!

On the house we are now living, we have a super 15m2 terrace. It just has sun half of the day, because it is covered, but is big enough to keep a big variety of plants. Here you can see it:

Gustavo attended a course of BioGardening, so we decided to make our own Eco Garden. We have planted: tomates, lettuces, rucola, strawberries, several aromatics (basil, coriander, mint, lavender, sage, oregano, parsil, thyme and dill), and some flowers (as I bought them here in Switzerland I have no idea on how are called).

When we where living in Madrid, we made our firs trial on the Eco Garden and end up throwing everything. We got a little flies plague. They were doing nothing but annoying, and without realizing were falling on the food or on the drink. Basically a big disaster..

This time things were supposed to go better (terrace, sun, natural not contaminated air,…). But we started to have an aphid plague affecting several of our beautiful plants. Desperate, we pull out some of the more infected plants, but it seemed effortless. Before taking harder options (like throwing again everything on the trash or spray with insecticide) I tried a desperate solution.

I observed that as the plague was growing, we started to collect a wider insects collection on our terrace. So I remembered what my brother once told me (my brother works as a bio farmer, one day I will post about his farm, it is amazing!). The main aphid predators are ladybugs and their larvae. Some days before I had seen a ladybug on the strawberries. Could we be so fortunate to have some precious eggs there?

And that was it! Suddenly strawberries stopped being crowded of aphids and got some strange not really beautiful black insects. Googling it I found they actually were ladybug larvae. So I expended some time moving them (with papers) from plant to plant where the infection was more massive. And that was definitive! How cool!

Besides dyeing down the plague, we have been able to follow the full ladybug process from larva to ladybug. A bio-balcony class! jeje. It is a pity Ada is too small, in some years she well enjoy observing this stuff!. Anyway I taked plenty of pics so she could see it later.

That were our enemies:

And that our heroins:

On a future post I will show the complete ladybug cicle.

I hope you liked my garden. I would love you give me new ideas on how to take the best of it, you know, I am not really an experienced gardener..

On some future posts I will go on showing how are my tomatoes and other species growing up.

I published this post here.

firma Here is my garden, and here my heroins, ladybugs

Posted in Garden | Tagged flowers, garden, idea, ladybug | 1 lovely comment

A mobile for babies made crocheting and explaining how did we ended on Switzerland

Posted on July 8, 2011 by festotu

A couple of months before we started sitting our daughter Ada to her little seat, so she could start playing a bit alone. At the beginning I was not liking the idea at all! I was feeling I was parking the baby there. So, I decided to make this mobile so she could be entertained when sitted. After all, a baby cannot be the full day on parents lap, sometimes parents have to go to the toilet, eat, and do some other basic daily activities incompatibles with carrying a baby..

So I made this mobile following experts recommendations (what a nightmare, if not!)

Use a lot of colors (nothing to do with the typical “pastel” colors people used to use, some day I will talk about the: baby boy -completely blue, baby girl – all in pink).
That moves
With natural materials
That makes some noise..

Ah, and the more important part, security steps:

Small separable pieces are completely forbidden.
if it has strips, they cannot be longer than 18 cm ( not longer than 7 inches)..

And that was the result:

To make it I used cotton on several colors and a crochet hook. I did not used a pattern as I improvised. One of the objects has inside a little rattle to make the mobile more attractive.
*For more projects using this same material click here*

Must say it was a complet success! Ada loved it since the beginning!
I love to see how has evolved the way she plays with it. At the beginning she was just looking at it, but she started to hold out her litte arms to touch it, and now if you let her, she puts it on her mouth and kicks it to see how does it moves. See what I mean on the next video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEqV3a32Kq4

Ada was from beginning a reason to decide change our country of residence. Well, not just Ada, but our idea to form a family.

In Madrid, where we lived before, the working hours are normally so long that Gustavo (my husband) would had barely seen our daughter ever awaked. Moreover, the salaries are so low that normally both members of a couple should work to maintain themselves. So, what about family? We do not want to have child to see them on the week-end and have them grow up by others (say kindergarten, grandparents, baby-sitters…)!

One year and a half ago we expended our Eastern Holidays on a trip on Central Europe, and we falled in love! What beautiful landscapes! What an agreeable people! So we decided to move on..

(follows in next posts!..)

I published this post here.

firma A mobile for babies made crocheting and explaining how did we ended on Switzerland

Posted in Babies | Tagged baby, crochet, Switzerland, toy | 3 lovely comments

The baby is teething, tutorial: how to make a pattern for plush toys and the mystery is finally revealed

Posted on July 4, 2011 by festotu

My baby girl today is 4 months old: congrats sweet little Ada!

Since last week she is suffering because of teeth. Her teeth are still not out but are so uncomfortable! She is full day drooling and bitting everything she can reach. And not, she is not destroying a pacifier, Ada has decided she has nothing to do with pacifiers..

She is really nervous and hardly can fall sleep, so I am full day with her, comforting her and trying to keep her calm (and myself!). So I have little time for anything else.

Nevertheless, now that she is finally sleeping (wow!) I will take the opportunity to write a little tutorial about an idea I got some time before: how to make patterns for plush toys of any desired shape for crocheting or knitting.

Here you can see a pict of one of the plush that I made that way and that Ada loves.

{Material:}

- Squared paper

- A white paper

- A pen or a pencil

- Scisors

{Procedure}

1 – Draw on the white paper the shape of the plush you want to make, or if you are like me, unable to draw anything recognizable look for your shape on internet and print it. Cut it.

2 – Draw the shape on the squared paper, tracing it with a pen.

3- Following the squares trace the shape following the next rules:

Consider the following for each square:

case 1) If the area of the In Zone on the picture is smaller than the area of the Out Zone of the picture, do not include the square on the pattern.

case 2) If the area of the In Zone on the picture is bigger than the area of the Out Zone of the picture, include the square on the pattern.

Follow till finishing with the figure.

That is it! You have your pattern!

Now you just need to choose between crocheting or knitting. For doing it, it is really easy, follow the diminutions and increases of the pattern.

And if you are going to make it knitting, take in to account to start the pattern once from one extrem and the other time from the other extrem, so you will have the two plain stitched sides facing out.

Ai, I don’t know if I have been clear enough.. maybe would be better to let the explanations on how to make the plush toy for a future post.

Hope you enjoyed it! and as always I will love to read your comments!

PD:oh, I was forgetting to reveal the mystery expounded on the last post. Yes, our new residence country is the beautiful Der Schweiz, yes, yes Switzerland. A super welcoming country, filled of super pleasant people and with peerless landscapes.