• Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    DIY | Knitting Café

    Last night I went to a knitting café for the first time. I had walked by the store the week before and had seen their sign that read „Knitting Café | Mondays 5pm – 8pm“ (well, ok, it said that in Swedish). I obviously didn’t happen to have my yarn and needles with me, plus I was on the way somewhere else. But I hoped I’d remember until this week – and I actually did!?

    If this isn’t fate: I had a bag from the store where the knitting café was held. A really pretty bag, too.

    Ironically, the „project“ (= yarn, needle and instructions for a sweater jacket, no actual work started yet) I took with me was a birthday present that Peter had gotten me from that place. Two and a half years ago, ehem. It wasn’t even the same owner anymore, so technically I didn’t have to tell her that story and thus embarrass myself … oh well.

    It’s going to be sweater when it’s big. I hope.

    There were four of us (including the shop owner), and although I’m afraid I was too busy counting in the beginning to be social and join in the conversation, it was nice. There were even sandwiches, and one of the ladies had brought cake since it was her birthday. When I joked that I had picked the right night to show up, I was informed that last week, another participant (who wasn’t there yesterday), had sort of „kidnapped“ them to her own home where she had prepared an entire dinner for the group. I am liking this already.

    I even have the perfect buttons for the jacket. Yep, another thrift-store find.

    I was also relieved to find that these wonderful ladies weren’t judging me for being an amateur who has to look down at her project the whole time to see what she’s doing. Also, I am slow. I mean, I didn’t seriously worry about not being allowed to „play with the pros“ if I wasn’t on their level. I guess the competitive part of me kind of did worry exactly about that, though. Frowns and eye-rolling. Luckily, that part of me is just paranoid, and was obviously proven wrong.

    This is the yarn Peter gave me. Organic wool with 15% camel hair. Better not mess this one up, huh?

    Oh yeah: Between all the chatter, coffee, sandwiches and cake, I did get started on that sweater jacket.

    This is what I am hoping it will look like:

    Here are the instructions, in case you want to beat me to it:

    http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/us/pattern.php?id=3676&lang=us (you can change the language on the page)

    A great site with lots of free patterns, by the way.

    Does this make you sad because there are no knitting café near you? Well, how about starting your own? That’s one thing that struck me last night: I didn’t technically have to wait for this to happen to me. I could have done that myself. You know, invite a bunch of your friends, everybody brings what they want to work on, you take turns with the snacks, … Simple.

    And if you want to go pro: Decorate according to the theme, like in Pyssla Duka Bjud.

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Jewelry | Sternenkind Creations

    I did it! Just sent in an application to à la London – Gothenburg Design market. Now I better get busy making more jewelry. I’ll post pix and all things related on the Sternenkind Creations page rather than as a blog post. Feedback – yes please!!! Wish me luck!

    Related posts:

    Going with the flow

    Pearls + neon yellow nylon thread = true

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Project of the day | Staging Spring

    I did get the balcony fixed up. Then I went to a store that as I discovered yesterday had locally grown hydrangea. So far, so spring. Then, on the way back – guess what – it started snowing. It would appear that sometimes wishful thinking isn’t enough (who knew?).

    Since desperate times require desperate measures, I resorted to what any home-story-teller who is worth their grain does anyway: I faked it. Rather: tried. As will become apparent in a moment, this is probably one of the worse attempts at staging spring. So … here goes nothing.

    Yeah, that table cloth under the hydrangea is not ironed. Neither is the table-cloth on the table, which is actually a curtain. I mean, the table-cloth is actually a curtain, not the table.

     

    I must say, those teacup candles are versatile. I need more so I can have them EVERYWHERE.

     

    Hyacinths. Just noticed that one of them is molding a little bit. Meh.

     

    Hello beautiful!

     

    Or should I say: hello bluetiful?

     

    Less elegant, more playful. You might say this balcony’s style is all over the place. I choose to call it „eclectic“.

     

    Unless I don’t show you the picture I just showed you, and show you this instead. Doesn’t work with real life visitors, though. Unless I make them leave the balcony frequently so I can rearrange things according to what they’re going to look at next. Seems like a lot of work, though, so … probably not.

     

    Now we’re getting somewhere with the spring feeling!

     

    So … another picture of the same just from a slightly different angle.
    And another! OK, I’m done.
  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Project of the day | The sunny season’s living-room

    Today I am going to take on balkonia, and hopefully turn this sadness into something … well, better.

    Yes, I was lazy in the fall. Just left the plants right where they were. Guess I’m paying for that today. Maybe I can get Peter to take care of it?

     

    Imagine me with kids …
    Can you find all the miserable plants in this picture?

    Can’t get so much worse, right? Here’s to hoping that I’ll be able to show you some after pix tonight.

    Have a wonderful Saturday everyone!

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Spring cleaning pt. 3

    Mission completed! I did enough to be able to abandon this project, and show some after pictures that don’t reveal everything I didn’t do. Success! Oh yeah, and I tried out some more no poo methods which I now can recommend with a clean conscience.

    I wish it actually looked like this …
    … but this is more accurate. Actually, no, it’s still too staged. Except for the mugs. Yup, there’s two of us – and Peter usually sticks to one mug, so … you figure it out.

     

    It actually looks a bit sterile … hm.
    My best friend (apart from lemon and baking soda): white vinegar.
    Forgot the before pic, so here’s one from during the process.

     

    After. It’s an old stove, so this really is the best it’s looked since I moved in.
    The yuckiest part: under the sink, where we keep all the recycling bags/bins and the compost.
    Still couldn’t win a beauty prize for this but again: old kitchen, lots of people have lived in this apartment.

    I cleaned the stove according to this recipe: Sprinkle some baking soda onto the plates, add some drops of white vinegar, let it sit while you do the rest of the cleaning. Then you just wipe it off. Before wiping the stuff off, I used one of those metal brushes (I don’t know what the technical term is, they are specifically for these kind of stoves). I found the recipe for this on a Swedish site, they had a lot more useful tips on cleaning, mostly also no poo: Bästa städtipsen för ett fint hem.

    For all of the surfaces (cupboard doors, tiles, working spaces, mopping the floor) I used the white vinegar/lemon/water mixture again. For the sink I just cut a lemon in half, rubbed it in and let it sit for a while before rinsing with water. Again, I am really satisfied with the results, so I am definitely done with the poo that we have standing around here.

    I found another link with no poo cleaning methods on ByzantineFlowers (I really find this blog inspiring, makes me wnat to try out a bunch of their recipes!): DIY Citrus Cleaner – you’ll find a lot more no poo alternatives than what the title reveals.

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    The quitter wins

    I am not ready to let the kitchen cleaning mission go yet I still don’t really feel like it. Then this CRAZY idea popped into my mind: What if I just do the parts that seem easy, and see how far I get? This might sound simple to most but for someone who has been walking around for most their life thinking that doing things half-assed is not allowed, that you have to decide if you’re in or out, that you don’t start unless you’re going to finish, blablablah … for someone like that (not me, of course), the conception of this possibility is really mind-blowing.

    After all, if I allow myself to start under the premise that I can quit whenever I want, why, maybe I’ll actually go through with it! If I go about it as I usually do, locking myself into the notion that you have to finish what you started, I probably won’t even start …

    So here’s to a day full of doing things half-assed and starting things without finishing them (or at least allowing for that alternative)!

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Spring cleaning pt. 2

    Although I didn’t get as far as I had hoped, I still got the chance to try out some no poo cleaning techniques – and can therefore make some actual recommendations:

    1. Oil and a mix of vinegar, water and lemon (roughly equal parts) turned out to be my best cleaning friends, I didn’t use much besides that. When it comes to oil and grease stains, it’s really a fighting-fire-with-fire kind of method – and it works, too! The spice rack being located above the stove was covered in a sticky layer of cooking grease and dust. I just dabbed some paper towel in oil and wiped the sticky surfaces. Just use the cheapest you have/can get, doesn’t need to be you precious EVOO.  This is obviously only step one, unless you’re content with replacing the old grease layer with a new one (that will get yucky in a few weeks). This is were the lemon/water mixture comes into play. Why not use that one first? Well, I guess you can, but when I tried it felt like I needed to use much more force with that one – using oil was a lot easier.
    2. I tried out the recipe for cleaning the oven (actually started with that one since you’re supposed to let it sit for 8 hours). I found that the ratio in the recipe made the mix to dry, so I just went with my instinct and added more water until it took on a „wasabi-like“ texture (if you were to conclude  from this that I have a sushi-related problem you’d be right on). Also, I used about double the amount of the original recipe. I got good results – I am telling myself that the stuff that I couldn’t get of has been there even when we moved in. This recipe is perfect for me since I am not a very patient person. I tend to get sloppy at the end of a task but luckily, with this recipe, I do not need to worry about whether I am going to die from the next meal I prepare in the oven after cleaning it. Sometimes you can have the cake and eat it, too!
    3. Oh yeah, maybe the most useful piece of advice that I managed to ignore once more after already having made the mistake: filter the lemon juice before you pour it into a spray bottle. Otherwise the pulp will clog up the pipe/spray head thingy. Or: don’t use a spray bottle, just dab the cleaning rag in the liquid.
  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Spring cleaning pt. 1

    The urge to spring clean has overcome me early this year. And I am not even going to work my way up, I am going to start with the kitchen. Cleaning, and rearranging, and throwing out stuff we never use, and all that jazz. So, you probably won’t hear from me the rest of the day. Or ever again because this might take a long time.

    This is what it looks like right now:

    Before

    Here’s to hoping that it’ll look better by tonight, that I won’t get fed up in the middle of it, and just eat take-out from paper plates for the rest of my life.

    If this makes anyone go „This is what I should be doing but I really don’t feel like it“, I recommend Karen Kingston’s Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui. It is an easy and inspirational read, and it’ll motivate you.

    Basically, if you want things to happen in your life, new things to arrive, you have to make room by getting rid of old stuff that you have no use for anymore, that only sits there and steals your energy. Sound familiar? That’s right.

    So let’s let go of the old and make room for the new.

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Going with the flow

    It may not look like it but there is actually a lot going on that I would like to write about. Mostly Ayurveda stuff, since I’ve really been hooked, not just on reading but trying out stuff. I’ve noticed some amazing changes that I want to write about. Now that I am off work for the next eight days, hopefully I will get at least some stuff out there.

    In a way, this post is connected to the Ayurvedic train of thought – and not just because according to Ayurveda, everything is connected. Being a person who loves planning stuff ahead, making lists and such, and often being frustrated when everything doesn’t go according to plan, (= a person with a dominant Pitta dosha, if I should express it in „Ayurvedic“), I decided I wanted to take a break from locking myself into a fictitious schedule, and just go with the flow instead. Do what I felt like, when I felt like it, instead of doing what I had planned out the night before simply because I HAD A PLAN. Yes, I was going to follow my intuition. I know that I am going to state the obvious here when I say: it worked amazingly.

    First I wrote a bunch of letters and e-mails to friends and family that I had been „planning“ to do for so long but never could find the right mood to sit down to. Then the sun came out and I realized the light in our apartment was perfect to take some pictures of the jewelery I have been making. I uploaded them right away, and wanted to share them but – and this is really very unlike me! – I quit before I was done, because the weather still was nice and my boyfriend suggested we go for a walk.

    We decided for Gunnebo castle, which we don’t do very much, although it is very pretty there. I forgot to bring my camera but I let it go, even though there was a ton of stuff I would have wanted to share on my blog. We ended up not walking around much either, since the ground was still covered with ice. It was still worth the trip: It turned out that the restaurant wasn’t on winter schedule anymore, and it just happened to be lunch time. I recommend lunch at Gunnebo castle to annyone who comes to Gothenburg, anyone who is into seasonal, locally grown food. Also, the atmosphere is very nice, old school Swedish „herrgård“.

    All in all, this experiment of just going with the flow, following my intuition was a success, I want to practice it more often.

    Ok, now for the part of the day where I did take pictures – the jewelery. I am not even going to pretend to be humble – I am really pleased with the results. Things that manifest as beautifully in the real world as we envision them are a great but rare pleasure. These are definitely in that category of things:

    You’ve got the lock, pretty baby But I’ve got the key … (Johnny Lang)
    Eyelets are not just for scrapbooking!
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    And the earrings:

    ***
    Yes, one of the strings doesn’t quite look like it’s supposed to – but I luv ya anyway!
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    ***

    Whaddaya think? I am thinking of selling them (and the pieces I have visions of but not created yet, hehe), like on etsy or something. Any of you have any experience? Cuz I don’t, so, tips and feedback are really appreciated!