A visit to Tarndwarncoort Homestead

Hello lovely people!

During the four weeks we spent in Australia (oh how fast these flew by...), the husband and I traveled the Great Ocean Road for two weeks. One day when it was pretty cloudy and rainy in Apollo Bay, we decided to drive past the mountains as the forecast promised better weather on the other side and guess what! The forecast was right for once!

We discovered the Tarndie farm in a little leaflet about the Otway Harvest trail and as there was yarn mentioned, I just had to go there! After having possible the best pizza ever at the Meating Place Café (pumpkin and goat cheese - oh my god, it was soo amazing!), we drove down to the farm. It was a bit tricky to find and at some point we were close to giving up but in the end we made it.

The Tarndie farm / Tarndwarncoort Homestead is a sheep farm and is owned by the Dennis family. It is also the place were the Polwarth wool (or rather the Polwarth sheep) origin from. As pure merino sheep weren't made to survive in the Otway climate/landscape well, these sheep were breed in the 1880s - they are 3/4 merino and 1/4 lincoln and next to that they are really cute, they can survive the climate and land in the Otway very well!

At the farm we were greeted my the owners and I was told so much about their yarn and I got to spent as much time in their little shop as I wanted too (the husband got to spend time in the sun with lemonade - so win-win!). Tom and Wendy were very kind and answered all my questions!

 I would have loved to try all their yarn but in the end I bought around 400 grams of white and grayish yarn. I think I will make a sheep (amigurumi) with it - kinda fitting, don't you think?

We got to wander around the farm a bit and man, it is a beautiful place. Best thing: we got to meet some of their sheep who were very friendly (I am pretty sure they are hoping for food). It was just two weeks before the annual shearing, so they were packed with wool.

How I wished we could have stayed longer! They have a little cottage where one can stay for holidays. If I had known before, we would have certainly stayed there. Did you know they have yarn retreats? How wonderful would it be to stay on a sheep farm for a yarn retreat?! Well, I guess, I have to return to Australia soonish, doesn't it? 

Take care

Anne

Too much yarn?!

Hi there!

Did you have a good start into the new year? I am sickish since Christmas but it is getting better (I think). :) I am still on holiday til next Monday and am enjoying the free days a lot. Lots of crochet and napping involved! :D

Last weekend, we tackled the office/studio. We have been talking about decluttering the rooms for ages but never got around to it. Too much on our plate and so we ended up pilling stuff into the room. You see, we basically live in the living room/kitchen anyway, so we didn't miss the room. Still, the clutter and the stuff made us both feel uneasy and unhappy. Clutter tends to to that to me.

So, we tossed, scanned (we own a document scanner now - it is wonderful! Far less paper, in fact we are heading towards a paperless office), donated and sold. Three moving boxes of paper, three boxes of books, two boxes of yarn (gasp!) and heaps of other stuff out of the room. And woah, there is still heaps of stuff in the room but it is far better than beforehand. I wonder where all the stuff came from - the office must be like a black hole which collects clutter and stuff! 

The decluttered room feels good. But I discovered that I have more yarn I can ever use (well, not ever but in the next years), even yarn I am not sure I will ever use. I bought it at some point for some project I never got around to make. Or I lost interest in the yarn because I didn't like to work with it. Oh and with some I am not even sure when I got it. Oops. I have the strong feeling that I have too much yarn.

Gasp! Yes, there seems to be something like too much yarn!

Of course I tried to declutter the yarn too and two boxes isn't too bad but boy, there is still too much. Now, my problem begins. I know there is too much, I know I should give some away but... I can't decide which! Whenever I take the yarn into my hand, my brain is full of ideas what I could make with it. Or I remember who gave it to me or the special moment I bought it. Sighs.

Any ideas what I should do?

Take care

Anne

Review of my 2015 Resolutions

Hi there!

Can you believe it is the end of July already? I most certainly can't. 2015 is passing by so quickly, it is hard to keep up! Actually I am pretty sure we skipped a few months this year... Sigh.

Anyway, it seems like a good time to review my 2015 goals, which I wrote about in this post. The following were my five resolutions.

Let's see how I have succeed so far...

(1) Open a Dawanda Shop

I finally bit the bullet last weekend. So far I have been too afraid to open a shop because I was afraid people wouldn't like my stuff. Silly, I know (they just won't buy it, if they don't like it) but I was afraid. Now I need to work on the General Terms and Conditions. Man, I thought overcoming my fear was the biggest part in the progress but no, working on these terms is a lot harder! Who would have thought?!

(2) Use a daily planner each day

Well, I didn't do too well on this so far. I tried. I really did but it didn't work for me. I wonder if I should try again or just give up?! Do you have good experience with daily planners? 

I use a planner and a to do app at work but somehow I don't seem to need (?!) one at home. Hm.

(3) Exercise daily

Eh, I tried? Again not very successful BUT I bought a fitbit charge HR last week and so far I have done 10 000 steps each day plus I started watching what I eat. Little steps, little steps...

Why did I get the fitness tracker you might ask? Well I am certainly not into self optimizing but this tracker proves itself pretty useful to get into a new habit. And I need a new habit: I am incredible unfit and I hate that status, so I need to change it. :)

I also went running with the boyfriend twice. Well, kinda - there was a lot of walking involved. I need to get fit enough for morning runs though as Kathryn, Michelle's sister, suggested that there would be kangaroos in the morning if we go running together this winter (=summer in Australia).

(4) Drink a Green Smoothie daily

We did well on that for a few weeks but in the end it took so long to prepare them. Recently I read some articles online on how people prepare all their smoothie mixes for the week ahead. Perhaps I will give that a try.

(5) Declutter the flat

Yay, finally something we are doing well with. There is still heaps of stuff in the flat but we tossed several boxes of stuff, took the good stuff to Oxfam and made sure not to bring too much new stuff in the flat. It is a long way but we are getting there. I might even declutter my yarn stash. We will see...

Did you have any new year resolutions and how did you go on them so far?

I try not to feel guilty about not reaching mine (yet). I see them more as guidelines and if they don't work out for me, I need to find new ones. :)

Take care

Anne

Busy Times! Plus, the Great Destash

Hello everyone! 

It's been a mad couple of weeks here, and things are finally starting to settle down. The weather has also been freezing cold - I am trying to be glad of that so that when I am sweaty and miserable in the height of summer I can honestly say I wish it was wintet ;)

New Job

On July 1 I started a new job, as Secretary to our local Rotary District Youth Exchange Committee. I've had to hit the ground running on that, as there are two big events coming up at the end of July! It has been a steep, steep learning curve, but I'm starting to feel like I might know what I'm doing. Incidentally, if you know anyone who is in year 8 this year and might be interested in a year away at school in another country in 2017, learning another language, let me know! I can put you in touch with the right people ;)

As part of that, I really needed a place to work and store all of the associated paperwork in our apartment. Kiah heroically sacrificed (and tidied and cleaned!!) part of his mancave for me, and we borrowed a desk and a chair from my parents. It's taken several days to organise, but now I have a desk and a printer and easy access to the files, as well as a designated spot for me to go and work. This is as much for my brain as anything else - it is easier to physically go and sit somewhere to do a specific task, than to mentally have to change gears, or feel that I'm always on duty. 

New Patterns

It was a total headache trying to get our new patterns up for sale! Based on my Flame Motif, Anne designed the Bonfire Beanie and I designed the Moroccan Doorways Mini Clutch - you probably saw the blog post about these last week :) Of course, in this crazy, fast-moving world, it's impossible to know what is going to be popular or not... If you have a few moments on Ravelry this week, could you visit our patterns and give it a favourite or a queue, even if you don't want to buy? 

DeStashInator!!!

My biggest achievement this week has definitely been weeding over 9kg of un-needed yarn out of my stash! I always buy more yarn than I need, even for specific projects, and the excess has just been getting more and more out of control.

I first shared with my close Aussie yarnie friends on Facebook and shifted about 5kg through them, then listed on a yarn selling Facebook group and by 11:30pm last night it was all sold! Now we are making the post office very happy (and rich), posting yarn all over the country! 

It's hard to say goodbye to yarn, especially yarn I wanted so much and bought for special projects. However, realistically I'm not going to use this stuff, and if I want more I can always go to the shops or the online yarn warehouses and buy more! Better money in the pocket than too much yarn spilling off the shelves, right? 


New Project

And, just because I'm never busy enough, I'm starting a new project soon - the Around the Bases CAL by KeitoPalette! It looks like heaps of fun, and a good way to use up my scraps and bits of Stylecraft Special DK. I'm still looking for a good centre square though - do you have any ideas for me? 

Hugs,

Michelle

Ta-Dah! The Lily Pond!

Hello everyone!

Last week just got completely away from me - between Kiah's birthday, multiple movie outings, the fatigue (justifiably) getting cranky with all the fun things I was doing, going to the lake for the weekend AND still arguing with PayPal and Ravelry about our new patterns... I didn't blog!

But I did get my Lily Pond Afghan all finished, washed, and blocked, so I do have something to share with you today :D 

The Lily Pond, designed by Jane Crowfoot, was a Crochet-A-Long held in conjunction with Stylecraft Yarns. The event doesn't officially finish until next week, but I have been helping Stylecraft with a few secret projects, and had access to the final few patterns through that. 

Jane Crowfoot is a super famous crochet designer, and I love Stylecraft Special DK, so what could possibly go wrong!? It turns out, quite a lot - the Facebook group/s had a rocky start, the patterns were sometimes very hard to decipher, information was missing, and the translation between UK and US terms didn't go very well. I did not get the same great joy of working through this CAL as I did with Sophie's Universe, but that is a very very high bar! 

I didn't choose to go with the recommended yarn colours - it was a bit dark and dreary for me, especially the blues and greens. For a full list of the yarns I used, see my Ravelry Project page :) 

After all the dramas, I do actually love the outcome! The blocking was lots of fun - we ended up using about 300 pins to get all the flower petals to sit nicely!! I am so lucky to have a husband who supports my crazy crafty endeavours, although I think he was starting to doubt this after his third trip down to the junk shop to buy more pins... 

This afternoon, Kiah, Lily and I took a relaxing stroll around Anderson Park (the other side of the bay at Meadowbank from our apartment), taking photos of Lily with the river, the lovely sandstone and quite a lot of enthusiastic clover.

The colours and pattern almost danced in the dappled sunlight - it really does look like a real lily pond! 

Then, just as we were getting in the car to leave, Kiah said "Look! Under that tree with the undergrowth looks almost like a pond! One last photo?" 

One last photo :) 

Why I declutter

Good Morning!

Thanks for all your kind words - we love reading your comments! It is wonderful to be connected by crochet to people all over the world!

Not too much crochet happened in this house here in Germany over the past few weeks. This has two reasons: 

 (1) I worked on a 90x90cm baby blanket with 4ply/sportsyarn. Took ages... I quite like how it looks like now though. The yarn itself is very soft but worked up with a 2,5 mm hook it turned out to be a bit stiff.I will soak and wash it and hopefully it will be softer afterwards. What is your favourite trick to soften yarn?

(2) As mentioned in my last post, a lot of decluttering is going on in our flat. We give to charity, we toss and so on. In many ways, we try to become more minimalistic. Because we want to focus what is important.

Of course there is some "clutter" which we won't give away or toss. Like the stone the boyfriend got from one of the examiners at his doctoral thesis defense. Or my Harry Potter books - they are dear to my heart! Living with less doesn't mean that we live without meaningful things. Quite the opposite: We only want to live with meaningful things; that is, things which we use or things which are very dear to us. I rather want to invest in memories and happiness than in things. I do love my yarn but not for the yarn itself but for the things I can make with it and the joy the crochet time gives me!

Many people associate minimalism with white, squeaky clean and empty flats. Our home will never be like that. Our flat shall be colorful and full of life. Just with less stuff...

 

That said: There is still a LOT of stuff in our house and I can tell you this: It will take several more months, perhaps even years before we reach the goal :P The decluttering feels pretty good though! :) 

I am dreaming of having a paperless office one day. 
Do any of you have experience with such a thing?

Take care

Anne

Decluttering and Organising the Yarn Stash

Hello all!

Guess what... I am sick with the cold again. Gosh, I am so annoyed by this. Does any of you have good ideas on how to avoid getting sick this much?! I am willing to try almost everything by now.

Anyway, back to more pleasant things. As I told you some weeks ago, I got myself a yarn winder to organize my yarn stash. It took me a lot longer to wind all the yarn balls into nice yarn cakes than I expected - lot more yarn than I thought I had. Opps.

As you can see on the pictures, I stacked the yarn cakes into IKEA shelves which seems to work really well. I get about 4x4x4 yarn cakes into one shelf. I do see the problem of getting to the yarn cakes at the back but at the moment this seems to be the best solution. I could add metal drawers but I wouldn't be able to add as much yarn to them. And let's face it: There is only so much space in my office/studio. Sighs. Perhaps one day?

If you search for "yarn storage" on Pinterest, you will find tons of wonderful ideas - this board for example has tons of ideas, tricks and hints.. I have tried some of them, like the boxes, but the yarn got tangeled up all the time. And if I put them into shelves it worked as long as the yarn was in proper balls. By the time I used half of it or more, it tended to get very messy. 

 

How do you store your stash? Send us pictures to crochet.between.worlds@gmail.com and I will add them to this post if you like!

 

You shall be very proud of me! I filled three bags with yarn which I won't use and will give it to charity. Wohoo, I never thought the day where I would give yarn away (willing) would arrive. Did you? At the moment, we (as in the boyfriend and I) are very busy decluttering the flat. One wouldn't believe all the stuff one collected over the years which is still in very good shape but never used. So it shall leave our flat and more somewhere else. We usually donate our things to Oxfam which will resell the stuff. There is a little store here in Dortmund and it is always a bit funny when I go in there and discover things in the selling shelves which used to belong to us. Feels good though. It is amzing how less stuff in the flat actually frees one's mind!

Have a wonderful week! Is it a long weekend for you too? It is here in Germany (well, for most people. Thursday is public holiday and most people take the friday off).

Take care

Anne

This and That...

Hello from Germany!

 Thank you for all your kind comments! We love, love, love reading them!

Again, my week didn't involve much crochet but lots of yarn winding. I am making progress but not as fast as I was hoping for. Unfortunatly the quality of the yarnwinder isn't helping much. I usually have to hold it firm while winding which makes my neck ache.

Which brand of yarn winder do you use and how is it working out for you?!

I saw some beautiful wooden ones online but they are really, really expensive (like this one). Plus shipping to Germany would add almost half the price again.

As I mentioned before I was gifted the left over yarn of my granny's sock yarn collection (this granny is still alive). I decided to make tiny corner to corner squares with it but I am not yet sure what they will become. Perhaps a blanket? One of my ideas regarding the squares is to add whites ones inbetween, so the color of the striped ones pops out. What you you reckon?

Last Sunday, we met my parents in Osnabrück which is a town halfway between our hometowns. The old town looked stunning in the sunlight! I really need to visit the town one day when the shops are open (I spotted a yarn shop). Oh and I even spotted some yarn bombing! Doesn't the spider look awesome?!

Hope you all have a wonderful week! 

Take care

Anne

Yarn Wonderland! - International Trade Fair for Handcrafts and Hobbies

Hello!

My week wasn't quite as exciting as Michelle's (she talked about her winning at the Royal Easter Show here) but still pretty good! 

Yesterday, I jumped into a train to Cologne (about 1 1/2 hours away from here) to go to the h & h. The h & h is the International Trade Fair for Handcrafts and Hobbies. According to the webpage it is "the central meeting place for the entire handcraft industry" and it most certainly was!

I went there with the lovely Sandra from TussiTempel (go check out her shop! She makes stunning beanies!!!). We only knew each other from Facebook before but boy, we had a splendid time! She is just as crazy as I am about soft, wonderful and colourful yarn! I can tell you ... there was a lot of squealing and giggling involved! Thank you Sandra for the wonderful time!!

There were over 400 exhibitors and I think we saw most of the yarn stalls. There were heaps of them and I got to know new yarn brands and little individual makers. I wish I could tell you about all  of them but then this post would get epically long... So just some insights!

Rosy Green Yarns. Oh my! I think I am in love! So soft and such great colours!! I have far too many projects on my hand right now but I am a 100 % sure I will order yarn from them sometime this year. All of their yarns are organic. Unfortunately I didn't take pics of their stall. I think I was drooling too much to remember...

I got to see (and touch) the new Stylecraft Special DK colors! Are you jealous?! I really like the new colors and they fit well into the range! Also I got to see their Alpaca Tweed Yarn. Wow! I see beanies coming in the future...! I got to talk to the ladies at the stall and showed them Michelle's award winning blanket. Wish I could have stayed longer (touching the yarn... they must have tought I was crazy...).

There is so much more to tell but for now I'll let you enjoy the pictures!!

Take care

Anne

These boots are made for... snuggling!

Hello everyone! Sorry I'm a bit late this week - I was hoping to blog last night but me and Sophie were NOT getting along, and I wanted to show you all how this week's part of the CAL looks :) 

First up though, I have been having loads of fun recently making Crocodile Stitch Booties! Using this fabulous set of patterns from Bonita Designs, I've made baby ones in Stylecraft Special DK Citron:

Child ones with a Stylecraft Special DK Lavender sole and Moda Vera Fayette Jewel Mix tops:

And adult ones with a Moda Vera Marvel Green sole and Moda Vera Fayette Frenzy tops!

It is a fantastic pattern - very easy to follow and well explained for uneducated people like me who have never done crocodile stitch or rib stitch before - I highly recommend it. And, so cute!

I particularly had fun at Mum's house on Sunday, shopping in her button collection :) Do you think these were good choices?

The baby ones don't have buttons yet. I need to either figure out how to crochet buttons that are the right size and work well, or maybe get some velcro? What do you think?

And here is my Sophie's Universe progress! It took me much longer than it should have to do the last 10 rows, but I kept reading the pattern wrong and miscounting and discovering mistakes in previous rows... Sophie didn't quite go over the balcony, but it was a near thing a few times. I love the colours though!!

Here's hoping I have better luck with next week's part 5 :) 

EDITED TO ADD: Here is my sister's start on the Sophie's Universe CAL - I love how the different colour scheme gives a totally different effect!! She was inspired by the Attic24 Cottage pack in choosing her colours.