Feeding Japanese fish

The weather is a kind of up-and-down over here.

Yesterday, sometimes sunny sometimes a little bit rainy. This morning grey and cloudy, in the afternoon sunshine for a few hours. We visited the Japanese watergarden in Naaldwijk. Well beside having lunch there, the most fun is feeding the fish (koi). They're very well trained, as soon as you pass the bridge they come sprinting to you.

Typical The Hague

One of the things we learned about The Hague when we came living here about 4,5 years ago was "Maison Kelder". It's a very famous pastry here. Their speciality is: hazelnut cream cake. It's really fantastic. But you know what's even better, the pastry is right across the quiltshop. How lucky can a girl be.

The crockery we used today was from my grandmother.We only use it for special occasions : ), like our dog's birthday. He became 12 years old yesterday.

15 march 1967 (45 years ago)

 Well it was wednesday, a cloudy day, with only 2.2 hours of sunshine, a  little bit of rain. The temperature was 7.3 C (44.6 F).

The Beatles recorded the song "within you without you" that day for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club band.

Iaoko Takeuch a famous japanese manga artist was also born on this day,  never heard of her ; ).

Train tourism in the Netherlands was very populair according the newspaper. There was the Softenon-scandal, and a washing machine costed 1145 dutch guilders (about 500 euro). In the cinema they played the film Tobroek with Rock Hudson. A very popular comic in the newspaper was "Suske and Wiske". Somebody in Drachten spotted an UFO and somebody else spotted a white-sided dolphin along the dutch coast. What an exciting day.

Well, happy birthday to everyone who is also born on the 15th of march.

Doggie fabrics and apples

Well there is not much going on here about quilting. Two projects, but they're going slowly.

Well what's taking so much of my  time then? Work and excercise, I have a rather busy fitnessprogramm at the moment to get me back on my feet completely. And with the economic crisis here in the Netherlands work asks a lot of attention, new challenges are waiting. So the quiltprojects as we say in dutch are "in the freezer" at the moment.

Next saturday Paco (our 12 year old dog with hernia) starts his hydrotherapy (swimming). It will be very interesting to see if he likes it in a clean warm swimmingpool. He likes to swim but normally he prefers a mixture of water and mud. But we hope it will help him to recover as good as possible. We don't want him to go to through the whole process of sugeries, so this seems the best way to give him a good chance. 

Bonnie's garden

Dieuwke is on her way to the south of France, she even took her bathing suite with her.

No quiltbee and no  "Little house on the prairie" this week, we started season 3 last week.

But she left me this book as an early birthday present: "Bonnie's Garden", "Le Jardin de Bonnie". It's really my style, I love the applique. And I couldn't resist making this project "A little birdie told me'', not too complicated  not too much work.

Things are a little bit "strange" at home, with our little four-legged friend Paco having a hernia. He seems to recover pretty well, but he has to stay in his basket for two weeks. Not easy for such an active dog as Paco, although he's almost 12 years old.

Sunday morning breakfast at Theresiastreet

Just to spoil ourself, after walking with Paco which ended in a little hail storm.

It's still amazing what you can do even if you're limited to 30 minutes walking, 30 minutes sitting on a chair,  several times a day. You just have to be inventive.

Yesterday evening we had dinner for the first time in  8 weeks at our favorite restaurant Mauce also in Theresiastreet.

We called them with, told them what we would like to eat and at what time. We're eating very regular here so we know the menu by head. We arrived at 6.15 p.m., took a drink standing at the bar, and exactly 6.30 p.m. like we agreed dinner was served. At 7.00 p.m. we left, taking our dessert (choclate cake) with us. Back home 7.05 p.m.

I was joking to Marne on skype, it felt like what some tourists do, Europe in three days.

Little doll quilt

Today we did a  35 minute visit at the County Museum in The Hague.
This is the advantage of having

":museumcards". The museumcard give you free access to a lot of museums in the Netherlands, and you can go as often if you want. The county museum is a very big museum, feels like a kind of maze when you're walking around. I totally lost track. Lucky I had my DH with me.

 We had to made choices and visited the "doll houses" exhibition and we went to the "wonderrooms". I could only find one little doll quilt. (All the other pictures are from the website of the museum.)

Especially in the 17th and 18th century people spend a lot of money of decorating dollhouses. The exhibition shows dollhouses from several European countries, and even one from China. The 25th march is the last day of the exhibition. So hurry if you're a fan of dollhouses.

The wonderrooms is something you just have to experience. We just visited only 1 of the 6 rooms, and it was full of funny "junk".

A nice way to spend a grey and cloudy sunday in the Netherlands.

Slowly but steady .....

.. my original plans to clean up and tidy up my quiltroom during my X-mas holiday were unexpectly changed on first X-mas day.

So now very slowly my quiltroom is getting reorganised with the help of my DH. One of the most important things for me is that we changed my cutting table. I used to use a little  wooden dining table for cutting my fabrics, but to be honest, of course it's too low. Now we have changed it and my DH bought me a bar table at Ikea (what a great store). So cutting fabrics has become a much healthier process for my back.

Of course I had to try it out just for a short moment. One of my projects for 2012, beside all my other UFO's, is making a kingsize crazy dog quilt. Last year in march I bought several dog fabrics in Seattle. So I hope I have enough, and if not,  then I have to do some shopping in september in Seattle again. 

But with the cold nights and winds blowing around the house I really appreciate my warm quilts.

They even talking about a "elfstedentocht" (eleven city skating tour 200 km). Woh,  that would be great the last one was in 1997.

Still very very very slowly, but still steady things are getting a little bit back to normal.

Stlll under construction Spakenburgerhouses

The quilt for the museum in Spakenburg (if they want it) is almost finished, just the border.

My own quilt will be a little bit bigger but not the 365 houses, at the moment I'm thinking about 8x8, that'still 64, I already made decisions for the sashings and the border. Maybe in the corners another house. We will see. I wonder how many are there already build worldwide? I have done 15 in januar, slowly but steady.

Applecores

Two projects: Spakenburger houses (14 finished) and Appelcores. For the applecores I borrowed a stamp from Dieuwke (you can buy it in Dorry's quiltshop). It's very easy, and saves you lots of times, no drawing with templates. On the other hand you loose that time because sewing applecores is much more complicated then I thought. I love the mix of muslin and scrap fabrics. You know I'm a muslin addict, so visiting Marne in september there will be muslin on my shopping list again. Because I want this to be a big quilt.

It seems that next week will be a little bit colder, some freezing temperatures. Well who cares, with all the narcisses we bring spring into our home.