Vintage Challenge

Some time this year I decided to sew a vintage garment each month. It did not work out as I thought, but all in all I did sew 13 vintage garments (but not one each month). Some came out better than others, but I am glad, I used some of my patterns. With the time it was not so important if I sewed something vintage. I now try to sew things I like and can wear on a daily basis. Of course there are also some fun projects, but for the new year I want to sew more wearable things and things I can combine with things I already have.

But here a overview over my vintage garments 2011:



















And here are the ones I have no photo:









(only the dress)

Christmas

I hope you all had a wonderful christmas. We were at my parent´s home. And we even had a white christmas. Photo proof:

My father made a very tasty christmas feast. Afterwards we exchanged our gifts and then played some games.

Yesterday we visited my Grandma in Schwarzenberg. Today we were at the Panometer in Dresden. It´s a big Panorama picture of Rome.

I hope you had some nice relaxing days too.

Chocolate Fun

Yesterday was our Christmas lolita meet-up and we went to the Halloren Chocolate Factory. There we visited the museum. It was interesting but nothing very special. Most fun was to meet all the others again. And we changed presents. We got one person beforehand for who we had to buy a present. I got a embroidery hoop. Not very lolita, but useful.

Some impressions of the museum:

I unfortunately have no photo of my outfit. But as it was nothing special, that´s okay.

Winter Kid

I made a pullover for my friends daughter. She bought the fabric. It is so pretty and soft. I hope her daughter will like it.

My Kindle

Some weeks ago I finally bought myself a kindle. I have to say, I was really sceptical when I heard of this thing some years ago for the first time. I thought, why do I need a new technical toy to read books. And at this time it was really expensive, especially when the books are not cheaper than the paperback version.

But when this year the version for 99 EUR appeared on Amazon, I thought about it twice. Now I have one and so far I am satisfied. First and foremost you can read long books, which normally would be very heavy, without breaking your arms. And the kindle is really lightweight and small (smaller than most paperbacks). So you can carry it even in a normal handbag.
If you go on vacation you can carry a lot of books with you and don´t have to decide for only a small collection. If I have WLAN where I am (with my boyfriends smartphone I mostly have) I even can buy books with my kindle. I tested it and it works really good.
And of course the kindle saves me a lot of place in my bookshelf.

The monitor is not all white but a little grey and it is very good to read. You can change the size of the letters. At the bottom is a display to show how far you read.

But there are some I would not say negative points, but points that get lost with the kindle. When I read the first book, I somehow missed the feeling of reading a book. The feel and sound of paper between my fingers and the feel of holding a book and turn the pages. For me this is some kind of ritual or meditation. I like the kindle. It´s a good invention, but for me it will never substitude this feeling.
I am also a bit sad that some wonderful formatations are lost. With the kindle you can´t decide for a book on a specific font. Many pictures are also lost. Especially in fairy tale books I love the little details like a special font or matching pictures. The kindle concentrates on the text.
Then you can´t borrow the books to others. I like to share books with others to share thoughts and impressions. I can´t do this with a kindle book. I finished one book today I really want to show my Dad, but if I want to do this, I have to buy it in paper.

But despite this I really like my kindle. I now can read books I would never have bought in paper, because of the room they waste (maybe this is a bad point too, because now I maybe buy more books than I can read, because I don´t have to store them). The kindle is really comfortable to read. I really like to read with it in bed.

I have not made my mind if the kindle is environmental friendly or not, because of the paper it saves. I think the people forget that for the production of the kindle you need materials which are not regenerative. And you need energy to run the kindle and the servers where all the books are stored.

And of course I made a case for my kindle. All of materials I had laying around in my stash.

What´s on my sewing table...

And there is also some embroidery:



This project includes also green felt and a lot of buttons.

New haircut

I was at the hairdresser over a week ago and got my hair cut, um, for me, very short. It is now only a bit over the shoulder, but I think, I like it. Now I have a chance to make all these pretty 40s hair dos. And it looks much more lively.

Sorry for the bad picture. I hate the light right now.

Embroidery patterns - SeptemberHouse

Another great source for embroidery patterns is Corinne´s etsy shop SeptemberHouse. She has so beautiful vintage inspired embroidery patterns. The first I stumbled upon were the circus wagons.

All of her patterns are stunning, but easy to make. I really like this.

And you should stop at her blog so september too. There are many beautiful free patterns (I love the elephant!).

Only a short post today. Have some things to do.

November Impressions

I promised you the photos for this week, so here they are. I took these two weeks ago at our old graveyard (called Stadtgottesacker), where I already took some at our Lolita meet-up. This time the colorful leaves were almost gone or all brown. But it nevertheless looked stunning. This is one of my favorite places here.