Remember the fabrics and ribbons i bought at the Holland Stoffmarkt recently? So i finally sat down to sew some pillow cases and one of two planned table runners.
Here are the pillow cases. I know they aren’t perfectly finished but for a first shot i’m happy with the outcome.
The table runner is of waxed cloth, and i like it !
It even looks nice with the placemats on it. I like polka dots.
What do you think ?
Photos by me, all rights reserved.
I had a friend visiting me this weekend and on friday night she took me out dining at the “ø” in Kreuzberg. “ø” seems to mean island and it’s a fairly new location i haven’t heard about before.
The interior was wonderful, with a shabby chic mixed with all kind of furniture styles. There were Bertoia wire chairs in the cafè area, a very seventies couch and mid century chairs as well as school chairs in the restaurant part. A patchworked rug made of oriental rugs, vouted ceilings and stamped walls.
The restrooms were fun, too. A big bassin in the entry hall to wash your hands in and at the ladies restroom a pink decor with a kitschy plastic triptyque mirror.
A part from the pleasing decor the food was very good.
I had a salmon tartar with avocado cream and joghurt as entry plate.
Then a very delicious fish and chips with a light lemony remoulade sauce and joghurt-cucumber salad.
As a dessert i had mango slices and coconut icecream.
The service was good and friendly, although the vine was served at the same time as we got our aperitifs.
They also have a big terrasse outside which should be a fun place to be in summer if it should ever appear here some day…it snowed this weekend in Berlin.
All together i can highly recommend the “ø”.
The adress is
Mehringdamm 80, 10965 Berlin.
( Tube station “Mehringdamm” ).
All photos by me, rights reserved.
Hi there,
despite the ( awful ) return of winter i ventured myself out on sunday morning and drove to Potsdam where every three months takes place the “Stoffmarkt Holland“.
I’ve been there for the first time last june with friends and love it. Fabric sellers from Holland are touring regularly through Germany and sell their fabrics, sewing supplies and everything you need for sewing. There is even a booth selling machines! I didn’t take any pictures at the market, sorry for that, it was simply too cold ( and snowing, arghhh ).
It is usually very crowded and so it was on sunday. I had made a little list of what i was looking for: neon-colored fabrics to make pillow covers.
I haven’t been sewing for years now, but ordered a simple machine which i picked up from the post office today. I still have all the fabrics i bought at my previous visits, so the next days i’ll be busy sewing new covers for my balcony chair cushions and pillows in the living room. Yeah!
Of course, i’ll show the results later on.
Yesterday my friend Ieva invited me to join her for the opening of a Pop Up Show at her friend’s showroom “Trofejas“.
The title of the show is “Soft Art Delicatessen zu Ostern” and features the installation “Das Festmahl” of the lithuanian collective of women artists “Baltos Kandys”.
From the press release we learn that (my translation) “the textile designers Auste Jurgelionyte, Karolina Kuncinaite, Migle Lebednykaite, Laura Pavilonyte, Rasa Leonaviciute and Julija Vosyliute form since 1998 a group of artists which actively participates at worldwide exhibitions and conferences in textile art.
The group’s name translates as “white moths” and symbolizes restlessness as well as their interest for wool, but not with the intention of destroying the material but to create something new.
So during the process of felting they create objects, reliefs and pictures, which are painted / colored once finished.
The installation features a wide choice of deli food and is supported by a videofilm by Tomas Andrijauskas, showing the artists themselves at a feast.”
All the food you see is made of felt. It looks so realistic that we were wondering about some cookies in the showroom if they were made of felt or if they were real. Absolutely amazing!
Baltos Kandys also makes necklaces and brooches of felt, in fact, the peas, carrots and eggs for example are also available as brooches.
Besides Baltos Kandys’ art the showroom Trofejas also sells baltic easter specialties during the Pop Up Show.
The Pop Up Show “Soft Art Delicatessen zu Ostern” at Showraum Trofejas is open from 4 to 8 pm on following days:
fri-sun march 8.-10., thu-sun march 14.-17. and thu-sun march 21.-24.
The adress is
Showraum Trofejas
Wielandstraße 31
10629 Berlin-Charlottenburg
For more information and the online shop have a look here:
http://www.trofejas.com/main
And you’ll find here the website of Baltos Kandys:
http://www.baltoskandys.com/
All photos by Giedre Bartelt from Showraum Trofejas: Thank you so much!
It was my sister’s birthday this week and i offered her tickets for a show as a present. So last night i took my sister and her partner to see the MoZart Group at The Tipi am Kanzleramt.
As i am member of a theater community which offers a large variety of shows and events to see each month, i choose just by reading the description. And the Tipi am Kanzleramt was a location i haven’t been before. It’s a huge tent, where you are seated at little tables. We had ordered one of the arrangements, which included a glass of wine and oven cheese and arriving earlier we had time to eat before the show started. I was curious what it would be like as i’m normally not a fan of classical string quartetts.
But these guys were extraordinary!
It was a mix of classic and modern music, only played by string instruments ( two violins, a cello and a viola ), ranging from the Rolling Stones to Salsa, from Heavy Metal to The Beatles to Kalinka to Ravel’s Bolero and some Mozart of course. All of it performed with a lot of humour and creativity, and virtuousity. We enjoyed it a lot and had lots of fun.
They are from Poland and are now touring all over Europe.
COPYRIGHT BY WWW.MOZARTGROUP.NET
If you have a chance to see them: GO !
Hi there! Let’s continue our little tour through my apartment with some before and after’s of my bedroom. This is the smallest of the three rooms in the flat.
Some before’s:
As you can see…yellowish walls, ugly carpet and some linoleum underneath, spots from where there used to be pictures hanging on the wall…very bla.
After the first week it looked like this
This room faces north and the courtyard in the back. Which is nice as it is very quiet and there is a big tree in near my window which provides a little more privacy in spring / summer.
And the room never gets direct sunlight so during hot summer days it still is nice and cool there.
This is the state of things the day before moving in: all white painting, and my beloved hardwood floors.
I choose to keep the heating pipes apparent as they provide some extra heating.
And this how it looks today ( and you see, it’s not always possible to take pics without my little Miss Gelly ).
The trunk is an old trunk from the swiss army and it holds all my bed linen.
The mirror is from my german grandmother and it must be from the 1930′s i guess.
The curtains above hide the wardrobe that is in the nook. I fitted some PAX elements in there, one which is 100 cm large, the other one is 50 cm, both are 236 cm high. There’s not enough space between the wardrobe and the bed, so instead of putting doors i choose the same curtains as for the window.
It makes the room quite cosy with ceiling high curtains on both sides of the bed.
The little red chair is a gift from my other grandmother. I got it as a child.
Actually i have a piece of furniture from all of my grandparents. You’ll see the one which belonged to my grandfather soon in the living room.
I only hung up two pieces of art as i don’t want too much distraction in the room and aim to have a calming feeling in there. After all it’s the bedroom, made for sleeping.
This photo has been taken in January already. It’s a corner of my living room with some nice sunlight shining in.
I haven’t seen any sunlight for ages here, i wake up every morning to a grey sky. Grey, grey, grey. So depressing.
According to the meteo news the other night, Potsdam ( which is not far away ) had 21 hours of sun this month so far. Not even a day.
This morning, after waking up and looking outside to find it grey again i was tempted to go straight back into my bed. But i didn’t. I got up, did some job research, applied for some open positions, got a call from an agency for a job interview tomorrow.
I just hope that i’ll get a new job soon, i’m going nuts without work. It’s not that i hang around the whole day, i do get stuff done that are in my pipeline for quite a while now, mostly admin stuff.
I do explore other options like becoming self-employed, but Germany is a administrative jungle for this, i’ve got to sort through that. I started working on a concept already last summer, so maybe this time i’ll take the jump. Maybe.
Anyone out there who has some experience of becoming self-employed here in Germany ? If so, please share your experience in the comments ( in english, german, french will be fine for me ). Thanks.
A few years back i bought some beautiful latvian vintage mason jars from a friend. They live on the window sill in my living room and i love them as they can be decorated in many different ways.
Sometimes they serve as vases, filled with flowers.
Or they contain nice decoration stuff.
At the moment they are filled with dried physalis and christmas tree balls from IKEA. But even empty they look beautiful as the glas has a nice greenish shade.
I’m thinking of buying lots of colorful marbles to fill up the jars with. Maybe i’ll find some nice ( and cheap ) ones the next time i’ll visit a flea market around here.
Spring is around the corner ( or at least i do hope so ) and i’m longing for fresh colors.
I’ve seen a lot of neon pops already last summer during the Berlin Fashion Week, but now it comes also to interior decoration.
I’d like to bring spring into my home with nice cushion covers like these, and add some buntings on my balcony maybe ? And i absolutely adore the necklace made of wooden neon pink pearls! A total want-to-have!
Do you like this trend as much as i do ?
Being unemployed at the moment gives me suddenly time to do things i used to love. Like drawing. Haven’t done that ( and haven’t had the time for it ) for ages.
But i hope this won’t last too long. I need to find work. The sooner the better.
