Postcrossing

Ask any of my friends and they'll tell you;
I love to write cards and letters.
Birthday's, special occasions or just for no reason at all.
All of them handwritten on nice paper, a specially selected card and decorated with stickers and stuff.
And, because of a smart little list next to my computer I never miss a birthday.
(and with a little luck they almost always arrive on time)

In 2008 I read an article in "Flow" magazine about a website called Postcrossing.
It is a project where you send a postcard to a randomly selected adres and then recieve a postcard from a different random stanger.

For me, as an avid card-sender, it's a really cool project.
And not even that expensive. It only costs you a stamp and a postcard.
Over the past few years I have sent cards to Polland, Russia, the USA and China.
I wite about 9 cards a moth.
**Or until I run out of stamps...

I buy my postcards whenever I see cute ones.
That can be in tourist-shops, HEMA, bookstores or supermarkets..
I have some really touristy cards on hand, with windmils, cows and tullips.
But also have a collection of cards with animals, art, cute drawings, flowers and stuff like that.
Some "Postcrossers" have a whishlist of specific types of cards they would like to recieve.
I always try to find the right postcard for a specific person.

Next step is to write something on the card. This is the part that I find really difficult.
Most of the time I write some random fact about my country or city, a bit about my day.
If I have something in common with the Postcrosser I'm sending my card to I'll write something about that..
I might include a little weather drawing..
The options are endless. And that's what makes it kind of difficult.

Essential is the postcard-ID.
It's a special code you get when you request an adress.
When your postcard arrives at the Postcrosser, they log the code onto the postcrossing website.
They can leave you a little message and it registers how long it took for the card to arrive.


This month I have postcards traveling to China, the USA, the Republic of Belarus, Taiwan and the Ukraine.
I wonder how long it takes them to get there.....

Currently 28.10.2013

some time ago I stumbled upon the Currently Challenge.
It's a small card with 7 topics you just fill out.
It documents the "right now"

each week I fill out a card..
Here's this week:

Weekend Walk

With two dogs in the house we do a lot of walking..
During the week we usually stick to local parks and walks around the neighbourhood.
But on vacations and weekends we try to go somewhere fun.

At the moment our favorite place to take the dogs is the "Purmerender Bos".
It's a huge forrest in Purmerend. Which is about 20 minues by car from here.
** I have to be honest; it's not actually a "real" forrest but a man-made park. But it's as close to a forrest as you will get in this area.

After having a leisurely breakast we packed up the dogs (must not forget the dog-treats!!) and headed over to Purmerend.
Our first stop is my mother-in-law's house. She lives near  the forrest and usually comes with us.
We stop for a cup of coffee and spend some time in her HUGE garden. After that it's off to explore the woods.

We have a pretty set route based on the least busy paths so the dogs can run around off-leash.
It was pretty busy yesterday.
Lots of family's and people with huge camera's. It took a while for me to understand why. I even saw a man lying flat on his stomach in the dirt. Turned out he was taking pictures of mushrooms!!

Sadly I didn't bring my "big camera" so I had to make do with my phone.
** thankfully the camera on my phone is pretty decent..

We'll be going back next week so I'll  pack the "big camera". I hope the mushrooms will still be there.

How did you spend your weekend?

Crochet

I have always wanted to learn how to crochet.
My mom tried to teach me but that wasn't a succes.. She moved way to fast and I couldn't keep up.
I've tried several different tutorials on Youtube.
Read different books about crocheting..
Without succes..

So I had somewhat given up on crocheting..
But then I went to a scrapbooking fair.
I can hear you think: "What does a scrabooking fair have to do with crocheting?"
Well there was a stand where you could crochet "granny squares" for charity.
They had some beautifull things there so I took some time to think that maybe I could learn someday....
The lady in the booth invited me to join them but I explained to her I couldn't crochet.
She told me if I left my project there (for charity) she could teach me!
How could I say no?

So I sat down, was handed a huge crochethook and some zpagetti and in the next half hour her 12 year old daughter taught me how to make a granny square.
And it turned out.. it wasn't actually that hard...
That afternoon I made 2 granny squares and was inspired to make some more at home.

So back home I took my cheap crochethook and some yarn I had lying around and made some more "granny squares".

I had a lot of trouble with the cheap crochethook. It was to small for me to hold and made my fingers hurt.

(A small note I have to make is that I have Fybromyalgia. It is a chronic disease that makes my joints sore. So maybe crocheting isn't a very good thing to do.. )

So I had to take a small shopping trip to the local craftstore.
And there I found a very nice, Clover crochethook.
I had seen then on Intstagram so it seemde like an excellent choice.

I also bought some cheap yarn in some fun colors.

More "granny squares"are in the making:

 

I really love my new crochethook!!

I also went on the hunt for another pattern to make.

On My rose valley blog I found a really cute flower.

The patteren was in English so I had to transfer it to dutch..

And had to figure out what it all meant.

Thankfull I had some help from an Instagramm friend =)
She also recommend a very helpfull crochet-for-beginners website.

So after a bit of work I could start on the "maybelle Flower Crochet" pattern.
It was harder as I expected and I had to start over several times.
But at the end of the night I had 2 flowers:

                                      

I am not 100% happy with them yet.

But crocheting for almost the whole afternoon and evening wasn't a very good idea.

Both my hands are very sore so I'm on a crochet-break until they're better.

And after that.. well.. I'll have to set myself a time-limit..

Vacation pictures

Every year during the summer we pack up our camping equipment and dogs in the car and go camping.
We usually go for 2 weeks and always try to go somewhere else in Europe.

This year we decided not to go very far. Keyser (our Dogo argentino) has turned 11 years old this year and is starting to show his age. So in case of a medical emergency I didn't want to be far from home.
We decided to go to the Belgian Ardenns. With Nico's buisness stiil in the start-up fase we also didn't take a 2 week trip like we usually do but went only one week.
Aside from the dogs, a friend of us also went with us.

As usual I am glued to my camera when we're on a trip. Also in my "essential-holiday kit"; a notebook ; this year a large sized Moleskine cahier, some paints, differents small bits of patterned paper, glue, siccors, aquabrushes, a date-stamp and red inkpad.

After the week I ended up with almost 200 pictures....
So my first job when we got home was to make a selection for printing..
Small batches of pictures I print at home but with these large orders I order them online and then pick them up at the store.This only takes 3 days. Which gives me time to gather up supplies for the album.

I bought a very cute album at HEMA which I wantend to use for this project.
So when I got my pictures back I started with the gluing in of pictures.
Only to discover that halfway through the binding fell apart!
I decided to take the album back to the store. They where very helpfull and refunded the entire cost of the album. And even paid for it to have it bound at the copyshop.

yes I know this a very "old fashioned" way of making an album.
But i just can't get used to these digitally printed albums; they all look the same!
So take a trip through my vacation album:

the cover: I use small offcuts from filmrolls for decoration..

Love this washi-tape..

pictures, stamps and pen

the left page includes a city map

with some clever positioning you can make your own panorama-pictures..

this one is spread over 2 pages..

Someone had folded his map into a tiny boat and had left it somewhere for me to find..

pictures, pen and watercolors

I used a paint chip to document our search for falling stars. I just love the name of this color "Moondust Memory"