Top of the noughties

Since everybody's doing 'Top of the decade' lists, I might join them. Mainly because I very much love the word noughties...

Top concerts I went to:
1. Leonard Cohen, Munich, 2008
2. Moby, Munich, 2002
3. Nick Cave "solo", Ljubljana, 2005
4. Schiller, Duesseldorf, 2004
5. Jane Birkin, Ljubljana, 2004
6. M'era Luna Festival, 2004: Covenant, Wolfsheim, The Mission, Lacimosa, In Extremo, Within Temptation...
7. Kraftwerk, Munich, 2004

Top TV shows I follow/often watch :
1. House MD
2. Project Runway Canada/OZ/US
3. Planet Earth/The Blue Planet
4. Top Gear
5. Time Warp
6. Long Way Round/Down
7. QI

Top films I watch when I feel lonely (artistic value not important):
1. About a Boy
2. Amelie
3. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
4. Ocean's 11
5. Lost in Translation
6. Under the Tuscan Sun
7. O Brother, Where Art Thou

Top albums I often listen to:
1. Soundtrack to Amelie
2. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
3. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call
4. Johnny Cash - Unearthed
5. Schiller - Weltreise
6. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
7. VNV Nation - Future Perfect

Top songs that defined the decade not on the top albums:
1. Moby - In My Heart
2. Arcade Fire - Wake Up
3. Nick Cave - Breathless
4. Herbert Grönemeyer - Der Weg
5. Sigur Ros - Glosoli
6. Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
7. Project Pitchfork - Jupiter

Top trips I made:
1. New Zealand, 2005
2. La Reunion Trekking, 2003
3. Morocco Trekking, 2004
4. Norway in winter, 2003
5. Istanbul, 2004
6. UK, 3 months in 2002
7. French Alps cycling and Tour de France (2002, 2003)

Amost there...

I'll just add some detailed photos of the Christmas cards I described in the previous post:

and then move on to this year's cards. I have already written about them .. twice! First when I received the fabric by Michael Miller and the second when I was working on them. But now, the finished product. Well, some of them:




Some of the cards were ironed and some not. And to me, the non-ironed seem almost better: softer, more 3-dimensional...


The fabric was sewn together and sewn onto blank cards. The inner side of the card now looks like this:
I know... the seams are not perfectly straight. But hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

Christmas is just around the corner

With Christmas being only a week away I will post about the Christmas Card I made... two years ago!

This year's cards still haven't been sent around and posting about them here would ruin the surprise - so I'm posting some old ones. Which were just as beautiful. But different.

(By the way: Last year's cards with the instructions how to make them could be found here.)

I started with blank coloured cards with matching envelopes and some stiffer white paper. Then I cut circles from the paper and poked holes in them. The main idea is to poke the holes in a circle - but not like a clock but with rather unevenly distributed. Of course you could make more (or less) holes but I found number 12 to be perfect (for symmetry reasons, 12 = 2x2x2x3, which allows for several different periodicities).


Then you find a matching thread and start "sewing". I could probably calculate how many different patterns can be made but let's just say: your imagination is the limit!


You can even combine two different colours in one circle:


Then I glued the circles onto the cards in a triangular shape to resemble a Christmas tree and put a more starry circle on the top of the tree:


Et voilà! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Photography

One of my greatest passions is photography. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to do it as often as I wanted to, but sometimes I find a couple of hours to do it. Like today. First the results:




Then the technical details: Nikon D80, Nikkor Micro 60mm, 2.8, 1/30s, remote flash, SB-800, tripod.

And finally, how I did it:



PS. In loving memory of my Mom. She passed away only four months after my Dad. She adored flowers and here favourite were tulips. Unfortunately, tulips were nowhere to be found in December so I got her some roses instead.

French Revolutions

I'll discuss a book "French Revolutions" by Tim Moore that has a lot to do with revolutions but nothing with the Revolution. In fact, it deals with around 60 revolutions per minute...

Yes, the book is about cycling. About an amateur who decides to ride the same track as the riders of Tour de France. Well, almost. He starts cheating almost as soon as he starts riding but nevertheless he manages to make 3000 km in a month! Chapeau! I wish I had the time to do this!

I found the book quite entertaining and enjoyable to read, especially as I know the places he writes about: Col d'Izoard, Col d'Aravis, Col du Lautaret, Col du Galibier. Yes, I know these places. And I know them pretty well:


A few years ago we even managed to follow two stages of the Tour: Les Deux Alps and Col du Galibier:


A crappy photograph but you can surely spot Lance Armstrong in yellow!

I'll finish with some interesting or funny random quotes from the book:

About France:
The surprise wasn't that there'd been a revolution, but that they'd waited until 1789 to have it.

[Talking about Loudun] A place where there was nothing to do and yet so much to be done.

Any place with "haut" in its name was to be avoided on gradient grounds.

One of the most unfortunate things about being an unfit Englishman cycling long distances in France is the number of signs that yell PAIN down every high street.

I had learned that Dax had paid the Societe du Tour de France one million francs to be a ville d'etape.

About heroes:
I learned about Wim van Est and his fall... They used spare tubes knotted together to rescue him! (source)



I learned about Eugene Christophe and the famous Tourmalet incident when he had to weld his bicycle together (the riders were responsible for their own repairs!) and was penalised because a boy pumped the bellows for him!

I'm very curious about how today's riders would cope with the Tour rules from over fifty years ago. That would be fun!

Work in progress

Don't you just hate it when you have the idea and you have the time to do something and then you run out of green thread and are unable to finish it? Argh.

A new bag for a new camera

Mr. Mojcek recently got a new mini pocket camera and needed a bag for it. So I went and bought some elastic velvet and used the remains of neoprene I still had from my laptop sleeve. First a pretty artistic image of the fabric:


I used magnetic closures, put a pocket on the front side for the memory card or spare battery. As the lines match perfectly, so you don't even see the pocket!


Even managed to pu my signature on it :-)

Soft sole baby shoes - part 2

I can't believe how quickly my son grows - and his feet with him. So I needed to make him a new pair of soft-sole leather shoes for the daycare. I used leather from an old jacket and some fleece (left-over from a blanket). Following the same instructions as for the last (at least six) pairs, I managed to make them in less than an hour. Way before I managed to grab my camera and document the process. Next time, I promise!

Piece by piece

I looove jigsaw puzzles. Unfortunately I don't have much time nor place to do them, but I still manage to do a little one now and then. So I did a 3D one, a 540 piece globe:


It took me two hours to the continents and the islands, and four or five to complete the oceans!




Here I am - here I wanna be!


I'll just add an old photo of the largest puzzle I ever made: a 9000 piece. My apartment wasn't big enough to make the whole puzzle at a time, so I made separate left and right half. Here's one:

Aprreciating appreciation

Following my previous post, the conference is now over and my hard work was nicely awarded by my boss. He appreciated my efforts and I appreciate his appreciation :-)

NanoToy

Another project for a customer - but this time the customer was me... does this count? Anyway, I was co-organising a conference and we needed a logo. I took my son's toy (brought by Mike from New York, thank you!) on a sunny day and photographed it. I loved the sharp shadows.


Notice the symmetries of the buckyball:


Do I need to say this was a conference on nanomaterials?


Different perspective:


And the final result:

Feeling patriotic

This is a project .. for a customer. The 'order' was to make something that relates European Union and law, so my idea was to symbolize the justice balance, the libra, with a mobile, balancing the flags of European countries.

All I needed were the flags:



a fishing line, some skewers and patience. An hour later, I had this:



It took me way longer to photograph this thing than to actually make it. I played a lot with the illumination, remote flash, diffuser, flash reflection, aperture... But I'm pretty happy with the results:

Surfin' www

I'm gonna be honest and include another activity that I do in my spare time - surfing the web. Here are links to some blogs or sites I follow more or less regularly:

My girly side:
Cake wrecks - when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.
Post Secret - confessions on life, death and God.
Etsy - my place to buy (not yet sell) all things handmade.

My other side:
The Big Picture - news stories in photographs by the Boston globe.
Dark roasted blend - weird and wonderful things.
Strange maps
Rebekka on Flickr.

Who-ho-hooo

I'm ready for Christmas!!!

Well, almost. I received a wonderful package full of Michael Miller Christmas fabrics so that theoretically I can start making Christmas cards! I know it's still September and in fact way to early and too warm to start thinking about December - but nevermind. I still have to decide whether I'm going to glue the fabrics together, or onto a blank card. I could also sew them entirely. Hmmmm, tempting!







I received my package from lovely and wonderful Spice Berry Cottage via Etsy.

More boy's trousers

I was so busy sewing this weekend that I forgot to take pictures while sewing so I only have photos of finished boy's trousers. If you remember, a while ago I posted a photo of Jersey fabrics: four different fabrics and a long way to go. Well, now I finished two pairs of trousers and plan to do four more. But first the photos of the ones already made.


Almost happy with these seams:


Crazy shadows:


Of course, my son should not forget that these were made just for him!

Boy's trousers

My little one enjoys running around and therefore needs comfortable trousers. These were made without a pattern, just approximate cut - and turned out superb! Made of striped cotton Jersey and a broad elastic in the waist.



Even the lines match perfectly!


The finished trousers.