73 % successful!

As 2013 is coming to an end it's time to see how successful I was with my resolutions:

- move (100 % success),
- publish two books (47 % success),
- travel more (50 % success),
- sell a house (0 % success, complete fail!),
- finish reading Agatha Christie (100 % success),
- get a bit of my old self back (40 % success).

73 % in average.
Not too bad, right?

Candle making

This year I decided to make some candles.

I've never made them before but it looked easy - and so it was! Just melted paraffin wax, added stearin and colours and poured them into molds. I didn't use ordinary molds but Moroccan tea glasses, which are tremendously pretty :-)

I made orange ones in red and orange glasses:

And blue and green candles in blue and green glasses, respectively.

White Christmas!

Well, we have no snow but we still have a white Christmas!

And for the first time, we have a proper Christmas tree, with lights!

And of course home-made Christmas cookies!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas Cards 2013

Now that all the Christmas cards are on their way, I can finally write about them. This year I played with cut-outs and made multy-layered snowflakes. All the designs were based on photographs of real snowflakes!

The colours were my choice, of course, but I tried to keep them ... wintery.

I just wish there was some real snow!!!

Home-made rowing machine

Just to make things clear - I did not make a rowing machine.

MrMojcek made it.

I just helped with the design, ideas, details, and execution :-)

 And I use it!

Penguins!

... and more curtains! These were made for the kids' room.

And I love the continuous pattern - you can hardly notice where one curtain stops and the other one starts.

Enough curtain posts for now -  I'm off to watch a film.

Poirot's Curtain :-)

Lego Advent calender

This year I decided to make advent calenders by myself. I even asked the kids what kind of calenders they wanted - sweets, toys, or activities.

They chose toys.
Of course.
But the old one added that he didn't choose activities because he would be getting those anyway :-)

So ... I bought two Lego sets, distributed the bricks into 24 packets (and cut the instructions accordingly) and now they're opening one packet at a time.

Surprisingly, they cheated only once so far :-)

More curtains...

No, I'm not obsessed with curtains but I just don't like staring into the empty darkness - or dark emptiness - late at night...

These are the ones I have recently installed in my work/hobby room.

Chocolate and coconut truffles

You know the feeling when you just have to eat something? And you want it to be good and homemade? Well, I do.

So last week I felt inspired and made some Chocolate and coconut truffles. Main ingredients are crushed biscuits, butter, chocolate powder, icing sugar, vanilla, rum and, obviously, coconut.

They were gone in no time!

Seeing hexagonal...

... but not revealing the Christmas-cards mystery just yet :-)
 

But I'm glad that 24 cards are finished so that I can finally clean the table and start working on something else.

Leopard Kimono

When I started this blog, I said I'd show "an occasional penguin". I promise there will be more penguins coming soon but now it's time for an occasional leopard.

Not just an ordinary leopard - a leopard kimono!

Made as a birthday present for a friend of mine.

And the winners are ...

So, this is it. I've read all crime novels written by Agatha Christie.

I've looked and relived so many (fictional) lives, met so many (fictional) characters, loved some, hated others, some bored me and some intrigued me ... I've met some that I would really like to meet in person, some that I would most probably fall in love with them, some that I would find terribly annoying and some that I would avoid at any cost.

I've also relived the majority of the twentieth century. Starting in a Downton-Abbeyesque England, witnessed pre-, through-, and after-WWII Europe and finished in the seventies. I've travelled through Middle East and - I've learned a lot of old English nursery rhymes!

As you know, I've rated all the books. The points were given for mystery, solution, and entertainment factor. Especially the last one is not often considered when looking for the best crime novel, but I read books for fun, so fun-factor is important to me. Sorry, hard-core-serious-literature fans.

Oh, one more thing should also be said in advance (before you disagree with my ratings): my itchy feet make me love more the adventurous books and less the static psychological contemplations.

Anyway, the winners are ...

THE BEST BOOK: And Then There Were None. 
Runners-up: Murder of Roger Ackroyd, N or M?, The Seven Dials Mystery

THE BEST MYSTERY:

And Then There Were None,
The ABC Murders,
Murder of Roger Ackroyd,
Why didn't They Ask Evans?,
The Seven Dials Mystery,
N or M?

THE MOST UNPREDICTABLE SOLUTION:
And Then There Were None,
Murder on the Orient Express,
Hercule Poirot's Christmas,
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side,
The Pale Horse,
The Seven Dials Mystery,
The Mystery of the Blue Train,
Murder of Roger Ackroyd,
The Mysterious Affair at Styles,
Parker Pyne Investigates,
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case.

MOST FUN TO READ:
And Then There Were None,
The Secret Adversary,
N or M?,
The Secret of Chimneys,
A Caribbean Mystery,
Nemesis,
4:50 from Paddington,
The Man in the Brown Suit,
Parker Pyne Investigates,
They Came to Baghdad.

I know that some of you will not agree with me. That Orient Express should be on top of the list. But it's not. Just like Another Brick in the Wall is by far not the best song, just best known.

So, if you only read one Agatha Christie novel, read And Then There Were None, not the Orient Express.

Although I strongly suggest you read them both.

Hell, read them all!

That's it!

I finished reading Agatha Christie's novels!

Well, OK, not really, cause I still have the Mary Westmacott romances and the two autobiographies to read but they don't really count, do they? I will certainly read them in the next months but they won't be judged ...

83. The Mysterious Mr Quin
A quite unusual collection of short stories featuring the mysterious Mr. Harley Quin. He always appears just at the right moments before drama begins and helps solving the problems without actually helping... I quite liked the stories, except the last one. Unfortunately, this was the last Agatha story that I read and it's a shame I didn't like it. Oh, well ...

Memorable quotes:
-"A problem is not necessarily unsolvable because it has remained unsolved."
-"There is no atmosphere in the present."
-"Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong."
-"Life is lived very much the same everywhere [...] It wears different clothes - that's all."
-"It makes one feel terribly old to have a grown-up daughter."
-"Daughters have a depressing effect upon one, I find." 
-"He wished the world had not become definitely so noisy." 

Favourite Guest Character: Mr Satterthwaite!
Favourite Stories: The Coming of Mr Quin and The Man from the Sea
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ***
Entertainment: ****
10/15

A short (statistical) summary on all the books will follow shortly.

Craft table!

I have a new table! Just for me, for my crafts, for sewing, drawing, painting, creating ... whatever.

I first bought a solid beech kitchen worktop, painted it with three coats of wood stain (earthly brown, Nr. 68 from Belinka) and one coat of colourless varnish.

I added only two legs, the other two were replaced with two Ikea's 2x2 Expedits. However, my sewing machine would not fit into the shelves, so I altered them a little and added the required height on one side.

:-D

22 meters...

22 meters of gorgeous fabric.

Some simple sewing and the curtains for our new home are ready.

Well, almost ready, four down, eight to go ...

My absence...

... is excused.
We've moved.
I've become an auntie.
I'm currently away.

A simple skirt

Although summer seems to be over, it's still time to write about a skirt I recently made and happily wore in the second half of the summer. A very simple simple Jersey skirt, just the side seams and an elastic band, but it's the pattern that makes the skirt one of my favourites.

I've been wearing it with a blue T-shirt and a Maori necklace :-)

Almost there ...

82. HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS (Poirot)
Usually there's a black sheep in the family but Simeon Lee's family seems to have more black sheep than white ones! A grumpy old man who loves diamonds hopes for some 'fun' when he invites all his children to a Christmas party. With such a melange of characters, something is bound to go wrong. Will the police find the murderer or must Poirot help them identify the killer?

Memorable quotes:
-"If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it."
-"All men are wicked. The nuns say so ."
-"I do notice things. It's a habit of mine." 
-"Les femmes, they are never slow to form an opinion, Dieu merci." 

Favourite Guest Character: Pilar
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: *****
Entertainment: **
10/15


81. EVIL UNDER THE SUN (Poirot)
A great story to read in the middle of the summer: the sun, the sea, the holidays, beaches and boats... and a murder. A great classic from Agatha.

Memorable quotes:
-"There is no such thing as a really calm sea. Always, always, there is motion."
-"He was accustomed to think of The Husband in three lights only - as 'the Obstacle', 'the Inconvenience' or 'the Safeguard'."
-"Les Femmes. [...] They are capable of complicating life unbearably."  
-"Women always keep letters and then swear they've burnt them."

Favourite Guest Character: Hm. Emily Brewster
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ****
11/15


80. THE HOLLOW (Poirot)
What happens if you invite someone, his wife and his mistress to your home? Another mistress bursts through the doors! Not a simple situation and sometimes a little help from your friends is just not enough to fool Poirot.

Memorable quotes:
-"It was nice, she thought, to be a human being again ... and not that other thing."
-"The past  is sometimes a very good place to live."
-"How cynical it is that a wife or a husband is always the first suspect." 
-"To the scientific mind, truth comes first."

Favourite Guest Character: Lucy Angkatell
Mystery: ****
Final Solution: ***
Entertainment: ****
11/15


79. A POCKET FULL OF RYE (Marple)
 A pocket full of rye, four and twenty blackbirds, a peg, yew, cyanide, Percival and Lancelot. And another blackbird.

Memorable quotes:
-"I find one must know how to do everything oneself. Then - one need never do it."
-"You can't change people."
-"People aren't always what they think themselves to be." 

Favourite Guest Character: Hm.
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ***
Entertainment: *
7/15

The after-party

Returning home from a journey isn't quite the end yet. One still has to sort all the photos, the tickets and postcards, maybe even make a Google Earth visualisation of the tour ... send the photos to other participants!

It's about time I start finishing my Lycian journey that I did in May.

But it's not an easy task!

Sloooowly moving

Don't you just love moving someplace new? Well, we're technically not yet moving as the floors aren't ready yet but I'm already packing all our stuff and transporting it to the house. And boy, I love doing this!

Not only because something is finally happening but also because you go through all your possessions... books, clothes, stashes of fabric, slides, CDs, letters ...

You discover so many things you totally forgot about, dig up old diaries (and of course read them before putting them into a box), find old letters (read them as well), go through all the unfinished projects (and immediately decide to sew a few things, starting today), spend the day playing excellent music from the nineties, go through all the coffee table books (an remember for each and every one where you got it) and read all the dedications ... and spend hours and hours going through all the dresses and remembering on which occasion you wore them ...

And I can't remember when I last saw an empty shelf in this apartment!

Approaching the end ...

78. THE MIRROR CRACK'D FROM SIDE TO SIDE (Marple)
A famous yet miserable actress, a friendly but annoying neighbour, a successful albeit deadly party and ... peace at last.

Memorable quotes:
-"After you've fallen in love with a man and married him and got used to his ways and settled down comfortably - to go and throw it all up and start again! It seems to me madness."
-"... bossy women seldom get themselves murdered. I can't think why not. When you come to think of it, it's rather a pity."
-"Children feel things, you know ... They feel things more than the people around them ever imagine. The sense of hurt, of being rejected, of not belonging." 

Favourite Guest Character: Jason Rudd, probably
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: *****
Entertainment: ***
11/15


77. THE THIRTEEN PROBLEMS (Marple)
Two groups of people challenge each other by telling mysteries - but of course only Miss Marple is able to give the correct answer. Mostly because the people everywhere are very much alike and by knowing the psychology of everyone in St. Mary Mead, she can solve just about any problem. Even the ones that haven't happened yet!

Memorable quotes:
-"... so many people seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly."
-"Everybody is very much alike, really. but fortunately, perhaps, they don't realize it."
-"I love stories about sinuous Spanish dancers. It makes me forget how old and fat I am." 
-"This is real life; and real life stops just where it chooses."
-"But there are quite a number of people who aren't stupid, and one shudders to think of what they might accomplish unless they had very strongly rooted principles."

Favourite Guest Character: Jane Helier, the actress
Favourite Stories: The Blue Geranium, The Affair at the Bungalow, The Bloodstained Pavement ...
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ***
10/15


76. ENDLESS NIGHT
Gypsy's Acre, poor Michael, rich Ellie, love at first sight, an eccentric architect, a wonderful house, murder, murder, murder, murder  ... A very enjoyable novel with a great narration by Michael.

Memorable quotes:
-"Two things run together, side by side. Weakness and strength. The weakness of fading vitality and the strength of frustrated power."
-"If a girl is going to have any sense at all, she'll have it at twenty-one."
-"Mothers are like that. Always inclined to be suspicious of daughters-in-law." 
-"Faces are tricky unless you can connect up when and where you'd seen them."
-"Where large sums of money are concerned it is advisable to trust nobody."

Favourite Guest Character: Michael Rogers
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ***
10/15

Sour cherry cake

What do you do if you have a large sour cherry tree growing in your garden? You can't really eat sour cherries - at least I can't - but I can surely make a cake. Basic chocolate sponge cake, sour cherries and filling made of yogurt, cottage cheese, gelatin (and vanilla, sugar, lemon juice, and cream). Delicious!

I really need to find another way to use those sour cherries, I can't make dozens of cakes!

Watching Le Tour!

I've always been a fan of Tour de France. I admired the athletes, I watched some stages live, cycled some of the mountain passes they did, admired the athletes even more and last but not least, enjoyed the scenery every single time. There is just something special about France.

So I was really excited to learn this year's route start on Corsica and visits plenty of familiar places! I'll try and dig up some old photographs from my very numerous and enjoyable visits to France.

Porto Cervo:

Arles (they had much nicer weather than we did:

Montpellier:

Baa Baa Sheepillow

What do you do when you meet someone who really likes sheep?

a) get to know her better, grow close and have lots of fun with her
b) accept the invitation and stay at her place
c) feel really bad for not writing to her for over a month
d) instead of writing an email, you make her a little present.

Well, I've done it all.

And this is the sheepillow I made for her:

I even managed to match the pattern around the zipper. Yay, me!

Now I just hope die Deutsche Post delivers it before she reads this post!

Monkey see, monkey do!

Two weeks ago, I was making pouches for MiniMojcek Nr.2's kindergarden teachers. Now it was time to make something for the teachers of MiniMojcek Nr. 1!

We got them some really lovely stuff but I wanted to add something personal. And since their class was the class of monkeys, I wanted to make something monkey-related. did you expect anything else?

Luckily I had some monkey-fabric at home, so I just cut the squares, glued them to the bag with a double-sided fabric glue tape and then sewed them onto the bag. The teachers were happy and so was I. Not to mention how proud MiniMojcek Nr.1 was that his mom did the bags for his teachers!

 

Happy summer holidays!

On the road again :-)

Not my typical destination but following the advice from a friend we're here and we're not disappointed. In fact, we quite like it here :-)

More pouches!

Remember two years ago, I made some fully lined zippered pouches based on this tutorial? This year I'm in charge of the end-of-the-year presents for MiniMojcek Nr.2's kindergarden teachers. Instead of buying something, I decided it would be much nicer to give them  home-made pouches. So ... here they are. First I had to find appropriate fabric and zippers:

Since there are two teachers, I got two fabrics:

Sewing them is actually fun!

And here they are. Each teacher will get a small and a large one: 

I hope they will like them as much as I do!