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!