THE PEACH DRESS

This peachy/salmon pink dress is one of my favourite dresses. I've always had a thing for shirtwaist dresses and this one has pockets as well which kind of seals the deal. I bought it at a vintage store in Berlin when we were there with Eddi in 2010.

But -there's always a but - it is a bit too tight over the chest and is now hopefully next to my sewing machine waiting for alteration!

The top always was a bit on the smaller side and I'd often wear a slip of lace top underneath in order to be able to keep the buttons opened as far down as possible. But nowadays it just makes me look stuffed, so I can't really rely on that trick anymore.

I have been thinking about how to alter it to add spaced around the bust; adding a strip of fabric in the middle of the dress, under/next to the decorative panel that runs vertically across the top, or make it diamond shaped or so? Or do I just add more fabric from under the arms? The dress it's rather well made so I am afraid to fck it up. Any sewing wizards out there with advice?

DRESS-FIX: FROM SLEEVES TO POCKETS

One of my favourite clothing revamps is to turn sleeves into pockets!

If there's a piece of clothing in your closet that you for one reason or another have not worn in some time there comes a moment when you need to take it out and decide if you should do something about it or pass it on.

 I have a dress originally from Shabby Apple that I have not worn for almost three years (since Dag was a baby, oh man, how was he ever that tiny!!), although I like it.

It used to have long sleeves, but I always found that a bit hard to use, so I eventually chopped them off into short sleeves to solve the problem. I did not sew the edges of the new sleeves but folded them up and over with curtain tape for a seamless, folded finish. However, the sleeve was rather puffy and puffy sleeves make my arms look huge, so I did not end up wearing the dress any more than before anyway.

 But, as it is summer and as I have been coveting different striped shirt waist dresses here and there I decided to make this one totally wearable and awesome again! This by taking the sleeves off and turning them into pockets! This is something I have in line for a couple of other dresses too.

(If you wonder why I keep going on about pockets this and pockets that it is for practical reasons -  phone and car keys when out with a toddler and moving around in and out of the big house on the farm. Nothing beats clothing with pockets when you tend to wear mainly skirts or dresses)

 So just open up the seams and remove the sleeves.
Fix the edges around the sleeve holes.

 Cut pockets of the old sleeve.

Pin them in place - this was the hardest part here as the skirt is pleated; to get the pockets nicely over the pleats without ruining the shape of the skirt.

Sew them in place and voila! An almost new wonderful summer dress!


Wooh!

However, although I can be rather sciccors-happy my advice before revamping or cutting in any clothing you have is to think twice about it; I have sometimes made quick choices on what I wanted for the moment without thinking what was best for the garment itself, and then later regretted it. Obviously you can't always win as fashion and your own preferences change with time, but you can give everything a good though first.

LEMON AND LIQUORICE

I got some fabric and some ideas and thought I'd sew myself some stretchy dresses now for the warmer season - I have come to notice very few of my actual dresses get any "screen time" due to the fact that I am the mother of a toddler. But you know my thesis, comfy and practical can be just as nice as something fancier if worn the right way.

I have a piece of yellow faric and a black lace appliqué I am going to turn into a simple pull-on dress. Before I reach for the scissors I have to make up my mind though, weather should I go for

A) a straight dress
B) an A-line, perhaps a bit shorter dress or
C) a dress with a flared hem.

Hmm hmm hmm. What do you think?

CHRISTMAS JARS.

Well you know me. I like it if it has pockets, or if it's on wheels. And, there's a third thing: jars. Jars are awesome because you can put stuff in them. Which is indeed what they are intended and were invented for (said with a Sherlock-ish voice).

You may recall me using jars as a packing for gifts, both edible and non-edible, some Christmases ago. Or the cookie gift jars; you can add the ingredients for a recipe in the jar, like cookies, and write the how-to on a card.  The cookies can then, once baked, also be stored in the jars. This year I'll be making some of those go baking-jars as a present to families with kids, but also filling some up with dried fruit and chocolates. It's an easy gift in you are in a hurry, or if you don't know what else to give to someone who has everything. (*Last minute advice*)


I went over to the big furniture house from our western neighbour, because they have tie right kind of nice jars. My suggestion is to use jars of one litre, but they were out of those and only had small ones of 1,5L left. It's nice with big jars though. But they do eat a lot of stuff so be sure to get enough filling!

A LITTLE SOMETHING BEHIND THE EAR

I made my showgirl colleague Tinker Bell and me some small modest hair flowers for the event we are throwing and hosting tomorrow.

Or, small and modest as in huge and over the top and self lit. The pieces are inspired by my friend Frollein von Sofa, who has made hats with lights and flowers on them. I attached small led-christmas lights with flowers on felt and put clips under.

Otherwise I'd tell you to come see our show tomorrow to get to see these in worn on stage but I won't since we are -oh yes- sold out. Yey! If you were lucky to get a ticket in time, see you there!

BARE BULBS

We have an old ceiling light in the countryside dining room that I always thought was a bit blah. (As you now, just because something is vintage doesn't automatically make it awesome). But it had been in the house for long, so it's not something you change just like that. When we renovated we took the lamp shades away and I noticed the lamp looked much better, in a fun kid of way, with only the light bulbs there.


The shades themselves were not that ugly but some of them a slightly broken plus they made the lamp rather uninteresting and, well, sort of stupid.

For some time I couldn't find any decent looking energy saving bulbs  (as the original ones are not around anymore). Most new ones have a different, white base and smaller bulb instead and for the whole thing to work they have to look like the traditional ones. But, I found some, it worked out . (And later noticed that the internet would have been full of such. Well for course it is, it's the interwebs after all..).


I thought this was a contemporary twist on an old object but then I saw a glimpse of a ceiling light just like this, with bare bulbs, on Boardwalk Empire too. I guess they've done their homework so some have apparently kept their lamps this way back in the days too...

RED LIPS AND A WINK

'Tell me a story'-heels from Modcloth.

And their sweater twin. (From Sheinside.)

Plus their purse cousin (or cousins, as there are several in the series)  from Lulu Guinness.

I actually got the sweater out of a sudden idea to kind of look like it and wear it with waved hair peeping out of a black - or possibly red - beret, red lips and pair it with tiny black hotpants, dark tights and chunky heels. Would have made a nice combo;  I thought the knit would be kind of oversized and hang loose on my shoulders. Which it didn't. It was kind of fitted and with the fluffy mohair it made me feel like an albino orangutang instead. So I'll pass that look onto some tiny tiny petite person instead :)

TUBE FLOWERS

Eddi had an antique set of test tubes just "lying around" on a shelf collecting dust and random stuff on it. I put it on the window sill and turned it into a vase for summer flowers instead.

BOTANICAL

Among those things you plan forever and one day actually get done, or almost:

Apart form the raspberry wallpaper that had been lurking in my head for years I also had the idea forever of framing old pages from a biology book and putting them up in the countryside kitchen. The past years I've seen such posters and pages more and more in magazines and interior blogs. I had checked out plenty on etsy and such, both old and newly printed, but the whole thing kind of lingered.

Now I don't even want such for the (new) kitchen anymore, I have new plans for what to put on those walls, but some time ago I stil grabbed the old idea and ordered a few random pages from an old botanical book via Lundagård. Will put these pictures elsewhere, somewhere.

At about the same time Ikea started selling similar pictures too, already framed... well of course they did. (pic from Ikea)

Sandberg also has a wallpaper with the theme, Botanica. Beautiful, but for a swooning 407e (!!? read it in a mag but must have been a typo?) per roll I think I'll just stick to old book pages in frames. From ikea. Or glue them directly to the wall like that. Why not, if the space allows it? (pic form Sandberg)

THE SIENCE OF A POM POM AND THE PAIN OF CRAFTING

As I only had about three hundred other things to do I decided to make us some pom poms the other night, I had had some yarn waiting for this moment for some time. (How annoyig of a person does that not sound like? "I have lots of things to do, but I feel like making pom poms! Tralalala!")

But as it was propably twenty five years ago since I last made such I needed to consult google before getting started. If you suddenly get a pom-pom urge, here's how to:

You need to cut two circles with holes in the middle (like a donut) out of cardboard (or, I even saw they had ready made plastic pom pom rings on the hobby department in the big store but hey, come on...) - I cut up an old cat food box. I made a couple of sizes.

Then you spin your thread, you can use many at once, round both cardboard donuts, cut the threads up in between the donuts, put a string in and tie firmly before removing the cardboard. Zippa-dee-doodah, ze pom pom is ready!

As soon as I started cutting the cardboard I remember how much I actually hate crafting. Or not hate, but how much it frustrates me. It's messy, and if the result does not look pro-made, which it seldom does as I don't craft often enough, I get pissed off. I thought spinning the thread around and around would perhaps be meditative or so (as much meditative something can get with a baby, two very intense cats and two older boys with their computer games at home can get) but it was in fact not. And nowhere on the world wide consulting web did anyone say how long you should cut your threads or what would be the best way to spin them in order not to get all messed and knotted up or take forever to spin. Really, was this as annoyig when I was five years old?

I noticed that buy cutting away part of the circle spinning was faster and I was able to spin'em straight from the roll clew. But then the pom poms went bazookas when cut up and turned out all miffo as they wouldn't stay together long enough for me to tie them tight.

But shame on the ones with hundreds (alright, tens)  of meters of yarn to go who gives up! I went trough the pain of cutting some more cardboard and realized the best way was just to cut the donut open, not remove a slice, and tilt the pieces a bit so the ring could be fastened to a whole circle again for the cutting up phase. Pompom science here. Perhaps that's the way we did our pompelipoms when I was a kid too; maybe this is the way to go, but ze interwebz failed to tell me. Well now you now.

Then they started turning out al righ and fastt: pom poms, yeah!

When a lot of time had passed by I had a hellofalotta pompoms and it looked like a kindergarten class on a sugar rush had been all over the place.

But yeah, all the pom poms. They'd look good in a christmas tree for example, hanging one by one. Or as a garland. But I wanted to make a wreath out of mine. I know there are ready-made different wreath-bases to buy, but I would never come up with the idea to actually go somewhere to buy one. Instead I had to go the experimenting way, which obviously would not turn out as fancy as would I have had one of those making-life-easier-ready-made-base ones. I fastened mine on a ring cut out of cardboard, or thick paper actually; the only thing big and thick enough I could find after a bit of annoying searching time was a piece from a goodie bag I'd received.

I tied my poms to the ring I'd cut out, then glued a second paper ring onto that, and finished off with a bit of mexican oilcloth to make the wreath a bit sturdier. And to look nice on the backside. Which no one of course will ever see.


And ta-fucking-da, there it is on the door! Would make any mother-of-the-eight-year old who made it proud. Where that the case. I can say Dag made it. A total prodigy.

So much text about fluffy yarn balls. No but really, it turned out rather cute. And who doesn't love pom poms after all? Plus believe it or not, afterwards I even made some more of those as it was going fast and easy it almost was terapeutic rollig all that yarn after all.

Now I just need to invite some people over to admire that wreath while waiting for me to open the door (must linger a bit hehe); we live on the top floor with only two neighbors. So no one will really see it. But thank god for the internet, right?!

BEDSIDE, ON WHEELS

 I've changed those small vintage side tables we had as night tables to trollies instead.

Although the tables looked nice, they  didn't have a lot of surface and instead of looking like they should (like this: here, and here -yes, some of hte books are the same. But I read others inbetween instead!)...

...they had been a mess lately. In fact, it's been quite messy at everywhere home the whole winter as I have had no extra time for anything and also have been rather tired, so anything that will get me more organized and leave me more floor space is welcome.

Now I have three levels for my things to store on less floor space than before! Hopefully they'll keep in order... As the trolley is easily moveable I can now use the drawers under the bed with less effort than before.

I got Eddi one too. I originally intended the trollies for our kitchen and for the countryhouse kitchen but then it struck me they had a more important task to fill. (The cat lamp does not really sit well on the trolley, but I have other plans for it already. For the baby. Somewhere.)

The metallic trolley (which btw is MINTGREEN (whoah!, in case you did not notice :) is from ikea. I was stalking their site every day after spotting it in a interior magazine, until I saw they were available in the store and then rushed over. I had started seeing the trolley in lots of interior blogs the days before and had to hurry before those bitches went and bought up my trollies!

I am now on a quest to organize and tidy a lot in the house before the baby comes. One thing is to make more space in the bedroom, to fit the baby bed... I will thus exchange the floor lamp to a vintage lamp that will hang from the wall above the bed; we have the lamp already waiting to be brought into town from the country house.  But more on that later.

LA BELLE DÉCADENCE

For some time last year I had this idea of a stage costume, that would also include big flat fans.

An idea that we early in autumn developed into a project:

That some months later, this February, turned into this:

Photo by Kaylin Idora.

By Atelieri O.Haapala. (You saw the other portrait just recently too)

And this, on stage:
(the last picture might be considered nsfw. But you can always call it art...)

(I just love our faces here!)

Sepia toned photos by Emiliano Melandri,  coloured shots by Jari B.Miettinen.

You'll see this (and another act) in Milan in a couple of weeks!
That will most likely be my last show before my burlesque-mommy leave starts.