LOVE, the world needs it!

LOLZ!

I already finished the Antler hat for Nicole from Australia:

Today when I got up I got on the scales: 85,4. If you can imagine there was a day when I weighed 127,8 kilo's, you can also imagine the sheer joy of today's number. With my height 85 kilos means I am no longer obese, just a tad bit overweight. No longer in the red zone so to speak. When I started out I couldn't even imagine weighing 85 kilos and somehow I got there. AND I am full of trust I will lose even more, since I'm shedding like mad since starting medication. Healthy weight for my height would be around 70 kilos. Seems like an unimaginable thing now, but knowing that 85 once felt like that... it opens possibilities...

The girl behind the register in the supermarket commented on how much she loved my coat! My new Noa noa coat! See: give love receive love! It is starting to work already!

I am really convinced that if you put out good and loving into the world, that is what you get back. Nicole deserves that hat. And I feel good by doing it.

Now to find a way to integrate that feeling at work.. that view on life... the world needs more love!

Good one :)

Today started out good, I took my sweet time to wake up, petted Mika. When at work I found that my ravelry friend Winterfi had given me the Ships and Seaside pattern I so wanted to have. It was on top of my wishlist!


What instigated this? Last night I saw a request from Nicole from Australia. She was looking for someone who wanted to make her the Deer antler hat by Tiny Owl Knits.

I offered to help her out. After a good nights sleep I decided I didn't want any money for it. I don't know how to receive money in paypal and I don't want to put in any time to find out either. So making it for good karma it will be! What comes around goes around...

And indeed it did, almost instantly: Winterfi gave the desired pattern. Thursday I will be heading to Amsterdam and I will buy the yarn!
And... this afternoon a package arrived: it was the Noa noa jacket I bought secondhand online. And it was perfect! Maybe a little tight for now, but as I am losing weight because of the medication it will work out fine. I did a little dance in front of the mirror when I put it on for the first time. It even smells nice!


I already made the antlers for Nicole's hat. Ears and main hat will be done tomorrow, assembly friday and blocking, it can be send saturday or monday! LOVE This kind of thing makes me happy!

ps: top two photo's are from Tiny Owl Knits. They are NOT my own!

Floating, dreaming.

Today at work I decided I could have go to the coffee room in the break. It was unnerving and I couldn't process everything happening around me. People are unsettled by my state of mind.

Still I was very proud of doing it. I went there, sat there, had a chat and survived.

When I got home the road at the back of my house was blocked. Neighbours are adding an extra floor to their house. It is a joy to watch, a giant crane is lifting the building blocks into place and all the walls will be up today. How exciting for the people who are gonna live there. It is coming together before my eyes. Like a giant construction box: DIY house. Like playing with lego but on a huge scale.

After I left school I went to the supermarket, they had a lot of new stuff and I took my sweet time to really inspect some of it. Some nice things found their way into my basket along the way. Supermarket trip becomes fairy wonderland, that is how it felt.

I bought Evi Vine's cd from iTunes today. It is gorgeous and dreamy and makes me feel like I'm floating my life.

Last week I didn't get into that Pippi Longstocking phase, work is what instigates it. Maybe it takes so much of me that afterwards the floatiness feeling kicks in to counter the harsh bits. Like a survival mechanism. I like it, makes me feels like a child in wonder of her own life. Joy in the small things like finding the last easter bunny chocolate in the discount bin...

Meet Mika!

Can't believe it took me a whole week to talk about my precious roommate: Mika.

Mika is a fuzzy wuzzy cat who I "rescued" out of the pound. She was born in a home with about 50 cats and 15 dogs. When the humane society took them all she was about one year old, never touched by humans and covered in a skin-bacterial infection. So she had to be shaved and rubbed with cream every day. When I met her she was shy to the bone and not very socialized. From my end it was instant love!
The first three weeks she stayed under the bookcase only to come out at night to eat. After those first three weeks she started to sleep in my bed at night, never to leave again.

Now, four years on she is the most fabulous loving kitty in the world. Still horribly shy but more social. She will never be a lapcat but she wakes me every day with a loud purr and head nudges. She always greets me by the door when I come home and snuggels up to me on the couch. She found in those years that she really loves to be petted and scratched.

When I was first taking my medication I was really dizzy all the time. One sunday evening as I was taking out the trash she followed me down the stairs to keep an eye on me. She never goes down the stairs she is scared shitless of the street sounds!

She is my soulmate in every way and we chat a lot between the two of us, especially when I am doing the dishes. She is a bit wack but maybe that is why we are so compatible. She is not the brightest of the bunch but neither am I. She is socially akward, as am I....

I love her sooooo much and spoil her rotten. There are weeks that I am eating bread and she still gets the good food. She is the ultimate couch diva! She knows she's pretty...

Strange days..Fun days...

Sometimes the day doesn't give you what you expected of it. Today I tried to embrace the weird turn of events.

At 7.30, yes 7.30 on a saturday, four men came into the backyard that my tiny appartement overlooks, they build some scaffolding and started to paint all the window frames! When I peeped my head out of the window my downstairs neighbour smiled at me and said: "surprise"!

So in one day they sanded, primed and painted all the window sill upstairs and downstairs. They did the same with my balcony doors and fence. They also did the shed (4 doors, a garage door and two dividing doors). My God they were like a hurricane of splendidness! Now everything looks shiny and new, happy, happy, happy.

At one point I had to leave the house ( couldn't handle the radio which was playing only Dutch music), so I went to feed the ducks. One of the ducks came so close I could put the bread in her mouth! She was at my feet... so cute.

When I walked past a few stately chestnut trees they were blossoming. I never really knew how pretty those blossoms look because I always rush by. Chestnut trees are cool. They look like big old grumpy men with their huge leaves. I love the leafs in autumn and then of course the chestnuts themselves with their armour with spikes! I took one blossom home and made a pretty picture:

It looks so frail and frayed, I love the pink middle of the petals and the bended stems. It is nice to take the time to really look at something.

After the workmen left at about four o'clock, I got an extreme case of cleaning. I dusted and vacuumed and mopped the floor and changed the bedding! Okay everything was dusty and the men kept walking in and out of my house and bedroom, but...
NO All Shall Be Cleaned! Must be a women's thing. Or it is part of my wackiness, that's totally possible too.

Took a nice shower made a great salad with avocado and cress. Nice day all in all...

OH, I bought a "furminator" comb for Mika. She loves it! It is this heavy looking comb with small blades in it. It cuts the fleecy bit but not the top hairs. The fleecy bit is what makes these nasty "dust bunnies" floating around the house this time of year. And Mika looks nice and shiny and content. Look how much fur came out:

Family

Slow start today and not in the good way...

BUT...

In the afternoon I took the bus to Tim (brother) and Cindy (sil). The bus trip wasn't too bad.
Mom and me baked pancakes for the whole family. Whole family is not that big in our case: mom, dad, Tim, Cindy, Ticho and me. It was fun! We decorated the pancakes with caramel syrup and sugar. We baked cheese pancakes and bacon ones. It was fun to be in the kitchen with all these people around, whom I love and know they love me.

I was planning of taking a photograph of the pancakes but they were too nice and we ate them all! We were eating outdoors in the beautiful garden. It was so nice...

Then Cindy's friends came in with joy and laughter and cakes because it was Cindy's birthday. She was very happy with the gifts I got her: a pandora bead with a butterfly, two pairs of home knitted socks and a black version of the Magic Treetop Bag.

It is nice to spend time with family in such a relaxed way.

Nyan Cat

Can't stop watching this; it's soooo cyoooot! Highlarious!

Roses are red... My hair is red, the weird device at the optician is red.

Today started good! I slept in till about ten 'o clock. Then I dyed my hair. It took two packages of dye, that's how long my hair is getting. That first day the color is gorge!

At about noon I had an appointment at the optician. I wear night contacts, that way my vision is excellent all day long. They are life savers 'cos for the life of me I wasn't able to wear neither soft nor hard lenses and my glasses just looked ugh on me. Every 6 months I have a check up. This time my left eye has gotten better! So my next set of lenses are "lighter". I did know your eyes don't get worse while wearing night contacts, but I didn't know they even good get better! Mister optician said it hasn't been proven but he sees it happen more often. Yay for my left eye! YAY!
I always like the check ups because of the cool devices they use on my eyes. One of these gadgets makes a map of the contour of your eyes. The thing looks like something from a Burton movie. All black and red circles and a blinking green one in the middle. It always makes me giggle when they use it. They must think I'm kinda weird over there....

And then! Then you can see your eye magnified on the computer screen and it looks like a map of some mountain with all the height colors and such! Did I say I like these check ups? I also like to see x-rays from my body... ooooh, those are my bones! Cool! I once even saw one of my brain, I should have asked a copy of that one, that one was mayor cool!

Then I went to the fish monger and chatted about salmon trout and "farmed fish" with the fish monger. He is cool, he looks like one of those old school fisher man with a beanie tucked up at the front. I always wait to be helped by him. He knows everything!

Sometimes I ask him stuff I have never heard of out of cookery books. Yesterday I bought two (yes TWO) Jamie Oliver cookbooks. Mr Oliver has made me a more adventurous cook, he uses some forgotten or simply unknown ingredients. He is to blame when I ask the fish monger about some obscure fish and the butcher for pieces of meat he has to prepare for me... "I'll have it for you tomorrow dearie, what you gonna make?" So thank you mister Oliver for making me a more adventurous cook. Today I made salmon-trout swedish style and I even liked the spinach. I never like spinach..

After the fish monger I bumped into Ina and she made me coffee and chatted about the trip to Paris she made this weekend. And she gave me apple pie. Note to self: NEVER eat apple pie again! It makes you sick every time!

By then it was about 2.30 and I went home and cleaned the toilet and the basin. I don't like doing that but I like the result. I also did the dishes and then I flopped down in front of the telly for some knitting.

Good one!

Happy Swappee from Finland

A few weeks back I entered a swap project from the Tiny Owl Knits group. Such loving and fun people reside in that group that it seemed like fun to join the Spring/ Summer swap. It's a secret swap so you have to stalk the other person to find out what she will like... I did some intense stalking I have do admit... smirk...

She made this Photo:

Today my Swappee got my package! And she loved it! Such a relieve! She even posted the most amazing pictures.. it made me soooo happy to make someone I've never met so happy! Intense..

I send her: A chinese teapot with tiny cups and a chines teaflower, a bar of tuscan soap (smells like summer), two skein of blue/green/deepbluesea color of drops alpaca, a skein of duckeggblue cotton I fished out of grandma's stash a while back (she mentioned somewhere she likes that color), seeds for sweetpea and a mix of seeds that attract butterflies, the pattern for the Free Rapunzel hat with two balls of Rowan drift and some vintage ribbon to make it, a photo I made in Indonesia of blue duck eggs, some keychains, a Rituals facial mask, and everything was gif-twrapped and tagged with these cute vintage brown tags I scored in the back of a scruffy bookshop. Oh! And she got one of the Magic Treetop Bags I blogged about in KnittyGritty!

It was a truck-load of fun to do! When I read her message thanking me I was bouncing in my chair with happiness! Good times!

Living history in the sun

Today I was supposed to go shopping with mom and sil. But my nephew was sick so the trip with Cindy (sil) was cancelled. Which sucked for her, sitting at home with a sick child instead of going on your birthday shopping spree...

I took mom to the "zuiderzeemuseum" instead. That is a GREAT open air museum in Enkhuizen, 20 minutes by train from our hometown Hoorn.

Mom actually remembered a lot of the things, like cooking on a petroleum burner and the gardens and the farm buildings. For me it was fun to hear her speak about these things from her early childhood.

The museum is gorgeous and worth the visit if you happen to find yourself in that little spot of our globe.

The sun was shining but the wind was blowing fierce and cold, even so,  it was nice to walk around in the sun and imagine life 100 years ago.

The life my grandmother lived.

Gained some great pics and lovely stories from mom and her memories of my grandparents.

Bliss...

Mom always takes the best pictures of me...

Walk the walk

This morning I started my day with a walk in the park. I saw a mother bird swimming with her chicks on her back. I fed the deer in the park some sugarsnaps and a huge lettuce. The park was filled with may-thorn bushes and they were all blooming. Last year I searched the park and thought I found one. Now I realise I was too early. I am now searching for a "vlier". I guess they will be a little later to bloom. I can get the lemonade this afternoon :)

These are a few of my favorite things

Yesterday was a bad day.
Today is gonna be better.

This is week 3 on anti depressant medication, it's going up and down. It will take another few weeks for the medication to "take".

So this blog will be my therapy.

Every day I will post something that was good about my day. If possible with photo's.

That way there will be no more (or less) bad days.