Category: life lately

yarn along

~ Maggie ~ 9 Comments

I’m joining Ginny’s yarn along today.

Knitting: I’m at the last part of the yoke of my sweater. I’ve been trying it on and it’s tight, but it does fit. Now I’m guestimating how to make a wide turtleneck (is that the right way to explain this? I want something that looks like a cowl on a sweater) with a little help from Elizabeth Zimmermann (Knitting without tears, I love that book).

Reading: Peter Tremayne, The Leper’s bell. My father loves these historic mysteries and keeps recommending them to me. This is the second one I’m reading and I’m still not sure if I share his opinion. I like the historic information that is added throughout the book (it’s set in Ireland in the Early Middle Ages), but sometimes it feels like it doesn’t really add to the story, but instead holds it up. Also I miss a feeling of connection to the main character. She doesn’t feel real to me. But then again, it’s quite entertaining. I am curious who stole the baby and why, so I’m sure I will finish it.

So what are you knitting and reading?

ten things that make me happy today

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

:: the gorgeous misty sunrise I witnessed this morning

:: looking back at a full but fun weekend

:: seeing the pile of bags I sewed this weekend (more on that later)

:: the bittersweet anticipation of our youngest girl moving out soon

:: family visits

:: thinking up a meal to cook for todays family visit, without having to drive to the supermarket.

:: remembering I planted four leeks in the garden. I think I’ll go and see if I can add those to my planned stir fry.

:: my oldest daughter being my hairdresser. I’ve never been disappointed after a dye or a cut since she took over.

:: autumn flowers

:: knitting (of course 😉  )

Wishing you all a wonderful start of your week!

Snapshot

~ Maggie ~ 5 Comments

I used to love Amanda’s “This moment” posts and be equally frustrated with them, as I never seemed to be able to catch a moment like she would. When I took this picture a few hours ago I was thinking this would be a good one to share on the blog. A moment! I thought excited. And I wondered if I could revive the Friday moment posts and… And then I realized it was not really a moment again.
It is a snapshot of my life right now though.
So that’s what I’ll call this. A snapshot.

(I’m not sure if it’s going to be a Friday thing or even a series of recurring posts. Looking back at the past few years of blogging I don’t think I’m in a position to make promises about regular posts anyway. I wish my older archives were ready to open up again, but they’re a big mess and I need to work on them a bit more.)

Yarn along

~ Maggie ~ 6 Comments

I’m joining Ginny’s yarn along today.

Knitting: a sweater for me. A not too baggy, but comfy and long sweater to go with leggings or skinny jeans. At least, that’s the plan.
The first try was from a pattern I used before, but it turned out way too big (my fault: I thought using thicker yarn and bigger needles in size XS would work, but it didn’t), so I frogged that.
This is the second try, winging my own pattern like I did with the purple and white sweater last year, but it seems a bit small. It does fit over my hips, so that’s a good start, I guess.

Reading: I don’t really feel up to any difficult reading lately, so I picked up a teenage favorite of mine. It’s from a Dutch writer, written in the 1930’s and I don’t think it was ever translated, but I love it. It’s 80 years old, but still very fun to read and actually quite relatable. I guess people didn’t really change that much, despite television and internet.

So what are you knitting (making) and reading?

October already?

~ Maggie ~ Leave a comment

Well, so much for picking up blogging again.
I do want to write real blogposts, but it seems I’m just too tired to find words (in a good way, we’ve been doing a lot of work around the house lately). So here’s just a few pictures I took in September. We’ll see how next month goes…

A good weekend

~ Maggie ~ 1 Comment

make puzzle, read, knit, repeat

a little roadtrip, diner with T, a short look at the sea, a visit to my parents

A little confession and a note to myself: I was so busy taking pictures that I kind of forgot to just be there and breathe for a while. That’s silly and I promise (to myself) I won’t let that happen again. I am savoring the short moment I did look at the sea without the camera though…

Rambling and some garden pictures

~ Maggie ~ 3 Comments

Well, it has been quite a while again, hasn’t it? What can I say… I actually have been really busy. I don’t know what I was thinking, I really like my summers to be quite lazy, but it happened.

It started with that last post about photography. I was hatching some plans to do more with it (yes I know, I said I wouldn’t, but it seems inevitable to go there everytime I really try to reconnect with my camera), so I set up a blog just for photography, explored how to sell prints, did a lot of shooting and editing. And then… well, I got overwhelmed (and disappointed in my abilities, but that’s another story).

I came to a place were I realized that maybe I should choose between writing and photography, because both take a lot of time and I also have my family, my house, my garden and my bookkeeping to take care of. But I couldn’t choose. While I love photography, writing is also very important to me. And that set me off on a whole lot of ideas to do more than just write a book and then wait for my publisher to send me a (tiny) cheque.

To grow my public I decided I needed to connect with readers, build a “tribe”, give something back. I wrote a story that will be published in short episodes, I designed and wrote a newsletter that will have extras for my subscribers and I wrote a list of ideas to revive my Dutch blog, focussing on writing, not my personal life.
And of course I thought it would be fun to start all that on September 1st. You know, since I like a good deadline.

Anyway, my summer was busy. So maybe it was a good thing that we hardly had a real summer until now. We’ve had an amazing amount of cold, wet days. There were also good days, but always just one or two, before it started raining again..
Right now I am (almost) done preparing for those September ideas (all in Dutch, sorry – I am contemplating translating some of my short stories, but that will take time). And somehow nature decided to give us a bit of summer after all. Forecasts are actually good for the next two weeks.

So… here’s to the rest of summer. And to taking pictures that won’t sell, but that will remind me of the good times.

Oh wait, that’s what I actually set out to put into words (I got sidetracked obviously). While I was working on my Dutch blog, I was also thinking about this one, it’s very few readers and what to do with it. And I realized (again) I really want to continue it to be what it always has been. some knitting, some sewing, some gardening, some family fun, some rambling about being too busy and about me trying to savor summer…

Well, so now I wrote all these words and I guess all I really want to say is: here are some garden pictures 😉

playing with my camera ~ Gouda

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

I guess most of my long-time readers know by now that I love to take pictures. In fact I think if things had been different when I was young (I was the responsable oldest who wouldn’t dare choosing an “artsy” career) I would have gone to a school of photography.

Oh well, it’s no use thinking about what could have been. I would have missed out on other great stuff if I had chosen that path (like meeting my husband). I’m lucky to have two good (though older) cameras and some time on my hands to play with it. (Let’s call it playing, cause everytime I state I want to do “something more” with my photograpy it ends up being no fun at all).

Today I purposely took the big camera with me when I went grocery shopping and I made a detour to visit the antiques market in Gouda to take some pictures there. You know, because I tend to stick to the flowers in my own garden and I needed a bit of a challenge.
Well, a challenge it was. I learned a lot by viewing my pictures and discarding almost all of them.

Buildings. I can do those, I know that. But I think in a city that is so well known it’s hard to take a picture that isn’t already been sold as a postcard. I keep trying to find interesting angles.

But people? Oh man… I need to practice. Both my skills at the camera and my skills at just being there and doing it. I always feel like an intruder when I see people’s faces -… okay, when I see any people at all – in my viewer, but I have to admit that the ones that have faces are actually the best of them all.

Also? Lighting. I really need to study lighting. There were some pictures that had a good composition, but the lighting was way off (the interesting parts were in the dark). I know there is a way to make the camera choose a different point to measure, but I never used that setting before.

The one below is one of those pictures, to dark and taken too hastily. I tried to rescue it, but the colors were way off (my photoshop skills aren’t that great either). I think it’s kind of nice in black and white, but it would never pass as a professional photo. It does have something that speaks to me though…

So, let’s try that again soon 😉

Right now I am…

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

… thinking about the lovely fabrics I bought lately and what I want to make with them

… sitting in a bedroom that needs a thorough dusting and cleaning

… telling myself to get to that first

… looking back on a wonderful weekend

… looking forward to a wonderful summer

… planning to fully enjoy every bit of sunshine we get (today? raining again, but they say by the end of the week we’ll get good weather)

… also planning to have fun inside (sewing!) when it’s raining (after getting rid of all that dust, that is)

… wishing you all a wonderful start of your week