Roses for Ronja

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This weekend I did some sewing. I bought a delicious Hilco velvet a few weeks ago at Dots N Stripes – who are having a sale at the moment. There’s still a few months of winter left in Denmark, so it’s not too late to make a nice and warm dress for Ronja, which is what I did. It’ll be great for our chilly spring as well – oh, just thinking about spring! :)

 

I have been looking at the fully lined “Betty” pinafore dress from Ottobre 06/07 a few times, but earlier the number of pattern pieces kind of scared me, so it took me a while to work up the nerve. However, with this fabric it seemed like an obvious choice, so I decided to go for it.

The dress did present a challenge to me, I assure you. I haven’t tried making pleats before, so that was something new - but that wasn’t really what I found difficult. The cursing started while I was making the pockets. Gathering the pockets and attaching the binding was terrible -  probably because I chose to make the bias tape for the binding from a very light weight quilting cotton. Next time I would definitely go with something more sturdy – a medium weight would do it, I believe. The binding continued to give me trouble, due to the light weight fabric, which was a bit of an agony. Also, I seem to never be quite sure as to how to finish the binding at the ends – folding it under, around, or whatever. I think it ended up looking ok, but it has a few imperfections (yep, that’s what I choose to call them) on the inside of the dress.

I gotta tell you though, on the positive side, one of the highlights of making this dress was the zipper. For Christmas I got an invisible zipper foot for my Pfaff 2027, and even though you do still have to make sure everything’s aligned and stuff like that, it just totally takes care of the most difficult thing about attaching the zipper for you – well, almost anyway. It worked wonders, and I’m really happy with the result – if you do a lot of invisible zipper sewing, I would definitely recommend this little thingy. I just realized, I didn’t even get a photo of the back – that’ll be included when Ronja models it.

Another highlight was just the thrill of making it – because even though I didn’t find it easy at all times, it was so pleasing to get out the sewing machine and work on a project. Oh, and Ronja loves the dress, so what’s not to be happy about?

Next up is making her a costume for shrovetide – she wants to go as an angel…

White world

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 I woke up to a beautiful sight this morning. Our garden is covered in snow, the sun is shining, and moments ago I sent Mads and Ronja off with a sled to play in the snow.

Ice on the branches 

So what am I doing back here? I’m sitting on the couch, covered with a warm duvet. Frida and I took over Mads’ flu that put him out of business for a few days, and now I just hope that she and I will be well for tomorrow when there’s a big Christmas party at Mads’ work.

Karen and her family were supposed to visit us today, but of course I had to cancel that as well. Bummer. However, 12 hours on a plane isn’t much fun if you’re coming down with the flu, so it’s a good thing they will be back sometime during the next year!

 I promised you guys a picture of Frida wearing the Dolly daisy dress, and this is it.

Frida modeling the Dolly daisy dress 

There was just no way to get her to stand and not chase the camera, so you will have to do with this sitting image of the dress. I can just see her wearing this dress along with the little red shoes from my own childhood – she’ll be adorable.

I have been receiving a few e-mails and comments about the Onion-patterns that I have used quite a bit. I think you will be interested to know, that coming up in my next post, I’ll be announcing a give-away. Maria from ShopOnion.com has been kind enough to donate some patterns for you guys – and no worries, the patterns come with an English translation. So check back soon! :)

January – and progress upstairs

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No, you’re right – the picture is almost cheating. We’ve had one day like that this past Saturday, and I just had to post a real winter picture. The rest of January has been all about beating records on high temperatures and rain. Saturday we got out the sled, and Sunday the snow was gone, leaving the sled a sad sight, the way it stood there in the rainy yard, filled with water.

As opposed to December when we took a break from working on the 2nd floor, Mads has been making some great progress upstairs these past weeks, finishing the insulation and mounting the first layer of wallboards – the last part with much appreciated help from our friend Martin.

It now looks like a room, the insulation keeps the place fairly warm, even though it’s not heated yet – and it’s definitely getting easier to see the end of it. We have a long way to go before it’s finished, but it’s a great feeling to be this far ahead in the process. As always, pictures can be seen here.

Ronja is getting so big – you’ll find a video of her singing “Bro Bro Brille” here. Have patience – it takes a few minutes for it to load, and the quality is not that great – however, the important thing is what’s on it.

No more winter!

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The snow has almost melted, and the weather is getting milder every day now. There is bird’s twitter in the morning and the spring flowers are beginning to show in the garden. Ronja had her last sled ride for this winter a few weeks ago – presumably – and she loved it. Now we’re looking forward to spring and summer – it is going to be nice to see more of the sun.

I’m doing ok with my running – it has been less hard starting up this time, compared to last time, when I decided to start running back in 2003. My most recent run was Sunday, and I ran together with my brother Jakob who has been visiting from Amsterdam this week. I was seriously skeptical as I haven’t been running with anyone before, but we had a really nice trip with good pace and we actually ran well together – I may even miss the possibility of running with a partner. It was a good thing that he talked me into it. ;)

Ronja is one and a half year old tomorrow, and she is developing so much at the moment. Her words are going from total Russian (which we do admire even though we don’t understand one word) to something that makes sense, and she knows a great many words now. She also combines words to little sentences and is making progress so quickly that we can hardly follow her. She is great at “helping” with the laundry – meaning of course that I need to collect it all over the house, before I can wash.

Ronja is going to Shrovetide (Fastelavn) at the nursery on Monday, and we’re still not sure what she should go as. My mother is looking for a little clown suit (a wonderful one) that she made for my brother at that age, and if she manages to find it, Ronja will probably be a clown – and a cute one too! I’ll get back with pictures.