Beautiful fruit and other things

First and foremost, Happy Easter to all you folk out there! I hope you have had a glorious day! I am thankful I was able to spend today with my family - it's always a good time.

I've had a great weekend thus far - Ryan and I went over to Malibu Canyon yesterday for a little morning hike. It was a beautiful day and perfect for hiking. We didn't go too far or anything, but it was great just to be spending time outside. On our drive back we stopped at a little roadside fruit stand that was selling some beautiful looking strawberries. I bought a case of them with the intentions of making some strawberry jam. And strawberry jam I made.

I love jamming.

I also made some lemon curd for some poppy seed tartlettes I brought over for Easter dinner. I love homemade lemon curd. I have some leftover from the tartlettes so I will probably be eating spoonfuls of it this week.

In other news, I have been trying to brainstorm different types of fiber art classes I can take this year. I was thinking perhaps an advanced needle felting class? I know the basics...but I think it'd be fun to learn more techniques. Any ideas?

I can't believe how quickly this weekend flew by...it's already Sunday night?! My how time flies. 

Here's to a new week!

Knitting a couple of crayfish

As promised, here are a couple shots of my most recent knitting project form Swedish handknits: the crayfish hot pad.  It's knitted in the round and the seams will be sewed shut when it's finished. Then, I will wet felt it so it shrinks up and becomes a little sturdier.  I'm using a 100% wool yarn...I couldn't find the exact color blue I wanted, but the one I settled on is working out better than I anticipated.

I've been working on it here and there for the past couple weeks. A couple rows while watching TV, a couple rows in the morning...a great leisurely project.

 

For those of you who don't know, crayfish are very popular in Sweden. Most Swedes throw crayfish parties in the summertime and it's quite a fun party to attend if you ever get the chance.  I'm thinking about throwing one this year...IKEA sells frozen crayfish for just the occasion!

Friday update!

Confession: I have been horribly horrible about regularly blogging these days. But I suppose you already figured that one out on your own.  I haven't been doing much crafting lately, but I've been doing a lot of list-making for projects and just plain ol' relaxing.

Our life these days have been great. Ryan and I are getting settled into our daily routines and, slowly but surely, I feel like our life is slowing down for a minute so we can play catch up. It's been wonderful to relax and just be. I've been watching a lot of TV lately, and quite frankly, I don't even care.  Maybe it's that Spring is upon us, but I feel like I am coming into a new season of life. And I like it.

Back to crafting. Thanks to Rachel's post during her craftbook review series, I found this little gem of a book:

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I strongly encourage you to check out Rachel's review of this book, it's what made me buy it! I am so excited about some of the projects in here - especially the Dala horse garland and crayfish hotpad. I've already started the crayfish hotpad...pics to come!

Then I was purusing through Etsy and found these inspiring things that went into my mental idea bank:

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I love the Scandinavian vintage look for the pillow.

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My mom just sent me a set of these little tins and I am quite excited to try a batch of sandbakkel!

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Ryan and I have been into vintage maps lately. Ryan has always had a place in his heart for geography, and during a recent antiqing venture we picked up an early 1800 map of the Virgin Islands for a few bucks. We went to the Virgin Islands for our honeymoon so it was fun to find an old map of a place we've been.  We framed it and hung it up and decided it would be fun to start collecting vintage maps of places we've been.  I love this old Stockholm map above - so cool!

That's all I have for now, folks!