Last Week

a little late but nevertheless, pictures from last week. clearly I was on a roll with my iPhone camera, still experimenting a lot with VSCOcam and Instagram. a little story with the pictures from top to bottom: 

photo edits I did to pictures my mom and sister in law send me from Europe. in a visual family like ours, the camera's on our phones are always working to update each other about our lives. 

I got the pleasure of seeing a work in progress from a dear lady who gets Catania yarn through me, she is working on a king size blanket and I love to see her progress. the colors work together so lovely and it is wonderful to hear she and her daughters work on it together. 

the weather got really hot and sunny this week, we all enjoy it. I played with colors of yarn, tape and thread. and unfortunately Floyd played with my yarn and a piece of pretty paper too... not so much to my liking I must say. although he apparently has good taste and picked some nice colors to play with.

create 'n date Amsterdam June 2nd: the pictures

all pictures by our wonderful photographer Yasmijn Tan

finally I found time to make these collages. a colorful mix of yarn, ladies and name badges on a bright sunny Sunday earlier this month: create 'n date in Amsterdam. the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, we all enjoyed this morning as you can see. meeting each other, enjoying coffee and cake, laughing and working on the crochet workshops prepared by Claire, Saskia and Annemarie. enjoying lunch in the sun, and some more crochet of course. it was so great to meet ladies I've known online through their blogs for years, to be able to see them in real life and chat with them. oh what joy.

for more pictures and stories, have a look over at the blogs by
Annemarie, Liz, Maartje, Annette, Bregje, Ilona, Patricia, Madelief, Marlies, Martina
let me know in a comment if you'd like to have your blog~post link here, I will gladly add it for you

 thank you so much again Saskia, Claire and Annemarie for all your efforts to make this create 'n date so wonderful. many thanks to all the pretty ladies who joined in with their enthusiasm, you are such a warm and loving group of women! I could not have done this without you all. it is a tough task to try and organize something similar in the future...

Another Week...

... has gone by

a week full of different things. from crochet to knitting, from backyard to downtown Toronto, from tulips to peonies, from shop to my home, from latte to cakes and cookies, from rain to sunshine...

so much is going on in my life at the moment, I am trying my very best but can hardly can not keep up with it.  as per usual, the blog comes to an almost stand still. as much as I don't want it to happen, it get's me every single time. apparently blogging takes me more time and energy than I think, I underestimate it completely. 

for some reason I do manage to keep up with my Instagram account. even more so, last weekend I finally downloaded the VSCOcam app and I must say it is probably the most pretty and best photo editing app I've come across in the past 1,5 years since I joined Instagram. I find it very convenient because of the limited amount of filters and editing options, so it doesn't take me ages to select my edits. it's free for iOS users, I'd say give it a try and I am curious to know what you think of it.

probably something for you to look forward to: pictures of create 'n date will be here this week...

Last Week

last week was an odd one, due to our flight from Amsterdam to Toronto half way. or at least that always makes my weeks odd. my head full of wonderful memories, still processing every conversation and eye sight.  my hands doing laundry and clean up. my body feeling jet lagged several times a day. 

by the weekend this seemed to be over, we got lots of sunshine and enjoyed good company, a delicious barbecue and after that a little bonfire. on Sunday I finally sat down to open all the wonderful gifts I received from old and new friends in The Netherlands and I crocheted along in the garden.

just in case you are interested: I recently edited some of my pictures on Instagram with the sweet app from Emma and Elsie over at A Beautiful Mess to create circles and borders, and add little text lines in cute fonts. it's available for Apple and will be available for Android in about 2 months.

today is another Monday, working on patterns and create 'n date wrap up as well as making new plans...

wishing you a great new week!

Happy Weekend

nothing says 'happy weekend' more to me than a lovely bunch of flowers, a latte and some crochet. a little sunshine along with that would be highly appreciated of course. the tulips were given to us by our dear Danish friend as a welcome home gift after our trip to The Netherlands. so sweet of her and I absolutely adore their colors. the crochet project are a few baskets in different green tones, the return gift to my friend who made me this beautiful cushion. she gave birth to a baby boy, so I left the peachy pink yarn out. I have to think of something separate to make with that color...

any projects or plans you have for the weekend? enjoy it either way!

Pre-Fun

in Dutch we have a word called 'voorpret' and I am not aware of a direct translation for it in English. too bad, because it is one of my favorites. I will try to explain it. voorpret is about enjoying an event, day or moment long before it is happening. it is about creating those stomach butterflies and a smile on your face when you think of that particular day, event or moment. the literal translation would be 'pre-fun'. you typically experience it before weddings, parties, holidays... do you get the idea?

since I enjoy voorpret a lot myself, I wanted to do something in advance of create 'n date to get my guests in the mood and enjoy the voorpret with me. but how? 

while I was busy organizing the event I thought it would be nice if everyone was recognizable through name or blog name tags. and of course for a creative event like this, the badges had to be good looking, colorful, unique and preferably handmade. 

the idea was to have everyone make their own badges in advance. I put together little packages with the paper invitations I showed you earlier. and I crossed my fingers the guests would love the idea too... 

like I said before, I hardly took any pictures during create 'n date last Sunday. but I promise you, the results were amazing! I am very happy it turned out so well. the ladies really made such a great effort putting their beautiful badges together, got creative with the given material, added their own touches, made small and larger badges... for now I can only show you my own little badge with a crochet edging. but there's more to come. 

Last Week

pretty tired and probably jet lagged, in the middle of laundry and clean up after coming home from Amsterdam, I am going through pictures on my phone and realize I am still buzzing from all that happened last week. we were two very happy guests at the beautiful wedding of a dear friend, spent wonderful times with family and friends over breakfast, latte, lunch, dinner and drinks. we loved the new Rijksmuseum, did some shopping and enjoyed the sunny weather. 

if are living abroad yourself or have been living, you will probably recognize this pattern...

and of course, last Sunday, create 'n date happened in Amsterdam! what a fantastic time we had together. while I am impatiently waiting for the pictures from our photographer, I can share with you the 4 pictures I took that day. clearly I was busy enjoying it all instead of taking pictures, haha. in total about 45 wonderful ladies attended this beautiful Sunday morning to create together and date together. the weather was nice and warm, we stayed outside all along. mostly blogging ladies, all very creative with yarn and more, sat together under the umbrella's like they were sitting there every Sunday for the past 4 years. amazing to see how this world wide web allows us to build a community online, that feels connected instantly as soon as we meet offline. 

when I receive the pictures I will post them and go into more detail about create 'n date. until then I have some prep stories and pictures, as well as a preview of the little project I took with me on the plane.

see you soon