Stamp for you, Miss?

I think, by now everybody on facebook must have made a close guess as to what my top secret project was.

This is the official No Pants Tram Ride 2011 stamp. It was a lot of fun to whip this one up, and stamping asses was quite funny too. :o) I made a simple linol stamp, because I couldn't think of any better way, but I think for next time we'll maybe look for a professional stampmaker or printer, people seemed to like the idea and it's always great to have souvenirs.

pictures by Julius Volz

I think everybody had a lot of fun and we made many people laugh, so it was a great success!
20Minuten online made a great video: Klick

If you wanna be notified of the fun things we organise, join our Urban Playground Zurich facebook group. (Where you can see more pictures and videos)
Coming up is International Pillow Fight Day on April 2nd.

Top secret

Top secret work going on here at the bubble. ;o)

Check back tomorrow to see if you guessed right!

What kept us up tonight

"Neverwhere" and some paper:

365 things - week 6

This week there is no yarn, because it all went away - quite quickly actually... :o)

These shell-chains have already found a new home at casa Picoletta

 

But maybe you like this little guy? You can hide little secrets in his belly.

And someone might have use for these, they're little ballerina slippers. I am quite fond of them, but they are not warm enough for me. When I still went to yoga classes I often wore them and have always been complimented a lot. (For the slippers, not for my yoga *sigh* ^^)

This little but I will just put out into the wild if nobody wants it badly, just out of fun!

 

Same for this old, much loved keyhanger:

So if you want anything this week, be quick!
And have yourself a nice wednesday evening!

Project Little Green Life: A lookback and new goals!

I started my Project "Little Green Life" around February 2010 and I just wrote down what I changed since then and what I am still looking forward to explore.

- After some experimenting I found a recipe for a deodorant that really works for me in May and have been using it ever since.
Actually, the longer I've been using the natural deo, the more I am able to go longer times without any deo at all, with no noticeable bad smell. I would never have believed it, but it really seems to be true that the chemical deos make our body unable to regulate itself.

- I switched to using vinegar with water as a conditioner for my hair. It works like a charm! The only downside is that Trev has been complaining about my hair smelling vinegar-y, so I'm still experimenting.

- I use olive oil to replace handcream, bodylotion, and even to take off my make up. There's nothing better!

- I switched from using disposable rasors to making my own sugar waxing (halawa, recipes all over the internet)

- I use only vinegar, baking soda and water for cleaning

- The little dishwasher liquid I need I happily afford in ecofriendly quality.

- I switched to using washnuts and am very happy with them. I get them at the local organic store in a clothbag, fairtrade, and they cost me less to the load than organic laundry soap. Plus they make my laundry veeerry soft!

- I started using reusable bags for shopping and I generally don't buy my loose foods in plastic bags anymore (who needs a plastic bag to keep a few oranges together? Seriously!)

That's all the things that I have accomplished in these 10 months. Not bad. I took the earth-quiz again (on the wwf website) and if everybody would live like me we would need 2.2 planets. That is not yet perfect, but a good progress, thinking back of the 5.3 planets I was using at the beginning of 2010.

I have changed so much, learned so much and had so much fun!!

 

Now I want to continue the story and I already have a few things that I want to take care of in 2011.
The big words of 2011 are Plastic, Consumption, Food and Compost.

Big point number one is Plastic.
I have been thinking a lot about plastic ever since last summer, and it slowly dawned on me how deadly and wicked plastic can be. (If you are interested in the topic you should start with this interesting site: my plastic free life.) And since I got sensitised on the topic I also realised just how much plastic we use in our daily life. And often we don't really use it at all. We tear it away from somewhere to make our claim on what's inside and then it goes in the bin. Crazy!
So in 2011, I want to cut my use and consumption of plastic. That's not easy, but it's a challenge, and it will be fun. I am thinking more about how to do it, but I have a couple of things already on my mind that will give me directions:

- I am using organic shampoo at the moment, but it comes in a plastic bottle that I want to eliminate. I have tried to make my own shampoo but haven't been successful yet. So I want to either find a way to make it myself or find [environmental friendly, affordable and easy to obtain] shampoo in a non-plastic conatiner.

- One of the big plastic waste products in my household are all things to do with teeth: Toothbrushes, floss, toothpaste, gel. It's all plastic. I want to find non-plaste-alternatives!

- Cut down packaging. It's the biggest bugger uf them all. This will be one point in my program for my buying habits.


There we go right off to consumption. Even though I have been trying to live frugal during the last year, consumerism hasn't been easy to shake off. It's not like I have no sense of style or don't like wearing new clothes. Or like I'm not intrigued by electronic gadgets. Or like I really detest fastfood... mmmh! ^^

- Reduce reuse recycle.
- If you have to, buy second hand, recycled, organic, local.
- Buy non-plastic, minimally packaged.

Third on the list is food. I have been slowly changing my eating and buying habits, but I am not satisfied yet. There will be more experimenting, and my goals are to

- Buy mostly locally produced, organic and seasonal food.
- Only eat a minimum of pre-processed food

This will be a hard one on us, not because we eat junkfood a lot (we both like our bodies), but because we love foreign food, mostly asian and indian. And now go, find locally produced bio chilies >.<

The last big project on the list is one I'm very excited about. I have been thining about starting my own compost for a while, and I will try and realise that this spring. (I don't know how many people had to listen to me getting upset about Zürich not providing a public compost service!)
There is a method to do it in small amounts and with little smelling (chlick here). The only thing that has kept me from starting already is the worms. I don't know where to find them and if you order them in shops they are insanely expensive. But I'm on my way. You tell me if you have any tips, and I'll keep you posted about my progress, ok? Good deal! ;o)

picture sources: matternetwork.com, interior-house-decorate, dornob.com

Dallas Clayton is AWESOME!

Hey there, it's me again. Sorry, seems like I have too much to talk about at the moment.
I just fell down a rabbithole and on the other side was a man who told me to keep on dreaming.
His name is Dallas Clayton and he is awesome.
This is his webpage and you should go and read through the Kidsbook that he wrote, it is very inspiring.

He also wrote this:

LEAPING
Don’t look over that edge
there is nothing for you there
but a mounting pile of excuses not to jump to the other side.

I thought it is quite fitting for the starting of the year. 
Have an awesome night full of big, big dreams!

A hat and some pants

I want to show you this because I know I'll forget about it and tomorrow won't be time, because it is 365-things-day.
I finished this hat after a loong long time today and I am quite glad and in the end still like it quite a lot. I made it too short first. Then frogged half of it and made it longer. Then it felt too big. Then the tassels were too long. And so on. And everytime I realised something was wrong I tucked it away hoping it would fix itself whilst I wasn't looking.

It is still a bit loose but otherwise it's fine and very comfy. It's made from handspun Lama fiber my godmother gave me. It is very shiny and chunky, but also a bit scratchy and I still have 2.5 balls left. I'm looking for ideas to make sth else with them.

Oh and as I said, since I want to get back into yoga this year, I thought I'd start with making myself some yoga pants. I had this oversized T-shirt with 'The scary bitches' logo on it that I just couldn't throw away but can't really wear either. So I cut it up and sewed into pants (really easy how-to here!) Easy peasy!
 

Die verstrickte Dienstagsfrage

There has been too little yarn content in this blog in the last year, so I'm trying to pimp it with the questions that the lovely lady Wollschaf asks knitters each Tuesday. Since the question ist in German, my answer will be, too. 

Wie lange braucht ihr im Wollgeschäft, um ein Garn für ein Projekt auszusuchen?
Nehmt ihr dann noch "Kollateraleinkäufe" mit, also Garne, die nebenbei mit in die Tasche springen?
Wie lange haltet ihr euch in Online-Shops auf, ebenfalls, um nach geeignetem Garn für ein Projekt zu suchen?
Und wie steht es da mit den Zusatzmitnahmseln?

Vielen Dank an Reni für die heutige Frage!
Das Wollschaf wünscht allen ein gutes Neues Jahr!

http://daswollschaf.wordpress.com/

Ich hab schon seit Jahren nicht mehr wirklich Wolle für ein Projekt gekauft da ich versuche meinen riesigen Wollvorrat zu schrumpfen. Dieses Jahr hab ich mir aber doch was geleistet für ein Weihnachtsgeschenk. Ich wusste welche Farbe und welchen Gauge ich brauche, hab zwei Arten Wolle angeschaut und mich für die weichere entschieden. Fertig. Ich glaube, das dauerte ca. 2-3 Minuten. ;o)
Kollateralkäufe vermeide ich nach einigen lehrreichen Erfahrungen ziemlich erfolgreich und online habe ich bis jetzt noch nie Wolle gekauft.

Start as you mean to go on

I have this good friend, Brenda. We often sit together. I knit and she talks. She talks a lot but that's OK. I like to listen to her.
Once she said: "Start as you mean to go on." And this expression stuck in my mind ever since. It may sound a bit old, but to me it is one of these sentences that have strength, magic to them, and that I believe are true.

So this week I set out to start as I mean to go on. Being good. :o)
I went out and held my nose up to the sun, I ran errands, I arranged a dentist meeting, I knit, I sew, I cleaned, and I worked on some personal projects.
It's only a bit of everything, but it was all there, and it made me feel good and hopeful to keep up the babysteps in the days and weeks that will follow.

My list of resolutions is quite long this year:
- to try some old and new sports
- to continue eating healthy
- to go outside once a day
- to finish some personal projects
- and to spend a little time each day only with one thing that I love

I know they are pretty general, but believe me, I spent enough time working out a masterplan of action for each of them, and I am pretty positive I will move another important steps forward this year.
The last one has actually evolved from a spiritual lookback on last year and is not as easy for me as you might think. There are many things in this world that I like doing, no doubt. But if I like something, I also want to do it right, and I want other people to like it. Or I want to do it in a certain way, because I saw that somewhere, and I liked it. Or I don't really know how to do it and I am too lazy to try or think properly. There are millions of reasons why I get scared off doing something I love quite easily.
My strategy so far has been to distract myself into it. It sounds funny, but I'd put on some music, a movie, or read about it on the net and do a little pottering in front of the computer until I got into doing it and have some sort of product.
But this actually keeps me from really enjoying the process and get into it with all my mind, love and skill, and thus acts as a sort of wall between my energies and creativity and the project. I think if I could learn to decide with my whole mind that I want to do a certain thing now and then fearlessly jump into action, I could be so much more successful with the things I try.

Today, I tried it with some sketching, and it worked pretty well. I came up with something that I really love after many many tries that just felt sort of 'meh' to me.
What do you think?:

The happy new year post

Well, hello everybody and welcome on the other side of the line that marks the new year. I hope you all had a nice evening in whatever style you like to celebrate.
I like taking sylvester easy and that's just what we did. Doesn't mean we didn't have a lot of fun though! ;)
I have taken quite some time in the past week to think about my life and the changes I wanna make in the next few months, so I was looking forward to 2011 with some anticipation that resolutions bring. Even though spiritually I feel that Halloween marks the end of a turn of the year, writing a new number at the back of the date is still a fact that should be celebrated. And since you also get holidays for it, it's the ideal time to have a good look back and then another one forward.

We started the year in Basel where we had been invited to by Sabrina and Martin, and after peeling ourselves out of bed we went into town where we found that the Tinguely fountain has its very own charms in winter.


We went for some very nice coffee at Unternehmen Mitte and then Trev and me headed off to the Fondation Beyeler to see their exhibition of art in Vienna in the 19hundreds.




It wasn't as great as I'd have expected it, but we enjoyed it anyways, as we'd enjoyed the whole trip. It was a much needed break since we haven't been away from Zurich just for fun in months and it made us feel very re-energised.

Today's the last day of Trev's holidays and we spent the afternoon working on our paper model. This is what we managed:

We're 3 pages down now... only 33 more! ;)

365 things - week 5

Warning: If you don't knit or crochet, you might want to skip this post.

The seven things I want to give away this week are all yarn.
I raided my stash and found a lot of yarn that is not my color, not my material, or just doesn't work for me out of whatever reason. Most of these don't have a ballband anymore, so I can't give you exact details, but I'll try to describe them as accurately as possible.
It would be great if you could share this post with yarn-ey friends, because I really don't know what to do with the yarn other than give it to people who knit or crochet. I mean, it's not like you can (*shudder*) ... throw it away.



This is a very thin, lacey yarn with a mohair halo (needles 2-2.5 I'd say) and a very nice, dark brown color.

Cotton sock yarn from Aldi, two full skeins with detail info available in a dark pink/yellow stranded colorway.

The same yarn in a dark berry pink tone.

This little ball of yarn is made from some shiny, glossy but very smooth and soft material, also quite thin, 2mm needles app.



Lang yarn graffiti in two colorways, two balls of the dark tone, one ball of the light. It's a very sturdy and plain textured cotton two-ply.


A good friend once gave me this and much as I appreciate it; I have been knitting and knitting on it and it just doesn't seem to get smaller, so if you have a big project in mind, maybe this comes in handy. It's around 400g of soft, sportweight yarn that will knit up fast with 4.5-5mm needles.

Seen anything you like? Want the whole lot? Or know sb who would be grateful for it? Don't be shy, tell me, I'd be really glad to be able to send these off to a good new home.

A Christmas tale

Hello everybody, how was your Christmas? Or Hanukah or Jule or winter solstice or Quanzaa or whatever you celebrate! It doesn't matter so much, does it?
My family celebrates very much in Christian tradition, with tree and charols and everything, although as far as I know none of us perceives themselves as christian. But the tradition holds things that are important for us, we are having a lot of fun, and this makes it work as a ritual, regardless of what philosophy is behind it.

First is the yearly quarrell of who gets to choose the tree. Officially, we all get turns to choose, but we don't keep track of it, so there's always somebody who claims it't their turn and somebody who says they're wrong. It is much fun and we like to have huge discussions about it. This year my dad got to choose and as always he wanted a really small tree. When we were kids we always managed to outnumber him with our pleas for a big tree, but now we are grown up and much more easy going. ;o)
It was the first year the three of us girls went to get a Christmastree all by themselves. We briefly discussed getting one in a pot, but then Picoletta fell in love with this one and we had to take him home.
In the afternoon we started decorating him. It is a very important part of the celebrating to decorate the tree together, since the 'Christkind' does not do it anymore. Picoletta and Trev got to work, whilst my mom surveilled them from the sofa.



And my dad got busy in the kitchen, his favourite part being the cooking:


I think decorating trees is a very cool invention. It brings light and joy and creativity and common activities into the dark days of winter. Doesn't that sound like anti-depressiva to you? It certainly is for me!


After dinner we all sang Christmas carols. We get to choose our favourite ones and we sing until we've sung everything we know. It is accompanied by much laughter whenever we get to the line "Owi lacht" because we still don't know who Owi is supposed to be, and much discussions when we quarrel about what goes together, 'Mehl und Salz" and "Brot und Schmalz" or the other way round, and much embarassement, when we realise we don't get past the first verse anymore. We'd often start the second one with much optimism and then everybody ends up going "hmmmm hmm hm" and trying to look as though they were singing actual lyrics.
It is a celebration of the common memories that we have of all the Christmasses we've celebrated together, an acknoledgement of each member of the family as we get to choose 'our' songs, and honouring our ancestors as we sing the songs that they've handed on and taught us. A ritual that makes the bonds of our family stronger and makes sure our history continues.




(Caramel still has to learn the lyrics, but she sings beautifully! )

Then it is everybody's favourite time: Presents! Everybody gets crazy!



All the presents I got this year were on my wishlist, so no big surprises, but since I had been looking forward to them very much, and they were all things that I know I will use a lot I was very! happy about them!
In the picture above you can see me going crazy about a mill that presses wheat into Müesli flakes, sth that Trev and me wanted to get ever since we got to use one in the yurt workshop and realised how awesome they are.

Then I got these adoooooraaaable houseshoes, and Trev has to threaten me with choccolate withdrawal to make me take them off for sleeping. ^^


That's the slippers I made for my dad:


Caramel got a bit scared and found a great place to hide!


Kisses were thrown around


Oh, wait, I forgot there was one surprise, and a great one! Trev made me these mufflers:


Aren't they cool? I've wanted such ever since last Christmas I think (don't ask me why), and he went and made them for me!!
I was so happy I grew an additional pair of eyes!


No, Picoletta is not passing out from too much Gluhwine... ;o)


She is putting on her shiny new piercing!
(No, she had it done some time ago. She only got a new jewel for it. Jeez, guys!)


She got me this fantastic book by Sven Nordqvist I posted about here.

Oh another little surprise: Now Caramel and me are all set for round the world tour in our Volkswagen bus!!
*brrrrmmm*

Isn't it funny Trev and me got each other presents in exactly the same colors? He's wearing this scarf I made him that was a veery challenging pattern and turned out to go much smoother than I had thought. Still it was quite a lot of work and a lot of hiding and working whenever I got the chance and he wasn't around! ;o)



It is always amazing how fast this very special evening flies by. I have a hard time understanding that some people dread this 'must' event with their families and relatives since for us it is always about fun and about everybody wanting to be together, it wouldn't be a problem if somebody decided not to come. Well, it would be sad and not the same, but nobody would be angry or insulted or anything like that. Presents are the same, if we have ideas for surprises we love to get each other stuff, but if we don't it isn't a big drama, we'll just announce it and people know they have to communicate their wishes or they won't get anything significant that year.
I am very glad to be able to enjoy the holidays in this stressfree environment with happy and healthy people that I love. Several things this year made me realise how lucky I am to be able to write about Christmas so carefree and happy and proud. I don't want to show off, I am just overflowing with happiness and gratefulness that I want to share. I am aware that I am very blessed and I pray that all the people who's lives are filled with sorrow and grief can find soothing in whatever way life may present it.
Merry Christmas!