Pretty Things!

Some more cute things I found on my vacation in Austria: in Vienna I stumbled over a little shop selling funky stuff, jewellery and beads and had to buy some things for making necklaces and earrings. I'm especially in love with the little donuts and cupcakes...

I also saw a poster for a flea market at a local craft store, and we went and raided their button stash. Only 3 cents a button! And look at those cuties!

What makes me happiest comes in a nice black&white suitcase...

And was accompanied by a little metal box holding these:

Purple thread and metal bobbins!

It's my great-grandma's sewing machine, a Privileg 518, which is probably older than I am. It's made of all metal and it must be the one that I made my first stitches on, back when I was about 5 and was interested in pretty much anything my great-grandma did. My grandma, who doesn't really sew, had it in her basement and decided to bequeath it to me. She loves that I sew, and even reads my blog. So, I've already said it but: Thanks, grandma! :)

I've only sewn a couple of stitches but it seems to work very well so far. Depending on how much time I can squeeze between my workday (GYN/OB rotation that started today) and family evenings, I might start on a polka-dotted Rooibos this week - if I manage to get it traced out. ;) I'm also on the lookout for a nice woolen fabric, for Casey's Circle Skirt Sew-along.

Talking of challenges, I've decided that, even though I love the challenge, I won't take part in Self-Stitched September this time around. I'm working as a trainee docter for three weeks of September, so I'm spending most of my day in scrubs, and after this first day, I forsee that I'd rather spend the rest of the day in lounge clothes instead of dressing up. I might join the Me-Made-Wednesday that's been started in the German sewing blogosphere, though, in the hope that it'll also motivate me to work on my fall sewing... ;)

Talking of fall sewing, the Fall Essentials Sew-Along is starting on Thursday! Stay alert for the announcement! :)

From Vienna, With Love...

So, I had a great time on my vacation to Austria. The weather was amazing(ly hot), and the temperatures in the 90s are supposed to hold until tomorrow. I sure could have used a couple more summer tops from my summer sewing list. I was hot! I got tanned! Yay summer!

We didn't actually stay in Vienna, but in the wine region Kamptal, 70km to the west. The village we stayed in for the first 5 days was the home of about 50 winemakers! You can imagine that we were tasting the different wines pretty much every day. I'm sure Oona would have been thrilled with this kind of holiday!

We did visit Vienna one day and it was so lovely! The architecture is beautiful!

We went by the Sacher Café and Hotel, were the delicious Sacher Torte was first made. (We didn't go in, as they wanted 8€ for a piece of cake. Really?)

I liked the city a lot. There were masses of tourists, though, and we didn't see much of the famous Viennese suavity. The waiters in the cafés seemed very harried and not very curteous at all.

My b/f and I have decided to go again on some weekend in late fall or winter, when there are less tourists, and maybe see a play at the Burgtheater, have some Einspänner (Espresso with whipped cream, yum!) and just spend some time wandering the streets. He has visited Vienna in winter some years ago and his experience was much better than ours this time.

I hadn't meant to buy anything, but we went by a shopping window with beautiful hats and after stumbling through their ground floor souvenir shop, found a huge hat shop in the basement! They had the traditional Viennese bowler hats and top hats, and also lots of cute fascinators, wedding hats in all colors... All handmade! I fell in love with this red felted hat and my mom's partner decided to buy it for me. :) It's very cute and it'll be great for winter!

My sister was looking for shoes for her friend's wedding, and while she didn't find any she liked, I stumbled over a gorgeous pair of red strappy leather pumps. They are real leather and were on final sale for, can you believe it, 29€ (from115€)! You bet I couldn't walk by without buying them... :)

I've already worn them with my Sailor Crepe and they're a great match!

In sewing news, the temperatures and my attic room have conspired against my sewing since I came home on Tuesday. I finished my sock during vacation, though, and already started on the second one. Pictures soon to come. ;)

Have a lovely Friday!

Short update & Fall sewalong

Sooo, just a short update in between trips. My summer school was a lot of fun, with interesting lectures every day, cool workshops (my main one was Clowning and we even went to a nursing home on the last day to try out our skills) and the coolest thing of all: free afternoon activities like action painting, a field trip teaching about local traditional healing plants, bodypainting...I even got up every morning at 7:00 to try out the different wake up activities like singing, Tai Chi, Yoga and Voice&Breathing, and there was music and dance lessons in the evenings... I was also pretty amazed to get to know so many deeply creative, wonderful people who also happen to study Medicine. :D

I had so much fun, the only time I managed to pick up my book or my knitting needles was during the trip... Which was ok, because I used cotton yarn instead of sock yarn, which resulted in a shaft that would have fit a small elephant, so I had to unravel it and start over. I got this far:

I haven't managed to do much of anything since arriving at my parents'. We took along another friend, so we showed him around, went to have ice-cream, saw Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" and Kleist's "Amphitryon" open air - and I went yarn shopping. I've never knitted anything more complicated than a scarf or wrist warmers, and that little bit of ribbing is the most I've ever made of a sock. But Sarah's Learning to Knit project and Sweater Knitalong have put a silly little voice in my head that's hopping around, coaxing me to make a knit dress. In red. With a cowl neck and no sleeves. It actually has a very specific picture of how it's supposed to look like. So I saw this cute bamboo&rayon yarn at the local yarn shop and bought every last skein they had. Which amounted to this:

Which is slightly silly, because the eight skeins amount to 400g and it says on the label that you need 650g to make a pullover. The skeins were on sale for only 1€ apiece, though, so if I don't find at least 5 more of them somewhere, they'll make a nice very long scarf and mittens. Maybe.

Now, before I have to run and pack the rest of my stuff to go to Vienna later, I'd like to announce that after the very successful Second Annual Summer Essentials Sew-Along (some of you are still sewing - yay! :), Sarah, Ali and I have decided to continue the fun and host a Fall-Essentials Sew-Along, starting in September! :)

We're still ironing out the last of the details, but we'll be back with more infos before September starts, I promise! :)