a bit of green

As some of you might know, I recently moved to a new appartment. The old one was already furnished, so I was lacking several basic things such as a couch or a table for the living room.

A while back, I salvaged an old window from the garbage and I’ve been meaning to do something with it; so I decided to make a window table! My dad (maybe you remember his skills from the bike panniers) came over and we built the window table together. Here’s the whole process!

You might remember last’ years  Advent calendar I made for Alex; he liked it so much I thought I’d surprise him every year with one!

As you might remember from the previous post, an Advent calendar is a calendar that begins on 1st December and ends on Christmas; it consists of 24 little doors or boxes numbered from 1 to 24. Beginning on the first day of December, one door is opened each day, counting down the days remaining until Christmas Eve; behind each door is a treat, a piece of chocolate or a toy.

Many of you have asked for some kind of pattern for our roll up panniers. The time has come at last!
Here’s a teaser image; you can download a high resolution PDF here.

Colorful elephants! These will be made into earrings for a bazaar I’m taking part in with a very good friend of mine.
They are made out of cardboard; we drew the shapes in Autocad (ask me for the .dwg), then cut them at our university’s laser cutter. Afterwards, we hand painted them, let them dry and added a clear varnish coat. We’ll add silver earring hooks and beads later. They make wonderful earrings; they’re so cute and colorful!

According to Wikipedia, “Guerrilla gardening is gardening on another person’s land without permission”. The term was coined in 1973 by the Green Guerilla group that was active in the Bowery Houston area of New York. The act itself, however, dates back to at least 1649 when Gerrard Winstanley and his group of Protestant agrarian communists called “the Diggers” was active in Surrey, England. The land that is guerrilla gardened (or bewildered as Australian gardener Bob Crombie likes to call it) is usually abandoned or neglected by its legal owner and the guerrilla gardeners take it over (“squat”) to grow plants. This gesture may or may not have a political flavor to it. In our case it doesn’t, at least not consciously.

As you might remember from the previous Bike Makeover post, it’s been a while I’d been drooling over these magnificent roll up panniers by Brooks; I was so charmed I couldn’t find another bag suitable for my bike. Normal bicycle bags seemed just too plain now, and most of the panniers I found couldn’t roll up at all. I kept searching and all the bags I saw were too bulky, too boring or too expensive, so my bicycle kept going with no bags at all. I showed the roll up panniers (that are much to expensive for my wallet) to my dad, and he exclaimed: ‘Alright, we’ll make one!’

Now that my university is closed for winter holidays, I finally have more free time to do all the crafty things I’ve been wanting to. One of these is a lamp made from plastic cups I’ve seen at taf, the art foundation, in the Monastiraki region in the center of Athens.
When I first saw it at taf, I was amazed; I looked closely and I couldn’t believe my eyes! The object itself is so peculiar, modern and alien-like it could be in any design exhibition. With my best friend’s birthday coming up, I decided to make it myself and give it to her as a gift. It turns out it was the easiest craft I’ve even done, the epitome of DIY objects!

Well, I suppose I’m exaggerating a little bit, but I’ve wanted to makeover my bike for quite a while and I’m really excited about it! The makeover is far from extreme right now, but I’ve got some  other projects in mind, such as some DIY roll up paniers (I deeply envy these!) and maybe a polka dotted helmet like that one from ohjoy.
I’ll let you know if I ever find the time to do these… I’ve got a huge list of craft projects that I rarely get the chance to even start. Oh well, at least I’ve got the ideas!

Since Alex told me about his family following the german tradition of Advent calendars, I wanted to make one for him as a surprise; and that’s what I did!

An Advent calendar is a calendar that begins on 1st December and ends on Christmas; it consists of 24 little doors or boxes numbered from 1 to 24. Beginning on the first day of December, one door is opened each day, counting down the days remaining until Christmas Eve; behind each door is a treat, a piece of chocolate or a toy.

Remember the post about window gardens? Well, we followed our advice and started our own window garden, our precious. Here are some preliminary results:

A glimpse of our tiny window garden; starring thyme and basil.