Ex Patria

Slow down

The sun is shining, the skies are blue.  It's a beautiful spring day outside and the skies are blue.

Wait a second.

Blue, yes, but something is missing...

You see, normally, the skies above us look like this:

We are in a very heavy over-flight zone -- it's not bothering us as the planes are really high up.  But the sky is always criss-crossed with condensation.  However, yesterday and today, the sky looks like this:

And why?  All because of the Ash Monster!!!

Volcano cloud plunges Europe into chaos! Our chancellor stranded in Portugal! Trains are overrun by dumped flight passengers! Mail piles up! German airspace closed until 2 pm today!

Our very own tabloid "news"paper, the Bildzeitung, has it all summed up perfectly. Well, it made me laugh.  This is a problem, a big one.  But catastrophes look different.

Truth is that the volcano has impacted our lives here in Europe in unforeseen and unforeseeable ways.  All German airports are closed, all Lufthansa flights are cancelled.  I am scheduled to fly to Dulles on Monday at 1 pm and I'm not being overly optimistic that I will actually be in the US on Monday.   I am going to Mannheim with my brother and his fiancee (hah!  Forgot to tell you about that, didn't I?) on Sunday evening, and if nothing goes on Monday, I will come back home and try again next week.  No way I'm sitting around waiting for days on end.

I suppose there will be a lot of enforced "eating local" in the next days -- lots of our veggies and fruit come from Spain, Morocco or Italy by plane.  Not sure whether they can switch this all to road traffic on short notice.  Already the streets are crowded.  The trains are stuffed and "everything that can roll does roll", as the speaker for the Deutsche Bahn said, after they hauled out even the shabbiest and oldest cars they have in storage.  The airport rental places have long run out of cars.  The Chunnel to Great Britain is completely booked out, as are many ferries.  Our land transportation isn't devised to deal with an additional couple ten thousand travellers. 

I have ordered a few items to take home from the US -- mostly fabric and DVD's.  If I can't go to get them, they won't come here -- no mail is arriving from the US, either.  Our chancellor is indeed stranded in Portugal, as our defense minister is stranded in Istanbul.  Mr. Guttenberg, I can tell you for a fact that the drive from Istanbul to Germany takes 60+ hours of driving.  John Cleese was stuck in Oslo and apparently needed to get to Brussels very urgently.  He took a taxi.  The bill ran to 3,800 Euros ($5,200).  Someone else took a cab from Oslo to Paris.  Say what you will, those guys did arrive eventually.

Someone suggested a cruise ship to the US.  I'd love that but I'm afraid that the refund of my flight ticket won't quite cover that kind of trip, which is really too bad.  

Personally, I am of two minds.  I love the idea that a natural phenomenon can simply obliterate all air travel in Europe.  There is something science fiction-y and dramatic about this that appeals to me.  On the other hand, I'd be very bummed if I couldn't make my trip.  But there is nothing I can do, so there it is -- life slows down a bit.  The average person in Fladungen has not felt the consequences yet.  I'll go and buy bananas now, just in case.  A certain girl needs a banana for her breakfast most mornings, it won't do to run out, you see.  Also, I better take good care of my seedlings, so eating local won't be a problem in a few weeks...

T-shirts

I have mentioned Farbenmix before - I like their patterns for their versatility.  You can totally go over the top and piece and decorate your heart out, or you can keep it very simple.  I'm sort of in-between; embellishments in moderation works just fine for me.

Now Sabine from Farbenmix has teamed up with Nancy Langdon and published a book chock full of bright, colorful and fun clothes.  Most of those make me stop in my tracks and ogle.  I'm not sure I'd ever be so daring with mixing different fabrics and adding ribbons, iron-on's, more ribbons, crocheted flowers and even more ribbons.  But the effect is so fun and so inspiring, I really wanted to give it a try.

I hung out on the Farbenmix blog for a bit and finally asked, "Can one sew these adorable T-shirts without a serger?"  Sabine said yes, and she should know.  And so I did and you know what?  I made T-shirts, and they fit.  And then I embellished them, and I like them even more.

The deer shirt:

 

And the bird shirt, with gratuitous deer:

 

Leah is napping, so no model pictures for now.

I am totally blown away that I can, actually, make T-shirts.  Who knew?  And how much do I want a serger now which would make sewing T-shirts so much faster and neater and easier?  Very, very much.

That's the way these things go...

Dress shirt into shirt dress

I will not show you a picture, you just have to trust me on this:  half of my study, which includes a sleeper sofa, is chock full of outgrown and/or outworn clothes that I don't want to give away because, you know, one could make something out of them. Feasibly.  If one actually did do something, I'm sure it would be great.

Then last week, I booked a flight to the US and in time-honored tradition, went to order such items online which we cannot get here.  One website I visited was Magpie Lovely, a website that sells excruciatingly cute kid's clothes.  I fell in love with this dress -- but, you know, $59 is kind of a lot for a dress for a little girl.  I looked a bit closer, and thought to myself, Hm, I wonder if I could make something like this.

This is the bane of sewing: you always ask this and you end up not buying and most of the times, you also end up not making the coveted item and you end up with nothing.

This time, I was determined.  So I dug out one of Doug's old dress shirts.  It was on the sofa courtesy a frayed collar.  I went online and found a great tutorial on Made.   I made up a pattern and cut up the shirt:

Yes, I know.  The color is a bit pale -- Doug claims that Leah has his coloring, so it would look good on her.  It does.  Only, I'm partial to stripes.  The striped shirt I wanted to cut up he took away from me, though, on the grounds of it being perfectly okay.  That was true but he's not wearing it!  And now I have to find a striped shirt at the second hand store because while the dress turned out cute and nice, I think stripes would be so much cuter...

Dress up!

With Daddy.  I couldn't resist and inserted a little tattoo/skull ribbon for subversiveness.  Otherwise, the cuteness would have been unbearable.

 

Back view. 

Next time -- you know, when I have that striped shirt -- I'll make the sleeves a bit less fluffy, I think. I omitted the elastic that the tutorial suggested to achieve the look of the inspiration piece but I might have to go back and put elastic in anyhow.  Next time, less sleeve for a sleeker look.  Also, Leah needs more underarm-space, it's almost a bit tight.  But the project was quick and easy and fun -- the tutorial is great.   Next up:  I make shirts.  T-shirts.  Yes, with knit fabric.  We'll see how that goes.