The gift of dreams / Un cadeau de rêves

The best of gifts.

Unexpected.

Things that come your way before you have even dreamed them up.

It happened to me this summer.  I received a great gift that's got me dreaming a thousand dreams.

I received a greenhouse.  A homemade, glass-paneled greenhouse.

If you are not a gardener, you may not understand my thrill.  But it is there, I assure you.  I am very excited about all the new possibilities it brings to my garden, I have been from the day Patrick told me he'd been offered a greenhouse for free.

It belonged to his cousin, where he goes every week for their band practice.  He had been going there for a while before he noticed the greenhouse, tucked in a hidden corner of their back deck.  He only exclaimed how cool it was and how happy I would be to have one like this.  I suspect he was already thinking about how he could make one for me in the future.  But his cousin was quick to reply that if I wanted it, it was mine.  With two young kids, neither he nor his spouse had time for gardening, and they needed their deck space back.

So it is that we went to their house on a Sunday afternoon to take the greenhouse apart, load it in our trailer and bring it home.  It stayed laying in pieces in our back yard for a couple of weeks while we debated where to install it, then dug out a patch of grass and laid down some pavement tiles to make a steady surface on which we reassembled the greenhouse.

I just love it, and already my mind has filled it with vegetables and flowers.  In reality, it remained quite empty this season because my garden was already all planted and grown by the time the greenhouse was finally up in the yard.

But I have so many plans for next year.  In the meantime, I took on the tedious task of repainting it white.  It had been painted dark green years ago, but the color had chipped and washed away.  I always liked classic white greenhouses, white is such a striking color against all the greenery around.

Now, with the warm season definitely behind us, I have all my time to fill my greenhouse with flowers, if only in my thoughts.  I am sure I can grow hundreds of varieties of flowers and vegetables before next spring comes along...

Le meilleur des cadeaux.

Inattendu.  Inespéré.

Quelque chose qui nous est offert avant même qu'on ait eu l'idée d'en rêver.  Une surprise qui déclenche une petite étincelle à l'intérieur et qui nous apporte mille promesses.

Ça m'est arrivé cet été.  J'ai reçu un cadeau auquel je ne m'attendais pas, et qui a fait surgir en moi un millier de rêves.

J'ai reçu une serre.  Faite à la main de matériaux récupérés, tout en panneaux de verre.  Un rêve de jardinier.

Si la culture des plantes ne vous dit rien, vous ne comprendrez peut-être pas mon excitation.  Mais elle est bien palpable, je vous assure.  Je suis fébrile à l'idée de toutes les nouvelles possibilités qu'une serre apporte à mon jardin, je le suis depuis le jour ou Patrick m'a annoncé qu'on lui avait offert une serre gratuitement.

Elle appartenait à son cousin, chez qui il va chaque semaine répéter avec son groupe de musique.  Ça faisait déjà un bon moment qu'il y allait régulièrement avant qu'il ne remarque la serre, installée dans un coin caché de leur terrasse.  Il s'est juste exclamé que c'est le genre de chose qui me rendrait heureuse.  Je soupçonne qu'il pensait déjà à m'en fabriquer une dans le futur.  Mais son cousin a très vite répliqué que si je la voulais, elle était à moi.  Avec deux enfants en bas âge, sa conjointe et lui n'avaient plus de temps pour le jardinage et ils souhaitaient récupérer l'espace qu'elle occupait sur leur terrasse.

C'est ainsi que nous sommes allés chez eux un dimanche après-midi pour démonter la serre et empiler les panneaux dans notre petite remorque pour la ramener à la maison.

Elle est restée en plan pendant quelques semaines, le temps de décider du meilleur endroit ou la monter, puis de creuser le sol pour installer des dalles de béton en guise de plancher.

Et maintenant, c'est l'amour.  Dans ma tête, je l'ai remplie plusieurs fois de fleurs et de légumes de toutes les sortes.  En réalité, elle est demeurée presque vide parce que la saison était déjà très avancée et toutes mes plantes avaient déjà leur place au jardin.

Mais j'ai beaucoup de projets et de rêves pour l'an prochain.  En attendant, j'ai entrepris la tâche fastidieuse de repeindre la serre en blanc.  Elle avait été peinte en vert foncé il y a des années, mais la couleur s'était délavée avec le temps.  J'ai toujours admiré les serres blanches classiques, j'aime le contraste avec la verdure environnante.

Avec l'automne bien installé, j'ai tout mon temps pour fleurir en songe ma petite serre.  J'ai bien le temps d'y faire pousser des centaines de variétés de légumes et de fleurs avant le printemps prochain...

Craft Book Challenge... without the book

Well, there is a book, I just don't get along with it very well.  My two last projects, meant to be my CBC for February and March, were supposed to come from this book, but the patterns were all wrong for me and so I had to toss the book aside and improvise, which turned out to feel even better.  It made me realize that I can do stuff my own way and it can look as good as the ready-made patterns.  Huge boost for my self-esteem.

So, the book in question is Sew!, by Cath Kidston.  

It is a very good-looking book with great ideas, and I don't regret buying it.  In fact, I am trying a third project from this book, knowing that if I get lost again with the pattern, I can change a few things and work it out.  My first attempt was a needle book, shown here in the book:

And here as it turned out:

I thought that using fabric covered cardboard was a bright idea, that is until I tried it and realized it did not really work out well.  My main problem was that my Heat'n'Bond stuff did not really stick to either the cardboard or the felt, so that the whole thing was coming apart.  It might be that I was using the wrong stuff, or that I did not know how to use it.  Anyway, I had to add a few stitches here and there to secure it a bit, but it ended up looking a little too cheap for my taste.  

You can see below what it looks like from the back, where I had to sew the strap.

I was not about to call it quit, though, so I made my own version, inspired by the pattern, but without the cardboard and the fabric adhesive.  Everything is sewn and nothing will come apart with this one.  It is not as sturdy as the one from the book, but I wasn't really into it to begin with, so I made mine a soft cover with a sheet of felt as batting.

I like this one much better and as you can see, I have already found some use for it.

My second attempt was a fabric-covered coat hanger.

I have to report that I did not go very far with this pattern.  I read the instructions twice and could not make any sense of them.  The measurements were all wrong for the hangers that I had, and the gathering technique did not seem to me like it would work.  I was still on my guard from my recent experience with the needle book, so I used the book as inspiration for the choice of fabrics and I just drew my own pattern to fit my hangers.

I am still surprised they came out so good, and I can see a few more of these hangers in a near future, because these were given to my mom for her birthday, but I want some for myself as well.

 So far, the CBC has been very revealing to me.  I have learned not to be afraid to try something new, and I have learned to trust my instinct and to improvise.  The three patterns that I had chosen lacked some instructions, and I have had to stop and think to find out how to get to the result in my own way.

My next project again comes from Sew!, and hopefully I can work around that one too.  I will show you soon what I am up to.

Sew and Tell - Holiday Recap

Why is it that every year I tell myself that I will start sewing presents early, only to get caught on December 23 frantically handsewing the last pieces close?  I guess I like to live under pressure, and I sure got plenty of that this year.  But it was well worth the trouble because I am glad of what I made and the little presents were appreciated by the recipients.

I made this simple bag for my sister Nathalie, who likes birds and purple.  The pattern is from a French book called "Tout en patch..." by Corinne Crasbercu, and you can see what it's all about here.  My sister and I actually exchanged our handmade gifts, she made some lovely crocheted items for me.

I couldn't resist the urge of making yet another of those lovely patchwork baskets from Pink Penguin.  This one, my fourth, was for my mother, and I filled it with japanese paper scraps for her scrapbooking and cardmaking, and with a few cross-stitched ornaments that I had made.

I also made her a couple of laundry bags (also from "Tout en patch...") that she will get to use in her upcoming trip to Cuba.

And as if I wasn't busy enough with the gift making, I decided on a whim to make a couple of chinese puzzles that we used in a game at our Christmas party.  They don't look like much, but trust me, they were a lot of work!

Want to see what everyone else made in December?  Hit the Sew and Tell button on my sidebar and find out on Amy's blog!

Sylvie

Goodies in the mail

See how happy they all look?  But not as happy as I was when I opened the package from Blushful.  A few weeks ago, tired of fighting with my tangled embroidery threads, I went on a search on Etsy to find some cute thread cards, and came across these.

They were by far the cutest I'd ever seen, and I ordered a pack of 20.  Now, they look even better in real, and I've had fun selecting one mushroom for each color thread.  But where it gets really cool is that because I was her first Etsy customer ever, Annie was overly generous and sent along some more gorgeous handmade goodies:

A cute little pink haired girl, made out of a wooden spool and dressed in pompom trim.

 And this felt beauty, hiding decorative pins in her hair.

I feel very lucky to have received all these nice gifts.  Hop on over to Blushful if you want to see more of Annie's work, she's got the cutest pincushions!