Elisas Craftscorner

Happy birthday - 11 years Elisas Craftscorner

2017-03-21T09:52:58Z

Remember how old Harry Potter turned, when Hagrid reavealed to him, that he was a wizard? Exactly, 11 years old. A magical age.

Happy 11th birthday, Elisas craftscorner!

I'm still there. Or back again.

To celebrate this special day and for honouring it, I have a little giveaway. Everyone who sends my blog a birthday card, either by snail mail to the adress stated in the imprint, or as a file attached to a mail till March 30th 2017 can win a pair of custom made earrings. C'mon, let's celebrate together!

I am going to give my blog a birthday present, too: I am not going to wait, till I have kept up with all old entries. Instead, I am going to jum in where I am and just write, when there is something new to show or tell about here.

And yes, there is something new: I have a creativity coach. Her name is Dale, she has a certificate in creativity coaching and she lives in one of the most creative cities of the world, where also another very inspiring blogger lives: Angry Chicken - on the west coast of the USA.My coach motivates me and helps me to break all my steps down to babysteps. She also has strategies how to make my goals come true, what to focus on and how to get over obstacles. Thank you Dale.

I hope you all have a great day and do not forget to celebrate with me! Expect to read more here in the future.

autuumnraffletakepartcampaign

2008-09-21T19:25:15Z

It �s been a while since this started being on my mind and now I have collected some things to fancily award the winners. So I am starting another campaign.

I have to admitt that it is also somehow the fault of a certain inhabitant of Zurich living in Oerlikon now. ^_-

The toppic of the campaign is: What makes autuumn nice for you?

What are you mostly looking forward to in autuumn and why?

This could be a childhood memory for example.

I thought about activities, recipes, festivals, things in nature or something like that.

Please arrange your contribution visual as well, e-g- with photos, selfmade videos, collages, things that can be touched (something 3-D).

Closing date is October the 25th. The winners will be drawn from all contributions and will recieve nice and partially rare presents.

Be creative and suprise me with your autuumn-y thoughts and creations. At least it should be enough time.

Before I forget, your contributions shall be sent to my already known adress.

Now all that I have to add is wish you much pleasure and joy by creating your contributions. A month should be enough to make anything, even for the most busy of you.

I�m in!

2007-09-11T21:27:13Z

I finally got my invitation to Ravelry today but couldn�t start writing right away because Casey had a mistake in the signup for newbies. Luckily Jess wrote me a mail and made a entry to the blog and now everything is fine and I even found some of my mailing lists people and even my Secret Pal 9 spoilee and my Wollfee from the last time and several other people. It is quite fun, I found some groups I loved right away just through the people I added as friends. And then I wrote my profile and added some fresh fotos and I am really happy about that event - Ron is in Baden- Baden today (that is exactly the other part of Germany) and so it made my day better.

My name at Ravelry is quite what you already know and I am really really happy to be the first, so I am Elisa there too.

I�ve already joined the Secret Pal 11 group and even posted to it.

Thanks to Aileen that I knew quite early what Ravelry was and signed the list. She is one of the editors.

Wow, I am so excited. Hope to see some more faces there in future. But now, to bed.

my very first SP competition

2007-08-21T12:31:35Z

Our hostess Jenn had the idea for a competition and since my questionaire is up since nearly a month, it�s only some questions to do for me.

Here we go:

1. What is the one knitting accessory you could not live without?

one? I have three: my chibi sewing needle case, my row counters and most important the fabric shopping bag (cotton, not closable) where I have my take-with-me knitting in.

2. If you're heading on vacation, do you take knitting with you? If
so, how much and what type of project?

of course!
In my last vacation which was at the end of June till the 10th of July, I took 7 skeins for winding with me and a bag full of small projects. This were 2 headbands (one blue linen from a USA yarn swap for my mum, a darkred merino lace one), 2 different socks (both are handdyed sock yarns - one is called "Cuban nights" and is a stripey one with each row another colour and the other one is from the first series of "colours for men" and is in different blue shades for my boyfriend and the difficulty is that he wants me to knit a elastic into the first rows like in bought socks) and a crocheted darkred berret, which still isn�t big enough.

3. Where have you travelled to that you'd consider your favorite spot?

Despite my age I�ve been a lot around the world already, but I think I have three favourite spots:
the city Bourgas and its beach in Bulgaria, which is my birthcountry
the island of Rugia in the Baltic Sea which is so small and so big and so extremely beautifull
Ueno park and the Meji shrine in Tokyo - Tokyo was so enjoyable at all but this spots are special

hey, now that I see this, all have something in common: water around or in it and plenty of green

4. What is your favorite knitting book at the moment? Do you own it?

there are two of them: one skein wonders, which I own and have used to knit several things and some more to come from and the "knitted embellishments" book from Nicky Epstein which I unfortunately don�t own but totally adore.

5. Do you listen to podcasts? Which is your favorite(s)?

Funnily enough, I started a german one for our magazine yesterday, with installation, homepage customization, recording, editing and everything by myself. Have a look here if you want to hear my voice: http://www.podcast.funime.de/index.php

For knitting I love the KnitCast from Toronto

Wow, I�m through it. And I am quite excited, my first knit related competition ever.

my first pair of socks for me

2007-08-16T19:06:14Z

I finally finished them. The first pair of socks I knit for myself out of sock yarn. The name of the yarn is "cuban nights" and it is bought from Kirstens onlineshop handgefaerbt.com

It took me months of spare time knitting and some rows grew in my holidays in Rugia this July.
I used my 2,5mm bamboo dpns, which I got as a present from my Wollfee - Pal. I managed to damage one of the needles and then to repair it somehow - it is now shorter and I changed the dpns for the heels and used aluminium ones but I really quite like the bamboo ones. More than I had expected.

It�s not so obvious on the photos but each row of the socks has another colour and not only did colours repeat but some very different colours like grey, greyblue, darkblue, pink, dark brown and else appeared. Even though the legs are slightly too short for my taste, I love my socks and wear them from time to time.

The next pair of sock yarn socks is for Ron. I started some cabled with thicker wool for me and somehow try to follow the tricky aran pattern.

Maze books and an award

2007-08-15T10:33:12Z

Today I got an award from my dear friend Trixi from Austria and I am quite happy about it, because it is my first one. I gave the file a makeover and removed the artifacts and saved it in a lossless format, here it is for picking up:

To read about the idea of the award and what it is all about, please click here

Well, now it�s my turn to tag people, who haven�t been tagged yet and therefore I tag the following persons: Anja, Yaga, Theresia, Tina, Aileen, Isobel and Sara . Much pleasure, girls!

And then there was some crafting work yesterday, I was very hard-working. The first thing was that I bought some coloured cardboard sheets some months ago in Strausberg, where I worked. The size is DIN A2 and the width is 52 cm. I didn�t use it for a long time. I saw the maze books on Theresias page and watched the instructions on craftsweekly. I decided to give it a go and made one for Tina, which is made of purple cardboard, corrugated cardboard, a red ribbon and a paper with purple dots on it which I got from Anja.

Last weekend my parents visited us and stayed in our house for a night and since I didn�t had the courage to cut my 52,0cm � 70,7cm cardboard on the desks or the kitchen floor (which is covered with flagstones) my daddy had to do it for me. We used a folded wallpapering table covered with old newspapers and due to a lack of a big enough ruler my dad used a tool that is supposed to hold it over the end of a fresh wallpapered wall and cut the wallpaper below in a perfect line. Afterwards I had to fold the cut cardboards (which were then 52cm x 52cm or 50cm x 50cm) cut some of the folds and the pages of the books were ready.
Sunday noon I drove my parents home (about 1 hour drive and I did it all without a mistake *proud*) and after a short lunch my daddy used a very good and expensive passepartout cardboard to cut several pieces (4 pieces for one book) with his huge graphics designer equippment papercut gadget, which was extremely fast and accurate matter.
Back home I took two identical cardboard pieces at a time and glued them together to make the cover or back cover of the books. After finishing and some time for letting the glue dry, I glued some of Anjas papers from her first "I want to make you curious about scrapbooking" parcel on the front of the covers, always following the instructions from the video tutorial. I then added the ribbon(s) but used instant adhersive instead of paste and except for the green ribbon which is from Anja of course, I had already bought all other ribbons myself. For the checked cover I used my leather pricker to make holes and then put those rectangular copper brads from making memories through them at the places where the ribbons were to fix the ribbons additionaly. I then glued the "pages" with a crafters paste I bought from netto and used my selfbought bone folder to make it neat. And like this I finished 4 wonderfull small books which have the sizes 13cm x 13cm, 12,8cm x 12,8cm and two of the 12,5cm x 12,5cm. Let�s see if I will keep them for myself or give some away or both. ^_^ Well and there are some news about my second sock. I have finished the rim, the leg, the heel and 49 of 69 rounds of the foot. Only 20 rounds left until I can finally start the toes. Can�t wait to do that, have been slowly enough and have soooooooooo much on the needles.

This night I got a cute Hallmark eCard from Jenn to let me know that she will be my Secret Pal hostess and that she is going to inform the participants of her list about their matches. I am sooo anxious to know who it will be for me. I am going to keep you updated!

Secret Pal 11

2007-08-06T14:07:02Z

After a round of being ready to get in as an angel, I am again part of Secret Pal. It�s been a year since I first joined and in the meantime I have participated in a lot of Swaps and got some good and bad experiences with those.

I am really looking forward to the new round and hoping to have a better Secret Pal experience this time.

I have contributed some buttons and of course hope to win a prize in the button contest.

Dear pal and dear hostess, I have posted my Secret Pal questionaire online, you can get there by clicking the link below the Secret Pal 11 image in the right navigation bar quite at the bottom.
Same goes for the wishlist, refered to in the questionaire. I gave it a makeover.

Of course you can mail me with any questions you might have anytime.

I am sooo excited! And now back to button creating! ^_^

of men and sheep

2007-07-07T21:06:10Z

The day before yesterday Ron and me went into a leisure park, the "Ruegenpark" to be exact. It is situated in Gingst upon Rugia, where I am spending my holidays right now (we are in a place called Ketelshagen near the town of Putbus). In this amusement park one could see a lot of miniature buildings, there were some great fun rides and we were really lucky with the weather, wich the first time here wasn�t rainy all day but even some sun peeked out.

There was also a petting zoo, a very small one. A blackface sheep and a cozy black - and- white Jacob sheep shared the space together with a mama goat with her kid.

Every day these four get a lot of strokes, food and sleep in a nice warm and dry barn. What a nice life, no milking, no shearing...

The jacob sheep was extremely fluffy and cuddly and absolutely lanoline - free. I ask myself if they probably wash it? *g* The coat was long, slightly curly and very soft, like downy feathers. I have never seen and felt anything like this.

This afternoon we went to Bergen (the biggest town here on this island) for buying a card reader to make it possible for me to blog with photos from my current holidays.
Afterwards we went for a walk with our dog Yuki and used the Famila parking space and the surrounding area for this. Again it was raining all the time and he was sniffing here and there and took a lot of time for this. It was yesterday, that I recognized two sheep with black faces and legs and grey coat here, today there were even five of them. At the meadow between the parking space and the rails they enjoyed the good green gras. But then the quandary occured to me: the sheep were leashed on with a collar and a long thin leash. I was deadly sad and apalled. For me this is not what I would call a humane and adequate animal housing. Home in Brandenburg I�d immerdiately would have called the so called office vet and told him about this. What kind of humans must that be, that have the heart to do such a cruelty?

Knitters Treat Exchange package

2007-05-21T18:20:58Z

Like my spoiler from x- Mas Swap Anja and Tsea I took part in the Knitters Treat Exchange too. This Swap was hosted by my Secret Pal9 spoilee Isobel and sweensie and the aim was to spoil another knitter. One should send yarn for a small project, a magazine, something pampering and a delicious treat and some small assecoires. Since the 5th of May I have been waiting for my parcel and now today my postwoman finally arrived with it.

"You have mail from Pennsylvania!" , she said and I immediately understood what it must be. It also became obvious, why it had taken so long.

From upstairs, looking out of the window, I first thought it must be something from Amazon and I found it very weird, why I should recieve a package from amazon since I hadn�t ordered anything.

I was able to controll myself and keep the parcel closed for quite a long time, because I used it as an extra motivation to finish my daily (and not so daily) tasks, one of which it was to iron Rons longsleeved business shirts with an outside temperature of 31 degrees celsius. jeez.
To make sure I have a photo in case I loose controll early, I first took a photo and then went on with work.

Finally the best about it could take part: the unwrapping.
My spoiler was the nice Karla from the beautiful Pennsylvania, who really put lots of thoughts and efford into the parcel. Ok, my questionaire was very clear and my wishlist too, but she also put a lot of other ideas into it. I recieved my beloved Simply Knitting (which is published in Great Brittain, in other words had to cross the Atlantic ocean twice which surely made it even more expensive ) which had a little pattern booklet with home assecoires as a free gift. One of the patterns is from a person I quite admire and have personal contact with, Claire from missbell.uk.
I also got a pattern for a lace shawl named "lily of the Valley", which absolutely isn�t my taste, but hey - I have a mother and two grannies, right? ;-)
The parcel also contained a noteblock that sticks and has a cool pattern, locking stitch markers and a chibi needle case from Clover from Japan. I�ve had them on my wishlist since the start of Secret Pal 9 last year and put them on because I�had seen them in an issue of Simply Knitting.
The pampering treat that Karla sent, was a bottle of "skin Sin" the gorgeous bodylotion from Lush (expensive). As delicious treats she sent delicious handmade cookies and some Chai tea from Twinnings of London because she was unsure if I�d like the cookies and because she likes Chai tea just as I do. I have now 3 different Chai tea sorts in my tea cuppboard. :-)

But the best in the parcel were a lace needle from addi turbos which measures 1,50metres and is 3,5mm strong. And above all this incredible yarn. The yarn is a Laceweight Merino - Tussah silk blend and just "my" shade of darkred. It is the thinnest yarn I�ve ever had and is wound up in a unusual form, which I�ve seen at several irish knitter�s blogs and at Theresias but it�s my first one in this shape.

Karla had the idea of me knitting the lace shawl from the pattern with the needle and the yarn (in her accompaning letter she gave me several advices for lace knitting) but this pattern really isn�t just my taste. But I think the idea itself was nice and so at least I am going to knit some lacy toe socks from this beautiful yarn with the pattern from a November Simply Knitting issue, which I have also sent to Tsea. I think the yarn is nice for the toes and not too thick and apart from that it is very smooth and comfy and with that silk content it is ideal for summer.

I have asked my friend Yaga from Switzerland a favour, she is going to buy some less than 2mm dpns for me. I very much appreciate that, because I bet that those needles will suit that Laceweight yarn better.

Thank you dear Karla for this great goodies, everything absolutely suits my taste, and the cookies too, don�t worry.

Thanks also to Isobel for her caring guidance and the immense efford she put into this swap.
I am going to take part in the second round around October too.

KTE Questionaire

2007-04-02T19:44:17Z

Until I get the extra page done, something to read.

1. What's your favourite type of yarn?

silk and cashmere. But since I can�t afford that to often, I love 100% merino or 100% pure new wool

2. What's your least favourite type of yarn?

everything that has artificial fibres in it. (Acrylic, Modal, Polyester...)

3. What's the first thing you do when you visit a new yarn shop?

walk through the whole shop to get the size and place of the favourite yarns section and get a view for all lil�gimmicks

4. What other crafts do you do / would like to do?

beading, scrapbooking, papercrafts, sewing, patchwork, painting, embroidery, drawing, dyening...

5. What magazines do you currently subscribe to?

no one.
But english magazines are great, as well as french are, no german required.

6. Put this type of magazine in order of preference:
Knitting / Crochet / Other Craft / Food / Home / Fashion / Celebrity Gossip / Garden

Knitting /Other Craft /Garden / Home / Crochet / Fashion / Food /Celebrity Gossip /

7. What items do you like to knit / crochet?

socks, scarfs, hats, headbands, baby clothes

8. Are you allergic to anything?

artificial fibres if the content is more than 2% *yuk* My skin drives me mad in this cases.

9. What do you like to* smell of?

rose, lily of the valley, freesia

10. What's your favourite way to relax?

besides from a day at a spa, enjoying tasty food, taking a bath (if my bathingtube wasn�t so small) in really hot water with a good bodylotion to rub in afterwards (very sensitive and somehow dry skin), then sitting down at the living room drinking some Tiger Spice Chai from David Rio, reading some nice crafty magazine and then doing something crafty e.g. beading, sewing and as a finish of the relaxation watching a good film or listening to a nice audiobook while knitting with some great fibre like silk or merino. mhhhh, what a nice thought.

11. You're stood in front of a Victorian style sweetshop, an Italian cafe, an old fashioned bakery and a dainty tea room. Where do you go first?

victorian style sweetshop - now you know why I look like a hobbit ^_^;;

12. What do you come out with?

lots of great sweets that don�t stick to the teeth (toffee, gummy bears), some good but not bitter chocolade, some cookies and english fudge and some extra sweets which the shopkeeper gave me for tasting. ^_^

13. Where do you go next?

I leave aside the caf� and the bakery and have a long stay at the tea room with my knitting and some good chai latte or similiar.

14. Any other words of wisdom for your pal?

dear pal, don�t hesitate to mail me. I have some other webpages and answer quickly and no problem with other languages. I am very open towards all new and other cultures. You can ask me absolutely everything.

crash your stash

2007-03-20T20:12:00Z

Today a parcel from the USA arrived. Like Aileen I took part in a swap too, which was swap - bot based. This swap saidf that we are to send something from the stash that will be more usefull for another person. Of course one should ask the partner what his likes/ dislikes and allergies are.

I got my parcel from Sandy, who lives in North Carolina. The parcel was full of uncommon fibres, and even though not all of the colours were exactly my taste, I loved it.
But hey, I have friends, parents and my boyfriend, right? The parcel contained 6 stitch markers from Meredith by the company "yarn paradise", which were inside a white organza - pouchie.
I found a great posctcard with some fibres and some balls and skeins of yarn.
The olive green balls (which look grey on my picture, but in reality are light olive green) and the darkred ball have a cool and firm touch. The fibre is hemp, and we don�t really get hemp firbe here. The lightpurple ball is baboo fibre and I already know what I am going to do with it. The darkblue skein is linen, the lightblue skein is pure merino wool and my highlight has the name "koi pond" and is the orange- red skein. That are 50g pure silk. Thank you, thank you, thanks, dear Sandy. You have made me really happy and brought joy to my life with all those great gifts.

sheep cookie

2007-03-14T17:13:57Z

My colleague Maria (the one with the colourfull scarf) today came along with a small bag of zoo cookies from Leibnitz. And guess what was inside? A cookie in the form of a sheep! Sure that I took my cellphonecam to take a photograph for the sheep release competition. The cellphonecamera isn�t that good, so please excuse the poor quality.
But the cookie was really a smacker. Really crunchy. I bet such great sheepcookies aren�t sold in England. What do you mean, Ruthie?

baaaaaaaaaa

2006-11-01T13:37:56Z

Wow, today in the middle of a cleaning and tidying session for my birthday party which will be Saturday, even though the stormy wind outside and with all windows closed I heard some shouts outside and a kind of bustling spirit was in the air. I thought that it could be another parcel delivery service and rushed to our living- room window. And I couldn�t believe my eyes. An enormous flock of sheep was passing our lot of land, two coalblack sheepdogs were running up and down the flock and two shepherds in full regalia were walking in front of and behind the flock. I just picked Rons camera and threw the window open. I took some photos and 2 mini videos, let me see, I�ll perhaps be able to include them here, if Ron can download them from the camera at his computer (the storage medium is a microdrive and my storage card reader can�t read those anymore). Jeez, I was beside myself with joy. I mean after all on the sheep this fluffy stuff is produced, which we use for knitting, spinning and felting and this is why I somehow like sheep. What a pity that sheep aren�t so snoopy by nature and you can�t cuddle and hug them if they are in their flock on free land. It was just an hour before this happened, when I read in the local advertising journal that our sheep farm in M�ncheberg is looking for their four missed feed fence electricity devices and has promised a big reward for each of them. I hope that they will get those devices back. Yes, M�ncheberg although a small town has a sheep farm, but unfortunately you can hardly catch them on the phone. Many greetings to Woolly Ruth and Kaba at this place, Without both of you, I sure wouldn�t post this entry.

post- birthdayshopping

2006-10-31T20:56:38Z

Today I went to have a little party with my parents, Ron and my granny and because of the damn heat problem it took place at my parents�flat. The day was made fine by a great strawberry tart, self- made apple strudel, self - baked pizza from my mum, looooooooooooooots of great presents (a warm feather blanket), some knitting of the first sock and shopping. I bought myself a new pair of cuddly boots, a pair of darkbrown/purple cord trausers, some tins of honey (Avocado and Mango honey, they didn�t have more of my beloved chestnut honey), a pair of bedshoes, some magazines, 2 sheep keychains, instant tea and some small things for my spoilee. Plus I went to take a closer look at "my" wool shop at the ancient part of K�penick where I went regularily when I lived nearby. I was incredibly lucky to meet the owner herself, because she moved away to West Germany some months ago. She fell madly in Love with a boy there, moved to him and just occassionaly drops in to make sure everything is all right. She still is hunting for my lana grossa "bingo" yarn and told me, that she was to the shop where she hopes to find some a lot of times by bus but always arrived during the shop�s luch closing time. She promised to try and go there by bike. The shop in K�penick now sells even addi DPNs (5mm and very thick wooden ones), they have a new range of felting wool in nice colours, and more beads than ever. I hoped to finally find some really bulky Aran- like 100% pure new wool which should be coloured, and they had some kind but it was only wickyarn. What a bummer. Instead the owner recommended a sock wool from Austermann and seemed happy when I told her that I managed the boomerang - heel. I bought one ball of this sock wool called "step" and the colour is called blackberry (in fact there are some shades grey and raspberry). I also bought a half high knitting nelly which can produce strings twice so thick than before, a pipe of G�termann beads (the colour is something copper/bronze like) and a scented candle with tangerine scent. The shop owner told me that she liked these scented candles because they weren�t causing headaches. wowowo, what a great day!

crafty birthday

2006-10-30T20:48:13Z

Today, one of my birthday presents was something I�d like to thank Hannah from Blackpool, GB sooooo much! I am very besotted with the "simply knitting" magazine and she sent the November issue to me. But it wasn�t only the again so well succeeded magazine, it was a whole bundle. The bundle also included a simply knitting calendar for the next year with lots of great patterns and a booklet with nice knitting projects from Rowan (the yarn producer). Waaaaiii, perfect! *happy* Thank you so, so, so much dear Hannah!

Oh, and before I forget, I got an eCard from my secret pal. Thank you secret pal, this was a really funny animation.