Soledad's Journal

Thank you, elwenlj, for the lovely little bells - I've never seen so tiny ones, and I'm sure I'll be able to put them to good use. :)

Also thank you, thesmallhobbit, for the lovely summer card. It was such a pleasant surprise! :)

In other news, Mum and I made our weekly trip to the corner café, which was really nice. Then I made cauliflower Strudel (sorry, noadvertising), talked to my friend Evie on the phone and we watched re-runs of the GBBO. And now I'm about to read some fanfic until "The Repair Shop" starts.

Question to well-informer British people: Is BBC News not showing Trooping the Colour this year? I'd love to watch the parade, but I couldn't find any hint at a live broadcast.

I've got up to 24 degrees in the morning. By the time Mum and I made our morning excursion (she admiring the toddlers on the playground, me hopping over to Lidl), it was 28 degrees - at half past ten in the morning, mind you! Currently, it's 31 degrees. We are sitting in the flat with blinds down and all windows firmly closed to keep the heat out. Ah, well, at least I didn't have to cook today!

Crafting-wise I've made one side of the little cardboard baskets. It was harder than I imagined. Part of the problem was that I can't for my life, cut things (even paper) in a straight line, so the individual strangs didn't fit as they should have. Another part of the problem was probably the wet glue that I used. I do own a hot glue gun, but... well, let's just say that the piping bag isn't the only thing I'm fairly hopeless with.

I'll try a different kind of wet glue tomorrow... and when that doesn't work, either, I'll switch to the glue stick - and to double-sided tape if nothing else helps. Those all have their own nasty tricks, so this promises to be a really interesting project (in the Chinese curse sense of "interesting"), and the four sides of the poor basket will probably turn out all different. But we all learn through pain, right? *g*

Lidl is having Greek days right now, so I've bought some frozen spinach and feta satchets, which we'll bake up in the oven as soon as temperatures go down a little. I've also bought halva with pistachios in it. I hope it will be better than the supposedly pistachio-flavoured ice-cream I bought on Friday and that tastes very artificially, almost like perfume. Grrrr. We had to pour eggnog over it, which is a waste of good alcohol, but what else could we have done?

Oh, and before I forget: congratulations, adafrog, to the 20th birthday of your journal! It seems we've all been on LJ for a considerable time. :)

Happy Birthday, dear adafrog! To quote the Ninth Doctor, I hope it was a fantastic one!

Here, have an assorted choice of virtual calories:



As for us, we had a quiet day again. I did the grocery shopping in the morning, then we continued the kitchen project (mostly involving Mum washing up rarely used things and me putting them back in their places), watched some telly and rested a bit in-between the various tasks.

The weather is still a bit cold, so I heated up some Zwiebelkuchen from the freezer to create a more pleasant temperature. Other than that, not much happened. Nothing on the creative front in any case. I don't mind, though. I had worked really hard on the little sewing kits; taking a break before I start decorating the actual boxes will do me good.

Happy Birthday, aeris444! I hope you had a good time today. Many happy returnings!

Nothing overly interesting here. I did the grocery shopping in the morning and the hairdresser paid us a visit in the early afternoon. In the remaining time I rearranged the flat for tomorrow's cleaning frenzy, processed the first batch of asparagus of the year and tried to persuade myself that tomorrow won't be that horrible. So far I haven't succeeded.

Happy Birthday, badly_knitted! I hope it was a lovely day.



Me, I had a busy day again. Was all over the town the whole morning, getting things dealt with and accordingly dead in the afternoon. No crafting, no writing, no nothing. Just a long nap when I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.

At least the issue with my phone is now settled. My number is no longer suppressed when I call someone, which is a relief.

On the double today!

Happy Birthday, dear akane42me and dear lindahoyland!



I hope you both are having a wonderful day!

Happy Birthday, just_jenni! I hope it was a nice, peaceful day, despite everything life has been throwing at you lately. *hugs*



Nothing new over here. It's still hot like hell, we're doing as little as possible; only that today I should have dealt with official stuff. After half an hour of waiting, the office lady told me that I can't do that for Mum without a written empowerment. It took another twenty or so minutes until she found the right forms on her computer and printed them out for me. That was "one trip I owed the devil", as we say in Hungarian.

I had to buy the detergents afterwards, so it was over 11am when I got home, 33 degrees outside, 28 degrees inside the flat. Thank God for ice cream, we'd have already died without it. I bought small pasties on my way home, so we had those for lunch, with coffee and fruit. The rest of the day was spent in a horizontal position, interrupted only by some phone calls.

I did a bit of writing, though, since I usually do it lying on my front. So the day wasn't completely wasted. But I'm fed up to the eyeteeth with this weather.

First things first: Happy Birthday, dear meathiel! I hope it was a delightful one!

Not much happened over here. We were resting a bit after two exhausting days, and I did some more card stitching.

Behold Card #5:



This one took me three days; not because the pattern would be complicated - it is not - but because the sheer number of stitches. It turned out well enough, so I'm content.

And now for cards 6-8:



These are basically three different versions of the same pattern; really simple ones, well suited for using up smaller pieces of cardboard.

Other than crafting, I made a quick lunch (cold sour cherry soup from the Tüte as well as pasta with cheese and a salad), I wrote a tiny bit, watched some telly with Mum and took a nice, long nap in the afternoon. It's getting hot again, and that makes me sleepy.

As I mentioned before, I started preparing things for those cute little lavender satchels. Today I decided to make one by hand, just in case we won't be able to cajole Louise into cooperation.

It started well enough. Blanket stitch along the narrower sides, check. Sewing on the decorative lace, check. Laying the pieces together inside out and sewing together the longer side... failure. The laying together part wasn't precise enough and one side ended up half a centimetre longer than the other one. So I had to undo the whole thing; and after that I just didn't feel like redo it. Perhaps tomorrow. There's always tomorrow. *sigh*

Other than that, we had laundry day, and then went for a walk with Mum. I had to go to Lidl, as they had raspberries on offer (25% cheaper, no way I could not buy them!), but Mum got tired easily, so we did what we always do in such cases: I parked her on the playground next to our building, where she admired the little toddlers while I was doing the shopping. She enjoyed the show enormously, plus she was in the fresh air, so: win-win situation.

It was 29°C in the early afternoon, so we decided not to cook today. We had sandwiches for lunch, coffee and ice-cream. I could live on those for a very long time!

Oh, and completely unrelated but still important:

Happy Birthday,lissas_elves! I hope you and the girls are all right!

Happy Birthday, altariel! I hope you had a terrific time!



Many happy returnings!