a pencil case

what a nice weekend ... warm but not too hot... lounging, playing and having nice catch up conversations by our friends' swimming pool ... perfect :) summer is coming to a end, I didn't get much time at the beach this year, but strangely I don't miss that as much as I used to. The house move really messed up our summer plans this year. It keeps getting postponed, so no definite plans can be made until then, but right now it's looking like mid or third week of September, which means we'll probably take that week of vacation in early October.
it was also a very crafty weekend. Not many items finished, but a lot of fabrics cut, stitched, sewn and ready to be made into something by the end of this week.



this is a much, much delayed order, but now that it's done I'm quite happy about how it turned out. I had a really difficult time with this one, especially with the pattern. The order was for a pencil case - a wide pencil case - a special gift for someone who uses a lot of pens everyday, and it had to have giraffes and the recipient's name. When I accepted the order I had no idea about how I was going to do it (typical of me !), so it took me weeks to figure it out. In the end, the simpler the better.

 

souvenir shopping in Lisbon

this month has been a very busy one regarding gimme your stuff swaps. I always say that I won't do more swaps, since my available time is limited as it is, but I find it hard to say "no" when all manner of wonderful parcels keep showing up at my house. For this latest round I had to do some souvenir shopping, and let me tell you it was not an easy task. If you've ever been a tourist in Lisbon, you'll know that the more traditional souvenir shops are around the Baixa/Restauradores/Av. da Liberdade areas (at least, those were the first that came to my mind when I first went shopping for these). I must confess that I had never bought souvenirs from around here before, although I am like any other tourist when I travel abroad and I just love souvenir shops - especially in castles and the heritage kind, and of course museum shops - I always h-a-v-e to get something, even if it's only a fridge magnet for my growing collection or a few nice postcards. Anyway, I tried a couple of the more traditional and bigger souvenir shops but couldn't find any items I really liked. I didn't have time to check the museums, but I remembered that T. had pointed out a really nice shop during one of our recent shopping trips downtown. I finally had the time to go check it out during the weekend, and found what I was looking for.




The shop sells all sorts of handmade Portuguese crafts, including pottery, painted tiles, embroidered handbags and needle cases, children's toys, among other things. Then right across the street I noticed another interesting shop, where I got a really nice notebook (yes, one more ., a girl can never have too many, right ?) and fell in love with these soaps (not quite the same that I sometimes find at the supermarket) and these boxes. It's definitely worth going there, so if you're a tourist around these parts or are looking for some unique gifts, go take a look ...

Santos Ofícios Artesanato
Rua da Madalena, 87

Nós por cá
Rua da Madalena, 76/78



 

the new blogger

so I was reading about the features of the new Blogger yesterday and I must say it was about time. When I switched from Live Journal to Blogger a year ago, it was because LJ wasn't flexible enough for my purposes. With Blogger I was able to create a new blog in seconds and change my template and layout how I wanted it (although I hate going through that template code !). But I miss the "friends" functionality from LJ, and the ability to lock posts that I might not want to share in public. One of the most exhasperating features in Blogger is the "republishing" thing every time I change the template .. isn't that annoying ? Especially when the percentage doesn't change and it keeps getting stuck. Or when your photos don't upload no matter what you do, or why can't we have categories like Typepad does. Recently I had considered changing to another blogging site, but now I think I might wait to see if these new features are going to be worth it. I'm especially excited about the dynamic pages (no more republishing) and the labels/categories (finally !) feature. I wasn't one of the lucky people chosen to beta test the new Blogger, but I'm happy to wait patiently for now, since it seems that not everything is working as it should yet...
 

on notebooks ♥

I've always had this thing for notebooks. I'm very particular about them, and I have a special fondness for those with blank thick pages. I sort of collect them, not intentionally of course, but I always find it hard to resist buying a new nice blank notebook. For work, I usually use medium sized ones (A5), but for my crafts notes I carry around a smaller one in my handbag all the time...
A couple of my favourite ones are these two. They're italian, and I just love this particular design. The blue is my current "in-use" one and you can see how scruffy it's looking... I brought it from Florence a couple of years back and it's now full of notes, drawings, ideas and whatever else I can think of that is worth writing down. The yellow one is still brand new, also from Florence (brought by a colleague who recently went there), and I haven't had the courage to start using it yet.
For some reason, it is quite hard to find nice blank page notebooks around here (they're usually lined, or the paper is too thin), but recently I found these design sketch books that quickly became a favourite.



I'm going to start using one of these soon to replace the blue notebook that it's almost used up, so I decided it was high time to make something out of these fabric scraps. I was feeling a little guilty I hadn't made anything with them yet, and I've been wanting to make something zakka-like and with some crewel embroidery too for a while now, so this was the perfect project. The crewel designs are from here, and now that Blair has received her surprise I can show these off.



 

weekend mementos

* rafael, 4 weeks old (ao colo da tia babada) *
* wrapping packages to go (more gimme your stuff) *
* sunday afternoon chocolate chip muffins (baked by A.) *