la cuisine

Saturday 18th of August.

Café dans la cuisine. Proper place to drink coffee.

My favorite place in the house is the kitchen.

The light is beautiful because there are many windows. And since the new Moroccan tiles are on the wall, the light is even brighter, still on a cloudy day like today.

The typography mugs I bought years ago at Anthropologie.

museum voorlinden

Wednesday, 15th of August - Museum Voorlinden - Wassenaar.

Museum Voorlinden is a museum for modern and contemporary art. A bright white building houses a varied and surprising collection and the garden surrounding the museum was designed by Piet Oudolf.

Perfect place to enjoy art, architecture and nature on a cloudy August afternoon.

tin toy tortoise

Tortoise in da house.

Since a few days we have a pet. A walking tortoise, a walking tin tortoise. Nostalgia!

Our brown tin tortoise, slowly walks on the harlequin carpet with his cute curved legs! You only need to wind him up and he simultaneously moves his legs, tail and head just like the real animal.

A real one would have been even more fun of course, but we simply don't have the right climate for tortoises.

I bought the tortoise in the Villa Augustus market shop and there are some more tortoises waiting for a new home.

You can see our tortoise in action on my INSTAGRAM!

bright light

After weeks and weeks of long 'backyard' summer evenings, we moved to the living room because of the summer storm yesterday. For the first time since a long time, we spent the evening indoors. Cooler days ahead of us...

The August days are slowly getting shorter, so we also need to turn on the lights. Well that has its charm too.

The 1980s toucan desk lamp designed by H.T. Huang, our vintage find from Palermo, ushered in the first indoor-evening. Bright, cheerful and funny light.


Palermo, 19th of June 2018 - our toucan in the vintage shop, a practical souvenir because of the folding beak.

Have a cool weekend you all, wherever you are!

marrakech theme - tea & turtle

A new crochet project for the upcoming cool crochet workshop in Marrakech in October.

I've made a 'turtle' teapot holder for my moroccan teapot.

Turtles are common pets in Marrakech and in Chambres d'Amis two turtles are living in the roofgarden.

Using a turtle potholder to poor fresh verbena tea, is a cool crochet project which fits perfectly in the Marrakesh theme.



I already made a turtle pillow for the bamboo daybed last year, but that's too ambitious as a cool crochet day-project, so I designed a smaller achievable version.

woodwoolstool baby blanket - bb18 white

... and as announced earlier this week, here's the bb18 white version!

Some weeks ago I shared the bb18 crochet project on the kitchen table. The bb18 (baby blanket 2018), with strong and bright colors, combined with black squares.

In this last month, since I'm back home from Sicily, I've made two new versions of my 'good old' baby blanket. Multicolored squares with a new design of black or white squares. Making squares are ideal small summer crochet projects.

You can find both bb18 blankets in my ETSY SHOP.

Which one would you choose?

ottomania

Wednesday, 1st of August.

We celebrated my birthday in Haarlem and on the Parnassia beach of Bloemendaal.

Unlike previous years, we do not always celebrate my birthday abroad, but hey in the summer of 2018, it feels like a holiday birthday, like the ones in Cadiz, Madrid, Pamplona, Berlin, Antwerp...

And the visit to the graceful Ottomania shop, added an extra foreign touch! The Ottomania shop has a refined collection, all products with the simplicity of Ottoman design and lifestyle. Perfect place to choose a very special birthday present. The first time we visited Ottomania was in December 2005, we bought some embroidered pillowcases and a handmade carrying tray with handle of tinned copper, that we still use every day. I love those timeless handmade products, they always remain beautiful.