3 more nights

3 More nights...

This weekend I'm off to Marrakech again. Each time I'm excited to return to the Red City.

On Wednesday we will kick off with the Marvelous Marrakech workshop.

Explore Marrakech every day in a different way. We have combined new places and topics with the best from our programs from previous years.
What's new about the Marrakech travel workshops program? We have a different theme every day, to explore the authentic Marrakech in a special and unique way.

Off the beaten tracks with workshops and exciting adventures while discovering Marrakech and surroundings. Where everyone else goes to the right we go to the left. By showing the real Marrakech, a visit to the Red City will be a much more precious experience!

While crafting, cycling, being our own veggies on the local market, cooking, photographing, discovering all kinds of gardens and exploring the countryside, we will surely living it up out there!

I hardly can't wait to settle down in the medina and start with the workshop preparations and meet everyone at Chambres d'Amis.

You can follow our adventures on Instagram @woodwoolstool #marvelousmarrakech2019

cafe au lait

Dazzling cafe au last Dahlias from the garden of my friend Marieke.

Yesterday my friend Marieke came over with her almost three months old daughter Loïs. We more or less spent the entire afternoon together on the daybed. Catching up with Marieke and cuddling with Loïs. We don't see each other not very often and as soon as we are together we always need hours to catch up. We never stop talking, which didn't bother 'mini', she had a two-hour nap on the daybed between us.

lilac knitted one-piece sweater

First autumn day and I am in the mood to knit. Do you recognize this behavior?

I found some soft lilac yarn at Zeeman, named Julia and I decided to knit a new one-piece sweater.

It goes pretty fast with knitting needle 8mm and it's super easy to knit this one-piece sweater.

My new favorite color is lilac. It started with my lilac jumpsuit that I bought in Vienna in March. Since then I notice that it is slowly becoming my favorite color. Lilac looks great with many colors.

You can find the knitted one-piece sweater pattern in my Etsy shop. The Julia yarn is also available in other beautiful colors, in case you are not to keen about lilac. You need about 6 balls of Julia yarn for the sweater.

djemaa el fna rotterdam

The Museumpark in Rotterdam has been transformed this weekend into a gigantic open-air restaurant during the Djemaa el Fna festival.

The food festival is inspired by the eponymous square in Marrakech, world's largest open-air restaurant. More than 40 chefs cook for you in the classic white stalls. The food is fragrant, colorful, tasteful and prepared with love. We had a delicious Pastilla and brought some Moroccan cookies back home.

However it is not just about food at the Djemaa el Fna. The festival has moreover a small souk and an extensive cultural program, with literature, music and theater. Artists and musicians are inspired by the atmosphere of a Thousand and One Nights.

We went to the storytelling Kalief by Abdelkader Benali in the tower in the middle of the festival site. Benali shows a Thousand and One Nights Night of our time presents, in an up-to-date and playful absurd look at the old stories in which he shares his fascination for his grandmother, the power of the oral narration.

On this beautiful late summer day in September, all in all an appropriate foretaste of my trip to Marrakech next week.

PS: The top photo was taken in the Depot Boijmans van Beuningen 'mirror' building under construction. Can you spot me?

apples

Saturday morning mini polder tour on the first day of autumn.

A perfect late summer day.

We had a coffee on the terrace at Fluitekruid, (Dutch for cow parsley) in the countryside and bought apples at Izak's orchard.

Throughout the harvest season, we always buy our apples in the wooden barn close to our home #shoplocal and some of you might recognize the wooden barn from 'woodwoolstool shoots' in the past...



March 2010 - a pile of woodwoolstools between my good old 2CV and the chickens

marvelous marrakech workshop preparations

Final preparations for the Marvelous Marrakech workshop are in full swing. Have been working on the last details for the workshop program this afternoon. Next to a bunch of sunflowers from the Villa Augustus garden and enjoying the late summer sunshine in my studio.

I can't wait to return to Marrakech and I'm super excited to meet everyone!

In exactly two weeks from now we will kick off with the traditional welcome dinner on the roof terrace at Chambres d'Amis!

noordwijk aan zee

Late summer day at the beach in Noordwijk.

What a treat!

sunglasses archive

With the purchase of two new sunglasses this season, my 'mini sunglasses suitcase' was completely packed and they didn't fit in anymore.

A vintage rotatable spectacle rack would be a good solution for the expanding collection, so I went looking for it, yet without result.

Then suddenly I realized that we still have a vintage postcard rack in the attic, I found 3 of them in a bulky waste container years ago.

The frames fit exactly into the 'landscape postcard' side of the rack. I love these creative solutions, re-using what you already have.

13 sunglasses, it may seem like a lot, however collected over the years. A new one every year, sometimes two ;-) and prescription sunglasses have been added.

Summer ain't over yet!

kunsthal rotterdam - i'm your mirror

Rotterdam - Kunsthal - Tuesday 10th of September

The impressive retrospective exhibition I’m Your Mirror, featuring the work of the famous Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (1971). In an activist and feminist way, and with a profound respect for Portuguese culture and traditions, she gives reality her own personal twist. Vasconcelos is known for her sharp sense of proportions, masterly use of colour and unusual choice of materials, like household appliances, wall tiles, textiles, medicines, urinals, pans and plastic cutlery.

I’m Your Mirror is an exhibition with a large number of sculptures and installations, such as Lilicoptère (a gold-plated helicopter decorated with Swarovski crystals and pink ostrich feathers) and A Noiva (The Bride - a six-metre high chandelier made of 14,000 tampons.) In her work, Vasconcelos is searching for different identities – including those of modern-day women – and the discord that can be found within them. She is inspired by the traditional crafts of her native country. The result is a seductive, funny, exuberant and sometimes absurdist exhibition in which nothing is ever as it seems.

The exhibition is organised by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in collaboration with the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art Porto and Kunsthal Rotterdam.