What we did…

… finally some pictures of the first part of our March break outing as promised. We went north in the search of snow. We found some, although not the copious amounts what we had hopped for. Living within the seasons has been very challenging when the seasons don't play along.

I take our winter books up from their storage downstairs at the beginning of December, together with the Christmas and Solstice books. After the holidays, usually January 7 when we put the Christmas tree away, all, except the Winterbooks go back downstairs. At the same time we also turn our nature table into a winter scene. This year we had used both shelves on the little sidetable that we use for a nature table – upstairs was King Winter in his winter wonderland, on the bottom shelf Huxley put Mother Earth and her children by creating a wonderful cave for them. 

Here is where it becomes challenging. Waiting for winter, for snow, for activities as they happen in the books that talk about winter. I think it is high-time that some books are written that show our winters as they are and also suggest some activities to do without snow. I have a gander that we will have more irregular weather like this ahead of us (smile). 

To try to find some winter, we planned to visit my dear friend Mary and her family in the north (from us it's about 2.5hrs due north) in Bracebridge, Ontario. We stayed there for a few days and had lots of fun. Here some pictures to share.

Bleached-leaves

Bleached leaves – wonderful colours and gorgeous shapes.

Bleached-leaves

Cadmun, the family german sheppard, black lab mix. She celebrated her 1st birthday while we visited. 

Bleached-leaves

Resting.

Bleached-leaves

Marys' youngest – full steam ahead!

Bleached-leaves

The path behind Mary's house – this is the snow we found and glorious it was.

Bleached-leaves

Mary with two of her three Children, Pauline (who teaches at the same school as Mary) with her children.

Bleached-leaves

Funghi growth on a dead tree trunk.

Bleached-leaves

On the second day of our visit it was so warm outside that the children played on the deck with only their shirtsleeves on. 

Bleached-leaves

Muskoka at its best!

Bleached-leaves

Woodpecker geometry. 

 

Thank you again Mary for putting us up for a few days!

 

A little taste of home

This time of the year is when we eat traditional Fastnachtschuechli at home in Switzerland. They are sold in all the local grocery stores and are only available in February and March (if my memory serves me right).

Fastnachtschuechli are to celebrate carnival Swiss-style. I miss this time of the year very much, as Halloween just doesn’t capture my heart the same way. I loved the lightheartedness of the Swiss celebration.

This year I decided to start a tradition of making the Fastnachtschuechli (can you tell I love saying it… Giggle), on family day , our mid February statutory holiday.

Yummy….

A little taste of home

“Guetzle”

Having left the country of my birth – Switzerland – at the young age of 19, most of the traditions that I crave are traditions of my childhood. Sadly though, many of these can't be replicated here in Canada. Mostly due to the fact that you need crowds of people celebrating together – the Swiss are not culturally inclined to congregate in groups outside of Switzerland though, so I am missing out on much.

Some of the festivals that I really loved where the National Day celebrations on August 1st – big bonfires, rockets, crackers, sausages over the open fire (veggie sausages i.e. Quorn sausages would do quite well for that too). I also love Advent celebrations. Ah.. the memory of the smell beeswax candle dipping that was open to the public during late November and early December still brings a smile to my face. Somehow though, Advent is just not activily celebrated here. I am also in my most busy Olive Sparrow time during the fall and Advent, so mostly I also lack the time to fully immerse myself into the quiet time of preparing for the bit day.

The one tradition that I insist on honing here is to "Guetzle" (this comes from the word "Guetzli" – which is swiss-german for cookie) – so "Guetzle" is specifically used in Advent when one is baking a myriad of different Christmas cookies. My hips don't need a lot of cookies to keep their svelete shape, our family is small, I work by myself – yet "Guetzli" baking I want to do. I usually make upwards of 15 + different types.

About 5 years ago, my husband and I started to give my home-made cookies to his clients as a small gesture of thank you. We also gift neighbours, friends, my galleries that are in town, a few of the people in the public housing complex in our neighbourhood and often a spontaneous selection of people dropping by our house over the holidays. 

This year I made 50 baggies of cookies, each weighin about 1/2 lb. So this years output was around 25 lbs. Plus about 2 lb for us to have at hand for guests staying here. 

Cookies-all

Many of the recipes I use are very old, traditional swiss cookies, combined with a few new ones I just like trying out. I also make some chocolate truffels every year, this time around I gave white chocolate ones a go – they are okay, but I don't think I will attempt them again for a while because the chocolate didn't firm up properly and I had to improvise with additions of cashews – they taste okay, but are not what I had in mind.

Another favourite is the Basler Läckerli – a ginger-bread-type with lots of dried fruit and candied peels – this year I added some of the sour cherries from our tree and I love the bit of tartness amongst all the honey sweetness. Nidelzältli are my sons favourite – cream, sugar and a bit of vanilla – essentially a soft granular fudge. There are also Brunsli – chocolate and almonds with eggwhites, rolled in sugar when rolling out – yummy… Chräbeli are my best friends grandmothers recipe – a traditional Anis cookie and the same dough that is used for Springerle (which I make with a lovely angel mold). Nusspraline – walnuts, coffee and icing sugar, not baked, but left to dry, then glaced with more coffee and icing sugar. 

The essential Swiss Christmas cookie is the "Mailänderli" (Milano cookie) – a shortbread cookie with an egg-wash

Mailanderli

Here is the recipe from my mothers home economics cookbook from 1948:

500 gram all-purpose flour (but you can also put part spelt or whole wheat in it)

250 gram sugar

250 gram butter

3 eggs (+ 1 egg yolk)

finely grated peel of 1 organic lemon

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Put flour, butter, sugar, eggs and the lemon peel into a large bowl and knead well, but not too long (so that not too much gluten develops).

Put dough into fridge for a few hours or overnight

roll out on a little bit of white flour

use your favourite cookie cutters to cut out shapes

transfer shapes to baking sheet (I always use parchement paper, not buttered)

brush egg-yolk onto each cookie

bake at 350 fahrenheit for about 12 – 15 minutes until the egg yolk has gone a beautiful colour.

Let cool and enjoy!

I love cutting out tiny cookies, so that each one is one bite. Takes a bit more time, but looks so pretty. As children, this was our standard cookie that we could help with. (the dough also tastes amazing – my son says so as well.)

On that note, I am now going to work on a few more dolls that have to be finished in time for Saturday. 

 

Olive Sparrow Children – Mandy, Wendolin, Sir Jamie

The quality of the following pictures is such that I considered not showing them here – they were taken at 2:30 am the night before my first show. All of us-the dolls, the camera and I didn't have all our wits about. But it would be sad to not show Wendolin, Mandy and Sir Jamie – Dolls that have found a home to date. 

First up though, a picture of all the dolls in a group shot.

Mandy-full

From Left to Right, back row first:

Pauline 48cm, Mandy 48cm, Suzy 55cm, Eloise 50cm, Milena 45cm, Antoine 52cm, Wendolin 55cm,

Front Row: 

Pete 31cm, Astrid 35cm, Daisy 31cm, Sir Jamie 35cm, Katinka 31cm, Claire 35cm

 

First I'd like to introduce Mandy, about 48cm, wearing leggings, a tunic and embroidered shoes. She will be joining a family that already has Olive Sparrow Children.

Mandy-full

Mandy is made from my re-designed pattern for the 48cm doll. She can sit freely without leaning against anything, she has long legs, a more trim body and feet that look great in and out of shoes.
Mandy-full
Mandy-full

Green-eyed little girl… She is a real sweetie.

 

Next in order of introduction we have Sir Jamie (yes, I have been listening to the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon while creating Sir Jamie – giggle). 

Sir Jamie is a boy doll, a night or a squire. He Is wearing a silk shirt that shimmers like chain-mail (Huxley was my assistant in choosing the fabric and said that the other very shiny silk works, however, this one looks like Sir Jamie has seen a few sparring sessions). His tunic is made from leather, tied with a hand-twisted rope, his shoes are leather too. Like any good squire, he wears leggings. His height is 35cm.

Mandy-full

The cape is made from a silk kerchief and has appliqued gold emblems on it. The hat was knit in a beautiful heathered grey wool.
Mandy-full

Underneath his hat/helmet, Sir Jamie is suave with his short cropped curly hair.
Mandy-full

There are definitely more knight boys in my future. I'm also thinking of a knight and princess pair (possibly with crowns and kingly/queenly gowns to go along with it). 

Sir Jamie is also going to live with a wonderful family that has a selection of Olive Sparrow Children already.

 

Here we have Wendolin, or short Wendo (named after a very, very dear friend of mine)

Wendo was the first 55cm doll I made from my newly developed pattern and I had a very hard time letting her go out into the world, alas, she was sold at the first show I attended, to a new client. 

Mandy-full


Mandy-full

Wendo has very nice feet, another improvement to the new pattern, and she can sit on her own. 

Mandy-full

Wendo's hair is extremely soft and a new hairstyle. I used two very closely related tones of wool to create natural highlights. 

 

This concludes the 3 dolls that have been adopted to so far. I will be listing the other dolls that are still available in my Etsy show in the next week. If there is one you see and like, feel free to send me an e-mail for more information. 

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Each doll is made up of the following materials.

Skin: 100% cotton (Swiss-made to Öko-Tex-Standard 100)
Stuffing 100% “green-processed” wool batt from Canada
Hair: 100% Wool, or a Mohair/Wool Blend
Clothing: 100% natural fibres (linen, cotton, silk)
Shoes: Recycled felted wool sweaters, or pure leather
Face: 100% cotton Embroidery Thread

Workmanship:
Each doll is created individually by artist Monika Aebischer, the proprietor of The Olive Sparrow. She sources and uses only the highest quality materials in her creations – swiss-made skin fabric, Canadian green processed wool stuffing,  wool/mohair for the dolls hair (often hand-dyed by her). Hair for the Olive Sparrow Children is made by crocheting a cap that is sewn to the head, allowing for replacement should it ever become necessary (although most children will object to this, as it changes their doll dramatically). For the wispy hair, a special german mohair is used and a labour-intense technique, for the loose longer hair each strand of wool is individually knotted into the crocheted cap. This is the prime technique for doll-wig creation.

Doll clothing is made from up-cycled vintage and clothing fabrics, in either pure linen, cotton or silk. Up-cycled fabric is wonderful for doll clothes, as the cloth has been washed soft, gentle and free of textile manufacturing products. Monika also felts used woolen sweaters to use for doll shoes and clothing. She knits the doll’s hats out of prime quality knitting wool. Each seam on the doll’s body is sewn twice to allow your child to fiercely love their Olive Sparrow Child. Clothing is sewn with French seams and some are fully reversible.

Busy Hands

A week of dying felt for crowns has resulted in this:

Dyed-crowns

and hands that are not to be shown in public.

 

These hands though have also helped me do some of this (photo is just a very small sampling of all the ones I've tied off this week.

Tiny-doll-heads

These are tiny heads for small figures on bendable wire frames – like my little knight from a few years ago. 

Today I'm back at the studio, tying off heads for larger and smaller dolls and running errands all in the name of the Olive Sparrow (boy that birdy is driving me hard these days… tweeet, tweet, tweet).

On other happy notes, our bunnies have been reunited and seem to be doing great. Eddie had his "little boy operation" and enough time has passed so that it is safe to put them back together. They are so happy (insofar as it's possible to see a bunny smiling).