Look what I got!

Hello!

Thank you all so much for your sweet comments about my Fairytale Glovelies! They are now for sale on my Etsy Shop...

Speaking of which... I don't know if some of you have already discovered the work of this very talented lady (and without any competition my sweetest internet friend)... her Name is Char, she lives in Canada and makes the sweetest paintings of Children riding animals!

Now some time ago, I got lucky in one of her Most Generous Giveaways and this was my price:

I could pick the animal, so I asked her to make me a painting of me and F. riding a Sheep... (Remember the Fluffy Flock at his parent's house?)

And once I saw our painting, I started thinking of a friend who just had a second baby girl... so I asked Char if she could paint me those two gorgeous girls, riding a Rooster (my friend has a Bed & Breakfast called 'Gallo', which means Rooster...), and look what she made!

Thank you so much Char! My friend loved it! And now I'm off to get mine framed...

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Oh, and have I mentioned that Char runs a very nice Blog too? Visit her!

And don't forget to have a look in her Shop! Her prints make great gifts (she personalizes each of them, writing the child's name into the story in the frame...) , and her Custom Work is AMAZING!

Let it Snow

You're probably not going to believe it, but it snowed yesterday. It didn't snow in the village (we only got rain, lots of it), but our friends, who live about 2 miles up the road from us, in a gorgeous old farmhouse on top of the mountain, called us at some point yesterday afternoon to announce that it was snowing. On the 8th of Novembre.

Let me get this straight: I live in ITALY. Not in Norway. Or Alaska. ITALY. Ok, it is Northern Italy, and we do live in the foothills of the Alps, but believe me: it's is NOT supposed to snow at this time of the year! Most of the trees haven't even lost all of their leafs yet!

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Anyway, with all that talk of SNOW, I was more than inspired (let alone motivated) to finish my very first pair of Wristwarmers...

'The Fairytale Glovelies'...

Now let it snow. We're ready.

Sort of.

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:o)

Rub to Keep Warm

With the Colder Weather finally setting in, I'm being inspired to make things that keep you warm.

Very Warm.

To make a little change from the rather Fluffy Merino Wool I usually use for my scarflettes, I got my hands on this Lush Looking (and Feeling) Alpaca-Merino Woolmix...

Yummy.

The perfect Wool for a Luxurious Winter...

And it comes in gorgeous colours, such as this Rich Rasberry Red...

Double Yummy.

Now you might already have guessed what I'm up to, but as it's not finished yet, you'll just have to be a little more patient!

And rub your hands to keep them warm... for now.

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:o)

Glimpses...

I'm resting.

And I'm working out new ideas... new projects. But I'm not ready to show anything yet. For now. So I thought that in the meantime maybe you might like to see where I take my pictures...

You see, finding a new "Picture-Cranny" has been one of the most challenging things about moving house, as I had my Camera-corner set up pretty well in the old house, and knew exactly how to get the pictures I wanted, without having to take 2000 of them... Moving house has thrown me off my Camera-balance for a bit, since the lighting in the new house is so dramatically different than in the old one and for some strange reason all the pictures I took came out looking somewhat grainy for a while...

But I'm fixing that.

Anyway... the new, peachy mystery background is.... *drumroll*... our bedroom wall!

The bedroom is quite a special place in our house, as it actually belongs to another, much older house than the rest of the rooms. It has a very old wooden floor, with gaps between the boards that allow you to peep into the basement, heavy, treetrunk beams that hold up the top floor of the house and an ancient door leading onto a patio... Exactly the kind of room you would expect in an old Italian Country house!

Yet the previous inhabitants didn't even use the room! Instead they had stacked piles and piles of rubble and old furniture in it and kept the door tightly locked, turning it into into a Classic BleuBeard Hide-out! In fact, when we went the visit the house for the first time, the owner just adviced us not to use the room, as it was just a dirty and windy old storeroom. But little did he know! For his advice only triggered my curiosity, and soon I saw this old room with cracks in the floor and gaps around the door as our perfect new bedroom! (Not in the least, of course, because I had decided that the 'bedroom' would make a perfect studio!)

So we rolled up our sleeves, took a deep breath and got to work.

F. convinced the owner of the house to change the broken windows, and got in a friend who knows about electricity to get rid of the ancient loose threads, attached to a lightbulb, that functioned as a light-system. I got in a brandnew fairytale bed, cleaned out some of the old furniture that turned out to be beautiful treasures amongst the rubble in the room, and made a heavy velvet curtain to keep the wind from blowing straight through the room.

And here we are today.

The last thing I would like to do now, is to paint the walls of the room in an almost white sort of green (as I'm not a great fan of 'Apricot' ), but with more urgents things to do before winter, we decided that repainting the house will have to wait untill spring...

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And you? Where do you take your 'Studio-Photographs'?

Off we go...

I finished the last of this weeks' custom orders!

All is now wrapped, labeled and ready to be shipped!

So off they go! And off I go too! We're heading out for a somewhat extended weekend in the Appenine Hills, hoping to finally find some time to make some longs walks and to enjoy the beauty of Autumn before the wind and the rain decide to wash it all away!

Have a lovely weekend my dears (Remember to steer clear from any Vampires or Zombies that might be roaming your neighbourhood these days...) & I'll see you all on Tuesday!

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PS. This is, without any doubt, my favourite Pumpkin-picture of the season!

I found it here, along with many more magical shots...

Wild Life

You probably already guessed that the nature walk didn't happen yesterday.

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Oh well... nature will just have to wait a wee bit, since for now I'm rather tangled up in a very exciting custom scarf-story! Nature's not going anywhere anyway... although the leafs are, of course.

Mmmmm. Must keep that in mind.

But for now, I'm happy with the wildlife that's hopping about in the Pilli Pilli Laboratory!

Remember Bucky? Well, this time, I'm making the extra loooooooooong version...

I've slightly changed the colours of this Bucky to make him more suited to the polar blue wool the customer chose for the scarf. And I must say I like him even more this way ... it makes him a bit 'softer' than his Big Brother.

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Oh deerie deer... this sweet bucky makes me think of all the things I would like to make for the upcoming holidays!

Goodbye Summer Greens

In the midst of Autumn, I decided to grow some flowers...

The first one, a dashing Forest Green...

... as a tribute to all of nature's greens that are now colouring to yellow, red and gold.

Soon the leafs will start falling.

But for now it all looks spectacular.

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Maybe I should take myself out on nature walk this afternoon... my leg-muscles are starting to wither from sitting down so much, crocheting for hours on end. And I bet my fingers would be quite grateful too...

Happy Mirday

Oh dearie... I just realized that October is drawing to an end, and I still have to get into Holiday-gear!

Yet no matter how much hours of the day I spend crocheting, sewing and drawing, it feels like there's never enough time to finally get down to those (essentially wintery) projects that are brewing in my head... Especially since lately I spend almost all my waking hours getting Custom Orders ready for shipping...

Like this one, for example: an extra Looong version of the Arctic Fox Scarflette... a really fun project to work on, but alas... quite time consuming.

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But I'm not complaining... au contraire, mes chéries... It's just that I need more time! So that's why I've decided to officially decree that henceforth a week shall have 8 days!

Monday... Tuesday...Wednesday... Thursday... Friday... Saturday... Sunday... and Mirday, a day dedicated to staying at home, and working on new and exciting projects. And a day shall have 36 hours... of course.

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There. I've done it. Now it's official. Which gives me the time to go and work on this new (and still very secret) project...

So happy weekend, my dears! And don't forget to stay home on Mirday !

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:o)

Cozied up

I know I have written about my feline assistant before this week, and I realize that you probably don't find it very exciting to read about my cat, although I bet there's thousands of cat-blogs out there... some of which, no doubt, astonishingly popular. So, notwithstanding the risk of boring you out of your socks, I just hàve to show you the pictures I took yesterday while I was crocheting at a break-finger speed to get some custom scarflettes done and ready for shipping...

Too much cuteness to keep all to myself....

Now just for the record: It is NOT my doing.

She actually tucks herself in that way. Pinkie-swear.

As soon as it gets too cold for my Furry little helper, she just sort of crawls under the blanket on her Pouffe. Ok, she does have her own Pouffe... yes... but then again... nobody finds it strange if dogs have their own basket... so why do I feel goofy about revealing that my Cat has her own Pouffe?!

Is it that we assume that cats just sort of colonize the best spots of our living space? Mmmmm... definitely something to ponder on...

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But enough of Cats now... Here's the proof that I actually got some work done too:

A wrapped Scarflette, ready to get shipped!

I always put a lot of effort in my packaging, 'cause I guess everybody likes to receive gifts from time to time! Even if you have actually paid for it yourself...

I *HEART* my Customers!

:o)

Head Soup

My house is starting to look like a Head-soup factory.

In fact, there's bodiless fox heads drifting about everywhere these days, as I'm crazy busy crocheting three custom scarflettes the same time... but I'm not complaining. I'm doing what I love, the house is warm and cozy (though my studio is still not anywhere near ready for use... and the more work I have, the longer that is going to take of course...) , and Maya, my faithful feline asistant is offering tons of moral suport. Although I must say she was a little disgruntled about the fact that it had been ages since she last appeared on the Pilli Pilli blog, and tried every strategy known to man and feline to sneak into the pictures I was taking.

Hence the picture below.

So, here you go girl. You're on the net. (You sure tried hard enough.)

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And what about you? Do you have an assistant?

A Walk on the Ice...

If you walk to the highest point of our village, you can see the peaks of the Alps, along the border with France... In summer they are an impressive range of black giants, framing the horizon. But yesterday morning, I noticed how those dark peaks had suddenly turned white. It wasn't much, but they looked like they had been delicately sprinkled with fine sugar.

So there it was, the explanation for why the air had felt different the last few days. Icier. It's winter approaching on white woolen socks... tiptoeing as yet, but we all know that not for long later he'll come dancing in with the fierce energy only nature knows.

Somehow this Arctic Fox Scarflette turned out looking exactly how the new coldness feels: still crisp and fresh, but with a clear whisper of the winter whose coming we await...

I hope you like him, C.! If you do, he's all yours!

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:o)

Quiet Afternoon...

I adore those really quiet afternoons with a delicate (and definitely already colder) light streaming through the windows, a snapping fire in our brandnew woodstove, a steaming cup of tea at hand, the cat sleeping on my lap and the yarn turning itself into some new creature...

There have been little of these afternoons lately. Too little if you ask me. But yesterday I finally managed to sit down the whole afternoon, without being tempted away to unpack more bags and boxes. Which doesn't mean there's no bags and boxes any more, mind you, but they just had to wait. For one afternoon. Or maybe two.

The cat was happy too.

She purred all through our cozy sit-in....

Arrival / Departure

It finally looks like we have 'arrived' in our new home, which is celebrated - in a most symbolical way - by the departure of these two custom-made foxlings...

They actually seem to declare the Pilli Pilli Laboratories back in business, even though my studio is still very much under construction, and I'm afraid it will take quite a bit longer to get it all decluttered and pretty. But hey... at least I'm functional again!

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Au Revoir mes Amis! Bon Voyage!

Off you go to a pair of very beautiful girls, far far away accross the Ocean...

Un unexpected Spectacle...

The last few days have been so busy, that at times I didn't even seem to remember where my head was. Between moving piles of boxes and furniture from one the old house to the new one, flying out on sunday morning for an extra shift at work ( a 20 km guided walk in the mountains...), and trying my best to get some custom items ready for shipping as well, there hasn't been a moment of pause...

Yet this morning, I was treated to the most stunning spectacle that made everything worth wile...

This is our new Village, Levice, which, at an altitude of aproximately 800 metres, stands out proudly above the clouds drifting in the valley below...

So let me get this straight: this is NOT a lake. It's clouds...

Now, isn't that just the most magical sight?! I think it is...

And that's how my 20 minutes drive down the mountain turned into a highly relaxing meditation on the wonders of nature. (Even though half the time I was driving with my window down, stopping in the middle of the road, to take pictures... )

I think we'll be very happy in our new house... and our new village... once we get all the mess sorted out, and my studio up and running!

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:o)

Flying off

Here it goes!

I'm flying off the radar for a couple of days to get settled in our new nest...

It's all a big mess right now, with half our stuff in the old house and the other half in the new one (and most of my supplies taped up in boxes, which I find quite agonizing), but I should be able to get the biggest clutter out of the way by the end of the weekend.

So wish me luck and I hope to be back soon!

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PS. Thank you Etsy for including my Arctic Fox Scarflette in the new Winter Accessories Preview Gift Guide!