Images from our last felt-group-meeting with some felted boxes like these
Always put your trust in Allah
When He pushes you to the edge of the cliff
One of two things will happen:
Either
He will catch you
Or
He will teach you to fly…
Category Archives: Felting News
Spring Dyeing – The Iris flower
Spring is really here now, alhamdulillah, and the iris flowers we’ve planted last year after baby’s birth are in full blossom, subhanallah. What a beautiful violet ocean…
It’s been a long time that I haven’t dyed wool. But now with these lilac gems in my garden I simply had to give it a go again.
I didn’t found any information about iris-dyeing online, so I started deliberately by giving the carded wool, some withered iris flowers and a bit of alum into a big cooking pot with a lot of cold water. Then I slowly brought it to boil, turned off the heat and left the whole “juice” over night.
The next day my wool came out in a beautiful light turquoise green colour – mashaallah.
I liked that colour so much that I took the used colour bath again and gave some cotton fabric in, which got that lovely colour as well, even darker than the wool.
Ah subhanallah, there is simply no colour as beautiful to my eye as nature dyed wool and fabric!
I am so impressed by the beauty of the outcome and even kind of proud of that discovery because, you know, getting these blue-green colours out of nature is not that easy and I had same results only with red cabbage.
So here’s now off now to some more dyeing and felting, yours itto …. wishing you a blessed Friday!
Spring Clean
It is going to be this time of the year when the almonds blossom, the fields get green again and I feel the big urge to spring clean our life and living.
Just as Allah cleans the nature with rain, beautifies it with flowers and green grass and clears it up with fresh winds, subhanallah, I feel the need to do so as well with my little spaces. It is once again all about beautifying and creating a blissful home and about implementing new inspiration and fresh ideas.
So I decided to dedicate this new month to “Spring Clean 2010”, inchaallah.
Not only do I want to do a deep cleaning of the whole house, but also purify our bodies and souls. I wanna clean up hidden corners around our home but as well those in my mind. I wanna beautify the rooms but as well beautify my Iman (faith) with some new knowledge. I wanna renew our wardrobes but as well our meal-plan.
I already sat down and thought about all the things that need a clean and a change. I made a list to write down all the ideas for changes around the house and for what to do in every room along with the regular weekly cleaning. I collected ideas for new decoration items, for crafting ideas, fresh wardrobe design and healthier meals…
So here’s a lot to do, inchaallah, and maybe I will give you some updates along this month on how we’re going on with all of it.
But for now, I leave you with a “salamou alaikoum and happy March!” and with some fresh ideas to get inspired:
Some spiritual decoration and design
How to clean up the kid’s room
Lovely felted boxes in different forms
February Felting
Some pictures of today’s felt-group-meeting with the girls on our terrace, in beautiful warm sunshine and in remembrance of Khadija, one of the girls who died a few weeks ago at the very young age of 18 from a hard winter cold, mashaallah.
« Inna Lillahi oua inna ilaihi rajeoon »
Blissful sunny weekend to you and yours! masalama.
Creative Outcome and a Giveaway
Salam alaikoum friends,
I took a little blogging break, enjoyed being with family and friends and had some lovely creative time with a dear sister, being outside in the sunshine and doing some felting for my little girl, subhanallah.
Coming back to that little space of mine, I realized that it’s been nearly two years I discovered the world of blogs and that my little blog already reached the 40.000-hits-mark, mashaallah.
I think it is time, to say “thank you”.
This place brought so much good into my life and I love writing here and to “meet” other bloggers and nice commenter.
I wanna thank you all for visiting me here, I wanna thank you for your ever lovely comments, your inspiration and your thoughts and I wanna reward you with a little giveaway (a handmade felted surprise).
So please leave a little comment on this post if you’d like to win.
To give everybody a chance, I will leave the comments to that post opened until next week and then announce the winner, inchaallah.
Looking forward to more years of blissful blogging and wishing you a blessed week,
masalama, yours itto
16/12/2009: Comments are closed now, thanks to all! the winnner will be announced end of that week.
Handmade Love
Some pictures from the last two felting-group meetings; a whole lot of handmade love…
While cleaning up the house, I always find a lot of “stuff” in my children’s room: broken pieces of plastic-cars, destroyed toys and a lot of nothing (undefined little things that maybe once have been something).
That always makes me sad and thinking about the throw-away-society we have become over the last century and it makes me wishing for a more sustainable living and for striving to more conscious consumption and for better manners in our own little life.
How much more beauty is in handmade and natural things, how much more soul, love and meaning in good quality work!
I am not just talking about toys, no, about nearly everything such as furniture, food, clothes, household objects and so on…
All that cheap (or even not so cheap) factory-made-plastic-stuff, all the synthetic clothes, the precooked and chemically-processed food, this all is just not good! – Not good for our bodies, nor for our souls, neither for the environment, nor for the society in general.
It is only about quick consuming and fast living and about throwing away and buying always new. Masha’allah.
Where is the love for handmade, for true values and the worth of manmade things gone? Where the appreciation for wood and wool, for homemade and handmade did went to?
How much more aesthetics is in natural handmade things, how much more nourishes a homemade meal not only the body but as well the heart and the soul? How much more speak natural goods to all our senses?
All the tastes, the colours, the shapes and the smells within natural things honour God’s creation, and the work someone put in it with his own hands makes the thing a prayer itself. Subhanalllah!
I say YES to homemade, to eco, organic and natural, to vintage, to repurposing, to recycling and to doing things by my own hands!
I say YES to declutter our house and to refill it with love and nature!
I feel an enormous wish to create and to make things now and I think the upcoming cold season is a perfect time to implement some warm handmade and homemade to our lives.
So let’s go and try some new recipes, some new crafting projects and some greener living!
… Off to a whole lot of making… and a happy crafty weekend to you, friends!
By the way, I got Amanda’s new book “Handmade Home” – a perfect inspiration on that topic…
Golden Autumn
What a lovely season autumn is! – So much harvesting, enjoying nuts and fruits, a nature full of golden colours and a warm sun with blue skies.
Subhanallah to all that beauty around and thanks God for all these blessings!And I am having some good news as well: the felting with the girls will continue! Yes, after such a long break we finally will begin work again next week, inchaallah – I am so excited and will keep you informed about all the creativity going on here.
Blessed weekend to you!
Felting update
It is nearly a year ago when I began the felting project in our village here.
For all those of you who do not know how all began, I’ll post my introduction from last year again here:
“I am happy and proud to tell you about a new social project here in our valley:
We are building up a Berber Women’s Wool Cooperative, specialised in felted products.
Since three months I am working with a bunch of girls from the village to teach them how to felt, how to dye wool naturally, how to create good designed products and how to run a business on their own. We are in the very beginning, but I am really thankful and excited about their motivation and the innocent sense of creativity they have. Masha’allah, it is so fulfilling to have the chance to work with them and I learn so much myself, too.
So we build up, little by little, by the will of God, a cooperative with a sustainable spirit to encourage the women’s independence and to ensure their own income.
Here are some of our first products and the work in progress…”
And now, a year later, I can give you some updates:
We worked very well last year, alhamdulillah, every week we tried out something new and we even sold some of the products, so in the end every girl earned a bit of money.
Since November we are not working because weather is too cold. The girls are preparing some wool at home but not a lot. I realize that for them the working process itself is enough: they love to meet, to be creative and to have fun together. But all the responsibilities and sacrifice a real established business-cooperative would ask for is quiet too much for them and they are not interested in working hard for earning a lot of money.
So we decided soon to continue as before, to meet independently and voluntarily, to enjoy the process itself and to leave all in an open frame, like a weekly woman’s meeting group.
I am more than happy with the decision because with soon to be three children I will not have the same amount of free time and energy any more and I do not want to be the pusher and manager of such a business. I am more than happy to meet freely with them, to share a bit of my creativity, to have contact with the people and to help them to sell every now and then some of the felted products to some of our guest or tourists around.
So, alhamdulillah, I am looking forward to the new season, to some new inspiration and new meetings with these amazingly vivid and happy young girls, and I will give you report as soon as we begin, inchaallah.
Blessed Friday to you!
Colour Workshop
Since a while I didn’t gave report about our felting project here. Weather is too cold now to work because our working room has no heating and fingers and feet feel uncomfortable very quick while working with water in an icy environment.
So we decided to go into hibernation and just to pre-work the wool instead of felting.
Two weeks ago we had a meeting with some American Peace-Corps-Volunteers who helped me to organise a workshop about wool dyeing.
First we gave a whole session about colour mixing and schemes and about the basic knowledge how colours develop out of the three main colours red, blue and yellow.
The Berber-girls had much fun in mixing coloured waters, finding out the results and learning about Goethe’s colour-circle.
Afterwards we tried to dye the wool with some red cabbage which gave a really nice steel blue colour.
The Peace-Corps-people also gave us some books about dyeing which we will read and try out in the upcoming months now, incha’allah…
Days of Ramadan # 26
Some of the felted products we did over the last few months.
…and the 27th night
“It is called the night of Power (i.e Laelat-ut Qadr) or the night of blessing (Laelat-ul mubarak). The deed in this night is better than the rewards of deeds of 1000 months (about 83.3 years).”
So we already count the 26th of Ramadan today, and that means the holy month soon will be over. But this coming night is a special one. It’s said that one of the impair last ten nights is the most blessed night of the month, we do not know which one it exactly is, but it is the night of Power, the night when the holy Qur’an was revealed for the first time by angel Gabriel to our beloved prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). So we as Muslims are supposed to spend these last few nights in deep devotion, offering night-prayers, remembering Allah, reading Qur’an…
IN Morocco people take the 27th might as the most special one, men go to the mosque during the whole night, women meet at home, pray together and colour their hand with henna, which is known as a sacred plant, healing the skin and protecting against the evil eye.
So we will go this evening to grandpa’s house, spending the evening with the women there, decorating our hands with henna and submit together to our Lord, incha’allah.
“Indeed We have revealed it (the Qur’an) in the night of Power. And what will explain to you what the night of Power is? The night of Power is better than a thousand months. Therein descends the Angels and the Spirit (Jibreel = angel Gabriel) by Allah’s permission, on every errand: they say “Peace” continuously till the rise of Morning!” Surate 97 : Verse 1-5
Wish you a blessed weekend and Peace be upon you!
