The Art Market

My bubble wrap tutu and the foam wrap corset was on display at the Art Market in Holmfirth last week and will be there again today!

Freitag's Links

★ 9000 Fallen Soldiers Etched into the Sand on Normandy Beach to Commemorate Peace Day

★ The Tour De France Explained in Animation

★ 10 Social Media Facts and Statistics

★ 10 Contemporary embroidery artists

★ Awesome Public Benches

★ This Pregnancy Photo Didn't Exactly Turn Out Like The Pinterest Original.

★ 12 Things Men Do Differently To Women.

Drawing workshop

Either write something worth reading 

or do something worth writing. 

Benjamin Franklin

I am not a writer. I am a doer and maker and struggle writing about the things I do and make.

I regret not keeping a diary regularly and I wish I'd have posted on this blog more frequently. There was lots going on in the last few weeks that would have been worth sharing and a lot more within the last few years that would have been worth remembering.

The trouble is, when lots of things are happening there is not much time to write about them.

"Ich kann die Welt nicht verändern, aber einen einzelnen Menschen, mich selber."

Karlheinz Böhm

Freitag's Links

★ The Internet in Real-Time
How quickly data is generated. 

★ A tiny Austiran town is reinventing the bis stop

I'm thrilled to see this beautiful and inspiring project.

★ Made me smile to see this English gardener cutting his front hedge in shape of a dragon. 

★ Bees make blue honey after eating M&Ms

★ Wishing I could be at the Africa Festival in Würzburg this weekend.  

Hanna, Jacob and I having fun banging the drums at the Africa Festival on the Talavera Mainwiesen in Würzburg last year! 

Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles

Big congratulations to our friend Jeanette, who won the Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles!
(Again!)

The Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles is completely off road - 2500 km through the Sahara dessert. It is not about going fast, but about navigation and driving skills.

Over eight days the teams have to find checkpoints and reach them with the least mileage possible. Which is a tricky task, since they are not allowed GPS and are only given a map from the 1950s, coordinates and a compass.

Driving skills are tested to the limit in this diverse and difficult terrain.

I can't stop looking at images of the Rallye and the dessert. What a landscape! What a challenge!





P.S.: There is no prize money. "The money generated helps to finance teams of doctors providing medical care for the population in the remote regions of Morocco. Annually and with the infrastructure of the Rally, a medical caravan, including a mobile clinic with 8 doctors, cares for the rural population. This year 4,582 people received free medical care. In addition, aid for children’s education has been set up as well as aid for an orphanage for children under six years of age." - Wikipedia

What a fabulous idea

Airbnb Presents: Airbrb from Airbnb on Vimeo.

P. S.: April, April!

Antique wedding dress

John's mum gave me her mother's wedding dress. Of course I had to try it on. 

It's beautiful. The detail is stunning. I will take more photographs of it soon. Until then: 

Four years with this little girl ♥

Restraint has been selected for Dança em Foco

YAY! Our latest dance film has been selected for Dança em Foco, International Festival of Video and Dance.


RESTRAINT from John Coombes on Vimeo.

Home tour vs. studio tour

I just watched Sarah Jessica Parker giving an interview/mini home tour for Vogue in one take, which reminded me of the studio/home tour video we did a while ago. The single take studio tour starts at 3:30.

My TipiLotta indoor playtent on byGraziela's Blog

Ich freu' mich riesig!

Schneeglöckchen and saffron

No snow, but snowdrops and lots of rain here in Yorkshire. Yesterday was sunny for a change and all the crocuses in our garden opened up. I love these first harbingers of spring.

Did you know that the spice saffron is dried stigmas of crocus sativus, which is also grown in England.
My crocuses are a different variety, but I am tempted to experiment using them for dyeing textiles.

Freitag's Links

★ Thomas Vailly and Laura Lynn's 20 Minutes Dresses.

Beautiful 3-D effects archived by applying glueing stretch fabric together. Made me think of a project I did once. See image below.

★ Färg & Blanche stitch wood together to form furniture.
That's harder than it sounds. A friend of mine has tried. I stitched metal together and that was hard enough. 

★ New flexible paper sculptures by Li Hongbo. Made me think of the absolutely stunning Alabaster heads by Jaume Plensa I've seen a t the Yorkshire Sculpture Park a few years ago.

★ John Lennon sewing 

★ Growing out bangs, or a fringe as it's called in the UK, or Pony in German, one of the things I dreaded before I had dreads. Found on thebeautydepartment.com, one of the most beautiful beauty blogs I've ever come across.

★ People in Vienna dancing to Happy by Pharrell Williams. Made me miss Vienna, but also made me smile.

Have a lovely weekend! 

Happy Valentines Day

"The Heart Machine is an alarming little machine to demand the attention of the one you love."

I love this wonderful machine by our friend, kinetic sculptor Martin Smith. It would make the prefect Valentines present, no? See more of his work here. 

photograph copyright Martin Smith

Freitag's Links

★ A very personal essay by Grace Bonney, founder of Design*Sponge. State of the Blog Union: How the blogging world has changed and what that means for us.

I love how she managed to turn all the difficult challenges into something that fuels her and inspires us.

★ Art Installation Featuring Twenty Miles of Ribbons Suspended in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral
on Laughing Squid

★ Old Yorkshire Barn converted into a modern home on dezeen

★ Successful parenting without spending money: a mothers story on The Telegraph

Read the Blog Free Our Kids here. 

★ According to Scientists, This is The Most Relaxing Tune Ever Recorded. The song can make one drowsy and hence should not be heard while driving.

Have a lovely weekend!

Mood Boards and Interior Design

I've been watching The Great Interior Design Challenge on the BBC iPlayer and now feel totally inspired to paint some walls and move some furniture.

Though before rolling up my sleeves and getting out the paint and brushes, I'll use scissors and glue to create a mood board. Especially after reading this article in the Telegraph: Interiors: use a mood board to pin down the right look,  with quotes by the lovely Holly Becker from decor8, Will Taylor of Bright Bazaar and others.

I always loved creating mood boards, but haven't made one for a while. This one I made years ago for a project with Dorma. They loved it and invited me round, but I couldn't make the appointment as my exchange course was finished and by the time I came back to the UK the woman who ran the project had left the company.



Trivia: I used to live in the amazing house [top right] when I worked in Vienna.



But back to the show:

Novice interior designers have to re-design a room, to the homeowners brief, over three days. They are given a budget of £1000 and the help of a builder.

The designers are judged by Sophie Robinson and Daniel Hopwood. I like the way they back up their decisions and explain why some things work and others simply don't. This turns a contest into an insightful program. It's also a very entertaining show, where designers have to work around problems, struggle to stick to schedules and budget and confront emotional home owners with their re-designed rooms.

It's presented by architecture and design critic Tom Dyckhoff. Houses from different areas, eras and architectural styles are introduced. You learn about the history of architecture as well as picking up tips and tricks for styling your own home and getting an insight into how interior designers work. 

A short documentary about the work of kinetic sculptor Jim Bond

This is what my partner John has been working on for the last few weeks. He's filmed some of the amazing kinetic sculpture of our friend Jim, interviewed him and put together this wonderful short documentary.

Jim Bond - Kinetic Sculptor from John Coombes on Vimeo.

Eye opener

Now, I usually don’t do beauty posts, but this is worth sharing.

My eyelash curlers broke a couple of weeks ago. No surprise there. I’ve been using them pretty much every day for the last 20 years.

All-in-all my make-up is pretty basic and fuss free. I curl my lashes, use eye liner, mascara and kohl. All black. Sometimes, when I go out, I use eye shaddow or lipstick. Or both - not black.

So, in need of a replacement, I decided to upgrade. The ones I had were from Bodyshop, and though they did the job, I heard that there are some lash curlers out there that did the job better.

Shu Uemura and Shiseido are the best rated ones, in magazines as well as online. But which one is the one for me? They all looked pretty much the same and I’m sure they all do pretty much the same job. No? I mean how different can the curl on your eye-lashes be?

They are both rounder than my old curlers. Also the Shiseido is a bit wider than my old ones and the Shu Uemura is a teeny bit wider than the Shiseido. In reviews most people complained both of them would be too wide. I didn't want to make a mistake, buying something that I couldn't use because it’s too big. I was okay with my old curlers, so to be on the safe side I did decide to get the Shiseido.

It’s funny how after this long time of using my old curlers these minute differences feel HUGE. Since, apart from the colour - the new one is black - they look pretty much like my old ones. I was really surprised how all the slight differences make a big difference on my lashes. Curlier than ever!

In the past I had to curl twice to grab all lashes as my eyes are quite big. Also I always go from the roots to the tips in about three steps. With the new wider curlers I am nearly, but not quite, able to grab them all in one go, but it turns out I either need more practice or I should have got the Shu Uemura.

"You can't use up creativity. 

The more you use, the more you have."

Oscar Wilde

Self portrait by my daughter Johanna (3)

Cut flowers

John went food shopping with our three year old daughter the other day and they came home with a colorful bunch of cut flowers for me. Hanna saw them in the shop and said: "Look, Papa, they are so beautiful! Let's buy them for Mama."

We've just had a chat with our daughter's nursery teacher today and have been told that Hanna is doing everything she should be doing at her age. I didn't doubt that, I think she's amazing, but it's always nice to hear somebody else saying that. Especially since we've been told so many difficult things about Hanna and her condition, and the problems she might have, by all the doctors and nurses that looked after her and us just after she's been born nine weeks premature. She was diagnosed with Tracheo-oesophageal fistula with Oesophageal Atresia.

Down from the tree and up to the attic

Most of our Christmas decorations came down today. Generally I like starting to decorate things christmasy from the 1st  December or 1st Advent, whichever comes first, and take things down on Epiphany. But this year I'm in no rush. I enjoyed Christmas in Bavaria and I enjoyed having our house all christmasy and cosy.

This year on 1st December I moved our sofa from the living room to the studio for a photo shoot for "Blogging Your Way". When I put the tree up in the living room I thought it was great to have more space and left the sofa where it was. We put a couple of small mattresses and big floor cushions down and created a lovely space for cuddles under the tree. The children have been building forts and castles and boats and will probably complain when we'll move the sofa back in tomorrow.

This year is going to be awesome

This year you’ll find text or images or both in the following categories on my blog:

Design & Art
Textiles & Tales
Food & Drink
Decorate & Renovate
Garden & Outdoors, Freitag’s Links - Mashup of online finds
Children & Creative Crafts
Studio Glimpse & Sketches, Quotes & Food for thought

I want to share what I’ve learned, what makes me smile, think, or just go ooh, aha and mmh. I hope to inspire you and get in touch with you. Let’s make this year a good one.

Love, Katrin

P. S.: Be patient with me, I've got two small children, I'll post as often as time allows. 

Nikon D200, focal length 35 mm, aperture f/3,2, exposure time 1/20.

Back from the holidays + early spring clean

I hope you've had lovely holidays. We've been in Bavaria to celebrate Christmas with my family.
We've had a great time. More about our adventures soon. Firstly I need to get things back up to speed here at the studio. There's a lot of sorting, cleaning, planning and organizing to do.

I just read "Magic Cleaning: Wie richtiges Aufräumen ihr Leben verändert" by Marie Kondo and skimmed though some other books on tidying and organizing and feel totally inspired and encouraged to have a clear out. Usually I am not good at throwing things away so I want to crack on while this feeling lasts. ;)

The book will be published in English soon by Randomhouse: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying

My shop is back from the holidays, too: