Snifurn

More things to plant plants into

I saw this outside of a shop and just had to take a picture of it!

Treasures

I have been to an antiques market today and was very surprised to see a carving set of George Wostenholm & Son, Sheffield.

When you go to ebay, especially ebay.com or ebay.co.uk, you are probably going to find a few shaving knives or the one or other carving set, but this is Hamburg, Germany.

The reason why I know about George Wostenholm knives is, that I have actually gone out with his great grandson.

The Lady who sold them to me told me that the handles are bone. I cannot help but think that they might actually be plastic, but hey, the knife is really sharp and it is quite a cool set.

Here are some pics:

I checked how old this set might be and according to this forum, the set is from after 1945.

There are currently other nice ones on ebay with stag horn handles and nicer boxes. Maybe I will get myself an upgrade one day.

These are also much more pricey than the one I got.

Ice Art

A few weeks ago it was really cold in Hamburg. Nice sunny days, but way below 0 degrees for weeks. Even our lake in th city center, the Alster, was frozen.

On a walk at lunch break I went through a little pedestrian street where the people obviously care a lot about their gardens. Everywhere in the trees they had beautifully shaped ornaments made of ice which were shining in the sun.

They even made big wind lights.

I looked into it and there are so many nice things you can do with ice in winter.

Put leaves or berries or anything that looks nice into a nice shape add water and either freeze it in your freezer or simply outside.

Make sure to use containers that are a bit flexible, so that they do not burst when the ice expands. Cool ice cube forms, tin cups, cans, tea candle containers,… be creative.

You can also put two things into each other for creating a hollow to put e.g. candles in.

If you want to hang it up you might want to add some string or wire into it before it freezes.

Here are some pages with detailed instructions how to do these.

Ice Candles

Outdoor Christmas decorations

Cranberry and Pinecone Ice Bowl

Well, in the meanwhile I have been to South Africain an attempt to escape the winter and am now hoping for spring. So this post might be a bit late, but I was thinking about those ice things and will definitely do them next winter.

28th Jan 2012

Of Photos and Frames…

I love photographies. Old ones or black and white ones are my favourites…

And frames are also a wonderful thing.

I have a little wall in my hall which I can see from my bed, if I leave the bed room door open.

For this wall I took lots of black frames and black and white photos of my friends. (ok, ok, Greta Garbo was not really a friend of mine..)

In order to figure out how to best spread the frames I had across the wall, I measured the wall and took some tape and marked the corners of the the wall on my living room floor. That way I could easily see how much space I had and move the frames about without having to put endless nails into the wall.

And there they are, all up and hanging.

28th Jan 2012

Watching things grow

I like watching things grow.

I also like to plant them in all sorts of receptacles.

Now is the time for bulbs, tulips, grape hyacinths, hyacinths, daffodils etc.

I plant them everywhere. I love them.

Here are some ideas how to bring the spring inside while there is still snow outside:

I have a thing for enemel. These are grape hyacinths in an old enamel wash bowl in my entrance. I just planted them 3 days ago. Still waiting for them to really open up.

Again grape hyacinths - this time in a broken tea pot. I only had it for 3 days when I managed to break it. I thought I might as well use it as a flower pot instead of trowing it away.