Goodbye summer, hello autumn!

Boho at Fusion

August comes to an end and with it, summer has long said goodbye. Although I tend to get depressed in fall and winter, due to missing sun, I can see the good sides of autumn. I love every season when it is just starting, I adore the first scent of spring, the first hot day and the first crispy frost. Autumn means cuddling in bed with a good book, knitting, drinking hot tea and watching series. We all get more homely, more gemütlich, as you say in Germany. There is no real translation for this feeling of cozyness.

Summer has been great fun.

We went to Fusion Festival, a hippie-summer-loving week of joy and music. I always find so much inspiration in creative fashion, building and food on the fusion. Some great friends came along to experience the festival for the first time. I was quite nervous, as it is certainly not everyone’s taste, but they loved it just like me and like me, they reported to be on a “Fusion-vibe” for quite a while after the festival had finished. I know this feeling, I tend to wear more boho-ethno style clothing and think that all the work-for-money business is absurd and how I should be an artist. All those daydreaming goes away after a while, but the believe, that people in themselves can be good and live in peace, remains.

After the Fusion Festival, me and Mr. Schön went to Mallorca for the first time ever. Mallorca has been Germany’s holiday island no. 1 for a few years now, and I never wanted to go there, as towns and countries with foreign customs and languages seemed much more appealing than just having a “sunnier version of home”. It was fantastic, however. The island is so diverse, it offers great

landscape, beaches, mountains, I could go on and on. Thanks to our little Fiat 500 there, we saw a lot. Palma is such a great city that I am considering going back here in winter for a weekendtrip. We went there to celebrate a friend’s 50^th. He found the most beautiful Finca, it was such a dreamhouse and was even more beautiful than on the website. Two dogs, belonging to the owner of the house, loved to spend time with us and play with us, it was so much fun! Everyone loved the young border collie and he loved us, it was the perfect match. We were by far the youngest teammembers, but a team it was, 14 people and we got along so well, no conflicts, no stress, everyone was cool and relaxed. If you ever want to spend a longer holiday on Mallorca, book a Finca. With a pool. And an outside kitchen. It’s heaven.

Dahlem-Dorf (near Berlin)

Middle of August is a quite dull time at work as everyone is on holiday. So I decided to take my overtime now and not like last year in December and go to Berlin. It seems to be the most fertile city in the world as about 80 % of all of my friends there have children

Fusion

now. So I took all my knit babies-clothing and went there (sadly, without Mr. Schön who had to work), visiting tons of friends, (and their babies, which were all well behaved, thank you for that) and walking though the city. Man, it is big. But as the weather was fairly good I walked and walked and walked. And went bouldering and shopping. It was so relaxed, I didn’t have a single migraine attack.

Last week I went to London with my mum. She has never been in an English-speaking country before (she is one of the typical Mallorca-people, afraid to leave the German-speaking zone while I think, people around you speaking another language is part of the charm of a holiday). Well, I have also never been on holiday just with my mum before, so

House or Parliament as seen from London Eye

this was new for me as well. It was quite cool. We hang out, had a lot to eat and walked a lot again (24 km one day is our record).

You know.

Too bad that it rained the first day. No, not rain, it poured. Our shoes were soaking wet after a while, so we decided on resuming our tour on the bus. It was a good decision, I have visited outskirts of London, I have never seen before. A good tip for London, not only in the rain is the Natural History Museum in the beautiful South Kensington. It ia free entry (in summer there is a lot of people waiting in front, but outside the season it is alright), we saw dino bones, a lot of diamonds and other stones and mostly adored the pretty building that was built to be the Natural History Museum some hundred years ago. Pretty amazing. Also a tip for bad weather: shopping centres, like Liberty. So pretty!

The weather improved during our trip, so on the last two days we could go back to walking. We saw typical touristy things, took a night ride on the London Eye (the best thing you can do, no 200 metre line (no line in fact) and a much prettier sight than at day) and saw the change of the horse guard, which was much less spectacular than expected. We even had afternoon tea, something my mother wanted to do, and it was pretty yummie.

Back in Düsseldorf now, Mr Schön and me will do an Altstadt-Tour with my parents and their best friends. I see a lot of booze and even more parent-kids-time. We will soon have to take holiday from each other, as I am certainly not that used anymore to hang out with my family, but the pub-tour through our hometown is always great. Cheers. And when in Düsseldorf, say hello J

Something is drawing me to drawing

The weather in western Germany hasn’t been nice during those past weeks, or at least not reliable with some heavy thunderstorms. I have to admit that I like it. I like thunder, lightning, rain. Especially, when I am at home, snugly, with a blanket and some tea.

For ages I wanted to rediscover an old hobby of mine: drawing. When I was at school I often used pencils

 to draw portraits.
I have to say, that I almost never drew from scratch, but copied photographs.

When you draw, everything around you vanishes, you concentrate on the next line, which pencil to use for which part of the portrait, the delicate lines underneath the eye of the person, their nose (always tricky) and their special features. Funnily enough, even when I had the most amazing sitting, drawing for hours and hours, I am never satisfied with the result. Often the portrait looks alright in the beginning and then I start to get impatient and rush over the hair, e.g. You can see it in the one picture I have drawn so far, it is a French actress, I cannot recall the name, but this 1960s portrait of her is so pretty, I love it.

I like the concentration that lies in her whole posture and the melancholy expressed by her eyes.

A tricky thing when you begin to draw a portrait is always proportions. First of all I try to sketch the whole head in very fine lines to decide where the nose has to be, how big it is compared to the mouth, etc. you know what I mean. In the fist picture you can see those lines if you look closely. I loved the drawing of the hands. It was not particularly easy, but the good thing if you are copying black and white portraits is, you just have to draw what is ACTUALLY THERE. Now, that might sound easier, than it is, but it is, in fact, easy. So if you apply line by line, hands appear out of nowhere. It was great fun.

The nose gave me some trouble, I made it too long. The eyes are still a weak point of the portrait and I am still not satisfied by it. Worst part is the hair. I was impatient and it is not easy to draw it, so I rushed over it.

Nonetheless, it was great fun and I hope to have more time for practicing my drawing skills in the next months. (Maybe even the next week, as I am doing a one-woman-travel-experience to Berlin, wohoooo! Tons of people to meet, though, so cross your fingers that I will find some time.)