welcome cold and cozy days&nights!

hey wonderful people living beyond the rainbow!
I've been quiet with full hands, but happy, happy, happy!!
I'm studying A LOT and that's taking almost all my time, but of course it is a great challenge and I just feel fulfill and excited =))
I'd like to share the link to a blog which is featuring some great artist fellows =)) I hope you find it inspiring!
loveofthegoddess.blogspot.co.nz/p/featured-artists.html
and here I leave you a pic from my shop to welcome the cold weather with long, cozy nights

https://www.etsy.com/listing/113835467/chunky-cozy-cowl-and-beanie-in-bright

Monday Moodboard

End of the summer, almost.

Shorter days, still there is a great light in the air... change of the seasons, ends and new beginnings, the circle of life... 

Good Monday to everyone out there!

Even the melancholia is beautiful in summer =)

The woman goes to the woods

The woman goes to the woods and asks to walk 4 or 5 km walk quietly, silently, searching the ground for chutsáj (chaguar) , also other varieties, to make thread.She finds a place where there are rather large. All its outline is thorny, like hooks. She boards an amount, makes a bundle and takes it home. she holds one butt and the other with her hands to begin to get the fiber. Hits, wash and dry the material obtained. Does the thread slowly. Everything is a ceremony, a knowledge as old as time made rite of gender. Then she goes back to the mountain to find seeds, shells, resin, to make dyes. She doesn't count stitches. She just dreams the design and weaves it directly. It ends in a purse or backpack which carries a single seam.



this story is so real as the sun and the days which pass by

woven secrets of wise women: holy and ancient crafts

More Peter Pan necklaces!! or Wendy stuff, as I like to call them =))
Just listed in my Etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/CoolCaracol
Model Ada by CoolCaracol





Model Aïda by CoolCaracol






 Model Anna by CoolCaracol

love the summer

What a strange, haunted summer here in Sweden!

It's not exactly warm, it's not exactly sunny, but it's not winter!

It's hard to explain what's the summer here in the very north of the globe... if I should put it in ten words, should be like: strawberries, wild flowers, birds, bees, long days, eternal twilights... it sounds interesting, doesn't it?

Anyhow!! here come some pics from my last listing... I love it, I hope you love it too: 

(you can see the wild flowers in the background, not only those I crocheted and the rosy, gorgeous model)

more pics here https://www.etsy.com/listing/104684345/a-rose-is-a-rose-iii-headband-or

Love the summer, enjoy the small things!

haunting beauty

another great tool to a happy life is, clearly, great music

sorry, I don't like Celine Dion - neither Titanic, by the way!

There is something very personal about the music we like. Something with roots in the soul, our chidlhood (what our parents used to listen when we were kids, for example) and memories and symbols as well... the music is a map of our lives: it shows a lot to those who know how to read it.
Personally, I like many styles and rhythms. It depends of my mood.
I prefer though those sounds with mystery and a special beauty and when I find some new artist, I feel happy as a child at Christmas =))

Let me introduce you to my latest find, the amazing, stunning, haunting Ólöf Arnalds from Iceland



and here links to two songs - she sings in English but I prefer her singing in her mother tongue: it seems she is flying far away to some enchanted and far away place

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvCPfIrqxHs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wsckkpcx3w&feature=related
ok, I have to correct that: even when she sings in English, she sounds amazing
check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3caiEhHvSzc&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=AL94UKMTqg-9BEQLZNjESsJNpk79bmke0v

enjoy the sound =)

got my mojo workin'

Vivid colors are a great help to wake up the creativity and fresh up a tired mind

how to don't shine then?

that's what I'm talking about!

take a look to the complete colorful list I curated here (and fresh up your mind): http://www.etsy.com/treasury/MTk4MDY2ODN8MjcyMDUwNzIzOQ/true-colors?page=2#comments

Monday's moodboard

This is a game we play with the European team at Etsy: which is your Monday mood?  mine seems to be sunny in despite the gray (rainy) day =))

I don't understand from where it comes this passionate love for the Peter Pan necklaces. I don't. But I love them too. I just don't like the name: they look more like Wendy's stuff, actually! but nevermind: everybody loves Peter and his Neverland.
I couldn't resist to try my own way and create some designs when I got this wonderful material of Permin (cotton, viscose, linen)
So here they are!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/104429444/peter-pan-necklace-by-coolcaracol-model

and the model Aïda:


if you want to take a look to more pics, here is the link to the shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/CoolCaracol
I promise I will upload instructions to make one of these beauties soon!


you stranger, have a great start of the week!!

some thoughts, some works

Go green, enjoy the slow, don't consume more than what you need, recycle, upcycle... love and smile often, be in the present, create a beautiful life, create beautiful things just because of the joy of give and explore. Enjoy your family and great friends, enjoy your solitude too...  happiness doesn't mean to have a perfect life but to choose to enjoy the life, with its ups and downs. There is nothing permanent but the present - a present continuous. You create it every minute.

Here, some things I created with joy:

a shawl for the fresh spring mornings in the garden



a cardigan made with baby alpaca and dyed by hand using gurkmeja root (if you'd like to try, it's really worth the effort! if you need tips, ask me), creating this ombré effect... I thought in my little niece, so delicate and sweet, while making this


a dress of soy and wool... a sweet and hot plumb pie or a basket full of cherries... but then, it was fall and I thought possibly in something tasty and hot, like a plumb pie =))



these works are available at my etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/CoolCaracol

some facts about the wool

did you know?

... an adult sheep produces wool for 70 pairs of socks / or six (yes, six) dresses or three men's suits
... wool is an insulating material against thermal changes, protecting from both cold and heat
... man has known and used wool for eleven thousand years ago

... wool last longer than acrylic fibers and ages beautifully, just like a good wine =)

Dawn, by Emily Dickinson


When night is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the spaces,
It's time to smooth the hair

And get the dimples ready,
And wonder we could care
For that old faded midnight
That frightened but an hour.




I have to remember this poem every time I stay awake too late in the night. Then everything has a deeper sense or at least, another beauty. 


picture from http://www.southernskyphoto.com/constellations/winter_dawn_sky.htm

I've finished the walnut blanket a few days ago... finally! =)) it takes some time to focus and dance with the needle, stitch after stitch after stitch... here it is:
 

and here the link to more pictures & info in etsy https://www.etsy.com/listing/103244129/the-walnut-blanket-a-tenderly-crochet

Today we were at the viking village in Skåne. It was some hundred of years ago a village there for real. Now it is a kind of recreation of a viking little village. During the summers, people go and camp there and live like real vikings. If you are not a new real viking -that's my case-, you have to pay for visit them. After paid, can you see them fight and sell handcrafts, all together!!
The most curious is that many "real new vikings" are not even from Scandinavia. Many come from England, another from Germany and so on... So the real new vikings speak mostly English... remarkable!!!

http://www.fotevikensmuseum.se/fotenet/en/index


Anyway, there I met Sabine from Germany. I bought a fabulous wool skein from her. She uses very old techniques and get a high quality product. I am already thinking what to do with the fabulous indigo wool I got from Sabine =))


here is the link to her shop http://wollschmiede.de/index.php/en/ (it's in both English and German)

I found this pretty cool site and I'd like to share it with you http://myslowdesign.com/index.php/category/slow-movement-

waking up to another gray morning -but hey! the raspberries are almost mature, the strawberries say hi with its deep, brilliant red and there is so much to do! Right now, I'm knitting a blanket of alpaca wool. It's not a complicated work, but it requires time and routine - not my strongest points! Later on, I will upload some pictures or you can check it at the Etsy shop CoolCaracol There it should pop in soon =))
Today, I woke up in Swedish, had tea with my husband and I checked my English e-mails. So, to make the balance and because nothing sounds better than the mother tongue, I'm playing music in Spanish. It's not so easy to be a traveler/foreigner when it rains and you feel the strong call of the earth. It's good that the earth has its own language.
There is an expression in Swedish, "att rota sig" which means to take roots. Now the sun comes (here comes the sun!) and the music in Spanish shines and my daughters are waking up.
Here, like a brilliant stone, a spell (to call the sun?), I leave you a song (Argentinian new folk), "at dawn": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Red1gsBlefc

I was at a Vintage Exhibition past may here in Malmö. Interesting how the vintage becomes just like a life style. Retro, nostalgia and eco-friendly concepts mixed all together in a passionate cocktail. We miss the idea of a durable, dependable, loyal something, especially nowadays, when everything gets replaced, broken and disposable after a brief sigh... why we love vintage? if your marriage doesn't work because you have schedule problems to meet each other or if the high tech society becomes too cold or too far away from any possible, fleshy nearness, then you still have your reliable vintage shoes/table/dress/leather bag/lamp made of real, endurable stuff, telling you: "yes, some things are unique and forever" and "yes, I'll always be by your side".
Agree. But vintage is also a way to consume less, to collect treasures, to upcycle and recycle things and then, yes, it's a whole life style. Go green, go vintage =))
Here, a link to get some vintage knitting patterns, for free
http://www.ivarose.com/inc/sdetail/3804

welcome!

Hi and welcome!
Enjoy the slow rhythm of life - the rotation of the earth, the tree's growing and stretching up to the sky. I do. Many days. Then the blog could be a reminder for the other days I forget myself in the stream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br2s0xJyFEM


Here, in Malmö, it's another gray day. You learn to love gray =)