Flower Garland Giveaway - The Winners

Thanks to everyone who participated at our flower garland giveaway! After reading all your wonderful comments, we would love to send a garland to every single one of you, but it would take too long to crochet that many vines, flowers and leaves. So, here are the winners :

One garland goes to Solange, because she was the first to know, that the pictures in question were taken in Coburg.  As far as I could find out by now, this means, the garland will travel to Brasila, wow! Congratulations, Solange! You answered so fast, have you ever been to Coburg?

The second garland was raffled among all the other participants. I closed my eyes and grabbed one name out of the bowl:

Congratulations, Sarah H! Please send me an Email because your blogger profile isn't public and I have no chance to contact you otherwise.

Now, this was really fun and we hope, you've enjoyed our little giveaway, too!
Thanks again, to all of you. We'll be back soon to tell you, what has been going on here recently.

xoxo

Yours
Jo and Mo

Flower Garland Giveaway

Christian, me and my son had just arrived back in Berlin the other day. Sitting in front of the computer, I was sorting the pictures, we took on our vacation, recalling the recent days. First we had been to Nuremberg, where we did stay at my parents home. Then, we had moved on to the family week end, Christian's dad organizes once a year, inviting all his children and their folks. Each year he picks a different town in Germany for this great family tradition! I looked at all the photographs of  parents, aunts, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters when suddenly Mo showed up, clapping her little hands whilst jumping up and down next to my keyboard.

"Hey, did you know, we had been featured at Piewacket blog?" she called.

"Sure!" I said. "At last, I answered Lara's questions for the interview!"

Mo scowled at me. "Oh, the interview!" she hissed. Then she reached for my left pinkie and gave it a pinch.

"Ouch"

"Don't pretend it hurts, it can't! Because I'm just an i-ma-gi-na-ti-ve friend, you know!"

"Wait!" I said "You can not read nor write, even less in English, isn't it?"

"Rattle can!" she nodded.

"Who?"

"Rattle, the boy, I was in vacation with lately." Mo rolled her eyes and went on: "Whilst you were having fun with Mr. Bargain, can you remember?" 

I took a deep breath.

"However" she continued  more peaceable, "Lara wrote such nice things about us. And she wasn't the only one. Not to mention, all the wonderful comments we've got. Don't you think it's time to say "thank you", time to give something back. It's not long ago, we thought, nobody would take any interest in our chatter at all!" 

I had to agree.

"Can't we do a little giveaway?" she smiled. "It certainly has to be something small, concerning shipping costs and your budget." she reflected. "What about flower garlands? They are lightweight and easy to pack and one never can have enough." Then she took a look at some pictures I just had moved to a different folder on my desktop. "Did you meet those people at the family week end?" she laughed. "By the way, where did it take place this time?"

"Not too far away from Nuremberg, at..."

"Wait!" she interrupted me, "Let our readers guess, we'll have a little riddle! One flower garland for the first who knows, where you have stayed!"

"But, isn't this a little unfair? Germans might be able to tell easily!", I argued.

"All right. Additionally, we'll raffle a second flower garland among all the participants in general."

"OK" I said, "Let's try!"

So, below are the pictures. If you want to take part at our little giveaway, just comment on this post. One garland goes to the participant who is the first to answer, where I took these pictures. If no answer is right, it will go to the participant who's guess is closest. The second garland will be ruffled among all participants. We'll announce the winners on the 25th of August. 

Now, I hope there are at least two persons in need for a lovely flower garland, about 1,70 m (5 feet or 6.93 inches) long, crocheted by me.

Edit (on August, 25th):

The giveaway and comments are closed now. The winners will be announced soon. :-)

 

Have fun!
Mo and Jo

Jo's Crochet Flower Garland How-To

"What are you doing? Your things are packed, the cheese cake for your parents is ready and you ought to sleep by now! Did you forget, you are going on vacation tomorrow?" Mo asked and shook her little head. 

"I'm trying to write down the pattern for my flower garland. I want to get this done before I'm leaving, but it's difficult."

"The pattern?"

"No, the pattern is very simple to crochet, but I'm not good in explaining, I guess." I said and stated: "The garland was in the picture of the old table and all the other things Mr. Bargain encouraged me to buy. One dear reader called Moogie, asked me for the pattern, when she commented at the "Mr. Bargain" post last week. I promised to write it down and I thought, this might me a brilliant way, to give a little something back to all those wonderful people, who read our stories and take time to leave a comment."

"I see! Well-intentioned, at least!", laughed Mo, looking at all my muddled notes with crochet abbreviations on them.

Jump to our tutorial page to see what I wrote...

We will be back soon, two weeks from now at the latest!

Yours

Mo and Jo

Rudi - The Writing Desk

"Hey, Jo!", a little voice shouted, "I'm back!" Mo was propping against a paint tin and gave me a big smile and kept on talking: "I'm feeling great! Did you miss me?" 

 "Not too much, I was in quit absorbing company" I said trying to look indifferent.

"Ah, Mr. Bargain, the vacation replacement! What do you think of him?" Mo wanted to know.

"Don't ask me, ask my purse!" I sighted.

"I know. He is fantastic, but has a tendency to overshoot!" she laughed and pointed at the old writing desk I had nearly finished painting: "I bet, he made you buy this!"

I nodded. "It's going to be my son's desk. Blue and red are his favorite colors and he'll be a school boy in one month time!" 

"Good heavens!" she yelled and glanced at me pitiful. "How time flies for you humans!" 

Mo has been around me ever since I can remember and doesn't look older than a 16 or maybe 18 years old girl by now. Me instead has turned forty this spring. Dear readers, I felt the need to change the subject: "How was your vacation?"

"Wonderful!" she dwelt and stretched herself. 

"Mr. Bargain told me, that you had been with someone?"

She grinned at me for some time before she said: "Maybe I'll introduce you to him, one day. But let's talk about this desk, first. The backplane is a little broken. You could take some fabric to cover it. Moreover, it lacks an ABC garland! One with big letters on the front and small letters on the back, at best!" 

And this is how the desk has turned out. We named it "Rudi", by the way. When I took these pictures in my working room - the light was better there, than in the kid's room - I felt an strong urge to keep Rudi for myself. Luckily Mr. Overshoot-Bargain  had made me buy not only one writing desk, but two. So there's a similar desk, waiting to meet the paintbrush, which will be mine and I think, it will get a little garland as a companion, too.

Till next time, dear readers!

Yours Mo and Jo

x

Mister Bargain

Some days ago, I felt the need to crochet some doilies out of big yarn. Mo was still missing and I wanted to divert myself with something, because I had begun to worry. My plan was to combine the doilies into one big sofa throw or cover. I was examining one of the white granny-chic beauties and felt rather pleased, when I heard somebody coughing slightly behind me. I turned around to find a tiny grayish fella sitting on my sofa's backrest. "Hello, I'm Mister Bargain" he said, gave me a nod and continued:  "I'm , the vacation replacement." 

I stared at him. He was was wearing huge horn-rimmed glasses. They magnified his eyes disproportional to his little body, that was dressed in a worn out and clearly undersized pinstripe suit.  His bald head was shining and his thick lips grinned at me eagerly before he started again, pointing at himself and speaking slowly: "I am Mister Bargain, I am the vacation replacement for Mo. She wanted to take some days off - you see - because she met this nice guy." Whilst he was speaking, his eyeballs were moving restlessly and made me feel dizzy. "Did you understand me?" he asked.

"So, you are a muse, too?" I noted. 

He laughed: "A muse? Well, one might say so!"

Still wearing a question mark all over my face, I pointed to the doilies, lain out in front of me.

"Oh, that's not my business!" he said shrugging his shoulders. "I'm here to help you otherwise. Let's get started! Look deep into my eyes!"

I could not help but glance at him. His unresting eyeballs now had become pinball bullets in action. I only can remember myself asking: "What do you mean by saying Mo has met a nice guy?" then everything was wreathed in mist.

When I awoke, Mr. Bargain had disappeared and I was sitting in midst of a lot of rummage. Among others, there was a mid century wooden bench, an old lamp, two old writing cabinets, several kitschy decoration items,  and a table from about the 1890's, lovely but in rather poor condition. 

"Dear me!" I thought. Then I begun to move around the stuff, trying to find a place to for each piece, where it could rest a while, before my paint brush would bother it some day. 

Have a nice week end; or, if you are on vacation, like Mo, have a wonderful trip! 

yours sincerely

Jo

x

Gardening

My computer is very smart, he refuses to work for longer periods when the weather is hot. He has told me, that he's in need of another cooler, but I'm not going to pamper him. First it's a new cooler, then a faster main board and finally a sleeker monitor! These are the cheap tricks of technical facilities I won't play along! It's been sizzling hot in the last days and so the keyboard has gathered some dust. This, and the fact that Mo didn't reappear since the story of the When-In-Doubt-Add-A-Flower-Lamp, is the reason why it had been quiet around this little blog. Today is the first day with acceptable temperature and I dare to post.

Mo's absence doesn't worry me too much. Every now and then, the so-called-muse hides from me for a while. Like the computer she isn't very fond of warm weather. Moreover, she isn't really into watching soccer games nor does she like listening to me playing ukulele and gardening isn't her thing either. 

And this is exactly what I felt like and did lately.

Our garden is so small, it would be an exaggeration to call him tiny. So, we grow our plants on shelves. At the moment, they look a bit lost, but I hope, there is a lot of summer left for them to develop. 

Furthermore, I was lucky thrifting! I found this lovely old metal garden chair and three of his brothers. They certainly will need a lot of attention and care, until someone might take a seat on them.

I also found the prettiest phlox ever. It looks like candy to me: 

Ah, summer!

I hope, you are all having a lot of sunny days (and smart computers), too and I promise, I will keep you informed, when Mo shows up again.

x

Jo

When in doubt add a flower

"Hey, Jo! What are you doing?"  Mo shouted and made me cringe. "You are staring at that computer screen for hours!"
Over and over again, I had been reading through these lovely comments on Lucy, the lady-chair and hadn't even noticed her arrival.
"I feel a little bit lost" I said, "because I want to say 'thank you' to all those people and don't know, how to do it properly. I always fear to sound pathetic when trying to express my feelings in English."
"Then try it in your mother tongue instead!" was Mo's conclusion, which made perfect sense to me.
I wrote down:

Liebe Leser aus aller Welt,

wir waren sehr überrascht über die vielen freundlichen Kommentare zu Lucy, dem Damensessel, und freuen uns wie wahnsinnig darüber! Ein dickes fettes Dankeschön an Euch alle, Ihr seid absolute Spitze!

I sighed with relief and Mo gave me a gentle slap on my back. "Can we get productive again, then?" she said, pointing at an old lamp, that I had painted recently but which was still lacking a lampshade make-over. 

Moments later, I was examining  our pool of vintage fabrics and everything went quite well until Mo decided, like in so many cases, that there was still something missing. 

"You  are right! It's got a lampshade now, but it isn't finished yet" I admitted carelessly.

"Fortunately we can make use of Mo's up-cycling rule No. 1" Mo replied with confidence.

"Which is?" I asked.

"When in doubt, add a flower!" she smiled and one second later, the so-called muse was gone.

I started crocheting and added some flowers to the lower ribbon of the lamp shade, which seemed to me fairly sensible at that time.

 

Then, as a logical consequence, I begun to add some flowers to the lampshade itself.

 

I didn't notice, the crochet flower virus was having a good grip on me, again. So things were getting out of control soon.

I had pinned half a flower shop to the lampshade before I got aware of what I was doing here. I surveyed my deed with a vague feeling. Was it good? Bad? Fine? Ugly? I didn't know. I was stuck. Fortunately I hadn't sewn most of the flowers to the lampshade, yet. I could still take them off again. I needed an advice, but where was Mo? All I could do, was to put some of her little furniture below the lamp, in hopes of luring her out.

As I'm writing this, I am still waiting for her, to take a seat and give me a hint.

What do you think, she will say?

Have a great time!
Yours Jo (and Mo)

Finished that project

Three days ago, I was weaving in ends for hours, when Mo jumped on my shoulder, out of nowhere and unexpected as usual. "Uh, tidying away ends, isn't that tedious?" she whispered and gave my earlobe a pinch. 

"Tedious, why? No! It's like meditation to me" I lied in my sweetest voice and went on sewing. 

"I see!" she answered briefly and was gone the next moment.

The next day, I was still busy with my large eyed yarn needle, Mo poked me in the back: "Hey Jo, still in deep contemplation?" she shouted. "Come one, let's take a break. Live is short, there is so much more we could do!" 

"Thank you, but I can't. I have to finish this first!" I answered and tried to look energetic whilst feeling quite worn out.

"So, you're not interested in me helping you with your little novel?"

I stopped amazed "You really want to help me with that?"

"Just kidding! You know, novels are not my business" she laughed.

"Then you better leave me alone" I mumbled and off the so-called muse went.

Yesterday night, the very moment I had tidied away the last yarn end, she reappeared.

"Yay, Mo! I did it!" I said pointing on the hexagon covered chair.

Mo wagged her head "If you asked me, something is missing. It is such a cute old chair, we should pay a little more attention. Maybe some flowers?"

"OK, then flowers" I sighed and reached for my crochet hooks.

Today I sewed on the flowers and was very pleased with myself, because I had finished that project.

"What do you think?" I asked Mo.

"Sweet!" she answered. "It reminds me of a wedding cake in disguise.

Fortunately Safran the cat isn't as critic as Mo. He said, it would be just perfect for him. A bed, a scratcher and, with all the tassels, a wonderful drill ground. What a cutie!

A happy, sunny weekend to all of you!

xxx
Mo and me

P.s.: The hexagon pattern is by the wonderful Attic24.

A teeny weeny project

"Jo? What's wrong with you? You're looking like a seeped cropping a cotton coaster" Mo said to me today.
"That's because of the blog!" I answered feeling uncomfortable. "I would like to show just one finished project but everything is only work in progress"
Mo shook her little head in disbelief and laughed: "What are you worrying about? You just need a teeny weeny new project and one thing will lead to another!"
"Oh please, not another venture, right now!" I cried out but Mo wasn't listening.
"Positively, buttons are the answer to your problem" she grinned. "You always wanted to cover some buttons with fabric, don't you? And recently we do have a lot of vintage fabric scraps!"
"That's far too fiddly for me, I guess!" I opposed but Mo commanded: "Let's find out!

Well, what shall I say. With the help of this great tutorial by CraftPudding a new addiction was born. I covered button after button. To my surprise it was incredible fun, fast and not fiddly at all! I was very happy, for now I was able to show a finished teeny-weeny project to the whole wide web world.

But my relief shouldn't last long, certainly. After I  had covered a bunch of buttons Mo smiled at me: "Jo, can you remember the project, we could not finish, because we were lacking nice buttons?"
I took a deep breath and felt my good mood fading: "Oh, that project!"
"Now, we can get it done!" giggled Mo and I just nodded, because, it's always the same: One project leads to another. I reached for a sewing needle and began sewing some buttons to that project.

Here is a preview of that project:

I promise, I'll show you the rest, after I've managed to hide thousands of loose ends, one fine day!

Have a nice time, what ever big or small project you might be engaged with!

Sun Bathing

Mo wanted me to add some more paint to these chairs today...

 
... but it's really hot and everyone is lazy...

... so I was sun bathing instead!

Have a wonderful & sunny week-end!

About naming

This is only my third post and I'm already in troubles. How come? Well, I was in a perfectly good mood until Mo showed up this morning and asked: "Do you know what the difference is between you and the people of Ikea?"

"Eh?"

"They manage to give their stuff proper names!" said Mo and curled a strand of her long white hair around her index finger.

"But I do give names to anything around" I replied puzzled. "Mrs. Schmitt the new cabinet, Wiesbaden the dining table, Wilbur the couch. What more could one want?"

"A little thoughtful research in advance in spite of spontaneous and loudly proclaiming a name to the whole wide web world!" she complaint.

"Eh?"

"You neglected blogging rule number one: Always ask doc Google before you name your blog!"

My heart sank and I asked: "What's wrong with the name?"

"Nothing but the fact that Mo and me is the title of a movie, a documentary, already!" whispered Mo.

"I didn't knew!" I replied weak.

"Can you imagine the crowds of disappointed cineastes when they mistakenly come ashore our little place?"

I turned white thinking about cease-and-desist orders by legions of lawyers. "How embarrassing! Mo, what are we going to do now?" Mo shrug her shoulders with a very clueless, ingenuous expression.

"Come on, you call yourself a muse! So please give me an idea!" I begged. 

"We could rename it. Say, About Mo and Jo, for example" she said.

"I wanted to leave my name out actually. Besides, we have two official readers already. What will they think?"

"We might ask them. Fortunately Blogger comes with built in demographic power. We could run a poll!" Mo grinned.

"That's ridiculous, isn't it?" sighed me. 

"Do you have a better idea then?" she asked carefully.

Bud I hadn't.

So, please help us making a decision! You'll find the poll formular at the very end of the page.


Edit: The poll is closed and since most participants voted to leave the name as it is, we decided not to change it. 

Just to show something more pleasant, I want to introduce you to one of Mrs. Schmitt's daughters in smurf blue:

Till next time
yours Mo and Jo