Walk through Olsztyn

The other day there was a nice sunny weather so I went for a walk through my home town. Below are some photos I took during my walk.

This building is in a very characteristic Prussian style, this part of Poland used to be Prussia in the old days.

View of the old town.

This is the old and historic Town Hall.

Decorations on a building in old town.

A small river Łyna flows through Olsztyn

The entrance to the old Town Hall.

Old Town again, the castle in the background.

A real Christmas tree in the Old Town.

In this church Ross and I got married nearly 17 years ago on 4 January 1992

Cemetery visit

Before Christmas I went with my parents to visit graves of my grandparents and aunt. Poland being a Catholic country has huge cemeteries with millions of graves. People visit graves of their relavites regularly and they leave flowers and lit candles.

This is a chapel at an old cemetery

View of the cemetery where are my maternal grandparents and paternal gradmother.

With my family

These are my parents.

This is my lovely nephew Kuba who is 17 years and 11 months old.

Snowing

We had some very wet snow for 1 day and it melted the following day as the temperature continues to be above 0C. The first photo below was taken from the window of my parents unit and the following photos even captured falling snow flakes. It does look magical but believe me it often doesnt feel magical when it is wet and cold around you.

Christmas tree

Ever since I was a little girl I remember that decorating a Christmas tree was a special ritual each year at my home as this was my Mums passion and over many years she collected thousands of different decorations. A lot of them are older than me and they are hand made of glass. I still remember lying on a sofa with my sister as children and picking our favourite decorations. It is special to be back home at this time of the year and to experience my Mums Christmas tree again. Below are some photos.

Chunky Xmas ATC for Marlene

Before leaving for Poland I created this wooden ATC for my friend Marlene in lieu of a Christmas card. I am becoming a great fan of chunky ATCs.

In Poland now

I arrived in Poland a week ago and it was such a great surprise for my parents, they nearly had to pinch themselves to believe that it was me. My Dad opened the door, went silent and then called my Mum saying there was someone at the door for her. They were both stunned but very happy, my Mum had to ring her sister straight away to tell her and my Dad was telling everyone he met next morning when he went to buy some bread. They said it was a surprise of a life time so it was worth the effort.

It has been quite cool since I arrived, around +3 degrees during the day but it is quite mild for this time of the year. It looks like we won't have white Christmas this year as snow is not predicted for a while yet.

A photo taken while we went for a walk with my sister.

My sister during the walk.

A little chapel in the forest, quite traditional for this region of Poland.

Surprise trip back home for Christmas

I am getting pretty excited about my upcoming trip back to Poland for Christmas and it is even more exciting given that my parents don't have a clue that I am coming! My sister and my nephew have been plotting together with me to plan this and we all can't wait to see my parents' faces when I turn up at their place on 4 December. I will let you know how this goes, some people have asked me if my parents have strong hearts and I think they do so hopefully there won't be any heart attacks (lol).

Well, my sister tells me that it has been snowing already and here is a picture taken by my nephew a couple days ago from the windows of their place. It will be a bit of a shock to my body to go from around +30C in the sunny Queensland to around -5C or less within a couple of days. I hope I can cope with that.

Below are some photos of my home city in summer. I come from Olsztyn, which is located in the north east of Poland, not far from the Russian border. The region is well known for its beautiful lakes and forests which surround the city.

This is a statue of Nicolas Copernicus who lived in our city for many years.

Christmas swap

I am part of a Christmas swap with 11 other "Art Sisters" and here is my creation, a pendant in a little felt wallet. It will be fun to receive 11 different creations from my very talented on-line friends.

Table runner for Alison

This is a table runner I created for my friend Alison. I am part of a patchwork/ sewing fortnightly group and this year we decided to have have a Christmas exchange of items handcrafted for another member (drawn out of a hat). This runner is hand embroidered and I crochet the lace for its both ends.

Collective canvas for Marilena's 50th birthday

Paper princesses (i.e. Gaye, Judy, Marlene, Celeste, Margaret, Marilena and I) have made another collective canvas, this time for Marilena's 50th birthday - the theme was hearts, birds and fabric. It all came together so well and Marilena just loved it.

Here are the pieces I created:

The pink heart in this one is embroidered by me.

Play day with Celeste and Gaye

A couple of weeks ago Celeste, Gaye and I got together for some arty play and didn't we have fun! We experimented with some bubble wrap and below is my creation, inspired by what Celeste has created earlier . We also played with some chunky wooden ATCs and below is the one I created.

Some recent creations

A little lead light hanging for an arty exchange

Little canvas swap

A little hanging created on a piece of wood for Jo

Wedding cards

I haven't been an active blogger recently so here is my catch up. I made a card for a 50th wedding anniversary - I used one of the paper quilted backgrounds which come handy for quick cards.

The following is a little wedding booklet for newlyweds, I love my new cricut cartriges which came handy when making this booklet. I also used the rusted paper for the background, when rusting I used blue paper and that's why it has some patina effect.
Front of the wedding booklet


Inside

Back

Some of my recent creations

With Beata being here and the traveling we have done, I did not have much time for art work. I am only just beginning to catch up.

This card was made for a Polish friend who loves Paris, I used on of my paper quilted backgrounds for that.

A purple house card created as a thank you for one of the organisers of 'the rusting day' at the Spinners and Weavers back in June.

A rusted house card created for another organiser.

Hong Kong activities

While in Hong Kong we encountered a typhoon which, while did not pose any danger to us, made us very, very bored for a day as we were confined to a small hotel room for most of the day. Luckily the day before the typhoon came we met for lunch with Lyn, the local girl and sister of Marlene, who told us about the warning system and what it all meant.

When we got up the next morning we received under our door some information from the hotel telling us that the typhoon was coming and to check the level of warnings in the reception. By the time we finished our breakfast the warning was T8 which meant all locals were to go home immediately as the public transport would stop within an hour time. Thank God we knew that from Lyn as otherwise we would have ventured somewhere given that outside it was still quite calm.

We did some walking around the hotel, went for coffee, watched TV, drank lots of cups of tea, read books and then started to feel very confined to the room. It was then that I decided we needed something "creative" to do and I managed to talk Beata into going outside to a small corner store which happened to be open. We bought some paper, markers, circle templates, scissors and magazines and on the return to the hotel I ordered manual activities. What fun - we felt like back in primary school but it gave us something to do. Below are our creations.

I enjoyed drawing circles and colouring them in

Beata did cutting out of magazines for my future collage creations

When sitting in the hotel, which was pretty sheltered from wind, we did not think the typhoon was powerful at all until we got out the next day and saw quite a bit of damage including huge trees being taken out of the ground with the root and many branches being broken. We were lucky that we didn't fly out on that day as many flights were cancelled and I know that poor Jackie was affected by it and had her travel very delayed on her return from watching her son performing at the Olympics (well done Matt for coming 21st in show jumping).

Another fun activity was shopping, particularly shopping for craft items. This was my 3rd trip to Hong Kong and many craft items were purchased before so this time I concentrated on beads, charms and little gem stones. Below are some of the treasures I found.