favorite shop friday: look for fiddleheads

This week I'm sticking with the clothing trend and featuring good old-fashioned, comfy t-shirts!

What I've always found fascinating about t-shirts is that there is really only one way to sew one up, but infinite ways of designing them so that they always have the potential to be completely unique!

Today's shop is Look For Fiddleheads, offering many unique designs for the traditional t-shirt! The shop name comes from childhood memories of searching for coiled baby ferns and the shirt designs are inspired by images in grandmother's old books. The result is fun, classic t-shirts hand-printed for men and women, often in hand-dyed colors.

Here are a few of my favorites...

Type B:



Inventing Toast:



Butterfly:



Well Dressed Men:



Always mindful of avoiding waste, Look For Fiddleheads uses all the "mistake" prints to created some very cool laptop bags...





Find your unique Look For Fiddleheads t-shirt at http://lookforfiddleheads.etsy.com.

doors and windows 3

Meersburg Old Castle, Germany

Meersburg Old Castle, Germany

Meersburg Old Castle, Germany

Meersburg Old Castle, Germany

Meersburg Old Castle, Germany

chandeliers of meersburg

I loved all the chandeliers that we found hanging from the ceilings of the rooms of the Old Castle in Meersburg. Each one was so unique from the last and each seems to have been added in a different century.

old meersburg castle

So remember my birthday last week? I promised to get back to that old castle in beautiful old Meersburg on Lake Constance. And it is very worth getting back to!

The little town of Meersburg was originally built up around this very old castle overlooking the huge lake. It was built in 628 by the king of the Franks then, by 1268, occupied by the bishops of Constance until the mid-18th century when they built the more comfortable New Castle in Meersburg. In the early 19th century the Old Castle was then occupied by Baron Joseph von Lassberg. All the rooms come from different parts of its long history...











But my favorite part of the castle, and the thing that made me so curious to visit it, were the three rooms that were once lived in by the famed and important German poetess Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.

Annette was very sickly in her later years and her brother-in-law, who was the Baron Joseph von Lassberg, invited her to live in the castle on the lake (which was a popular place for the sick to regain their health). She eventually died there on the lake in the castle in this room and in this very bed...



...on 24 May 1848. Her rooms were more or less just as she left them and there was a display of her poetry and a few drawings done of her and of the castle as she lived there.





But although the lake was beautiful, her rooms comfortable (not the cold stone rooms of other older areas of the castle), and the pretty little castle garden was just outside her door, she was apparently never very happy there. She wrote a poem while she lived there called "The Old Castle" where she says

Schreit' ich über die Terrasse
Wie ein Geist am Runenstein,...
Ist mir selber oft nicht deutlich,
Ob ich lebend, ob begraben!

I cry over the terrace
Like a spirit on the rune stones,...
It is often not clear to me,
If I live, or if I'm buried!



The castle was so romantic! We walked through rooms 1400 years old and many gradually added in later centuries, seeing evidence of all the castle's inhabitants: the weapons tower, the bishops' chapel, the dungeon that had old graffiti from its prisoners, and, of course, the death bed of a poetess.

I am looking forward to going back again and spending more time in Meersburg and its old romantic castle and getting inspired by it's stone halls and the spirits of Frank kings, old bishops, and perhaps Annette's crying spirit will act as my muse and I can write my own poem or two! It was just that kind of place!

favorite shop friday: treehouse28

After coveting the adorable kids clothes from last week's feature, I decided I better feature something for us big girls...and I have found the incredibly chic, modern, and oh-so-comfortable-looking clothes of Treehouse28!



Alix designs and then hand-makes all of her pieces from scratch. Each piece is custom-made in your sizes and chosen colors. Her goal to make women's clothing with a passion for uniqueness, beauty, simplicity and comfort is evident in every piece!









I love these clothes...I'm thinking I'm going to have to chuck my old wardrobe so I can feel constantly beautiful and comfortable in my new Treehouse28 wardrobe!

You can start your own Treehouse28 wardrobe at http://treehouse28.etsy.com.

euro 2008

Germany is happy today!

I don't follow sports. I don't care about sports. My husband and I like to go to the occasional live baseball game (especially with my family) but other than that, sports have absolutely no hold on our interest or care.

But when you live in Europe you kind of have to be at least aware of football (and by football, I mean soccer for all you Yankees). My husband and I have noticed that although many many sports are enjoyed on this continent only one is taken seriously. Very, very seriously.

Coming from America as I do I have of course seen sports taken very seriously and enthusiastically. I was in Houston when the Rockets won their basketball championship years ago and watched that city go Rocket-crazy. And this soccer tournament reminds me of that...expect it's not just a city, but the entire nation. No, actually, it's the entire continent. And I really don't think Americans understand the passion that Europeans have for soccer.

So, for those of you not currently living in Europe, the Euro 2008 Football Championship is going on right now. And it's a very big deal.

I had no idea this tournament was coming up...until I started seeing German flags everywhere: hanging off balconies, in shops and restaurants, and every second car on the road has flags waving from it. And not just German flags, but flags for every competing nation.

And I realized the games had started to be played when I noticed big flat-screen TVs hanging in department stores and restaurants showing the games and also when the train conductor got onto the loudspeaker during a trip I made to Karlsruhe telling travelers the current score of some game going on.

And then my husband started watching the tail end of the games so he wouldn't be clueless going into work the next day where everyone was talking about the tournament.

On Sunday we were traveling up to Karlsruhe on an early train which is usually pretty empty but this early Sunday it was packed with exhausted, dejected Hollanders on their way home from begin defeated by Russia at the previous night's game in Basel, Switzerland. As we got off the train, a group of Hollanders in their orange football jerseys and scarfs and hats wondered through the train station and got pity comments from most of the Germans they passed.

But Germany isn't so sad...not yet. Last night they won their place in the final match!

Now, a lot of Germans will stay home and watch these matches on TV, but many will go out to watch the match together. Towns and cities will set up public viewing areas...in fact, last night in Berlin half a million Berliners watched the semi-final game against Turkey in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

And I rode my bike down empty streets out to Bühl's Johannesplatz to catch a bit of the game and act the part of an interested anthropologist to study this cultural aspect of being a European.

Johannesplatz is a central square in the town's old city center surrounded by Italian ice cream cafes, bistros, and restaurants. Every business in the square had a big TV or two or three hanging outside and there were hundreds and hundreds of people there to watching the game.

Some of the hundreds at Johannesplatz last night...



Tooooor!! (Germany scores!)...



Now, the thing about this game is that Germany was playing against Turkey and there is a big Turk population in Germany. After arriving to the square I noticed that most of the Turkey fans were crowded in one third of the square while most of the Germany fans took up the rest. It was interesting to watch the two sides of the square react as first Turkey scored a goal and then Germany scored a goal. And then I went home to Karl to watch Germany win the game with a literal last minute goal.

So today Germany is a happy place and I'm curious how crazy things are going to get this Sunday with the finals!

Turkey is sad...





Germany is happy...





Even Angie is happy! (Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, at last night's game)...

my birthday

Monday was my birthday! And Karl took the whole day off work to be with me!

We left first thing in the morning after a yummy breakfast at my favorite bakery to take a train south to Bodensee (or Lake Constance as it's called in English) and we spend the entire day there along the big beauitful lake.

The train ride was so lovely...it took us through the mountains and trees and towns of the Black Forest.

The lake itself is very big. It borders Germany, Switzerland and Austria and as you stand on the German shores you can just make out the Alps in the hazy distance.

We had lunch in the town of Friedrichshafen then took a bus to the town of Meersburg, which is one of those little European towns that never did well economically so it never changed. It was such a pretty place!

We visited the Old Castle of Meersburg while we were there...and which was the reason I wanted to go down to the lake in the first place...but that was so neat that I'll save photos from that until another time!

Turning a year older wasn't so bad!