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Boring day Today in Amsterdam the weather is horrible. Lots of rain and wind. Yesterday we’ve got the same weather in the morning. But later on the sun was shining and it became a nice afternoon. I had to do some shopping in the city center. After that is took some shots.

The fist one is a tourist taking a picture of her family. I was impressed by her boots. They are great don’t you think.

The second one I took at one of the canals. I saw some colourful tourist on orange bikes. But when I wanted to take the picture this couple passed them. Well I was happy with it.

The last one is typical Amsterdam I think. All tourists come to Holland for the Red light district, drugs and the canals.

see also on my pictures on FlickR

At last I have something to show my loyal readers who may have forgotten this started as a craft blog. Blushing started life as part of a bag of scraps gifted to me by a friend who had quite a lot of bits and pieces. She has been making bags and scarves with her pieces and I was unsure for a few weeks what I would do with the strips as most of them were quite narrow…around 10 to 15cm with a few 25cm wide. I like the idea of table runners come bed runners come wall hangings so decided that it would be a challenge to work within the limits of the colours in the bag. I divided up the scraps into one large pile of medium to heavy weight linen mixes in taupe with charcoal and blush and another pile of beige though copper to peach rusty orange. There are also a few scrap strips which I have put aside for use in my strippy throws.

I sewed various strips of the taupe pile together after arranging them in some semblance of order, then pressed it and took a photo of it hanging from a cupboard so that I could get an idea of if anything needed to be taken out. Sure enough once I loaded it onto the computer I could see that one strip was standing out too much so I took that out and rearranged that area a bit and then it was time to hunt for the second hand yet as new curtain for the backing that I just knew I had somewhere in my garage! After about thirty minutes I found it and was delighted to see that it was even better quality than I remembered.

Then it was simply a matter of sewing the back to the front by machine and then I did some top stitching with perle thread to finish it off. All in all a simple project made challenging by the limited colour scheme and size of the pieces. We have however found that it is probably one of the most attractive things I have made, probably due to the quality of the fabric. It also goes incredibly well with our dark red curtains and has made the room have a more contemporary feel.

So I am asking your patience today as there have been a few unforeseen problems caused by my uploading so many photos…remember when I taught myself to upload them? Well apparently I have not been resizing them so the ten that I uploaded to flickr this evening took up a gigantic 10 megabytes my son said. Yowser!!! So if you don’t mind just for today click on Wild Blue Yonder and you will see more of what I have been up to lately! This is going to be a series of quilts of throw size with a very pale to soft inner centre of at least a square metre going gradually darker to the last few rows of blocks which will be really dark with the odd splashes of lilac to purple in one and pink to red in the other. Each block is 15cm in size so it will end up having 100 blocks….for some reason 100 blocks appeals to me.

I had no sooner put them up to our group on flickr when I started getting comments and questions…must remember to do that after I have cooked dinner…not during! Speaking of flickr I have found the most amazing talent, both globally and locally and I am hoping to start bringing you design reports or updates on what these wonderful artists designers are doing and more importantly, where to find their work. Not only are they incredibly talented with an astounding amount of work behind them but I have also found some new designers, so look out for them……get in now while they are not as well known and save yourselves a lot of money while getting a piece of a new designer’s history. It is very exciting and it is a privilege for me to be sharing resources and knowledge with these very talented designers and artisans.

En Holanda todo el mundo sabe que Mokum significa Ámsterdam. La mayoría de los holandeses acertará también a explicar que se trata de un término procedente del antiguo lenguaje del hampa. A mí siempre me ha intrigado esa denominación de la ciudad, así que me he lanzado a hacer una pequeña investigación.

¿Es Mokum un sinónimo de Ámsterdam? Hoy en día sí, pero este no ha sido siempre el caso. Mokum es una palabra procedente del bargoens (pronúnciese barjúns), denominación que se da a la jerga secreta hablada en los Países Bajos durante la primera mitad del siglo XX entre ladrones, contrabandistas, proxenetas y otros personajes al margen de la ley. La palabra tiene su raíz en un vocablo del yidis, mokem, que significa “ciudad”. Y con ese significado genérico se utilizaba también en el bargoens, de modo que originalmente no se refería de forma específica a Ámsterdam.

Según un pequeño diccionario de bolsillo de bargoens compuesto por E.G. van Bolhuis en 1937, la palabra mokum se utlilizaba en combinación con otra u otras para hacer referencia a una ciudad concreta. Así, Gran Mokum sería Ámsterdam, Pequeño Mokum significaría Rotterdam (quizá de forma despectiva) y Mokum Gas serviría para referirse a Gouda, entre otras muchas combinaciones.

La palabra mokum, con el significado de “ciudad”, está documentada por primera vez en 1731. La cuestión es cuándo se empezó a utilizar para denominar a Ámsterdam. Hay muchos indicios de que ese hecho se produjo en algún momento de la primera mitad del siglo XX. Pero lo que probablemente ayudaría a popularizar y consolidar definitivamente en todos los estratos sociales el significado actual de la palabra fue la canción Geef mij maar Amsterdam (Dame Ámsterdam), escrita en 1955 por el cantante popular Johnny Jordaan. Cualquier amsterdamés de pro se sabe de memoria este estribillo:

Geef mij maar Amsterdam, dat is mooier dan Parijs
Geef mij maar Amsterdam, m’n Mokums paradijs
Geef mij maar Asmterdam, met z’n Amstel en het IJ
Want in Mokum ben ik rijk en gelukkig tegelijk
Geef mij maar Amsterdam…

Traducido de forma literal (sin conservar la rima), viene a significar:

Dame Ámsterdam, que es más bonito que París
Dame Ámsterdam, mi paraíso Mokumés
Dame Ámsterdam, con su Amstel y el IJ
Porque en Mokum soy rico y feliz a la vez
Dame Ámsterdam…