welcome, this is Made in Hägn

Photo from September 2008.

Today, the wind is blowing and it's raining. I didn't go for a walk. Instead I picked an old photo. That's just as well, seeing snow every day can get boring.

Idag blåser det och regnar. Jag gick inte på någon promenad. Istället valde jag ett gammalt foto. Det är lika bra, snö varje dag kan bli tråkigt.

Todays sketch. Inspired by the morning walk.

Dagens skiss. Inspiration från morgonens promenad.

I'm from Sweden, so Swedish is my first language. However, on the Internet I've mostly read and written in English. There's more information available in English and more people who knows English. Therefore I've never really thought of not writing in English on this site. If and how to write in Swedish, has on the other hand been on my mind a lot.

Some times I've planned to make Made in Hägn entirely bilingual, with two versions of every page. That's not what I choose to do in the end. It would have been more work and was happy to make something a little bit simpler. There's really confusing to write in two languages at the same time too...

There's one thing that make me want to write in Swedish. If I would compared the English language blogs that I follow to the Swedish language blogs that I also follow, I actually read more or less everything in Swedish, not so with the English. And I would really like to have Swedish readers!

So from now on I'll write parts of every post in Swedish too. This was the plan from the beginning, just haven't got around to it sooner. It shouldn't be to hard. I've always wanted the important content to be mostly visual. This is just an exception!

Jag är från Sverige, så svenska är mitt modersmål. Men på internet har jag för det mesta läst och skrivit på engelska. Det finns mer information på engelska och fler människor som kan engelska. Därför har jag aldrig tänkt på att inte skriva på engelska här. Om och hur jag skulle skriva på svenska, har jag dock tänkt på mycket.

Ibland har jag planerat att göra Made in Hägn helt tvåspråkigt, med två versioner av varje sida. Så valde jag inte att göra. Det skulle ha krävt mer arbete och jag gjorde gladeligen något enklare. Det är förvirrande att skriva på två språk samtidigt också...

Det är en sak som gör att jag vill skriva på svenska. Om jag skulle jämföra de engelskspråkiga bloggarna som jag följer med de svenskspråkiga, så läser jag faktiskt nästan allt på svenska, men inte allt på engelska. Och jag vill gärna ha svenska läsare!

Så från och med nu kommer varje inlägg att skrivas på svenska också. Det var planen från början, det har bara inte blivit av tidigare. Det borde inte bli så svårt. Jag har alltid velat att det viktiga innehållet ska vara visuellt. Det här är bara ett undantag!

Ice on birch.

I like to take photos of things close up. It has snowed so much this weekend! It's unusual that we this much snow this early.

There's a site called Polyvore. It's mainly a way to make collages of clothes and accessories. I must admit that until I tried to use it, I didn't think it was something that I would find very useful.

An outfit that works with my wool vest. More information on the vest at Flickr and on the rest of the items at Polyvore.

But when I tried it I was hooked. It was so easy to put together something that looked interesting and that I never would have thought of in any other way. Somehow it felt like this could be an easy way to try new things.

Now I have put Polyvore to use. More or less all of the garments that I've made have been sort of isolated, with no plans of how they would interact with other garments. I do like to have unique garments, but sometimes I wish I had put more thought on how to actually use what I make.

But no thing's ever to late! With the help of Polyvore I will make an outfit that matches one of my handmade garments. But that's not it (I like when I can get many things at once). I will also make a fashion illustration of the outfit I've made on Polyvore.

This will be my challenge on the weekends, so expect to see the Polyvore collage shown here as a fashion illustration in about a week.

On the weekdays I'll do the Daily Walk.

Todays sketch. Inspired by the morning walk.

I haven't planned to do these walks/photos/sketches on the weekends. So nothing like this tomorrow.

This is todays photos. Cloudy day today too. But a bit less windy.

This is Hägn. I live there.

I put up this fence, when it was still summer.

I've just joined the 6th annual SWAP contest over at Stitcher's guild. It was actually quite along time since did some garment sewing, so I'm so excited!

This is what I plan to make:

Sketches of 10 of the garments I plan to make.

For some time I've had an idea of making four groups of five garments. One group for each season and where one should be able to wear all five garments in a group at the same time.

The sketches and fabrics for the spring part have been ready for quite a while now. For the SWAP I've added the winter part too. I've not found all the fabrics for winter yet though, but the sketches are ready.

The SWAP calls for 11 garments, where one has to be some sort of jacket. Something that are meant to always be worn over something. The plans for that one is not entirely finished yet. I have some ideas that need more time evolve.