welcome, this is Made in Hägn

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.

A sketch inspired by todays morning walk.

As promised, the sketch inspired by the walk I did this morning. Nothing fancy, but it's a start.

Snow on pine tree needles.

I love walking. For a very long time I had a dog. That meant that I went walking with him daily. That was lovely. My dog is no longer alive and for some reason I don't go on walks anymore, at least not here in Hägn. Which is strange, cause I've done a lot of walking in the other places where I've lived, without the dog.

That is going to change. Starting today I'll go in a walk in the mornings and take some photos. But that is not the only thing. Later during the day I'll make a drawing or sketch which will be inspired from the morning walk.

It will be fun to see how this turns out. I suspect that in the beginning the result wont be that good, but as time goes it will be much better.

This morning it was a bit windy. So I decided to take the walk in the woods. It was also quite cloudy and not a lot of light. Not ideal for shooting photos.

Unsharp snow on pine tree needles.

Yellow lichen on tree body.

Several of the blogs that I read have written lists of seven things about themselves. In order to give, any reader that I might have or get, a chance to know me a bit better I've made such a list too. You'll find it below the picture. Enjoy!

The second garment I made from one of my handwoven fabrics. The pattern technique is called dukagång.

1. My favorite color in the whole wide world is orange. Bright glowing orange. Like in the picture. I don't link orangey colors that aren't orange to me at all. I especially hate a kind of faded orange that has a bit of pink in it. Sometime people see that color and thinks that I will like it. I will not, I want the real deal.
2. I like to know a process from the beginning to the end, to know and master everything. Well, at least if it's something that I'm interested in. That makes me extra proud of the things that I've got that are made of wool from my sheep Elsa (she's no longer alive, which also makes 'her' stuff super important). I feed her and took care of her. I shore her. I carded the wool. I spun the yarn. Some of it I dyed with vegetable dyes. And finally I knitted something out of her wool.
3. If I don't already have an opinion in a subject, I can't help but feeling drawn to having the opposite opinion to that of the majority, or the one that no one else has! I'm really good at thinking of things from another persons perspective, which is mostly good. I don't hate people, cause to me it's pretty obvious that the people that do bad things aren't as lucky as I am in one way or another.
4. Normally I don't like to watch a movie or an episode of a TV-series that I've already watched. With one exception, Friday Night Lights. I love it beyond words.
5. One of the best times in my life was when I went to school in one part of Sweden, had my boyfriend in another and my family in yet another. I appreciated that I could concentrate on one thing at a time and I felt so lucky and fortunate to have so many good things in my life when I traveled between those places.
6. To me, Christmas is decorating the Christmas tree with my siblings on the eve before Christmas eve and to eat my families Christmas ham. But since I am a loving and caring girlfriend I will spend this Christmas with my boyfriend, without those things.
7. A lot of the things involved in sewing, weaving (especially weaving), knitting and the likes, is really boring to do. But I want the result, so I do them anyway. I definitely hasn't done a craft because I find the process especially rewarding. The reward is in the end, when I have something that is unique and only mine.

Now every page that I have actually written any code for is online. The final part was the links section. There's not that many links there yet, it takes some time to add them.

The next step will be to make some improvements on the CSS code and perhaps some minor changes, plus the fun part. To code the next section! I need to plan it a bit more, but soon I can begin.