The Treasures of our Trip

This is what we're bringing back with us from our short trip to Germany, to keep the link glowing for the months to come:

1. transparent crafting paper, a large cheese box, a mermaid instruction booklet and an electric lantern holder

To make a mermaid lantern for Glasgow's St Martin's Day lantern parade. Cubling is big into mermaids (and other less girly stuff, just that the less girly variations the craft shop had on offer didn't resemble combine harvesters, cranes, diggers or tractors) hence the mermaid booklet. She's still too young in my opinion to be trusted with the real thing, i.e. a lantern with a candle in it, so the electric variant has to make do for this year.

2. A hair band.

Nothing too German about that. She just wouldn't leave the shop without it and to be fair, it would help her hair style immensely. If she kept in in for more than two seconds that is.

3. A Brotbrettchen.

That's the flat rectangular with a slice of bread and a cow-shaped cold meet slice on it. It's a wooden board for eating your bread on. Instead of plates, you see. Very German. And they have such fun versions of it, I love them. This one was picked by Cubling as a souvenir.

4. Bernsteinkettchen (amber necklace).

A souvenir for my little niece and her teeth which may bother her. Amber necklaces apparently soothe teething pains. Believe it or scorn it, Midwife Muse tried it a little while ago on her gandchildren and maintains it worked (and she's not German so it must be true).

5. Various CDs and DVDs of German music and cartoon series.

That's me hoping that letting her watch TV in German will magically make her love all things German. To be fair, I can't wait to relive my own childhood by watching Die Sendung mit der Maus and Co. And I'm obviously big time into bribing toddlers.

6. A wooden sewing toy

Given to Cubling by my friend A. The needle is a mouse who eats through food. Cubling loves it, she's such a food addict and loves feeding any real or imaginary person or mouse.

7. Another present from A.: a drawing block, crayons, and a magic pencil with all the colours of the rainbow. The latter is a particular hit, Cubling loves making the colours change and telling me all about it.

8. A nursery rhyme singalong book.

One of those really annoying toys. I really had tried hard for Cubling to pick the autumn teeming book (Herbstwimmelbuch) which was my book of choice. However, she saw this and was not to be separated from it. So we've not got a book that plays 10 different German nursery rhymes, which is going under the name "Big Book" and is compulsory bed and nap time reading material. Did I mention my rotten cold? Imagine the scene, me singing with a sore throat and stuffed nose, 10 nursery rhymes at an impossible pitch for me at the best of times. It may annoy me and everyone in earshot, but Cubling has already started singing along and it certainly is her favourite book at the moment. So much so that I could've left all the other books I took at home.

9. Yarn

I spent my last Euros on 6 balls of Italian made yarn to knit a summer dress for Cubling. It's another F.Pea creation (cowgirl butterfly astronaut vest) and the suggested yarn, being US made, is not available here. I think I've finally found a good replacement.

10. Oops, forgot the scissors. That's because they had to stay as we only had hand luggage. When I went to my beloved craft shop aptly named "Zauberkoerbchen", Cubling wanted them. Then they became her precious. Imagine, my ever energetic, ever moving, ever running, never calm or sitting for any length of time, my one and only spirited girl - there she sat with a pair of scissors and a sheet of paper, cutting into the edge. Ever so carefully not to cut her fingers. For half hours at a time. There is magic in a pair of scissors as Slugs in the Refrigerator has described more eloquently.

And this is the lovely yarn I was knitting with while in Germany: Hachos de Mirasol, a Peruvian and fairly traded yarn which I just adore.