Recycled blanket

Many years ago my mother knitted a blanket for our home. 

It was huge and multi-coloured and full of love and hard work. Over the years this blanket was used for picnics, for lounge forts and garden tents and for keeping us warm by a camp fire.

But as life happened on and around this blanket, it collected it's fair share of scars and wounds. In the end, it just didn't look good any more. It was time to be upcycled and recycled into something new.

Over the past month I seperated all the blocks, sorted them by colour and reassembled them with crochet borders into three seperate, smaller blankets.

Now every child has his and her own blanket, knitted by Gran and crocheted by Mom.

Blue for Jandre,

pink for Anika,

and green for Stefan.

Ready for the next round of forts, picnics and campfires..

Flower feedback: Franschoek 15

It is stories like this which make me so grateful that I planted all those flowers:

This photo was taken on the 1st of April 2013 (no joke), in Franschhoek. That day me and my boyfriend from Belgium were visiting this very cute town together with my parents.
We decided to go visit the Huguenot Monument and whilst doing this, we stumbled upon this little flower hanging from a bench. So we read the description and took a picture as instructed.

Now, let me tell you a little about us. My name is Bianca Vermaak. I was born in Johannesburg in 1993. My boyfriend is Cédric Gerain, born in Brussels, Belgium in 1994.
When I was 4, we moved to Belgium, where we have lived for the past 15 years. This is also where I met Cédric, during high school. I couldn’t' t have wished for anything better to happen to me.
Cédric was going to study Civil Engineering at the VUB in Brussels and in matric I decided I wanted to come do my Bachelor at Stellenbosch University. I applied and got accepted. Of course I was over the moon, but I knew this would mean me and Cédric being apart and having to take on a long distance relationship. He told me, the darling he is, that he didn't want to stand in the way of my dreams and wished only for me to be happy. So, on the 17th of January I left for Jhb, to fly down to CT 2 days later.

It was very hard in the beginning, my parents moved with me, but my two older sisters were left behind, as well as all my friends and of course, Cédric, so it was pretty sad to say the least..
However he had managed to get a ticket to come down in April for two weeks, so I was ecstatic! Even though it cost him a fair amount of money, roughly R10.000..
So he came over in April and we were reunited once again, which was magic. We then spent 2 unforgettable weeks together, with the visit to Franschhoek included.
He was absolutely blown away by this country; its beauty, culture, the people and not to forget.. the weather. So, he will definitely be coming back.

Given this, you now know our story and hope you enjoy it and who knows which next flower we'll stumble upon..

Thank you, Bianca! This is such a great story. I am so happy that you shared it with me.

Recently published articles

I wrote a few articles over the past months and two of them have recently been published.

On the WEG website there is a story of our travels through South Africa. It tells about the African Flower Chain trip and is written in Afrikaans.

Merise is a magazine published in Australia, aimed at the South African diaspora living in Australia and New Zealand. I wrote an article about my new hometown, Adelaide, for Issue 5. Merise is published in both Afrikaans and English. The article was originally written in English but a translated version also appears in the Afrikaans edition.

Flower feedback: Mac Mac 14

My flower messages are getting few and far between... I wonder how many flowers still survives?

I received this message from Jaruska Warriker a while ago:

We are at the Mac Mac waterfall and we were on a trip through the Lowveld. Although we stay in the area it was the first time we visited this waterfall.  We are cousins that differ only a year in age and we are more like a brother and sister than like cousins.

Thank you Maritz and Vera!