Cafe

This week's prompt in Our Beautiful World is 

cafe

chosen by Mandy of  A teacup of Scrapisms.

A cafe I regularly go to with my friends is Koumbi Coffee and Crafts, a cafe at the city centre which is very different from any other.

It's a beautiful place filled with crafts and handmade things.  

 You can buy things from the shelves.

Or buy kits to make things while you are having coffee.

There apart from having coffee and drinks with your friends (like Anna and me here)

you can also sit and stitch, learn a new technique,

use everything in the workshop space,

attend lessons and workshops.

 Anna of In My Closet has organized many of her workshops there.

You can even celebrate your birthday there!Like when my crafty group friends surprised me with a party there!

Many groups gather there weekly or monthly for their meetings.
There is even some yarn bombing outside the cafe!

Last but not least I have to mention Anthi, the owner of the cafe, and the people who work there, who are all friendly and gentle!That's one more asset of this place.

Why don't you join us with your favourite cafe in Our Beautiful World?

Blogland friends

It's true that through the Internet I have made many friends in my life.
But if we go back in time,when I was a teenager I had about 100 pen friends (pen pals) around the world many of which I have kept as friends through snail mail, e-mail or facebook even today.
Some of them I have met. Others vanished or I was always behind in my answering rhythm and they had no patience with me.
Anyway for me the correspondence of those days (that really helped me develop my English writing skills) is the Internet of today.
Through the Internet in blogland, facebook, the sea glass sites, the craft sites, instagram and more I have made many many new friends.
What I really always liked was the fact that at some point the friendship from vistual became real and we met in real life, in real time!
That's how I managed to visit Finland and Austria. I met my old life long pen friends there.
And in 2014 when I went to the States it was a combination of today and yesteryear, a life long pen pal and a sea glass site Internet friend.
Why am I telling you all this?
Well a couple of days ago I had the chance to meet some more virtual friends whose blogs I had been reading for some time.
Nicol of Χειροποιήματα της Νικόλ and Vicky of Ποδηλάτισσα blogs with her sweet daughter Demetra visited Thessaloniki and we met.
First we met at Georgia's aka Ahtida's house. I had met Georgia before and some more bloggers visited there to see the ladies from Athens. Although I was the new one there they all made me feel comfortable. They were Rena of Δια χειρός, whom I already knew, Maria of Morphoplasies, Yioula of Γιούλα Δημιουργίες Χαράς, Mary and Olympia of  Old things,
Georgia's husband Demetres and Georgia had cooked some great food which we all savoured and the whole meeting was a success filled with laughter.

(photos by Olympia)

Then the next day Nicol and the other ladies insisted that I should accompany them to an evening out. So I had the chance to meet some more ladies that I only knew through facebook like Glykeria of Έργα Τέχνης,Irene of Inandaroundmyhouse ,Madrina,Vasiliki and Adriana.

 They were a great company of friends, we had a really good time and I am sure we will meet again.
It was so nice to put face to name and facebook profile and get to know so many interesting lovely ladies.
Who said blogland or virtual world can't be beautiful. And I am happy those friendships that have formed in the cyber world have developed into real world friendships.

A thimble exchange with Costa Rica

I am not a collector of thimbles. A couple of months ago I took part in a thimble exchange though.
It was via Kim's blog of Wisdom with needle and thread  and I exchanged with Christy from Peru!
You can read all about it here.
Then a lady from Costa Rica reached me to do an exchange with her too.
Here's what she sent me. A lovely thimble from her country, two fridge magnets, chocolate and a piece to stitch.

Here's what I had sent her. A thimble from Parga.Isn't it gorgeous?

A thimble from Thessaloniki.

(Sorry for the blurred photo!)

And a fridge magnet from my city.

My parcel took ages to reach her! Some postal services are really bad! Anyway I am glad my parcel arrived safely afterall and she liked everything I sent her!
Thank you Arlette for this lovely exchange.

Green bag lady

Some time ago (in fact in January) I won a Sewmamasew giveaway and received my giveaway win from Green Bag Lady blog. 
I had won these two lovely shopping bags handmade by this great lady who has been making fabric bags and giving them away for free to persuade people to use plastic bags less and fabric bags more for their shopping!
Aren't they lovely?
Thank you Ms Green Bag Lady.
Here's something taken from her blog.

Green Bag Lady Bags

35,074 FREE SHOPPING BAGS have been given away by Green Bag Lady! They are used daily in more than 3300 US cities, plus over 1400 cities in over 600 territories/ provinces/ countries world wide!

Bag Count Updated: Mar 31, 2016

 That's amazing isn't it?
 If you visit her blog regularly she gives away bags all the time so you may win one too!
In fact that's the second time I win her bags, both times through Sewmamasew!!

Books

Today's prompt in Our Beautiful World is 

books

and was chosen by dear Ros of Mikey's mum.

This year I have taken again the challenge at So little Sleeping and so much reading and am planning to read 26 books the whole year. That's the #readathon16.I have also joined Goodreads.

So far I am ahead of schedule and have read 15 books.

In January

1. A book that takes place at Christmas

Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol The Pears Edition (a classic)

2. A graphic Novel
Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou and others (didn't really like it)

I read The Secret Garden to my pupils because we went to the theatre to see it as a musical. This one doesn't count in the 26.(Excellent!)

3. A book that takes place on an island.
Moiraida by Eva Omiroli (Not good!)

In February
4. A book with an animal on the title or the cover.
At the flipper of the dolphin by Takis Georgiou (Not good at all!)

5. A book that takes place during a war.
Anne means mum by Stelios Stylianou (Very good)

6. A book that takes place somewhere you always wanted to travel (that's Cornwall, England)
Rosamund Pilcher's The carousel (She has written much better books)

7. A book with at least 6 words in the title.
Jonas Jonasson's The 100-year-old man who climbed out the window and disappeared (Excellent!)

8. A book with fewer than 150 pages
Tiny white shell by Katerina Chlorokosta whose blog I love reading.(Excellent!)
In March
10. A book by an author younger than 35 years old.
Giak by Demosthenes Papamarkos (Very good!)

9. A book that is the debut of its author. Ahyat Anhar by Maro Karga which was Excellent!!!!!

11. A children's book
Richard Scarry's Best Story Book ever(Very good)
12. A book with short stories.
Short stories by Alexandros Papadiamandis (a classic)

13. A book with a book on the cover
Aviccena by Gilbert Sinoue (Very good)

In April so far
14. A book by a writer who uses a pen name.
The Graphic Novel Aivali by Soloup (Excellent!)

15. A book by a publishing house you don't often read. (This one was a gift by dear Edgar in the States who wanted to give me all the books by Helene Hanff. Thanks Edgar!)
Helene Hanff's The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street (Very good, really witty)

Last but not least the bookmark I have been using since Christmas in my books is one made with love by my friend Andria of andriasserendipity showing me, hubby and Barca!

Isn't it beautiful?
Why don't you join us in Our Beautiful World with a blogpost about books?

Also any suggestions on books that I might enjoy are very welcome.

A gift for a baby

 That was back in January but I am so far behind in my blogging that I decided to start writing short blogposts again almost every day to cover everything that has happened and I haven't blogged about.
So here  is something I made for my friend Sarah's baby. It's an owl made of felt which doubles as a ringing toy.

I also stitched this for the baby.

Here's a photo from Sarah's blog with all my little gifts.

And then I made another owl for my friend Juliana who loves owls.