I was told by my neighbor that the Delftse Blauwe fiets that my daughter and I made over the last Mei vakantie is getting internet attention. Thanks for your interest, and so allow me to shed some light on our project! We are relative newcomers to Delft (forgive my lack of Dutch!). My family and I arrived one year ago from Miami, Florida, and we crazy about the bike culture here. My husband and I were once bicycle racers, and we still can’t believe that life where cars can be largely replaced by bikes is our new reality. It’s so fantastic, that I thought we could make a nice tribute to the Dutch cycling culture… The idea came to me when I saw a sawed off half of a beautiful old Oma Fiets sticking out of a flagpole on Willemstraat in Hof Van Delft, and I thought it looked very cool. I began looking for a suitable bike in the trash piles (the bikes dredged up from the canals were ridiculously smelly!), and my daughter and I found the perfect bike in the garbage with the classic Dutch lines and sawed it in half with a metal saw. We love to make mosaics as a hobby, so on Queen’s Day, I bought up as much Delftse Blauwe porcelain as I could find at great Queen’s Day prices and allowed my daughter to smash away! It’s hard to see from below the bike, but we decided to use the lid to one of the porcelain jars as a bell, and yes, the Girl with the Pearl Earring graces front of the bike’s mirror-covered light. The handle bars and fenders my daughter covered with a collection of cobalt blue IKEA casualties. The rim of the front wheel we covered in mirror too, and I have a dream of powering this wheel with a solar panel to create a bit of a discoball effect when the sun shines on the mirror. (Perhaps my neighbor, Ernest in the ecohuis on the corner of Schutterstraat, being an expert on solar power, would like to get involved????) If you would like to see the process of making the Delft Blauwe Fiets, you may look at my family’s blog at http://www.mcclainfamily.blogspot.com.
It was a lot of fun to make! Thanks again for your interest!

Sjonnie heeft gelijk: deze hangt in de buurt van een bioscoop (waar de betere of moeilijkere films draaien).

Maar toch heb je niet geheel ongelijk Kimbo. Want hoe origineel deze bijzondere vlaggestok ook lijkt, in Delft alleen zijn er minstens twee te vinden. Deze DelftsBlauwe dus en ook ééntje in het Westerkwartier. Al weet ik niet welke straat het precies is, het zou zomaar de van Bleyswijkstraat kunnen zijn.

En misschien hangen er nog meer. Wie weet?