Agus Yornet Blog

DIY Shaped Cushion with Punch Needle / Almohadón con Punch Needle

It's been a while since I do something with the punch needle and I notice I could use the same technique to do some shaped cushion which I though it will look really fun in the sofa. So here is the tutorial :)

Hace mucho tiempo usé la aguja punch para hacer una alfombra y ahora me di cuenta que se puede usar la misma técnica para hacer almohadones con diferentes formas! Así que va el tutorial de como lo hice:

The materials I use were:

- Wool

- Punch Needle

- Linen, for the back of the cushion

- Burlap, where I did the design

- Glue

- Thread and needle

- Polyester Fiberfill

Los materiales que use fueron:

- Lana

- Lienzo para la parte de atrás del almohadón

- Arpillera, donde bordé el diseño, he visto que usan una tela que tiene agujeros más chiquitos pero no se como se llama, si la conocen me dicen?

- Hilo y aguja

- Plasticola, después me enteré que es mejor usar Fortex

- Vellón siliconado

Prague Off The Beaten Track - Secrets of Prague Full Guide

Since a year ago I moved to Brno, the second biggest city in the Czech Republic that is about 3 hours drive from Prague. Since Prague was kind of the closest biggest city I have had for a year I did several day trips looking for fun things to do that were not the typical tourist spots!

Hace un año atrás me mudé a Brno que es la segunda ciudad más grande de Rep. Checa y queda a aproximandamente 3 horas de Praga. Así que tuve la suerta de hacer varios viajes por el día a Praga donde no debaja de ser turista pero quería conocer cosas nuevas fuera de las principales atracciones!

Doing a cookbook: How I decided to document all my family recipes in a cookbook

Some time ago I decided to start documenting my family's recipes. My mom comes from Perú, my father is Argentinean, my grandparents are Chinese and Spanish, so the food at home was extremely diverse.

Just before deciding to move out from home, I decided all this needed to be documented. This is how a journey of documenting more than 60 recipes began for 8 years. Photography of each dish, copywriting of the recipes and graphic design of the book were done by me.

Here are some details of the book and the process I followed to make plus some tips cause everything doesn't always go as planned 😅

As my two previous photobooks (Erasmus photobook and China trip photobook) I decided to print in Blurb (Even though I wish Blurb have sponsored this post, this is not sponsored just honest review haha)

Biggest Learnings of Food Photography as Amateur

- Natural light is everything

- Learn how to do a balance composition, like adding extra elements to the picture, maybe some ingredients, a spoon, another plate, a glass.
- Play with color contrast and textures!
- Take the photos fast! (you can tell when the soup you are doing a photo is cold or the ice cream is melting)

Before making this book I hadn't had any experience in food photography. I started documenting my family recipes just one year before I move away from home, I was 17 years and this was 2011 (left photo). I finally got to finish it in 2019 (right photo). This is the reason that pictures in the book are diverse in quality, they not only reflect my family cuisine but also reflect 8 years of learning and improvement.

Handy elements for food photography

Aliexpress Stationery Curated product review and Haul

This is not the average post I do here, but seems I have not been doing many DIY or travelling cause... coronavirus. I decided I will show a small haul of stationery and other tech stuff from Aliexpress. I guess all readers here still like stationery products as much as I do :)

I am HUGE fan of Aliexpress, not only because you can find whatever you want but because you also find things you didn't know you want or even existed 😅that's a bit dangerous to be honest.

Here are some findings of some of the cutest products I have bought and which I enjoyed and been surprised by the quality. I hope you like it :)

Aliexpress stationery products haul review selection

I noticed that there are some products in Aliexpress that are done by particular designers and are not so easy to find. This Oatmeal paper notes is one of them, I loved the vintage and kawaii look of this notes plus the packaging, super adorable!

Oatmeal Oats vintage notes here for 1usd

This are just paper notes with a look kind of Windows 93

Computer Game Memo notepad here for $1.35 USD

Adorable kawaii notes of fluffy animals here:

Cute Kawaii Rabit Memo Pad here - $0,45usd

7 Cities to visit in Czech Republic other than Prague

Since May this year I live in Czech Republic! Big big change. I am currently working at Kiwi.com (an online travel agency). While living here I found extremely difficult to find information online about what to visit (a part from Prague and Vienna) so slowly I had gather some information by asking coworkers and doing some fine research. Turn out Czech Republic has so much more than Prague! and a crazy amount of castle all over the country!

This a post to give you an idea of what day-trip you can do from Brno or what cities you can visit in the Czech Republic apart from Prague. I didn't dig deeper into what to do exactly in each city, is just an overview. I hope you like it! and if you happen to be local or Czech reading this post, extra comments/tips of these cities or others are more than welcome, this is just what I figure out with my non-existence Czech.

If you are newbie in Czech Republic (as me) I will tell you a surprising fact (or at least it was surprising for me): Czech Republic is great producer of white wine, their viticulture region is in the south of the country, this region is call Moravian and they produce around 96% of the wine of the country. I marked in yellow on the map along with the cities I will talk about:

day trip cities from Brno - Cities to visit in Czech Republic apart from Prague

Znojmo

Znojmo is a little town in the Moravian region and therefore is full of winery producers. On your way there you will see that is full of vineyards. When I say little, is really small and I recommend to go during summer so you can enjoy the nice views while drinking some local produce white wine. Is perfect for one-day trip and if you get bored you can take the bus back to Brno whenever you want.

The number one activity here seems to be doing the “wine trail”, basically renting a bike and go around different wineries. I didn't do this since we planned the trip little in advance. However, in the city you could see all around sign indicating the different trails. More info can be found here.

How to get from Brno to Znojmo?

It is really really simple because is a internal bus, so you just pay when you get in the bus like any other city bus. At the time I went it was the bus 108 leaving from Brno Dolní Nádraží, check the schedule because on weekends usually have a frequency of 1 hour.

Lagarde Bodega - 4 días en Mendoza, Argentina - Itinerario completo día por día de que hacer.

Mikulov and Lednice

View of Mikulov city from the hill

View of Mikulov Hill from the Castle

Have you heard of Mikulov before? Me neither… and yet this my FAVORITE towns from this list. I was extremely impressed by the beauty of Mikulov. I believe is even smaller than Znojmo, but OMG, so so beautiful. There is a small hill in the city where you can admire Mikulov from above, but the city itself it feels like a little Italy and is really well take care of. The gardens of the castle were carefully trimmed and immaculate perfect. The city is so small that you can see people going around with their glass of white wine around the castle, the center, is like an open bar.. but is a town.

I would recommend coming here even if you are just visiting the Czech Republic.

Lednice Castle, Czech Republic

Now let’s talk about Lednice. Lednice is 45 minutes away from Mikulov in a bus, so doing both towns in one-day is perfect. The most iconic thing about Lednice, is its amazing castle and its park (that is the biggest one in the country covering 200km2) both being part of UNESCO world heritage. If you take the bus 570 from Mikulov to Lednice, it will literally leave you 50 metres from the castle, which is free to enter.

My recommendation here, both cities are small but if you want to be chill, organize yourself to be around 10:30 - 11 in Mikulov. You will have lunch there, maybe an ice cream and then around 16-17 you can head to Lednice with a nice wine and wander around so at 20:00 you go back to Brno. (I didn't know this and I arrived to Lednice at 19hs so I was literally 1 hour in the castle and then went back, a reason to go back next summer… )

Here is why you should get back by 20:00:
IMPORTANT! keep in mind that if you want to go back from Lednice to Brno, the last train is around 21:00 and the last bus that gets you to the train station is at 20:00. So at 20:00 you should be heading back!

How to get from Mikulov from Lednice?
Take 570 bus, google maps have the schedule on it, so just follow the map! is only 45 minutes away.

How to get to Mikulov from Brno?
Same as Znojmo, there are city buses. You can take then 105 from Brno Zvonařka and in 1hr 30min you will be in Mikulov.

Valtice

This town is over the border with Austria and is only 7km from Lednice (actually one of the wine trail you can do is Mikulov - Lednice - Valtice all by bike). Valtice has, of course, another castle, which is really stunning and also part of UNESCO World Heritage. But the unique thing about this castle is that is home for one of the oldest and largest wine cellars in the Czech Republic. Here you can find the best 100 winning wines from Moravia Region.

The entry to the cellar was about 200 czk and you can stay there for 2 hours tasting all the wines you want. You can bring your own cheese and aperitifs to accompany your wine and of course you can buy the bottle of wine you liked the most.

I don't want to be hard on Valtice, but apart from this, there wasn't much to do in the town… In my case I went we a group of Brno Expat Center that organized a tour from Brno with a professional wine taster!

How to get to Valtice from Brno?
You can take a train to Breclav and make a combination there to Valtice. Is about 1 hour 30min (check the Czech train info here)