Mindful gardening

I bought a book today - which in itself isn't unusual, because it happens all too often, but this one looks different, interesting.

One of my most cherished books is Zen and the Art of Quilting, by Sandra Detrixhe - I have read it, and re-read it nearly a dozen times. Thinking of that quiet book with calm confidence saying yes, I do know what I am doing with my quilts -- I picked this one up. The Art of Mindful Gardening, by aptly-named Ark Redwood. (If he was a character in a book, you'd never believe it.)

It helps that it's cute. And so 1930s in style (I freely admit that I'm a sucker for 1930s design ethic: I am reading a biography in the 30s now, and I love classic prints in the style like this cover).

So, what am I doing, blogging about a book I've barely read? I'm excited and I wonder if it will live up to the dippings-in I have tasted and enjoyed.

The garden is lush now, the tomatoes this week measured not in numbers but in bucketfuls. The season is changing and mists in the morning on the farm tell me the days of summer are almost gone.

I read, once, that the true measure of a garden is in the delight it gives you as you notice daily changes. The slow ticking turning of the year. Today I admired new shoots on the scarlet runner beans (maybe another crop is coming) and enjoyed my rustic wooden trellis, the red flowers all tied up with scraps of gingham red-and-white fabric. I delighted in snapdragons pushing out second shoots short but fat with flowers, seed pods rattling dry - break them open to gather next summer's colour. Zucchini for dinner, round ones the size of a tennis ball and two little long dark, dark green ones. Black beauty, they're called. Grilled. The sweetness of tomatoes from the bottom of the bucket.

I can't think of anything much more mindful than a garden. Let's see how this one goes...

Plats du Jour

I picked up this beautiful cookbook in a second hand bookshop last weekend.

Front and back covers 

I'm shameless. I bought it simply because I love the cover. Both front and back. Plus it was $4. And it's full of basic classic French and Italian dishes, with a very few Eastern and Northern European recipes, too. 

Thankfully, no photos frighten the reader with bilious coloured late-50s carrot flowers and piped mousses, yet it's clearly written for a British public who were just getting an inkling about Continental food (published 1957). 

But that's not what I bought it for. I bought it to read and enjoy the period piece it is. And for the illustrations, because they're just plain gorgeous.  

David Gentleman is the illustrator. I knew it was a bit of a classic cover, but I hadn't realised what a famous illustrator Gentleman is. His long and varied career has covered illustration, poster, book and stamp design. Apparently, he's one of the UK's most prolific stamp designers ever. I couldn't find a lot of his other work online (book illustration is mainly under-represented as art), but there's this nice collection of Gentleman's works in the Tate.

Gentleman draws hairy-armed men on bicycles with swags of onions, but he also depicts the cuts of beef and how to cut a schnitzel (across the garin of the meat, in case you are wondering - which Marcella tells us means the meat won't curl in the heat, of course). He draws hunters standing around with a dog, and the kitchen range, and a variety of lovely things I'll scan and share when time permits.

Clarity of line and good humour. But not too cute. I love it. (The wine was nice, too.)

Once upon a time...

Have you noticed, recently, that the word 'Stories' keeps coming up?

It's usually plural, and I'm seeing it everywhere. First it was that national book chain, advertising that they have 'All the best stories' - and one of our TV channels boasts about their stories, and the library, too.

The Duke and Duchess of Urbino (1465) by Piero della Francesca. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
More than just an interesting story.

Today, we received a flyer from a second hand bookshop, promising to deliver a new story for my Enjoyment! (Their caps). Not only do I hate random capitalisation (it's okay; I won't rant), but I'm beginning to get annoyed by this use of the word 'stories', too.

What does it mean? Why are all books suddenly 'stories' as if we are kids at bedtime needing to be soothed to sleep? Maybe we do want escape and fantasy reading. Are we really that stressed out? (Or are we listening to the media too much?) I'm not sure I want a juvenile relationship with words and books and the amazing strands of people's lives that make up the incredible wriggling mass of interesting, odd, and complicated humanity.

Do you?

Yours,
Puzzled

Looking on the bright side

We're moving slowly here at Tacc Headquarters, due to a nasty cold virus that took up residence almost a week ago and refuses to leave.

I remain cuddled on a sofa with a quilt, crochet to hand and a good Michael Pearce historical whodunnit. Drinking lots of tea.

Wouldn't a tea cup like this in my favourite shade of yellow make it all a bit better?

Photo: teacup and saucer from my dad
Originally uploaded by loveitaly

What do YOU say when you see a large spider?

I was editing a primary school textbook yesterday, and the lesson I was reading was all about using exclamation marks.

The students were supposed to fill in the blanks by writing down what they would say in several different situations, such as;

What would you say if you scored a goal in footie or soccer?
____________!

And then:
What would you say if you saw a big spider in the bathroom?

____________!

Two things came to mind:
1. The blank for my response isn't long enough (or big enough), and;
2. I don't think I'm supposed to use words like that to answer questions in a primary school lesson.

Foiled again. I'll never graduate!


PS: The photo above is definitely not a spider. Which I suppose means I also fail in image recognition. It's a helicopter, but don't you think it looks like a bug? I've always wanted to use this image (taken by Mr Tacc) in my blog. Hoppo Bumpo, this one's dedicated to Argy and Bargy.

On my desk....

This week, the desk's a jumble of projects all vying to be finished. I've got a growing collection of stencils on the retro farm theme, and the latest additions were a sheaf of wheat, a strawberry, and a very sweet little hedgehog who, I am told, needs a 'shiny black button nose'!

At the back, the drawing for my latest Posted Stitches quilt, on the myths and legends theme. A kimono hanging up has since been finished and is being used. And I'm still reading that gorgeous French book....

More desk delights can be found over at Kootoyoo.

B

This is... What I'm reading.

Sometimes your attention scatters everywhere, like a stream of beads dropped on a wooden floor... in all directions, all at the same time.

I always read more than one book at a time: usually about six. Some people hate that: they feel that I can't be paying proper attention, that it's disrespectful, lazy, or all of the above. I've tried following reading lists, having prescribed monthly titles for discussion groups, but it just doesn't work.

You're either a chomper or a grazer when it comes to reading, and I graze: I have a book for every mood, and I now enjoy keeping them swinging up in the air, juggling stories and recipes, essays and articles, and letting them all wash over me and through my mind.

This pile is my bedside table. Molesworth has been on top for a few weeks now, but he's resting. (Chiz, chiz) If you don't know Molesworth, he is a scamp of a 1950s British school boy with atrocious spelling and a wicked sense of the absurd. He will be back to these pages. If you need to know now, visit St Custard's and enter the hallowed halls....

Anne McCaffrey - Dragonsong - I read when I was a teenager, and loved in a moody 14-year old way. Recently, I found a copy for a pittance in a second-hand shop, so I decided to remind myself what all the fuss was about. A great story, told with clarity and a light touch, of a young girl feeling outcast - who is actually tremendously gifted. I still think it's perfect reading when you're an adolescent with daydreams!

Anita Shreve, Light on Snow, not started yet, from the library. The Secret Life of Bees, also not started (does that count?) And a good stack of magazines topped with Peter Pan, on the bottom shelf. We read a lot of kids' fiction around here...

But this: this is what had me glued to the page last night, sitting up too late to find out what happens:
Mary Stewart is a corking storyteller. Her tales can be a wee bit dated now, but they have aged gracefully. This is the story of Merlin and King Arthur, dramatised and with fully-rounded characters who doubt and debate, make mistakes and muddle through. I've never been much into the Arthur thing, but I have always loved myths and legends, and I will be making a quilt on precisely this theme this month, for Posted Stitches, so I decided to give it a try.

And finally, the magazine that arrived on Friday and had me oohh-ing and aah-ing and reaching for the sketchbook, is Quilting Arts. I got hooked on their articles, "Five ways to design using inkjet prints" - - and I started printing drawings this morning. Very, very exciting!

B

Thanks to My Champagne Dreams for the theme, and to Three Buttons for starting it all off.

Stenciling along...

Well, I rashly agreed to sign up for a stencil-along challenge over at Hoppo Bumpo.

"Yay, this is really exciting! I love stencils", I thought.

And then I got busy. Really, really busy. Tired, sore feet and down-at-the-corners-of-my-mouth busy, with job hunting. Applications and networking and emails and phone calls and endless scouring of job ads, and more soul searching, and lots of shadow-boxing at the gym (okay, maybe not lots, but enough to make me grin a bit again). It's no secret that the job hunting game is depressing, and I'm starting to find it hard. I hate admitting it, but it's just the way things go.

A bit of stenciling did happen in between everything else, and generally in short bursts late at night, and I'm almost ready to reveal what I've made. See, I had to keep the lid on it till October because it's for Posted Stitches.

So, what does a girl do when she's blue? Well, today I bought some shoes. That counts. And chocolate - I splurged on one single raspberry milk chocolate cream from Haigh's, Melbourne city. Yuuuum. And the gym (dancing and very silly boxing). And last night, some tea and stitching on the sofa. Tonight I have a big urge to watch Howl's Moving Castle for approximately the 63rd time. If anyone's looking for me with fabulous job offers this evening - I'm on the sofa.



Okay, so back to the stencils. I struggled with the freezer paper, folks. I was wondering what on earth I was doing wrong, and then... it struck me... I haven't got freezer paper - I've got a slightly different product! So now I'm a shadow-boxing, blue, dim-witted dingbat. Doh. Just crossed wires, really, as they sell a wider range of Reynold's papers in Canada, and somehow we discussed the wrong one. I didn't keep the box, so I hadn't realised until today, when - Bam! - I worked it out. Time to find some real freezer paper before trying again.

In the meantime, two yummy books have crossed my path and have been gobbled up:

- The Lollipop Shoes, by Joanne Harris. This is the sequel to Chocolat, and it's damn fine for cold evenings and for pulling you out of your troubles into the swirly, spangly, slightly suspenseful world of the witches of Montmartre. Get a shawl and some fuzzy slippers before you start this, because you'll be up late!

This one's still in the process of being 'gobbled':
- Things to Make and Mend, by Ruth Thomas. I picked this up on Sunday at BookTalk Cafe on Swan Street (about which more anon), no doubt attracted by the stitching theme. The main character is an embroidery artist who works in a quick mending shop. So far, so good. And I love the fact that someone actually embroidered the cover - Faber and Faber logo and all - which is photographed for the book!

So here's a sign-off from me, the footsore stencil flop with a sitting up late reading penchant. I'm sure I'll be back on cheerful form soon to tell you all about my adventures and the tiniest bit of progress that I managed to make on the Summery Quilt this week.

On my desk...

Here's a little thing, on my desk. It's my first (or second) attempt at an art journal page, inspired by the interview Jennifer hosted with Dawn DeVries Sokol over at CraftSanity.


I've been sitting on it for a week or two. (Not literally!) I just wasn't sure if it was really art journaling, and then I opened up the book today and decided that because it had blue all over it, I rather liked it. A photo from a greeting card, some wrapping paper, fabric leaves and a fabric flower. No acrylics? Just use fabric paint. Who can tell?

Books, prescribed

I've been reading this list, found here - and it's stirring the dragon of obsession in me.

Book lists provoke, in equal measures, ire and the irrational desire to go out and read every single book on the list, in the order they're listed, just because someone said you should. And how exactly would that make you a more intelligent reader, I wonder....

I think a book list ought to be taken as an interesting way to find new authors and interesting books. Isn't that what most compulsive readers want? As Pullman says himself, it's an exercise in itself;

"One interesting thing was the growing realisation that my list was less about literature than about story, or about something else that wasn't fine writing, but was more important. Some of these books are badly written, but unforgettable: Lovecraft's stories, or David Lindsay's extraordinary A Voyage to Arcturus. Some are here because their subject matter is inexhaustibly intriguing...."

You can read his "How I chose my top 40" here.

On my desk....

Hurrah, that desk. My husband built it out of a huge slab of MDF and some Ikea legs. And because we're all for reality blogging around here, here it is in its un-excavated state. It's a lived-in artefact!

Notable features upon this relic of recent activity: (can you tell I'm still pretending I'm an archaeologist?)

In the upper layers we find:

• A prominent site of homage and worship: the sewing machine. Ritual purposes?*
  
• A colourful notebook - see blogged post about it - and several strata of notes on jobs.
• 'What Colour is your Parachute?' - a fantastic job-hunting, career-changing manual.

Below these items, we find:

• A cutting mat, in case I feel the need to shred things with a scalpel (does that ever happen to you? I find tax time and whenever I need to do the filing, that the urge to cut things to ribbons mysteriously emerges in me...)
• Moo cards, Mixtape, and fabric paint.

Buried by time, and elegantly cropped out of the photo, is a lovely scrap heap of bits of fabrics I'm 'Working On'.

Happy Wednesday! Thanks to Kootoyoo for the meme.

B

* Note added later: In our house, "Ritual Purposes" is our shorthand for anything inexplicable, as in "Probably used for ritual purposes..." meaning "We have no idea". The other one is, for businesses "Must be a money-laundering operation", meaning "How in heck do they stay in business?"

Anyone got any more of these? We sort of collect them...

Clutterificent!

I'm trying to de-clutter my life. Or at least, just my desk. Now, before you think 'beh, that's so obsessive', let's just point out that mine is not the realm of the beautifully-arranged, craft designer wonder-house to be showcased artfully on my blog. Oh no. My house is a roof for books. Shelves of books. Piles of books. Books under the bed. (There would be books in the closet, too, except that the closet is filled with fabric.)

A beautiful junk heap, that's what I call it!

I quite like it this way. My books are my friends. I've read a lot of them, and I even paid for some of them. (Gifts and review copies, folks - what were you thinking?) Both my husband and I were once book reviewers, and so we would get 3-4 in our in-trays, each, per week, with a note saying; 'Please review and keep if you like'. -We wrote a lot of reviews.

So why the flutter over the clutter? Well, after the Big Trip 08 - our 3-month jaunt through Europe and Canada - we came home to find that someone had mysteriously shrunk the house. I mean, it's all still sort of where it was, only everything seems smaller. And I want to do some sewing, and some writing, and the papers and books are getting in the way.

It must be spring insanity. I'm sure if I lie down for a while, it will pass...

B

PS - I agree with Yatzi on some things. No, my place is not that bad!

What to do when it rains in the Lake District

We've just got back from a two and a half-day jaunt to the Lake District.

Revisiting places we went to on our honeymoon, sampling the tea and scones (with cream and jam, of course!), walking down stone-wall sided lanes, with sheep bleating in the fields, drying our feet and rain-soaked trousers in the local pub. It was all we expected, and we packed it in, and it was lovely.

This picture was taken in the window of our room at Bank Ground farm, the farm that inspired Holly Howe in Swallows and Amazons.

Avast ye maties with lashings of ginger beer....

more anon,
B

Fun stuff on the scanner

This weekend I went into Melbourne's Chinatown with a couple of friends for the meal they call Yum Cha (I'm sure they call it Dim Sum in Canada?). Anyway, lots of trolleys, big tables, much tea and dumplings - you get the picture.

While we waited for a table at the palace of Yum Cha delights, I popped across the street to the Chinese stationery shop - a cave of wonders for a paper junkie like me! Stickers, erasers, Snoopy everything, and all manner of interesting kitsch. I nearly over-heated.

May your dumplings be filled with equally delightful finds!

First, a notebook. The purple foiling on the front has not come out so well, but it says "Write on your heart that every day is the best day of the year". OK, I'm up for that.


And the it's got little dog creatures holding balloons, but I thought the balloons said "Boo!" until I looked closer....

And finally, these stickers, my favourite of which says; "You are my forever baby. Do you know?"

Do you know indeed!

Now all I need to do is to find out what the Chinese characters say...

Also on the scanner this morning is an amazing Russian Folk Tales book I picked up some months ago at a secondhand bookshop in a country town up in the Goldfields.

It's got a lovely cut-paper style to the paintings, which I think are watercolour and or gouache.

The colours are bright and saturated, and I love its graphic appeal: