Looking and thinking, travelling to some summer

I've been playing out in the wide world, looking at the colours and thinking of pictures and creations. As usual, getting away reminds me of who I am and of all of the images and ideas, colour and creations I want to be part of my life.


Travel opens possibilities. It wipes the veneer of weekly, daily, monthly work and routine out of my head and reminds me that life is short and is here to be lived to the full. Bloom and fade: celebrate and burst with colour.


The things I see make me want to draw all day, paint all evening, dream all night.

I did do a little painting on this trip, and lots and lots of drawing. Constant doodling. I made the commitment not to worry if it was any good; just to do as much drawing as I could. Even though we're back and the wind is wuthering (and we've got the traditional post-air journey sniffles), I'm doodling most days. It feels great.

And this is one of the photos from the trip that I find most wonderfully, richly satisfying.


Doesn't that just make you tingle? They look rich and full but pokey and prickly all at the same time. Can you see how big these barrel cacti are? I purposefully poked my toe in the bottom of the photo so you could see just how bloody enormous they are. I imagine if you sat on them, they'd pop. Or slump. (And poke billions of little cacti-holes in your delicate derriere.)

These photos were all taken one sunny fine day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as I went around the botanical gardens and sculpture park. Big thanks to my lovely host, Jennifer, for suggesting it -- somehow I never fail to find inspiration in a great garden.


Especially one with vistas like this that remind me of the summers in Canada and big fields of wildflowers.

Now all I need is a big floaty dress and a sunhat. (Too bad they lost my luggage and all I had was my Melbourne winter black. But that's all forgiven and in the past now, right?)

Ahh, holidays. > dream <

Homemade In Epicure

HomemadeInEpicure
Originally uploaded by smallcloughs

I'm on holiday at the moment -- did you miss me?

I'm on the patio, sitting in the sun in Canada, enjoying the summer breezes, the prospect of more barbeques and swimming in the lake.

Meanwhile, at home, the little cookbook we produced for the bushfire benefit has attracted some attention and was in Epicure last week. Yay!

If you don't already know all about it, go to www.handmaderecipebook.com. (I promise you it's delicious, I edited those recipes and some of them looked great...!)

More soon, just wanted to share the (belated) news. If you'e already ordered a copy of the book, apparently they have arrived and will be shipping very soon if not already. Double yay!

xx
B

I almost felt guilty...

For cutting them all off the bush. But with the forecast for today sitting at a scary 46 degrees (which turned out to be true) - I knew they would never survive. So I cut them, every one - and we have them indoors to enjoy and admire.


The very natty mat is a lovely gift from Potty Mouth Mama. I won her de-cluttering blog giveaway, and last week a parcel of delights arrived: trim and ricrac, vintage tea napkins (love 'em) and this little tablecloth - just the right size for our outdoor tables. The lime green piping is from her stash, too - just-washed and bundled before this photo. Thank you, Ms. PMM!

It's funny how the weather predictions last night made me tense. All this talk about the 'Horror Day' of untold temperatures, and dire warnings not to go out unless it was absolutely necessary. It made me somewhat edgy, so I was out in the garden last night, fussing over the tomatoes and the basil, topping up the pots with water from the bathtub (now that summer's here, our last soap-free rinses sit in the bathtub, getting cool and awaiting re-use as footbaths, dog splashes, and garden water). The vine Mr Tacc gave me a few years ago for my birthday is scorched and the beautiful red flowers have all dropped off. Our lemon tree soldiers on, with one hard green little lemon on the way. Many other plants have turned up their toes. This season is harsh.

Where I grew up, it was winter that you hid from. Staying indoors until we were crotchety and got chucked out the back door, snowsuit to the eyeballs, big mittens on penguin-flipper hands. Crunching through the crust on the snow - will it hold me or will I fall in up to my.... oof. waist? Blizzard days of all white: no school, home to draw and listen to the radio, read good books and bake. Snow days.

Me, circa 1994 - New Brunswick, Canada.

Here, I'm beginning to get used to the fact that summer is the killing season: the sun scorches and kills the garden, and we stay in to avoid it. Keeping inside, in the dark and cool, reading books, watching movies. It's all the same things, just the layers of clothing are different.

I avoided today's dire predictions - did go out - went to sit in the cool and craft with lovely new bloggy friends (hello!) and to stay in, out of the harsh weather, crafting in the cool.

Some things don't change much, but at least I didn't have to shovel my car out before I could drive back home. (And there wasn't a mountain lion under someone's car, which there was one memorable Canadian winter crafting day .... but that's another story).

Houses

You'd be forgiven for wondering if this blog has become a house blog instead of a craft blog. But, you see, there are so many inspiring house photos - these three dug up from the archives of a summer visit to Charlottetown, PEI, many years ago.

This is what's inspiring my next round of drawings.

Gorgeous weatherboard: front-face and square. I look at this and count the windows: how many rooms would that place have? I'm sure there'd be enough for a craft corner somewhere in the eaves. Perhaps that little attic room with the light on?


Let's walk a little down the street. The houses sit close to the road, but it's so quiet. Not exactly genteel. Just quiet.

I love the colour-coordinated trim and the solid confidence of the houses. The cars look so small - and this is North America, so I assure you, they're not.

Steep roofs for rain and snow, plenty of space for living through cold and dark winters.

Or if you have an affection for ice cream blocks - those cardboard-wrapped blocks of ice cream that you slice, perhaps you'd have gone for the deluxe confectionery residence with marzipan frosting?



Sugar sprinkles, anyone?

Dressing for the future

I've been looking at a great site recently. Imagine a dress that could change over time. It would adapt to heat and to light, change colour or slogan according to your direction, perhaps also respond to more subjective stimuli, like hugs or baby stains?

Artist Joanna Berzowska has created a selection of dresses for herself, for the needs and aspirations of the next 23 years. Her project is one of six fascinating textile art projects to be found on the Digital Threads website.

Many thanks to Ken Vickerson for the link. You can see Ken's artworks here and Mr. Tacc's post about them here.

B

Things that inspire me....

I'm getting over this virus, gradually. Very big thanks to those who sent me well-wishes. It made me smile, and that made me stop being grumpy for a while - and that made life easier for patient Mr Tacc., who was heard to say, "You're grumpy as all hell when you're getting better." Yes, I'll take that award. It's perfectly true.


Last night I dragged my weary self to the Victorian Writers' Centre for a talk called "Getting into Editing", which was an interesting discussion about the profession, starting with the experiences of four very different editors. The audience asked some excellent questions, and the session gave me plenty to think about in relation to long-term goals. Not least, I know I have a few things to learn!

It was lovely to be out and about, and the city is vibrant in the early evening, with everyone out after work, strolling the lanes. On the way to the session, I stopped and picked up a course brochure for the CAE, who do short courses in the city. When I got home, I went through with a red pen and circled the courses I'd like to take. Gosh, that's a lot of red! Apart from sewing and textile design, there's crochet, book binding, silversmithing, dichronic glass jewellery, resin sculpture, woodwork, mosaics, contemporary drawing and so, so much more. Decisions, decisions.

With energy returning, I'll try to get a few seams done on the summer quilt today, and take some photos (I've also got two rather intense job applications to do).

Looking through some photos recently, I realised that what's inspiring me at the moment are the rich saturated colours that appear in nature.

Springy bright pink flowers on the trees on my street.

Summer flowers at the O'Keefe Ranch, BC, Canada. (Our visit and gorgeous quilts blogged here: Quilt Hunting and here: Quilt Hunting, Part 2.)


Darkness falling, late afternoon in winter. Okanagan, BC.


These are the colours in the summer quilt, and I hope they'll remind me of this year's extended summer in the Northern hemisphere (travelling through Canada), and the summer that's just waking up here in Melbourne.

Balance

My own Inukshuk
Originally uploaded by Claude@Munich

I'm starting to work on the next month's theme for Posted Stitches. Before the end of this month, I need to make a small quilt (10'x10") on the theme of 'Balance'.

(Blogger keeps dropping this image credit: My own Inukshuk originally uploaded by Claude@Munich)

I've been hunting online for ideas and inspiration. Balance could be literal (standing on one foot), or it could be figurative (being off-balance, finding a balanced view). Which will it be for me?

This image of an Inukshuk caught my eye. You see these figures all over the Canadian landscape - piles of rocks, balanced to make figures. It's a reminder that I'm home when we leave the towns and cities, and on the rocky outcrops there are silhouettes of figures and cairns - sometimes even an Inukshuk dog! Heading north of Toronto to Georgian Bay, or just like this photo, which was taken in Alberta, where I grew up and camped every summer.

It reminds me of the major balance in my life, which is that I don't live in the country I grew up in. Although I'm happy here and Australia is my home, I'm continually on balance. I'm not from here, but I have family and great friends here. I've been away from Canada for so long that I don't get the popular references or I remember things as they were 10, 12 years ago - not as they now are. I've moved internationally four times - twice as a child; twice as an adult. I balance Canada, the UK, and now Australia, which is my home.

I don't often think of myself as an immigrant, because that brings to mind questions of loss and leaving that seem final, complete, and historic - all those images of people arriving post-war at the big sheds in places like Melbourne, or Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Image from the Pier 21 museum website - they have a fantastic collection of stories and photos.

But I do think that many of us carry around multiple identities based on heritage, languages, family history, international ties and a balancing act of who we are. In my case, that's sometimes very Canadian, sometimes quite the Aussie. Sometimes not sure which will come forward until I find myself questioning things I once took for granted as the 'natural' (Canadian) way of doing things. Well, no, there are many ways to do such things - health, schools, social life, language - one is no better than the other. They all live in a constantly-shifting balance inside us.

Balance. What does it mean to you?

Quilt Hunting, part 2

Well, it wasn't only quilts that we found at the O'Keefe ranch - there was also a cowboy exhibition in the museum, with all sorts of artifacts, including these beautiful embroidered gauntlets.

The caption reads: "Beaded and fringed gauntlets were extremely popular among the cowboys of the BC Interior. These gauntlets from the South Okanagan are ornamented with beadwork and embroidery".

When I first saw the gauntlets, they reminded me of the embroidery you tend to see on Canadian First Nations' items, such as moccasins and gloves. There are a few examples in the Textile Museum of Canada, such as this embroidered and beaded decorative cuff (presumably for a coat), made by Woodlands Cree in Western Canada, c. 1880, or this pipe bag from Ontario, of about the same time.

Most of the photos in my previous post were from the Schubert House, on the ranch -- but of course, there was a main house, which was decorated in rich style as befitted a successful ranching entrepreneur of the late 1800s.


The recreated ranch house kitchen...


... with a triple Irish Chain quilt on display below the window.

The very expensive William Morris wallpaper on the stairwell and hall. Somehow this stairwell manages to be dark and rich-looking, but not gloomy. Perhaps it's because of the light wood of the banisters and the high contract on the wallpaper, or perhaps also because the staircase is freestanding and there are no supports or posts constricting the space?

You can't see it in this picture, but a judiciously-placed mirror enabled the lady of the house to glance up to the upstairs landing from the parlour - just to make sure that there were no eavesdroppers amongst the children of the house!

And finally, upstairs in one of the bedrooms, a beautiful washstand sits next to the bed with a faded beauty of a log cabin quilt. The colours of the room are cool and comfortable, but not dull - simple and charming.


- Now I want to go and make a log cabin quilt!

B

Quilt Hunting

Today we went down the road to the O'Keefe Ranch, in the dry hills north of Oyama. Worked by father and son for over 140 years, the O'Keefe was established in 1867, and it's now a heritage site with houses, a store and a church, farm machinery, proud chickens and young sheep, and of course... quilts.

Imagine my delight when I came up the steep stairs of the log cabin (the original house), to see this lovely feather applique quilt.

My memory says that this is called a Princess Feather quilt, but perhaps I've got that wrong? (There's a quilt like this in the textile collection of the American Museum in Britain, at Bath).

There were also more utilitarian quilts in the children's rooms in the Schubert House, one of the houses on the ranch. I loved the blue walls and this well-worn, slightly faded tufted bed quilt.

Downstairs, in the farmhouse kitchen, a very knowledgeable guide sat and told us the tale of the settlers coming across the whole of North America to build and live in this house. A party of descendents , some of whom had grown up in this actual house, were visiting.

The tale of their ancestors' cross-Canada journey is incredible: from the East to Fort Edmonton - two months by Red River wagon. Mrs Schubert was pregnant, and although friends begged her to stay in the East until the child was born, the couple were determined to get to the Goldfields, and they set out with their three young children, all under 5 - one in each saddle bag on their mother's horse, the other perched in front of one of the men.
Confident that they would reach the Goldfields of interior BC before winter, and before the birth, they struggled through the Rockies on foot and on horseback, all the way to the wild rivers of BC, where, starving, the settlement team finally took to rafts. -Only to discover that their river suddenly descended into a canyon and a mighty waterfall. So they walked. Three days up and around a mountain, then down again to the river to build more rafts, where, somewhere on a riverbank, not far from Fort Kamloops, their daughter was born.

I can hardly imagine the story, though we're sitting on old chairs in their kitchen, and there are toddler great-grandchildren rolling around on the grass outside. The swing screen door bangs, and when we go out into the meadow, it all looks peaceful, as if rivers and starvation and drowning never shadowed the horizon, and we know that they lived to a ripe, quiet old age.

A Currant Affair

Red and juicy, some of them dried already and prey to birds, the currants glow like jewels. I can feel the sun on my neck and my back as I stoop over the bush. Every so often, a berry breaks, and my fingers are stained red with the warm juice.

Dad’s currant bushes are on the edge of the property, on a hot, dry steep slope. You’ve got to watch your feet scrabbly gravel. Every once in a while, a warm red berry pops off the bush and lands, caught in the dry stiff grasses. It’s hot.


I’ve gone out to pick the berries, not knowing what I’ll make with them – arguably a foolish thing to do, but I want to play in the kitchen indoors where it’s cool.

So I’m out in the heat, snipping sprigs of berries and encouraging the occasional ant to look elsewhere for dinner. We opt to split the bush: there are enough berries for everyone and no doubt for some early-morning birds, too.


Inside, the berries are sorted. My feet hurt; it takes almost an hour to pluck and clean just over 2 cups of berries, but they are so beautiful that I’m proud.

The best sprigs stay to one side for garnishing; the rest onto the stove for sauce. I have to get a clean spoon, because I’ve licked this one! The sauce is warm and bubbly, very tart – almost, but not quite, sour.

Red Currant whip – 15 mins prep; 1 hour cooling time

Lemon sherry cream
- Some heavy cream, about 1 cup
- Half a fresh lemon
- 2 Tablespoons sherry
- sprinkling of sugar
In a bowl or a large measuring jug, stir together the cream, the juice of half a lemon and the sherry. Sprinkle with sugar. Whip with a wire whisk until frothy and stiffened – this may or may not take 2 minutes. Put in the fridge to cool.

Red currant compote
- 2 cups fresh currants
- 1/2 cup sugar
Place the currants and the sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Let cool. You can strain it if you want, but I don’t mind the seeds.

Layer nice glass dishes with cut nectarines, spoonfuls of the currant compote, and chill until dessert time. Then pour the lemon cream on top and blance sprigs of fresh currants to decorate. Best served chilled.

Enjoy!

Hexa-heaven

I told myself I would never make a hexagon quilt. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always admired them, but I decided long ago that there wasn’t enough time in my life and patience in my character to see me making a hexagon quilt.


That was before I received in the post an innocuous-looking kit containing 7 squares of fabric and 7 pre-cut hexagons. Just baste them on, trim the corners, and sew into a flower. It’s really not hard. What I didn’t realise was that it’s addictive. – And I thank my friend who started the interest with this lovely story and the kit: she did give me ample warning, so I’ve got nothing to complain about…

What I discovered was that although there is no time in my life for hexagon obsession, there is, on the other hand, a lot of waiting time involved in travelling, and a project that does not require scissors and can fit in the average pocket will inevitably become a traveller’s best friend.


No longer for me the endless games of solitaire on my iPod, I’m into hexagons, I can hexagon while I wait. I can hexagon on the train. I can hexagon in waiting lounges and on planes (sans scissors), and I can hexagon while I’m talking to people….. hang on, that’s not dead time! So why am I hexagoning?

Well, it is oddly satisfying, and I am one of those women who like to work on something while they talk. The occasional baffled comment from on-looking family rings gentle alarm bells as I remember my former hexagon-free self:
“But what’s it FOR?” (I don’t know; does it matter?)
“Won’t that take forever?” (Well, yes, but that’s not bothering me at the moment.)
“Won’t those paper pieces disintegrate and fall out?” (Ah-ha, a potential convert, thinking through the logistics. I spot a fellow obsessive mindset…)
“Do you actually buy fabric to do that?” (Blush. I pretend I’m not, but we all know the truth.)
...And so forth.


Let the hexagons roll on, I’m into the forties and counting, and I’m getting oh so much better at dividing numbers by sixes and sevens. Twelve pieces equals two outer circles; now I need contrasting centres… Four pieces from this scrap equals most of one outer circle, if I can match it, or perhaps they’ll make four good bright centres. And so on.

Thank you to Jennifer for sending the kit in the first place, to the family and friends who have understood and donated scraps, found and offered perfect card for more centres, put up with talking to the top of my head, or driven me to the fabric store. You’re all hexagonal stars!

Listening to the breeze through Canadian pines

Gsssshhhhhh....wwwsshhhhh....
It's a sound I catch sometimes, even in Australia, and it always reminds me of home. The gentle whoosh of wind through pine trees, ruffling and rustling the thousands of needles. Some love the sound of the sea on the beach, but I grew up loving the northern woods.


I've been off-line for a few days, and that's because I've been hanging out in my woods. We arrived in Canada a week ago, and since then I have swum in cool northern lakes, slapped a lot of mosquitos, gone canoeing, jumped off the dock, messed about in boats, talked with my sister and cuddled her dog, eaten bbq'd dinners, checked for bears before venturing out of the cabin in the morning, and fallen asleep under whooshing pine trees.


There's peace in the unspoken elements that represent home when you have lived away from 'home' for so long. I left in 1995 and haven't been back much since; ten years in the UK, now 3 and a half in Australia.


When you leave for so long, you find you love things about each of them, but sometimes you've got to just sit and listen to the wind in the pine trees.