Colours of Autumn

Sometimes

Last night I picked up a pencil and began to draw. I had forgotten what it felt like to be completely absorbed in creating a picture. Time passes so swiftly that you can forget to drink when your lips are dry and leave it to the last moment to sprint to the loo, the latter I have seen my girls do so many times. I enjoyed the process so much that I am going to try and draw more often.

Wild and Woolly

It has been lovely and stormy here for the last few days. Shortly after dinner on Thursday night a falling Jacaranda branch on the next street caught a power line and the lights went out. Our house is all electricity so the timing was good, the dishes had just been finished and a hot cup of tea was fresh in my hand. The children love the excitement of an unexpected blackout, especially on a woolly night like that. My eldest told us about some of the stories she had read about Laura Engels Wilder on the old frontier and how they had lived with only the lantern light when the sun went down. We tried our hand at shadow puppets, stretching our imagination to match the shadows made with the animals we wanted them to look like.

Fun and Games

2 winter scarfs, one big and one small, finished before the chill sets in playing house x. Little toys and paper doll on pencil made with care and lots on masking tape

One of those lovely re-published Little Golden books. I love the little head scarf and the green smock Hurrah Salty Dolls and congratulations Mile Dye Club! Click here to find out more:) Little roller skates (just the Xanadu style I wanted as a little girl) that are a perfect fit for my young one found on the side of the road. Hurrah for roller skates making a comeback! Have a great week :)

Days

Lovely fallen frangipani on a bed of crisp Autumn leaves Sweet pink frangipani on our window ledge Happy children drawing with chalk, dust on feet and hands, washed clean at the end of day x.

Untitled

The last couple of weeks have rushed by and I am so looking forward to the Easter break. Over the weekend there were some quiet and sunny moments. The children have started once again to add to their blown egg collection. We use the old method of food colouring, a dash of vinegar for the colour, and melted candle wax for the designs. I picked up some lovely and furry quinces from the local market. I love the way they look as much as pears. I will make quince paste (for the first time) with them over the weekend. And thank you for those wonderful women photographer suggestions. Hope to be back for a Thrifted Tuesday entry tomorrow :)

A pause..

..for modern art. Photograph taken by Eve Arnold at the New York’s Museum of Modern Art, 1956 - image from here. Lately I have been looking at the work of female photographers. I came across this one the other day. I love the angles and the sense of space. I have been looking at Imogen Cunningham, Olive Cotton and Tina Modotti too. There is such a gap in my knowledge, and I want to discover more female photographers from the last few decades (I already know of and enjoy the work of many male photographers). I would love to hear any of your favourites :)

Fair Autumn

In the city autumn has been slow to show all of its pretty self but up in the hills it is everywhere. What my grandma said was true, fresh air and sunshine really is the best medicine.

Random House Zen

Since our house was robbed a bit over a week ago I have been feeling an uneasy ambivalence towards our home space. On the weekend I decided it really was time to move on and begin settling back in. We baked and made play dough, I moved a few things around and spoilt myself with this always out of stock IKEA quilt cover to perk up the bedroom (which was the most turned over room in the house). I do feel much better after this effort and am conscious that I am mostly seeing the house in my familiar way again:)

By light

Within the busy days there is always time for some quiet.

Apples and Pears

When pregnant with my first child I had a relentless craving for pears. If only my craving had been in Autumn, when pears are in such abundance, what a wonderful feast I could have indulged in. These days I enjoy pears equally for both their taste and wonderful design. While making this apple and pear pie last night it occurred to me that so far we have done little to acknowledge the new season and its offerings. The making of this pie is then the first of hopefully many happy and familiar autumnal rituals and activities that will occur over the next few months.

Robins and Roblins

Rosalie Gascoigne, Untitled (two linoleum tesserae), 1994-95. Image from.

Well, it has been quite a week. It began easily but then on Thursday my partner came home to find that our house had been broken into and many of our things taken. The usual were targetted, laptop, camera, TV, Cd's. Also taken were some precious pieces of jewellery, including nonsensical pieces like an old Country Women's Association badge and my little tarnished Brownie badge I had kept with me for so many years. Just last night I discovered the sweetlty comical brooch my jeweller brother had made for me of my dear puss was also gone. I felt angry and sorrowful for these last possessions, knowing the only value they held was what I attached to them and that they would be so easily thrown away by those who took them. I chose this image of this incredibly beautiful piece by Rosalie Gascoigne for a different reasons (including that three months of digital photo folders have been lost). Rosalie was a woman who saw value in everything, old floor boards, road signs, broken dolls, and this wonderful lino. She was a collector, collecting what was already disregarded and discarded by others. This is something that really struck me about the robbery, that there are some who can not understand the value of things, possessions or otherwise, and this struck my as particularly unfortunate when it came to the loss of my little cat brooch and Brownie badge. On the upside I spoke with my brother and he said that he will happily make me another brooch straight away - so sweet x. This week I think I will try to blog a bit more and in the absence of my own photographs I will find some more treasures made by the beautiful minds and hands of others.

P.S. The title of this post came about because my little one couldn't quite manage the word Robbers which kept us all smiling.

Little birds

I feel like I have been absent from this space for a long while even though it has been just a tiptoe over one week. Things have been busy here and at work, one small one has been sick and my partner who already works full-time is back at part-time study. With one laptop between us I will need to grab my time when I can over the next few months. The weekend just gone was one of those blissful ovals I made reference to in my last post, made even more blissful by the mild sunny days and the chilled nights. Yesterday the girls and I all settled down to some spontaneous and unplanned crafting. They made a sturdy tree house out of egg cartons and toilet rolls for their small toys and I made this bird mobile. I thrifted this sunny fabric while on our last seaside holiday. It was a fairly impractical fragment, small at around 90 centimeters and quite sheer too. I love the material and knew from the moment I found it that whatever I made from it would have to be on display so that I could often look at it. The mobile was a good solution. Have a great week!

Monday

Monday mornings come too soon. We were all so sleepy this morning and could have easily thrown Monday in, stayed indoors, pretended we all had a long nap and that Sunday had not yet departed. A three day weekend seems a very sensible solution to the sleepy Monday predicament. Here is a wiki search I did earlier on long weekends. In Norwegian, the term "oval weekend" is used to describe a long weekend. Normal weekends are described as "round". Hurrah for the oval and for more of them too!

Yes Please!

I thought I would pass this apple cake recipe over the back fence as it has been a winner here at number 10 :)

125g unsalted butter * 2/3 cup caster sugar * 2 eggs * 1 cup self-raising flour * 2 tablespoons cream * 2 small red apples * ½ teaspoon cinnamon *1 teaspoon caster sugar.

Method

Slice apples into thin slices. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add eggs one at a time until well combined. Add flour and cream, beat until smooth. Pour into prepared tin and press apple slices, skin side up, into batter. Sprinkle with cinnamon and caster sugar. Bake for 35-40 minutes at a moderate temperature.

Very nice served warm with cream too x