nemo ignorat

fishlis (assumentum bestullae)

fishlis

Three years ago, I've stitched fishlis I called assumentum bestullae (you can find more on them here). I showed them in an exhibition which lead to a falling out with the gallerist and I lost my fun for them. But when I went under the torrents of life, I remembered how much fun I had with them and began some new.

Baiser, for her kissing mouth

baiser

Baiser was called Wonky in the beginning. She looks like I felt. But then she mutated into the kiss.

And then there is Snarky.

snarky

Snarky's mouth looks like he could make some snappy remark any time. I like him.

No 3 still isn't developed enough to have a name. He or she is still going.

The fabric is still some Procion MX dyed old bed sheets from waaaay ago, long before I was able to successfully dye cotton with natural dyes. But the fabric's still here and wants to be worked into something nice.

wooden spoons

I'm almost 50 now so things were different when I was little. My mum kept her flour in a large metal box. The box was from baby food in the 50s or 60s, most probably from my food. There was some cheerful baby face on the box and some name or other for the baby formula. She scooped the flour with a wonderful bakelite flour scoop. The metal box rusted away over the decades but the scoop is still in my flour box in use. (Though my box is made of plastic with tight silicone seal, I am paranoid when it comes to moths.)

But since I use more than one kind of flour (there is the usual wheat flour, the blé noir for galettes, and the dark rye flour) I always had to switch the scoop from one box to another. It's just so practical. And it has a nice size and handling. And it always reminds me of the in milk steamed sweet dumplings called 'Buchteln' we cooked on sundays (I still have the brown glaced porcellain bowl, too, in which mum served the vanilla sauce that belongs to the dumplings).

Anyways, this switching from box to box was tedious. And I really love wooden spoons, so I asked a very nice wood carver from Romania who sells his stuff on etsy, if he would make me some flour scoops like the one I already had? And he did. They arrived yesterday.

Aren't they just lovely? I love wooden spoons. I love cooking with them. I love the feeling of wood in my hands. Never got used to the plastic kind.

On a more exhausting note, this is how my studio space to come looks right now:

main room

office space

and a shy look into the kitchen space

It's a whole small flat with a small kitchen space, a small bathroom with shower, the main room, divided in two smaller spaces and a rather small room where I plan to put my office stuff in.

Originally, I wanted to go all natural. Clay plaster, lime-casein-paint and so on. But after a closer look at the walls today, I decided to stick to modern age stuff. The wall material is too mixed up. I would have to sand off every wall completely before I could plaster it. All this when I only want to move in as soon as possible. So, come monday, I will invade the local DIY store and get the usual filler, primer and paint. BTW has anyone and idea how to get rid of cigarette smell?

DH's new socks

While packing for vacation, we noticed that DH needed some new socks. So the first thing I did was knitting him this nice pair in green. I have no idea what kind of sock yarn or where I got it from, I found it in my stash and used it. He loves them. That's all I need to know.

resurfaced

The currents of life swept me away the past months.

But a wonderful and unfamiliar long vacation in Brittany helped me find my way back to the surface again.

We saw the Blood Moon,

which is rather an event in an area with no light pollution. The nights are so dark that you can actually see the stars and the Milky Way. I mean, the whole sky is full of stars and constellations. Would I live there, I'd get a telescope. I sometimes just stood in the yard, getting cramps in my neck from staring at the sky.

With a beach crazy dog you'll always get the opportunity to see the ocean.

This is, by the way, the same dog who stops under tree canopies and under benches when it begins to drizzle. Who drinks like a giraffe to prevent accidental splashes of water on his face. And who wants me to clean his feet when they get muddy. Who doesn't run when the ground is wet because of the mud that splashes against his tummy fur. I could go on and on with examples of why this is a totally different dog at the beach than at home. He is so crazy getting to the beach that I have to keep him on a rather tight leash when we walk along the cliffs. Just to prevent him from plunging 30 feet or more into the depth. So we went to the beach every morning. Just to see him run through the sand and the waves, playing with kelp, simply being the happiest dog on the world.

Which provided me with ample oportunities to study sand textures.

I have dozens of pictures like these. They all reminded me of shibori resist dyeing.

One reason for my silence over the past months was that I didn't have access to my studio. Everything I wanted and needed to do I had to do from my living room. Which is rather large but still supposedly the place with our dining table (dining at the table was not really possible while I was teaching), our books and DVD collection and the sofa. In short, the place away from the workplace, where you might want to relax and entertain friends and guests. Not the place with a large loom, a sewing machine (which I couldn't use anyway), a spinning wheel, all my books and spindles and stuff and a table where I cut fabric, dye and do everything else on.

Circumstances prevented me from getting into my studio, so a lot of projects had ample time being mulled in my head but not seing the light of reality. A collection of shibori and katazome scarves is one of those projects.

Just a few days before we left for Brittany, I actually got my studio back. Now I have to renovate it a bit and hopefully by December I will be able to move back in. With my looms and my sewing and dyeing stuff and everything. We'll get our space in our living room back and I will have my space again dedicated only to my work.

You can imagine, the horizon of my life river journey suddenly looks much nicer.

The past months were more like rapids between high and dark cliffs where no light reached the bottom of the canyon. And sometimes I felt like drowning and never being able to breathe and see light again. But as long as life goes on, there is breath and light. Sometimes just around the corner of the next cliff.

Brittany is at the westermost part of France so the sunrise will always be in your back when you look at the sea - the sunsets are most spectacular, though

and thanks the dogs above for their smaller avatars here on Earth