The Olive Sparrow

Blankets Galore

Remember the loose threads in the picture? Well here are the babies that where created from those. 

Blankets for Hoöpla! the show my friend Rima organized in the West End. It was a very successful event considering that it was the first show. I think there where upwards of 300 visitors and about 30 vendors. 

My main offerings where play silks, party banners and blankets. I still have to take some photographs of the banners, however, here is a listing of all the blankets:

Sold

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sold

Sold

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Detail of Blanket #16

Each blanket measures about 39" x 48" and can be used by a baby as a crawling blanket, a child as a nap blanket or a play blanket and for an adult as a lap blanket. Each costs CDN$110 (plus applicable taxes and shipping). 

The blanket fronts are made from cotton and linen fabrics, in the pink/yellow blankets all the patterned fabrics are vintage prints. In the other blankets, a combination of different textures are used. All the top and bottom solid fabrics are 100% linen, the backings are 100% cotton fleece. 

If you are interested in purchasing one of the blankets, please send me an e-mail. Payment can be made via Visa or personal cheque. If you like, I can send you more detailed photographs. Please also note, that some of the colours are a bit off and if you need, I can send you some fabric swatches before you decide to purchase one of the blankets.

September in Review and Pictures

Visuals... finally:

My dear friend Mary visiting for a sleep-over with her 3 kids: Carick, Oliver and Eloise, reading all the little ones a good night story.

Huxley using money from his piggy-bank for a special treat. In front of the new sofa pillows and the re-painted side tables (white, oh what a clear, niece colour)

Huxley on his first day back to the Waldorfschool, all excited, wearing his new hiking boots that got sent to him by his lovely aunt Roswitha from Switzerland.

"Com"-Mission complete, for a client in Vancouver measuring 30" high by 100" wide

An experiment for a totally new style of work 36" x 48", currently hanging in our living room.

Detail of a piece that I really love, completed this month, incorporating lots of stitching on batiked papers.

About 1/3 of the plums that I put-up by freezing to make plum-wähe, a swiss-type pie for a sweet supper.

At the children's museum after Huxley was an excellent sport by accompanying me to the Kitchener-Waterloo Spinner and Knitters sales marathon. What a blessing this little one is. Behaved for just long enough to not have mami overspend by walking the show a second time.

So this is a snapshot of actual things accomplished during the month of September.

Was there a weekend just now?

Wow... that went just too fast... another week/end come and gone. On Saturday we went to our CSA for their picnic and Huxley had a hoot in the vegetable field paths together with his oldest friend Andreas. He is a mere 6 weeks older than Huxley and his mom and I were hanging out throughout our pregnancy. His dad is Swiss too, so we went to the farm and gave the boys the experience in swiss german. 

This is just a shorty, as I'm on the way to the studio, but didn't want to miss the chance to post a picture of the boys talking with Farmer Alvaro. 

We ate ground cherries, something I had never experienced before and will try to see if I can grow it in my own backyard. 

At home, the tomatoes came off the plants yesterday, so tonight we will have some green-fried ones while I will bubble another batch of sauce to put up. This is the week where the weather will turn, as the forecast really shows just that. Summer was too short, but at least we had september to be warm still. 

The Hoöpla! show was a great success, with lots of hand-tingling work to be done before and after the show. My new business cards for the Olive Sparrow are now in circulation, the blankets have been seen by over 350 people and the playsilks have already substantially diminished in inventory. 

The next post will be images of the finished blankets, but right now I'm putting on my breakfast table setting hat, then the painting hat for the studio. 

The Working Weekend

Once, a very, very long time ago I used to have weekends, a time where all I had to do was relax and maybe some groceries, laundry and relax some more. However, with the advent of self-employment, my own studio, various projects, that kind of schedule just went out the doors. My husband too works for himself, albeit from home. So every Thursday/Friday we have the usual discussion of who gets to work on what. Before we had Huxley it was simply a conversation about when we would do something together, going for a hike perhaps, or a movie, dinner, a visit to friends. Over the past 4 years though it has become a task to manage spending time with Huxley, as a family and getting all the other things done that need doing. 

This weekend I am meeting a client at the studio, then I was going to drive 200 km for a gallery opening (a new place that will carry my paintings), spend the night there, then rush home and work on finishing all the blankets for HOOPLA! for this coming Friday. Looking at this schedule I've had to cut back and the drive to Kingston and the opening can simply not happen. 

Right now, I have to make Huxley's lunch, as last night I had fresh tomato sauce bubbling on the stove and slow-roast tomatoes in the oven when I was overcome with absolute exhaustion and had to go to bed. I will arrive late at the studio, luckily there is no boss telling me so, just my internal nag that will give me a hard time. 

This will be a post without an image, something I don't like seeing in others posts, but hey, it happens to the best of us. Alas, I am intending to take pictures at the studio today because even though on a daily basis it does not feel like I am getting a lot done, after a period of time it does seem substantial. 

Squirreling it away

A large stockpot full of sour cherries from our tree planted 2 years ago. I got 17 jars of sour cherry jam from it.

This weekend has seen the putting away of 18 jars (1l each) of organic Roma tomatoes. This is my first time doing it and even though I followed some recipes, not just one, I will see if it works. It is just so interesting to see the discrepancy between recipes, government health recommendations and actual experience handed down by somebody that had been doing it for many, many years, namely my dearest neighbour Dina. She is of greek descent and when she arrived in Canada over 40 years ago, she had an italian neighbour teach her. 

So I did some by her recipe, some by Tessa Kiros from her book 'Twelve", and some from a government recommended guidelines. It is so beautiful to see the pantry fill up with glimpses of summer. Oh, and did I mention that I also have about 45 jars of jam? Mind you, they are 250 ml ones, so it is only about 11.5 kg of jam... not so bad for a family of only three people. (My dear Mr.C. finds it rather a bit on the extreme site), good thing I haven't told him that I still have to make pear butter and quince jam. Quince I really have to make, as I've missed doing it for the past two years and I just absolutely devour that jam. I was also still going to put away a few jars of pears, but I have to see how time is doing. Applesauce is another thing that I will do a bushel off. 

My goal with the canning is that I can can enough fruits so as to not having to buy much of any from far away places. Of course, there is always the occasional fresh items such as bananas about once per month, mandarins, oranges, lemons for baking. 

Last year  I ended up giving quite a few jars away for Christmas, together with a large mason jar of pancake mix, loosely based on a recipe from Laurel's Kitchen. Boy, I'm so bad, I should really be providing weblinks to all these books, but I'm just to bushed. 

On friday I had also prepared a flat of plums for freezing. I freeze them in flat bags, so that I can put them frozen onto a "Wähe", a swiss-type-quiche-egg-custard like pie thingy that is very lovely to have as a meal. So I've also got 10 of those that can be made during the winter. 

When I'm done, I'm planning to post a full list of jars and type of goods, not only to share, but also to keep an inventory. 

Other news.... I got my Victoria spinning wheel today!... but boy do I need to lear to spin before I'm able to show of anything. Even though Pluckyfluff states that there is no ugly yarn, and I do have to agree with her in principle, I know that a lot of practice is in order. A whole bunch of my friends had chipped in for it as a birthday gift, lovingly organized by beloved Mr. C. 

I guess I'd better get to bed now, this coming week will be the first full week of me getting to the studio for 6;30 am monday to friday and I'm curious to see when the novelty will wear off. 

Hugs to you all!

A new Page in the Book

Today, this very morning, I'm turning a new page in my book of life. Huxley is starting to be at the Waldorfschool every day, every morning. No more daycare! So hub and I agreed, that I would get up at 5:30am, be off to the studio until noon and then pick Huxley up at school. Even though I am a morning person, and  this is not really that much of a difference from Huxley waking us at this un-holy of times, it will probably be hard when it is the middle of winter with a new snow-fall to content with. But it also means that hub who works from home and sometimes does not leave his office all day, will bring the little one to the school. So if all goes well, I will have close to 30 hours at the studio every week, geesh, this is almost a full work week. The best part is that I also get to spend awake time with Huxley, don't have to rush through rush hour to get dinner on the table. 

I still did not have a chance to post pix from my birthday party, but there was a huge surprise: Richard surprised me with a totally unexpected proposal for marriage. We've been together for over 7 years, living together most of that time, but well, living in sin. No date set yet, but sometime next year we will have a little ceremony. 

us with me looking at the ring that Richard designed, Huxley eating my skirt, just because about 30 people where watching us. 

Off I go on my new adventure...