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December 2008
December 31, 2008
December 27, 2008
Then it was passed
The festive play room, which is actually a real dining room.
The drive to DH's parents and to the farm.
A milestone... ours is now officially an old car.
Huxley's cousin L, Bobby, DH, Huxley
L riding on Bobby
Huxley riding on Bobby holding the reins and grinning at dusk
That 15 foot tree being lit by the construction crew, here pretending to be on break.
Real candle light on the tree and a festive decoration
The Star and it's reflection on the ceiling
Camera swinging
Getting wild and doing camera tossing a blog about it
and flickr
The four-legged beauties
After the misty-drizzle-ride and just in time before the rain really started.
Now, at home, lazy and getting dinner ready. A salad, just greens, some bread, some tofu cubes. Light fare. Tomorrow? Relaxing, playing, dinner out and folding laundry, cleaning up and pretending that we're on vacation (huh... what's that? says any mother...)
December 26, 2008
The Day After
Cleaning, shopping, cooking, family, festooning, breakfast in bed (brought to us by Huxley), two nights in a row up until 2:30 am, Santa eating his cookies, gifts wrapped, gifts unwrapped, dinning room decorated, flowers on the table, the cat almost catching the hamster, home-canned pears with chocolate sauce and ice cream and whipping cream, a large snowman built and now melted, my mothers 50 year-old wedding dishes used, gifts of love and fun for everyone, a new camera for me, 15 pairs of socks for DH, Santa visited, hugs and kisses, an allergy reaction by DH to the fibres of the linen from the couch (the only downer, and something we must change).
Today driving to DH's parents, lunch, stockings, white elephant gifts. Then to the farm and the horses, a raclette dinner, a sleepover with a 15 foot tree, real candles, riding, visiting, coming home.
TTFN!
Enjoy the festive season.
Thank you for stopping bye, for reading, for participating, for inspiring.
Love and Peace to Y'all!
December 15, 2008
Festooning in Action
We did some festooning with the little one... but first he helped me create some wonderful "Fliegenpilze" red-white mushrooms. I made some salt-dough, we cut out the 'shrooms and today at the studio I painted them.
I used organza ribbon that has been left over from when I did Huxley's birth announcement. I like the way mushrooms look, and I will use them as little gifts for Huxley's friends at school, and as packaging enhancements for my cookies. I also just "absolutle" adore anything with red and white polka dots and mushrooms. But it has to be bright red and clean, pristine white.
a bit of a staging with an old gocco-print of an angel, used in 2002 as a show invitation, this year, some of them reworked by my husband as his client christmas cards. (I don't think any of them read this, so I can disclose it here)
A bit more nostalgia. A 1996 or so fibreart experiment "coiling" gone wild. I'd used a wooden garland as my core and chenille yarn as my wrapping. Since then, every christmas it hangs by the door until christmas eve, when a carrot gets inserted, because, hey, I'm sure it's obvious, but it's Rudolf's feed sack!
Another art piece that only comes out for the winter season is a reverse-applique snowman picture that I did some years ago. These "Organzas" used to be part of my greeting card lines, a business that I had for about 5 years and gave up around the time when Huxley was born 4 1/2 years ago.
Speaking of the sweet little one... by chance, I put him up against the growth chart today and noticed that last year I had happened to do it on exactly December 15th as well. He's grown 6 1/2 inches in this past year. No wonder I can stroke his hair so much easier now.
We just returned from a Christmas tree procuring expedition now, but IKEA, where we've been getting them for the past 5 years where already sold out. I guess this year, we won't be getting a cheap one. Dang... but we never get it before now, as I insist on our tradition of putting it up on the afternoon of the 24th. So tree-searching we will go.
December 12, 2008
Zooming in
Studio details in visuals from this past week:
itty-bitty-batiked piece of paper, done a while ago, will be incorporated into current canoe series
newly reverse batiked boats awaiting sewn details
detail of sewing on one larger canoe paper piece
ditto, finally learned to do them french knots... an error I had made was to point the needle towards the surface, i.e. wrap towards the hole, instead of away from it....
Playing around with painting and pencil drawing on paper
making it more raw
paste paper on japanese paper, textural, rich, decadent... to be used with canoes
noro scarf, like so many others, except in seed stitch, my favourite
love the blending of colours, more mottled, and less defined rows than doing it the other way, i.e. in a rib pattern
another section
the finished scarf, 4 balls total of noro used. I'm in love with it, sadly, nobody so far has commented on it... but I love it, love the colours, the feel, the texture, just everything.
Starting a completely new series of works, on paper, for framing, lower price point, for world domination (grin)
blurry, by intention, so they're protected....
details, pieces are worked on ancient (at least 60 year old paper, once used to house archival photographs at the Toronto archives. They threw out this lovely ledger-sized book last year, so I snatched it up.
What do you think... you like? I want to do some every week, because it's like DH said, if I do another 50 of them, I'll become very proficient.
December 10, 2008
Playing around
One of the things Huxley is passionate about is his animals. This boy loves playing with them, imagining stories about them, talking about them, you name it. A couple of years ago, I saw the Schleich S Animals and they are absolutely gorgeous replicas. I started buying them for Huxley, a few at the time. Now we must have about 40% of their offering. In an ideal world, I would have loved to collect Ostenheimer wooden carved animals, or a similar type of less detailed, but wooden sort, alas, with only having one child and not unlimited funds, I decided that Schleich was the alternative.
Now these animals go and have all kinds of adventures. Last night, a large portion of them had to go on a trip on our thrifted fire engine (a lucky $3 find from Goodwill, missing the basket, but refurnished with a fruit tray)...
It is notable, that our knight with lance is leading the way, and because Huxley also has a half wood, half plastic fire truck, some animals had to ride on that one.
During my time cooking dinner, I heard Huxley talking to his friends (that's what he calls all his animals), that they had to come for dinner and eat. So just because there where about five minutes that dinner was happily cooking itself (we had oven-roasted greek-inspired vegetables, couscous and tempeh with collard greens, an escarole salad with tamari roasted nuts and for desert home-canned pear half's with raw chocolate sauce) I made a mad dash into the basement and back room and built Huxley a table and "chairs" for his dinner party. I was so pleased with myself, as he had been asking for a table for weeks, and I never before took the time to do it. Always wanted to plan it, do it right, do it properly.
I find there are so many things that if we wait until we have time and energy to do it properly, they have outgrown their need, moved on to something else.
Talking about waiting for use though... When I was in grade 9 (at the age of fourteen and a half), our public high school in Rüti, Switzerland offered for us to choose all manner of classes to supplement our core curriculum. I took english, french, sewing fur animals (yes, bunny fur, and sheepskin, including a fully articulated teddy-bear), and making a rocking/pulling horse. When my father passed away in Switzerland, I got my girlfriend to keep the horse in her mother's attic for many years, until I finally brought it here in 2004 when Huxley was just a baby. I don't remember much of the horses' construction, except that we where given a frame of wood for the body, had to wrap it with wooden shavings (long stringy bits, also used to make teddy bears), then sew a white under body before making him a proper wool fabric skin.
When Huxley was little, he didn't show much interest in the horse, he would sit on it once in a while, but eventually, we took it from our play area and put it into the basement. I was disappointed, but thought that this way, it would at least keep for the grand children (grin...). So I was just ticked silly, when last week, Huxley ask DH to take the horsey out for him. DH does not know where to find things in our house, so when I came home, I did a mad dash into the basement and now Horsey is being ridden on every day. Huxley even tried to sleep with it, but I said that it needed a lot of space, so it got its own spot on the floor.
Its fur mane will need to be replaced, as well I need to make a new tail, also, since it is now 26 years old, it does need to have a couple of patches where some hungry moths made a hole. Overall, I think the old beastie is in wonderful shape and oh, it makes me so happy that it is being played with.
You might wonder what possessed a 14 year old to make things for her way in the future children? I was one of many female cousins on my mothers side, and it was still customary that we would fashion items for our trousseau. Plus, I thought the horsey was so handsome that even just displayed in a child-less home he would look splendid.
He does.... especially with Huxley on ridding him.
December 09, 2008
Samichlaus and Spiderman
Both names start with the letter "S", but that is probably where it stops.
On December 7th, Huxley helped me bake a Grittibänz to honour Saint Nikolaus (Samichlaus in Swiss German), which we should have done on the 6th, but because I felt very un-saint like, I did it on the 7th. Even though in Europe/Switzerland, Saint Nikolaus is also a commercial venture, I still think it is much less so than the Santa Claus we have here in Canada.
I find one of the most disappointing things about Santa Claus is his excessive appearances--the mall, almost any event that is Christmas related, parades, etc. How can a child still have reverence for the man being seen everywhere? And how, can he be away from his place of work (i.e. the North Pole and his toy shop) so much at this busiest time of the year? Okay, he has elves that know what they are doing... But I wonder... doesn't it seem that it must be Mrs. Claus that is the real force behind the business, the one keeping the elves in check, ensuring everything is running on schedule, in other words, getting everything all done, with the man always absent on publicity tours...
Overall, we try to keep Huxley away from all the Santa events, except going to the Mall to have his picture taken, because we've done it since he was a baby, and every Christmas, we haul out all the sequential pictures and add the newest one. It's a wonderful way to see how Huxley has changed over the years. Then there is the fact that with DH being Canadian, Santa is what he can relate too, and it is what he wants to share with his son. A real conundrum, since for me, it has no meaning, but then I live here now, and there has to be a fine line of having both traditions and overloading Huxley, and selecting which ones are important to us.
Spiderman, eh?... Well, Huxley goes to a Waldorfschool, and we don't expose him to any commercial media. We have a TV and a DVD player, but no commercial television. If there is something important on, i.e. key speeches by the government or world events, we go and visit with our neighbour who has a TV. I love the old-fashioned notion of doing that. It builds solidarity and friendship with our neighbour, and we are not in a vacuum when receiving news. Huxley of course does not attend these things yet. So how does he know about Spiderman? Well, when he went to the local home-daycare, one of the families also attending had their boys (2 and 5) talking about superheroes constantly. This was also a reason why we were so happy that we found a way to have Huxley attend the Waldorfschool exclusively. His play has changed so much and become so imaginative since he is there. Yet, every so often, he had expressed a desire to own a spiderman.
In yesterdays advent calender, his daddy had put a note that we were going to have a bubble bath. A tub full of foam. I figured, that the cheapest bubble bath would probably have the most foam. For a one or at the most two time event, it will not harm Huxley to bath in a mixture of chemicals I generally don't allow in the house. Hence when we where at the store, he notice the Spiderman on the bottle of bath stuff, and I figured, okay, let him have it, so it doesn't become that forbidden thing that he will pine after. He had a lot of fun, and I convinced him after the bath, that Spiderman was a bath toy, and had to stay in the tub. I was already prepared for tears and arguments, but Huxley just said, okay. The bubbles where a disappointment though, I put about half the bottle into the water, but this was not the bubble bath like I remember it from my childhood.
So that is the story of how Spidey-man came to live at our house.
