afternoon tea and garden centres
Saturday 29 April, 2006
(Picture today is a journal collage.)
Once upon a time, my sundays were spent recovering from my Saturday nights. Sleeping until 11, eating a fry-up and drinking a lot of coffee or good grief, it's true, sometimes even Coca Cola. (You know how coke has that magic 'grease-cleansing' power when you're all hungover and your mouth is woolly?) I'd get the Sunday papers and lie around the house in my PJs reading that, then head off to town in the late afternoon for a cheap asian dinner and an early movie.
Do I sound nostalgic? Well, maybe a little...although I'm sure it is better for my bank balance and my liver that I don't "hit the turps" like I used to!
Now my Sundays involve getting up early with wee children, breakfasting on cereal and bananas. We spend our Sundays either doing child-centred things - games, trips to the park, art sessions...or house stuff - housework, house maintenance, gardening.
So, no cocktails this weekend, no gin and tonics, no live music, no illicit cigarettes...but the money I would once have spent on going out, I spent at the garden centre this afternoon. And instead of dinner out, we had sultana pasties and flat whites for afternoon tea.
From the Garden centre sale, some native grasses, a hydrangea for a shadey corner, some lavenders, another olive tree because our first one is growing like magic in our clay soil, some lupins just because they grow so tall and are so pretty, a pretty Australian flowering shrub and a huge bag of potting mix so I can re-do my containers and freshen them up a bit for winter.
It might not be very urbane or sexy, but seeing those plants lined up on the deck ready for planting is making me smile more than a hangover would!
Posted on 29 April, 2006 | 3:29pm | 2 comments |
the old friends
Thursday 27 April, 2006
I just had my dear friend Lisa to stay. Isn't it wonderful how with your oldest friends, you can just 'be'?
We had such honest conversations. Both of us have been a bit down lately for our own reasons, so there was candid confessions, a bit of hand holding, a tear or two and of course, lots of tea drinking. When she arrived, my house and garden were a tip, I was feeling ditzy and PMTish, and had forgotten to buy wine. She immediately pitched in with the the children, helped make the dinner and produced a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream from the boot of her car! :)
I feel buoyed by having her here, just for 24 hours! She was as funny and vital as ever, my kids love her to bits and she reminded me to be grateful for 'my lot'.
Old friends are like old handknitted cardigans :: soothing, comforting, warm and a lovely reminder of your past!
Posted on 27 April, 2006 | 1:10pm | 2 comments |
a kind of hush
Wednesday 26 April, 2006
The more I think about what I could write about this morning...the less I have to say!
I hope you are all well and enjoying either the spring or the autumn.
I'm off for a walk to the post office in the faint autumn sun, and maybe a quick fossick in an op-shop, too.
Posted on 26 April, 2006 | 11:57am | 0 comments |
when is craft a form of procrastination?
Tuesday 25 April, 2006
I've been doing lots of little craft projects lately - making brooches for friends, like this cupcake for cupcake fan, Jo...knitting a scarf for my husband...warming up to the doll-making projects I mentioned by making collage dolls and fairies from paper and paint...
then last week a very good friend very gently and very wisely observed that I was putting an awful lot of energy into these endeavours, and asked me how my writing was going. Hmmm...
a frighteningly good question - my writing is going badly, or rather it isn't going...because I haven't done any (blog and journal don't count) for a long time. The year is over a quarter gone and I have so little to show for it.
So when does craft become procrastination? And I'm I 'wasting' my creative energies on trying to find the right shade of felt and learning to knit, when I should be 'crafting' words and 'knitting' my manuscript? I felt happy as the scarf I was knitting grew under my fingers, but it was nothing like the rush I get from a piece of writing growing and growing.
I really don't know the answer to this question. In my creativity workshops, I tell students that any form of creativity is good, is healthy, is therapeutic...and that being creative in their wider lives will feed their writing.
But what if it is happening at the expense of writing?
I guess I should tuck my needle box away and write something - start a short story, draft a poem, work on one of three abandoned novels - but writing is NOT like riding a bicycle. I do forget how to do it. I get rusty and scared and stuck and each time I stall and then have to begin again, it is like the very first time.
All of that takes a lot of energy and strength, and makes that new metallic embroidery thread I just bought look all the more enticing...
Posted on 25 April, 2006 | 9:01pm | 4 comments |
collecting
Tuesday 25 April, 2006
Have you ever had the experience of a collection just 'happening' to you?
Recently, I realised that (quite unconsciously) I had gathered a collection of unusual dolls. They were dotted around the house here and there, so I put them all together on a window ledge in my 'studio' room.
Now I am seeing quirky dolls everywhere, and I got some amazing books out of the library last week about making unusual dolls: icons, idols, wishing dolls, fertility dolls...
I like the way they can be cute or ugly, child-like or witchy, pretty or threatening...to me they are not so much dolls in the traditional sense, as small sculptures of people...wee works of art.
In this photo is the little Indian Sikh doll that my grandfather's 'servant boy' made for him when he was serving with the Royal Air Force in India during the war. There is the spooky, beautiful porcelain doll, gifted to me from my friend Maria, made by Dunedin artist Jules Novena. There is my priceless 'stripy sock' doll made by friend, Lawson - I will keep her 'til the day I die! The tacky 'native' doll was an ironic present from Drew when he visited Fiji - I love her, despite the fact she was bought as a joke and is 'politically incorrect'. The wee green, faceless Steiner doll I bought for just two dollars at the Steiner Fair - I felt guilty paying so little for someone's careful handiwork. And then there are all the others...
So, some heirlooms, some gifts, some I bought - but never with the sense that I 'collect dolls'.
But it appears I DO collect dolls! I'm always wary of 'collecting' things, because I have a terrible tendency to hoard anyway (which I fight with all the time and regularly have dramatic 'purges') so the last thing I need is an 'excuse' to gather more things around me - but I quite like how this collection happened 'organically' - how the dolls snuck into the house, quietly creating a clan without me even being aware of it.
I would like to learn to make dolls - open-faced little sprites to hang on the wall or sit on a shelf - so I can get my doll-fix that way and then give them away as gifts, which solves the problem of more accumulation.
Often giving is more fufilling than having, anyway.
Posted on 25 April, 2006 | 9:48am | 1 comments |
the reason why...
Wednesday 19 April, 2006
The thing with blogging is that some days in one's life are better than others and on the rough days, sometimes I blog about that and other times I just stay away. Usually after blogging about a 'blah' day / feeling / experience, once I've moved on to a more settled or happy frame of mind, I cringe about what I wrote - the melodramatics of it, the passion I felt about something so minor...and I long to take the post down, or at least to say something ironic and sarcastic about my yesterday-miserable self. But I don't - because when I started this blog, my inspiration was Anne Lammott - who shines her writerly torch on the blackest parts of her inner world and stays there, in a way that is gritty, funny and real.
Lately, I've been going through one of those patches where I wonder why I keep up with this strange little corner of cyberspace. One thing I love about it, is that I''ve 'met' so many people and been buoyed up by comments from both dear friends and lovely strangers.
At the moment, I'm reading a fabulous book "Almost There" by Irish writer, Nuala O'Faolain. It's a memoir and she's a melancholy soul, and either because of, or in spite of that the book is enormously inspiring and comforting. I love the way literature throws up answers to questions you are barely aware you are asking. Here she writes about how addictive autobiography has become for her - and here, lay the answer to why I struggle / dance ahead with this blog:
"I am surprised that more memoirists don't become serial memoirists, because it is a precious thing to be allowed to talk about yourself in public, not for reasons of simple exhibitionism but because the attempt to describe your experience to an audience pushes you forward into an understanding of it."
So true!
The other important function this blog has for me, is often in a day it is the only writing I get time to turn my hand to...and I daresay in the future, when my kids are bigger and I have all the time I need to write and play and be creative - there won't be the same driving need to raise up my hand and say to the 'world': "I'm still here, I'm still writing and I'm still trying to make sense of it all" in the way that is so important, when my life was four walls in suburbia of a slightly dull city, looking after two energetic boys (busy being all that children are) and trying to retain some sense of myself as a valuable individual.
Posted on 19 April, 2006 | 10:04am | 4 comments |
nom d knock-off
Tuesday 18 April, 2006
My Mum is so clever.
I sent her two photographs ripped from fashion magazines of a 'nom d' scarf constructed of old 50s and 60s silk scarves. I also included (hopefully) in the envelope - a pile of op-shopped scarves.
Yesterday, look what I got in the mail! (Sorry about the slightly blurry picture.)
The nom d one cost $250. Mine came to $4.50. Heh heh...thriftiness, mixed with craftiness, mixed with fearless blatant rip-off-ness rules again!
Posted on 18 April, 2006 | 10:33am | 5 comments |
Easter recap
Tuesday 18 April, 2006
For your amusement - here is Fraser and I morphed into weird hobbity-elf people via my parents-in-law's new Mac. It has a natty in-built webcam with 'photobooth'. Much time was spent in tears of mirth at the various 'effects' we inflicted on one another.
Easter passed in a blur of marking (blog always suffers when I'm in the thick-of-it - sorry about that!) But its all done now...until the next round.
Because I'm a slack mother, I forgot about Easter eggs until last thing Saturday night and I went to the nearest supermarket in a panic, and the confectionary aisle looked like Soviet Russia; that is - empty. Egg fever had taken hold of the residents of Palmerston North and the only eggs left to be had were the enormous $25 jobs. So at our house, the Easter bunny bought Freddo Frogs. Ahem. Willoughby was quite confused, but we told him Easter bunny brings chocolate, but not always eggs. I think he smelt a rat, or perhaps a bunny, or perhaps the absence of a bunny.
We had one desultory visit to the beach where I showed my 'cranky-old-lady' tendencies and got enraged by the amount of 4WD vehicles, quad bikes, cars and motocycles on the beach. It stunk of petrol and it wasn't safe to let the kids wander around. Bogan heaven - hippy hell. To top it off, some bogan dickhead stood by laughing as his revolting dog did a big cheesey poo on the boys' sandcastle. We would have challenged him but he looked like the type of person who might be liable to P-flashback psychotic incidents...so we just gathered the kids and shuffled off, grumbling.
Willoughby woke up on Monday with a bad case of the chickenpox - so has been itchy and scartching his way through the days.
But to make up for that we had two lovely lunches at my parents-in-law's idyllic country haven, with lovely sister-in-law Bronya and delightful two year old neice, Gabrielle. Also had wonderful friends Rachael and Luke over for dinner and a sleep-over.
And such was Easter...
(boring post - sorry - feeling rusty, uninspired and in need of more coffee.)
Posted on 18 April, 2006 | 9:58am | 2 comments |
the madness we call dinnertime
Tuesday 11 April, 2006
4.30 - 7.45 at our house::
we eat at about 5.30 (I know,...EARLY! but kids need to eat then), so I usually start to prep dinner at 4.30. The children always want to be where I am, so the kitchen becomes a chaotic maelstrom of toys, kids, me whizzing about and national radio blaring as I try to keep up with the outside world!
Fraser gets home at 5pm, sweaty and low-blood-sugar from biking too fast. The children attach themselves to him as soon as he walks in...but he wriggles away, wipes the sweat from his brow, inhales a plate of crackers and cheese to stop his hands shaking and then showers. Children come back under my feet while he is in the shower. The table is set, we eat. Magnus throws his dinner on walls and floor. Willoughby has to be cajoled, threatened and blackmailed into eating his vegetables. By now it is after six. I leap up the second my plate is empty and start cleaning up.
Without kids, cleaning up is just dishes. With kids, cleaning up is dishes, wiping down all surfaces the kids have been near, sweeping and mopping dinner off the floor, sponging grubby bibs and t-shirts, throwing toys from kitchen and dining room back into their bedroom...
While I clean-up, Frasher helps Willoughby with his homework and Magnus grizzles because no one is paying undivided attention to him. I try to distract him in a way that enables me to still clean-up. I have to keep Magnus away from the pile of broom sweepings, because he likes to stand on the sweepings in his bare feet *wow! gritty! squishy!* and do a little dance. He also often does a big and revolting poo after dinner - nice.
After clean-up and homework is showers and pyjamas and teeth-cleaning. I settle Magnus to sleep. Fraser reads stories to Willo and settles him.
By now it is about 7.45.
Fraser and I end up in the kitchen. Put the kettle on...take a deep breath...give each other a hug and say, "Hello you - how's it going?"
Posted on 11 April, 2006 | 10:22am | 6 comments |
craft and laugh
Monday 10 April, 2006
You know you're getting older when a night in with a needle and thread makes you happier than going out and drinking too much and dancing until the wee hours! :)
Last night my new crafty-group had our first 'Craft and Laugh' night at my friend, Rachael's place. It was lovely - we stitched and played and chatted and giggled, Rachael served wine and chai and cookies and cake...and I had a ball and the time FLEW!
Above is what I did - I still have to stitch around the eyes and nostrils - it's on a wool skirt. Catherine changed the neckline on a dress and appliqued a flower on another dress. Mary embroidered a felt flower and then appliqued it on to a t-shirt. Rachael did some collage-y, arty stuff.
We decided to call our group a 'Craft and Laugh' night, rather than the more common 'Stitch and Bitch' because we didn't want to perpetuate the idea that women 'bitch' or gossip when they get together. And we definitely laughed more than we bitched! :)
Anyway, next time I'll get some pictures of us laughing and crafting. I had SUCH a great time, the only thing that floats-my-boat more than a craft night, is a clothes swap night. I'm thinking it is nearly time to organise one of those, too.
Yaay! for sisters doing it for themselves, and all that.
Posted on 10 April, 2006 | 11:00am | 1 comments |
barbaric yawp
Sunday 9 April, 2006
Here is me after a night of broken sleep (we had a storm and the baby woke lots) and Spiderman - who ends up in the strangest places and in this instance had surfaced in the laundry basket. Boy, do I look pale and wrinkly when I'm tired.
I had one of those inexplicably great weekends. Happy kids, cool stuff to do, a nice balance of work and play, some good food, lovely people to hang with, lots and lots of feijoas, some wine, some cool DVDs (excellent Michal Gondry documentary)...life is sweet.
I have a ton of marking to do, my email is busted, I've got lotsa trademe stuff to send out, tax stuff to do, the house is *ahem* less than pristine...but I'm happy. Go figure.
This happiness thing is an elusive beastie.
I hope you all had good weekends.
Posted on 09 April, 2006 | 3:18pm | 2 comments |
what they don't tell you about having children
Thursday 6 April, 2006
Lemme tell you something...
when you have kids - you find yourself doing one hell of a lot of laundry. Like, at least one load a day and sometimes more. And sometimes you might get behind with the laundry and it turns into a big laundry-monster, kinda like the trash-heap in Fraggle Rock...and then you tentatively approach the laundry-monster and IT EATS YOU ALIVE AND SWALLOWS YOU WHOLE! AAARGH!
You also find yourself dealing with food all the time. Making baby mush, school lunches, breakfasts, snack plates, dinners and dinners and dinners and dinners, and juice-ice-blocks and baking biscuits...on it goes...and when you aren't cooking it, you're thinking about cooking it, or you're cleaning it off the front of t-shirts or off the floor...
Never before have I felt so much like I EARN my Friday night take-aways!
They don't tell you that at the family planning clinic - so I thought I'd better tell you, just in case you are considering kidlets. Heh!
Posted on 06 April, 2006 | 10:03am | 7 comments |
School gala days are cool
Wednesday 5 April, 2006
Last year I decided I wanted to pull up the stones and weedmat that the previous owner of our house had put along the driveway garden...(geez, why HAVE a garden if you're just going to smother it to death with freakn' stones and weed mat?) and plant agapanthus.
I know agapanthus are out of fashion because they aren't native to NZ and because they are EVERYWHERE and because they are killing delicate NZ plants when they grow in the wild etc...BUT they are hardy, prolific and grow pretty blue or white flowers...so what's not to like? (I've never been one to follow trends, anyway.)
But when I skipped along to the garden centre to execute my plan - I was horrified to discovered that aggies (because you can't kill them and therefore will never need to by more, I'm guessing) retail at a whopping $14.95 for ONE BABY one! Yeesh!
So it would have cost over $100 to get them. I considered it, but wise husband said "Noo way - just be patient and some will come our way." (We even considered nicking some baby ones off the big mama ones on traffic islands etc at times, but restrained ourselves.)
Anyway, the moral of this overly-long-given-how-trivial-it-is story, is that at the school gala day I paid $1 for two bags of agapanthus. I presumed there was one plant in each bag - but I just went outside to plant them and there was TWELVE baby plants! Whoo hoo!
Now me and Magnus are muddy, I'm happy, the strangulated earth is breathing in some fresh air, the driveway is 3/4 planted and all for one rockn' dollar. Whooo!
Wise husband is SO wise. I should listen to him more often.
And BTW the face-painting stall was a big hit. Me and Rachael were the face-painting QUEENS and we must have painted over a hundred faces...that's a lot of glittery butterflies and orange tigers! Whew!
Posted on 05 April, 2006 | 1:52pm | 0 comments |
so over TV
Tuesday 4 April, 2006
Dear Important-People-Who-Run-Telelvision-In-New-Zealand:
I am officially OVER television!
That is not to say that I will never ever watch it again BUT I think TV as it exists right now is a dated, twentieth century construct and (hopefully) will soon be replaced by create-your-own digital media, similar to MY SKY only heaps better!
Fraser and I didn't OWN a television before we had children. Then when we found ourselves housebound (with kids!) we bought one so we could watch movies on video.
The only TV I watch these days is:
-occassional things on C4 (music shows and documentaries and such)
-Coronation Street (but I'm not addicted and can go for weeks without tuning in.)
But last night I tried to watch Jamie Oliver's new cooking show and in one little half hour programme there were THREE sets of adverts, each set went for over five minutes! It was driving me NUTSO! They must have had to shave heaps off the programme to fit the adverts in and I'm betting if you watched it on DVD you would see lots of extra bits.
These days, if I want to watch something on a screen I like to watch TV series on DVD - hours and hours of your favourite programmes with NO ADVERTS and you can watch multiple episodes if you are in the mood...I watch movies on DVD, because as a parent of two I rarely get to the 'big-movies' (as Willoughby calls it) so I try to keep up with the cinema-zeitgeist on the smaller screen and, because we have a great art-house DVD store in Palmerston North...I have been watching lots of wonderful documentaries.
I HATE New Zealand television with the endless, annoying ads...the way they schedule the brainless foreign programmes (yes, like Coronation Street) on early and put all the locally made dramas and art shows on ridiculously LATE! and they way they will cut chunks out of programmes to fit in more advertising.
Signed - the anti-TV, DVD addict.
Posted on 04 April, 2006 | 4:43pm | 4 comments |
snapshot of wee magnus
Monday 3 April, 2006
Yesterday Magnus finally found a strawberry after a long time looking through the bushes and here he is running towards me with his prize...
Wee Magnus is beginning to talk and loves the sounds he can make with his mouth...
Wee Magnus pretends to read books when he sees his big brother reading books...
Magnus is maddeningly clingy and wants to be lifted up all the time...
Magnus is fearless and launches himself off tall furniture with no thought to his safety...
Wee Magnus has already been to A&E at the hospital twice at the age of one! Yeeek!
Magnus likes bananas, peanut butter sandwiches and apple slices. Magnus hates cheese, fish and rice.
When Magnus hits you, it is because he likes you and wants you to talk to him.
Magnus does farts that sound like they came out of the bottom of a grown man.
Magnus grinds his teeth, likes to blow bubbles with his own saliva, and loves to dance.
Magnus dances like an old hippy, swaying and rolling his head around.
Magnus likes Bob Dylan, Weezer, Salmonella Dub. Magnus cries when the Chemical Brothers come on. He also hates the Cocteau Twins.
Magnus is asleep right now. Long may Magnus sleep!
Posted on 03 April, 2006 | 10:04am | 2 comments |
mind dump
Sunday 2 April, 2006
Okay, I'm all confused about what I want to write today so here is a mish-mash of some of the things I thought I might want to blog about over the weekend:
trying fresh figs for the first time...omigod! : the huge amount of Aries and Taurus mates I've got (April and May is EXPENSIVE!) : crafty nights at Rachael's house : wanting green shoes : the killing of baby girls in India : planting winter vegetables : how to make a good vegan pesto : my bad posture at the computer : wanting to go to a yoga class every day instead of once a week (I wish!) : Cadbury mini-eggs (so pastel-shaded and cute! so annoyingly yummy!) : my 'new' pinking shears - love 'em : nearly time to read Derek Jarman's journals again - I read them every few years and they always give me hope and inspiration : Mentos Sour lollies...the grape ones are amazing : reading Douglas Wright's autobiography and loving how non-linear, non-chronological and darkly romantic it is! : red and apple green together : cinnamon toast : thinking of friends soon to birth babies : hating how small NZ is : loving how beautiful NZ is : 1970s craft books : my new and unhealthy addiction to Flickr : cyber window shopping, so many great, handcrafted online shops...but so many are in the USA *sigh* : realising that Bob Dylan played at the one Glastonbury Festival I went to, and I DIDN'T GO AND SEE HIM! : losing another wonderful friend to Wellington - PAH! (Wellington Shmellington!) : spinach is the best salad leaf! : the joy of glitter : winter brings the urge to nest, to sleep more, to eat apple puddings : cocoa chai
and that is just the top layer of my brain. I'd better go before I write an essay! Yeesh!
Posted on 02 April, 2006 | 3:11pm | 2 comments |