Farewell to blogging.....

What is my reason for giving up blogging?
I was reading an old article in an old Australian Geographic by Claire Dunn who did a Henry David Thoreau with a few others in a National Park in northern NSW. They had to learn to make their own fire using aboriginal fire sticks ( a bit daunting when you are hungry and dying for a cuppa) gather their own tucker, construct their own shelter, gather their bush tucker, make traps to catch eels, construct their sleeping pads etc etc.... of all the modern conveniences she missed the electric kettle the most. I will digress here and say that when we were holidaying on Currango in one of the rough cottages the thing I missed most was a sink...you have no idea what a useful thing a sink is till you are without one.....
So all this set me thinking, I do not need to go into the wilderness to find who I am, but I would like to take a leaf out of James Hillman's book, The Soul's Code where he says:" Failures in our loves, friendships,and families often come down to failures of imaginative perception.When we are not looking with the eye of the heart, love is indeed blind, for then we are failing to see the other person as bearer of an acorn of imaginative truth" and further on he says"Imaginative perception takes patience" and "in your patience is your soul".
My mother always told me I needed to learn patience and while I think I have acquired some patience perhaps some more wont go amiss.
I have found( as I suspected all along) that my laptop is very seductive and it is stopping me from my normal creative pursuits.
So farewell and thank s to all of the kind people who have followed my blog.... shut down is tomorrow

Renovations

Last Tuesday we went to Stirling to visit our friend who is renovating his late 19th century cottage. He has fixed the fire place which I showed on my blog some time ago. He has painted the room and cleaned up the chandelier and it all looks very light and pleasant. The carpet will be put down as soon as the heatbanks have been installed. It has all been a lot of hard work for him but it is all very satisfying to see it starting to look ready for furniture and his collection of paintings all still in storage.

 The light fittings look great , those that are up at present. Some of the old ones are lovely but they do look odd having the modern energy saving globes we all have to have these days.

The light on the left is in the kitchen which also has a great old fashioned  wood stove , a replica but it will cook and keep the kitchen beautifully warm in that cold Stirling climate.
He has installed an Ikea kitchen (shock, horror!) but it actually looks very nice and blends in well with the feel of the cottage. The lino is so realistic it was hard to realize it wasn't timber flooring. He had some lovely Persian tiles as features in the walls above the bench tops.

 I think there is nothing better than a woodstove for cooking on and for a general feeling of well- being on a cold and wet winters day to have the warmth of a wood fire there to be near.Food cooked in a wood stove always tastes so much better.....

He has also started to plant his front garden after first having some huge trees that were blocking the light , removed. Ivy is a great nuisance and difficult to remove but he is slowly getting on top of that as well.He found the tree ferns under neath the trees and since they have had plenty of light are re shooting with those wonderful curled new buds. He has also planted masses of bulbs which will show up next time we come to visit  to see further progress.

Thursday Craft Day

Thursdays once a fortnight our craft group meets at someones house and today it was my turn.
The hostess usually supplies a bowl of soup and this time I had made a lettuce soup based on a chicken stock. Served with a dollop of cream from the Farmers Market it was quite a pleasant soup. I got the recipe from an English friend and it is a good way to use an Iceberg lettuce. A home baked loaf of bread spread with a mixture of butter and olive oil I do in the food processor to go with it makes it a good lunch. Coffee was served with a Dutch Apple Cake freshly baked this morning.We all do our individual thing of course

mostly everyone seems to be hand knitting at present, though one member was doing her jewelry. I am doing swatches of knit weaving and have no real project in mind at present. Closures of jackets are a bit of an on going dilemma for me, I do not want to sew on a double bed edge if I can avoid it and tonight I came up with an idea I will have to experiment with first.
I also ordered more yarn from the Bendigo Woollen Mills today and I hope it will get here by the end of next week so that I can start a black jacket for myself.                                                   After lunch some one had suggested my piano playing friend and I play some music for everyone.So we obliged and played Cirri and Vivaldi.I wonder if we will be asked again!!

Willunga Artisan Market

 This morning at 7.30am, I parked my van outside the old Willunga Agricultural Hall, near enough to easily cart my gear in when the hall opened. Willunga is a busy place on a Saturday as opposite the Hall is the Farmers' Market and around the corner is the Quarry Market. So it pays to be there early to get a parking spot close by. Trish was already there setting up her glass bead stall outside and some one ran to get the key to open the hall.
Once in, it is a matter of getting some trestle set up and thank heavens since I have been away(for twelve months) the committee have bought easy and more manageable tables to put up. It takes quite a bit of effort to go back and forth to get your gear organized and looking presentable....it is not my strong point.....
Then it is a matter of waiting for people to come and look and hopefully buy...hope springs eternal!!

 You can see some of my more exotic art pieces on the right.Every one loves my scroll and the wall hanging "Love in the Myth" was curiously, read by more men than women and they came away smiling.
One woman asked if I would be prepared to exhibit the piece in the heavy frame called "Crusades" in her next church exhibition, she noticed the recycled jewelry and beads form a cross.
By twelve I was thinking, what else could I produce that people might buy, getting a bit

tired of hearing how lovely everything was and how clever I am etc etc and "was it all my own work?"....tch, tch, tch  where did I get the time?
(All that time we save during daylight saving comes in handy in the winter!!!!)
It is lovely though, to have friends pop by or see people who recognize you from twelve months ago...
By 12.30 pm my neighbour and I were thinking packing up would not be long, when two women were admiring a sleeveless split top.  One decided to try it on. It looked great but, oh deary me , did she need another top? She was moving house and it would be another thing to pack...No, she would come back next month, would I be there next month? Yes, I would, and they walked off to admire Doug Bells beautiful wood turnings. He has done an exquisite piece with a rim of eggshell shards incorporated around the rim, it is one of his gallery quality pieces. The woman then turned around and came back saying she would have that top after all, but she also really liked the red origami garment (this is shown at the top of the page). Her friend was very encouraging pointing out that these were unique garments and may not be there for her next month....so I offered the two at a pretty good price and she was tickled about that and took them. Hooray! hooray! she made my day!!! and I came home pleased as punch......
Of course it gets my creative juices going which is great as long as I still have access to all that daylight saving we did last summer!!!!

More Paper Wasps

 My friend send me another photo of her ever growing Australian Paper Wasps nest.... the photo below shows the one she sent some weeks ago and the photo on the left shows that , seemingly, all the eggs have hatched and there are now a positive clutch and clutter of wasps. The caterpillar population must have suffered a terrible setback, but are we sad about that? We all love butterflies of course but who loves the caterpillar that munches its way voraciously through all our much loved vegie patch?

Nature is just so amazing in the way 'dumb insects' construct these perfectly shaped apartments for their off spring! Who instructs these creatures?

On the left is a most beautiful moth I found under the Holm Oak yesterday. I have not been able to find a classification for it but it is most likely a wood moth of some sort. The markings on it are stunning and unfortunately it was dying.
We haven't had the moth with the eyes on the wings this year, I used to get a lot of them when I lived in my cottage near Watervale.

Hare with Amber Eyes

I am re-reading "The Hare with Amber Eyes", it is one of my favorite books.I think De Waal writes

in a very elegant style and the way he goes about tracking down his ancestors way of life through historical documents kept in Paris and London libraries, is lively and full of his excitement and perplexes at what their lifestyles must have been like in the 19th century. But he has also made me aware through his very thoughtful and sensitive descriptions of his own creation of  handcrafted , delicate pottery vessels, that perhaps my own creations of fabric are worthy of my own appreciation. Hence the photos of my cover for his book, in which I tried to convey the Japanese sense of faded and delicate imagery. It is also lovely to hold in my hands, the fabric so tactile and comforting.....I'm not sure a kindle would give you that same comforting sensation.

The other thing that gave me quite a jolt, was the fact that while the De Waal  forbears were being stripped of all their incredible wealth in Vienna in early 1938, I was being carried by my pregnant mother in Den Haag, Holland. My parents living a life of  incredible difficulty which caused my father to enlist in the Dutch army to have some sort of income to support his family. When war broke out he was taken prisoner of war and transported into a camp somewhere in Germany. My mother was not informed for weeks as to where her husband might have been. There was no support for her at all from anyone, certainly not the government nor the church to which they belonged and to which they gave unswerving loyalty till the end of their days. It astounds me now how loyal they remained to their chosen belief system and I admire them for their fortitude.
I have two netsuke a friend has given me and though I know they are reproductions, I love the delicacy with which they have been created, they are stunningly beautiful.....

Quince Chips

The quinces this year are slow to ripen and the birds are attacking them for the first time. Mainly the ones at the top of the tree so there are still plenty for us. Yesterday I picked a bucket full which I then proceed to scrub with a plastic scourer to get the fur off. I then halve them , take out the center and any bits that look suspect and cut them up into 8ths. Before that though, I dissolve 3kg of sugar in a large stockpot which has 3 cups of water and 3 tbspn  apple cider vinegar. So cut up the quinces till there are 3 kg of chips and put them into the the liquid in the large stockpot.

Bring to a slow boil and simmer them for at least an hour and a half stirring occasionally.
Then let them sit overnight.
The following morning again bring them to the boil and boil for another hour till they are that wonderful rich, red colour.
Let them cool and take the chips out on a slotted spoon, drain and then put them on the trays of a dehydrator and dry them  for about 10 to 12 hours.
Again leave them to cool and then roll the chips in caster sugar and store in glass jars.
They actually keep for over twelve months if you and your dinner guests can stop eating them.

Well, the transfer of photos leave a lot to be desired!!! I have tried and tried to get the chips in their sequence of preparation but as you can see, the finished product is before the chips in their cooked state, before the drying stage.....
never mind, I'm sure you will all see the logical sequence of the operation.!! I also cook quinces in the left over syrup and then deep freeze them in containers which will keep me in quince fruit for my breakfast for the next twelve months!!!!