August 2011
35 posts
2 tags
Pocket curtains
I sewed these curtains about a year ago for Astrid’s room. She loves them, she likes putting little things in the pockets that Axel can’t have like playmobil and barrettes.
I sewed them pretty quickly and quite simply (no time for measuring or pattern tracing) but they’ve held up quite well.
And okay, I like putting things is the pockets too!
Fabrics are a mixture of...
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Astrid got a new elephant duvet cover. Moomin and the Snork Maiden seem pretty blasé about it. Astrid’s more excited.
This is the handmade pillow my sister Amy made for her when she was a baby. All vintage fabrics.
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Dolly´s Outfit 7
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“and meanwhile,
we men,
touch the water,
struggling and hoping,
we touch the...”
– Pablo Neruda
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“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”
– Virginia Woolf
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“It doesn´t have to be a big fire, a small blaze, candlelight perhaps.”
– Ray Bradbury
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I cannot see fairies; I dream them.
Here are some of the images on my inspiration board right now. (I can’t source all of them as many are pages ripped out of magazines long ago.)
Oh how I must have a chandelier hanging in my garden someday.
The bookmark was made by my parents, it’s from one of the earliest years of their leather-work business.
Is there anything more surreal and magnificent than sea...
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In my pockets
Hurricane season is somehow refreshing. Of course I’m not for the damage that may ensue, or the inconveniences like power outages it may cause. But just the weather itself is a welcome change. The strong winds clear away the intensity of hot summer days and clear my mind and my cobwebs. I feel ready for a new season, ready for change, ready for all that’s new and up ahead.
I feel an...
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Så klart (Of course)
Smashing graphic design on this hand cream I got in Sweden, which reads: “Of course there should be a hand cream that both makes your hands soft and takes the environment and climate into consideration as much as posslble. Without perfume or colour.”
Damn that cursive writing is fine!
This one is a kid’s skin lotion. Great colour choices and…wait, did that happy whale...
6 tags
Toothsome blue
Blueberries- yeah! Local-yeah! Great package design-yeah! And always love Canada’s bilingual packaging. It has an exotic appeal to me now after I lived without it for a few years. Douglas Copeland also boosted my perception of this in his book Souvenir of Canada.
I’m pretty sure eating an entire box of blueberries at once is a bad thing, so I’d better have a bit of self...
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Beatrice
Beatrice has been with me for a long time. She’s kept many a pot of tea and coffee warm. I first got her when my mother mailed her to me when I lived in Sweden, and she’s been with me ever since.
Now when I look at the expression on her face I think she looks a bit tired, like “How come I always just work and work and nobody ever wants to snuggle me?” Must remedy this....
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The thread
This is the time of year the woodpile sits drying in the driveway. Soon it will be neatly stacked for winter. This is at my parent’s house, the house I grew up in, and as long as I can remember there has been a woodpile drying in late summer.
I like the way it sits there through the hot days of August like a thread into the next season. Here are the hot days: colder days are coming. I...
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Aisle 7, rocks and flowers
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Goldenrod
When I was a kid my older sister Amy used to get to sleep overnight in an old chicken coop on our land with her friend Michelle. (“get to” sleep in a chicken coop…may not be so desirable to me now…) I was always jealous because for a long while my younger sister Eva and I weren’t allowed to sleep there with them because we were too little.
Finally the day came...
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Ain´t no need for fancy all the time
These are “art supplies” we saved for Astrid. Sure it’s nice to have nice craft supplies sometimes, but more often than not she’s very happy to cut up old boxes and cartons and make them into something.
This is her new shelf and she’s pleased as punch with it.
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Faces everywhere
These are from a great sticker activity book from Muji. They remind of how I’ve always liked the game of finding faces on things- door handles, the cheese grater (has a very earnest expression, seems to cheerfully say “I’ll grate your cheese for ya!” ), on beach stones…
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Polarn O. Pyret
This is a summer onesie EA got as a gift from Auntie Pia. It’s from Polarn O. Pyret, a wonderful Swedish kid/baby/mama clothing store.
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Trapeze
I have a collection of images I call my “image bank”, a lot of them are online now but before everything was online I collected inspiring pages from magazines, old books, etc.
This is one of my old images, I don’t know the source, but I’ve always loved it. She looks a bit hesitant, and maybe even scared, but she’s up there, and she’s balancing there, looking...
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Quiet night kitchen
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Wrecking Ball/ Destructatron
Ah, yes, the days of taping up ripped books have begun again. Anything left in 9 month old’s path is fair game, I suppose, but still, one hears quite often shouts of “No! Not that! Get that from…him…aaaargh, never-mind-too-late.” Of course it elicits lots of exasperated swearing from me, but on a good day I can see this as kind of freeing- how much do I really need...
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You don´t make friends with salad (Homer Simpson)
Made a quick salad for lunch based on cilantro I had that I wanted to use up. Romaine lettuce, grapefruit, avocado, red onion, black olives and cilantro.
The colours of the compost looked great!
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Lite-Brite
We were over at our neighbour’s house the other day and they’d found a Lite-Brite at a yard sale. I never actually had a Lite-Brite, but my friend Wanda did. And I loved it. (Wanda, as I remember it, had everything. Lite-Brite, canopy bed, every possible Barbie and Barbie accessory, swimming pool, and maple flavoured cupcakes in her lunch.)
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Messes 8 and 9
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Where we live
We were at Public Gardens again (“I pretend it’s my garden.” “Well, it’s the public’s, so it is yours. Kind of. “) and played in our house for awhile. It’s under some trees with draping branches and surrounded by tall yellow flowers. Inside there are room-like areas, so we pretend there’s a living room with a fireplace, a bedroom, and a...
7 tags
Paprika paprika paprika
The other day I had a rare quiet couple of hours without the kids so I got lots of little odd jobs done. It was very satisfying to work away at getting organized without any distractions or interruptions. And say what you will, I enjoy domestic tasks like, for example, cleaning and labelling spice jars. This particular activity was very relaxing, like copying recipes.
I labelled each one in...
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“What did I tell ya? There´s the whole world at your feet. And who gets to see it...”
– Bert, Mary Poppins
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exact precise accurate definite plus je ne sais...
Feeling sort of disconnected. I feel this way when I’m too busy. I lose track of which direction I want to go in, I forget that baby steps add up. I am so busy just with the everyday tasks lately that there hasn’t been enough room for much else. I want to feel there is time to slow down and really take in here and now. Time to somehow record or respond to it all. At least in some small...
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“Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of...”
– Natalie Goldberg
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Oh honey honey (Atlantic Canadian foods 2)
Everyday tasks
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Bouquets
Everywhere we go Astrid picks little bouquets of wildflowers, then brings them home and puts them around the house. It’s sweet.
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Project
Astrid and I made a house the other day. We were so inspired and excited about the idea that we were both still in jammies when lunchtime rolled around. I love it when a creative idea takes over and you forget about all other plans and just let yourself get caught up in it.
Scraps of cloth, an old Vesey’s seed catalogue, ribbon, feathers, scissors, glue, and an old box= hours of...
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Elephant´s Outfit (special in Dolly´s Outfit...
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Oh August
Monday was a holiday and we spent it doing lots of summery things.
Took the kidlets out sailing on Dad’s new sailboat. It was lovely, even with out-of-sorts kids who “didn’t scream, but did whine and cry most of the time, ” as I described it later. Thank God for big bags of snacks: life-saving distraction.
This was also the day Astrid FINALLY got to bring all of her...
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“No sorry closing eyes
No cutting down to size
No other thoughts arise
When...”
– Yo La Tengo 