A jumper and a cardigan

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are two of my recent knitting projects. The chunky cable-sleeve cardigan was knitted in a day, and I learnt the magic loop method in the process (turns out you don't need circular needles of varying lengths; you can use long ones for small circumferences, too). It bought this pattern from Knit Safari and made it in size S, but I used different wool: Lana Grande from Cascade Yarns, which is 100% Peruvian highland wool and very soft and lightweight. I also love Tiam's designs with big sculptural sleeves and have bookmarked some I might try in the future, but I chose this one as it fits under a coat without being too bulky.

Making the jumper was a very different experience, and as I was switching between thick needles (I was working on a blanket with 25mm needles at the same time) and thin ones, my first attempt resembled a chain mail, as I didn't knit tightly enough. It is based on a free pattern by Paintbox Yarns ('Bubblegum Bobble Sweater'), but I spaced out the bobbles more - the original has two extra rows of bobbles between my rows. I also used different yarn again (a cotton/bamboo blend), and I didn't bother making the tension swatch. When I did measure along the way, I stretched the piece, which was another mistake (I do tend to interpret instructions as a rough guide...). In the end my head didn't even fit through the neckband and I had to make the front and back again. 

The result is now a mix of sleeves in XS, as they were fine, and the torso two sizes larger ('to fit bust 91cm', which I am not), but it is still quite small overall, so it works.

I am happy with how it turned out and didn't mind the extra work - I enjoy the process. Sewing it all together was the hardest part, and my seams are a bit messy. In hindsight cotton/bamboo wasn't the best choice for bobbles, but I just pretend the visible holes are deliberate. There are also some irregularities in the rows of stocking stitch, but I like the wabi sabi look.

I love bobble patterns - they are so tactile and fun - and am planning to make some cushion covers with bobbles next.

Pink

 Three feet

Uncooked

Clouds

1|  Pink shoes you can walk in for miles (because they are Ecco), to the pub and back, for example

2|  Alternating cooking and eating apples from the garden in this apple frangipane tart

3|  I have photographed the view from the kitchen window in this house and in my old place so many times, always with grand plans to paint the particular colour combination of sky-land-sea, and I have done the latter four times in all those years. Sometimes we are in the car on the way to work or home, and the bay is sublime, and I make a mental note to get the morning or evening light down on paper or canvas or snap a hasty photo. One day soon those scribbled lines of 'fuzzy strip of indigo above pale blue water, flat sky' will be translated into paint.

Flower power

 Jasmine for the garden

 Florals on a jumper (from Part Two)

Peonies that never opened fully

Essential oils and tea from a local herbalist

Last week, on our way to the midlands to visit friends and family, we stopped at a lovely garden centre for presents and got a jasmine plant for our garden, which is a dream come true for me (if it survives the wild west of Ireland - the very helpful lady there assured us it would and gave us advice on how to plant it). The car journey for the rest of the day was an aromatherapy experience.

Sleeping with the window open and the intoxicating scent filling the bedroom may not happen for a while yet, unless I sleep in the shed, as we put the jasmine beside the door to the shed, where it is sheltered. Between the stock (another strong fragrance), the jasmine and the lavender, our garden is fast becoming a feast for the nose. 

Another favourite, though not as fragrant, are peonies. We have a few in the garden, but the ones in the photos came from a florist. They never opened fully, but I love the tight ball they start out with. 

John got me some essential oils and a specialty tea for clear skin (hint?) from a local herbalist. I had asked for neroli and rosemary, and he kindly added sweet orange oil, so I have been burning a lot of orange-focused blends to sweeten my time in the studio (it badly needs it, as a piece of furniture in there still smells musty from the damp in the last house - John calls it 'the smell of stale ideas' hovering in the studio, and I am determined to conquer it on both levels).

Things that work | Silk and lace

I get overwhelmed by too much choice and too many decisions to be made, which explains why I can be found skirting the deli counter nervously (and possibly walking away hungry) and why our house will be all-white on the outside when the external wall insulation is completed.

While I doubt I will ever resort to a 'uniform' that eliminates the need for deliberations on what to wear - I love clothes too much for that level of minimalism - shopping leaves me frazzled, so finding well-made things that work and knowing that in the future I won't have to wander around countless shops before emerging with the item I need simplifies things.

I prefer my clothes to be made from natural fabrics*, and one of my favourite materials is silk. Currently about half of my underwear consists of silk and lace sets from this range. I don't care that it is a celebrity line; it is beautifully designed and the sets are extremely comfortable and light, so suitable for everyday wear. They are machine-washable, and they last. I am sure there are various other silk options online, but I can buy these locally, which is a bonus, and the old-school department store assistants are always so lovely and chatty.


 *though I have a few polyester pieces that are years old but still look like new, so I don't rule it out

Making - eat, bathe, wear

 

|  Eat: Christmas cookies, as per German tradition: very rustic-looking Elisenlebkuchen (my sister's are perfectly round and smooth) and Engelsaugen (angel eyes), and with the leftover egg whites I made coconut macaroons (not pictured).  The Lebkuchen have all the Christmas flavours - ground cloves, cinnamon, mixed peel and rum. I also made several loaves of hazelnut-studded Apfelbrot (recipes for that and the Lebkuchen to follow in time for next year's seasonal baking - I have been meaning to add a page with recipes here, for archiving purposes - the internet is chock-a-block with food blogs, so I'm sure the world isn't waiting anxiously for my contribution, but it will be nice to collect some here, as a back-up to my notebooks and folders).

|  Bathe: These bath truffles were easy and fun to make. I used six drops each of geranium and lavender essential oils and both rose and calendula petals. Due to the coconut oil, they create quite an oily bath, which some people don't like, but it means no need for moisturising. They were sitting on the kitchen counter, which confused visitors to my house, as they look edible (white chocolate and rose truffles sounds good). I love having baths with Epsom salts - they are a good way to absorb magnesium via the skin and have numerous healing properties.

|  Wear: I knitted this simple scarf for John a while back; unlike many other projects (where did this year go??) I managed to finish it in time for the colder weather. He knew exactly what he wanted; he picked the colour and requested the white strip. Sometimes I like being given instructions.

Making things has been an antidote to the stress of the last few weeks. Using my hands is so therapeutic, a way to get out of my head - the thoughts it stimulates are of a less frantic kind. I have prescribed myself daily doses of knitting for the holidays.

Drink the wild air

 Wool-dress-bikini-and-bare-legs weather (slippers made by my sister)

 A new book to look forward to

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air..."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

I've been following Ralph's advice. Some of the best swims of my life have happened in the last month or so. A couple of times I came into the office to find a printout with the tides on my desk; we have been timing our swims perfectly. Sometimes the evening light would add a golden-pink glow, and one afternoon the sea was wild and throwing us around, shaking out all the tension and mental clutter.

And I did get back to the easel (and the kitchen table for illustrations. I rarely use my desk. For illustrations I like to have everything piled on the kitchen table. I think I like looking at the vase of flowers and working in an environment of domesticity.). How I had missed painting. Life has been so full lately, in all the best ways, but I need to remind myself to feed every area, to maintain the equilibrium.

It has been warmer outside than in the house. I move back and forth between my blanket in the garden and indoors, where I am in the process of doing a summer clean before heading off for a visit home next week. Today my house seems even more dollhouse-like as usual as I have gained height (it really does happen) from an Alexander Technique session (thank you, Shane!). AT worked wonders for George Bernard Shaw, possibly adding years to his life, or so I am told. The best thing is you don't have to actively do anything, yet you notice a difference in how your body is aligned after imagining it lengthening and expanding. Whether I'll have the discipline to practise this regularly remains to be seen, as always...

 

This week

 

|  The programmes for this year's Colours Fringe Festival (I seem to be using a lot of turquoise and seagreen these days, as my sister pointed out). My work-related To-Do list is getting shorter, and I can feel myself slowly transitioning into summer holiday mode.

|  Still enjoying the remains of flowers I received a few weeks ago, which now populate various smaller vases. 

|  Judith Kerr turned 90 this week. There is something special about her books and her illustrations. I have fond memories of Mog the cat, who existed in real life, and cannot wait to get Creatures, the new book. Click here for a slideshow and here for a video of Kerr reading from and talking about her work.

|  Wearing my Noa Noa balloon pants (they look better with wedges, but around the house it's mostly flip flops/ barefoot). The sun makes an appearance every few days, then it's back to wind and rain. The latter was what greeted my sister and brother-in-law's arrival, but so far they remain in high spirits. And it looks like it's a sunny day today, so it might yet turn into a weekend for the beach, like last week.

Wear and Read

 

 

|  My sister made me a corset. It is a thing of beauty and I can see it being part of my "uniform" when working from home, to make me sit up that bit straighter and feel more able and in control. I realise the historical connotations would be rather the opposite. But I find it does wonders for one's breathing if you don't make it so tight it squashes all your vital organs. Her online shop is here, but will be transferred to another site when she leaves Germany.

|  I am much more of a baker than a cook, so I want to learn more about cooking. The Flavour Thesaurus is not only a great resource, explaining what goes with what and why, but also entertaining (sample: "If you ever feel a bit decadent tucking into bacon and eggs at breakfast, it may help to know that in pre-revolutionary Russia the Tsar's children started the day with a dish of mashed banana and caviar.") and a beautiful book.

|  The older I get the shorter my hemlines, it seems. For a good part of my teenage years I wore long floaty skirts; in my early twenties a much older boyfriend described my mid-length skirts as "granny-style"; and now I can often be seen in 1960s minidresses and shorts, including these yellow dotty ones.

|  Stag's Leap, Sharon Olds's book of poems about the break-up of her marriage, is a revelation, haunting and powerful, and deservedly won the T.S. Eliot Prize.

[All of the above are presents given to me by real people in my life, not blog freebies!]

Budding

 

I feel a bit like the elephant in the last picture. I don't know whether my tiredness is the post-counselling kind, a sign that spring is coming or that I cannot tolerate more than one glass of wine in 24 hours.

The weather is telling me I should be at the beach or on a mountain, but my body can only decide between bed and couch. I have been dressing in combinations of winter knits and summer linens (I have had that linen dress for at least twelve years - it is indestructible), and most of my plants are happy and active. Underneath this lethargy I am enthusiastic about new beginnings.

Monday at home

 

|  Simmering lemon, vanilla and rosemary. I burn essential oils almost every day, but occasionally I like to use the stovetop method. And it always strikes me how different the oils smell from the plants they are derived from. Today I needed to focus, and rosemary is great for concentration. I didn't have any fresh rosemary - that would have been even better.
|  Thinking of outlines as shared boundaries rather than lines is vital in learning how to draw and paint. Incidentally, I photographed this quote after spending a few hours doing black-and-white line drawings. I was given this book (Creative Scribbles - Where Dreaming and Drawing Cross Paths) recently by someone I had told I felt stuck - such a thoughtful present. It is filled with prompts such as "Don't think, just draw" or "Draw a brawl between four colours".
|  Still trying to manifest a cat sartorially and to perfect the shoulder stand (no picture). 

---------------------

I may have posted this before, but I found this again while sorting through my bookmarks - Peggy Fogelman from the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Bad Hair (4 min audio with slideshow). She was one of the speakers at a conference I went to earlier this year, and I looked up the Met's website afterwards - I love the Connections feature that Bad Hair is part of.

Patterns

Repetitive patterns are calming to an over-anxious mind:

 

|  I chose this Noa Noa dress (a present from my mom) partly because of the print - dots in wobbly squares with rounded corners are very satisfying. I can stare at this print for a disproportionate amount of time - it is a type of meditation.

 

|  I have been making more crochet cuffs and knitting socks.

|  Tempting liquid blue in Ballyvaughan.


On a different note, today I am procrastinating by reading a book about procrastination that a friend lent me. I am only a few pages in, but it is interesting what Fiore has to say about the role anxiety, self-criticism, fear of failure/success and guilt play in the context of procrastination. We need compassion for who and where we are now to overcome the underlying causes of procrastination. I always knew that I procrastinate because I feel I am not good enough, so why even bother starting something, etc. And I can see that while putting things off leads to anxiety, the reverse is also true, so it is important to tackle the anxiety. Fiore is adamant that laziness and disorganisation are not the reasons people procrastinate, which is worth reminding yourself of.

Summer moments

This break was longer than I expected. Thank you for the nice comments and e-mails I received while I was gone. The summer has been tough, and while it was good to be at home with my family for four weeks, that time was spent in hope, a hope that ended up being crushed as soon as I got back here - I thought I was prepared, and yet it hit me so much harder than I had feared it would.

But I am trying to focus on good things: my health, my work, the house I live in and the wonderful people in my life who have made me feel so loved. And all the small-yet-big things that are part of it all: the sweet peas on my windowsill that a friend brought, one of many unexpected gifts; the beautiful end-of-summer weather we have had; the books I am reading that are teaching me so much and those I am reading in the middle of the night when I can't get back to sleep; gradually being able to run for longer and faster; Connemara in golden light; feeling more serene in the face of obstacles; making new friends...

These pictures are from my time at home. I didn't capture the best of it on camera (my family, obviously), but they were there, surrounding what can be seen here.

| The cats are part of the family, of course.

 

| An all-female outing (my mom, my sisters and I) to see this exhibition.

| Evening sky on the way to Heidelberg.

 

| Trying on dresses my sister made

 

| ...and having afternoon tea at her place.

| Colourful fruit

| Summer reading while cat-sitting. And the nice feeling of being able to wear a summer dress or bikini all day long (here in Ireland it's bath robes and scarves in the house again).

Into Spring

That sense of urgency and excitement I described in the last post is still here now that I am back in Ireland, but it is tempered by extreme tiredness (I fell into bed at 2am). So instead of tackling the things that are at the top of the list, today I have been  procrastinating with domestic tasks, lazy coffee breaks in the uni and organising. And I may watch another part of Mildred Pierce tonight - I am making the five-part series last a few weeks instead of watching it all within a couple of days, as I sometimes do with DVDs.

 

| What remains from my trip home - a fast-disintegrating manicure with my mom's coral nail polish that I cannot bring myself to take off just yet. The sunlight is deceiving; it is bitterly cold, with sleet and hailstones. I dressed rather optimistically in a linen skirt (with tights, Mama!) this morning...

 

| Books:
-I am reading this Deirdre Madden book - because I loved Molly Fox's Birthday - and am trying to get Authenticity as well; she is such a brilliant writer. I haven't finished this yet, but am enjoying it (if that is the right word - it is not a light read).
-My notebook and I are inseparable. Now that I try to practise restraint with my diary, this is where all the mad scribbling takes place, but at least it has different categories.
-A friend lent me Drawing Texts - an anthology of essays by artists and other people in the arts about the activity of drawing - years ago and I have found it refreshing and valuable for both my teaching and for myself. Earlier this year I came across it in a second-hand bookshop and I am rereading it.

 

 |  Sorting through my wardrobe. My bedroom is small; the wardrobe is small. While part of me would like a bigger wardrobe, the minimalist in me is pleased, and I find that I still only wear less than half of my clothes regularly. Nice dresses are displayed on the doors and the wall. I am careful with any new purchases; they have to be good quality and ideally ethical and go well with lots of different things. My kitchen cupboards are next. Both with food and clothes I can be extremely impractical (weird food combinations due to lack of planning, lots of flimsy camisoles, but no proper jumpers, and so on), and I need to be better organised.

I am looking forward to the long Easter weekend. We will be working a bit, but the plan is to do something nice, maybe a day trip, and bake Easter cakes (something I haven't done in years). In my family we used to have a Polish Easter cake made with lots of eggs, so I might try that.

Red, yellow, white

RED |  I am wearing a lot of red these days. When I explained to Matt that red corresponds to the root chakra and wearing red can be grounding, he looked slightly worried and said I lived in a strange world. It was one of our typical artist-vs.-scientist conversations. I was feeling very much un-grounded this week; it is something I struggle with a lot and that creates a lot of fear. (Sonia Choquette also recommends various other things, including rubbing Vick's VapoRub into the soles of your feet, to strengthen the root chakra. These rituals may seem so small and insignificant, but I feel instantly better when I employ them.)

YELLOW |  Getting back into yoga (the Alexander Technique had taken over a bit)

WHITE  |  I genuinely love doing laundry; I find it very relaxing, and I like taking care of clothes. Complicated care instructions and delicate fabrics make me happy - perhaps it just means I have too much time on my hands. I am looking forward to being able to dry clothes outside again soon.