children

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I had a baby! That's her on the right. On the left is my first baby; and this is them together right at the beginning of their adventure into siblinghood. Five months have passed since then (isn't that incredible?? It's amazing to think that my baby girl is not a newborn anymore - where is the time going?). When I first started writing this blog it was in an attempt to capture the transitory nature of the things in my life - mainly the art and craft work that I was creating and then allowing to slip between my fingers ... into other people's fingers usually, but sometimes things just fade or deteriorate, and then soon those things are gone from my memory too. Then, of course, I started noticing that so much of everything else is transitory too - everything in fact - and it became difficult to know what to include. Luckily (!) I've been way too busy looking after my family to really worry at all about what to include or not, but the one thing that really has to be here is my children. Look at them! They're luscious and blooming. My newborn girl is gently dancing! My son is filled with wonder. Their skin glows, the world is new.

Crop

A plate of peppers picked from my garden! The crop is now pretty much over, but the enormous satisfaction of growing vegetables from tiny little seeds is great! I love my garden. It's very wee, and mostly in pots, but I love it. It's currently being ravaged by I don't know what though - all my baby broccoli plants are looking very chewed.

growing things

Hello again after a looong absence! Believe it or not, less than 24 hours after writing my last post I gave birth to an absolutely scrumptuous little girl. I was going to write about her today, and post a photo - after all, she too has a transitory, almost illusory presence in the Now - always changing, growing, becoming a new version of herself .... but I've decided to write a little bit about my garden instead. This summer I grew my first vegetables! It wasn't my first try, but it was my first success ... sort of! I managed to grow one eggplant (for some reason the flowers weren't pollinated ... the bees were scared of my plants ... but I have a winning way with a paintbrush ready to assist the bees with their pollinating business next season); lots of tomatoes; a pile of parsley and basil; several pepinos; loads of spicy peppers; a bunch of strawberries; and the beginnings of a pumpkin! And, sadly, no success with my zucchinis whatsoever. But, despite my limited success, I feel such an ENORMOUS amount of pleasure in growing food from tiny little seeds, into great galumphing plants. There's something wonderfully magical ... yet absolutely right and normal ... about planting a seed in some dirt, watching the leaves emerging, the plant growing, the emergence of fruit. It's beautiful. So here's a couple of photos - the beginnings of my solitary aubergine, and a couple of my first peppers.

cord pot

This pot is one of the results of a recent pottery class at the local pottery workshop. I like it and am glad that it survived the attentions of the tutor who tried stamping it while wet with prefabricated manufactured stamps (you know the type I mean!). Have you ever encountered a tutor who tries to be really hands on with your work? It was my first time and I was so surprised! David had the same experience at the same workshop and I thought he was exaggerating but it was true - people really do come over and put their hands on your work and try to manipulate the clay on your behalf. When I came to pick up my pots a few weeks after the course I even discovered that someone (no doubt with the kindest of intentions) had glazed the pots which I hadn't had time to do. It was a huge contrast to other workshops I've potted at and it felt All Wrong. Now that I know how things can operate there I'm going to become more assertive. It's a really lovely place to do pottery and the people are great so I do need to find a way of making sure that I don't feel my work is being interfered with.

masks for the fair & trousers & flowers

hello again!
I've been pretty slack in updating this blog but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy! The school that runs Vincent's play group - Motueka Rudolf Steiner School - is holding a spring fair this weekend so all the parents were asked to make 10 things to be sold for $2 each at the fair. I initially had a million ideas, but didn't get very far with any of them (except the Lamp Fish - but I only made two of those before I had a crisis - ran out of glue and couldn't seem to remember to buy any more whenever I ventured into town). In the end I got a bunch of books out of the library, thinking that I would make origami animals which I would turn into mobiles ... but instead, after many very disheartening attempts to fold bits of paper into animals (is it really possible?? perhaps paper is just supposed to be paper and animals are just supposed to be animals - after all, who would try making paper out of animals, hmmmm?), I made these masks:




Clearly, there aren't 10 of them, but I think we'll just ignore that point for now. But that's not all! I recently acquired a most magnificent sewing machine (a Bernina 830). I've always wanted a sewing machine, and now I have one, so the pressure is on to actually use it! So, I made these trousers for Vincent:

It's the first time I've ever made an item of clothing that hasn't immediately fallen apart, so I'm quite chuffed. They're made of a lovely wool and I lined them with cotton to stop them from being scratchy on Vincent's legs. They're warm as toast and seem to be able to endure all manner of toddler hi-jinks. Even better, the wool fabric I used is the 'wrapping paper' that David used to wrap up all my birthday presents on the year that we got together. So the fabric has history, and that makes me even happier.

Lastly, because this blog is in part an attempt to capture the transitory, here are some photos of a couple of the Spring flowers blooming around our home. These two are my favourite flowers - kowhai and magnolia. Yay for Spring!

alphabet soup

Hello again! Finally I finished it! I've been brewing up a quilt for months and finally it is done, packaged and posted. Not only that, but I managed to actually take some photos of it before sending it off - amazing! So here it is, Ryco Drawbridge's Welcome to the World Alphabet Quilt ... mostly hand stitched (until I managed to get my hot little hands on a beautiful Bernina 830 and then the pace really picked up). See if you can figure out each creature/creation representation of the alphabet! Some are obscured by Vincent's head so you might have to guess what I stitched for WXYZ.

brown spot pot

As you may be starting to gather from my pottery explorations, I'm not a very exact kind of potter! David came home with a few of his new pottery creations last night and I was amazed by how perfect they were - the attention to detail was incredible. I tend to just throw things together. In the time it takes David to make one thing, I may have made three or four things. This pot was made about two years ago in Wellington. I spent ages applying the glaze, thinking that every colour spot I made would stay where it was when I fired it ... but they didn't! And I ended up with this blurry, faded, version of what I had imagined. But I still liked it, and David liked it even more, so I gave it to him. When I was building this pot I was thinking of this enormous hand-built pot I saw in a pottery book (damn, I just went and had a look for the picture, but it's hiding). It was huge! It was maybe 5 feet tall and all hand coiled. My pot is tiny, and was never going to be tall, but the thought of that other pot is somewhere imbued in it's essence.

These days the brown spot pot sits in the kitchen filled with: two sets of keys, several coloured pencils (blue, red, orange, and green), a one dollar coin, a green ribbon, two plastic pegs (one yellow, one white), a plastic container of sewing pins, a silver bracelet, several nails, a needle, an Allen key, and an I love Hackney badge.