Remember sunshine?
There'll be no more sunshine spilling lazily into the stairwell for a while - it's winter in Cape Town now. Brrrr.
Holidays and birthdays
Mountain walk
The Autumn weather descended on us over the weekend, and we felt it on our ears and noses when we took an evening walk on Table Mountain yesterday. I found lots of little treasures to draw.
Frodo and Friends
But my camera battery went flat, so I got out my purse instead, and came home with a darning mushroom, a potato peeler, a set of jumper cables, bags of nuts and a stack of vintage crochet patterns. I love that market, I do.
I'm gamely soldiering on with my cannibal crochet and Gabby, freshly returned from Japan (see me turn green), is making an origami fish mobile.
Janine bravely undid an entire scarf to start all over, and Michelle was sewing pieces of lace from an antique collar onto a skirt to wear to a wedding.
And Alta was working on a beautiful quilt for a small niece, while Michelle sweated over her very fiddly applique. 
"Life isn't school"
Sandra from Smosch said something so cool last week. It went like this:
"Ok, Monday started and I thought: Life isn’t school and work on sunny days. Life is love, friends, dogs and roadtrips. Work can be saved for the dark night instead."
What a gal! I took inspiration from this yesterday and took some time out to warm my bones in the autumnal sun, and took some photos of our teeny but thriving balcony garden and streeettching kittycat.
A meaningful life for a lampshade?
All the light fittings in this flat are currently occupied. Please take a number and queue at the top of the hall cupboard.
How to get ready for a new week
Here's my recently-tested recipe for a great weekend:
- Watch Juno (delightful)
- Make Pad Thai (or better, get husband to make it)
- Go window shopping with a friend
- Do no work (do not omit this step)
- Sweat it out at yoga
- Go to Kraft at the Book Lounge
- Bounce with little nieces and fat-as-butter baby nephew on a trampoline (adorable)
- Decide to resign your job
- Take a long walk on the mountain
- Decide to go to Tuscany, even though you can't afford it really (esp if you quit your job...).
When you've done all that and are sitting in the sun with a book and a cup of tea, get a kind neighbour to knock at the door with half of an enormous bunch of flowers that someone thrust at her in the street.
Repeat whenever necessary.
PS: Think this is big flowers? Check out Lena's colossal floral specimen.
Selvedge
I read an interview with Tom Dixon the other day, where he was asked to describe himself in five words. He used up three of his words, saying he's "lucky, lucky, lucky" - and that's how I feel too!
I've been having an extraordinary run of good fortune and coincidences of late. Recounting each one would be as boring as describing what I dreamed last night, but one bit of luck is really worth sharing:
At the end of Feb, I got an email from Selvedge Magazine, telling me I was the lucky recipient of one of the 50 free online subscriptions they were giving away! Wowee! Now I just log in at Exact Editions and read the current issue (pic above), as well as back issues of this amazing textiles mag.
You can get a free trial version of Selvedge at Exact Editions too. Check it out.
Jammy Tuesday!
Despite appearances, this bottle of jam didn't just teleport down from heaven into our kitchen. I made it myself!
The happy coincidence of my reading Barbara Kingsolver's wonderful Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and a gift of two boxes of freshly-picked black figs from a farmer on Friday, saw me up at 5am today, slaving through deadlines so that I could spend the afternoon at my mom's house in Fish Hoek, stirring up great vats of seasonally-grown bubbling fig pulp.
Just look at that colour! Sigh. Feeling so wholesome and earthy now - I mean, I don't usually cook, never mind actually make jam! Next time I'll harvest the sugar cane myself too.
Friends nearby, be nice to me and you may get a bottle of this for yourself...
Sundazed
On the weekend Nanook found herself caught between the study curtain and the lining, and between the summer sunshine and my camera (and now between my blog and your eyes).
Foiled them!
Aggregate
Paul Edmunds is my clever husband, of whom I am so very proud. But he doesn't like a fuss, so I'm not going to gush, and will simply treat this as a news item:
Last year, Paul won the Tollman Award, and used some of his prize to make this beautiful book about his work from 1995 - 2007.
The book is available through the Joao Ferriera Gallery, and also at Bank Gallery in Durban, where it will be launched tonight at Paul's opening of his show, also called Aggregate.
Aargh, can't help myself - I have to gush: Isn't he just brilliant? Go see the show, Durbanites! I'm taking a flight up on Friday for a weekend in the subtropics. Can't wait!
After dinner
We had some friends around on the weekend. In the morning, the light came streaming in on the remnants of our feast.
Ercol at home
It really fits in well at home, and now all our furniture is about two inches off the floor. Sorry to visitors with creaky knees.
