My Pocket

sewing and butterflies

For the moment I'm sewing voile curtains for the boy students' rooms in the cloisters. Their living quarters are called the cloisters because it's a building with an open central square with lawn, trees and a pond. The 30 odd rooms all face in towards this and there are covered walkways all the way around to the doors. The walls facing inwards are all window so they need a thin curtain to complement the thick one, just so you can have some privacy but not keep out the light. That's what I'm making, as some need replacing. It's a lot of fabric...

On a completely different note: butterflies.

nearly to Old Winchester Hill

I like this little bird-like piece of wood I found on a walk the other day. Not sure what to do with it yet so it just follows me around in my bag for the moment.

I just came back from a long walk now. I think I'm the happiest when I walk, or at least the most at peace. I am exactly where I want to be, moving along. When the sun shines and the breeze is warm it's bliss. This time I went along the Green lane, as we call it, it's just a track through the fields and woods but it's flanked by trees all the way. That's the path I usually go around every weekday after lunch. I took the path down towards Warnford and shot this picture of the horse paddock before I was too deep into the woods.

Ahem. Should have taken me wellies... We had a little accident slipping into a puddle.

The path was so muddy it took me twice as long to walk, having to navigate across the puddles to either this side of the track or that, but I must say the mud makes the most delightful squelchy sounds under one's feet. I'm well aware how lucky we are here though, with hardly any flooding at all compared to some parts of Britain. Even I grew tired of the puddles in the end so I began walking the edge of the field instead, I loved the view.

In Warnford I cooled my feet in the stream - so clear! My toes didn't look exactly the way I remembered them though. Afterwards I walked around on the grass for a while, I've hardly walked barefoot at all this summer.

They grow watercress in waterfilled pools along the edge of the park. I should eat more of the stuff, seeing how local it is.

I always stop on the little bridge where this photo was taken from, I like watching the water flowing and whirling.

Mostly I veer off homewards by now, taking the old railway line track towards West Meon, but today I decided to go further, up and up and up the hill. I never know how long a walk will be when I leave home, I just decide each time I reach a fork in the road.

The view from the road up towards Old Winchester Hill is stunning, this picture doesn't do it justice. I'll have to take you there sometime to see it for yourself. You can see so far and wide, all the hills, trees and fields.

I stopped and had a little rest at the top, leaning against a gate and watching the view and the sheep. The sun sifting through the leaves of the trees. I could have walked on to Old Winchester Hill now, but I felt like going home. My camera ran out of battery here so I'll have to show you a picture of the Hill some other time. It has remains of an ancient settlement on it and what you can see is a mound going all the way around the top of the hill.

Oh, it was nice going downhill after that! Even better, I found the first ripe blackberries and had a handful. That was my walk, took about four hours I think. Wish you could tell me where you go walking and what you see! Do you like walking?

early autumn colours

Anne Marie recently reminded me how much I like autumn. We're not even out of July yet, I know! But still, I was inspired to go out and find some colours, if not autumn colours then just rich, deep, earthy colours like these reds, oranges and yellows. Actually, there are already some harbingers of autumn too, like apples and pears that are ripening now.

Apart from apples and pears there are plums on the way, a few elderberries that I've seen, the figs outside our bedroom window, raspberries still and damsons along the roads. The grapes in the rose garden are probably quite plump already too, must remember to look.

The mullberries are beginning to turn dark and I'm looking forward to having a few, only a few, but plenty of juice running down my fingers because I really can't help it.

Waltzing Along

Help comes when you need it most
I'm cured by laughter
Mood swings, not sure I can cope
My life's in plaster, in plaster

May your mind set you free
(be opened by the wonderful)
May your heart lead you on
May your mind let you breathe
(be opened by the wonderful)
May your heart lead you on

These wounds are all self-imposed
Life's no disaster
All roads lead unto death-row
Who knows what's after

May your mind be wide open
May your heart beat strong
May your mind's will be broken
By this heart-felt song

May your mind set you free
(Be opened by the wonderful)
May your heart lead you on
May your mind let you breathe
(Be opened by the wonderful)
May your heart lead you on,

May your eyes let you see all of disaster
May your heart lead you on, lead you on
(May your eyes be opened by the wonderful)
Set you free
(May your heart lead you on)
Lead you on

James, Waltzing Along

I love this song. The lyrics especially.

I wish for you that today is all that you want and for the weekend to be all that you need. For those I don't speak to very often; I am well and I hope you are too. Take care of yourselves - I think of you!

Monica - hoppas du har det bra! Jag hörde från mamma att du läser min blogg ibland. Vad glad jag blir! Kram till dig!

This weekend I am going to finish the present I began sewing for my friend and catch up on some homework. Most of all I'll want to snuggle up with my boyfriend though, who is coming home tonight after a week of surfing in Portugal. It's wonderful being on one's own for a while, I get to feel who I am just me and move and work in a different way, but after a week I am happy to share my space again.

I hope life smiles at you!

creative imperfection

On the train going down to Paris I nestled up in my seat with a sewing project, something I haven't done before. Excellent! I can look out the window watching the world go by, the way I love, and do something practical and creative with my hands every now and then. I've been wheedling with myself lately, trying to get my flow going because I know how much I need to be creative to keep me sane. I've been pretty stuck for a while now, having everything I need to start up several projects but not getting anywhere. Like a lot of people I suppose, I'm a perfectionist and sometimes, you know, what you create isn't quite what you thought it would become. And then I think, better to stick with my imagination and keep the dream. But life isn't very juicy that way, nothing going through you. Besides, perfect is rather boring and barren.

So, a few small things are beginning to take form and this train project is finished now. D asked for a case to keep his camera in and I really like the colour he chose, rusty orange. I'm fond of this way of fastening buttons but I don't know where it comes from. I've only seen it on parcels coming from Asia, but I'm sure this kind of closure is common elsewhere too. So simple. You just wind the yarn a couple of times around the button and there you are. It's secure too, though you might have to replace the yarn at some point.

Stitching all over the place, yep that's me. :) And I like it that way.

Oui, c'est beau Paris

Paris started out just as rainy as Britain, oh bummer... We hid under umbrellas through the worst of it, just short of reaching the Eiffel tower (see it just beyond the trees). Wide rivulets were forming on the paths and we had some fun navigating across those, or exploring the Mekong delta which is how my dad experienced it. He can rarely take anything out of the ordinary seriously. Actually, not much of the ordinary either, now that I think of it. He's the one holding the umbrella in the picture by the way.

I love the French newspaper and magazine stands everywhere. Not just a great place for some gossip, but like an open-air bookshop too. That's my mum in the picture.

I'm fond of the fruit and veg displays outside the shops, I keep a lookout for them in Britain too. There's something so wonderfully old-fashioned or exotic about it. We managed to find a small market too which made my day. The berries were sold there. Along the little square where a line of shops - the greengrocer, the fishmonger, the butcher, the charcuterie, the boulangerie (bakery) and the winery, all in a row!

Mum and I found a pair of sandals each - her red with white dots, mine black.

Carl Fredrik (my brother) and I enjoyed ourselves in the evening with taking night-time shots out the window of the neon lights beyond the hotel. He is one budding photographer I think, he's got a great way with the camera and is so imaginative. We tried catching the headlights of the cars passing on the street below and had a lot of laughs in the process - quick, quick, now! Aaawww... Again - now, now!

We strolled along the Seine on my last day, after window shopping in Saint-Germain-de-Pres and I like that kind of holiday time the most. Just wandering along, seeing what you find and ending up wherever you do.

One of the things I like the most about travelling are the exotic smells. Doesn't really matter what, just whatever reminds me that I'm in a foreign country. I still suddenly find myself back in India whenever I smell anything resembling the smoke from smouldering burnt rubbish and it always makes me happy before I realise what I'm actually smelling. :) In France it was more from baking wafting out from the boulangeries, smell of lunch from the sidewalk restaurants, a wiff of incense from an open doorway, laundry somewhere or just summer sunshine warming the pavement.

In the end we ended up by Notre Dame and sat people-watching on the side for a while, resting our feet. Wish I could have spent some more days with them, strolling around breathing in the atmosphere, but there it is. It's back to work for me now. I'm so revitalised though, it did the trick those two days. I'm inspired too, French people have so much better taste in clothes than the British (sorry!) and I saw many people who had their own style going on. Perhaps that is a capital city phenomenon, but still. I love seeing different cultures.

That was a happy little holiday for me. Thank you mum and dad! Love you.

I'm back!

I've returned from Paris as of late last night and I'll tell you all about it this evening but I thought you'd like to see my Eiffel tower angle. It was pouring when we saw it on Monday but that actually made it worthwhile for me - I stood for ages underneath watching the heavy drops drip and fall and fall from the top. Didn't get a good picture of it to illustrate but it was something like below with the little white specks against the black. It was impressive up close even though I've seen pictures of it a thousand times before I must admit. It has a grace and litheness that not many other monuments or manmade structures have.

More later! Hope you are all well!

nice weather for ducks

Finished my essay and my assignment! I am so slow, but I am at least done and relieved. Two less on the road of many this year. The weather has been supportive (I'm not being sarcastic!), pouring outside when I had to stay indoors and write and then breaking up into sunshine and blue skies when I went out. It's nice weather for ducks they say and I believe they're right. The neighbour and his duckpond support a very large community of ducks for the moment. Most of the little ducklings that have been born continually through the spring and summer made it into adulthood and are paddling around the fields. They're hilarious when they're all in a row, all 15 or 20 of them at a time, waddling home with their beaks in the air and in a terribly important rush. When I finally get a good shot of them I'll show you.

I've begun drawing a bit again. I've always drawn on and off since I was a child, I'd do lots and then suddenly stop. Several times I got rid of all my equipment of pencils, paints and brushes and sometimes I saved them again before they were given away. I didn't keep anything of what I drew, or created for that matter. This drawing is one of the few kept because it's part of my personal history in a way. When I was in uni feeling miserable, not wanting to become a doctor but not knowing it yet, I went to see an amazing psychotherapist.

She had as her speciality a kind of visualisation technique where I would lie down on her couch (only then - the armchairs is where we spent most of the time!) and she would guide me to relax and then give me a scenario. This time it was to picture a person, an inner best friend and ally that is only there for you and who you can tell anything. I pictured her. She can do all sorts of things (as you can see :) ), symbolising things I didn't feel I could do, stuck and trapped as I felt then. She's happy too, and open. I still talk to her quite often, she didn't really leave me since then.

That's what I loved about this therapy and this woman, it and she helped me find friends and strengths inside that I didn't know I had. She did it in a way that I felt was respectful, supportive, nurturing, honest and open. She was really there for me and that was what mattered most to me, not the talking or the going over of this and that. She was a surrogate mother, father, true friend and helper and she didn't judge me or what I said. Not to say she didn't raise a few eyebrows and interject a few 'really - are you sure about that?'s, but she didn't judge it, just pointed it out.

Anyway, I'm thinking of showing a few more of my pictures from that time because I'd like to go over them again to remember some more old friends and experiences. You're most welcome to view and read about them and I hope you don't mind me bringing up some personal things. Sometime I'll show you what I'm drawing for the moment too. Oh, I forgot to say - she, my inner friend, asked to be drawn on an envelope, I don't know why or how that came into my head, but that's what she said. I think it had something to do with movement, like an envelope isn't created to lie around and be pretty, it's useful and independent in a way. I drew her while on a train journey too - so movement indeed!

I'm going away for a while now, on some other train journeys, first to college and then to Paris to see my parents and younger brother who are there on holiday. I'll be back on Wednesday and oh I hope I can find some quirky or sweet French things to take pictures of and show you. Well, one is a given I suppose, but I don't know if it's worth it. I mean I won't even see the thing for what it is, I've seen it so many times before and there can't be that many new angles to capture a tower from, can there? I will enjoy myself in any case and boy do I need the change of scenery. Take care of yourselves until then. Have a lovely weekend!

Our Hearts Should Do This More

I sit in the streets with the homeless

My clothes stained with the wine
From the vineyards the saints tend.

Light has painted all acts
The same color

So I sit around and laugh all day
With my friends.

At night if I feel a divine loneliness
I tear the doors off Love's mansion

And wrestle God onto the floor.

He becomes so pleased with Hafiz
And says,

"Our hearts should do this more."

Hafiz

magnolia

Another of the magnolias have unfolded its petals. In the morning it was a tight bud the size of both my fists. I could smell its faint scent from several steps away. By lunchtime as I came out the door of the school I knew it had opened to bloom as I could smell it already meters away. I love the silky feel of its heavy head in my hands, dipping my nose in and breathing in the perfume. It will be gone by Thursday I should think. But what does a flower know about Thursday, there is sunshine to bask in and bees to see.

I know about Thursday, because by Saturday I have to hand in this blasted essay. Sorry about the language, but writing essays are one of my least favourite pastimes. Like pulling teeth. So, let's talk no more about it. When I am finished do you know what I will do? Finish this:

Can't show or say anymore about it for the moment as it is a gift for one of my old friends in Sweden who has had a baby. I liked her so much in school I don't know why I didn't keep in touch. I just don't generally. Don't expect people would want to stay in touch with me. But in this case, she is so worth it and I am so terribly late with replying to the lovely letter she sent me that no excuses will do. I want to make her this in any case. And perhaps she will even still talk to me?