I'm almost ready for the Hamilton Right Bank Arts Festival next weekend. Loyal readers may be wondering why on earth I am going to yet another market, when all my market experiences to date have been breakeven at best. I wonder that too, and have been to-ing and fro-ing with my committment for months.
Reasons to do it include
1. As a 'working artist' I don't have to pay a stall fee, I just have to make books all day in full view of the punters. I like making books. I have prepped four Treasure Hunts and two Time Traveller's Journals that can be finished without resorting to much adhesive or presses or other awkward steps, so I don't anticipate any difficulties.
2. I like to visit Hamilton. I get to stay with Jo and Cam and Ruby the Dog and Audrey and Socks the cats, who are all lots of fun. I get to hang out with my Best Friend Sarah. I'll visit with mum and dad, and see with my own eyes the dramatic results of the Disgusting Soup Diet as reported in weekly phone calls from ever shrinking parental units. I love the Waikato River and the parks that line it and look forward to familiar walks in beautiful surroundings.
3. Al is coming too and we are going to take the maximum time possible (5 days between cafe shifts) and make a little holiday of this trip. We are going to stop in Tauranga on the way up (to collect the new Trade Me ride-on mower) and I will meet Elizabeth and hang out with Ruby Grace. We're going to make special visits to Raglan (and maybe Pirongia) to collect some 'treasures' for the Treasure Hunt books I'll be sewing up at the Festival (the covers with local maps are already done).
4. There are lots of lovely arts festival events happening for free while we are there and I look forward to picnics in the park enjoying poetry, music and dance.
Reasons not to go all involve pessimism about not making much/enough/any money and consequential depression and continuing poverty.
So of course I'm going to go. If you are in Hamilton next Saturday 25 February, please do come along to the Piazza in the Hamilton Gardens and visit my table. If you identify yourself as a blog reader, you will receive a special 10% discount on any purchase!
Friday, February 17, 2006
Thursday, February 16, 2006
The Time Traveller's Journal
I have mentioned before that The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is my favourite book. I have just read it for the second time and found it as compelling and satisfying, although I was able to perceive some imperfections that I didn't notice in my intense emotional response to it a year ago.
Anyway, I finished it again late on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday morning I went into my studio and started making a new book. It was not on my list of Things To Do, it did not have any gestation as notes or sketches, I hadn't dreamed it or thought about it at all. I just started making it, with a vague idea of sewing some little booklets into a maze of accordian folds. I found a huge sheet of waterford watercolour paper (creamy, thick, luxurious) among the goodies I was given recently.
The book grew quickly and by the afternoon it was almost finished (I still have end papers to stick down) and only then I realised that I had made a journal for Henry, the time traveller in Niffenegger's book. It is emphatically non-linear and would be ideal for a time traveller whose experiences are not consecutive. It would also be useful for recording dreams, catching poems, starting to write another Tristram Shandy etc.
Until surfing for links to add to this post, I didn't realise that Audrey Niffenegger is herself a book artist and teaches at Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts. I wasn't surprised though, as the two main characters are a bibliophile and rare book librarian (Henry- possibly the best and most sexy male librarian character ever) and a paper making sculptor (Clare).
Anyway, I finished it again late on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday morning I went into my studio and started making a new book. It was not on my list of Things To Do, it did not have any gestation as notes or sketches, I hadn't dreamed it or thought about it at all. I just started making it, with a vague idea of sewing some little booklets into a maze of accordian folds. I found a huge sheet of waterford watercolour paper (creamy, thick, luxurious) among the goodies I was given recently.
The book grew quickly and by the afternoon it was almost finished (I still have end papers to stick down) and only then I realised that I had made a journal for Henry, the time traveller in Niffenegger's book. It is emphatically non-linear and would be ideal for a time traveller whose experiences are not consecutive. It would also be useful for recording dreams, catching poems, starting to write another Tristram Shandy etc.
Until surfing for links to add to this post, I didn't realise that Audrey Niffenegger is herself a book artist and teaches at Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts. I wasn't surprised though, as the two main characters are a bibliophile and rare book librarian (Henry- possibly the best and most sexy male librarian character ever) and a paper making sculptor (Clare).
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Introducing Ziggy!
While not a particularly flattering photo, this does represent a typical encounter with Ziggy, one of the two dogs who live part-time at Te Horo. Despite her advanced years (note the elegantly greying muzzle) she never misses an opportunity to come and say hello with great enthusiasm. She sings, she licks, she wags, she runs in circles like a crazy thing. She also chases and catches rabbits and likes to have bits of rabbit strewn across the lawn to gnaw on later. 
I am not a 'dog person', but Ziggy has won me over with her relentless affection for me. It helps that she is an outside dog, although if the back door is open but no humans are about she'll come tiptapping up the hall to find the lazy slugabeds and try and persuade us to come out and play. She doesn't seem to realise that when she has rabbit-breath the invitation is much less appealing.
I am not a 'dog person', but Ziggy has won me over with her relentless affection for me. It helps that she is an outside dog, although if the back door is open but no humans are about she'll come tiptapping up the hall to find the lazy slugabeds and try and persuade us to come out and play. She doesn't seem to realise that when she has rabbit-breath the invitation is much less appealing.
Friday, February 10, 2006
A tisket, a tacket, a basket of eggs
I'm flitting between book projects a bit madly at the moment. It's useful to have several on the go as whenever I get stuck on one, I just switch over to something else for a different kind of challenge. Today's energy is being divided between a project involving my blue handmade paper and blown blue eggs and a tacket bound book.
According to Shereen LaPlantz, tacket binding is a very ancient binding technique. The oldest intact bound books found in the world were tacketed books from 3rd and 4th centuries Egypt. I've been wanting a good way to bind codex style books and so far this is my favourite of the bindings I have tried being pretty easy, pretty looking and having an illustrious history that complements the content of the books I working on.
According to Shereen LaPlantz, tacket binding is a very ancient binding technique. The oldest intact bound books found in the world were tacketed books from 3rd and 4th centuries Egypt. I've been wanting a good way to bind codex style books and so far this is my favourite of the bindings I have tried being pretty easy, pretty looking and having an illustrious history that complements the content of the books I working on.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Paper making
My new skill for this week is learning to make paper. Here is a photo of the results of my first effort. I am teaching myself from a how-to book, and an old paper making kit that someone gave my daughter when she was little. Naturally my goal is to produce suffient quantities and quality of incredibly amazing paper to make my own books, but I expect it will take me quite some practice. Meanwhile, I've got some not too lumpy, not too thick, rather pretty, blue note paper to show for my first efforts. (And so proud am I of this effort that I actually wrote two letters on it to send snail mail when I really could have just sent emails as usual!)To make my note paper, I soaked all the non-glossy scrap paper I could find, but I wasn't sufficiently robust in excluding the presence of ink to avoid creating pulp the colour of dust bunnies. Fortunately my instruction book was correct when it suggested that the easiest way to make coloured paper is with coloured napkins. I put a couple of dark blue ones in the food processor and voila! Paper the colour of faded indigo with flecks of white and red.
How-to make paper guides consistently describe the desired consistency of the pulp as 'thin porridge'. Porridge is such an individual thing and it seems my porridge preferences are thicker than most paper makers, as my idea of 'thin porridge' was stodgey enough to make cardboard. However, once I thinned it to what I consider the consistency of cloudy broth, then my sheets started coming out like paper.
It was immensely satisfying to progress from the lumpy misshapen cardboard of my first few sheets to the relatively thin, smooth, square papers of an hour later. I look forward to many happy hours of messy water play (this is definitely an outside activity) as I continue to refine my technique and understanding of the process.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Treasure VI
Inside Treasure Hunt VI: on the left a selection of drift-twigs from Otaki Beach, on the right tiny pumice pebbles and sea glass from Paekakariki Beach and a creamy ridged shell from Pekapeka. Note the shiny shiny vinyl, it is quite luscious: a bit sticky so that you have to work a little to open the pages which come apart with a noise that reminds me of unpeeling sweaty, sandy, bare legs from a hot vinyl car seat on childhood summer holidays...
New Treasures!
Remember the Treasure Hunt series I started last Spring? Well, there's more! I've added four new books, each a unique collection of 'treasures' sewn into a little book with map covers which more or less show where the contents were found. There are two from my South Island trip (Dunedin and Kaikoura maps) and two from the Kapiti Coast (Paekakariki and Kapiti Island on the front covers).The treasures are pretty shells, interesting drift-twigs, tiny round pebbles or pumice, sea glass and such like. The kind of treasures that you find in your jacket pocket weeks or months after the beach holiday and they bring back memories of aimless saunters. The kind of treasures that children insist on bringing home and accumulating in shoeboxes.
These kinds of treasures often look most irresistable when wet, a quality I have tried to capture by sewing them into shiny clear vinyl pouches. These books are small enough to fit in your palm... or to send to someone surviving a Northern Hemisphere winter who needs a taste of New Zealand summer right now.
They are only $30 (inc p&p in NZ). Email me if you want one.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Recovery and Moses
The agony is over. I put my back out at work on Sunday, lifting heavy racks of dishes in and out of the sterilizer. Three days of aches and pains followed but finally this afternoon I seem to have come right. Was it the lavender oil baths, the lovely backrubs with various ointments (thanks Al!), the careful stretches and excercises twice a day, my careful posture whether sitting, standing or lying with pillows under my knees, continuing to work but asking my workmates to do most of my bending and lifting tasks for me (thanks Allie and Tina!), or just the passage of time? Who knows, but I am hugely relieved to be pain-free and somewhat flexible again. I have too much I want to do and can't be bothered slowing down right now.
On my way home from the cafe tonight I impulsived picked up a hitchiker, even though I was only travelling 7 kms. His name was Moses (which, to me, made it worthwhile just to have shaken his hand) and he was travelling home to Wanganui from a long weekend celebrating Fiji's Sevens Rugby win. I don't usually have anything to contribute to conversations about rugby, but I happened to have watched the finals of the Sevens so I could be knowledgably excited about Fiji's thrillingly close victory over South Africa. Moses told me about his experience of those final minutes of the match at least three times in the five minutes we spent together. It is a privilege to share someone's joy like that.
On my way home from the cafe tonight I impulsived picked up a hitchiker, even though I was only travelling 7 kms. His name was Moses (which, to me, made it worthwhile just to have shaken his hand) and he was travelling home to Wanganui from a long weekend celebrating Fiji's Sevens Rugby win. I don't usually have anything to contribute to conversations about rugby, but I happened to have watched the finals of the Sevens so I could be knowledgably excited about Fiji's thrillingly close victory over South Africa. Moses told me about his experience of those final minutes of the match at least three times in the five minutes we spent together. It is a privilege to share someone's joy like that.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Growth
A birdseye view of the vege garden on 4 February 2006. The Chinese Mini Corn on the left is anything but mini, towering over the whole scene. In the middle, at the back, are huge tripods of beans surrounded by insanely fecund zuccini. Compare to the photo taken 18 December 2005 and one from late November.Contrary to the impression this blog might be giving lately, I am actually engaged in many book related activities, I'm just not quite ready to post on them yet. But watch this space, coming soon will be photos of new Treasure Hunt books (3 finished, 3 on the go), an exciting new addition to my studio and much, much more...
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Today's harvest
What we are eating off of our land today
(this post is dedicated to the blog called Listmakers)
(this post is dedicated to the blog called Listmakers)
- scarlet runner beans
- peas
- snow peas
- zuccini
- garlic
- cauliflower
- brocolli
- tomatoes
- long green capsicums
- potatoes
- raspberries
- basil
- coriander
- rocket
- strawberry spinach
- various lettuces
- parsley
- chives
- thyme
- and eggs from the chickens
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Happy Hens
Here are four of the five chickens that roam freely around Te Horo. The missing chick is Blacky who is broody at the moment and is most unwilling to leave the coop where she is lovingly nesting four plastic eggs. The chicks in the picture are imaginatively called (from the top) Bluey (who lays blue eggs), Browny (who lays brown eggs) and Speckledy and Speckledy (who, you guessed it, lay speckled eggs). Here you can see them engaged in one of their most favourite activities: Messing Up The Tidy Garden. On this particular day Al and Jessica had mulched the long, heavily laden row of passionfruit with fresh pea straw. By the time they persuaded me to come out and admire their work, the chooks had done their very best to scatter the straw across the grass as you can see.Usually we find the chickens have broken through the fence around the vegetable garden and are clawing up the seedlings, munching at the silverbeet and generally causing mayhem. They are also quite thrilled whenever I plant flowers by the winery steps. It's a bit pointless really for me to keep trying since they remember, even better than I do, that only a few months ago that bed was, for a couple of glorious weeks, a compost pit to which thrilling treats were added daily. Their nostalgia for those heady days of rotting food to scratch through are rewarded all too well by masses of worms today.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Me and my sun oven
The worst thing about working in the cafe kitchen is the heat. With one oven on all day and sometimes two or three stove top elements and a couple of toasters as well, the place heats up fast. In the heat of the summer the kitchen becomes very uncomfortable to work in. At home I have a way to harness the heat of the sun for cooking without heating up our kitchen. Here I am gettting ready to serve up a yummy homegrown vege meal cooked entirely by passive solar power.
My sun oven was manufactured in South Africa but they are (apparently) pretty easy to make from a cardboard box, some aluminium foil, glass or perspex and black paint. The sun's rays are concentrated by a cunning combination of angles, reflection and absorbtion to enable most kinds of food to be coooked. It is a relatively slow, moist heat and according to the instructions it is impossible to burn food in a sun oven. In my experience, however, it is possible to overcook it to a colourless, tasteless mush! I have read about people baking bread in them but they tend to be writing from Africa or Arizona or other places where the sun's rays blast hard almost all the time. Even with the hole in the ozone, and global warming, so far my NZ environments have proved too cloudy too often to rely on a baking heat hot heat .
That could change, however. Yesterday, before I left for work, I positioned the sun oven for maximum rays and left a feijoa crumble in it. By the time I got home (after a swim in the sea to cool off after a day in the cafe kitchen) the feijoa had boiled over and made a sticky mess on the floor of the sun oven. (Worst of all, removing the sticky mess took up quite a bit of the black paint which is essential for holding heat, but I can easily repaint it.) Fortunately the crumble itself was deliciously caramelised. Anyway, it seems possible that Te Horo's dry hot summer may enable me to expand my sun oven repetoire...
Monday, January 30, 2006
Hand Me Down Heaven
Eleanor's photographer friend moved back to the USA and gave her a big pile of mat board and paper. Eleanor didn't want it for herself so offered it to me. I brought it home and sorted through, with oohs of delight alternating with snorts of despair. Overall I estimate the package breaks down as:
20% exquisite and wonderful (full sheets of undamaged mat board and paper that I would buy for myself)
20% pretty good (useful items of unexceptional quality)
50% salvagable (a bit of trimming will yield ok-to-very-good stuff)
10% rubbish (best used for compost!).
All together it's wonderful haul, a great score, a generous gift... thank you Eleanor! (PS Check out Eleanor's blog).
20% exquisite and wonderful (full sheets of undamaged mat board and paper that I would buy for myself)
20% pretty good (useful items of unexceptional quality)
50% salvagable (a bit of trimming will yield ok-to-very-good stuff)
10% rubbish (best used for compost!).
All together it's wonderful haul, a great score, a generous gift... thank you Eleanor! (PS Check out Eleanor's blog).
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Mazel Tov Betty
My friend Betty had her Bat Mitzvah yesterday. Usually this takes place around one's 13th birthday, but like me, Betty didn't get to have a Bat Mitzvah when she was young. So Betty timed her Bat Mitzvah with her 50th birthday. It seems like such a good idea that I'm probably going to wait another decade before I do mine.
Betty's Bat Mitzvah was especially moving for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Betty herself is not a person who has been comfortable taking centre stage. Yesterday she was described as the archetypal unsung hero of our congregation. For all the years I've been attending shul Betty has been the chief shamash, making sure that the chairs are arranged right, the siddur or prayer books are out, the wine is poured and the challah is warm. But beyond the housekeeping, Betty has also been a assiduous student of Talmud and Torah. We started learning Hebrew at about the same time but while I dropped out within a year (such a short attention span!) Betty kept plugging away. I witnessed the outcome of all her study yesterday as she helped to lead the service, read from the Torah scroll in excellent Hebrew and gave a thoughtful drash.
Another reason why I found her Bat Mitzvah particularly moving was because of the many friends and family to came along to suppport her. Many people came from 'Webb Street' (the Orthodox synagogue) to honour Betty with their first visit to us as 'Ghuznee Street' (the Progressive synagogue). This scale of interdenominational visiting is very rare, and very special. Betty's warm hearted nature, committed study, courage take her life in new directions and wonderful sense of humour brings people together. Betty, you are a true mensch!
Betty's Bat Mitzvah was especially moving for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Betty herself is not a person who has been comfortable taking centre stage. Yesterday she was described as the archetypal unsung hero of our congregation. For all the years I've been attending shul Betty has been the chief shamash, making sure that the chairs are arranged right, the siddur or prayer books are out, the wine is poured and the challah is warm. But beyond the housekeeping, Betty has also been a assiduous student of Talmud and Torah. We started learning Hebrew at about the same time but while I dropped out within a year (such a short attention span!) Betty kept plugging away. I witnessed the outcome of all her study yesterday as she helped to lead the service, read from the Torah scroll in excellent Hebrew and gave a thoughtful drash.
Another reason why I found her Bat Mitzvah particularly moving was because of the many friends and family to came along to suppport her. Many people came from 'Webb Street' (the Orthodox synagogue) to honour Betty with their first visit to us as 'Ghuznee Street' (the Progressive synagogue). This scale of interdenominational visiting is very rare, and very special. Betty's warm hearted nature, committed study, courage take her life in new directions and wonderful sense of humour brings people together. Betty, you are a true mensch!
Thursday, January 26, 2006
The Yoga Report
My search for the right yoga teacher is sure leading me into some interesting environments. For those who haven't been following the yoga thread that is a minor part of this blog, here's the back story. When I lived in Northland I discovered a wonderful yoga teacher at the Yoga Space in Whangarei. I organised my weekly trips to town around her classes and worked steadily at improving my yoga under her tutelage. One of the hardest things about moving south was leaving that behind, and I have been searching for an adequate substitute ever since.
My first foray into the local yoga scene was Yoga for Life, a heavily advertised franchise offered at Raumati Primary School, not too far from where I had a studio in Paekakariki for a while. Everything about that class bothered me (the music, the incense, the teacher's lack of attention to students, the cold smelly hall...) and there was little that I recognised as the robust Iyengar yoga I had developed a passion for. Fortunately, that very evening Ngaere gave me a pretty good yoga CD I could follow at home, and so I've been practicing regularly while I continued my search for a teacher.
Some time later I tried another Raumati yoga class, this time in the basement of someone's seaside home. The atmosphere was nicer (sea views), but once again the class was tainted with new age muzak, the content was yoga-lite and the teacher and I just didn't hit it off. After that I stalled for a while, unable to find any other yoga happening on the Kapiti Coast. So off I went into the big city to check out one of the many yoga offerings a urban population can support.
A trip to Wellington involves driving for an hour each way, about $25 worth of petrol, and often a hefty sum for parking, so I didn't want to risk another yoga-lite debacle. I did some research and tracked down a real Iyengar school. Upstairs on Cuba Street, the 5.15pm class was huge, with two young, muscley, male teachers and the only background music wafted up from the buskers on the street below. It seemed promising, but the other first-timer walked out in the first 15 minutes due to the fascist teaching style which demanded all participants perform the full poses perfectly, without props and at length, drawing attention to any failure to conform. I began to wonder if I had wrongly read the timetable and found myself in an advanced rather than beginner's class. I didn't let the teachers bully me too much and hung in 'til the end of the class, trying to keep up without injuring myself. Afterwards, as I paid an exhorbitant class fee, the teacher confirmed that it has been a beginner's class, and sneered at my gentle comparison of it to the robust yet compassionate teaching I had found in Whangarei.
It took quite a while to recover from the aches and pains of hard-core yoga and I began to understand the appeal of yoga-lite if that was going to be the best local alternative. However, my search had to continue to find a teacher I at least liked! I returned from the South Island with two local yoga leads to follow, and tried the first of those today.
Does anyone else remember the Amirita Cook Book (hand drawn, vegetarian, the NZ answer to Moosewood?) that was in every flat kitchen in the 1980s? Well I have returned to the source and talk about brown rice and tofu! The Lotus Centre is where the Amirita Cook Book sprang from and it probably hasn't changed much in the 20 years since. It's in a big sprawling villa painted purple and yellow, hidden behind masses of trees in a Paraparaumu suburb. The teacher is one of those limber, glowing 70 year olds who makes you believe in the power of healthy living. I was a little distracted by the cream and purple velour warm up suit he was wearing, and the paint-by-numbers art on the wall, but he was knowledgable and sincere and funny and the class is CHEAP! Unfortunately it's not Iyengar yoga, and it was pretty much on the lite end of the spectrum even though it wasn't for beginners. It was a comfortable environment and wouldn't be a total waste of money, but I do have one more lead to follow. Stay tuned for the saga of Saarsha House and kundalini yoga coming your way soon, I hope.
My first foray into the local yoga scene was Yoga for Life, a heavily advertised franchise offered at Raumati Primary School, not too far from where I had a studio in Paekakariki for a while. Everything about that class bothered me (the music, the incense, the teacher's lack of attention to students, the cold smelly hall...) and there was little that I recognised as the robust Iyengar yoga I had developed a passion for. Fortunately, that very evening Ngaere gave me a pretty good yoga CD I could follow at home, and so I've been practicing regularly while I continued my search for a teacher.
Some time later I tried another Raumati yoga class, this time in the basement of someone's seaside home. The atmosphere was nicer (sea views), but once again the class was tainted with new age muzak, the content was yoga-lite and the teacher and I just didn't hit it off. After that I stalled for a while, unable to find any other yoga happening on the Kapiti Coast. So off I went into the big city to check out one of the many yoga offerings a urban population can support.
A trip to Wellington involves driving for an hour each way, about $25 worth of petrol, and often a hefty sum for parking, so I didn't want to risk another yoga-lite debacle. I did some research and tracked down a real Iyengar school. Upstairs on Cuba Street, the 5.15pm class was huge, with two young, muscley, male teachers and the only background music wafted up from the buskers on the street below. It seemed promising, but the other first-timer walked out in the first 15 minutes due to the fascist teaching style which demanded all participants perform the full poses perfectly, without props and at length, drawing attention to any failure to conform. I began to wonder if I had wrongly read the timetable and found myself in an advanced rather than beginner's class. I didn't let the teachers bully me too much and hung in 'til the end of the class, trying to keep up without injuring myself. Afterwards, as I paid an exhorbitant class fee, the teacher confirmed that it has been a beginner's class, and sneered at my gentle comparison of it to the robust yet compassionate teaching I had found in Whangarei.
It took quite a while to recover from the aches and pains of hard-core yoga and I began to understand the appeal of yoga-lite if that was going to be the best local alternative. However, my search had to continue to find a teacher I at least liked! I returned from the South Island with two local yoga leads to follow, and tried the first of those today.
Does anyone else remember the Amirita Cook Book (hand drawn, vegetarian, the NZ answer to Moosewood?) that was in every flat kitchen in the 1980s? Well I have returned to the source and talk about brown rice and tofu! The Lotus Centre is where the Amirita Cook Book sprang from and it probably hasn't changed much in the 20 years since. It's in a big sprawling villa painted purple and yellow, hidden behind masses of trees in a Paraparaumu suburb. The teacher is one of those limber, glowing 70 year olds who makes you believe in the power of healthy living. I was a little distracted by the cream and purple velour warm up suit he was wearing, and the paint-by-numbers art on the wall, but he was knowledgable and sincere and funny and the class is CHEAP! Unfortunately it's not Iyengar yoga, and it was pretty much on the lite end of the spectrum even though it wasn't for beginners. It was a comfortable environment and wouldn't be a total waste of money, but I do have one more lead to follow. Stay tuned for the saga of Saarsha House and kundalini yoga coming your way soon, I hope.
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