Bookshelf

My reading log notebook (on the left) is full. I like to keep a written record of my reading, although I have a digital one on goodreads. For my next log, I’ve chosen the one in the middle which I bought last year at Mrs Blackwell’s Village Bookshop in Greytown. When that’s full (it’s small, it won’t take long) I’ll move on to the one with the embroidered cover from Scorpio Books. Your suspicion that I have a thing for all things book would be justified.

I’ve read eight books in the last month (August). My favourites were Be Brave, The Life of a Pacific Correspondent by Barbara Dreaver, and Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. Both of these are memoirs. Another notable book I read was Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-Knowing by Ann Morgan who encourages the followers of her blog to read books in translation to widen our understanding of the world.

In her latest post, she writes that in this kind of reading:

… I am a guest in someone else’s space, given the opportunity to see how things are done elsewhere, without any attempt to mediate or dilute them for my perceived taste. This can be challenging, particularly if you are used to being centred in the books you read, but it is also a great privilege: a welcome disruption to the habits that surround us and a reminder that customs that can often seem mandatory are just choices. 

Her recommendations have opened up new worlds to me, but so too have books written originally in English. Two of these I have read on the cusp of the month of August: The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich, which I finished at the end of July, and The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett which I finished just after midnight last night. Another is a biography: Fulvia: The Woman who Broke all the Rules in Ancient Rome by Jane Draycott. Fluvia, born in 80 BCE, has been mis-represented in history, according to the author who sets out to make corrections to the record. In the process, she educates the reader about the lives of Roman women and the mine-field that was politics of the time. It was somewhat distressing to find parallels with today.

In between these books, I have kept up a pretty steady stream of so-called cosy crime for sheer pleasure and, perhaps, for restoring my equilibrium (or complacency?). I identified with this comment about the genre by a friend who often recommends good cosy crime books: “Reading this was like a cat soaking in warmth in a puddle of sunlight”.

What I learned

By the end of the day (yesterday) I had learned a few things from my ‘home schooling’. While I missed the exercise of getting to class and the social interactions, I enjoyed the quiet, the space and, especially, not having to pack up after two hours. I was able to concentrate and consider how the eye sees. I spoilt the watering can sketch with too much detail*, but was pleased with the light, shadow and texture of the copper pot. The jug (sideways) was … ho hum. Often when I take photos I am disappointed with the result, which makes me aware of how the eye sees differently from the camera. A sketch or painting, on the other hand, can focus on what the eye – and even the mind – sees.

A day of painting has sharpened my perception of things around me: what pleases me about objects in the house, and the forms and shadows in the garden. It has increased my appreciation of the work of artists – how they fill the frame and use light and shape, and what they are seeing.

Ornaments by Frances Hodgkins, 1942. Gouache on paper, 565 x 384 mm. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

‘Ornaments’ by Frances Hodgkins is very busy. The domestic objects on the windowsill begin to merge with the wilder outdoors, so that it becomes not just a painting you look at but a conversation inside your head. I know from her earlier work that she is capable of realistic and perfectly proportioned work with correct perspective. That she chooses not to worry about that so much in her later paintings gives a clearer idea of what she is seeing.

I don’t aspire to be Frances Hodgkins (well, maybe I do!) but she is often in the back of my mind when I sketch and paint. I can learn from her.

*This brought back a sharp memory from high school art class where I painted and painted so much on one painting that to me it looked drowned and oppressive. The art teacher (Valerie Heinz, known for her own work) was very nice about it, but I was deeply disappointed. It didn’t match what I saw in my head.

Home school

Lots of ‘excuses’ for not making it to watercolour class this morning. It was cold. The deck was treacherously slippery with frost over rain. Would the pavements be slippery too if I walked or biked to class? I looked at the clothes I had put out ready to wear and instead reached for my warm track pants and woolly jumper. Half an hour before class was due to start I phoned in my apology. Then I sat down at my desk with the sun at my back and began the project I’d been planning for class: working with watercolour pencils, using photos I’d taken previously.

I unpacked my bag
got ready to start
and was absorbed by the task
with a photo for inspiration

A birthday card I made in the weekend makes me smile and gives me a bit more confidence in my creativity.

A cat card and cat book for a person who loves his cat
Inside
The back

Note: The extra ‘R’ in birthday is deliberate. It’s hard to see in the photo, but some letters are in a different colour to spell out the recipient’s name for which I needed an extra ‘R’.

Wagging school

Having read an article about truancy in The Press this morning, here I am not going to my 10 o’clock watercolour class. My reasons aren’t as tragic as those of students who don’t go to school, just a feeling that I’ve made a mistake enrolling in this class – although at least the two sessions I have been to so far suggest that it isn’t working for me. (Nothing to do with the very helpful and expert tutor.)

Last night I packed my bag and took some photos to use in today’s class on monochromatic tonal value scale and 3D modelling which I enjoyed last time I did the course three years ago. I was too sluggish to get through this morning’s chores (including two loads of Mum’s washing which is a task fixed to a Monday, somehow) and get there on time, even though I managed it last week.

My 2023 efforts
My 2023 3D Modelling
Lemons for 3D Modelling today
Jug for 3D Modelling today
Copper pots for today’s class – nice shadows
Kitchen scales – perhaps too ambitious for today’s class

My desk is clear of the watercolour gear I’ve packed in my bag, and there is the colouring-in book I haven’t looked at for ages. I feel a little frisson of delight looking at what I’ve completed this year, and there is one partly done. Perhaps that will be my artistic outlet! A bit like my retreats into cosy crime instead of those ‘serious’ books which too often (but not always) are put aside. (Speaking of which, in the process of weeding books from my shelves yesterday, I re-discovered a book about the Anglo-Saxons and have it open on my desk ready to read.)

Writing this post has been like giving myself a ‘talking to’. Time to persevere with the harder options, perhaps?

Hail, sleet and snow to low levels

Hail on the deck this morning

Hail is bouncing off the roof next door. Occasionally, puffy snowflakes fall, while the southwest wind blows rain onto the window. The Port Hills are obscured behind grey cloud; it will be snowing up there. Now and again, the sun comes out. I’ve replenished the bird feeders. It’s 1.6 degrees outside.

Yesterday I biked home from watercolour class against a warm nor-west wind and the washing on the line was crisp and dry by early afternoon. Today, Mum and Felix are in their armchairs by the fire.

Heritage wool repair

This old woollen blanket of Mum’s has been in a cupboard for years. It’s the sort of blanket people used to give as a wedding present and it could well date back to the 1950s when woollen mills were thriving up and down the country. Mum has two of the orange and cream ones as under-blankets and a blue-green one under her duvet. There is a cream one with sage green blanket stitch, and two grey ‘army’ blankets with red blanket stitch still in various cupboards. I brought out two aircell blankets to use as throws. I can remember from my childhood that these were popular as children’s blankets as they were warm while letting air circulate.

Double blanket from Glenray Woollen Mill Napier
Two darns
Inside view of a darn
Aircell blanket from Onehunga Woollen Mill

They would all have been stored away somewhere, but I put them to use, preferring wool, particularly of such good quality, to anything else. When I discovered this cream, blue and lemon blanket last week I decided it needed some attention. This afternoon, I used embroidery thread to darn the moth holes and to repair the unravelling blanket stitch. A tutorial on YouTube gave an easy lesson on how to do that! I darned on the inside so that the mend appears flat from the outside of the blanket. The blanket is now in the washing machine undergoing a wool wash.

Many of the woollen mills have closed, but it’s great to see a resurgence in using wool. The Napier Woollen Mill’s machinery was bought by Wild Earth Yarns Ltd and shipped to Christchurch. I just looked them up and found they have a retail shop in Addington.

You often find the old blankets in markets, repurposed as clothing or cushions or bags. A variety of the patterns are used in a cushion we bought in Wānaka several years ago. Otherwise, they are found in museums – or, in our case, put to good use!

Wānaka cushion
Kaiapoi blankets in the Kaiapoi Museum

Watercolour (reprised, but not remastered)

Perhaps I should have enrolled in the creative writing course instead of repeating the Introduction to Watercolour Painting. I had a disappointing start last Monday, having somehow forgotten the disappointing end to the course I did in 2023. Note to self: don’t look at what other people have achieved. Then I had the brainwave of using poetry on card-sized illustrations, putting a wash on each piece first. I made a start today. So far, still disappointing – although it was a restful, meditative thing to do on a Saturday afternoon.

The background wash is easy enough
They’re cows, okay?
Should have left that last line off

There is a connection missing between what I visualise and what appears on the paper. Those yellow blotches are meant to be thistledown, and those black splodges are meant to be cows going in for milking in the rain. They look more like wildebeasts or perhaps elephants. And was I thinking of Purple Rain? I need another brainwave if I’m to cope with the remaining five classes.

This or this … or this?

Ready for the oven

Indecisive about which recipe to use (one online, two from friends) I did a combination of the three. Lemon drizzle cake is always a popular choice, and it had to be large, light and moist with ten of us to feed for dessert at a family dinner. Along with other ingredients, I chose to use three eggs, oil and yoghurt, four lemons from my tree (two in the cake, two in the drizzle topping) and cut back on the sugar. Online sources gave differing amounts of baking powder to use with plain flour when self-raising flour is specified in a recipe – so I just made a guess, with a bit more for luck.

Making the drizzle
More restraint with the decoration might have been advisable!

A scoop of vanilla bean icecream completed each serving, and I can report that it was a success.