Fixie's Shelf

Impressions of Rome

Our first impression of Rome when we arrived was the shoes. My god, the SHOES here are something else altogether. No matter how casually a woman is dressed, she'll be wearing something incredible on her feet. Think purple patent leather strappy sandals with pearl studs all over them, or 6 inch cork heels with gold lame around the toes. If it doesn't shimmer, it doesn't count. Even sneakers are decorated with metallic purple trim if they aren't already gold, bronze or pearl in colour. Only the men and the lesbians wear sensible shoes. As you can tell, we are in the latter category. 

I can't tell you how much relief I felt when we were picked up in Sora by an Austrian girl called Anna, to be taken to the farm we stayed on. She was wearing desert boots and dirty shorts. I knew we'd fit in there afterall. She told me later that when the guy who runs the farm, Antonello, goes to town without wearing shoes, the people in the town are so shocked they offer to BUY him some shoes! This came out when Paula made the terrible faux pas of popping out to get some milk in her bare feet, and was met with stares of horror. 

Making cheese the traditional way...

In Melbourne I've tried making cheese a few times, with rather mixed results.  I've looked up plenty about the science of cheese making and most of the info I can find involves expensive equipment, a dedicated dairy-room, sterilisation of everything in sight... and so on.  I've always known that people used to make cheese in a simpler environment, think of the grandfather in Heidi, by Joanna Spyri.  But how to access that information?

We got up early in the morning to go for a walk up the mountain to see the shepard milk his goats and make cheese with it.  He let the goats out to wander up the mountains, and at the end of the day rounds them up with the help of his sheep-dogs.  

His operation was very simple, consisting of a pen in which the goats were held, caulron on a hotplate next to the pen, with a metal trough tilted to drain the whey into a plastic basin, and a few plastic cheese baskets and utensils. 

 He ages his cheeses and makes rennet from the stomach of his sheep in this grotty little hut:

As you can see, not much sterilisation is involved.  He checks the temperature of the milk with his hands, pours in some rennet-water, pops off to sweep the goat manure while he waits for the milk to set (about 15 minutes), then gives his hands a quick rinse (I didn't see any soap) and plunges them back into the milk to gather together the curds.

He piles the curds onto the trough, divides them among the cheese baskets, and presses out the whey with his hands.  No need for the $500 cheese press I was advised to purchase.

Le Mogli - a permaculture farm in Italy

A 15 minute walk from the farm we are staying on, is another farm-in-the-making, Le Mogli, where an Austrian guy called Guenther, who I am guessing is in his early 20s, lives and works in a 300 year old stone ruin.  Bit by bit he's fixing it up, sleeping on the roof in the meantime, and he's experimenting with permaculture gardens, building clay pizza ovens, and getting to know the wild herbs and vegetables in the surrounding forest.  I have never seen anything as beautiful as that forest, where you can walk along and pick wild asparagus to munch on, and every time I ask Guenther what this plant is, he seems to have an answer.  'That's plantane, a medicinal herb used to make cough syrup,' he tells me.

The day was magical not just because of Guenther's amazing stories and tour of the farm, but because of the people.  I had a long and involved chat with a traveller called Volcan, who is recovering from a nasty parasite he ingested in Columbia, resulting in 13 days in hospital in Rome.  The poor guy didn't have any travel insurance, but happily he didn't have to pay thanks to public health care.  We covered all aspects of nutrition, one of my favourite topics, especially for how he should rebuild his health.  We also covered about a thousand other topics which held me gripped for hours, and this is a big deal for me as without sign language I don't really expect to get much more than a superficial conversation in here and there when I'm travelling.

Jesse too found a soul-mate, a 20 or so year old called Glen who has 7 brothers and sisters.  I tell people I have 7 brothers and sisters, and that there are 8 of us altogether.  Glen, it turns out, has 7 brothers AND 7 sisters!  He is number 3, which could explain why he was so good with kids.  He took Jesse off into the bush and made him a bow & arrow out of sticks and vines, and a tube of bamboo slung over his shoulder where he stored them.  Jesse felt like a warrior and led us all home through the forest at the end of the day.  He told me when he's grown up he's going to go and live with Glen.  Until now he's been adament he'll live with Paula and me his whole life.

Above is a snapshot of the house Guenther lives in.  You can see Guenther on the left, working on the pizza in the wood fired oven, and Glenn standing up on the right with a bandana over his head.

This is a snap of another abandoned ruin near by, built 300 years ago.  You can buy ruins like this for just 12,000 euro, which got me fantasising, I tell you... maybe I'll come and live here with Jesse and Glen!

Italy Farm

We are staying on Italy Farm, which on its website promises to be a self-sufficient organic farm in the mountains in Italy, between Rome and Naples.  It's a gorgeous family run place, run by a guy called Antonio, who somehow managed to convince his parents to open the farm for guests.  Anyway, the farm itself was the most exquisite place. It's a little family run place, with the mama, Maria who cooks, the Papa, Guiseppe who does the farm work, and a bunch of volunteers who work very hard in exchange for food, bed and farm knowledge. 

They raise rabbits for meat (I rather squeamishly watched Guiseppe kill and skin rabbits and chooks for dinner... wondering if I could ever be brave enough to do the same), chooks for eggs and meat, olives which they press at the community press, grapes for their own homemade wine (yum! even I liked it!), and they have 2 enormous vegie patches. There were also goats and donkeys. My favourite thing was to follow Guiseppe around - he was the sweetest little man who spoke no English but with the help of mime we were able to communicate very well. He worked slowly and happily, singing as he drove the tractor or picked beans. In every corner of the farm he has a stash of homemade vino, which he drinks like water. It could explain the singing. Either way, he was a happy, sweet friendly drunk, and I have to say he was very respectful and efficient when it came to killing the rabbits and chooks. Jesse and Paula went for some very long tractor rides with him which was a real highlight of Jesse's time at the farm. 

Jesse asked if we could go horseriding, which we did. I tell you, it was nothing like horseriding in Australia, where beginners are given very passive slow old horses. These horses were as frisky, naughty as anything and there certainly weren't any helmets in sight. Jesse had his moments on his own horse, which were rather terrifying, as it got all tangled up in ropes and bridles from another horse, but he hung on and all was fine in the end. We went through fields of blackberries and got nicely scratched, we saw ruins and very authentic old Italian women with a stick and her goats - it was straight out of a storybook. The big excitement came when my horse suddenly decided to gallop. I thought I was going to fall off. My hat flew off and I hung on for dear life. Finally managed to stop the horse without panicking TOO much... it was all very exciting and thrilling, and we were rather relieved not to have sustained any nasty injuries in the process. 

Every day here is filled with incredible experiences such as this and I feel I have learnt so much which I'll make use of when we get home. The only drawback to staying on the farm was the food. Unfortunately Maria is kind of stingy in her approach to serving guests, and frankly not a very good cook. Breakfast consists of stale white bread, coffee, and packaged jam (she only served homemade jam once). Not even butter. Lunch, had we ordered it, would have been more of the stale white bread with a minute amount of filling. Dinner, except for the night that Jesse, Paula and I took a pasta-making class with Maria, was packaged pasta with some kind of vegie-free sauce, followed by a rather stingy portion of vegetables. Basically it comes down to white flour as the bulk of every meal, which has been somewhat horrifying for all of us, as we hardly eat any white flour foods at home. My body has gone into shock. I've found ways around eating white flour - we convince Maria to make us some eggs at breakfast, at lunch we'd eat a 
salad with tuna, and at dinner eat whatever Maria served us. I find myself longing for protein, for actual sustenance and nourishing food. Even in Rome before and after we went to the farm, we couldn't find good food. I thought Italy was supposed to be the home of magnificent pasta! All we can find is packaged food served cold and unappetising. 

Breakfast in Korea

 

We had grand plans for our stopover in Korea, that we were going to head off to this seafood market in the morning.  We didn't realise that the airport is on an island, and the only things on the island are the airport and a very fancy hotel.  It would have been over an hour's travel to get to the market, and we didn't think we could risk it given the possibility of getting lost and hence missing our plane.

Instead we ate in the hotel, and discovered a wonderful breakfast that we'll make at home.  Already one of my dreams for the trip coming true.

Do you like the dress in the picture above?  I tore it from some Korean text on a map.  Don't get too excited.  The English translation of the text is along the lines of "This map was brought to you by the fabulous organisation of blah blah which is highly accredited blah blah."  I was very pleased with my improvisation of the dress given that I had no scissors - no plane travel with a useful instrument.

And speaking of plane travel I almost went beserk trying to work out how to bring a fermented drink when you're only allowed a few 100ml containers on the plane.  Argh.

Eating on the plane

 

We flew Korean Airlines and I was absolutely thrilled to eat my first Korean meal on the plane.  I have lived on Kimchi for 2 years now without ever actually eating an authentic Korean meal.  This meal is bi bim bap - you put some rice on top, add some hot chilli paste (yummy and sweet), and stir it all into a single dish and eat.  YUM.

We're off to Europe!

 

We headed off to the airport at 4am, flying to Rome via Korea, so we can sneak in a 3 week holiday/exploration of Europe before our shows in France.  I left so full of excitement, dreaming about what I want to get from this trip:

I want to learn to make cheese in Italy.

I want to see a self-sufficient organic farm in action.

I want to learn some French, Italian and Korean meals that I can make at home and add to our family's food culture.

I want to walk in a mediaeval village and feel the essence of times past.

I want to do great shows at the festival Clin d'Oeill.

I want to learn to draw better.  My commitment for this trip is to keep a visual illustrated journal.  What you see here is my first page... stay tuned for more.

We are going to meet Sergio again in Italy - he is the man who started me on this entire puppet journey when I bumped into him on the street in Guatemala several years ago.  His puppet show was so beautiful, and he took the time to show me how to articulate and build marionettes.  This encounter changed my entire life and now I'm travelling the world with a puppet show, thanks to him!  He speaks only Spanish, I know only English, so we have no language in common.  But every now and then we send each other photos or DVDs of what we're doing.  Finally I will see him again and I can't wait - I feel there's so much more I could learn from him.  So I hope I will find new inspiration from seeing him again.

On Fire!

 

Paula was standing cooking at the stove yesterday when she caught fire!  Flames ran up her sleeve to her shoulder and I stared at her for a whole second, expecting her to jump around and put it out.  Finally I realised she was oblivious, and I grabbed a towel and dived at her, shrieking "Paula!  You're on fire!"  I patted out the flames and Jesse cried from the shock of it.  And Paula was perfectly intact, with only a tiny black burnt spot on her sleeve.

We're going to France!!

OMG we really and truly are going to France in about six week's
time. We got a call the other night, asking if we could pop onto
video conference to have a chat with the festival directors. I'd
totally forgotten we'd sent off an email to them about The Grimstones
in a fit of dreaming about going to Europe. I had to quickly change
out of my jarmies and put my hair up before I felt fit to turn on the
webcam. I was ready to tell them no go, because we didn't have
funding. But it seems that's not a problem - they'll cover our
airfares and everything! So we're all bouncing up and down, and I
find myself hunting down a spot of internet access while I'm on tour
so that I can google topics such as "medieval village in France" and
"self-sufficient organic farm in Italy."

For me travel is all about eating. I want to eat my way around the
world. Not fancy gourmet food - I'm looking for the old cuisine, the
stuff that's been served in farm houses for centuries, made the old-
fashioned way from the best possible ingredients. The more I learn
about the old cuisines of the world the more in awe I am of the way
they all incorporate nutrition principles that I've learnt are
essential - bone broths, raw animal foods, fermented foods and
beverages, and nutrient dense foods such as eggs, organ meats, whole
small fish, fish eggs and more. I want to discover how the French
traditionally met their nutritional needs, how the Italians did....

But back to the festival we're going to, it's called Clin d'Oeill,
and I totally suggest you pop over to their website just to see their
adorable little character wink at you. With an aesthetic like that,
no wonder they like The Grimstones. I reckon I have something in
common with these people!!

Oooh I'm off to google Brittany - I read an article about Brittany in
the paper the other day. The author mused how ironic it was that the
Bretons live in high dairy country, and yet they don't make gourmet
cheeses. No - they are obsessed with butter. Well once I would have
thought that was odd too, but after reading Nutrition and Physical
Degeneration by Weston Price, I understand that high quality butter,
especially the deep yellow butter produced in springtime from cows
eating rapidly growing grass, is rich in fat soluble nutrients, and
not only is it a super-food in itself, but it helps you to absorb the
nutrients from other foods you eat. Go the Bretons! I bet their
butter is unlike the pale insipid stuff you find in the supermarkets
here. Incidentally I buy my butter in spring time and freeze it to
eat during the rest of the year, and I order it from this wonderful
French man up in Queensland, who makes it the traditional way...

Under Construction

I have a little secret to share with you - I'm getting a new
website. I got a sneak preview the other day and my lordy, it is
GORGEOUS! Thanks to my very talented friend Jenine Davidson, who has
a magic touch when it comes to designing things, I reckon I'm going
to have the best website out there in cyberspace. And ironically, my
very favourite pages were the ones she hadn't made yet. Look what
she put on the page! There are my lovely Grimstone puppets, hard at
work! Stay tuned - I'll let you know when the website is up.

Jesse joins The Grimstones

 

We ended up totally stuck for a nanny to look after Jesse on this tour. Despite our repeated efforts, we just couldn't drum up the right person. Jesse was also feeling desperate for more time with Paula and me after being away from us a touch too long on the previous tours. So he was very happy when we announced he could just come to the theatre with us. 

In fact, he made his debut performance! We assembled for him the most adorable costume, rubbed dark shadow around his eyes, and welcomed him into the Grimstone family. He did very well actually - he must have absorbed a fair bit about the process simply by being in the room with us as we rehearse and perform the show. His acting was pretty good for a 5 year old, and he had his own ideas about his role and how he should play it, which were great. And then, when the crunch time came and he had to step out in front of many watching eyes, he did so, totally calmly and professionally. What a trooper! 

We worked out a system for him to keep him happy and occupied while we worked, and I made him a checklist to tick off when he'd completed each item. First up he had to warm up, get into costume, and have his make up done. Then he'd sit down at the table and enthusiastically work on his workbook while Paula and I prepared for the show. 

He'd read in between his appearances during the first show. One of us would play something fun with him afterwards, and then there'd be a bit more work as we help him again with the workbook. He had a jigsaw puzzle to do most days, a CD to listen to, and then we cheated and put on a kids' DVD while we performed the second show on our own. In the afternoon one of us would take him out for an activity - to the beach, or down to the gym in the hotel, which he loves. I have to say, this worked very well - and at the end of each day he was very happy and contented.

On tour again...

We're on the road again - this time to Newcastle and Gosford. Actually we've hardly touched home since I last wrote on my blog - we've done shows in Adelaide, Melbourne, Warragul, Geelong and Pakenham as well as on this current tour. 

I'm definitely getting the hang of this and I've got my packing down pat. I have what is basically a giant handbag, in which I keep everything I need, both to entertain myself and remain healthy. It's got my computer, a book to read, a folder of work papers, a pencil case and my journal, a toilet bag with my nightie and some spare underwear, and a bottle of beetroot kvass. With this bag I can go anywhere for any length of time. I bring it to the theatre, and it only takes a minute to pack it at the hotel, whether we're going for the day or moving on to a new destination. 

Then I've got my lunch bag, a little insulated package which holds all the food I need for the day - bottles of cultured milk, kimchi, homemade energy snacks, fruit, and a decent-sized meal too. I bring my own cutlery and have cut down a tiny chopping board to slip inside my pack along with a sharp knife. This way I can make myself breakfast, chop up fruit and salad, and make sandwiches anywhere. It might sound excessive but when there's four of us in a motel room that provides no facilities, it ends up that we all take turns to eat breakfast, using the one spoon I brought. 

I like the life. I get a feeling of calm descend over me as I sit in front of the mirror, twist my hair into the impossibly complicated chignon required for my character, Gertrude Grimstone, and apply my make up. I enjoy chatting with Paula between shows, and hanging out with her in the dressing room. I like having a good stretch each day, and I really love having a chat with people from the audience after the show. It gives me a real lift to see how many of them are touched, or even blown away, by our little show. 

We meet such interesting people too - sometimes the techs or front of house staff tell us amazing stories about their lives, and other times it's those in the audiences who tell us their dreams and inspire us. We've met some other homeschooling families on this tour and their kids are so lovely and easy to relate to that it's very inspiring for our own homeschool journey.

Garden of Unearthly Delights

This is the most delightful tour I've ever been on. It feels like
I've stepped back a hundred years, into a vaudeville travelling
fairground, complete with several creaky vintage wooden tents, red
and white candy-striped walls, red velvet curtains, a ferris wheel
and even a freak show. This is where I work - The Garden of
Unearthly Delights, the festival playground of Adelaide Fringe.
Every day I ride my bike for about ten minutes past lovely Adelaide
stone houses and through the botanic gardens, to arrive at the gate.
When I arrive the place is dead, save for people unloading and
setting up for the night to come.

The place comes alive at 6pm, as the trees are lit up with beautiful
coloured lights, the ferris wheel starts turning, and all sorts of
vintage costume characters spruik their wares - we are among them.
Paula and I get dressed in our gothic finery as August and Gertrude,
and hit the garden to convince people to come and see our show. We
hand out flyers, and every now and then someone says, "Oh I saw it
last night, it was fabulous." And then of course Paula announces in
a loud voice to everyone nearby, "Did you hear that? She said it was
fabulous! She thoroughly recommends The Grimstones." Each night in
the audience we see several people we've tried our luck on, so we
know it works.

Our tech crew is fantastic, and we are having a nice time getting to
know the boys from Sherlock Holmes, the show after ours - we spend a
fair bit of time rubbing shoulders in the dressing room so it's good
to feel friendly with them. After we've taken our bows for our show,
we head straight out the front door with our case of books, and start
selling them. I'm getting better at this too - as people walk out
the door, if they meet my eyes I ask if they'd like a look at the
book. Soon we're surrounded by people leafing through them, and
invariably several decide to buy - then it's a fast juggle of money,
book signing, friendly chatter and still trying to keep an eye out
for other potential customers. Paula and I are a pretty good team now.

Once we're all packed up, the festival is in full swing, and with a
simple flash of our artist's pass we can get into any show for free.
We've been making the most of it, taking it in turns to stay late and
see shows. In my case it's a little tricky working out which are
going to be suitable for Deaf people - sometimes I luck out nicely,
but last night was full of shows with talking, a bit of a
disappointment for me.

And then it's a gorgeous bike ride home, and I always feel like I'm
flying. Home is Adelaide Caravan Park, nestled right next to the
city, but peaceful with beautiful trees and a nice sense of
community. Most of us are here for the festival and it feels very
friendly to get to know our neighbours.

Last week we were working full days, with tech runs, extra school
shows, and late night appearances at VIP events - exhausting. This
week however is lovely, and we are just doing our 6pm show. You
might think that leaves us with all day free, but actually we only
have the morning. At 2pm we settle down for a nap, then head into
the festival to get ready for the show. The morning is taken up with
admin, grocery shopping, filling the gas bottles and other odd jobs.
And in between, I work my journal or make art. It's lovely, a
beautiful lifestyle. I do feel as though I'm living in a bubble
though, without much contact with the real world. It's an easy
delightful bubble and I love it in here, though part of me is a bit
spun out by how surreal it is - I wouldn't mind touching some "real
life" at some point soon, just to remember what it's like. In the
meantime though, I'm blissing out!

It's my birthday...

We're livin' it up in Adelaide, performing at the Garden of Unearthly
Delights as a part of the Fringe festival. it's delicious and
delightful and a great place to have my birthday. I feel so spoilt.
I woke up to a pile of presents, which turned out to be mostly empty
notebooks, art tools and inspirations - utter goodness! My very best
present was this exquisite poem that Jesse wrote. It made me cry.

Home and cookin...

Oh hell, I give up. I've been waiting to write for about two weeks
now, intending to snap a gazillion pics to use as the starting point
for my next several blog entries. I've lots of things to show you
all. But a trip to the city yesterday resulted in being told by two
different camera repair places that the "zoom error" my camera
reports every time I turn it on is too expensive to fix. The repair
would cost something in the vicinity of $700 while the camera itself
is worth about $280. It makes me sick, sick to the stomach, every
time I have a piece of equipment that is basically good except for
some minor fault, but our world these days is designed for
disposability. Even getting a tube on my bike tyre repaired is not
the done thing these days. It'd take too long to find the hole.
Cheaper to chuck it out and buy a new one. And all this rubbish we
are generating, all the waste, is terrible. I watched Wall-E just a
few days ago and I couldn't believe that someone in *hollywood*
actually made a great film about something important. Planned
obsolescence, where manufacturers ensure we will buy another within a
few years is one of of the most horrible things about living in such
a commercial society.

Enough whinging. For now, words will have to do. Until I find my
old camera (which requires a new and very expensive disposable
battery every time I've taken about five photos), or give in to the
commercial world, dispose of my camera, and shell out for a new one.

So. We're home from our tour. I'm lucky in that I've never had post-
travel melancholy, and also that usually when I'm on the road I enjoy
it. It was wonderful to get away from Melbourne, the complexities of
day to day life here, and just live it simple for a while. But it's
just as wonderful to get home. We're only here for a month so I'm
trying to get up to speed on hundreds of those niggling life jobs
that just have to happen to keep the wheels turning.

I'm also very aware that March is going to be a killer month for us,
with two weeks at Adelaide Fringe, and a bunch of gigs in and out of
Melbourne after that. Something happens to me when I'm performing.
It becomes impossible to cook and keep up with domestics. The answer
is to be well prepared. So I'm filling our pantry shelves with high
energy nourishing travel snacks, and the freezer with tempting
instant meals. (Not easy for me - I'm kinda picky about eating food
that's been frozen.)

We arrived home just in time for the horrendous heat wave which
buckled train tracks around Melbourne, and I made use of it by
turning Bertha into a dehydrator. I soaked nuts, seeds and grains to
sprout and then dry (eating nuts and seeds that have been prepared in
this way means we absorb all the wonderful nutrients they have to
offer, whereas eating them raw means the oxalic acid and phytates
present prevent absorbption of nutrients). I spread out all my
cheese cloths in Bertha, spread damp nuts, seeds and grains onto
them, and left them to dry. The temperature in the van got up to 52
degrees. Ouch. But my nuts are crunchy and dry now. Next step is
to turn them into biscuits, nuts roasted in maple syrup and egg-
white, nuts roasted in tamari and honey, muesli and chocolate cake.
I also dried several squares of thinly sliced sourdough bread to use
as wholesome crackers.

How I wish I could share with you the image of all those things
drying in Bertha - they looked wonderful!

Now I'm waiting for a day cool enough to put the oven on, to toast
all those nuts, bake the biscuits and cake. In the meantime though,
I haven't stopped cooking. I made the most wonderful fish mix by
grinding blue grenadier, prawns, scallops and calamari with some salt
and garlic. We fried some in coconut oil for fish cakes and they
were gone within the hour. I divided up the rest and made yum cha
dumplings, yum cha rice rolls, seafood ravioli filling, and some
fishballs for laksa.

This morning Jesse and I put on our aprons to make pasta. One of the
fantastic things about my Thermomix is that I can grind wholemeal
flour very fine, so wholegrain pasta doesn't have that thick grainy
texture. It's gorgeous. Not only that but freshly ground flour is
apparently like freshly cut fruit. When you open fruit, we all know
that vitamins are quickly lost. It seems flour does the same thing -
we get a massive hit of vitamins if we eat our flour freshly ground.
While Jesse and I made ravioli with that seafood filling, fettucini
to put in the freezer to eat with pesto later, and spaghetti to eat
tonight, Paula was busy making the ingredients for lasagne. Jesse
and I rolled out fresh sheets of pasta for her, and the lasagne is
ready to cook. It's hot today so we're going to put it in the oven
in Bertha - she really comes in handy these days.

In the freezer we've got all we need now for a yum cha, a pesto pasta
meal, a laksa broth, and soon we'll have sausage rolls and spinach
pies and lasagne and chocolate cake to join them.

I love being home - everything I need for a big cook up is right here.

Happy New Year

Welcome to 2009 everyone....

I'm hoping this year is going to involve a fair bit less admin than
2008. In fact, I've made a New Year's Resolution to cap my admin
hours at 9 per week. Who knows if I'll be able to manage it, but
I've downloaded a stopwatch program and I've already started
"clocking on" when I'm working. I've also made a bit of a plan for
which days I'll work, with the theory it will help to prevent work
from just taking over. We'll see how it goes....

Remember last year's resolution? I decided not to buy new clothes or
homewares for one full year. It's been a very interesting year
embracing that one. Parts of it were really hard - especially at the
change of season when I like to plan how I'm going to stay snug this
winter, or what light and gorgeous clothes I want for the summer. I
hadn't realised how intrinsic a part of my annual routine that was!
Other parts of it were much easier, as I simply accepted that I
wasn't going to be buying stuff, and didn't go to the shops much.
Here are some positive spin-offs from the year:

- I discovered when I wanted something that if I waited, and asked
around, very often the item would eventually come. I found chocolate
moulds that were gathering dust in my sister-in-law's cupboard -
which gained a new life in my kitchen. I borrowed a friend's bread
tin at various times during the year when she wasn't using it. I
found wanted items in op-shops and pounced on them with glee. And
also, if I waited long enough, often my need/desire for the item
would disappear. I hope I can continue to make use of the wait-ask-
principle!

- I found that even though my resolution was limited to homewares and
clothes, I was having second thoughts before buying anything. I
bought much less in the way of clothes and general crap for Jesse
this year, and when I was buying for Paula I was mostly careful to
choose quality things that wouldn't become junk.

- I bought SO MUCH less stuff - I'm sure it did the environment
good. And although I'm not going to make the same resolution for
2009 I expect my consumer-consciousness will follow through. I've
become a much more ethical shopper... and I hope to be able to give
up my reliance on cheap goods from China soon too. Right now I'm
totally against the corporate giants and sweatshop trade - and I'm
wondering if my next step can be to reduce or eliminate my purchases
from them.

All that said - I did break my resolution a few times. I bought a
few small plastic food containers, and I bought a Thermomix - a fancy
food processor that can mill grain. I could have waited until this
year to buy it, but I decided after all the research I'd done into
nutrition that I'd rather break my resolution and buy it six months
earlier, so that I could have six extra months of freshly-ground
flour with which to bake bread. My health has continued to improve
vastly, though I'm not sure if the flour has played a big role or not.

Matroshka Doll Wheat Bag

I love Matroshka Dolls. I love the simplicity of their shape and the beautiful hoods they have. I stitched this one from some of my favourite fabrics, filled it with wheat and lavender, and now it's a little wheat bag. Back when we had a cold spurt, I'd heat her up and Jesse would fall asleep cuddling her. She also works as an eye cover for day-time meditation and naps - lovely. Most of all, she looks good on my bed!

Mind Dump

One of the things I love to do in my journal, every now and then is a mind dump. A quick few sentences about all the stuff that's buzzing around in my head - it really does help to clear my head a bit when it's whizzing.

The Ideal Week?

I've been wondering lately, if there is such a thing as the perfect week? Ie, is it truly possible to have a week that I would enjoy at the time while fulfilling all the things I want to achieve in the big picture? 

I made up a timetable to see if I could fit everything in. It was going great - nice and full and with a beautiful balance. And then I realised I hadn't put in WORK. Admin was in there, at the lovely rate of an hour a day, four days a week, but other work seemed to slip off my mind until I'd finished it. 

I think I'll have to rejig :)

A new way of Journaling

I've been having a wonderful time trying out Teesha's method of journaling: 

1) put a colour wash over the page 

2) add collage pieces around the edge 

3) integrate the collage pieces by scribbling over and beside them with crayons and pens 

4) I've been playing with fonts and swirls - it's great to learn to write a different way. 

Well that's my version of her method. Check out her tips here.