hand and holidays

This will be my last post for a while since we are going on holidays to Italy (of course), Montenegro and Albania from Wednesday.

My hand was operated on last Tuesday (for my carpal tunnel syndrome). Everything went well and it was quite an experience since I had never been operated on before. I like my surgeon and am seeing him again in September. I can already tell that the operation was a success although my scar is a bit sore and I cannot apply much force with my fingers. The above picture is of course the "before" one. I do have an "after" one but I don't want to gross you out!

I hope you all are having a great summer and I'll post again when we get back in the last week of August.

Ciao!

Maple leaf

I found this leaf on the way home from the baker's (with warm baguette) this morning. I think it is Japanese maple and the colours in this one leaf would do me for a lifetime I think. I love the green veins on the pink, the pale yellow... There is so much sunlight coming in at me right now that to tell the truth I cannot judge the quality of the photo but I hope it captures the leaf. D is learning flags. Her absolute favourite for the moment is Honduras (!!?) but she recognises a lot of them and I taught her about the Canadian flag and maples and maple syrup in Paris the other day when we passed in front of the Canadian cultural centre.

Anyway... I realised that the cushion I made recently, the autumnal one, is similar in tone to the leaf so here is a photo of them together. Actually, a friend slept on this cushion, with a pillowcase, when he stayed at ours a couple of weeks ago and I think the experience was so comfortable (and my cover so nice of course) that he asked me if he could buy it off me. At first I was reluctant because I love it and made it for our flat but I realised that this attitude would fill up my flat but not my pockets in the long term so I accepted and set my price. Yay! A sale. I am an artisan seamstress.

In other news... D left today for Montenegro with her aunt and two cousins. Yikes... two weeks without her. This is the first time we will have been apart for so long. I suspect that when we arrive in Montenegro at the beginning of August we will find our daughter all grown up! Two weeks is a long time for a five and a half year old (and a thirty-youngthing mother).
J'ai trouvé cette feuille en rentrant de la boulangerie ce matin. J'adore les couleurs et j'avais presque envie de la peindre ou de la dessiner ou de trouver une autre manière de la représenter. Mais je me suis rendu compte qu'en quelque sorte je l'avais déjà fait sous forme de cette housse de coussin où l'on retrouve les même tons. J'adore mon coussin, j'adore la feuille. Et les deux ne resteront pas avec moi et donc il est bien que j'en parle ici... la feuille ira là où vont les feuilles et la coussin va atterir sur le canapé d'un copain qui a dormi dessus chez nous et qui a aimé et qui a proposé de l'acheter. Et j'ai accepté. Hourrah! Je suis une artisane!

Library sur herbe

Busy and hectic day in Paris today. Lots of walking and talking. D and I had a conversation lasting an hour and a half planning an imaginary ball to which the whole family was invited - we discussed who was going to wear what to the very last detail; far more exhausting than the simultaneous walking!!! But just as picturesque.

Anyway walking home from the station I half had in my mind a very lazy rest of the day just vegging at home when, lo and behold, what should we spy but some chairs in the town hall's gardens and boxes of books. Yes the library is camping out this summer and everyone is invited. So that is where we vegged for the rest of the day. We spent a good three hours there; at first reading books to each other and then I talked with various people while my children drew with their friends in the grass, (paper, felt-tips and board for support all thoughtfully provided by the librarian). Wow. The photo above is of the less occupied side of the gardens - believe me there were plenty of people making the most of this amazing initiative.

Ah après une journée épuisante en ville quoi de mieux qu'une bibliothèque en plein air? Nous avons passé trois heures ici cet après-midi avec des livres et des revues, des feutres et des copains. Nous nous sommes retrouvés entre amis (Mimi la souris, la meilleure copine et son frère) et nous avons fait de nouvelles connaissances "littéraires" (Léonardo, Mélusine...) et réelles (RV au même endroit demain avec certains). Nous nous sommes reposés, nous avons réspiré. Et maintenant... repos et réspiration encore plus profonds: dodo!

Focus

Ho hum. Really I know I should have posted again before now but absolutely nothing crafty has been happening and that remains the main focus of my blog. Looking after both kids full time makes me tired at the end of the day though and I tend to just start surfing and don't stop in time to write something of my own! Lame I know! The main thing going on in my own life (I'm discounting my family life with kids) is the pruning down of my possessions. I have got rid of loads of stuff recently. I even threw some of it in the bin - the very idea of this makes me quite ill - recycle, reuse, refashion - but I had to do it to clear out my space. It has been a great process and I am getting to the point where (at last) I am very critical of anything that "belongs" to me (in the sense that it all has to make the grade). I can even see myself ending up a one biro girl, which is pretty extreme. But all this stuff shifting has made my ideas shift around too and I am starting to gain focus. I am whittling down everything; ideas, possessions, thoughts... and my hope is that soon all that will remain will be things that take me a little closer to where I want to go. I have always had a vague and blurred yet poignant idea of the sort of life I would like to lead and I am now the focus puller trying to make out the details and bring it all into existence. I read something somewhere once, in an article about writing, that you have to edit, edit, edit - even good stuff needs to go if it doesn't work towards improving the whole. This idea has been bouncing around my head for a while and I am now editing with a passion.
C'est les vacances et je pense, sincèrement mais sans rancune, que pour une maman à la maison les vacances sont tout sauf ça!! C'est du boulot!! Donc me voilà, bien fatiguée à la fin de la journée avec à peine l'énergie pour me brosser les dents et certainement pas assez pour écrire un blog... Je disais là-haut cependant que je suis en période de purge! (si l'on peut dire ça). Je jête plein de choses. Plein de mes possessions car je voudrais les réduire au stricte minimum. Je fais un premier passage mais je sens qu'il en faudra un deuxième et un troisième... Mon espoir est ainsi de découvrir l'essentiel. Revenir vers l'essentiel. Arrêter de me laisser distraire par des choses, des idées, des activités qui ne m'amènent pas là où je veux aller. J'ai toujours eu une idée de la vie que je voulais mener. Une idée bien floue mais bien prenante quand même. Et aujourd'hui j'essaye de voir les détails dans ce flou afin de les faire crystaliser. Afin de vivre cette vie que je veux quoi. Et en jêtant des choses, celles qui restent deviennent plus importantes et plus jêtables elles-mêmes en même temps. C'est l'ironie de la chose, des choses. Plus l'on en a plus l'on en veut, moins l'on en a moins l'on en veut... ça déjà c'est une grande découverte.

Autumnal!

Yup so even though I have pleeeenty of other more important things on my to-make list, I decided to sew a new cushion cover for our sofa.

Here it is, pinned and ready for quilting.
Looks like autumn right? B mentioned this and that he would prefer a summer one, last night and frankly I feel flummoxed. I'm not used to getting specific remarks like that from him. But I don't think I can do summer. Summer has blue in it. A lot of blue. A lot of sea and a lot of sky and I don't do blue. Then, tonight, D got in on the idea and thinks I should do a cushion cover for every season. The winter one should be white, grey, blue, black and brown says she. And do I have icey material?

Well. It may happen and it may not. But for now I really like autumn!

Je suis en train de mettre à côté tous mes projets plus importants pour faire cette housse de coussin pour notre canapé. B a toute de suite remarqué qu'elle ressemble à l'automne et qu'il aurait préféré que ça ressemble à l'été. Hmpf. Je ne fais pas l'été moi. Pas bien en tout cas. Soit je crame (en vrai), soit je ne mets pas de bleu (en représentation artistique). Et il y a beaucoup de bleu dans un été. D pense maintenant que je devrais faire une housse pour chaque saison. Je serai presque d'accord s'il n'y avait pas de bleu dans l'été et l'hiver et je ferai peut être le printemps pourquoi pas. En tout cas pour le moment j'apprécie l'automne. Et ce le jour le plus chaud de l'année pour l'instant.