...do small things with great love

A Great Many Hearts by cocoaferret on deviantART

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” 

― Mother Teresa

Night Sky and a Crescent Moon

I love looking up at the sky on clear nights to see the stars and the moon. I could sit and stare for ages and just let my mind wander...

Inspired by that wonderful night sky, I have 2 new necklace designs to add to my tiny charm series:

Love Song to the Moon

and Wishing on the same Night Sky

Available in both my Etsy and Luulla shops ~*~

Little Lottie

Last year I bought a plug plant of lavender, a pink variety called 'Little Lottie', to try growing some on my balcony. It started off quite well; I potted it as soon as it arrived and it seemed to establish really well, with new growth sprouting not long after. Unfortunately over a few weeks I managed to over-water it and, as lavender hates soggy roots, it started to die. When I pulled it out of its pot the roots had begun to rot.

As luck would have it though, one of the branches had dropped off the main stem and buried itself in the soil, so I left it in there, hoping that perhaps it would take root.

Well, by this spring it had redoubled in size and I was so happy when little flower buds started appearing.

This is a few of the cuttings from that little plant which I almost killed. How resilient must it be?

On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur

Le petit prince by shortpinay on deviantART

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

("One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.")

~Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Globe to Globe

As part of the World Shakespeare Festival this year, the Globe theatre has been playing host to theatre companies from all over the world for their special Globe to Globe season. All 37 of Shakespeare's plays are being performed over 6 weeks, each in a different language.




I've been to see 3 of them: A Midsummer Night's Dream in Korean - it was so, so good! Really funny, with a great twist on the original plot and incorporating Korean music, costume, make-up and theatre style; Titus Andronicus in Cantonese - I didn't know this grim tale before...let's just say I don't think I'll see pies in the same way ever again; and yesterday I caught Romeo and Juliet in Brazilian Portuguese - I loved it! The folk carnival-esque costumes and decor, the circus theme, the music and the singing!

I would have loved to have actually been to see the Haka that was in the Maori Troilus and Cressida O_O




Globe to Globe goes on until 9 June, catch it if you can!

Finished Reading - Snuff by Terry Pratchett

39th book into his Discworld series and Sir Terry is still going strong.

His Grace Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the Anhk-Morpork City Watch has been dragged on a holiday to the country estate of his wife Lady Sybil and he's really missing the city. He doesn't like the countryside, can't get on with its folk and they all seem to know something that they don't want him to know about. Soon enough he finds himself investigating a brutal murder and unearths some very, very bad things that have been going on...

I love all the Vimes and City Watch stories, my favourite being Night Watch, but I like the whole series. If you're not acquainted with Disworld, it is a flat planet carried on the backs of four elephants who are on the back of a giant cosmic turtle. It's a place strangely similar to our own but there the humans rub shoulders with all the denizens of the fantasy/science fiction realm.

I started reading the Discworld stories in my mid-teens after going to an open air production of Lords and Ladies for a friend's birthday party. I love the mad-cap whirlwind story telling and the often laugh out loud humour: the quickfire dialogue, clever wordplay, in-jokes and astute observations, satire and parodies.

It does seem that Sir Terry has become more serious in his recent books: the raw, mad energy of the earliest stories reigned in, the visual gags toned down, but the sharp humour is still there. And there has always been a moral thread in his tales; he's talked about Death, social injustice and ethics many times before.

Snuff isn't one of the strongest stories, there are some loose threads in the subplots, but it's a good romp none the less. It's always fun to revisit this world that is so well imagined now after nearly 30 years, to see old characters and meet new ones. I'm looking forward to the next adventure!

In picture - far from the hustle and bustle

sanga choling gompa, pelling by Marina Shakleina

In picture - colour and light

March's theme is going to be places of reflection.

Nasir-ol-Molk Mosque, Shiraz, Iran by Rowan Castle

Slipper making with the Merry Bobbins

I went slipper making with a friend on Sunday. The workshop was run by the wonderful Chloe and Kirstie of The Merry Bobbins in a shoe store on Broadway Market.

It was so much fun! We cut up felted wool jumpers, attached them to squishy soft sheepskin soles and turned them into adorable snugly slippers. I chose the round toe; there was also a slimmer pointy toe version.

I only managed one side at the workshop but completed them without any problems at home. You can decorate them however you like, I put pink ribbon bows on mine (after changing my mind millions of times regarding where and how big...) and finished the back edge with some more ribbon.

I ♥ them! They are so cute and really, really comfortable. We were all sent home with the pattern and a leather needle, and I am seriously contemplating making some more as presents.

There are still some places left in the 2 remaining slipper making Sunday workshops - if you're in London, they're highly recommended! ~♥~

Flashed face distortion effect

I am fascinated by optical illusions, things that can trick your brain into seeing strange phenomenon because of the way it interprets information that it receives. Makes me wonder if what I'm seeing and not seeing are really there (or not)...

This is a very interesting example, a quite recent discovery called the 'flashed face distortion effect' where ordinary, unaltered faces turn rather ugly and scary in front of your eyes. Follow the on-screen instructions to see the effect.

New Year's Eve

[365] by Michelle Huynh

Happy 2012 everyone! Did you do anything special to bring in the new year?

I went to visit a friend who I hadn't seen in a while. She'd invited me to what she had intended to be a small, quiet New Year's eve with a few friends. The evening was going quickly for our small group; we chatted over food and drink, sang songs and played silly games. It was getting a little late by the time we decided we should probably head out if we wanted to see the fireworks. We even made hot chocolate to go so we could celebrate in style when Big Ben chimed midnight.

Of course, we were stuck in traffic for much of the way with others who'd presumably decided on the same thing. We eventually managed to park the car somewhere with 15 minutes to go and had to race against the clock to be on one of the bridges for the fireworks over the Thames. It's not easy to power walk whilst holding a flask of hot chocolate. We made it in time though and promptly joined in with the excited throng. There was much jumping, and shouting, and hugging. The hot chocolate had gone cold, but we didn't care anymore.

After the countdown and the light show, we decided to delay getting back into the car as we didn't want to have spent more time in it than out of it. So we wandered around the streets of central London, sang some more songs and bought smoothies from a smoothie shop that had employed bouncers for the night. Soon after, it was decided that we would all crash at my friend's place so that we could have a fry up breakfast together in the morning.

It was around 2am when we got back. Still buzzing, we continued to eat the leftover food and proceeded to wax lyrical about life and other things right into the small hours.

RW Emerson said, "It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”

How true.

~*~ 

In picture - in the meadow we can build a snowman

ToToRo~~~~ by Studio♥Strawberri

Oooh I want to build a snowman Totoro next time it snows...

Finished reading - Castle in the Pyrenees

Jostein Gaarder is one of my favourite authors. I've read almost all of his works and I love the way he weaves philosophical ideas into his stories. I often have to re-read paragraphs, and I like books that challenge me to stop and think as I'm reading.

He is most well known for Sophie's World but I felt the story there was used to to soften the long sections of philosophical exposition rather than being the main focus. I prefer his other books where the narrative element is stronger and philosophy is explored through ideas in the stories, like in Maya, The Solitaire Mystery and Through a Glass, Darkly.

In his most recent The Castle in the Pyrenees, we meet Solrunn and Steinn, two people who were once deeply in love back in the 1970s. A terrible event caused them to go their separate ways and after 30 years without contact, they meet again in a hotel by a fjord in western Norway, a place they once spent time together. They both have their own families now, but the meeting rekindles many memories and buried feelings. They start an email correspondence and reminisce on the hopes and dreams they once shared, discussing philosophical questions about life and death, and bringing up once more the terrible incident that drove them apart.

The story is told entirely through their email conversation. It is an interesting format and is used to present two very different viewpoints on life and beyond - one that is scientific and rational against one that is a spiritual and romantic. I didn't find the story of the two past lovers particularly gripping and nothing very much actually seems to happen. The plot twist at the end, though clever, felt rushed. But perhaps that detachment would be true for any outsider looking in on the reminiscense of two people who were once in such an intense relationship. There is certainly a feeling of sadness and a sense of lost naivety. The existential questioning also weighs rather heavily. Gaarder has explored fate, death and loss before but this had a more melancholic tone in comparison. I didn't like this one as much, but it is certainly worth trying, though perhaps not the first one to know his work by.

Dissected porcelain

I really like this concept by UK sculptural artist Beccy Ridsdel. Called Art/Craft, she wanted to explore the debate of craft versus art, technique and function versus idea and meaning.

Installed like a surgical lab experiment, the outwardly ordinary pieces of bone china plates and mugs have been dissected to reveal beautifully ornate innards.

Beccy explains that the '... ‘surgeon’ is dissecting the craft object to see what is within' and that '..he finds craft through and through. He tries the experiment again and again, piling up the dissected work, hoping to see something different but it is always the same'.

Her thought was that by '...turning a table full of craft objects into an artwork in its own right, it had a point beyond the technique, beyond the things themselves'.

 

I'd argue though that the dissected pieces themselves also suggest how, at its core, craft has art running through it. Beautiful craft work is, in its own right, an artform. Take any piece of tapestry, hand embroidered wedding gown, hand forged sword...

Finished reading: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood's classic novel from 1985 about an imagined future, a dystopia called the Republic of Gilead in what was formally the USA. Women have been forced into subjugation by the new military regime. Offred, our protagonist, is a Handmaid whose sole purpose is to get pregnant or else be turned out to die of radiation. Through her narration we learn about the events that led up to the founding of this totalitarian theocracy and the social hierarchies, laws and practices that it establishes.

Have you read it? Maybe age affects my reaction to it but I found its ideas even darker and more disturbing in tone then William Golding's The Lord of the Flies or George Orwell's Animal Farm which I read in my teens when we studied them at school.

Atwood's depiction of the treatment of the women in the story, by men and by other women who are in power, I found really shocking. Although I guess taking away women's rights, their choices and even their identities, using them only as breeding machines, controlling what they wear and what they say or enforcing sterility and pushing them into prostitution are not new or even just fictional ideas. Exploitation and subjugation of women has always happened and still happens. Maybe I was shocked at the way it was made lawful by the story's regime and the women broken gradually through subversive psychological abuse. A thought provoking read.

My tomato babies

Back in March, I planted some tomato seeds. I'd never been interested in gardening or growing before, mainly because I didn't think I was particularly green fingered. A mint plant I once brought home died within 2 weeks.

But the self-contained pot of compost and packet of seeds looked promising enough, and I was curious. Would I be able to grow them successfully?

It was actually really exciting seeing the little sprouts develop. Growing things helps you to practise your patience. In my other life as a medic, you become so entrained in getting things done now, now, now that you forget how some things will just happen when they do.

And these little seedlings are so incredibly hardy. I must have subjected them to several of the clumsiest repottings and yet they grew and grew. And grew!

I had to be cruel and pick out the ones to keep going as I didn't have enough space on my balcony to house all of them.

Even with the few I kept it soon grew into a forest. They just kept going, upwards and upwards. The ones where I'd left some side shoots as an experiment spread sideways too.

They flowered late because I kept them crowded for a bit too long and halted the growth a bit but it was so satisfying to see the first trusses of little green fruits.

And now they're slowly turning red.

Did you know that tomatoes are related to the deadly nightshade, potatoes, chillies and the tobacco plant? And the plant leaves and stem actually contain tropane alkaloids that are toxic if ingested. The biology geek in me finds this all fascinating.

Happy Mid Autumn!

It's the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese lunar calender today, the Mid Autumn Festival! Also known as the Moon festival, it is the day in the year when the moon is at its fullest and roundest and was originally associated with moon worship. Traditionally it was also a celebration of the harvest.

Chang' E the moon maiden who stole the elixir of immortality, with the Jade Rabbit

Today, it's a day when families gather (the round moon symbolising reunion) and moon watch, celebrating by moonlight, eating lots and lots.

A many coursed dinner would be followed by lots of fresh fruit - pears, starfruits, pomelos, and of course, moon cakes. These are round pastries with sweet fillings. There are so many varieties of moon cakes now, but my favourite is still the traditional ones with the sweet lotus paste and crumbly yellow egg yolks.

Can you see why they're called Moon cakes? =D

Photo by china roamer

My absolute favourite part of the festival is the lanterns. When I was younger in Hong Kong, our living room had French windows looking out into the garden and there'd be brightly coloured paper lanterns hanging from the top ledge, the candles flickering inside. I liked the special shaped ones the most, rabbits, tigers, goldfish, star fruits...

A shop selling beautiful paper lanterns

Photo by Dead Cat

Of course, being allowed to stay up late and wonder around with a pretty lantern was incredibly fun. Public carnival-like celebrations would also take place, with huge lantern displays, performances and stalls.

Look out for the big, round moon tonight!  You might just see the Jade Rabbit. According to Chinese folklore, he lives there with Chang'E, the maiden who flew up to the moon after stealing and taking the elixir of immortality.

Old friends

MUTTs by Patrick McDonnell

Last week I managed to get together a few old friends from school for dinner. I'd kept in touch with most of them since we left school (nine years ago!) but we hadn't had a reunion where everyone was there in ages.

It's funny how you will all grow up and become strong, independent women but the instant you all get together again, you revert right back to your 16 year old selves, giggling and sharing stories like all that time in between hadn't passed.

I feel so lucky that my friends have stuck by whilst I had my crisis last year. They have all been really supportive of my crazy decision and it's been even more wonderful that they have cheered me on my little venture.

The dark days really may be over ☺

In picture... 照る照る坊主 Teru teru bōzu

Terrible situation in NE Japan. Hope the nuclear emergency resolves and they will recover quickly from the devastation left by the massive earthquake and effects of the tsunami.

照る照る坊主, by 7E55E-BRN ♥

"Fine-weather priest, please let the weather be good tomorrow."

Mini presents

One of the many things I love about shopping online is that, every time a package comes through the letter box, it feels like Christmas to me. Whether it's books or clothes, new supplies or actual gift items, I get excited when the parcels arrive and I get to open and unwrap my latest purchase. What makes it even nicer is if the sender has gone all out in the presentation - it feels even more like opening a present.

My latest supply order from miandmisupplies arrived this morning and I was very pleasantly surprised by their beautifully colour coordinated packaging. Supplies usually come only in simple self-seal polythene bags, so I wasn't expecting this at all. The purple and yellow even continued inside with a yellow gift box underneath the purple tissue paper. It was a really lovely touch, made even better because the actual beads are adorable.