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• *117* postcards from Japan, Kyoto (part 2)

  Posted at 10:37 am by quiltwhileyoureahead, on September 8, 2019

  

  More Kyoto. More temples. Frankly, it’s all about them… oh and the geisha too…

  So after the Fushimi Inari shrine/amazing red torii gate experience we headed back to the hotel for breakfast and then out again for more:

  first up this one, dedicated it seems to a while boar. No English description (and why should they, in all honesty), but really fascinating.

  

  

  

  In the same big compound stands the Kenniji Temple, grandiose and made up of various building and – finally – our first zen garden, or dry garden… the most peaceful of places.

  

  

  

  … and a moss garden…

  

  and a favourite of mine, a round window…

  

  the main hall has a huge painting on the ceiling – fairly recent but incredibly powerful

  

  The next day we took it a little easier; the boys did some totally bonkers virtual reality ninja training and then retired by the pool, Mr M and I took in the MOMAK , for our weekly modern art fix.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Back at the hotel we saw a gorgeous dance show by a Maiko, an apprentice Geisha… so delicate and gentle… a real snapshot into the past…

  

  Posted in photography, travels, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

• *116* postcards from Japan, Kyoto (part 1)

  Posted at 7:52 am by quiltwhileyoureahead, on September 6, 2019

  

  Kyoto is magical. President Truman, when choosing a target for the first atomic bomb discarded Kyoto because he’d spent his honeymoon there and loved it so much. It was for century the old capital of Japan (before to move to Tokyo a couple of century ago. It houses 1700 temples and shrines. It will capture your heart.

  

  We arrived in a monsoon after a quick train ride from Hiroshima and whilst the boys and Mr M settled in the hotel I felt I had to get out and ‘breath the local air’. Of course I got totally soaked on my way to the Tokyo National Museum but nobody seem to mind that my shoes squelched around the halls, I wasn’t alone. It’s a gorgeous museum, not big like it could have been, apparently they have millions of pieces, because they rotate the exhibition a few times a year, so in an hour or so you can walk around the 6 vast rooms listening to the audioguide and have a good idea about statues, pottery, ancient objects, old manuscripts, textiles and paintings. A great and instructive overview that almost leaves you wanting fore more and so, if you had the chance, would definitively go back again… So clever. If you’ve lost the will to live at the louvre for example you know exactly what I mean.

  

  When I left, still with wet feet and dripping trousers, I decided to take the long way back to the hotel… and kind of got lost… kind of… but it was so much fun, so many things to see…

  

  

  

  

  

  I knew exactly what I wanted to see first in Kyoto, the Fushimi Inari Shrine… in my list of things to see since like forever… it had captured my imagination since I saw it on an ancient National Geographic magazine back in the day when I couldn’t speak English… I didn’t know what it was then but I had massive butterfly when we started off in the morning. Our hotel suggested getting there at 7 and then get back for breakfast and it was such a good idea… we were literally amongst the first ones there and it was ‘goosebumpy’. Yes, it’s a word.

  Forgive me the photo vomit…

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  … and then we went back to the hotel for breakfast. Still pinching myself.

  Posted in photography, travels, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

• *90* recap

  Posted at 7:34 am by quiltwhileyoureahead, on June 24, 2019

  

  Can’t believe it’s been a week. It was a busy week, ‘to be fairs’ (teenage lingo… stick with me)… culminated with me sleeping three hours Saturday afternoon and then 12 hours straight that night. I just can’t hack it anymore.

  ok, let’s see if I can remember it all…

  I went to see this movie with my sister:

  and it was great. Not at all what I was expecting, but brilliant. Emma Thompson is, as usual, fantastic. (And so is Mindy Kaling by the way)

  I had my nails done. I never have my nails done… I do it myself and I’m terrible and it lasts two days and I moan what a waste of time it is and then try again…

  

  I had my nails done because we went to a black tie even – on a school night! – and wanted to feel grown up…

  

  Late night. Champagne. Wine. Moira Stewart did the hosting and I totally chickened out from going to say hello. Should have had more champagne.

  The following night Mr M had his ‘new office’ launch party… he created the most amazing place for his company (SLG Beauty) and the party was phenomenal…

  

  We got spruced up again… and the boys came too…

  

  there was a ball pit…

  

  … and cocktails…

  

  and hundreds of people, friends, family, music, dancers and the most amazing atmosphere…

  I lost my voice, my feet were killing me and we rocked into bed after 2am.

  Saturday I was dead.

  Not even the cricket could wake me up…

  

  I’m obviously being sarcastic, since when cricket woke anyone up? It was nice to see the sun though – to be fairs (see first para above). So I slept whilst Mr M drove No 2 to the airport, he’s spending a week in Tuscany with my parents doing some work for them. Good boy.

  Sunday was a lazy one.

  And now it’s Monday, No 3 is gone away with school camping in Wales for 5 days; it’s weird to have just one child in the house. Well… a 6’2″ child… it’s not really a child but still…

  Have a good week, folks, it’s going to be a scorcher!

  Posted in boys, life for a while, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

• *52* A room of one’s own

  Posted at 9:24 am by quiltwhileyoureahead, on April 7, 2019

  

  ‘A room of one’s own’ by Virginia Woolf

  Yup another one of hers. Just as famous so I’m not going to discuss it in too much details because, heck, it’s early and I haven’t had any breakfast which means the brain is not quite in gear… and so many words have been written about it I couldn’t possibly add anything meaningful.

  I will however say that it was all I expected to be. In a good way. Maybe more.

  Let’s consider it was written in 1928, originally it based on a couple of speeches she gave to two women colleges in Cambridge. 1928. The same year that in England women finally got the vote on equal terms with men. Still though… things weren’t exactly equal.

  In this little book, barely over 100 pages, Woolf fiercely argues for the necessity of women to have a room to call their own and £500 a year in order to be able to write… which is to say that she fiercely argues for a metaphorical space for women in the world of literature dominated by men and most of all for financial independence.

  All those years ago she wrote:

  … you will agree that the excuse of lack of opportunity. training, encouragement, leisure and money no longer holds good.

  She is so ahead of her time… How would she react if she knew that 90 years later women, while able to be financial independent, are still earning less than men and are still fighting for equality?

  I think she’d be a little cross and she’d be given us all a metaphorical kick in the rear and encourage us, push us to do more…

  At the very least she’d think us lazy. I daren’t think what else.

  So if, like me, you’ve started the day with a semi-argument with your husband over his ‘inability’ to fill in a pay-in slip and could I please do it – you don’t want to know the details and my eloquent ‘chosen’ words – talking about this book has a certain irony.

  Have a good day.

  Some fab quotes:

  “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” 

  “Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony; but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques–literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women.” 

  “The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.” 

  Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

• *3* new year, new cushion

  Posted at 12:25 pm by quiltwhileyoureahead, on January 3, 2019

  

  … because you can never, ever, have enough cushions. Fact.

  

  The central block, formed by the nine granny squares slip stitched together is another one from the big bunch I was gifted a few years ago… and it’s not the last one either.

  

  I think most of the yarn that was used is acrylic… the colours are very 1980’s and haven’t faded at all when washed or in the light. Normally I shun was from acrylic, squeaky yarn but for cushions it doesn’t really worry me, I think it adds to its authentic feel and it’ll be more durable. (Can you say vintage if it’s from the 80s? good Lord, I’m vintage too!)

  

  Those colours… bonkers right?

  

  The only thing I added was the border for which I used my precious avocado dyed dk wool. To be honest the colour hadn’t come out as strong as I hoped but it matched so perfectly that I had to use it.

  The back is a simple off-white cotton.

  It’s currently on my Ercol sofa looking rather spiffy. I’ve just used the word spiffy… I am vintage… it’s official.

  “No more cushions, please”… said no one, ever.

  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments

• – 2018/186 – poetry Monday

  Posted at 7:52 am by quiltwhileyoureahead, on November 12, 2018

  

  Non-combatants (by Evelyn Underhill)

  Never of us be said
  That we reluctant stood
  As sullen children, and refused to dance
  To the keen pipe that sounds across the fields of France.
  Though shrill the note and wild,
  Though hard the steps and slow,
  The dancing floor defiled,
  The measure full of woe,
  And dread
  The solemn figure that the dancers tread,
  We faltered not. Of us, this word shall not be said.
  Never of us be said
  We had no war to wage,
  Because our womanhood,
  Because the weight of age,
  Held us in servitude.
  None sees us fight,
  Yet we in the long night
  Battle to give release
  To all whom we must send to seek and die for peace.
  When they have gone, we in a twilit place
  Meet Terror face to face,
  And strive
  With him, that we may save our fortitude alive.
  Theirs be the hard, but ours the lonely bed.
  Nought were we spared—of us, this word shall not be said.
  Never of us be said
  We failed to give Godspeed to our adventurous dead.
  Not in self-pitying mood
  We saw them go,
  When they set forth on those spread wings of pain:
  So glad, so young,
  As birds whose fairest lays are yet unsung
  Dart to the height
  And thence pour down their passion of delight,
  Their passing into melody was turned.
  So were our hearts uplifted from the low,
  Our griefs to rapture burned;
  And, mounting with the music of that throng,
  Cutting a path athwart infinity,
  Our puzzled eyes
  Achieved the healing skies
  To find again
  Each wingèd spirit as a speck of song
  Embosomed in Thy deep eternity.
  Though from our homely fields that feathered joy has fled
  We murmur not. Of us, this word shall not be said.

  Posted in poetry, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

• – 2018/167 – music Friday

  Posted at 12:20 pm by quiltwhileyoureahead, on October 5, 2018

  

  Something a little different today…  last night I went to a classical concert in Birmingham at the Symphony Hall.  It was fabulous.

  They played Beethoven 7th Symphony which was amazing… he is my favourite classical composer and the second movement of this piece is simply magical.

  Make yourself a cup of tea and sit down.  Give yourself a break for a few minutes.

  Enjoy they music.

  Posted in music, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

• – 2018/153 – 48 years of books (1984)

  Posted at 4:45 pm by quiltwhileyoureahead, on September 6, 2018

  

  Hotel du Lac (Anita Brookner)

  I can’t believe that nobody had ever suggested this book to me before… why??  It is simply brilliant.  Not in a shout out brilliant, but in a modest, subtle, elegant way brilliant.  Yes, it’s an elegant book, that’s it.

  Edith writes romantic novels under a pseudonym but her life is anything but, she has a good social life, her own home and a good income,  an ongoing affair with a married man, and has just ditched another one at the altar… this last act is too much for her friends who despatch her to the Hotel du Lac, sombre, uneventful, traditional… in order for her to get back ‘to normal’.

  She tries to fit in, to do the expected, she meets all sorts of eccentric people that are guests too at the hotel and none of them is like what they seem, and in the end it is them who unknowingly help her decide what she wants in her life… security or love or herself… you’ll have to read it to find out…

  The writing is superb – Anita Brookner won the Booker Prize for this novel – not a word is wasted… and it’s funny too, blink and you miss funny but the humour is there and it’s clever and understated.  Just brilliant.

  I will totally read more of her writing when this blasted ‘quest’ is over.

  “My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.’

  “The company of their own sex, Edith reflected was what drove many women into marriage.”

  “You have no idea how promising the world begins to looks once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish. It is the simplest thing in the world to decide what you want to do – or, rather, what you don’t want to do – and just to act on that.”

   

  The list so far

  2018   Mr Hanckock and the mermaid

  2017 – Magari domain resto (Lorenzo Maroni)

  2016 – Upstream (Mary Oliver)

  2015   –  Reasons to stay alive (Matt Haig)

  2014 – Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)

  2013 – Careless people (Sarah Churchwell)

  2012 – Wonder (RJ Palacia)

  2011 – The Paris Wife (Paula McLain)

  2010

  2009 – Let the great world spin (Colum McCann)

  2008 – The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)

  2007

  2006 –  The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

  2005 – Never let me go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

  2004 – American Gods (Nail Gainman)

  2003

  2002 – Everything is illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer)

  2001

  2000 – Coram Boy (Jamila Gavin)

  1999

  1998

  1997 – Paradise (Toni Morrison)

  1996 – Wilfred and Eileen (Jonathan Smith)

  1995

  1994

  1993

  1992

  1991- Regeneration (Pat Barker)

  1990 – Darkness visible (William Styron)

  1989 – Like water to chocolate (Laura Esquivel)

  1988

  1987 – Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)

  1986

  1985­ – Oranges are not the only fruit (Jeanette Winterson)

  1984  – Hotel du Lac (Anita Brookner)

  1983 –  Heartburn (Nora Ephron)

  1982  – The colour purple (Alice Walker)

  1981

  1980 – Emmeline (Judith Rossiter)

  1979– The bloody chamber (Angela Carter)

  1978

  1977

  1976

  1975 – First loves last rites (Ian McEwan)

  1974

  1973 –  the honorary consul (Graham Greene)

  1972

  1971  – Reunion (Fred Uhlman)

  1970  – A slipping down life (Anne Tyler)

  Posted in books, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

• – 2018/142 – FoQ 2018, Shizuko Kuroha

  Posted at 1:30 pm by quiltwhileyoureahead, on August 13, 2018

  

  This week it’s going to be a quilt party around here…  I’ve taken a lot of photographs yesterday and I want to share with you all that caught my eye.  Also, believe me when I say that not a lot is going on behind the scene if you discount school shopping and normal holiday life (nobody wants to walk the dog, nobody wants to do holiday homework, nobody wants to do the washing/ironing…)

  So without further ado left me show you another favourite exhibition at the Festival.  Totally different from the style of Nancy Crow, but equally mesmerising.   The show is called Indigo & Sarasa: pieces of my life.  Indigo… well we all know about the wonderful blue fabric dyed with the indigo plant, a tradition which is really strong in Japan;  Sarasa is the name of the block printed fabric, traditionally in lighter, warmer, earthy colours.

  Shizuko Kuroha is a famous Japanese quilter, authors of many books, she works mainly with vintage fabric from her tiny studio in a Tokyo suburb.   The story goes that in the 1970s, whilst living in the United States, Shizuko saw an old quilt that gave her such an emotional response and left such a lasting impression that she had to learn how to quilt…  when she moved back to Japan she started to explore the rich quilting tradition of her country and these latest work are simply sublime and hasn’t stopped in 40 years.  She works on normally just about two quilts a year (look at the following photographs and you can see why) but she spends her time teaching and giving lectures too.

   

  Remembrance of wind, 1996

  

  so many different fabrics…

  

  such tiny pieces…

  

  Echo 1, 2007 (left) – The sun shines brilliantly 2011 (right)

  

  I love how you think she uses a clam shell pattern, but that it’s only in the quilting… it’s all in the clever use of log cabins blocks.  Genius.

  

  all hand stitched…

  

  This minuscule logcabin miniature quilt was mind-blowing.

  

  Wind and Tree 2010

  

  The peaceful Sea 2010

  

  And a personal favourite, Wish for a beautiful earth 2000

  another ingenious log cabin block in a courthouse step pattern…

  

  Aren’t they magnificent?  Her eye for shades and colour variation, her skills in manipulating geometrical shapes almost magically into other make believe ones is just incredible.  Fabric dances in her quilts, don’t you think?

  Posted in quilting, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

• – 2018/137 – music Friday

  Posted at 9:20 am by quiltwhileyoureahead, on August 3, 2018

  

  I’m off to Italy for the weekend to see family.

  Alone.

  Feeling giddy and slightly giddy in equal measure.

  (as a child I used to love the movies with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis… and we chose Dean’s song “that’s Amore” as our wedding song.  I’m ever so fond of the old crooner)

  Posted in music, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

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