MITs and simple pleasures

 lemon-blueberry-cake

soaps

gardening

It is rather difficult to work from home when the weather is as good as it has been for the past week. In fact, I cannot remember the last time it rained, and this is the west of Ireland. I keep making excuses to get up and do something that involves fresh air and sunshine (such as finally peeling off the foil on the new door frames, which clearly states "Remove immediately after installation"... oops.).

In an attempt to tick off at least some of the items on my to-do list, I have dug out one of those productivity tips I had stored away in a corner of my brain, which is to set the three most important tasks (MITs) of the day first thing in the morning. While I always have a million things I ought to do swirling around in my head, determining and writing these three down - and, crucially, thinking of them as 'most important' - helps me to focus. I have two sets of threes, one for work (both the Uni work and my freelance work) and one for everything else (these days, at least two of that second set are house- or garden-related, and the other one tends to be something to do with correspondence or organising, for example meal planning or scheduling things). It is so simple and works so much better than my overfilled and overwhelming diary (which I still keep, but I now try not to stuff sheets of paper covered with more scribbles into it).

I know I always go on about aromatherapy, but there is such a strong link between smells and wellbeing, and, perhaps accentuated by the sun, I am noticing them much more, and 'stop to smell the roses' throughout the day. The soaps pictured above were housewarming gifts, including a cinnamon soap from Germany, and they smell and look amazing.

We had friends over for lunch on Friday and Sunday, and I ended up making the same cake twice. I used to make this lemon-blueberry cake a lot a few years ago, but this time I made it with coconut sugar, which gives it a darker, more wholesome appearance (even if the health benefits over white sugar may not be that considerable). I love using citrus peel in baking and cooking (grating lime peel onto stir fries is a favourite).

 The garden is bursting with activity. You can watch things grow; the neighbours' dogs and cats visit; and we have added a bird bath (another gift) to the bird feeder - a safe distance from the cats' reach. I spent a good chunk of my work-from-home Friday weeding, which has got to be one of the most therapeutic tasks there are. The specks of orange in the photo above are calendula, which is not a weed, but we have tons of it (I need to ask my mom for her recipe for calendula balm), and a couple fell victim to John's polytunnel tidy-up.

Books and music and free time

 Drusilla Modjeska, Stravinsky's Lunch

Co. Clare with a blanket of snow

This is one of those weekends with only a couple of scheduled activities, an introvert's heaven and firmly within my comfort zone, which is exactly what I need at the moment, or so I tell myself. I now own a copy of one of my favourite books, Stravinsky's Lunch by Drusilla Modjeska, about the Australian artists Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. The same friend who introduced me to Modjeska's work gave me this beautiful edition. It was such a wonderful surprise, and I am falling in love with it all over again. The book is about the relationship between art and life (and love), examining the two very different paths of these two women's careers and personal lives, taking in modernism, feminism, Australian history, and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

Life was so busy for the first three months of this year that it feels spectacularly luxurious to sit and read or just sit - I have embarked on yet another attempt at making meditation a habit. The author Natalie Goldberg wrote this piece about struggling to make it a routine, which is encouraging to read for those of us who are too hard on ourselves. My younger sister does a Yoga Nidra style meditation when she breastfeeds and thus builds it into her day. On dry days (of which there have been quite a few lately) I open the French doors in the sitting room and sit on the steps looking at the sea and the Burren and the constantly changing light (the photo above was taken last week, on a very cold day just before spring fully arrived).

And even the work on the house is relaxing most of the time. I have been listenintg to old Desert Island Discs interviews while painting, which has yielded beautiful new additions to my playlist (for instance "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" by Alison Krauss with Robert Plant, from an album I had been close to buying several times, but never did. Thank you, Sigrid Rausing.), as well as a heightened feeling of connectedness with others and our shared humanity, which may sound odd to a lot of my friends - I have so much catching up to do; outside work I have been isolating myself, so it is high time to actively connect.

Sunday

 

 A blissful, quiet, sunny and still Sunday, spent between the house and garden, hardening off plants, painting rooms and furniture and starting a spring clean that doubles as moving in. This place is paradise on a day like today.

Windows

 Windows to the world (and hopefully lots of visitors!). The door is a minty green on the outside.

..and windows into a children's book 
(paperback version, which doesn't allow anything printed on the inside cover, hence only one page of endpaper)

The first quarter of 2016 has been full of new things so far. Two new books that I illustrated are out (Red's Road to Green is only available in the US at the moment, but will be here soon), and more to follow. The excitement of our new house and coming home to see it changed every evening. Being engaged (since before Christmas), though not making any plans for a wedding yet (that part fills me with dread).

Today was my first time back in the garden this year, and it was glorious. I had been working 12-hour days for a festival, and it is only now that I am back to my normal routine that I realise what I have been putting my body through by spending so much time indoors, hunched at a desk. We went for a walk up our boreen and another walk down to the beach and filled our lungs with sea air. A fire in the stove, lovely surprise guests this morning, who didn't mind the layer of fine dust (from sanding the walls) everywhere - this has been a perfect day.

Happy Home

 Bought pumpkin pie. Almost as good as the homemade pie my sister gave us (no photo evidence of the latter).

 The Nicholas Mosse ceramics were a housewarming gift.

 

Little visitor

Our favourite card, made by the most adorable (and  perceptive) girl.

 Love the details (my palette and brush, John's stubble)

After a bit of a hiatus (that began when I started teaching again and may have also been triggered by the lukewarm reception I got for one of my DIY jobs...only joking - that was pure coincidence) we are making progress with the house. I was going to post some before and after pictures, but realised that I seem to have the dubious ability to make the after pictures look worse than the before, mainly due to light: All the befores are drenched in sunlight and the afters are taken at the end of the day, in artificial light, and look gloomy as a result. But they are coming.

We are still living in two rooms, and everything takes longer than we thought, but we knew that would happen, and it makes sense to take it slowly and not end up with panic purchases and all the wrong colours. It is such an exciting project. In the meantime we are making this our home with what we have and somehow don't even see eyesores such as the gas boiler anymore. It is also very much possible to get used to a chocolate 1980s bathroom suite.

We have had a good few visitors, with a good few kiddies on what we call the kiddies' bench (that we use a lot ourselves. I never had a bench before; it is now one of my favourite things in our house). We are finishing a jigsaw that four smaller hand were working on this afternoon. In the years I lived on my own I never thought of getting a jgsaw, even though it was something I loved as a child. I am so grateful for the constant surprises and ties to the past that cohabitation brings.

Drinking the wild air

We were lucky dogsitters for the last four days, and I have come to the conclusion that the cure for everything must be salt water in combination with a furry friend. A day of the sun splitting the stones also helped. We went down to the beach this morning and sat on a wall looking out at the sea before getting into the water (the dog). I had no idea what the time was (I had left my phone at home on purpose; the photo above is from Friday), and there was a lovely sense of it not mattering. Spiddal was sun-drenched and sleepy, with a couple of other dogs trotting down the road and waiting in front of the shop and eldery people with their carers out on their walk, and I had this moment of transcendence.

As I was typing the above and thinking about all the needless worrying I did last weekend and how different this weekend was, a friend sent me this link. Perfect timing. I am sure some of these quotes will become mantras.

Old place, new place

Tea with Kathleen, Oil on canvas

Our 'everything' room, with the beginnings of a sea of cushions

One of these days I will be back to a regular blogging schedule, but meanwhile the (rather wonderful) craziness of my life right now continues. With so much happening at the same time I have been a very bad friend to some people, but as my sister likes to remind me, the other person could get in touch, too. For some reason I tend to carry massive guilt with me all the time, about everything thinkable, but the world doesn't revolve around me, and I am aware of the danger of unintentionally making yourself far more important than you are. So less guilt, and one thing at a time.

At the weekend we had two of our first visitors. One of them was my good friend and now ex-neighbour Kathleen, the octogenarian who looks younger every time I see her, and I finally gave her her portrait, which is a lovely memento of the countless cups of tea we had together when I lived in the chalet. I had offered it to her from the start, before the exhibition, and then wondered whether she actually wanted it, as some sitters are reluctant to have a painting of themselves, so I made sure to double-check. 

Most of the painting I have done recently has been painting-decorating (photos to follow), and I am lucky to be living with a man who is not afraid of pink. He even asked for some things to be painted pink. Today one of my students was wearing a beautiful ensemble of colours and print, and when I complimented her on it she said she really needed it this morning, foregoing a muted outfit. Colours do have such a big impact on our mood. For the house we have decided to keep most of the bigger pieces of furniture neutral and put the colour in the details, the objects and the art. Now that autumn is here and it gets dark early, I look forward to some cushion-cover-sewing sessions by the fire, with quite a bit of pink.

Blue sky, blue sea, blue hours

On Friday, driving home from Clifden, where I was minding our exhibition, I caught the blue hour and saw Connemara like I had never seen it before (not pictured here; I didn't take any photos). It also happened to be very still and dry, so the lakes were perfectly smooth mirrors. Something that had become tiresome (I have been doing a lot of driving to and from Clifden) turned into a magical experience, and I didn't mind being stuck behind a very slow huge truck.

It was a reminder of how our attitude changes everything - even if the external circumstances hadn't changed, I could have accessed that mindset. I had been spending too much time worrying about things large and small, and that drive on Friday put not an end, but a pause to it. Of course Connemara is always stunning, and there is always something new to see, but even if I had been driving through drab industrial estate after industrial estate, I could have gone someplace in my head that would have brought me the same happiness.

But it helps to be surrounded by beauty. Today we came home to a summery evening and spent time in the garden and down at the beach (John went for a swim; I chickened out). Having a garden that, as my grandmother used to say, wants to see its master every day, is such a blessing. It is fast becoming a non-negotiable to be out there doing something (so far it has been mainly weeding and cutting the grass), like our daily walks, and already we feel healthier and happier for it.

Friends' gardens and all the 'new'

Pink wall and a suited guest

Flower arrangement and willow wolfhound, both by James

Gardens have become a big theme, the backdrop to my summer, both as existing gardens and in daydreams for a future one. Large chunks of the last two weekends were spent in friends' gardens, and what marvellous gardens they are, full of surprises and quirks. Not pictured is garden number 3, where we were all treated to a one-person-at-a-time tour of all the plants (and the tadpoles) by Rab's two sons. And once again I am reminded why I want to add botanical illustrations to my subject matter, together with the interiors and houses that have crept into my work recently.

Summer used to be the time when everything calmed down and there was a sleepy quality to my days, but this year has got to be my busiest summer yet. The freelance side of my work is growing, and I am still figuring out how to live life as a part-time employee and part-time self-employed. The weekdays/weekend divide ceased to exist for me a long time ago, and now it is the same with the 'work seasons'. It is very freeing and has taught me to value every day equally, and of course it helps that I love all my work.

Having said that, I will have a break from teaching, and I am looking forward to that, as much as I enjoy it. Today was the last Wednesday lunchtime class until October, and I will miss that group, and all the others.  But teaching requires a lot of energy, and it will be good to conserve and pour that energy into everything that is coming up in the next few weeks and months, a whole lot of 'new' - an exhibition, two books, a move (more on that later), new online ventures, a new nephew...

Treasures on the coffee table - and beyond

Two recent additions to the piles of books on my coffee table - John got me these after I showed him this short film, which he loved as much as I do (especially the bit about Lincoln's pocket watch).

There is so much to discover in these books, down to wonderful details such as the endpaper (third photo above). The endpaper of the book I am illustrating at the moment will have a repetitive pattern of elements from the illustrations, and I am looking forward to adding these little touches. Kalman's work always acts as a reminder of the utter joy and delight of drawing and painting, looking and noticing, for me (among lots of other things), and I would buy her books for the endpaper alone.

On Monday morning I set up office on the wooden deck in the garden, and it was the start of a productive week. Just like sleeping with your head on the foot end of the bed, shaking things up this way seemed to trigger a flood of new ideas and different approaches in my brain. My outdoor "desk" then turned into a picnic table when my friend arrived with her children. This place is paradise when the sun is out. This week we also discovered a new-to-us walk in Spiddal and a new hidden beach. We listened and sang along to a cover of Tom Waits's "Ol' 55" in a lovely pub, which prompted me to play Closing Time in my class yesterday, and just when "Martha" finished the band downstairs in the College Bar started playing that very song in preparation for a wedding, the afters of which we attended in the evening. And today is Sunday.

Saturday morning, Craughwell

 

Branwell after his shower (he likes to stick his head under the running tap - he is more of a dog, really)

 Bog cotton

 

Sheep bookcase and cat

Spring laundry stripes

 His placemat

Excuse the disproportionate amount of cat pictures here. Like a pregnant or new-mom blogger whose blog content suddenly becomes 98% baby-related, my brain has seized upon a kitten named Branwell, and he's not even mine!

He went missing a couple of weeks ago, but came home after three nights, just in time for my sister's birthday (half an hour before midnight - Anke and Adrian were about to retire to bed when they heard a familiar meow!).

This is a special time for us, as our younger sister is visiting for three months. We have so many plans, but so far we have mostly been talking about our exciting plans, so it's high time for the doing, although this long weekend is reserved for fun and the recharging of batteries, after a hectic two months. Last night we all stayed at Anke and Adrian's house, and the weekend feels like a holiday already. Adrian made us amazing milky coffees from scratch - grinding the fancy coffee beans, foaming the milk. I rarely order coffee, as it makes me shaky and panicky, but prepared-at-home tends to be fine/milder, and Adrian's is perfection.

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Other little things that have been accompanying this month:

Listening to "Bloodbuzz Ohio" by The National (a slightly different live version, a bonus track on the album) on loop

Drinking fresh thyme tea, nettle tea and matcha tea and eating wild garlic (on top of brie on toast - the best combination!) and micro vegetables such as pea shoots grown as per James Wong's instructions - all the green things

Smelling kitty breath and kitten paws - I had to end this post with one more cat reference!

 

Scene from the weekend

Another week has gone by, and there has been more knitting and painting. We did one craft fair on Sunday, and there will be another one this weekend. The day itself did not really feel like work, and the hours flew by, but I was exhausted afterwards - as an introvert and Highly Sensitive Person any day surrounded by lots of people seems to have that effect. Too many stimuli. I took most of yesterday off - Monday often happens to be a day off for me* - and am looking forward to an Epsom salt bath tonight and the sauna tomorrow.

* Incidentally, I found out yesterday that Marc Allen doesn't do Mondays and finds that by Tuesday afternoon he is absolutely eager to work. I watched some Marc Allen youtube videos because I am re-reading Shakti Gawain (they co-founded New World Library). I like his work-with-ease approach. Apparently, he never works more than 20 hours a week. For many people that is not an option, but as someone who works part-time in her day job and in productive bursts at home, I can relate. You can get more done by doing less. And quiet time is so important to refill your "creative well", to use Julia Cameron's words, and let ideas emerge or develop.

Water, stars and scents

Birds bathing on the roof outside Matt's apartment

"When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?" 

Virginia Woolf 

"If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently." 

Bill Watterson

Looking at the stars (on evening walks, or when I get home and it is dark, I make a point of stopping and directing my gaze upwards at the night sky), water in various forms (swimming, baths, steam room) and breathing into my back (here is a post on the topic on Rejuvenation Lounge) are keeping me afloat at the moment. My problems are indeed small and insignificant, but I do have to remind myself to stop catastrophising.

I have been worrying and fearing and getting upset over unfairnesses (and as a result been hypersensitive around certain issues), and my body has responded the way it always does - aches at first, and then being properly ill.

So this weekend is for resting. And, having a reason, I do not have to feel bad about taking it easy.

Other things that have helped are rubbing geranium oil into my hands and then pressing my palms onto my face for a minute. You cannot not relax when being enveloped by this scent. Along the same lines, my favourite two Yogi teas at the moment are Rose (same effect as geranium) and Green Balance, a blend of green tea, kombucha, peppermint, lemon grass, elderflower and lemon verbena that is silky and delicious.
  
In her new book Ann Patchett describes going to the swimming pool at lot when she was upset over her disastrous first marriage. She says something to the extent of how being in the water let her dissolve in a cathartic way, and I feel the same when I am a ball of anxiety over something. Salt water is even better, and really I should try being in the ocean under a starry sky more often.

Recently

I was absent here for a while for various reasons - family visiting, work in the Uni starting again after my long summer off, needing time away from the computer after long sessions of teaching myself Adobe InDesign - and came back only to find Blogger stubbornly refusing to cooperate, so I have temporarily lost bits in the sidebar. While I attempt to solve this, here are some glimpses of recent happenings and be-ings:

View from the prom in Salthill. Galway Bay was eerily still for a few days - a mirror-like surface, coupled with thick warm air and people moving slowly; it felt like walking through a dream.

 

Encountered on another walk. I must emphasise I do not approve of people dumping old furniture in the landscape, but this was at least aesthetically pleasing. It also reminds me of that famous Cranberries album cover. 

My sister and I are busy preparing for crafts fairs, Christmas markets and online shops. I am trying to establish whether buttons or hooks and eyes or snap fasteners work best on crochet cuffs.

Baking. There has been a lot of baking, for birthdays, hikes, visitors and visits. I found out that liberally substituting honey for sugar is not always a good idea (banana mash instead of banana bread) and that a cake described as "really moist" in the recipe still can turn out excessively moist (pear mash instead of pear cake), to the delight of my visitors, who thankfully were all family and brave and ate it anyway.

Rab and I presented some of our collaborations at the first ever Cong Arts Festival. My sister and brother-in-law kindly helped out in various ways, from driving to filming our show. Cong is a picturesque village most famous for the film The Quiet Man. We loved this sign plus painted ducks' footprints.

Connections (cutlery, crystal)

 

Not feeling the best, I haven't ventured out much apart from a short walk in the woods and onto the cliff beside the beach (Tolkienesque woods and beach just a few minutes apart is heaven) - and to the local swan rescue. Most of my time has been spent in bed reading The Secret History and tending to domestic things.

Amidst the chaos of moving in, my sister somehow conjured up a three-course meal (berry crumble pictured), and my brother-in-law played his first gig with his old band at the weekend - I can only marvel at how fast they are settling in.

I drove away from their house with boxes of books from my childhood room - my entire art library - that came in one of their containers, as well as fancy glasses my late grandmother had given me and the extensive set of cutlery that had been stored away in my mom's basement for 20+ years, one of those gifts "for the bottom drawer" that relatives contributed to over a few years.

I washed the glasses and cutlery and made space in my kitchen and only noticed then how dull the cheap cutlery I had been using all the time looks in comparison. There are many areas in which I still don't feel like an adult at age 30, but I am in possession of sparkly silverware that includes tiny forks for cake and crystal glasses that I am determined to use for non-alcoholic beverages, seeing how rarely I drink at home. I don't believe in reserving things for special occasions.

But more than giving a semblance of grown-up-ness* at a time of doubts and financial insecurity, these objects are a reminder of home and a link to my family and past, and my inner minimalist recedes in respect for their significance (though I do seem to have way too many books on art!).


* I don't intend to ever grow up fully - note to somebody who keeps saying I act/look like a 4-year-old!

Flowery

 Tiny...

...to tall.

Pink and yellow on paper...

...and in the garden.

The hawthorn is spectacular from a distance, but beautiful in detail, too.

"A few years ago Hockney was so frustrated at having to leave home before the hawthorn came into flower that his annual diary was re-arranged so that he could guarantee to be there for what he describes as 'action week', that moment when nature explodes from winter monochrome into spring colour." (The Guardian, 24 May 2013)

I was reminded of David Hockney's endeavour to capture 'action week' today, because the hawthorn seems to have erupted everywhere overnight, and more and more colours sprinkle the greys of the Burren.

There are fresh flowers on my table, a new soap in the shower, and the tulips in the Burren Perfumery's herb garden happened to be the colours I was using for a background I painted.

The water we drink is infused with mint, and I dream of having a lemon balm bush like the one in my mom's garden and making tea from it. Apparently it is easy to grow here, too.

All these scents and colours are an antidote to a rather stressful few weeks. I may have a seemingly endless To Do list and a woefully empty fridge, but I do make time to stop and smell the roses tulips.

Oh yes

I did work hard on Friday as planned, so for the remainder of the weekend I was able to do all the things I mentioned in my last post minus the baking (there was no need; there was still Christmas pudding!).

We did find two new beaches and also looked for, picked and ate sea beet (it's a bit like baby spinach, but with a thicker texture and with salty sea taste - really good). The turquoise of the water is misleading - it was freezing, so this all-year-round swimmer (ahem...) did not take off any clothes. But the cold wind gave me a boost similar to a swim, and just being surrounded by water, animals and Tolkienesque countryside was exactly what I needed.

I am aware I have all these things on my doorstep - the sea beet was actually from the shore here, a few minutes' walk from my house -, but sometimes going somewhere new or less familiar is required to rewire one's brain. I feel almost ready for the (admittedly very short) crazy week ahead.