kvinnogöra

Det fanns ett uttryck som växte fram ur tidsandan när 1900-talet just hade passerat sin mitt. Tron på tekniken var ännu obruten, människorna dess allt lydigare redskap. Då talades det om "förspilld kvinnokraft". Med det avsågs krusade örngottsband, omplanterade pelargoner, hemkokt hallonsaft, konserverade kantareller, manglade lakan, stoppade raggsockor, vikta näsdukar, mönsterstickade fingervantar, äppelmos om hösten, hembakat till eftermiddagskaffet, broderade dukar, strukna skjortor samt surdegslimpor som tog dygn på sig att mogna. Även plättar med sylt började te sig onödiga, det gick fortare med pannkaka i ugn. 
Det fanns ett uttryck till, som även den förkroppsligade tidsandan: "Hellre ett skitigt hem än ett rent helvete". 
Vilken arrogans mot dem som behärskade överlevnadens konst i den nyss svunna tid när allt, bokstavligen allt, hängde på att var och en tog ansvar för livhanken från början till slut. Vilket måttlöst förakt för människors urgamla och aldrig upphörande slit för att hålla lorten och lössen från dörren. För kraften det tog att trots allt, med små medel, unna sig glädjen att göra vackert omkring sig. Varför skulle enda sättet att mäta arbetets värde vara att räkna det i pengar?  

-Lena Katarina Swanberg, ur Torpdrömmar

the clothes horse

sometimes i think all i think about is clothes. okay that's not really true. but i do go through periods now and then when all that seems to hold my attention is clothes - making them, sketching them, planning my wardrobe.

it's a confluence of of my complete love of planning, plotting and list-making, plus my obsession with fabric and delight in sewing. i shouldn't judge myself. it's okay, it's my "creative outlet!"

the tricky bit is that as a planner and a plotter, i do love preparedness and simplicity - not minimalism in the fashionable sense, but the idea that you can have one perfect thing that serves a multiplicity of needs is just so deeply satisfying. like those all-in-one camping pots, or a swiss army knife (come to think of it, this may also go some way to explain my love of camping). i like neatness and i don't like excess - at least in theory.

thus my goal is, quite reasonably i think, to have a pared-down wardrobe of really perfect items, just the things i really need and wear, to be perfectly and appropriately dressed for all occasions. this conflicts wildly with my desire, as a sewer, to have and to hold all the pretty fabrics.

right now i really want to make a suit, but when on earth will i ever wear a suit?! how do you do it without looking like a grandma/melanie griffith?? but they're so beautiful (at least to look at) and it would be such a triumph to make!

it's not easy being a clothes horse and an efficiency maniac in one.

geese.

i stopped to watch a flock of geese fly by, long white necks stretched against the pale, snow-filled sky.

"strange, isn't it?" remarked a woman walking by.

"how do you mean?"

"they're flying in the wrong direction."

i can imagine a time, not so very, very long ago, when a flock of birds flying in the wrong direction, heading north in midwinter, would be met with fear and worry, a portent, an omen, a sign of terrible things to come.

things aren't as they ought to be. and yet we barely know enough to notice these strange changes.

elevenses

working from home today. what's better than being able to take a mid-morning break to sit on your couch, drink tea, pat your rabbit and waste a little time on pinterest? nothing!

please, this

"I would like to live on a farm. Not a modern farm, mind you, but a simple old-fashioned farm with cows and pigs and goats and chickens and ducks and horses, where every day is the same except for the seasons bringing a different kind of work. I would have a vegetable garden, and from the kitchen I could look over a wheat field. I would work hard all day long and feed a lot of people, preferably more children than grown-ups. I would have a big, square wood-burning stove with low benches on the side where we would sit in winter and warm our backs. And in summer there would be large copper kettles on the stove with fruit and sugar cooking for hours, the preserve jars lined up on the long kitchen table, and in the fall mushrooms on the stove, freshly picked in the woods nearby. There would be a small river to calmly fish in. The farm should not be too far away from a small village, and I would set my clock by the sound of the evening church bells. I would like to sit on a bench in front of the house when the day's work is ended or lie under an apple tree."

from Marlene Dietrich's ABC

i found this on the wonderful, now seemingly defunct, blog a clock without hands, which was one of my favourites for a long time.

photo lessons

i'm giving myself a photography course. i have a syllabus and everything. because it occurred to me, just think how much better i could be at photography if i dedicated a certain amount of time to it every week! well okay this wasn't really my own idea, i was greatly inspired by this article: how to live on 24 hours a day.

in other news it is most aggressively november.

start.

i know blogs are hardly a thing anymore. but i needed one anyway. i need a place to put all the things i love, all the pictures and songs and words and things. i love pinterest but it's so easy to just gather, gather, gather, throw all the beautiful pictures on a board and never look at them again. a blog is a good place to just pick one perfect image you want to look at again and again, to put it together with words, to post a song, to put together a story.

so this is my new blog. and if you are someone who still reads blogs, and who even manages to find new ones, welcome!

<3