Shopping

The Ektorp, courtesy of http://www.ikea.com/

We need a new couch. Our current couch was new circa 1975 and it belonged to my mother-in-law. Sadly, it is not retro chic. It is brown. With beige stripes. And it is made of a peculiar, nubby, thoroughly unidentifiable fabric. But for all this, it has served us well ever since we set up home together. And it's a good length so you can stretch out very comfortably for a post-dinner snooze. But its time has come. Its cushions have become flat and depleted and there's no getting away from the fact that it's just plain ugly.

So it's simple, right? Go out, find the one you like, buy it, bring it home, sit on it. No. Not. So. Simple. We went to Ikea on Sunday and also Freedom, another furniture store which we have here in Australia. Now, having done my Net research, my plan was to go in, buy a 2-seater 'Ektorp' at Ikea in a suitably goes-with-anything colour which wouldn't show every little mark and get out. But then we sat down on an 'Ektorp' stationed near the door. "What do you think?", "I don't know, what do you think?", "Is it comfortable?", "Let's try the 3-seater", "Oh, they have a 2.5 seater", "What about the 'Beddinge'?", "Oh no, it's a sofa-bed", "That one's too expensive", "Well, that one looks a bit wonky"...and so on and so on until we'd walked through the entire store and bought a wreath for the door, a scented candle, a jar of Lingonberry jam and a bottle of Elderflower cordial but no couch. Then my DH said "Let's go to Freedom..." and the whole process began again...

Having had my memory jogged by Crazy Aunt Purl's latest blog to tell my Ikea-and-the-couch story, I will now take up another of her themes and express my dislike of self-checkouts at the supermarket. We have used them a couple of times lately and they are really quite useless in my view. Every time we have ended up having to call for help when the machine decided we'd done something it didn't like the look of and terminated our transaction. So, remind me, how is this saving my time and the supermarket's workforce (and, more importantly, money)? Aside from this, though, it is just another way of disassociating people. Soon, there'll be no need to interact with other people at all. For some this may be a good thing, but for me, I think it's rather nice to say 'hello' to a number of people as I go through my day. Obviously, these are not hugely significant interactions but just for a moment it takes you out of your bubble, that little space you hum along in where you and yours are number one. How bizarre supermarkets today would be to the shopper of the 1920s or 1930s. My grandmother would often recount tales of going to the butcher for this, going to the grocer for that...now you grab something wrapped in plastic off the shelf and swipe it through a machine without having to talk to another soul. My DH is all for this brave-new-world streamlining and perhaps it will prove to have its merits one day - when we cannot remember it being any other way.

Treasures from the Thrift Store

"Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us."
- Oscar Wilde.

Out of the midday sun

Image courtesy of http://holidaysiq.com

We are in the middle of an early hot spell at the moment. Since late last week it has been 30 degrees plus and it doesn't look like abating until Sunday at the earliest. Now, I'm going to be honest with you - I hate hot weather. For someone who has lived in Australia from birth, I am no beach-bronzed sun-lover. No. I burn in the sun. I get heat rashes. My hair frizzes. In short, as you can tell, during summer I look and feel an absolute treat. But having just read Jane's entry about winter at http://www.yarnstorm.blogs.com/, I have similarly decided to take a different view of summer. Slip into a bit of a 'colonial' mode, if you will - and I mean this strictly in an aesthetic sense and without the ugly racism, of course. Close the curtains and lower the blinds during the day, thereby subduing the house into darkness. Sit outside in the cool of the evening and read a book. Try to move slowly in the heat. We have just had ceiling fans installed so this should enhance the mood! In other words, I am going to try to work with the season instead of fighting it. Think of me tonight reading A Passage to India in the backyard as the ice cubes clink in my glass!

To get a sense of what I mean, just have a look at the cooling and calming Indian verandah above and also this lovely link: http://decortoadore.blogspot.com/2008/07/british-colonial-design.html

An ephemeral start to the week...

" Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck." - the Dalai Lama.

"The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing." - John Lennon.

"There are two types of women in this world - ones who like chocolate and complete bitches." - Dawn French (sorry if you don't like chocolate - I'm sure she's not referring to you :) )

Some more from my little blue folder of ephemera...three beautiful postcards from Tokyo's National Science Museum (which took on an interesting sepia tone when photographed in the hot afternoon sun) and three random, clipped-out quotes...

Ephemera

Image of the Madonna courtesy of http://www.depauw.edu

The problem with paring down is, of course, where to put everything. This is an especial problem for the inveterate collector, that is: me. I collect everything. When we go on holidays I keep train tickets, boarding passes, amusing wrappings off chocolate bars, serviettes at restaurants, newspaper clippings. And then I don't want to throw anything out because it reminds me of being there. "That wrapper was from those chocolates we bought in Tokyo!", "That was the train ticket from the day we went out to Versailles!" etc., etc. So it came as no surprise when sorting through my study yesterday to find a manila folder marked rather grandly: 'Ephemera'. I thought it might be fun for the next couple of days to sort through it and see just what this human bower bird picks up and drags back to her nest...

First up then are bits and pieces from our visit to the Museum of Russian Art at Minneapolis (http://www.tmora.org/) So beautiful but you could overlook it if you weren't making your way around 'the Twin Cities' reasonably carefully. Housed in what looked to be an old, Spanish-mission style church, it was showing an exhibition of sacred art when we were there last October. I am undecided on questions of faith but I find enormous peace in looking at Russian Orthodox icon paintings. Perhaps it's the colours used, or the expressions on those holy faces, I'm not sure. The little icon I bought did not photograph too well for some unknown reason so instead I post two other lovely ones above (the detail of the Archangel Gabriel painted by Semion Fedorovitch Ouchakov is from a print I have at home and photographed myself).

There were also other, more recent examples of Russian art at the Museum and I love that the women depicted in Konstantin G. Doroknov's "September" (above) are sorting through the cabbages. No reclining in salons for these ladies. Perhaps there's a little bit of Soviet Realism at work but I love those everyday details - the cabbages, their aprons, the kitchen. I have included two details from the painting which I photographed myself, since I couldn't find Dorokhov online.

Are you a collector on holiday?

Preparing for Summer

Image courtesy of http://marcopoloni.com

As a part of our home improvements week, we're ordering some Japanese Noren curtains for our front porch. There's no point putting in another door as such, because it leads in a very short step straight to the front door, but I'm hoping to make this little space just a bit cooler during the coming summer months. I also want to make it more of an 'anteroom' rather than being so much an extension of the outside space as you come in from the front garden so some dreamy, floating Noren curtains seemed like the answer. And once again through the wonder that is the Internet, I have found a local shop which will make them to custom fit our slightly irregularly shaped doorway. They will fit across more of the doorway than those pictured above, and with a little more emphasis on the practical rather than the purely decrorative, but I think it'll work out to be a nice solution. I like to see the house make these seasonal changes - it seems like more of an organic being that way!

On a break

Hello! Good to be back in the Wood after a couple of days absence. We have had an unofficial long weekend here, since the Melbourne Cup was run yesterday (which somehow extends into a four-day weekend for everyone!?) and my Fellow Traveller has also taken the week off from work so I have been away from the desk and working instead on a number of around-the-house projects which have been crying out for attention for some time. So, we now have a lovely new rug in the living room, we are in the midst of a major find-a-storage-place-for-it-or-throw-it-out drive, the fly screens for the windows and the water tanks have been sorted out in preparation for summer and we are getting the washing machine and a couple of electrical jobs fixed after a lot of procrastination (and darkness!). Very industrious indeed.

But you've got to have some fun too, right? So, today we set out for the nearby Yarra Ranges. We had a beautiful, beautiful lunch at Sweetwater Cafe at the Yering Winery. I highly recommend it if you're ever in the area (I would've snapped my thoroughly yummy risotto for you but I forgot my camera...) and then we headed on to Badger's Weir for a walk through the fern fronds. So peaceful. And we were delightfully surprised when we got back to our car to find the area populated by about twenty rosellas, a wallaby, a cockatoo and a couple of currawongs... Above are a few photos which my DH took with his mobile - one from the balcony of the Cafe looking towards the Yarra Ranges, the fern fronds and ghost gums on our walk and a wallaby wondering just why we were following him...