I know I said I hate machine quilting and I know I’ve whinged about it before and I know I’ve confessed undying love for big stitch, perle cotton, hand quilting – which I do love! – but do you know what? It’s slow and I have umpteen quilt tops folded up and shoved here and there and I need to quilt. And quilt nicely. And this will happen if I practice … and get a new machine.
Now Amy and Jessica swear by their Berninas but they’re just a little, I mean lots, out of my price range. Of course, I would really like a quilter like Patti’s Gandalf but that is DEFINITELY out of price range, not to mention, I would need to move our bed in order to accomodate this amazing machine. Instead, after months of looking, I have decided on a …
Husqvarna/Pfaff Mega Quilter! It has a really wide throat, a super big table, it’s a super heavy industrial style machine and can be bolted into a contraption that looks a bit like an illustration out of a 19th century neurological surgery textbook. But given adding this to our already small living area, i.e. our bedroom, would also involve losing the bed, I just settled for the machine for now.
So this morning, Nanny, Grandad and I went down to the local dealership/ patchwork store and boy golly – I bought one!
[ look how happy Nanny looks! Mind you that may be just vicarious happiness as she established how many quilt tops SHE has for me to quilt! }
It was however, too nice a day to sit inside and finish the engineering degree required to thread it, so after loading this mega wonderful sewing machine into the boot of the car, we headed down to the lighthouse for fish and chips by the seaside and it was glorious.
The sky was so blue, the sun so warm, the cafe so fresh and yummy and the company so good. What more could one ask for …
Check out this sincere little robot we found inside the main door of the cafe. Don’t you just think that it is earnestly looking up to Grandad, asking whether he prefers the red of the green.
Neither thank you, says Grandad, we’re having whiting and chips and potato scallops. Oh and look, we both filled our pockets with salt!
It was a beautiful day and I am such a wonderfully lucky woman to be able to share my Thursdays with my Nanny and Grandad. Let alone have a new Husqvarna Mega Quilter.
Here in Australia, invitations to morning teas, school P&F suppers, church jumble sales, family christenings … any event that combines people and food! … are often accompanied by the phrase “… and bring a plate!”
Of course everyone knows that the plate is to be filled, preferably with something homemade, and my Nanny Dougall was the queen of “bring a plate”. She brought pies, and shortbread, and tarts, and beautiful melting moments, and light fluffy sponges – boy could she cook. And the plates were a crazy selection of old Royal Doulton and Meakin plates that both she and her mum had collected. They sat, wreathed with their cheerful Art Deco flowers, in the china cabinet facing the steep sand hills and brilliant blue ocean of Nanny’s little seaside village, and when they were out and about, there were dark rings in the sun bleached wooden shelves, reminding us where to return them.
Now I have several of these plates and they all have a bandaid – an old tatty cloth one – stuck to the back with Nanny’s name – Claire McDougall – written in her faded blue handwriting. She was happy to share the bounty of her kitchen, but by golly, that plate better come back!
So the other day whilst I was sewing bunting, the rich creams, and 1940′s turquoises, greens and oranges, and pink florals reminded me of Nanny’s plates and so was born the “Bring a Plate” quilt – based on the design of my blue Family China Quilt from a few months back.
I chose 10 fat quarters from Peppermint Stitches, some fabulous red and pink check that looks just like the tablecloths Nanny kept in her sideboard, and a wonderful white and red polka dot and set to work.
The plates have 8 wedges in them, the 9th fat quarter makes a pretty lilac centre, and the 10th fat quarter is for green leaves.
And here’s the best bit, from 10 fat quarters I get 32 beautiful, Nanny Dougall plates! Awesome!
So, I have drawn up a 52 inch square quilt with 22 plates sashed with the white and red polka dot, a 6 plate on point table runner, 2 x 1 plate oven mitts (as per Nanette’s advice, I shall practice my stipple machine quilting on these), and the best bit – a 4 plate hexagon shaped tea party quilt for little people and their softie companions. This is the most cheerful and productive project!
The tea party quilt is also including some applique – a wreath/bouquet/blob of flowers in the middle, and then leaves and a smaller flower in each of the triangles. And I have some pretty as green gingham binding – oooh it does look sweet even if I do say so myself.
Now, I just have to make some felt food for these plates … inspired by Nanny of course. But I won’t include the fresh oyster pikelets she used to make me for breakfast. They were delicious. Truly they were!
Well they’ve been a long time coming, but today I finally remembered to take my camera to Peppermint Stitches so here’s a little look …
[ jelly-saucepans ]
[ bundles-of-fat-loveliness ]
[ bundles-of-woolly-colour ]
[ hand-dyed-linen ]
[ bales-of-jelly ]
[ a-drawer-full ]
[ steamer-trunk ]
[ moda-cotton-cloths ]
[ blanket-box ]
What a pretty shop huh!
I’ve been thinking of other small quilts one could make with scraps – and after perusing this fabulous book …
… decided to try the doll’s fan quilt. Naturally, I decided to try this at 10 to 6 this evening when I should have been preparing dinner, tidying the house, folding washing – bathing the dogs would even have been a worthier option ’cause they STINK from the all the wet weather.
And when I’m doing things in a guilty rush, I utilise the most slapdash, inefficient and un-economical methods. Oh well, it was fun, and now I have a number of ways not to construct a doll’s fan.
So these were the templates …
… and I decided to re-acquaint myself with foundation piecing (doesn’t everybody do this at 10 to 6). After a couple of false starts – I can never remember which way to place the fabrics – I had my wedges done, and then the red centre. Then the wailing from the family proved overwhelming and I had to down tools and cook dinner. Gee they’re demanding!
Whilst sauteing onion, I measured the little fan and could have cried. Despite my careful foundation piecing, it appeared to be too small. Then I realised, I hadn’t added the border – this would add the needed 1/2 inch! Huh! Thank goodness.
After dinner, I pinned, pinned, pinned – I bought these red pins the other day – they are fine and sharp and they’re all red so I won’t have to worry about matching my pins! – and then carefully sewed that curve.
It was so neat!
So lessons learnt – foundation piecing is okay, not convinced it would not be quicker and easier to cut a template and just piece the jolly wedges. And secondly, don’t cut templates out of flimsy-as foundation stuff – you cannot cut around them with an degree of accuracy. Der!
I will make as many as I can from these lovely scraps but I’m not sure I’ll continue with the foundation piecing. I might just cut out a template – I certainly will be doing that for the other two pieces.
btw, the original quilt was put together by Sara Nephew – author of the book – she found a bundle of 15 squares in a box and they were intended to be dandelions. The book is a delight to read – Ms. Nephew has collected photos and stories of the women who made many of the quilts in the book, and she also includes copies of newspaper advertisements from the 1930s. The language is just delightful. Let me share one little article with you …
Though many of us have little opportunity nor inclination to see the rising sun, we still find it very lovely to look at in a gay coloured quilt. This one, aptly named Rising Sun, will be lovely with the sun’s rays made in scraps or in three different materials. The block goes together quickly – before you know it, you’ll have enough ready for your quilt. In pattern 5346 you will find that block chart, an illustration of the finished block in actual size, showing contrasting fabrics; accurately drawn pattern pieces; an illustration of the entire quilt; three colour schemes, step by step directions for making the quilt, and exact yardage requirements. To obtain this pattern send 10 cents in stamps or coin (coin preferred) to Mary Cullen’s Household Arts Department, The Journal.
Ms. Nephew comments that many thirties patterns must be redrafted as it seems as if some of the designers had never pieced a quilt themselves – they were more focussed on producing something new!
Still, how marvellous that the newspaper offered a new patchwork pattern every week!
Oh and did you see the yellow background? I bought this beautiful yellow fabric today at a patchwork store in Cleveland (where Nanny and Grandad live) – it almost has a slight sheen to it like a chintz and was available in every colour imaginable. It is beautiful quality and the yellow looks just glorious with my 1930s fabrics.
I also bought this gorgeous fabric – oooooh! I think I will slice it into borders. Nanny wished wistfully for her 5 daughters to be young again so that she could make them all a dress in it! – she bought 2 metres too! Can’t you just imagine pillowcases trimmed in this! Or quilt sashing!
Oh dear, I’ve just “woken up” – it was my coarse snoring that jolted me awake as I sit here on the sofa in the quiet, dimly lit hum of the heater! Hope this post makes sense! I’d best be off to bed. Good night!
What do you do on a Wednesday when the dining room table is piled high with unfinished projects, you have promised to finish them all asap (to all and sundry for reasons ranging from, to be used in a quilt class in 3 weeks, to so we can eat dinner somewhere other than our laps) and it is raining and chilly. You go searching for kewpie dolls, that’s what!
Now I KNOW I saw some recently – lots and lots in fact – densely piled, higgledy-piggledy, on a low shelf in a nice shop. Isn’t my memory a useful thing. So I drove around and around until 10.30am stopping at every store I thought was a possibility, then collected Carolann and drove around some more – until 2pm actually.
Did we find any? No! We did, however, discover the carpark opposite Borders has been demolished – all 10 storeys of 1950s communist grey concrete. Amazing. There one day, gone the next.
(that;s me in the patchwork fabric skirt and Carolann looking all cheerful – Julian took this through the window at Borders – he said we looked funny – pointing and shrieking at the hole in the ground where the carpark used to be)
And then we sought shelter from the rain in Borders and found some nice quilt books. Excellent, but still no kewpie.
Then, after collecting Little A from school, when I was all frazzled and at my least productive, I found a large kewpie in a dolls house shop opposite the bakery.
Not quite what I wanted – and four times the price – I want to make a kewpie version of the carnivale doll – you know, with a tutu on a stick. But, it would suffice for a trial run.
So kewpie came home and I had fun dressing her …
I gathered her skirt on – big mistake – I couldn’t get it to sit snugly enough to her waist (or lack thereof) so now I’ve bought some very narrow elastic for round 2. I also am altering the pattern for her ruff – I shall add a narrower fabric ruff as well, and pink the edges of both this and her skirt. Then I shall add some obligatory gold glitter to the edges of her tulle petticoat and ruff.
I do love her tulle petticoat and broderie bodice – I’d like to wear a tulle petticoat.
And guess what – I found 10 4 inch kewpies in a dolls shop that is situated within the Buderim Ginger Factory, 2 hours north of Brisbane – weird huh! The sweet owner is posting them and we shall create kewpie heaven.
Gee, aren’t they photogenic! No wonder they’ve been around for over 100 years!
Another sweet and instantly gratifying project for Stacey has been a field of woollen flowers, taking my inspiration from here …
… what a divine book – but! There are NO secondhand jumpers in Brisbane. NONE. We poor Brisbanites have to turn instead to the extravagant woollen fabrics – never mind, these small squares go a long way.
I did not have any double sided iron on pellon, so I made my whirly-gig flowers from a bundle of beautiful Weeke’s Wool and instead of fixing my pretty florals to one side of the wool, I left the wool plain – which is good too because it is so prettily hand dyed that there is lovely variation in the colours – and added a patterned yo-yo and a small button.
These are so quick to make – I can churn them out in less than 10 minutes. Now I just have to make a couple of birds, a few leaves, maybe a ladybug and then I shall stick them onto some long and sturdy ribbon – randomly of course – and hang them above the table of wool.
I shall also put some on my woollen winter hat – it’s purple and makes me look a lot like Mrs. Weasley from the Harry Potter films – but that’s okay :-0
I can’t think of any quirky adjectives that go with bunting – bashful bunting, nah! – blissful bunting, you try-hard lily! – beautiful bunting, sounds like an advertisement from a leisure arts magazine. It’s just bunting.
But it’s pretty … and you can buy loads of fat quarters you think are super pretty but won’t make a quilt with and use them … and it takes up unbelievable amounts of time to make … that’s bunting!
So I suggested to Stacey over at Peppermint Stitches that we could decorate her windows with some pretty bunting whilst we worked on quilts to hang and she sent me home with a luscious bundle of fat quarters -
I drew a pattern on the back of a school newsletter and then cut, and cut, and cut, and cut, and cut, and then cut some more. Glory be! Did those triangles take forever to cut or what! And yes, I used my rotary cutter – you would be forgiven for thinking I used nail clippers it took so long.
And then because they are hanging in a window, I made them double sided. But I didn’t want to sew dinky seams and turn them out, so I sandwiched them together with zigzag – and, modesty aside – I have to say, I became a guru at not letting that mincy little point disappear down my feed dogs. Trust me – my thoughtful and cooperative sewing machine tried many times – but I prevailed.
This did mean, however, that I wound up with little twirly bits of cotton at the bottom of each triangle – so I knotted them, threaded them onto a needle and slid them between the two layers of fabric – now we can wash the bunting should it look dusty. Cool.
Then it was onto this marvellous yellow gingham bias tape Stacey has in the store, iron it over, topstitch and voila! Bunting.
We have hung it across the front windows – which were huge – and I’m taking in the last two lengths for the smaller side windows. And it does look pretty.
Now if you’re in Brisbane and you have an overwhelming urge to make bunting, we have two bunting workshops coming up – one at the beginning of October so you can hop into some pretty Spring bunting – especially if you’re going to have a Melbourne Cup Luncheon (for all you overseas readers – I think this equates to your Kentucky Derby or Ascot) and one at the end of November for your Christmas bunting – this would also make a great teacher gift.
If the sun comes out tomorrow – which is doubtful – I will take a photo of the bunting at Peppermint Stitches – it looks mighty pretty and when it is hanging up, you forget about all that cutting and just stand outside on the footpath and oooooh and aaaahhh!
It’s been a gooooood week. I’m finally inching back to being the lily I like being – lily the mum, lily the hausfrau and lily the stitcher. And I’ve been rewarded so generously -spoiled really – by the lovely readers that stop by this weblog each day!
Crafty Diane of Dixie (you should stop by and see the lovely quilts her Great Aunt Doodle has made – how lovely to have such treasures in the family!) has shared with me her Arte Y Pico award - a celebration of blogs which shine with creativity, design, and interesting material, making an appreciated contribution to the blogging community. Thanks so much Diane for thinking of me – it inspires me to sew harder!
Tuesday, I was surprised by the lovely and talented Rachael Rabbit who shared her Brillante Weblog Premio 2008 with me! Apparently, when one receives this award, one must respond with a thanks to rival those delivered at Academy Awards. So naturally, I thank the beautiful readers who stop by this little blog each day. Just knowing you will be dropping in, inspires me to stitch more quilts and keep stretching myself to include new techniques and ideas. I must also thank my adorable husband Julian. He keeps me in fat quarters, bandwidth and has an endless tolerance for fabric laden dining room tables, late dinners and chaotic laundry. He is working on an appreciation for my quilts and travelled far from the young man who liked black sheets and towels! And of course, my dear Little A – everything I make is “lovely” or “beautiful” and I provide a good excuse for being late for school – “Mum was checking the comments on her blog.” Does that thanks have enough oomph! :-)
And if all this wasn’t enough, on Thursday dear Tine from Sodeste, granted me another Brillante Weblog Premio – 2008. My goodness, I’m blushing! Thank you Tine – I so enjoy reading your blog every day and your visits to blockaday fill me with a warm happiness that my little weblog can reach around the world to find new friends who share the same interests as me!
And today … today I spent the morning with a lovely friend, Linda, and we sat on her verandah in the sun, sharing tea and stories about our children and quilts and how we spend our days. Then it was over to New Farm to collect Carolann and we headed to Peppermint Stitches for a wonderful afternoon of hanging colourful bunting across Stacy’s sweet windows and choosing a new basketful of fat quarters for the Colourful Houses Quilt Round 3! (It’s bright and big and beautiful!)
Do you know, I used to think fat quarters were a bit wasteful – I always bought yardage or fat quarters that matched - but now, I just love the freedom of pieceing with fat quarters plucked from here, there and everywhere. Over the last six months, I’ve really worked hard to let go of the matchy-matchy and am loving the energy and whimsy of my drawerful of fat quarters.
And I especially love being here at blockaday to share it all with you.
Now, if I was to follow the rules for each of these awards, I would have to choose 17 blogs to pass the awards onto. I don’t know that many people! So I’m combining the three awards and sharing with each of the following talented stitchers (in no order), an Arte Y Pico and Brillante Weblog Premio 2008:
1. Louise at Miffy’s World – you make the most beautiful aprons I have ever seen and I love the energy you have for your family and life. Now Louise, I have sent you an email with my phone number – we MUST do coffee early next week – Monday? – so that I can collect my beautiful apron!
2. Anita at Bloomin’ Workshop – you have such a wonderful eye for design – you inspire me to work harder!
3. Patti at Quilting is my Passion – oh Patti! Your generosity and friendship has made my year and your beautiful quilts are glorious
4. Amy at Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts – oh the fabulous energy and beauty of Amy’s quilts sparkles with every visit to her blog and her writing warms my heart and tickles my fancy! (Hey! don’t you think it is divinely intriguing that there is another weblog called “The Other Mrs. Schmenkman”!)
5. Jessica at J.M.B.Mommy – this girl makes beautiful, quirky and original quilts and has a wonderful mind, sharp wit and a social conscience that reminds me to stop and think about what I am doing and why.
6. Sarah at Frog Creek Hollow – your tutorials and stories are so beautiful – what a way with words you have and I so admire your lovely sewing.
7. Sweet Nellie - oh my goodness, your work is without parallel – it’s gorgeous, original, quirky and Little A just loves you.
So there you go! My 7 recipients. Have a lovely weekend and I wish all 7 of you hours of wonderful creativity.
I had such fun making that little village of Thimbleberry-styled houses last night, I pulled out a drawer full of scraps this morning and began planning some more colourful houses. It was the perfect morning for such pleasure. The sun was shining, the house was quiet, there was French music tinkling through the kitchen and I could not be anywhere else ’cause I was baking bread.
(In her glorious collection of cooking essays, “Home Cooking”, Laurie Colwin provides a recipe for bread that can be squeezed into a busy day of running errands, dashing to the office and the chaos of small children – bah humbug! I LIKE being a slave to my bread – it means the day s-l-o-w-s- down just delightfully and don’t we all need a bit of that!)
So, I set up the cutting mat on the kitchen chopping block – such a good height, but I have to continually fight the temptation to flour it well! – and with the picture in my head of what I wanted, got chopping …
This is a seaside village, perhaps Mousehole in Cornwall – always wanted to live there! – and the cottages are beautifully colourful and tumble cheerily down to the harbour’s edge. Strangely enough, Mousehole has a large number of resident Matroyshkas (courtesy of a pair of pyjamas Little A has grown out of) and they have recently been seduced by the charms and samples of a travelling Laura Ashley curtain salesman. No blank windows for the Matroyshkas of Mousehole – there are florals and butterflies aplenty!
Here they are, popping their heads out the doors and windows, checking to see whether their family’s fishing trawler has made it safely back to harbour.
One of the Matroyshka families is slightly rebellious – they have eschewed the traditional geometric designs and chic paisley of their neighbours and smothered their cottage with ravishing roses – the travelling Laura Ashley curtain salesman was guaranteed of a good time here! Actually, these Matroyshkas are related to the Araboolies of Liberty Street and Jessica, if you’ve not read this book you must cross straight over to Amazon and order it NOW. It has your name on it!
Of course, planning the quilt in my head as I cut meant that there were a few pieces missing. Never mind, back to the chopping block ..
But alas, even the slowest rising bread is eventually cooked (except this photo is BEFORE it went into the oven – you know, forgot to take an after photo before we ate it!) , and it was time to down tools, and head off to Nanny and Grandad’s for lunch.
But this evening, instead of cooking dinner for Little A, I glued myself to the dining table and sewed, sewed, sewed – until Little A confiscated the quilt – she only returned it when food was delivered.
There are two more borders to go – a fence-y kind of one using more of the small florals from the windows – we can imagine it is the travelling Laura Ashley curtain salesman, laying his wares out upon the wharves hoping to catch a few more customers. And then some kind of frame.
I like this bubbly border – I randomly chopped bits of 2 inch wide blue and separated them with 2 inch squares of red – Wee Play of course – I’m going to buy a bolt of this I love it so much. I also love the palest pink frame between the bubbles and houses – I was in a bit of a quandary with my brain stuck in the border=dark, border=dark gear and then suddenly BING! I thought “No! Palest pink!”
And I am utterly addicted to these houses and am off to Peppermint Stitches tomorrow to deliver metres of colourful bunting for Stacey’s windows AND buy 10 gorgeous fat quarters to make a BIGGER village of houses. This will be my second “take 10 random fat quarters” quilt – definitely my favourite kind of patchwork.
Carolann will kill me because I told her on Wednesday I would not make another stitch or cut on the houses until next Wednesday when we would work on it together – and now I’ve made two lots. Oh dear! Hey and also, I thought last night’s houses were colourful but do you know, I think they’re actually a cluster of workhouses for Victorian orphans – I mean, next to the Matroyshkas they look sooooo gloomy!
p.s. I just stuck my finger in my eye and it had soap on it – ouch! Definitely time for bed.
I will never, ever be one of those people who have a cool, minimalistic home with white grey walls, furniture and floors. Nope, I have a colour fetish – the more the merrier. And the pleasure is not just to be found in fabric – admiring the well chosen colours of the clothes of strangers in the corner store, looking out for the line of gerberas in an old neighbour’s front garden, or putting rich pumpkins with glowing capsicums and verdant green rosemary in a black cast iron pan is just as satisfying and makes me daydream of quilts in these colours.
And there was plenty of colour in Bootville this evening. Julian subdued the three foot long rhubarb that had been lurking on the bench …
… into crumble of course …
- and I stitched up a version of a Thimbleberries quilt advertising a new line of fabric in the latest Fons and Porter to grace our newsagents. I, however, used scraps from Beth’s Sampler and some of my reproduction stash. Boy have those fat quarters from the sampler gone a long way – one 24 block sampler, one dresden plate wall hanging and now a 22 by 18 inch wall hanging. Cool!
I just love the rich colours of this little quilt – I especially love the small dashes of black (Patti, I am completely converted to the beauty of black) and the houses look like a row of terrace houses perched on the hill of an old, old suburb where I would love to live.
The border looks like a Mondrian painting – or some very stylised Art Deco stained glass. Nevertheless, I don’t want the original border but haven’t yet decided on my own. I’m going to sleep on it.
Clearly, or unclearly as the case may be, I need to buy some better pencils than those currently floating about – for some reason, one of us bought 2H pencils – why, I don’t know. They may sharpen to glorious points but can you see that line? Where? There! From point to point. No, I can’t either.
And knowing I only had a 2H made me lazy so instead of drafting the little houses on my graph paper, I just guessed – yeah that looks like 4 inches! Well it was only going swimmingly until I went to stitch the first two columns together.
Little A suggested just trimming off the first column so that they were the same. For a fleeting second this seemed like a champion of an idea. But then I remembered I was working hard at accuracy here, so, get this! I measured the first column and worked out how much bigger I needed to make the second! Amazing!
The third column was a doddle and I want to make this little quilt again and again and again – I’m thinking 1930s houses, polka dot houses, bright houses (Park Slope style) and pale, pale blues and greys and ecrus to make me think of the beach.
Hey look, the bottoms match!
And check out Little A – she’s beavering away at her Moomin stories the minute she gets home from school!
You can read all about a foursome of Moomins who discover the cheeky Mymbles, Min and Me in the pantry!
Oh we’ve had the loveliest day as a family – gosh it was nice to all be together, around the table, working on the same project. There was the best buzz!
Little A was drawing …
Julian was writing html …
I was pattern-making and stitching …
Even Simon was alert and curious … looking this way and that as if he was at a tennis match!
And what were we doing – we’re all abuzz with moomin magic, and are working on a moomin blog for Little A! It’s called moominologi - where Little A, her friend Little N, Julian and myself will celebrate all things moomin. Little A and Little N are writing their own stories set in moomin valley with their own moomin characters as well as Tove Jansson’s original characters, and will illustrate them. I have promised to help with the colouring in of said illustrations and will oversee the posting and housekeeping of moominologi, and Julian is of course our web designer and domain master!
They really are fabulous books – you must check them out – the stories and characters are so very original and quirky and they make for the best reading out loud. They fill Little A with chuckles and inspire so many wonderful drawings and stories. And as Anne in Finland says, they can be read on many different levels. Just this morning Little A and I were reading the short story of Snufkin and the Spring Tune where Snufkin meets a little creep (as in creeps along in a shy and silent manner, not unpleasant yob) who is so insignificant no one has ever given her a name. She asks Snufkin if he will, which he does. The next day, she tells him how much her life has improved now that she has a name instead of just being a creep …
“… you see, before I had a name I just used to hop around, and perhaps feels this or that about this or that, and everything was simply happening around me, sometimes nice things and sometimes not nice, but nothing was real, don’t you see? Now I’m a person, and everything that happens means something. Because it doesn’t only happen, it happens to me – Teety-woo. And Teety-woo may think this or that about it … if you see what I mean.”
This got me thinking about how we – both at an individual and state level – can sometimes “dehumanise” people by taking away their names. When people become numbers or have a derogatory nick-name applied instead, it is so much easier to ignore them, deprive them, insult them or hurt them, because we no longer think of them as a person. I have read that Tove Jansson was especially concerned with finding some magic and beauty in the world after the horror of World War II so I was thinking about it in this context and I wonder whether it would have been harder for a guard to go round up Martha, Emily and Rebecca in a concentration camp or village and kill them, then it was to round up the *** Jews or numbers ***.
Hmmmmm ….. but, oh dear, don’t let my dark musings here put you off – there is so much fun and laughter to be had in these books!
Little A and I are also keen to add as much information about Tove Jansson and the books as we can gather – and after a cursory hunt, that will require more effort than I initially thought!
So tonight, we are waiting for … I won’t tell you what Julian just said – he’s having issues with the site … he now says he’s hacking into a database to retrieve the content … that doesn’t sound good … but I think we are just waiting on the final tweaking of the site and of domain thingys to be recognised and then I will give you all the link!
My little Moomintroll is coming along nicely – when it’s finished, we’ll photograph it and use it for the site’s banner. I’m pleased with the character I’ve created in his face – just the right amount of wide-eyed curiosity mingled with a wee bit of nervousness.
And I can’t wait to stitch the tree and I’ve a whole lidful of buttons ready for the mountains … so much stitchy fun – never enough time! :-)