The Tenderness of Wolves

I loved it! One more on the list of my favourite books.

Bog & fog

Once there was a shallow lake right here where Ljubljana is today. Well, the lake was much larger than Ljubljana is. The first settlers here lived about 4000 thousand years ago in wooden dwellings built on stilts, and even my house which is located at Ljubljana moor (as we call it) has wooden logs beneath to support its weight. The remnant of this lake had been bog which was later dried up to some extent. The land is still very marshy, and since Ljubljana is located in a kind of basin, each year we’ve got days with fog, so thick that sometimes it is hard to see the road in front of you. Up above the fog there is a hint of blue, blue sky. We have such days now. It was sunny yesterday where I work but at home I could see this:

I stayed in the house all afternoon. Anyway, it gets dark at 4:30 pm. It was chilly outside though only -1 degrees C. So, I made these for lunch:

They are made of cottage cheese, an egg, flour and some salt.

I couldn’t help myself and ate some of kaki (persimmon), I dry on the radiators. It has to be completely dry; otherwise it is kind of bitter. It pulls your mouth together. Here they are, all lined up to be eaten:

P.s.: I am glad that you liked the pincushion, or just the stitches. Unfortunately I am not able to show you what I made when I was about 12 years old; it was a masterpiece – a leather outfit (tunic + trousers), all stitched by hand, with fringes at the ends. That’s what the heroes make you do.

I created

During the last week I created a pin cushion for my mum. As it looked a bit dull I tried to embroider some flowers on the white part of it but the orange flower I had embroidered didn't look pretty, so I removed it. Sometimes the simplest things are the most beautiful ones. I gave it to my mum yesterday and she liked it very much.
Funny, how difficult it is to find a filling for the cushions and soft toys in Ljubljana. I had to go to many shops to find it. Nowadays nobody creates things anymore. Perhaps people are fed up with such things. It is the same with the fabric. Shops closed and it is almost impossible to find some lovely patterned fabric in our shops. I think it will be time again to go over border again, to Austria, and buy some nice things there.

Books & life

Good books are read slowly. I found this out recently, while reading The tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. I enjoy reading it. There are many new words I don't know (it is in English) and phrases that make me read the sentences again and again. I still have a few pages left.
And there are books which are read fast, in a day, but later I cannot recall what they were about. Sometimes they are just to make me laugh, to make my day.
I read too much, I know. Because there is life to be lived. My life. :)

Flower pots

My favorite animals are cats but I work for an organisation which protects birds. How funny things turn in life! On Friday I had to make a birdfeeder very quickly for an article I wrote for a magazine we publish. It is a pity that I didn't have any bird seeds near. This is what I made:

I had to lead a workshop for children age 4-10 a couple of weeks ago where we were making similar birdfeeders. What fun the children had, especially when I put the acrylic colors on to the tables! In November 2008 we will be making the nest boxes for the birds. It is very useful to try such things at home first as it saves lots of time and lots of faults.

I like writing articles for children although I have none myself. Perhaps it is a child in me to bear the blame for this. I like to play the games as well but usually there are not enough people around who would like to play. I think I will never really grow up and I like it this way.

It is time...

... to post some of the blogs I look at every day. The ones that I enjoy most. They could be found in a side bar.

Mountains and flowers and me

I found this photo yesterday. It was taken this summer. Me, climbing one of the mountains in Slovenia. With over 2500m above sea level it is one among the highest in my country. It looks rather boring and bare but when you look closer there are so many tiny beautiful alpine flowers among those rocks. The main reason I like going up there. I can't wait for the late spring again. Mountains and flowers - here I come!And guess what! I always have a smile on my face, no matter how hard it gets when such little beauties surround me.

Home

I have traveled around the globe quite a bit. I used to spend all my savings for my travels. Not that there would be as many as I would wish there were but I saw some places around the world. When I was a little girl we used to go shopping to Austria or Italy as in those old days it was a problem to get even some chocolates in our shops. Before Christmas it was impossible to get oranges. Strange days, indeed. Now there is plenty of everything in the shops.

So, later in my teens I traveled all the way to France with my then best friend. Before I turned 20 I visited most of the European capital cities, before I was 25 I traveled around the Scandinavian countries. This time alone, all by myself. I had a time of my life. I mean it. Around that time I stepped on African continent in Tunisia, with my school friends at the university. It was fun. When I met a beautiful young man, he took me to New Zealand. A beautiful green country. I had a wonderful time there but it didn’t feel like home. Kind of isolated, far away from my real home.

After that the world felt small.

Then there were travels to Jamaica, where I hated it, being harassed by the locals all the time, to Canary Island, to Crete. At some time in my life I traveled to China. I felt really good there, everything felt so familiar. Like being home, though I didn’t like the landscape. I liked the feeling to be among the people. I traveled with a group of people.

I don’t think I have ever mentioned that I like Wild West. I will write about this some time later. My greatest wish ever was to see the prairies, to see the places where all those great battles I read about in the books took place. Sometimes wishes come true and a few years ago I traveled all the way to those places described in my books. Together with my husband I landed in Denver. I thought it would have felt like coming home. How wrong I was! Anyway, I loved it. I still dream about those days. I keep remembering.

Since then I have been only to Villach or Graz where I used to buy some organic food and where I still go shopping to Ikea, once I went to London and Warszaw to some workshops, once I went to see an exhibition on Maya in London and to one on Aztecs in Vienna. And I tell you, no matter how far or close I travel, nowhere feels like real home. My home is here, in this little country we call Slovenia. I love it here. It feels like home, it is my home.

The other day...

... I baked these:

Cinnamon rolls by some Swedish recipe. They came out very dry.

A day after I climbed the nearest mountain (or is it a hill with elevation a bit over 1000m?). It was freezing cold, the snow started to fall and the wind was blowing around my ears. On my way up I warmed myself but I was asking the trees, the snowflakes, the birds, the rocks - why am I doing this, torturing myself? I imagined how I sit in my cozy chair in my warm living room and read some excellent books I had brought home from a library... In a hut up there I drank some good hot tea and ate my lunch. The weather was even worse when I went down, back home. Then I realised that I had to go so far to be able to tell a story about my trip, to tell you that I saw an owl in a chimney of a weekend house I passed by, and to enjoy the coziness of my home even more. Often I say to myself:

If you don't go, you don't have a story.

Though the stories I read about are nice, too. :)

Pay It Forward

Two days ago I was browsing through some blogs and quite by coincidence came upon 13mimosa blog. You know, when I see that someone is celebrating a birthday, I cannot resist to give my congratulations. And I read on. I came upon Pay It Forward post and immediatelly decided to join in and share something handmade by me with the readers of my blog (which are not so many, right? :)).

If there is someone out there who would like to join this exchange, here are the rules:

1. You leave a comment here on my blog and request to join the Pay It Forward exchange.
2. The first three comments who agree to join will receive a handmade gift from me (a surprise of course) within 365 days.
3. You return the Pay It Forward by making the same promise on your blog.

This should be fun!

A book

I went to a bookstore yesterday in the afternoon. I like browsing through the books although usually I don't buy anything. Books in Slovenia are very expensive and for this reason I visit our local library instead of buying books.
This time I stopped in the childrens' book department first and I saw it again: the Slovenian version of Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and illustrated by Anita Jeram.

Many years ago I gave this book as a present to somebody I loved. Right up to the moon... AND BACK. Perhaps for the nostalgic reasons I had to have this book. As this man has a very special meaning in my life.
Now I finally own it, this fine book. It is on the list of my favorites. And this list is very short. I kept touching the book yesterday and I read it a couple of times. Although it has a hardcover, it is soft when you touch it. Especially when there are such sweet and gentle memories in your heart as mine are.

Our new president...

... is Danilo Türk. This news will be official once during the next week. I think the selection of the candidates this time was good and that he will be much better president as the one we had (well, we still have). We'll see.

The colors of the fall

I am not a great fan of the cold months, in my opinion they last too long. Half a year of wearing lots of clothes to keep me warm and mostly bad and foggy weather is not something that I look forward to. In the recent days my camera is not used very often. Anyway I took some fall photos the other weekend. The last colors of the fall, no doubt about this.

Vibrant colors that make you happy when you see them.

Leaves down, leaves up.

Fruits of the fall. Food for animals.


The last beauty on my window.

I am back

Those few days I had only for myself went by so quickly. I don't think I will write anything quite inspiring today but I will share with you a photo of the cookies I baked last week. Not really delicious as they were too hard but they look quite nice, don't you think so? :)

I read some books in the meantime:
Girl with a pearl earring by Tracy Chevalier - a Slovenian version of the book loses lots with the translation as it is really terrible. But I liked the book and it remembered me of the days I spent in The Netherlands on my travels many, many years ago.
Summer lightning by Tamara McKinley - actually this is a good book for a summer holidays reading.
The food of love by Anthony Capella - I loved this one. Perhaps it is time to visit Italy and taste the real Italian food (though the truth is that it is not difficult to eat some good Italian food in Slovenia as well).

To tell the truth, I couldn't finish reading In the presence of horses by Barbara Dimmick. I couldn't, the story was too sad and I have to surround myself with happy things at the moment. That's why I read inspiring blogs like the one of Karen Beth or the one of Marta who also creates beautiful things. A little bit of imagination and anything is possible. I haven't shared this with you but one of my favorite books ever is Illusions by Richard Bach. In my opinion, one of the most beautiful sentences in the book is:

If you have imagination as a grain of sesame seed, all things are possible to you.

Let's use it! :) Happy Tuesday!