ibikotten

autumn to winter to spring

2011-02-28T03:46:00.000-08:00

some images from the past months.

I made this stork mobile for my son's class' nature corner, for Autumn.. it's a while ago, I know.

it was fun and the kids helped with the glue.

I wanted to make a raincoat out of a plastic table map.

this was the first one:

it lasted one wearing and then tore completely. the backing was made of paper.

then I found this sort of - I suppose that's what oilcloth is - in Ikea, and made one for each of my bigger kids and one for my son's friend. but I only have my daughter's photographed:

the boys' are dark blue with white dots and with no lace. naturally. sadly, there isn't that much rain around here...

Amalia and I made this little fairy boat in our back yard one afternoon:

Thea and her blanket:

A winter walk to the beach:

And a walk in the forest nearby:

...

{this moment}

2010-10-15T05:50:00.000-07:00

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. see soulemama for more magical moments.

2010-10-14T02:57:00.000-07:00

via made by Joel, I found the science toy maker which made me want to jump a few years into the future and make an origami glider with my children. it warms my heart to see people put so much time and attention into sharing their so valuable knowledge with others, especially when this knowledge can bring beauty and a little magic into life.

Baby yoga

2010-10-12T02:04:00.000-07:00

September 1st

2010-09-01T13:15:00.001-07:00

My son started school today. first grade. I can hardly believe it. here he is, proud, serious and full of hope and expectations, walking towards the flower gate through which all the new first grade students walked. Ori took the photos of all of the children and they all had this wonderful tense excited expression. so lovely to watch.

Thea started to check what real food tastes like... so early for my feeling, but she really wants to, tries to grab my fork as I eat, and now they say start at 4 months instead of 6. so here goes. Butternut squash for now. she loves it (as long as mommy's milk follows).

Amalia had a rough day I think.

my 2 girls. I'm so in love.

One Month Old

2010-05-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

...and I'm so in love...

we named her Thea.

she's peaceful and quiet and gentle, and her eyes seem like they belong to someone who's been here before... My mother said she makes her think of weeds, long and delicate and something about her movement.

The kids are crazy about her. She brought a gift of love to the family, a quiet and simple and light sort of love.

Baby time

2010-04-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

Our third daughter, still with no name, arrived on the night between saturday and sunday, april 11, at 2:40. The house is full of baby bliss and baby love, and some children freak outs too.

The birth was all I could hope for. When I was thinking about giving birth this time, my hope was to go through it with no fear. I had a strong experience of fear with the two previous births - the first one was full of panic even, it wasn't planned to be a home birth but happened too quick to get to hospital; the second was wonderful but still there was an element of suffering and fear towards the end. I think there's a difference between experiencing pain and suffering. Sure, births are painful. but this last time I succeeded in going through the pain with courage and joy and with no suffering. and it makes me very proud.

At the last phase I could feel my body tear apart almost, and the strong strong pressure and pain, and at the same time I could see it as a big pipe full of light, opening up for her to pass through. so I could call it "open" rather than "tear". and I had in my head the words of my friend Karmit, about how not only the body needs to open up but the soul too to let a baby come. and in my ears the words of my wonderful midwife: "just give it space, lots of space. You don't have to do anything, it is happening to you". and for the first time I could let my body push without stopping or pressing actively. I stuck with the beautiful harmonies that me and my support team (Ori, Michal the midwife, and Inbar who came to be and help) created with our low sounds, rather than shout - as I did both times before. I invited the baby to come out (and they all with me: come out, come out..) and out she came. I keep coming back in my mind to this moment of deconstruction and creation when a baby slips out of my body, such an ultimate moment of life, and I'm surprised to find myself willing to do it again, right now... (but I do think 3 is enough for me...)

She's so sweet, relaxed and peaceful, and we all adore her.

And I was thinking, it would be good if I could take this as a sort of a lesson in letting go of fear and control. I wish I'll be able to let things happen in their own pace and time, to wait and listen and mostly have faith. at least sometimes.

*this post was written under the influence of birth hormones :-)

more of the past months

2010-03-17T12:36:00.001-07:00

Purim is a holiday of costumes and sillyness. Since my kids go to a Waldorf kindergarten, some order and seriousness have to remain in place.. each group has a theme and the children have to think of costumes that would fit within the theme. It is actually not such a bad idea, seeing how children in other schools and kindergartens go for the ready bought superhero or TV characters costumes, whereas in our community a bought costume was a rare sight and we avoided all the ben10s and bakugans and the rest. In Hilel's group the theme was "sea world" and he, after a year of planning on being a mamuth this year, shifted immediately to the idea of a killer whale. funny enough in his 3 years of kindergarten Purim celebrations he was already a squid

and a swordfish

and he only got out of the water once to be a monkey.

here he is this year, with Amalia.

Her group's theme was "circus", and she found the loveliest reference for an acrobat in our Pippi longstocking book, with the wonderful drawings by Ingrid Vang Nyman. She just had to add some plastic bits, the crown and a butterfly shaped key holder as a ring, and her fairy neckless.

It was a rainy Purim and we stayed mostly at home and made some masks together.

On fine, sunny winter days I try to take the kids out as much as possible. I pick them up from their kindergarten with some fruits and snacks packed along with my knitting, and we go to a playground. these are from February first:

and now that it became more spring like we had some really warm days, and started going to the small stream near Amikam, not far from here, usually with more friends. For these outings I add an empty plastic box, to collect tadpoles and then release them again when we're about to leave.

and this happened in our back yard, while I was hanging the laundry:

what a monster. They have been living in our yard since before we moved in, in a beautiful co-existance with a pretty big pack of eternally hungry street cats that wander through. A few months ago we found a tiny little turtle, I suppose there's a chance of that happening again sometime soon.

getting ready

2010-03-17T01:41:00.000-07:00

this is yesterday. The mirror needs cleaning but I'm entering week 37, so I'm allowed to let it stay dirty for a bit... towards the end of this pregnancy I feel like a glass so full of water, that with every movement I might spill some. so I'm quiet relieved to reach week 37 with only reminders of the coming birth and not an actual beginning. Now I can be sure that this birth will happen at home, as the midwives only take a home birth from this pregnancy week and on.

both previous births took place at home. This time I feel less ready, less focused, so I'm trying to set my mind on home and family. I was very busy with getting as much work as possible done, drawing patterns, cutting fabric, sewing, passing some parts on to my seamstress. but somehow there isn't that much done...

Here are some things I was working on during the past few months:

a granny square blanket for the new baby. It's the first crocheting I ever did... it was fun. and the yarn is lovely soft Merino. I tried to save the knitting for any time when I'm outside or visiting someone, or at home next to my children, in short, any time I couldn't do more demanding work. It was fun to have strangers react on this activity in places like the dentist's waiting room or a playground. It's the kind of thing that immediately makes people feel friendly and smiley and talkative.

and now that it's finished, I feel the baby can finally come out.

This is Ayala. I participated in a doll making course organized and taught by Shiri, another mother in my daughter's kindergarten, who has the most wonderful talent for making beautiful things. it took quiet a while to make her, and my children were waiting from week to week to watch the slow developments. they were excited when she was done. here she wears some other doll's outfit, but by now she has a dress of her own and I'm hoping to find a moment to make some more clothes for her. Amalia doesn't want to part with her, so Ayala even tasted some strawberries once... I had to clean her and now her face is not as new looking. But it turned her (for me mostly) from some desired object that Mom worked so hard on, into a real toy.

new fabrics for an old design, these cord trousers are for ages 2-5.

Thanks to Amy Karol and her "Bend the Rules withFabric" book, I learned about the EZscreen kits for making home scale screen prints relatively cheaply and safely. so I ordered a kit and started playing with that. I made a bunch of these little blouses (ages 18 months to 4 years) and printed some of them with 3 different bird drawings. I only have this one photographed, the others are still at my seamstress' studio, being sewn.

A simple summer dress.

there are more clothes in the making, I hope to slowly be able to show more things. My strategy for these pregnancy months has been to just work and work as much as possible, and face the selling part later, when the baby will be here. so I might open an online shop sometime in the near future.

ubugi

2010-01-31T01:14:00.000-08:00

...is the title on the PDF file that contains the pattern for this lovely and simple baby outfit. I fond it on the nani-iro website, in the 2009 sewing section ("collection and order" on the top menu. I didn't give the direct link since strolling through their site is such a pleasure). I don't know how to name it myself - pajama maybe? The pattern is very simple and easy to follow, and the size I think is about 3-6 months. I later made a smaller version for 0-3 months.

I bought 5 meters of the softest ivory flannel when we were in London, and I thought it would fit this pattern perfectly. But it seemed just slightly too simple... so I decided to make my own colorful bias tape out of fabric scraps and some new fabrics that fitted in with the color schemes.

I cut small strips diagonally:

sewed them together into long strips:

ironed with this little instrument for bias tape making:

here's another one:

The inspiration for the patchwork bias tape came from this beautiful blog. I hope to have some pictures in about 3 months of a real baby wearing one of those.. :-)

Jaffa port

2010-01-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

Amalia (not mine, friend's daughter) and Elisheva both wear my sharwal trousers

new things

2009-12-20T12:06:00.000-08:00

hello!

some new things I've been making lately. I'm quiet slow and my attention is spread over different projects of sewing and knitting + the famous everyday life that doesn't let me use my scarce working time for working. I'm 3.5 months away from birth and it's a hell of a deadline, so I'm trying to focus as much as possible on my things and my goals and less on spreading my efforts on gifts etc. but I'm not so good at that, so gifts continue to flow...

I made these twin cardigans for our friends Iris and Ishay's new twin babies, Netta and Hagar:

They're laid out on a beautiful huge tablecloth I found at London's Spitalfields market last month. we spent lovely 4 days, just the 2 of us, unbelievable as it may have seemed just a while before. All grandparents joined in the mission of babysitting, and we took our first vacation without kids since we have kids, that's exactly 6 years. and our last vacation for the next few years again... it was an important reminder to what life can be outside the parenting bubble. And it was wonderful to come back.

here are close ups of the buttons, vintage, once found on etsy or ebay, can't remember:

Just before leaving for England I ordered some lovely fabrics from sew mama sew, and they arrived shortly after we came back. In my studio, They joined (aside from all the "old" fabrics) a beautiful piece of ivory flannel that I had bought at a shop in Soho, can't remember it's name. this shop was so overwhelming and the prices were so high that I finally managed to buy only this simple but super soft and fine 5 meter piece of flannel.

Anyway, the package that arrived full of beautiful florals, one natural linen-cotton blend and one lovely Heather Ross mermaids fabric pleased me as much and sent me right into my little studio. I couldn't gather enough creative energy to come up with something of my own, so I used a pattern from a book, I think it's the first time for me to follow a pattern without any changes. here is the dress:

(my daughter does her own styling ever since she was 2 years old. I wouldn't dare to think up this combination, but luckily she's not as inhibited as I am)

this is the back side, with a beautiful vintage button I found at a Tel Aviv button shop once:

she looks so happy in that last picture, but in reality she took the dress off immediately after I took these shots and declared that she doesn't like it and that I should put it in my own closet. so I'm starting to seriously consider (again) opening a shop on etsy.

some new things

2009-10-05T12:49:00.001-07:00

hello!

I've been away for so long. first we moved.

(watching the movers work, the old house)

(bidding farewell)

(grapes from the old house on the new one's deck)

That took a lot of energy, and a long time to get my studio back to a working state. Then to get myself back to a working state. And then I found out that this was happening:

...which explains some of the energy loss..

I'm happy but exhausted, waiting for the first trimester to finally end. I think it did, but I can't feel the difference yet..

However, I did manage to get working again.

here are 2 white blouses for the kids, to wear to kindergarten on fridays.

(for him, made of an old bed sheet)

a present for Annika, the new baby girl of my friends:

(her initials embroidered on the ribbon)

(the top, together with another larger one for my daughter. made of an old piece of fabric I had laying in my stash, which I suspect of formerly being a sheet)

thrifting and sewing

2009-06-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

There's a little second hand shop/cafe where I sometimes pick up a coffee and take a look.

Last time they had a big box full of those dolls people used to bring back from a trip abroad in the seventies and eighties - at least that's my memory. They were mostly horrible plastic ones, but I found these three:

The swiss boy lost his arm thanks to my curious boy, I wonder how that can be fixed - the elastic that attached both arms came out of one of them and left a hole half blocked with dry glue.

I'm not sure where the middle doll comes from, some Balkan country I suspect. Her face is painted fabric and her clothes and shoes have lovely little handmade details.

A sweet white glass plate and a little vase:

and some sewing:

with trembling hands I bought some Nani Iro on sale from reprodepot - it was still so expensive and then the shipment and then customs to top it all, it really makes no sense shopping for fabric online when you happen to live in Israel. On the other hand if you don't you're in the hands of the very few reasonable fabric shops that can actually tell what the fabric content is, and then if you buy prints you're likely to meet the rest of the roll on someone on the street, not necessarily a nice surprise.

However, I bought 3 pieces of double gauze and when they arrived I fell in love and treasured them in the fabric stash, took them out once in a while to caress them with dreamy eyes, and couldn't really bring myself to cut them. But finally I gathered the courage and decided to make a skirt for myself.

The problem I have with how I sew is that I tend not to trust the material and a little bit of chance. I try to control everything. Felting has taught me to let go a bit, but still this is my automatic mode, in any kind of creative work. With this on my mind, I wanted to make an everyday summer's skirt, I wanted to make something simple that will just look nice (and wouldn't it with this fabric?). I love clothes that are very simple but a little twist makes them unique, and with all this controlling I rarely manage to make something like that.

At the same time I couldn't get out of my head a skirt that My mother once had, it was a very full pleated skirt with a ribbon that covers the seam that gathers the pleats and ties at the back. So I made almost that, and in doing so I repeated all my patterns - making a controlled, not so casual, not that simple skirt. still, the fabric is so lovely and summery, and I'll probably wear it a lot in the coming months.

Now I'm using the leftovers for a skirt for Amalia.

(and there are two other pieces left to drool on!)

(My mother saw it and said it reminded her of an old skirt of hers... she asked me to make one for her. What I would make differently is sew the ribbon a bit lower on the pleats, so that there's a bit more of them showing on top.)

cheesyness

2009-06-03T13:10:00.000-07:00

Last week we celebrated Shavuot, my favorite Holiday that is all about the first harvest of the spring and, for some reason, about cheese eating. It seems that in all the kindergartens the kids did the same thing this year: making Labane balls. My son brought them back from his kindergarten along with some bread they baked, and we ate it together and it was so nice that I asked his teacher for the recipe and we did it again today with our good friends from the north that were visiting. Labane is made by placing yoghurt in a sieve that's covered in thin cloth and letting it drain most of its liquid overnight. in this recipe I added about 1 teaspoon salt and the juice of half a lemon to each liter of yoghurt. after the Labane was ready, I gave the kids plates with Zaatar, flax seeds and turmeric (didn't have sweet paprika powder for the red color ones, sadly), jars, olive oil and some rosemary and zaatar branches from the garden. They rolled little balls of labane in the different spices and drowned them in olive oil and herbs. in 2 days they'll be ready.

working hard:

labane and turmeric mixed together into a funny colored paste:

slowly it became less and less appealing...

that's what the table looked like when they were done:

but all for a good cause:

let's hope it tastes nice.

some inspiration

2009-05-24T13:04:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about presence in parenting throughout the years I've been a mother. I feel often like I'm not really there, with them. My thoughts are always somewhere else: with the house chores, planning the day and routine, and thinking and imagining ideas for my work. I'm almost always in a hurry but can't get much done. The house is a mess, I'm hopeless with paperwork and so few things have a real place. And I don't even get to cook complicated things, which is OK since we like simple food and it's often healthier, but it also feels as if cooking too became something on the far end of the to-do list, instead of a creative, loving action.

I'm reading soulemama's book "the creative family", and she shines a new light on these matters - well, new to me, even though it's a simple change of focus. ("simple" can be so important, don't you think?)

Her idea of assigning a specific time for just being with the kids wholeheartedly, without a thought about anything else, and even using a timer for that is so simple yet so focusing in itself. The change in perception of creativity that is offered in the idea to create with them rather than saving all the creative energy till after they've gone to sleep (maybe that's just my interpretation) is so refreshing. I tend to treat my work as a separate thing, and I think Hilel is coming to hate my sewing. In the chapter about imagination games she talks about getting involved in their imaginative play. I'm not sure about that, I always felt that I could never come close to their psychedelic way of thinking, and that my way of playing will limit them to my much poorer imagination. I also felt that it's just not really my job to play with them: I'm not their age, I have tons of other stuff to do, and by being left alone to play they can get much further in their imaginative travels and in gaining self confidence. However, it is a good idea to try and think of it differently, see what happens.

I haven't yet finished reading, but I'm really enjoying putting question marks on my ideas and conceptions of education. It is so inspiring.

Today Amalia stayed home with me, she only goes 3 times a week to sort of a day-care, and I tried to dedicate more time to being with her, although I had other stuff to do, as always. But I think we both gained so much from this: I got to do my things even more than I normally do, and she got to play with me. First she wanted to do some puzzles together, and we did, but I said I'll have to later do some sewing, so she said: "I have an idea: we'll do two together, and then I'll start the same two over by myself". that worked. Then I let her play with the buttons while I went on with sewing. After a while I thought I really have to start making lunch, so I offered to bring her oven to the kitchen, to cook next to me. We got her a beautiful wood oven for her birthday and it's standing in the children's play room, where they of course rarely do play... she has all those little pots and plates and cups from Ikea and some felt vegetables I made, but she hardly ever uses it all because their room is too packed with stuff to be inviting for play. Bringing it into the real kitchen was a big success, we cooked next to each other and she really engaged in this.

lentils cooking...

...or was it water?

cutting vegetables

then cooking them

and finally we even set the table with both the real food and her play food. She even wanted to put "her" food in her plate next to the quinoa...instead of any real vegetables of course... we'll have to work on that some other way.

2009-05-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

A package arrived yesterday from Sara from studio bella. We swapped summer girl's clothes. We got these beautiful linen blouse and pants, airy and natural and sweet.

Amalia wanted to wear them together, although I thought they might each work better with something else. well, Amalia is not someone to be taught anything about style - she has her own definite taste and the confidence to stand for her ideas. it is however a very sweet combination. Thanks Sara!!

summer clothes for little friends

2009-05-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

Two friends of mine asked me to make some summer clothes that they would buy for their daughters (9.5 months and a year and a half). As it was so late in the year and I hadn't even begun working yet, I decided not to work with a seamstress this time, and to skip this summer season but for making this small batch. It took me two or three months, I began very slowly and hesitantly. surprisingly, when we decided that our son will stop going to his kindergarten and stay at home with me, I managed to put more effort and more creativity into this project. I realize now that I have been more focused on him than on sewing, and therefore put less importance on how special and wonderful it will turn out. and it was that different energy that allowed me to get busy, to enjoy sewing, and to find ways of being original and creative while working and not while planning.

When I was at Art school I was always imagining and sketching projects, but didn't have as much patience for actually making. Thinking seemed to be enough for me... It was a rare thing for me to be able to confidently and unthinkingly dive into the realm of physically making without worrying. So this time I felt so relaxed and happy to be just working and not so busy with how good it will all be.

A great crafting experience.

Birthday Picnic

2009-04-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

Amalia turned 3, unbelievable as it may seem to us and to anyone that knows her.

We organized a little picnic for our friends in an oak forest nearby. Simple and quickly made food (humous, pitas and some salads along with nuts, crackers, strawberries and a chocolate cake) and very few plans - I thought of a treasure hunt for the kids, where the treasure would be a big bag of papers, scissors, paint and glue, but eventually it wasn't necessary. they ran up and down the hills and into the "flour cave" which was a soft limestone wall where they could get really dirty, put on the costumes I brought with us, and finally did get into some origami and paper cut outs, making airplanes and flying them. I love watching a group of children play, when they all get along and just so creatively and freely dive in and out of games. I love it when there are smaller and bigger kids and still they manage to play together. I love how they exist in their world, right next to us yet so far away in their stories.

*they're all somehow taken from the back... I'm so aware of some friends not wanting their children to appear on the internet, that I got used to taking pictures from behind.

Amalia is the one wearing the white princess costume. The monkey is Hilel.

in production

2009-04-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

hey hey, I finished 2 shirts today! two!! in one day! it makes me so proud.

I'm only showing teasers (of only one, the other was finished too late for picture taking), as I want it to be a surprise for some friends who's daughters may be wearing them sometime soon.

37

2009-04-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

It was my birthday today.

I'm not a big birthday fan, it's always a day of tears and regrets, so I didn't do much celebrating. But I did manage not to sink into self-pity Lucy-Jordan-singing mode. instead I tried to keep it just another normal Saturday.

The children made me some birthday drawings, Here they are on the fridge:

(bottom left by Hilel, other three by Amalia, they are whales with legs)

and Amalia kept picking flowers in the garden and giving them to me. They definitely sweetened the bitterness of getting so... grown up.

Instead of baking a cake I wanted to try some savory muffins for breakfast, so I dug up a banana muffin recipe and improvised on it. Turned out delicious and even half healthy!!

here's a sort of a recipe:

Sweet potato spelt flour muffins

2 sweet potatoes - cook until tender and leave to cool in a sieve.

in a bowl mix:

1.5 cups spelt flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

salt

mash the sweet potatoes with a fork and add to the bowl, as well as:

2 eggs

some cream (I'd rather have used yoghurt but we ran out)

and quiet a bit of olive oil

-until it all resembles a muffin mixture texture in it's fluidity.

1 purple onion - chop and fry and add to the bowl.

add some grated kashkaval cheese and some grated nutmeg.

pour into a well oiled muffin baking pan and sprinkle with some more grated kashkaval.

bake in preheated oven at 180 C (mid temperature) for 15 minutes.

This is from a few days ago, our super nice neighbors took us to this little creek nearby where the water pour into a little swimmable pool. It was even warm enough, but I only packed the kid's bathing suits, so we only dipped our feet. Hilel was very busy trying to catch frog tadpoles and Amalia was just enjoying the water.

And from another weekend walks spot: Ramat Hanadiv park, just outside our home town.

a wolf loves pork

2009-04-17T06:07:00.000-07:00

An amazing stop-frame animation short by Takeuchi Taijin.

sewing and messing

2009-04-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

When Amalia was born I "inherited" some clothes from some friends with older girls (we still get a big bag of clothes every now and then, so much quicker and cheaper than sewing ;-)). There was this one very sweet apron shirt that's made in one piece. I love it when something seems very simple but the making of it is clever, especially clothes that are made in one piece - when they work and look good they are even more beautiful for this elegant solution in their making.

Anyhow I worked out the pattern more or less and since then made a few sizes. But being the chaotic crafter that I am, there seems to be no real connection between the patterns of the different sizes, god knows why. I found that out only recently and kind of late in the season for making anything to sell...

I realized that I had sort of missed the summer season about 2 month ago, when everybody started to show off their summer collections and I had done nothing all winter (but watch lots of downloaded films and TV series - hey, it was cold where my sewing machine stands).

A friend phoned me and asked to buy some summer clothes for her daughter, and then added that some friends of hers would also be interested, and should we organize a home-sale at her place before Passover. so I thought, OK, no big plans, I won't even phone my seamstress, I'll just dig up the few pieces which patterns are finished and checked, make 3-4 sizes of each, and make very few pieces to sell. and then start immediately working on winter, since I'm soooo sloooww. I started with this shirt, and drowned in this pattern mess, had to draw it all over again and try on my house model to check it works fine. so much work! I might have some things finished for the girls to buy around September... luckily, Israeli summer runs until about late November.

*It's not so well photographed, it was windy.

here's a cool video clip of Israeli musician Oren Lavie.

Happy Passover.

spring swap

2009-04-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

While wandering through Flickr, as I often do, I stumbled upon the beautiful clothes by Amanda of Mannagryn . I asked if she sells, she offered a swap. I'm still waiting for the little note from the post office, she already got my package, and so I can share what I had made for her son.

edited: I'm kept waiting because of the Israeli post services, not because of Amanda of Mannagryn.

Not only does Amanda make beautiful clothes and uses the most gorgeous vintage fabrics, but it seems from her photos that her sewing is impeccable. Naturally I became very concerned with the quality of my sewing and of the patterns and fitting. I found myself making the trousers twice, as I did the light grey shirt - only to decide that the fabric doesn't fit the pattern. and so I embroidered it and made the darker grey version with a much finer fabric. only the red Tshirt was already made in advance, luckily... so there you go, a confession of a neurotic crafter.

Amanda has posted photos of her son wearing his new clothes on her stream.

I'll post about my half of the deal as soon as it arrives.

7 AM

2009-03-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

I'm taking our dog for her morning walk at about 7 AM. last night we changed our time to summer clock, and so in fact today it was at 6 AM. 6 AM!! outside! no coffee!!! At least I managed to not forget my camera.

that's our yard. We have to move away soon, I'll be missing it. Even though we haven't managed to take good care of it.

At the end of our street there are fields and a quarry.

So much of what grows wild at the edges of the fields is edible. wild fennel, oats, mustard and some who's names I don't know in English and probably more that I don't even know about. Here's some yummy, sweet smelling fennel and some oats:

The wheat is still green, it's just the sun and dew drops that make it look ripe.

I hope these images will keep my mood up for the coming week. My partner is going to China for the whole week, I'm having a cold and generally I'm on low energy. I wish I could snap my fingers just like Mary Poppins and have this week over with.

Wallace & Gromit on the moon

2009-03-07T14:10:00.000-08:00

by Hilel. I think he really got the shape of their spaceship right, and I love how he added Earth and the sun behind, along with some more distant stars.

And this:

One of my favorite musicians/artists, Juana Molina.

I love how she samples and loops herself and creates layers of beautiful music, a one woman orchestra.

I was looking through her different clips, trying to choose one, and it was amazing to hear how different every performance is from how it sounds on the albums. while performing she creates whole new songs out of the familiar basic elements. (it was hard to choose one, take a look at this other candidate for embedding)

(winter) desert vacation

2009-03-03T05:48:00.000-08:00

My friend Y. came from Paris to start making her film about a place called Neot Hakikar, at the very southern end of the dead sea, where the biblical Sodom used to be. She and her partner and her cameraman spent 4 days there, and we joined them as babysitters for their 2 year old daughter. The weather was disastrous, we managed to arrive at the 5 yearly or so rain and storm weekend. In the desert rain might mean inundation - which nobody knows if or where might occur, so all the touristic spots were shut, just in case. so the first day and most of the second were spent indoors. Towards the second afternoon the kids were getting irritable and bored and so were we. We got in the car and drove to see the dead sea, worrying about floods and will we be able to get back. but everything was alright.

The dead sea is so beautiful and unworldly. But around it it's dirty and ugly. It seams there's nothing left untouched: electricity lines, building leftovers, pipes sticking out of the ground, and just standard human garbage such as nylon bags and plastic bottles.

The kids however didn't mind any of this and quickly got into stone-searching and mud-sinking mode.

Little E was sleeping in the car, and they could be just brother and sister again, that probably also served to calm them down a bit.

Here they are checking out the salt:

and a second after this shot was taken they both jumped into mud, a lot of mud, with their fairly new shoes.

The next day we decided not to let the weather and outside circumstances ruin that last chance at a desert experience for us (well, for this visit at least), and went out, simply out near where we were staying, no big endeavor, no far reaching plans.

Hilel was really into climbing those soft rock mountains, the ground was much fun to walk on after the rain, it was soft like a mattress.

The girls and I made a circle of stones together, in which many stories (by Amalia) came to life.

Later, at another spot, Hilel was very busy breaking off pieces of dried cracked mud and throwing them to see them shutter to dust.

Playing hide and seek, we found two circles of stones with some dry branches in them, someone made this in the middle of this nowhere. isn't it wonderful to find such things?

The highlight of the day for Hilel was climbing the mountain side and sliding down.

By the end of this day the girls became best mates at last, after 2 days of E. doing as she pleases and generally being two years old, and Amalia going nuts over it and not allowing her any of her stuff and saying over and over that she's "little". (Amalia will be three in April.. I guess for her scale E. is indeed so much younger, a year is a third of her life)

And here's Hilel discovering the Boom, on the way back to our normal, greener civilization.

weekend

2009-02-23T12:25:00.000-08:00

I made a rabbit Friday, out of a man's shirt and some fabric leftovers. it helped overcome a deep weekend blues that jumped at me earlier that day and forced me into a strange driving away mood. coming back from my little private trip I stopped at the vegetable shop in Fureidis for some hot peppers, and they were selling freshly cooked, still warm vine leaves stuffed with rice. I bought a box of those as well, and felt so much better. an example of the vain, empty consumption culture that I'm part of :-)

Then I went home and made this fellow. I think I'll make a dress for him, but I can't stop thinking that he's a He.

Saturday we went to the children's Museum in Holon near Tel Aviv, but couldn't go in since we didn't call in advance. Isn't that weird? Anyway we spent the morning in a playground, then went for lunch at a Georgian food restaurant, Nanuchka. They have these pretty amazing lampshades:

And just a nice shot of O and A and some Staropramen.

spring time

2009-02-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

It's only february but it feels like spring already... There aren't many reasons to be happy living in Israel these days. Politically we're going for a disaster, there's no water and there were almost no rains this winter, rent prices aren't dropping enough and the school system is terrifying for parents of a 5 year old. But at least we can enjoy sunny days like today, when every bug is crawling out and every bird is out singing and the air is full of humming and buzzing and the flowers are all blooming in pink and yellow and red and purple...

I made some corn and banana muffins with the kids (so helpful; near nervous breakdown) and we took them for a picnic in the nearby Ramat Hanadiv park.

Hilel was wearing a pair of very warm flannel pants that I finished last night - still there are some adjustments to be made to the pattern - the crotch is too low and there's something wrong with the pockets.

I'm tired... another episode of "the century of self" and off to bed.

peter and the wolf - a beautiful animated version, a bit grim and spooky. the ending is different from the original story, a more humane solution.

landscape to play with

2009-02-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

I started making this landscape play-mat over a year ago, it was supposed to be a birthday present for my son who was about to be 4 (he's now 5 years and 2 months old and I finally almost finished...). I got the idea as I watched him play with an ugly road carpet over at a friend's house. This sort of play mats or carpets can be a great platform for inventions for children, but the way they are often done is somehow closed, there are too many details that have to do with a lifestyle that is not ours (ice cream and pizza parlors around every corner, not that we avoid pizzas and ice creams but I don't think they should make up the only cultural reference for kids). So I thought of making an open landscape with roads, and when playing the children can place different objects or dolls or whatever they feel like to make a story up. There's a mountain and a sea-shore, a lake, fields and meadows. in my kids' room there are baskets with stones they collected, shells, little animals and trees that I made or that somehow made their way over to us. it's fun to see how different bits and pieces finally find a place together in a game. It's still not finished, I'm planning to frame it with some other fabric. but I'm not sure if it would make it all too bound or limited. maybe when he's 6 I'll have the answer..

*the mess at the background of that top picture is an example of the embarrassing truth of our house.

top view with a zip line who's purpose remained a mystery. the red car did some dangerous driving on it:

waves and sea foam:

I used paper clips to help the trees stand upright:

To characterize a field, I created little pockets to place the vegetables in them:

Joanna Newsom

2009-01-27T13:03:00.000-08:00

I think she looks in this video like a character from a mute film.

so magical.

I find her Ys album to be unbelievably wonderful.

(but it did take a while to get used to her voice.)

in fact I feel like putting this other video of hers here too. I want to create a little collection of videos that I think children can enjoy without having all those youtube temptations on the side bar that are often not at all suitable for them. so this one I showed my children and my daughter loved it. of course she doesn't speak any English, so I could forget about one type of content related worry..

super!

2009-01-26T12:44:00.000-08:00

look what I found.

check out her flickr for more.

Felting workshop: day 4

2009-01-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

On the final day we made hats. Again I left my camera at home and arrived 2 and a half hours too late... (morning traffic + frantic children). So again I only have pictures of the final product at home.

I had 2 grand ideas, one that Karmit dismissed immediately with a big lough (a 3D cloud hat with a rainbow and a big sun at the back) and one that I actually tried but abandoned: it was a rectangular hat with on the top a sun on one side and a moon on the other. the moon was going to be half black and half white, as if it's being lit by the sun, and I was going to draw trees and houses on the hat itself with pre-felted pieces. but making a half black-half white ball for a moon wasn't working at all, and after 2 different tries I turned to the final, simpler idea of a rabbit's ears hat.

I made a plastic template in the shape of the hats profile (only larger), and another template for the ears. first I laid the wool for the ears and sort of half felted them, except at their base, where they were to connect to the hat. I laid some white wool along the inside of the ears that remained unfelted, to imitate the furry bits of the ears.

then I took the template out of them and placed them on the hat's template, opening and flattening the wool of the ear's bases. and then I covered the ear's bases and the rest of the template with wool and felted the whole thing. I used a plastic sheet to separate the ears from the rest of the hat, so they don't accidentally get felted together.

Finally I cut open the part of the hat's opening, took the template out and worked the middle line, where the template's edge used to be, until it looked seamless. then the fulling stage, to give it a good shape and shrink it to the right size. I stopped fulling when I could wear it and I kept it on my head all the way home, but couldn't resist shrinking it further to fit my children.

felting workshop: day 3

2009-01-10T07:48:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately I couldn't be there at the second day, the day that was dedicated to stuffed felt animals. there's a Flickr group for this workshop and I hope soon there will be more photos available from the other participants. I forgot to bring my camera to the third and fourth day :-(, so I can only post photos that I took at home later. If there will be more process images later on on the group I'll link them here.

On the third day we were focusing on surfaces. It was hard to decide what to make, I saw the amazing animals that they had made the previous day and got all confused. finally I decided to make a felt drawing for my children's room. usually I don't like the aesthetics of the anthroposophic felt drawings, so it was a strange decision to take, and it was a hard project to dive into - because it is the material that dictates much of the look.

I was planning on a circular surface with a general whitish wash over a gradient from grey in the sky to brown on the ground, and 3 dimensional bubbles for clouds, and a tree. I soon discovered that a smooth gradient is almost impossible with wool. when laying thin pieces of wool and then felting, it just gets the shape of the wet wool, bunches of hair. finally it became mostly white.

I felted the clouds on half balls in various sizes and later took them out.

Halfway I was not very pleased with the the way the colors didn't work how I wanted, and I felt like I'm getting a regular felt drawing. but then I added the tree. I used pre-felted pieces of brown (for the trunk), greens and light brown (for the leaves) and orange (fruits), which I cut into rounds that communicated with the bally clouds. finally I was more at home in this more graphic precise world. but when I felted the rounds lost their shape and the little orange ones nearly disappeared. It seems that the orange I was using for them was not very cooperative in getting felted. I was using a thin net when felting, to keep the wool in place as much as possible. still, it moved around a bit.

At the end I cut the whole thing to a circle. I quiet like the tension between the organic forms of the felting and the hard scissor cut.

cheap organic

2009-01-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

New Year

2009-01-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

It's a late Happy New Year. It hasn't started so very happy where I live.

My wish for this year is for this war, this stupid stupid war to end as quickly as possible. I hope our leaders would be less self-absorbed and short-sighted. I wish my people would dare to object and to think and see beyond their inherited fears. I hope we could all look into the past every once in a while and learn from the things that had already happened, it despairs me to see how people avoid those so important lessons and prefer to plunge into senseless violent actions in the name of some empty slogan or religion or the fear of the different.

I'm watching an interesting and important series called The Power of Nightmares, and it's so painfully relevant to our life here.

And for some more personal resolutions. In this coming year I would like to be able to be creative and productive without any inhibitions. I would like to take more time for myself and to return to a more concentrated creative mode, one that I haven't been in since my studying years. and to be more chill.

Amen :-)

Felting Workshop

2008-12-30T13:19:00.000-08:00

I don't get to felt much although I enjoy it immensely. It just takes so long to make anything.. But whenever I get the chance to join a workshop I try my best to participate. sitting for a few hours with other creative women and crafting and talking is a favorite pastime anyway, and I love discovering the difficulties and solutions of a craft I haven't yet mastered. With felting it seems that the wool has a life of it's own, and the creation is somewhat unknown until the end.

My friend Karmit came from England. She's a felt artist, among other things. She gave a workshop in 4 meetings, each 8 hours long.
The idea was to learn as many techniques as possible, but we decided to make things and not just stay with techniques, so we don't bore ourselves to death.
so on the first day we dived into a pile of books on botanics, sea animals, birds..
this was my reference:

I love this form of fruit, with a little home for each seed.. I wanted an object that would be an invitation for playing, with a hidden surprise.

First I created the inside with the spaces for the seeds. I used beads for that and later I cut them out.

I covered the bundle with a different color wool

and then it was time for a cigarette break.

(here's the view from the balcony at Rakefet's studio, where we were working:)

amazing Tel Aviv building back side.

In the meantime, here's a stage of the work of the other ladies: Orit made a sort of a psicho-root with lots of green branches hanging from it, Michal made an acorn, and Rakefet made a beautiful jewel-object inspired by a jelly-fish.

I covered my fruit with another layer of different color wool,

and separated the leftover light-blue wool from underneath into sort of dreadlocks

Another layer...

which I then cut in the shape of leaves.

slits to pull the beads out:

here's the inside, and the seeds:

finished!!

and here are the finished objects from the other brave felters:

In the next days animals, scarves, 1 picture and a few hats were made.

I'll post more pictures soon, hopefully.

Hello!

2008-12-30T13:12:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to start this blog by writing some sort of commitment or plan of what I will be using it for. but I can't focus on anything like that. so I'll just start and see what happens.