Birthday Picnic

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

 

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

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

An amazing stop-frame animation short by Takeuchi Taijin.

sewing and messing

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

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

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

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

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

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.