Color

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else - by color.
(Paul Cézanne)
http://quote.robertgenn.com/getquotes.php?catid=175

Repetition

It is impossible to repeat in one period what was done in another. The point of view is not the same, anymore than are the tools, the ideals, the needs, or the painters' techniques.

- Pierre Auguste Renoir, from Renoir's notebook, quoted in L. Nochlin, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874 - 1904 (1966)

I was thinking about how I can never repeat anything I did before. Even if it was very right, very nice, very easy to do, when I try to repeat it, it will come out differently. Maybe it's only very slightly different, but different nevertheless. If I try to repeat the same thing exactly the same way, I become frustrated and worn-out. It won't happen again. The only thing I can do is to be grateful for what once was created well and then to go on, now creating something that is maybe equally nice, but ... different. Maybe better! :-)

Coincidence

I don't believe in coincidence.
Juliette Binoche
(http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/coincidence.html)

Bob Dylan. Happy Birthday!

Noone's like him. 

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/3404038/Bob+Dylan+Dylanstor2.jpg

Little Box

I always love to keep little things in nice boxes!
This box is made of six padded and quilted squares, each square is a complete little "quilt" in itself. They are sewn together at the edges, the square on top is the lid, fastened at one side. The top square has also sewn in the little strip for the button. The whole thing is surprisingly sturdy if the edges are fastened inside with fusible strips.

Glad

... always glad when I put things together somehow! :-)

Learning

This is how I learned to sew a horse: 

To make the first one I just tried things out, using the "knowledge" I had accomplished so far. It turned out that this little obese horse couldn't stand, but it sits very nicely! It took some time before I figured out how to make a horse with real, more sturdy legs. So the second horse is able to stand, but still in a wobbly fashion, and it looks a bit like a "Beatle", but I love it, although: if you push it a bit, it won't stand very long, the legs have a tendency to spread towards different directions... But then I found a real good pattern on the internet and I was able to make the big horse, complete with a quilt and bags...

I think this is how learning works best: I had a strong wish to make such a "horsie", I found out who and where to ask for advice, I tried again, and I honored each step as good and lovely: I still so much love my well rounded first horse which would not stand but makes such a pretty and funny pin cushion now! And I love my wobbly horse with the tousled mane! And I love my more elegant version of a horse as well, it has some dignity I think... :-)

But this was very important: I took my time to do that and I always had persons around me who praised me for me efforts and laughed with me when I produced funny results and encouraged me to go on. 

So, this is how learning works!

Since I have been a teacher for 25 years (both with kids and adults) I know that sadly learning at schools usually doesn't work like that. 

Buttons, self - made

I just started to make my own buttons. I decided not to tell anyone HOW I do that exactly ... but if you look closely onto the pictures I guess it's not really difficult to figure it all out ! :-) 

With a nice pin it's also possible to wear them as some kind of brooch.

the reverse side:

              

A Teddy Bear named Brommbear

"In our childhood, teddy bears are warm companions - good listeners, never critical, always reassuring. They are bear-shaped security blankets, huggable enough to fold in our arms, a perfect fit for our laps."

(Bialosky, Peggy and Alan, http://www.teddybeardirectory.ca/TeddyBearQuotes-TeddyBearDirectory.htm)

Gifts

My sister came back from a trip to England and presented me with these beautiful English fabrics! And matching buttons! I love these things! :-)

Herman Melville, "Moby Dick", Chapter 68, The Blanket

My favourite book, my favourite chapter, my favourite lines:

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies. How wonderful is it then- except after explanation- that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!

A Compilation of Traditional Patterns