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I took a couple of photos of the Victorian house where my workplace is located. It’s a lovely old building with lots of character and a few period features.
There was the possibility that we would move out to a newer, but absolutely charmless, premise in Exeter Civic Centre, but we are staying put. Hurrah! This building has been offices for several years and is slightly shabby, so we are going to give it some TLC and a bit of a spruce up inside. I’m pricing up some signage for outside of the building, hence the photos.
Front door
When I’d downloaded them, I zoomed onto the arch over the front door and saw these two fantastic creatures flanking either side of it.
I love them! I’d never stopped to examine them before. They’re each different down to their tail, wings and skin texture.
Creature the First
Creature the Second
I have them be benign dragons or griffins. What do you think?
This happy discovery reminds me of the treasures I often find when I stop and look at everyday things.
Well this happened pretty quickly! I laid out my vision for the perfect lighting for our kitchen a couple of weeks ago and our new lamp was shipped to us yesterday from Lyons, France.
I’d emailed Olivier Abry, light “creator-assembler”, a week ago and he got back to me on Friday with a link to this beauty for sale on his webpage. It’s an industrial, adjustable, swing wall sconce – a reconditioned factory lamp. We’re going to get a touch dimmer switch for it and it should be in situ very, very soon. I’ve never thought of myself as the sort of person who sources lighting from French designers, but hey, go figger!
We’re having a bloody wet and cold summer here in Old Blighty. Steve and I went into Exeter last weekend and everyone seemed really grumpy. I admit that I started losing my sunny-side-up optimism and began grumbling right along with everybody else. Apparently the jet stream, a zone of fast moving winds, typically flowing around the globe about six miles above the earth’s surface, is lower than normal, which is making a wet, cool summer for the British Isles.
I’ve been feeling the lack of sun. I miss the warmth of sunlight on my skin and the low pressure system responsible for the wet weather has been dampening my spirits somewhat.
Sunrise glow before ascending into the cloud cover
Normally the afternoon sun floods in through our west facing kitchen windows. The last time we had a long stretch of sunny weather was back in March, as evidenced by the calendar!
Basking in my kitchen
The other day, I rode the bus into Exeter for work. I used to take the 7:30 am ‘commuter’ bus, filled with sleepy students and tired wage slaves. Now I get the 9:45 am bus for my very civilised 11:00 am starting time. It’s a jolly bunch on this bus, people going in to shop or have lunch. As more people got on the bus at each stop, they laughed with each other about the horrible weather.
I know people who complain about everything and it’s kind of a drag to be around them. I don’t want to become like that even about the weather. Apparently this current weather system may last through September. The laughing people on the bus reminded me that I can choose how I view my world.
When I alight from the bus, I have a 5 minute walk across town to work and I thought, ‘I’ll look out for what lovely and different smells and sights the rain brings. I’ll find what is good about it’. Right away, I noticed how sweet the rain smells, the shiny surfaces of the streets and buildings and how pretty flowers look sprinkled with raindrops. I bought a new brolly from Laura Ashley, charcoal with light grey polkadots and fuschia trim. I’ve been looking out for a new raincoat and stopped in my favourite lingerie shop, which also sells outerwear, and saw a gorgeous German trenchcoat that I plan to go back and try on when I have some more time.
Stormy skies and diagonal slashes of rain
Hedgrow leaves
Sweet Pea
Sweet pea blossoms
Lighting is very important in our home. We prefer dimmable, ambient light where possible. We have a great 1950′s overhead light in our kitchen. We found it for a fiver in a charity shop in Totnes and replaced the rather pedestrian light that was in situ when we moved into our flat.
We also have several light sources scattered around the periphery of our kitchen, all from IKEA. This one lights up our spice & condiment shelf.
This one illuminates a food prep/serving area.
This one helps the person doing the washing up to see at night.
Illuminating our tea & coffee corner.
We strung a garland of leaf fairy lights from Debenhams around the window.
Since we now have two tables in the kitchen, we use it a a place to eat, work, hang out, make art and food.
We have a floor lamp, but the problem is that while it casts a pleasant, ambient glow, it doesn’t get light where we need it if we’re working at the table. We’re not able to hang a pendant light from the ceiling because it’s an Edwardian house with a plaster ceiling and we’d be asking for trouble if we start to mess with it. So the ideal lamp would be floor or wall based.
We found this Tolomeo floor lamp from Italy, which was nearly right, but the base would get in the way.
However, I found this lamp made by light “creator-assembler” Olivier Abry, based in Lyons, France.
It will be perfect for our needs and I love the colour which will pick up on our orange wall. The only hitch is that his lamps are one of a kind, so we don’t know if it’s still available. Olivier sources industrial lighting from old factories and rebuilds them for domestic use. Anyhow, I emailed him today with a couple of photos of our kitchen and specifying our desires:
- For a light which we can mount above our noticeboard on the wall.
- Ideally, we would be able to be raise it vertically and move it laterally, depending on what is happening at our table and where we need the light to fall.
- We’d also like to be able to dim the light if possible.
- We probably wouldn’t wire it into the wall, but would plug it into a power point/electrical socket.
We”ve found everything for our flat so far by thinking long, and sometimes hard, about exactly what will work. Then we let it go into the ether and sooner or later we stumble across precisely what we desire. So, I have a feeling that we’ll have the perfect overhead kitchen table light source in place soon!
I am so enjoying getting up and NOT putting my painting clothes on! We’ve finally finished, although I will be painting my studio pretty soon.
This weekend, I put the non-orange portion of the kitchen back together, after having finished painting it on Friday, and gave everything a jolly good scrub, eg, floor, top of fridge, toaster, in the process.
Today, I brought my sewing machine into the kitchen and spent the morning making bunting guided by a super-easy bunting tutorial from Josie at Homemade & Happy.
I used some of my hand-dyed (by me!) and batik (store-bought) turquoise fabrics to bring a splash of blue into the kitchen and to add to this Summer’s festivities.
We’re having houseguests this weekend and a bunch of our friends over on Sunday for an Innaugural Brunch to celebrate our newly decorated flat, the Queen’s Jubilee, our 2nd wedding anniversary and just about everything else.
Let the festivities begin!
It’s so lovely in here. Sunny outside and warm enough to have the windows open. I’m going to switch sewing machines and do some mending that’s been piling up, while enjoying the birdsong streaming in.
When I show my bed ‘Enter the Forest of Dreams’ this August, it will be in the round, meaning that the bed will be viewable from all angles, front and back. When I made the headboard quilt, I backed it with some yellow-green fabric I’d dyed and a very simple label.
I spent Monday laboriously unstitching and removing the label, but keeping the machine quilting intact. I spent the past two days painting the back of the quilt. For some moments I wondered what I was doing. I rarely practice a technique or work a design out on paper. I just know how a thing should be and try to give it the space to emerge.
I’m into woodcuts and really like how the quilted outlines and details didn’t take up my fabric pastels and paints, giving my forest landscape a hand-hewn quality. I sponged most of the paint on.
I did quite a lot of the painting last night and thought of old fairy tales of women venturing into the nighttime forest, either by choice or by banishment. Women who are different, women who are ‘other’. Women whose vision is focussed on farther horizons than those about her can see and who speak answers to questions still half-formed.
It takes an incredible amount of courage to follow one’s Dream. It can feel dangerous or risky to fly in the face of convention, to turn one’s back on what is on offer and to walk towards a life which is yet to be crafted. I’m going to write these words onto the back in antique gold lettering.
As I cross the threshold of the Forest of Dreams,
my deepest longing is rough-hewn in the gloaming.
The trees gather round
to mind me through the night.
As I fall into sleep, does my Desire become a Dream?
And when I wake, will my Dream become Reality?
'The trees will keep her safe'
