Time to Light the Fireplace

It suddenly got cold here in California. Really cold. And windy; the Santa Anas are back and as I look over at the Santa Monica mountains I could tell there was already a wildfire brewing. So sad.

This is the season that I turn once again to sewing. I pulled out all my wool fabric scraps and began a nap blanket. More like a crazy quilt nap blanket. I love these textures and embroidering over them, adding applique and little embellishments that tell a story.

I have to pull out my denim one too which needs finishing around the edges but is so heavy for a bed; I think I'll trim the borders a bit and make it into a large wall hanging.

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Childhood Memories

I find myself wanting to regress to my childhood fantasies. As I little girl I had a large windowsill in our London flat which I converted into a house for my trolls. I used to make chests of drawers with matchboxes and beds out of the larger ones. With the curtains drawn, they had their own little world in there with a much better view than I did at night since they could see the moon and stars. I dreamt of living in a tree house or in a giant toadstool converted to house surrounded by nature and befriending animals. Maybe it was all those Ladybug books my mother used to read to me when I was sick or my falling in love with The Wind in the Willows which Claudio and Paula took us to see. Mummy and I used to sew together on days off from school since I was a sickly child and still remember this blue corduroy mouse we put together with a shoe lace as the tail. It is one of my favorite childhood memories. It was non-stop for me making my own toys, doll houses and furniture after watching her sew on the machine and knit my brother and I matching sweaters. I remember also spending hours brushing my dolls' hair and making all sorts of buns on them and was bitterly sad when our dog Sebastian chewed off one of my dolls' feet. I proceeded to make some red knitted boots for her so you couldn't tell she was maimed.

So it's no wonder I made this felt and crochet gnome house today. Now all I need is one of Jo's Fairy Cakes.

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Nesting

Pearl S. Buck in her autobiography My Several Worlds wrote: "I am an inveterate homemaker, it is once my pleasure, my recreation and my handicap. ....being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking. Thus to establish again my Nanking house and garden took solid months. I am not a perfectionist, I do not like floors that cannot be walked upon or books that cannot be left about, or untouchable tables and chairs. But a strong sense of design, and a love of ordered beauty are essentials of life not only for my family, as a duty, but for myself as a background. I cannot live anyhow. In one room, if it is all I have, I am compelled as instinctively as a bee to create order and produce a home. I cannot settle myself to writing books unless I have first made this background of life as complete as I can. The necessity is a curse and a blessing, separately and together, but so it is."

Never has a woman described so to perfection what I try to explain to those who don't understand that side of me. I cannot begin to be (as in alive) in a new environment until I have created my personal nest and am capable, having been in dire finincial straits many a year, to create a home with almost nothing. The nesting instinct might seem simplistic and infantile to many but creating my Home Sweet Home wherever it may be is uppermost on my priority list. Having a full refrigerator and pantry and a garden where living things are witnesses to our aliveness, at night, lighting up the house so it looks warm, alive and inviting from the outside, baking on the weekends, and planting a new seedlings in the garden are joys unsurplantable in my sense of worth.

TOKEN: Ye Olde English Tea Cozy

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