in my head

I'm not really creative the past months. In my head
there are lots of things waiting to get out. Two of them
are bugging me along my way to work yesterday -
painting portraits and a song.



I used to draw a lot of portraits. I'm out of practice.
I got some problems with the proportions and distance.
The noses look weird and even the eyes - which I always
loved to draw - don't seem right (so I don't dare to draw
ears - they were my weakness!). The pose of the girl on
the right pic was inspired by a passanger, who was
watching our window display.

Can you guess what it is on the bottom pic?

It is the Indonesian music notation. A quick way to
write down a melody since I don't have to care either
it's in C-dur or F-dur or whatever. I long to compose
a song for an ensemble, but I never manage to do it.
Sometimes I have a melody in my head, but it's gone
before I find the first note on the keyboard. Yesterday
I decided to write it down that way - at least I could
capture the base melody and some other parts.

We'll see, either it'll be a Midnight Blues - the one in
glass is already in my shop ;)

fresh week

A few pics from the past two weeks.


Something to celebrate.


What could happen when your mind is wandering
elsewhere while you're riding a bike or cooking.


Enjoying one of the last peonies from the garden.

I'm wishing you a wonderful fresh week!

alive

Hi friends! Just wanna let you know I am still alive - only
my laptop (or better said: the graphic card of my laptop)
was dead and getting a new computer was not so easy.
It took a week till I got my new computer. I'm working
with a desktop again now - no more laptop for me (it
was only 5 y.o. - what a short life!).

I am already a week behind my schedules and am still
struggling with the new OS. It doesn't support my old
peripheries and softwares - ack!! I'm losing time to
google for solutions. And of course one deadline after
another is waiting (so here I am to vent and whine -
what I often criticize on others who whine about not
having enough time instead of doing their work in that
time LOL).

No time for creating nor gardening too. I could have
had a bowl full of strawberries, if I had harvested them
earlier - the slugs and birds were happy for that fact
though, as well as the mildew (or perhaps I should
blame the rainy summer for the last.. ;)).



OK, enough venting and whining ^_^ Ironing before going
to bed should be a good meditation for today, I think.

Hope, you are all doing well.

this week

I'm working on different things at the moment. It's hard
to concentrate myself on one project, when there are so
many things need to be done. So, sometimes I find myself
out of focus.



Then I realized, I need some kind of order to get things
done. Sometimes the most boring and unbeloved things
like ironing or washing dishes can help me to get focused
again. This time it's spooling the thread I use for my
packaging (up till now I had to search the end of the
thread in the chaos, if I forgot to let it hang out after
I cut a piece of it). It's kind of a meditation (and sport
for the biceps LOL).



Last task for today was listing my new Trifiori necklace.



I don't know why I didn't make the necklace earlier.
Probably because I didn't want to let loose the beads.
I love the colors so much and I was afraid, I couldn't
re-make them. I've been wanting to make them ever
since I watched the France film Brodeuses (Perlen-
stickerinnen in German), but I couldn't find the right
glass colors (now you might understand my obsession
in mixing blue and green glass last autumn ;)).

So, today is the day. Today I'm ready to let the beads
go. I might not be able to re-make them. But I'm sure,
there will be many other beautiful colors to come.

Have a beautiful weekend, friends!

over

Yayy, my school was finally over last Friday! Now it's
time to catch up with everything else that I neglected
the past weeks - friends, shop, blogs, garden and the
housework.

Two weeks ago a girl from my class has given me some
trouts - smoked and fresh ones - to thank me studying
with her. So, today I cooked trouts in a sauce mix of
tomatoes, chillies, rhubarb, lemon, lemon balm and
parsley. Yummy!



The recipe was a modified version of my mom's recipe,
in which averrhoa bilimbi is originally used for the sauce
(my mom got the great idea to use rhubarb instead).
The fish and the sauce mix are normally wrapped in a
banana leaf. Since I don't have any (I'm still thinking
of planting a banana in my garden just to have the leaves
for my Indonesian cookery :)), I put everything in a
casserole instead.

The next task is my garden. At the moment the spiders
and ants are about to take over my garden. Look at those
garden spider babies in my lavender bush! There must be
over a hundred of spiders - yikes!



I planted carrot and peas a few days ago, but on Friday
I got some veggies and herbs (and some chocolates) from
the girls in my class - so sweet! They simply know how
to spoil me :) My garden is now full (and so my stomach ;)).