domicile

Just Say A Little Bird Told You

When asked last night what I wanted for my upcoming birthday I was pretty sincere in answering with "a day off and breakfast in bed." (Which, by the way, made me feel a heck of a lot like my mother, but no surprise there I suppose). I might modify that today to include a stack of magazines, a good book and an afternoon visit of tea and pie, because afterall if I spend all day in bed I might get hungry. But, since I'm my own boss so none of you can really grant me the gift of a day off, I will share with you a few other items, for the curious amongst you.

• A new pair of red clogs, because the leather on my beloved old ones is cracking and all rainy days can be made that much brighter with red clogs.
  
  
• There are always scads of books I would adore to stack beside my bed. Right now those include: Craftivity: 40 Projects for the DIY Lifestyle, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and my biggest weakness bawdy historical fiction this time in the form of The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory.
• This ring (or more correctly set of rings) is beee-u-tiful and looks smashing on as well. I had a chance to meet its maker yesterday at Portobello West and she's a doll. Thanks to her I also now know that I would need that ring in a size 6. Who knew?
• A massage I had this summer at Silk Road was indeed an experience in Bliss that I would happily repeat.
• An evening of wine, hummous, Flamenco and company at the Kino would not go ignored.
• Oh, and I would just adore a pair of pinking shears!

I would also genuinely love to have more time to spend with friends and more of a chance to work on household crafts and projects, but I don't imagine anyone I know has yet found a way to harness time. That said, I do know some real smartypants so perhaps I'll get lucky?

I've been in a pretty consistent purge mode since we got back from holidays and even thinking about acquiring new stuff seems painfully indulgent at this point, which is half of the reason my first thought was a day in bed I think, as I'm not really on the look out for much stuff these days and I feel like most moments I've had at home lately have been spent in a constant state of taking stock of each and every corner and nook and wondering what should stay and what should go. So, with that in mind I'd also be honoured to have donations made in my name to organizations that align with my values (if you're planning on shelling out for a birthday present, I assume you know by now what those are), afterall I have always kind of wanted a goat.

The Trials and Tribulations of a Wonderkitty

  Sleeping with his new catmint 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

My buddy, my alter-ego, my sidekick and above all my wonderkitty Mr. Pluto started acting very protective of his tail about 10 days ago. We noticed he was always keeping it out from under him while he slep and in all our snugglefests he would not let us touch it, which is quite unusual for a cat regularly described as a love monster. You see Pluto, who is now reaching his middle age (I like to think) at a wise 11 years old, is something of an agressive snuggler. If you will stay still, he will snuggle with you all 12 pounds of him nuzzling up your body to make sure he rubs every available furry surface into you. He is in this one task (and eating) totally unrelenting.

Oh and he also likes to talk. A lot. Which suits me fine, as it helps me feel like he's contributing to what would otherwise be very one way conversations that I begin with him. The friend who gave me Pluto as a birthday present 11 years ago always said that one of the reasons she got me a cat was to keep me company while I talked to myself (we were roommates at the time).

Anyway.

Mr Pluto and his tail. His tail seemed to be on the mend, and he was displaying all his normal kitty habits of demanding regular feedings, cuddling with us in the evenings and in that wretched time when you know you need to get out of bed in the morning but having a warm cat curled up on top of the blankets makes it that much harder, and so we figured whatever had happened to his tail was on the mend. We speculated about him getting it caught in a door, or perhaps being stung or bit by a spider but we suspected he had been on the losing end of a fight with the tabby that lives across the street.

Pluto has always been a very social cat loving the company of both people and other cats, but he can also be a bit territorial. Over the summer I've observed his territorial instinct play out in seemingly illogical patterns. On warm summer evenings he and this tabby from across the street would  meet in our neighbours yard -- neutral territory -- and lay on their front steps, stretched out and each occupying a stair next to the other with paws dangling down, while they watched the neigbourhood dogs go by from a safe distance. When called home, Pluto would often give this cat a little nudge goodbye and that was that. Sometimes, though only once or twice, they would bring this little lounge session to our front steps and that seemed to suit everyone fine. However, if the tabby would dare to come into our back yard Pluto will initiate a growl-off of very serious proportions. I guess he really sees the backyard, which is quite fenced in and enclosed, as his stomping grounds. It is, afterall, where his mammoth catnip plant is  located.

Anyway, I'm going to guess that the tabby was the one who bit him on the tail, though I certainly don't blame him, as I've seen Pluto instigate his share of scraps. And this brings us to where I am today. Sitting at the computer, my darling boy on my lap with a cone on his head and a very undignified shaved tail. Poor muffin. The cone was a late addition this morning after he wouldn't stop licking at his new surgical wounds that he rececieved yesterday after a he spent a morning worrying at his tail to such a degree that he had managed to remove most of the fur himself. We went to the vet who did a very speedy procedure to get all the ick out of the abcess he had managed to grow there and bandaged it up for him to come home. I hate seeing him so undignified, even if the occassional bumping into wall is somewhat comical. I adore this beast so very much that anything that brings him such a degree of discomfort and lost respect is very troubling to me. I think he and I will spend the rest of the day sorting through fabric in the basement in preparation for making some holiday gifts and perhaps I can find a pile of something that he can curl up in. We should probably also have tea.

I considered posting a photo of him with his sad skinny shaved tail and conehead, but I couldn't bring myself to so instead you get more of a snuggly shot of my man, craddling his summer catnip when it was just a wee thing. It is now easily four or five times the size of him.

If you don't ask...

... you won't get. Right? So, I'm taking a page from Alexa and putting out a heartfelt request for a magazine swap buddy. Preferably someone with access to Bolig Liv. I picked up my one and only copy in the Copenhagen airport while balancing a box of Kleenex in one hand an d my carry-on in the other. And when I finally made it home and through my head cold so that I could sit down with some tea to leaf through it, I fell instantly in love. But love was tainted with sadness as I looked longingly at the page of "in the next issue" images knowing that another copy was not easily in my reach. And so! If you live near regular copies of Bolig Liv or have other magazine treasures you would like to share, I'm so wide open for a swap. I can get my hands on pretty much anything in the Can/US market and work a block away from a particularly awesome magazine stand. And if that isn't enough for you, I can also get Japanese craft books but those are slightly less predictable.

Interested? Get in touch with me and I'll be your BFF. ourdomicile at gmail dot com

Thanks!

The Internet is My Copilot

As I mentioned in my last post about Helback Scherning, a sizeable portion of our travel itineraries were derived from pre-trip web surfing. In fact, this was one of the first trips I've taken where nearly all my research and planning was done online ahead of time, and almost all of that research proved to be both reliable and right on target for our interests. Ok, so saying this was my first time doing travel research that may not be totally true as often before heading down to Seattle Lauren and I will scour the web for new things to watch out for and to generate our own personal shoe store maps, but I already know Seattle so that's more for filling in details than it is a de facto city guide.

I got most of my references and must-sees from blog reading in fact, as I mentioned Allisyn Copenhagen was a big one for Denmark, and for Amsterdam (because it had been nearly a decade since I'd last been there) I got a lot of references from Alex's lovely site A Girl's Guide to City Life (the Amsterdam edition of course). I also got a very kind email from a Domicile reader with pages of annotated Dutch recommendations for everything from cafes to galleries and that was such an invaluable resource.

So why does this matter? Well, maybe it doesn't. But, as I took a blessed two week holiday from all things internet-related (I consider less than 10 minutes on email/web a day a holiday), I found it interesting to note just how much the web was playing virtual tour guide and really enhancing our very offline adventures. In the past, I've had the great pleasure of doing most of my traveling in places where I've known a native as it were. Be that Rome, Venice, London, Portland or the beaches of Costa Rica, as such I've managed to not just avoid getting stuck in tourist ruts, but also discover many of the more hidden charms of the places I've visited. We had also packed along a couple of borrowed Lonely Planets for each destination and aside from providing useful maps, info about train stations and opening hours for the larger galleries they ended up as more of a liability than an aid for us. Restaurants we went to from the books were in each case passable, but really not great and decidely pricier than places we found by simple checking out the menus of cafes near the lovely savonnerie written up at Girl's Guide to City Life for example.

Non of this is really rocket science. I know I'm not a "visit the main drag" kind of traveller, but I guess I was really very impressed by how our travels as currated by a myriad of blog clippings and emails were really just one hit after another. I should really give back and write up a summary of some of our favourites when I've got some time. In the meantime, I will say that if you've got a hankering for melt-in-your-mouth potato-pumpkin gnocchi while you're in Amsterdam, do head to Frenzi, they wash down so beautifully with the 3 Euro glasses of organic french house red that you'll find yourself coming back the next night for more (at least we did).

Rolling Out the Danish Treasures

Many of the destinations I wanted to visit while we were in Copenhagen came from months of scattered bookmarking in my web travels. Sites like Allisyn Copenhagen and LilleHus were primary sources, but from there I wandered and found clothing, textiles, pottery, galleries and general loveliness galore all of which I kept a running log of so that we could seek some treasures out on our trip. Funnily enough we ended up finding many of the stops on my little list rather by accident our first day as we wantered around Vesterbro. That first day in Vesterbro was wonderful. We found food, drinks and plenty of gorgeous little shops that suited us both to a T. We really felt like we had found our niche.

On subsequent days I would check my little list in the mornings and if we were planning on being near a neighbourhood with one of the stops on it, I would be sure to mark it on our map. I'm glad I had these reference points, for while we did find many places naturally, one of my favorites, the Helbak-Scherning shop, I surely never would have found tucked away as it is down a side street off the Stroget. Helbak-Scherning is the shop and studio of two ceramacists: Mette Scherning (who makes the brooch you see on the left below) and Malene Helbak (who makes the little jug you see up on the right there).

I went back to their shop a few times agonizing over just how much of their beautiful work I could safely bring home in an unbroken state. We ended up buying a jug much like the one pictured here (I left my camera in Victoria recently and so am sadly relying on web photos here) and a matching dish for the house. I treated myself to a brooch that is nearly the twin of the one you see here. And I brought some Scherning earings back for my darling Lauren.

Both women's work is so right up my alley that I could have easily bought one of everything, and will definitely be back there on subsequent trips to my new favourite storybook town.

Jip and Janneke

  jip and janneke 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

I first fell in love with Jip and Janneke (pronounced "Yip" and "Yan-icka" at our friends place. They have a lovely little calendar filled with Jip and Janneke illustrations by their front door which I couldn't help but admire. Like many of their treasured pieces the calendar was from Amsterdam. When we went on our trip I was on the look out for Jip and Janneke things that I might bring back to our house.

As I had been assured, there was Jip and Janneke stuff a plenty all over Amsterdam and I did manage to score a few bits and bobs like some goodies for Little Miss P, some adorable things for my beloved god daughter, and a few cards and things that I've given to folks. I have hung onto one that I'll likely frame, or bring into the office for my insipiration corner (soon to be constructed).

I can't quite describe what it is I adore about these two, but I really can't get enough of them. Since I've been back I've done a bit of web searching and discovered more about the woman who illustrated them originally Fiep Westendorp. Fiep sounds like quite the gal, managing to make a fulltime career out of illustrating by the sounds of it, including doing some work for the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam back in 1956. Jip and Janneke first hit the scene in 1952, so I'm certainly not the first to fall for them, in fact my web searches turned up a post showing that Hilary is also a fan.

I really must get to building some kind of an inspiration corner at my office for this and some of my other treasures from our trip. My biggest challenge really is the time (no surprise there), as when I'm not at work, I really don't feel like coming to work, but I know if I do make it will make my time there much more rewarding. Maybe this weekend...

Withdrawl

  martin's coffee (with cream) 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

Just when I think we've surely enjoyed the last of the clear, warm sunny weekends we get another one. Yesterday and today were warm enough that I spent a fair bit of time in the garden with my wool cardigan discarded in favour of only a tshirt. In fact this weekend's weather has been so lovely and my general commitments so light that it should have been a fairly idyllic two days but I had to go and louse it up today with addiction withdrawl. Specifically coffee withdrawl. You see in about two weeks I'm going to do a cleanse, one that I do every year or so that my naturopath guides and which I actually generally enjoy overall. I enjoy a few days of eating only broth and fresh juices, inspite of my  usual  love of food. And I often find that during the cleanse and for the time afterwards I get bursts of inspiration and energy quite unlike those I experience usually. In fact, the only part of the whole cleanse I dislike and I will admit actually down right fear is the giving up of coffee.

Now my sane mind tells me each time I do this that I really shouldn't start drinking coffee again after I finish the cleanse but it is usually the first thing I go back to. And, while I'm not proud of it, I'll admit I go back to it with intense joy. And then, cleanse time rolls around again and I face a good 24-48 hours of headaches, irritability, foggy-headedness and general malaise. I can in fact feel my whole body go through the withdrawl with the muscles in my neck and back tightening up and prodding me with a constant reminder that they would quiten down and relax if I would just give them one neat espresso. Perhaps two.

I'm not sure what I'll do this time. I'm nearly one day into the icky part and should be feeling loads better by tomorrow. I find myself thinking that I could not possibly go through this kind of withdrawl again and so should perhaps give it up for good. But then even images of a good coffee, like this one here from Amsterdam, or the sight of my gorgeous little espresso pot from Rome make me think that I can't let it out of my life just yet.

Renovator's Amnesia

  3D mapping Ikea Style 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

The next big project on our list is renovating the kitchen. Currently I am experiencing a blissful honeymoon phase with the idea of this project. While I can certainly feel the "you'll be washing the dishes in the bathtub for weeks!" gremlins pressing for space in my internal monologue, for the most part I'm crushing out on the idea of big drawers that slide open with ease and a new floor that isn't peeling up and cracking all over the place. Oh yes, and cupboard doors that close. And! A clear uncluttered space for eating, because all the photos in the catalogues we're looking at are uncluttered so surely if we buy these new cabinets our kitchen will magically unclutter itself. And it will always be clean.

And I will suddenly be about 2 inches taller. With blonde hair. Oh, and did I mention I'll be Swedish?

Yes, it's true: we're looking at Ikea. Normally, we're pretty die hard DIYers and believe me, we did toss around the idea of trying to rework our existing cabinets into something prettier ourselves, but really the trouble is they're not very efficient. And I'll admit I've been sucked in by the idea of modern sliding drawer mechanisms and all the handy dandy inserts and such that those Swedes practically guarantee will make your life more streamlined and satisfying. Normally, I would also assume that investing in an Ikea kitchen wasn't really a good longterm solution for a room that gets so very much wear and tear, but we have to resign ourselves to the fact that our house is not a longterm investment kind of a place. It is more than likely that by the time our new kitchen Swedish wears out we, or someone else, will be sizing up the place for total gutting or bulldozing to build something else. So while I'm really not one for disposable purchasing, the draw of (relatively) cheap big wide and deep drawers is too much for me to resist. Still the whole project is going to take some serious investment of time and cash, so we're still adding up the final total and deciding when we can get started. And I haven't even started looking at flooring yet. Likely this year's Christmas presents will come in large flat packed boxes with umlauts on them.

Dry rot is not your friend (or mine)

  rotty, rot, rot 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

Sometime around late last Spring, Martin removed the storm windows from most of the windows on our house. For those of you who don't live out here on the West Coast of Canada, storm windows aren't really the norm out here. Here they are in fact known as the "poor man's double glazing" as really we don't need storm windows given our climate any more than maybe 2 or 3 days a year, but if they're up all year round they do help insulate the house. Especially if you have old crappy windows.

We have old crappy windows.

Anyway. Our old crappy windows are almost all painted shut and have storm windows outside of them making house ventilation inside the house a bit of a problem. And so, as we began a project to unstick our windows we also started removing the storm windows. And in one case, the case of one of the livingroom windows, upon removing the storm window Martin managed to nudge/touch/break off half of one of the window sills which was pretty much disintegrating all on its own due to dry rot. A stream of explitaves issued forth and we carried on with a sinking nagging feeling. You see to fix something like a window sill, that is pretty much a hotbed of dry rot, one is really best to remove the whole window and rebuild the whole frame. Which, I'm sure it goes without saying is a pretty big project, and to make it worthwhile you'd really be wise to install a new window while you were at it. Now we had a quote for having new windows installed and discovered that replacing even half the windows in our house would cost significantly more than triple the value of our car. Which says a lot about our car perhaps, but also should give you the strong sense that we're in no rush to replace the windows.

And so, it was, that one day this summer I found myself searching online for a DIY way to fix dry rot on window sills that did NOT involve dismantling the whole window and frame. And that was how I found out about "penetrator" products. And, on a Sunday morning around 7am, while Martin slumbered on, I read web site after blog about applying wood penetrators to dry rot. Hot stuff. Wood penetrator is almost certainly a toxic chemical soup that seaps into your rotty wood structure and hardens the heck out of it. Magic. And so, on that same day, though several hours later Martin and I roamed the aisles of a mega-hardware store until someone finally helped us locate some wood penetrator (which was a frustratingly difficult venture) and I subsequently set about repairing our rotty window sills, because I figured if nothing else we'd be back where we'd started: starring down the face of dismantling our entire windows.

And so, on a day that seems very, very far off now, sometime mid summer we came home from said big hardware store and set about cutting away the rot (almost all of the sill) and then applying wood penetrator to the remaining wood, while we installed a carved out bit of wood to fit into the new hole where the sill had been. Martin did most of the refitting, I applied the wood penetrator and then a wood patching compound. And then, we left it. For months. Between Martin's father's passing this summer, little Miss P breaking her arm and then the rush to get ready to go away for the second half of September, things like this fell to the wayside. And our front corner window has sat with a piece of exposed wood, some wood patch and plenty of wood penetrator coating it all since then.

And while October has so far been strangely sunny and clear, the weather all week has been telling a tale of impending rain. Rain, which when it does come, is likely to stay until sometime in oh maybe March. So today, after work, I came home and went straight out with a pot of paint to try to provide somekind of protective coating for our very patchwork fix for our dry rot problem. Unfortunately conditions didn't allow for any kind of attempt at matching colours so that sill -- unlike the rest of the house -- is now white. Of course, we had planned to try to paint the house this summer which this dry rot repair was a part of the preparation for, but with our summer taking the personal twists and turns it did a full paint job was definitely not in the cards. And so, if you should happen by our house, don't spend too long wondering if we're colour blind or if we totally eschew aesthetic details, with our mostly green trim and one white sill, we're just in the middle of a project that is not likely to finish up for a good 9 or 10 months. Welcome to the DIY schedule of renovating. Stay tuned.

Pinto Success!

  beans! 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

I have made much of my project to grow some genuine protein in my garden in the form of some humble pinto beans over on You Grow Girl and so it is with glowing pride that I come here to share my success. Yes folks: I have beans. So far, about a cup worth. And there may be a whole cup more out there yet to mature enough for harvest. Now I have to admit I went a bit by the seat of the proverbial pants on this one as I wasn't quite sure how one coaxed a bean plant from green bean production to hard bean bounty, and so expert gardeners out there feel free to correct me if my methodology was wrong. I didn't really have much of a plan for these guys beyond planting them at the very end of the season and hoping they'd produce. In the end, the plan I ended up following was one more of fate than design, namely: I went on holidays for two weeks at the end of September leaving my very mature beans on the stalk and came  home to find most of the bean pods dried and when split chock full of smooth delightful pintos. Huzzah! The others out there are still a bit too moist for harvest me thinks, and so I'm letting them dry out a bit before I haul them in.

I'm not sure what to do with my cup (plus more!) of pintos, but I'm thinking it will be something special. All ideas and recipes are more than welcome. I'm also kind of feeling a bit like gardening is magic I have to admit, as I sat in my yard cracking open dried bean pods and pulling out a hearty handful of slippery, smooth beans when only weeks prior I had taken a half dozen of them and stuck them hopefully in the ground. I guess the wonderment is so strong because most of my gardening is about turning seeds into something that for my purposes doesn't look much like a seed anymore: tiny black lettuce seeds into big leafy greens, nubbly little beet seeds into sweet magenta orbs, brown pellets into chives and so on. I don't usually stick a seed (in this case a bean) into the ground so that I can harvest 50x its likeness. But now that I have, I have to say it really does seem like an insanely awesome project to undertake. I'm already imagining the entire East side of the house in constant bean production next summer... though I'm sure I'll tone things down a bit when the time comes.

(Cross posted at: You Grow Girl: the Dirt)