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I had the feeling that if I stayed any longer at Vitebsk
I would find myself covered with moss and hair.
Marc Chagall, 1931
We trekked down from our mountains to Pisa, where we encountered history, culture, art, and a truly unique creative imagination. What a fantastic exhibition - I'll write more about that tomorrow. It was such a fun outing, and one that opened a million new doors, windows, and skylights in our minds!
Tom and I often bemoan how few cultural events are put on here in our little corner of Italy. This year, we decided to make a special effort to visit places with a little more culture in the air. So we're off bright and early for a little road trip to see an art exhibition.
Can't even begin to say how much we're looking forward to it!
When it starts to snow, like last evening, I smile when I see:
the tracks of our technically-outdoor-only cat braving the elements (briefly),
our barn just refilled with wood by our neighbor the wood-cutter,
our kitchen stocked with a big basket of broccoli and some cabbages just gathered in our neighbor's garden, and
when I see a little hand in the window, and a little round face watching as I get a load of firewood. This view is what fills my heart.
I could tell you that my favorite hang-out is the beach, where I chat with friends while my kids play with other kids, where I walk along the shore, and where so many memories of the last several years are engrained in the sand and the relentless motion of the waves.
But my favorite hang-out ever was the pub. The pubs of London, before the invention of wine bars. A White Hart, Three Cups or a Red Lion pub, with floral or deep red carpets and dark wooden furniture, with musty smells and calls for "last orders," with brimming pints and no tipping ... it feels like a different lifetime.
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For more favorite hang-outs around the world, see Jane.
Rebecca has been practicing her harmonica quite a bit lately, and her favorite audience is our technically-outdoor-only cat. I think Ms Cat must enjoy the attention, or at any rate she doesn't mind the sudden wake-up music. Anyway, she doesn't show any desire to leave her favorite cushion during the performances, which are usually brief, and always end with the musician bursting into joyous laughter: she likes to have fun, this little girl of mine.
Rebecca's serenades have inspired the name for a new necklace, which I've added to my shop (I do have a problem with coming up with titles and names, but fortunately Tom and the kids always come up with something good - like the title for yesterday's post, for example).
(Orecchiette = "little ears", and I owe the title of this post to Jeremy)
We were very grateful to our neighbor when, over a month ago, he told us to help ourselves to as much broccoli as we wanted from his garden: he had over-planted, and had also got a spectacular yield this winter, which meant far too much broccoli for his family to eat. We only eat vegetables and fruit that are in season, and at this time of year broccoli (and cabbage) is what the land offers. However, we've never had so much broccoli in such a short time, and I ended up trying some experimental cooking to use it.
It wasn't always a huge hit. But we reached a new low the day I concocted a broccoli, garlic and haricot bean soup: that evening, as Rebecca sat down at the dinner table, she covered her nose with both hands and announced that there was a bad "garbage" smell in the kitchen. And since I was unwise enough to burst out laughing, the boys felt authorized to expand and embroider on Rebecca's comment, and ... well, suffice to say that I did not make broccoli and haricot bean soup again.
And so I went back to cooking our family's favorite broccoli dish: orecchiette con i broccoli, a traditional pasta dish from the southern Puglia region. Orecchiette ("little ears") are something of a specialty pasta, and after weeks of buying it, it occurred to me that I could simply make it myself. I often make tagliatelle and lasagne, rolling out and cutting the sheets of pasta with a little hand-cranked pasta machine, but I'd never made any other type of pasta before. I was surprised how easy (and inexpensive) it is.
All you need is regular and durum wheat flour, and some water. Here is a fairly good how-to guide in English (don't be intimidated by the initial statement that "it takes experience, ability and practice" - it doesn't!).
And, to be honest, once I got used to the idea that I could make pasta without a machine, I realized that what I most enjoyed about it was making it exclusively by hand, with no mechanical tools at all!
It was cold and sunny today, but we stayed indoors, leaving the pink sweater I'd refashioned for Rebecca hanging there, because she was feeling a little under the weather. Instead, we sat by the fire and read a book. One book, in fact - we read the same book many times, over and over again. The same book I'd read hundreds and hundreds of times to the boys, when they were little. First came Jack, then Kack, and then Lack, then Mack and Nack and Ouack and ....
... Pack and Quack. Eventually the time came when I simply had to close that book. At which point we started making up our own story, with a cast of cardboard & yarn characters as we went along. When we finished telling the story of a man, a woman, a little girl with unruly hair and their cat with the red whiskers, I was kind of hoping that Rebecca would continue playing with the paper dolls we'd made, so I could take a break from storytelling.
But that didn't happen. Often it seems that the real play happens in the making of toys, rather than in using them after they're made.
You know that your all-time favorite quarterly French home crafts magazine - as described (here) - has had a serious makeover, when nouveau: tous les 2 mois is written in large print on the cover, and you find on page 28 a possibly French crafter on a break, and on page 52 a sample of French canine fashion.
But I persevered, and finally on page 65 I found my first idée:
This is in fact a gorgeous nouveau idée, at least to me: fabric trimming on a knit sweater, how beautiful is that? I had to try it immediately!
So I cut a strip of fabric, running the scissors along the line made by the floor tiles - my favorite method for making straight cuts in fabric (I'm so thankful to whoever laid the floor tiles in this house, they did such a precise job!) - and made some bias tape to use as trimming around the too wide neck-line of a wool sweater my mom made for Rebecca. The only problem was that my 45-year-old sewing machine totally refused to sew through the knit (has anyone had that problem?), so I had to hand stitch it, which in the end didn't take long at all.
I loved how it looked, and since I had a little bias left over I went ahead and made a little applique flower too (I must have taken a little French-style crafter's break in there somewhere, because by the time I took the second photo it was evening, and I had to turn the lights on):
There's something beautiful about the combination of cotton fabric and wool knit, I find. I plan to give this nouveau look to a couple other sweaters.
Before having kids, I was (or tried to be) more chic. Then I had babies, and for awhile I was pretty rustic.
And now I've struck a balance: rustic-chic. But my style is constantly evolving. How about yours?
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For more Corner Views on world styles, see Jane.
Rebecca found a big stick in the woods, and carried it all the way, waving dangerously my direction, to where she'd noticed a large puddle. She began splashing. It was the most gentle splashing I've ever seen - more like stirring, really - and it stirred up all kinds of strange shapes and textures in the mud at the bottom of the puddle.
We both stood and watched, entranced, as the swirling mud and muddy water caught the light and made all sorts of shapes and colors, almost in the tones of our hydrangeas in winter. Who knew mud could look so pretty?
Sometimes the unexpected magic of simple things is the most wonderful magic of all.
Family life at the edge of an ancient rural community near the Mediterranean
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