summer sales
Pick up a newspaper, turn on the television, log onto your emails or walk past a shop window and you will be bombarded by advertisements for SALES. Not just post Christmas, but every day of the year. If a brand you’re looking for is not on sale, a quick search online will usually reward you with the item your looking for on sale somewhere.
I don’t know if all countries have constant sales, but I remember being in France in January when the winter soldes were in full swing. French shops can only have sales twice year, in January and July. The sales last for four weeks although until 2020 the sales used to run for six weeks.The sales are intended to make room for new seasonal products and collections. The prices on remaining stock drops as they weeks go by until the sales end.
pashminas
Pashmina and cashmere both come from the domesticated changthangi goat which lives in the Himalayas. The goats shed their wool in Spring. It is combed off their bellies for pashmina and the rest of the wool from their bodies is combed off for cashmere. The difference is the number of microns. Pashmina is very light and gauzy and is usually mixed with 30% silk to create a warm but strong and long lasting fibre used to make shawls and scarves.
In 2001 we were spending a lot of time in Hong Kong before moving back to Western Australia. The weather outside was hot and often humid but in offices, restaurants and shopping centres air conditioning was on ‘high’ and it could be very cold! We went to Lane Crawford and bought me a pashmina. It has traveled everywhere with me since and is worn frequently during winter. It is soft and rolls up to easily fit in a handbag or suitcase.
Time to wash my pashmina! To do this, I dissolve soap flakes in about 300ml of hot water, then half fill the bucket with cold water and stir it to ensure the soap flakes are dissolved and the water is cool. I hand agitate it, then rinse up to five times in cool water until the water is clear.
Fold the pashmina in half across the middle, then in half again and place it on a towel, Fold the sides over the pashmina and twist the towel to remove most of the moisture. (The pashmina is old but the towel, from Club Med circa 1984, is older!)
To dry it I place it on a hanging rack after shaking and smoothing . I move the pashmina around a few times while it’s drying to avoid imprints from the rack frame. It dries very quickly. Before I roll it up and put it back in its bag I check all the hand knotted fringes on either end to ensure there are no knots.
small paintings
My life has been pretty frantic since last October. We have had constant demands on my time, my painting things got put away, off the table, out of sight. Every now and then I’d think longingly about sitting quietly and painting. Mixing colours, really looking at things so I could capture the essence of it, applying paint to paper. There was no point in even getting my brushes, paints and papers out, even after Christmas as I had no time to paint.
This is a very small diary and was never going to work for us!
Post Christmas tidying up unearthed a 2022 unused Moleskin diary. I really like Moleskin diaries, journals, painting books and other products, but this is a very small diary with seven days to two very small pages. My husband and I keep a combined calendar so we know what each of us has planned and those plans would have never fitted in this petite diary.
Eureka moment! I’d do a very small painting every day either on one or both pages. Considering the size of the pages I was never going to confine my work to one page, but that was my initial thought, quickly discarded when I picked up a pencil So I set everything out and started drawing, then painting and as soon as that painting dried I started another one on the next two pages and this kept going until I’d done four paintings. It felt wonderful.
My first small painting intended for one page but soon over both.
Bottle brushes, endemic to Western Australia come in red, pink, yellow and white.
So many of these bold, cheeky, darting dear little birds around here.
Chinese ceramic headrest/pillows date from the Tang Dynasty (618 -907) and were used by the upper and middle classes. I’ve always liked the illustration on this one which also features chrysanthemums, common in Chinese illustrations.
Hearing about someone’s plans for Chinese New Year, motivated me to do a little painting based on the Chinese pillow.
I planned to stack the paints and brushes on top of one another and leave most of the table available for other things but that hasn’t happened. My paintings things are going to stay there and whenever I can find 10 minutes, I’ll work there. I even found I could paint leaves with one hand while the other hand held my phone. I needed to finish the painting before we went out.
Second day of small paintings. I have a scarlet hippeastra about to bloom in the garden.
in the garden
This Gloriosa lily is a Rothschildiana variety.
Peliagonias.
Cannas
Hydrangeas everywhere. So pretty, so hardy in this harsh sun.
What’s happening in you garden?
I love your use for your old diary, what a great idea. I am have used a moleskine diary for about ten years now, I always look at other options but end up buying a moleskine.
My mum bought me a beautiful pashmina for my 40th birthday, I was gutted when I got it out of the wardrobe recently and found it had been eaten by silverfish and was riddled with holes 🙁
Hello!
Small paintings the new way to do one every day. Also discovered the thinnish paper not good for wet on wet! Never mind, it’s a means to an end at the moment. We use a large, shared calendar to keep track of our movements but adored my Filofax for about 20 years.
I didn’t know silverfish attacked fabric, I thought they ate paper! What a pain. Like you, I look for things which will last a long time, so a damaged pashmina would be a blow.
Deborah