Bohemian girl

Domík - 5

2012-01-28T23:16:00.003+01:00

Domík will be five tomorrow. We had all day celebration with granddaddy and with friends.
And I am leaving for ten days tomorrow morning. I am going to Mohuč, Mainz, Magonza, I am not sure what I will be doing there and what language I want to speak to the old heavy historians there. Maybe it will be fun. But I doubt it. I cannot believe I will be in Germany tomorrow, and without my little boy on top of it. Bye bye.

Pink clouds are melancholic

2012-01-13T14:23:00.002+01:00

This was the sky yesterday evening.
Now, a kid crying downstairs, I am missing mine. I am going to get him at kindergarten soon. He is there, every day, happy, running, playing, I am surprised he is still happy to play at home alone. I am planning my trip to Mainz. It is a study trip and that does not make me really outraged. Again, I wll be missing my little guy, and the bigger guy, too. I wish I could make a detour down to Bologna, or at least down to the first Italian town, to evoke the memories of my real student time. Well, it will not happen. I mean this time.

Happy, happy

2011-12-31T13:35:00.001+01:00

I wish you Happy New Year 2012!

Hat

2011-12-28T22:10:00.002+01:00

Hat, a beret for little Markétka. Casted on 65 stitches, follow up on round needle on 120 stitches, 20 cm, knitting little knots along. Here I am trying to look like an experienced knitting blogger burbling some familiar sounding words. It is not only that I don't know the English knitting vocabulary, I do not have a slightest idea how many stitches I casted on (or whatever) and I don't even know how I succeeded in spreading those little bullets so regularly. It is true, there are kind of holes next to each bullet but it seems that she doesn't care. She said she wanted to wear it sideways, like a painter. I love my nieces, they love everything I make for them.

2011-12-25T00:17:00.000+01:00

My brother. Around 1970. Here he was as old as my little Domík is now. The pictures have a strong déja vu for me, although I was not born yet then.

Merry Christmas!

It is sad

2011-12-20T17:15:00.006+01:00

1936 - 2011

In newspaper the journalist call him a president and they call an actual president a "contemporary head of the state". I think it is significant. The spontaneous honour and hommage that he receives from people is exceptional.
Pictures, have a look, from the life of V. H.

Cats in a Violin

2011-12-12T00:53:00.002+01:00

A book from the library. It came out in 1969. I read in some interview with the poet that he used to make living with writing children's books back in the 1970s and 1980s. And he was not a prominent writer, with a political support or anything like that. Lot of people of letters had an independent path as long as they were allowed to publish. But this money thing - it is interesting and depressing how it is harder and harder to make living in art now, having just one job.

Nativity scene

2011-12-04T21:14:00.004+01:00

Improvised nativity scene. Little abstract and that is what makes it. All family contributed. Domík came up with the light. I was proud. We thought we would have it for Christmas instead of our normal nativity scene. Then Domík accidentally kicked it and then he kicked it little more, not accidentally. That was the short life of our new and theatrical Bethlehem.

Advent

2011-12-02T21:10:00.001+01:00

Some cookies. I bothered with the icing only this time. The rest comes from, guess where, IKEA.
I met with my cousin there and we had a nice and little hectic chit chat. I am working on some books (for work) and I received an article published in German Zeitschrift, it is part of my doctorate work. I am supposed to finish the school this year, I am not sure about that. I am reading another Fred Vargas. Apart from other stuff, that is more boring.

So I am making this little resume here for you that could be actually longer and might slowly transfer first into more intimate stuff and then into phantasmagoric and surreal ideas.

I will save that for next time.

Hat

2011-11-26T22:55:00.002+01:00

We did not go out today. I guess, you can say what I was doing ... and what Domík was doing. The hat is going to be mine.

Celtic oppidum

2011-11-22T21:50:00.004+01:00

I guess that pictures of beautiful landscape would not strike you. Even a former Celtic oppidum would not help, neither the rocking stone (roche tremblante) of a supposedly magic Celtic quality (I tell you what, it did not even rock...).

It is little waiting rooms at train stations that deserve your attention. I seriously think that someone should photograph them like a series. They are kind of dried up spaces, a mixture of what things used to be 20 years ago and an endeavour to modernize which usually goes completely wrong direction. My husband liked the wall hangings, so well and badly known to me from when I was a kid. He wants one like that in our kitchen. I like it here on the blog better. I have no idea what the first one represents.

By the way, the walk in the wood and around the oppidum (you could not see it) was great.

Photo /c/ husband

Hold your horses

2011-11-18T22:11:00.004+01:00

Hot wheels in the picture is Domík's and mine common project. It is a magazine. a home made one. Domík came up with it. And mummy felt like 10 years old ardent boy working on the picture for his pencil case.

The first picture: Dinosaurs by daddy.

The last: Book by Andy Warhol's mother for her little Andy. I think it is called Holy cats. The picture comes from a bizarre book on Warhol's relation to his native country and his family. I recommend. But you have to wait for the English edition.

Other than that:
I recall last year and our Christmas preparations. The little guy was ill and we had a lot of time to plan. We made gigantic gingerbread house. This years is different. I have more of interesting work and sometimes I enjoy it. I do not know yet if we pass this Christmas at home or in my parents' house. I can still make some gingerbread cookies. But before I will make three Wiener Schnitzles and we head off away from the town tomorrow for the walk in the wood (and in the fog which is actually smog - but not in the wood, right?).

....

2011-11-14T21:27:00.004+01:00

I have a cold. It is annoying. I also got a bouquet, how beautiful! And a T-shirt and a handmade dinky minimalist book from Domík. It contains a spider, his drawers, a suitcase and a guitar. I ll show you later. But the most beautiful present was Domík's congratulation whispered in my ear. Something in between of what they taught him at school to say for their friends' birthday and what he wanted to say from his heart. Yes, I dropped a tear.

First picture: I am finishing some leftovers.

Yey!

2011-11-08T20:09:00.006+01:00

I thought that I had made well enough puppets to put together a photo shoot. In the end it is the little guy who turned out the best. He likes robots. I sew one for him, it is the guy with a square head. His favorite. Mine is the doll, one of the first achievements after I started goofing with a needle and fabric again after some 15 years of a break. Oh, and talking about sewing, check out the little guy's lovely baggy shorts with front pockets carefully worked out in checkered fabric. Japanese sewing book.
On completely different subject: I am going dancing tomorrow night. Yey.

Ill (meaning ill)

2011-11-03T21:53:00.002+01:00

I got so ill this last weekend that I could not go back to Prague with my family. The guys went by themselves, they liked it more than they had expected, and I stayed at my parent's house. My dad was taking care of me. He cooked, made tea and kept telling that I should see the doctor. I had fever! On the last day of my quiet refuge I went with my dad to collect moss for the Christmas nativity scene. How romantic! It needs to be done by this time, before the snow starts falling. I felt somewhat rustic as I was divesting the soft moss carpet from the rocks, feeling little tiny roots tearing off the stone. I did not mind the natural dirt and mess of rotting tree needles, leaves, earth and dew, all crunching in my fingers. As a kid I used to be disgusted!

Head of a bear

2011-10-22T22:54:00.002+02:00

Little guy said the other day: I need to close the door so that I don't hear the little puppets.
What little puppets? I said.
They run around in the hall way and they disturb me.
???
He noticed that I kind of liked what his imagination brought up.
They come out at night, he continued, and they look at our stuff.
They don't hurt, he assured me, they take care of our things, they watch them.
So why do they disturb you then?
I don't like hearing them, he shrug his shoulders.

(I am not surprised. I am glad I do not hear them)

He has also shown me repeatedly a head of a bear sticking from things piled up in our spare room. He was pointing in the clear air insisting that it was a bear's head. It was probably his mommy's anger which materialized and hid in a dark corner.

I am glad I am not a kid anymore. I need to take that bear's head and puppets' pitter-patter into my heart.

What next?

2011-10-18T10:58:00.005+02:00

My husband asked me to knit him a sweater. He actually does not care about me knitting a sweater, he would like to have a colourful splashy sweater that would be hand made. Probably hand made for him by his wife. Maybe he does care about that. He has made few designs. He is good in that. This one, the lower one, has come out from some doodling with the little guy. I really like it, although it looks like a view of a crazy knitting project with yarn and knitted pieces than a real pattern. But it can work as a pattern too.

Talking about patterns, I recall those that I made some twenty years ago and kind of laughed at them at this blog some time ago. They are very 80s, abstract, colourful and angular. They start growing on me. Have a look.

Art therapy, again

2011-10-11T11:26:00.004+02:00

Relieving after many days of work. The work continues but without catastrophic deadlines. I bought Domík a "book of works", this is what he calls it, it was Fuoriborgo's influence when she wrote about it. It has many nice techniques that my kid can follow, I think he will use the book even when he is older. This collage is one of the "works" that came out of it. Ours is nicer, I need to say. I helped Domík, I need to say too. Well, Domík helped me. We took turns in cutting, sticking, deciding where goes what. I do not need to hide that I like this kind of work, it is a therapy.

Bonnard

2011-09-17T23:15:00.004+02:00

I like the colors. And the composition. The view out of a window and little pieces of what is going on inside. I wonder what I would think of those paintings if I was their contemporary. Whether I would have thought that the novum in them was unbearable.

Pictures from Bridgeman.

What did we do in summer?

2011-09-10T21:56:00.006+02:00

I guess, I owe some explanation on the pictures from the last post. We went to a little summer camp, private and cozy, at my friend's. Lot of kids, kittens, dogies and a teacher for the kids. It was nice but we survived only two days. We went on to see the cousins. We actually did a big route at the time. Berlin - cottage - cousins. We had a lot of time on the train together. It was a good summer. Now it almost does not seem that I was busy working.

Much

2011-09-09T22:06:00.004+02:00

There is not much going on on this blog these days. I cannot say that the real life is more interesting either.

Cute and goofy

2011-08-29T22:28:00.005+02:00

It was Domík's first summer holiday. He LOVED being with mummy and daddy almost all the time. So much that he cannot wait to be in the kindergarten again. He dreams about his teacher. He says that both of his teachers are young, they are the same age. In fact, they are 20 and 50.

It was also my first working holiday. I have been missing the heavenly and blissful time on maternity leave.

New stuff

2011-08-17T10:13:00.002+02:00

I have a new wooden necklace and the little guy has a new teddy bear. I made it. It looks like a voodoo sculpture, it was quickly sewn together. But it is cute.

Vavřineček

2011-08-15T23:20:00.003+02:00

I wanted to see this for long. It is not a performance for tourists as it may seem from pictures with those strangely dressed up people, it is a real life, or more accurately a living tradition: a pilgrimage to the St. Lawrence's church in the Chods' country in Bohemia. I think this is the last area in Bohemia where people have been wearing their folk costumes for church festivities without breaking the tradition. People used to wear folk costumes there even during week days still back in the 60s. They were more simple, of course, the skirts were pleated, women had short blazers or whatever the right vocabulary is, and wore black scarves similar to those in the pictures. I actually remember women in their daily folk costumes on a square in the town where I grew up. I grew up pretty close to the Chods' country. Nevertheless, I learned about the pilgrimage to the St. Lawrence from TV, two years ago. Such is a paradox of my longing for more authentic ethnographic experiences.

1 2 3

2011-07-27T15:26:00.005+02:00

My kid is starting to get interested in numbers. Finally... I like this 1 2 3 composition that he made and some graphic designers might like it too. Each number is reversed and so it is the whole row. I guess we can say that he is left handed.

...

2011-07-25T21:33:00.005+02:00

I made the pictures blue. They are blue like my memories from the time when I used to play with this doll house. With this baby doll, too. It hold its little baby doll that I made out of paper and painted from both sides to approach the reality.
My grandma used to live in this house, the one with the hipped roof. Time stood still there, the chicks keep pecking around, rabbits cuddle with kids and my aunt still cooks on the fire wood stove.
Domík does not shut his mouth all day. I like it, and I like the most when he is finally quiet.

Barcelona II

2011-07-17T16:35:00.003+02:00

The first picture was taken at the train station Barcelona Franca, it is an old bar from the 1960s, closed down and photographed through a glass door, the arches are actually in the main hall behind me. A little sign next to the door showed a bow tie and reminded me that back in those times people dressed more formally and perhaps more nicely.
2 - How do they maintain the plaster?
3 - Font that was hard to read. Gracia
4 - A medieval painting, part of a cycle depicting a story of a saint. Taken in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. One would think that it is a smaller collection of regional art. No. Although it does sometimes relates to the region, it is mainly a grand show of beautiful works.
5 - Cathedral.

Barcelona

2011-07-12T21:33:00.005+02:00

It is hard to write something short and concise about this trip. I have been still digesting my experience. And I still cannot put up with reality back at home. Prague is a country town compared to this delirious city. It is not only high and narrow houses with plants flowing down from balconies and busy city streets, scents of yummy food on every corner and always something nice to look at in shops and on the streets. Sense of fashion and sense of color and good taste. I have read somewhere that people living by the sea (compared to those without the sea, us) are confronted with something bigger then they are every day, horizon, the sea, something that exceeds them, and it influences their character. I was not there long enough to learn about people. I don't speak the language and I only guess what it is like to live there. I can only say that the life there must be more colorful.
Prague is my older lady, lazily rolling between quiet ponds.

Holiday

2011-06-26T23:26:00.002+02:00

Trip to Barcelona is coming soon. We are reading in a little Catalan vocabulary in our guide book. It does not have words as polar bear or kangaroo and it disappoints Dominik.
I want to take "Spanish reading" with me since I have always had a strange habit of taking something completely out of place with me to read during my holiday, as books in Italian to America or Polish and depressive essays to the Greek coast. I might end up reading Borges. It is close, anyway.
Oh, and travel books by Čapek from 1930s, they are pretty neat, fresh and nice, and interesting after all, Spain was so different ..., one can say.

Look

2011-06-24T00:01:00.004+02:00

I recommend to your attention. I can spend hours there. And... I found my picture there, too.

Minimax

2011-06-19T16:20:00.008+02:00

A little boy gets smaller and explores the world of insect. He gets by well because he knows a lot of stuff, he is curious and has a microscope back in his big world. It is nicely written this book. Beginning of the first day of summer holiday, quiet morning and air shivering with adventure is especially nice. I think my little guy does not care about the book at all. He does not know yet what summer holiday is.

Green and Gray

2011-05-26T18:57:00.000+02:00

I work in the office few days a week now. The office neighbors with a recording studio. So I am writing some boring e-mails while at the same time voices of a woman and a man from behind the door sound, discussing an existential crises of their lives, over and over. I feel funny. Then the owner of one of the voices walks in, the studio has to be entered through my office, ha, I almost say hi because I recognize him, he gets in and says thirty times in a row: Run through the forest, lets meet at the car, I ll beep twice, OK? And he walks out and I keep writing existential emails to my boring addressees...

It was...

2011-05-23T21:36:00.004+02:00

...pretty. I forwarded to myself some work, I thought I would do a little of it there but I dared not to even think about it so that I would not spoil my beautiful time. The girls live there.

....

2011-05-19T22:34:00.006+02:00

There is no way that he would try the little vest on. No. Times have changed. No photo shoot today, sorry. It is made of all the nicest yarns, wool alpaca and wool merino and who know what other wool, all new and gathered from different parts of the world, as my little guy would say: from different planets. We are going tomorrow to see my brother and for the first time the l. g. will see a cow in a shed and a goat in a barn and a pig in a yard, not at my brother's though but in the village. Oh, southern Bohemia and sweet memories of sunny summers.

My work pace has accelerated in the last week and our stomachs suffer of special diet.

Cake was good

2011-05-11T21:49:00.000+02:00

Today I wanted to go to the castle, out in the mountains but Domík is still down with antibiotics so we did not. We stayed at home and played a pharmacy. Poor thing, too many doctors lately, it has affected his playing. I like the game when he was a doctor I was a nurse and after the shift we went home together because we lived together. And we slept in the same bed. Cute.

I am having a reunion on Saturday, too many years after the high school. I do not know if I am looking forward to it or not.

Four Lines

2011-05-05T23:01:00.004+02:00

- And when you want to turn, do you have to go straight?
- Yes. Or you have to turn. It depends on how you take it.

Sometimes our dialogs resonate with Winnie the Pooh thinking.

But sometimes we show more social awareness and responsibility. On both sides.

- This is oil. It is being used up. (while looking in a kid's book...)
- But not here.
- Everywhere. It is everywhere the same.
- But I am very careful.

Garage

2011-05-03T19:54:00.004+02:00

My creative vein found its fruition after a long time. The requirement was a garage for his new robot-transform-into-car toy. It is one of his first toys that does not seem exactly pretty to his mummy. Important was, anyway, that he liked the idea of the garage with a poster area on its both walls. I even sneaked in a master's painting over the work table inside of the shed. It is going to have a detachable roof. Maybe.
Other than that, we are busy and sick on top of it.

Summer Vibes

2011-04-22T23:38:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I saw my cousin, the one I used to play with as a kid. We agreed that the most romantic and film-like summer holiday was the one when we were 13 or 14 and we spent it with a friend of us, Lenka, at her grandma's on a farm. Oh Lenka, she had it so good there! We just showed up one day and stayed few days and had the nicest time. It was on the edge of being little girls yet allowed to go out on their own, we were running around like kids and we imagined we had adventures in what we though was the real world. The setting was perfect, farm house, geese, pond, striped blankets in the window, great grandma on bed in the kitchen, rich fields and the cloudless sky. We were completely free and we had each other.

I do not see my cousin so much nowadays but she has a good influence on me, I always get some positive vibe from her. Maybe it is a feeling of security of home.

(I did not mean to be pathetic today.)

Telephone pics

2011-04-12T14:39:00.004+02:00

These are mobile phone pics. I picked especially those scattered, unfocused, grainy because such an imperfection belongs to the mobile phone photography. Snapped in a hurry and awkwardly. My little guy took some of them. But the first and third one, those capture the view the way it really looked, on one misty morning at the 1980s housing estate in winter on top of it. Prosek is the only cool looking housing estate that I know in Prague. It was build with love for this type of houses and urban planning, I dare to say.

Igráčci

2011-04-08T21:35:00.002+02:00

On one of the last visits at my parents Dominik and me climbed the attic, opened a mysterious wooden trunk (yes, an old fashioned well made trunk with a bulging lid) and there they were, my old toys. Honestly, I had made the first inquiry some years ago and pulled out this cat among other things. I had lot of stuff, that is for sure. I played a lot with my cousin, we had quite developed games that only the two of us could enjoy. We played with little dolls and had all the furnishing and little tiny things that we could get in store for them. Which, on the other hand, was not that much. So we also made what we could not get. For example I found little carpets that I had personally weaved at a little kid's loom (you could get that) and weeny teeny paper dolls for my normal dolls painted from both sides.

And among all that junk there were these guys, a variant of the German Playmobil. Together with a baby doll house with a carefully selected parts of furniture and dolls these Igráčci, that is what we cal them, were taken down and were honored by the little guy to be taken back to Prague with him.
All of them used to have little belongings, depending on the job they performed. Oh well, that is left for another visit to my parents house.

baskets

2011-04-04T18:57:00.001+02:00

We found these baskets today in a little shop attached to a kind of a sheltered workshop. Tiny space and five young people quietly working on their baskets. The baskets had all nice colors, mainly sweet shop color combination, I like that. And they were exceptionally cheap. I do not know how long they will last, though.

And I will need to find a sheltered workshop myself soon if I continue to read these German texts. I like German language, necessary to say, but this is too crazy. I need it for my doctorate, necessary to say, too. The writing here is all ONE sentence. Find the verb - there are two.

Jičín

2011-03-24T20:07:00.004+01:00

This loggie is a peculiar type of architecture. Am I inside, am I outside? There is a courtyard surrounded by buildings behind the loggie but the most attractive part is actually just like a peel. This little palace stands at the end of an alley. Majestic as it can be, from 1620 or something, with four rows of oaks. It connects this little palace with the town of Jičín. Nice outing. Only if there was not a busy road going all the way along the alley.

...

2011-03-14T10:49:00.004+01:00

I have been frenetically knitting. Something for the little guy, so that it would go fast. That is about all interesting going on here.
The yellow daffodils are called narcis in Czech. I wonder why.

...

2011-03-10T16:12:00.005+01:00

In daddy's studio in Prague.
With mummy in a chateau. Little quick trip that we made just today. It was great to be out. Domik was observing sculptures of renown men and asked me if these people were real in the past. After I said that it was right, he was sitting quiet for a while and then said dismayed: I would not want to turn into a sculpture. I explained that the case with dinosaurs in a museum was different.

On a happier note

2011-03-01T09:30:00.003+01:00

When I look in this book I feel like I also want to knit, cut fabrics, papers, draw with color pencils and make up silly stories. I even have a sympathy for little animals living in socks. I was going to stick here a tun of pictures but would not it be little unfair to the author? I wonder. The book is new new.

...

2011-02-28T17:01:00.005+01:00

Thanks for the care and response on the last post. In the end, as I think about it, it is mostly the independence that I have been weeping for, some kind of endless freedom that I rediscovered while being and playing with my kid and that resulted from having no other responsibility. So it is not about time with little guy in the end. He is growing up and he needs other activities and mainly other kids and he has that at school. So it is mostly my complete freedom that I have had and that is now turning into being hooked in the work process. But it could not have lasted forever, so what. I can get by with that. I actually do not weep so much.

Edited:
O.K. I put a picture of butterflies twice in a row, last post and this. It was unintentionally. I guess, there is a meaning to it, though, going along with what I have said here.

...

2011-02-22T23:57:00.000+01:00

Today my little guy stayed in the kindergarten till three in the afternoon. Then he wanted to visit with his little friend from upstairs and he spent the rest of the afternoon there. I was at home by myself almost all day. He said he wanted to live there, too. I could not figure out when it was last time we did something together, something like cutting up paper, modeling with a clay. (Yes, I know the last post...) I am starting to be more work oriented, a real work. And I am having a job related meeting tomorrow, the job might steel good part of my time. I suddenly started to miss my time with little guy. The job is my field but I have been so happy at home. I have not realize that before I agreed to go to the meeting.

....

2011-02-14T11:59:00.001+01:00

An art therapeutic machine, that is what we painted yesterday. It happened coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, while the little guy experimented with mixing up different colors I painted a sampler (top painting in the first picture) which Domík thought of as a machine. Again! So I made a nicer one and Domík did too (the two other paintings in the first picture). And together they make one, a freaky one. However, I still have not chased out the marble machine phantom from our family.

Domík got a nice rucksack for his birthday, from Chicken Rhythm, it was a give away on Fine Little Day, I was lucky. By the way, the company sells really cool t-shirts and patches with machines.

I am planning an outing, so far only in my head.

...

2011-02-11T22:35:00.007+01:00

There is nothing like knowing that you have only five pages of translation left. I have thousands things on mind that I want to do. And I know that when it comes to it, I will mostly sit and stare, unable to decide which pleasure to choose first. Mainly, Domík will have his mummy completely devoted to him again. I am afraid I will be building up a marble machine or some craziness like it. I appreciate his interest in how machines work but I do not want to build one. I bought him marbles, though, and we play with them. I thought he might simply abandon the idea one day but so far it has not happened. Is it because I have been neglecting him lately and he stuck to the idea? The translation is good, I tell him, I can buy some toys. It was not very smart but he liked it. What would not I do to please him? I need to look how these marble machines work....

Book

2011-02-08T14:40:00.003+01:00

Skaf - tuleň / Skaf - the Seal, by Lída Durdíková, illustration by Rožankovský, published in Prague 1939.

I bought this book for the little guy before he was born. I had time to search for good-looking books back than. The book is very educational, I learned a lot on the life of seals while reading it to the little guy. Some parts were scary, though. Killing the seal by the Eskimos, for example. They also sang a freaky ritual song. There is a colored illustration on each double page. I like colored illustrations in the books for adults, too. And it has become so rare.

....

2011-02-06T18:59:00.000+01:00

Maybe that spring is in the air. It was nice to be outside, all of us, after the long little guy's tonsillitis. Tomorrow back to normal.

He turned four

2011-01-31T20:19:00.000+01:00

My kid turned four. We had a quiche for dinner and a chocolate cake. And a couple of friends over. I will probably need to make a party with kids next time. I cannot imagine it. Despite the kid looks perplexed in the picture (a short moment of rethinking his few years in the world), he was excited. That he would get lot of presents. And so he did.

Contemplating

2011-01-26T22:07:00.002+01:00

What is it, mummy?

Nothing... Just thinking.
What about?
My place in the world...
Aha. I see.

(dialog with my 4 years old)

Now on different subject. Two years ago we were in Lecce, down in Italy. I came across a picture of us that I have not seen since then. The teatrum is actually a part of the museum. Funny and old nice museum. They had photographs of better things from the ancient times that they could not have. Apart from few things, the museum was basically empty. And, despite this fact, I liked that it was a peaceful and quiet place in the middle of the old city, exactly the opposite of what the grand museums want to be today - lively, interactive, noisy, with crowds of people. They try to get rid off everything what makes them special. How come that things like time stood still and quiet strolling inside while looking at everything is not appreciated anymore? I know, the idea is to get more people inside. So they take the wrong path and turn themselves into an amusing park. Anyway, why I am complaining about museums right now, I wonder. It just came around...
The Lecce picture glows with heat.

Frame

2011-01-22T15:42:00.004+01:00

My little guy made this painting so that he had something to put in the frame. He noticed frames for the first time at an exhibition. He was enchanted by them. I was happy because otherwise he would be bored to dead there. I do not blame him, although I had a good time. When he came home he announced to his daddy (the owner of stretching frames) that he had a new project and that he needed to work on it right away. First he did not seem to understand that he is supposed to paint on paper and then he can put it in a frame, that much he was amazed. I like what he painted. His black period is over, for now.

Stripy

2011-01-20T17:28:00.004+01:00

My husband likes this style, I am lucky. The next commission is a colorful sweater with some weird pattern. I cannot wait.

I was inspired by this scarf.

Little Brooch

2011-01-16T21:22:00.003+01:00

Here he is, my goofy, with his little brooch. (I held the fabric and made sure he poked the needle from the right side. Other than that it is all his work).

Folks and Brooch

2011-01-13T12:18:00.006+01:00

I am happy you liked the previous post, maybe I can reveal some family history in few sentences here, I do not have many pictures though, let me find some and take pictures of the pictures.
My parents when they were twenty something, I guess. My dad was tall and skinny, it changed when he was around 40, after he had rebuilt a house for us he grew strong and became the most handsome dad in the vicinity. He has been nice and caring all his life, did not show much of a male self-conceit so typical here, which I appreciate a lot. I like looking at my parents in these pictures how they used to like hanging out together.

Last picture, an embroidered brooch that I made before Christmas, first it was a present for the kindergarten teacher but after I imagined her possibly perplexed expression I gave up. Domik likes it, however, and he made one for himself. Believe me, I will show you next time.

Old pictures

2011-01-10T22:09:00.004+01:00

My grandma. Born 1909, two kids, died early. I never met her. Talented painter, spent some time at the academy, ended up as a seamstress and a dress maker. Almost went to New York in 1930s to take an apprenticeship as a milliner at one compatriot lady but it was crisis and fashion changed and hats were out. I thought of her when I climbed out of the train station in Big Apple this summer.

Second: My mum. My dad liked taking pictures of her. I think so, we have many nice ones. She was photogenic (she still is in her late sixties!) and he liked his Flexaret. Necessary to say, I am also intrigued by her hand knitted sweater. If she only knew what I am showing here....

Noro Moro

2011-01-02T18:54:00.007+01:00

I liked knitting this sweater. I had announced its birth earlier. I enjoyed the temptation to see what the color combination would turn out next. That way I did not get bored with the knitting. Unfortunately, it was too small for me. So I made it for my niece. I hope she is going to wear it.
The Saltimbanco's Harlequin has a nice sweater, too (the last picture).

Happy

2010-12-31T18:56:00.008+01:00

Fuoriborgo asked me nicely for a credit on my picture that she is showing on her blog. I apologize to everybody whose picture I just showed that I did not go into the trouble. It is a modest pel mel of some of my favorites, there is something to look at for a while in every picture. Happy New Year!

Today on Reading

2010-12-22T21:45:00.004+01:00

My life has been surrounded by a translation and I need to do some work every day but tonight I was on strike. I read a paper. With a literary section. They had a nice portion of it. I read Linhartová, an essay from the 1980. It is strange to read her in a translation. She wrote a good deal of her work in her twenties, and then, after she left for France in 1968, continued writing in French only. She did not leave, as she said somewhere, for political reasons but for the fact that possibilities of her own language were exhausted for her. In this translation, on poetry, she is more straightaway than in her ephemeral stories from the 60s, however, while reading, I felt like I was walking inside of my own cerebral convolutions.

2010-12-21T23:47:00.002+01:00

I baked some Christmas cookies and they are long gone. The same for the inhabitants of the Ginger bread house. We are expecting Christmas presents from Baby Jesus in the mail and they are not coming. What will we do if they do not come?

White

2010-12-15T21:14:00.007+01:00

It has been snowing all day. ALL DAY. Prague is beautiful in the snow. Only going to the kindergarten in the morning takes a quarter an hour more. Dominik starts to have his own projects, often too crazy to be implemented. Some are nice, we doodled on stripes of paper that he had cut out. I made a design for a scarf. And a headband for an Indian guy. It was a blog worthy outcome.
The tower in the view on our street looks very science fiction. Mostly I do not notice it. Domík even thought that it was New York on the picture. He has never been to New York. But he has lived on this street his entire life.

Aprender a Bordar

2010-12-11T23:34:00.001+01:00

A little book on embroidery that I got at Rosa Pomar's. There are far more nice and cute pictures like these in the book. And reading Portugal is fun, I mean for those who do not speak the language. So I do not know if it has some clever tricks how to make your kid start embroider (if you ever wanted to) but I enjoy the pictures and decide whether to try something like this or that. I think that what I like the most is that I actually do not know how to embroider nicely and patiently and this book proves for me that it does not matter.

My husband calls the book A cool hippie embroidery book.

Mikuláš

2010-12-06T23:03:00.004+01:00

I liked the garlands that I saw somewhere on someones blog, they were professional, long and cut out with a saw. I was wondering how difficult it is to make one. I made three rows of singing cats and glued them together. They are too many, I am afraid, so many cats singing, it is annoying. They are our St. Nicholas's day garland, they watched the window, where this Mikuláš (Nicholas) left some treats in a sock for Domík.
Usually, Mikuláš comes to your home, accompanied with Devil and Angel, often it is a masked uncle of yours, a kid gets scared, no surprise, three weirdos in the hall, and Mikuláš asks him if he was nice and obedient in the past year and the kid is so frightened that he rather is obedient for the whole following year. Anyway, I find it little too much, lightly said, and we skip it. Just imagine, that Dominik got scared when he saw the sock hanging behind the window. He liked the treats.

Winter

2010-12-02T22:39:00.002+01:00

There is a hell lot of snow in Prague right now. It keeps falling down, just like feathers from the blanket. It looks magic, the snow. It is sparkly, as my kid reminded me today. We made a ginger bread house. I think it is the last one that I ever made. It took several days, starting with getting ingredients, going through baking, decorating, gluing it together. I like it. It is big and takes lot of space on our table. It is my art piece. It has tiny mushrooms on the roof. The weird animals around are a fox ans a hare.

We have this painting in our living room in my parents house. It is a reproduction of a Dutch painting and this is just a detail. What is the name of the guy who liked painting frozen lakes? I like the ice and the boats on it.

My little niece painted this snowman this summer. How did the theme come to her mind? I like it, nevertheless, watch out for the birdie in the feeder.

Edited: The painter's name is Hendrick Avercamp, and by coincidence I bumped into this article on him, together with links to his paintings.

2010-11-29T11:23:00.003+01:00

I wish that our washing machine stopped doing that threatening squeaky noise. It did not do it before. I wish I did not buy Domik girlish winter shoes. Well, they are blue... What else do I wish? That the life would not fall in pieces.

Passion

2010-11-26T17:29:00.001+01:00

This is for crazy knitters. I wanted to skip the intro but then the woman started to eat yarn and I got interested.

It is actually one of those nice stylish shops with knits but the intro would rather get those (of us) who have an affair with yarn. And therefore would not buy a ready made sweater. But what do I know, it is fun to watch the girl's passion anyway.

fish and knitting

2010-11-21T15:28:00.003+01:00

The kid's sickness has been getting unbearable. Also for the parents. I am trying to deal with our spare time at best when we cannot go out or to see other kids. Although his games are getting more complex, still it is hard for me to embody mentally into a 3 years old. Luckily, we got some finger puppets, I like the choice of species, a beetle, a duck and a cat (I could not find the cat to make a photo shoot with) and we play our "talking game", one of a more demanding ones. I enjoyed drawing fish, Domik helped a little, too. these were props for another game that I did not have to play. Daddy had to.

I do not know If I like the knitting that I started. The yarn is great, the pattern doesn't show at all what it did in a magazine.

Things with little Guy

2010-11-14T20:57:00.004+01:00

I made Domík a bag, a shopping bag, he calls it. He was checking on mine to give me instructions how to make his. It needs to open, he said. He was nice the whole time I sewed, he knew I was making something for him and thus giving him attention. And so he played quietly along. But I give him attention all the time!

Christmas baking started. He made a picture that I could not keep.

By the way, more sickness coming up. I will see tomorrow, I am starting to get miserable. How does that happen?

Mushrooms

2010-11-10T11:11:00.007+01:00

Atlas of mushrooms, I have a hard time finding good translation for that, I hope atlas is right. This one is from 1831-1846, it is big, 38 x 48 cm and has 76 plates. I do not have it, these pictures were taken in a library and published in another book. So, imagine it big, otherwise you do not get the image. It is a piece of art. I am more of a mushroom admirer than a hunter. However, I have to admit, there is something about going to forest and wander around and finding and picking them.

The title is VIncenc Julius Krombholz, Naturgetreue Abbildungen und Beschreibungen der essbaren und vedaechtigen Schwaemme, Praga, 1831 - 1846.

And thank you for showing empathy on my last post, the kid is jumping and running again, oh my god.

My bunny

2010-11-04T23:30:00.004+01:00

Tonsillitis second in a row. It is crazy, this illness chain has started since he has been going to school every day. I am at home and cannot really do much for work. Fevers and crying. Fighting over taking antibiotics. I was actually going to write something different:

"When I was in my mummy's belly, it was dark. It was dark and I had a toy with me. It was a black airplane. It broke. Then the doctors took me out." I seriously doubt that this is a prenatal memory. I told him that he was in my belly. Maybe it was too early to tell him, it stuck in his head and he cannot imagine it nor understand it. What he said sound symbolic though. What broke? The plane?

2010-10-31T23:08:00.006+01:00

Half a day trip to Příbram. One has to climb a pilgrims spot above the town through a long covered staircase that starts right in the middle of the town. Hard winter is coming, they say, the ravens are in Brno by now... These blue sunny and incredible cold autumn days are unusual. In the evening, after the trip, I attended the Lucullan feast in a restaurant on a ship, I have nice friends, they like eating.

Today I carved my first (and last) pumpkin head. Important is, that Dominik had a good time.

Nice surprise

2010-10-26T17:21:00.004+02:00

There could not have been a nicer surprise yesterday morning, a package from Finland from Merulli. Nice yarn and something for Domik too, he is a fan of Moomintroll and here comes his Mumínek. I like the yarn a lot, it will turn in something nice one of these days.

Rubic's Cube

2010-10-24T22:45:00.003+02:00

This is at the playground two weeks ago. The same night he had a fever and has been at home with tonsillities ever since. He is jumping around again, wants to play with us all the time. I can't wait for him to start kindergarten again, my little bunny, my cutie, my everything.

Kuky

2010-10-22T21:29:00.000+02:00

I get lot of commissions now, from my little one. Since I proved I can fulfill his wishes he wants more and more. This is how it is, you offer a finger and they pull all your hand. I do not want to make Thomas engine and his friends. Dear Domik, I really appreciate that you want your mum make toys for you, but I can't make everything. But I could make Kuky, the pink, sorry red, bear, a film star from an animated film. The film is beautiful, pity that the idea, plot and some props have been sort of copied from this book. However, that does not prevent me from crocheting the little bear. Your wish, my pleasure!

Rockets and Robots

2010-10-15T10:17:00.008+02:00

These pictures were taken at the exhibition, I like that they all have the reflection of whoever was around. It goes well with the theme, which was sort of funny and at the same time creepy, imagination of the future that never happened. Lot of sci-fi stuff and also Russian propaganda about beautiful tomorrows, and, luckily for my kid, many rockets and robots so parents could have a proper look at everything.

All different

2010-10-10T12:03:00.008+02:00

Shadow theatre. Straight inspiration from the front page of IJM studio in Amsterdam that Mieke Willems have mentioned. We also have a backdrop with trees and hills and we sort of play with it at dark with a light coming from behind, like IJM has it, but we are far far from the cool stuff that they present. But I had fun cutting the puppets, it actually turned out pretty good considering my skills.

Lovely handwriting that I am involved with right now. When I figure out what the letters are I find our that it is in German and my torture continues. And thus, step by step, I am slowly building up a content of my dissertation.

Still life with a head, a chair and a missing body.

Rose hips ideas wanted

2010-10-06T23:47:00.004+02:00

We went for rose hips, Domik pulled out his usual stuff, where are the cars, where are the streets and I would not rather go there, meaning the wood. I liked picking rose hips although I do not really know what to do with them other than tea. Any idea? I enjoyed my half an hour country life gathering berries and imagining something nice I would make out of them while Domik started to explore the meadow behind me. He picked three flowers, one for his grandpa, one for grandma, one for me.

Maxipes Fík's Machine

2010-09-30T22:50:00.006+02:00

This is a device machine that Maxipes Fík, the cartoon character, drives in the story. As it goes all the little levers and wheels and gadgets move and shiver, no one knows what they are for. Domík was determined to have it right away. And I actually liked it that he liked this machine, it is like a symbol of an invention, with those little things on it. First I pretended I did not know what he was talking about but sooner my idea on how to kind of make the machine happen came to me and I just made it. It took two days. And the gadgets don't move. I am afraid this was the disappointing part. I am not there yet. Also, it is too small. But Elmo can sit in it and Domík pulls him around. When he is big, as he often says now, he will make his own machine.

He grinned at me nicely

2010-09-27T23:36:00.004+02:00

We played a shopping game today. His shopping manners were hilarious. He screamed: Buy more! after each of my purchase in his toy and other stuff shop. He would hand me money that he had proudly ripped of his cash register, before I had time to give him mine. He also liked to wrap the stuffed animals that actually came to the shop as customers, he put them in plastic bags as if they were sold. He showed me the backroom of his shop with some "under counter" goodies. He painted his bank notes with strange symbols and also the numbers he screamed out over his cash register sounded very exotic.

He was happy that I played with him. He was nice all day and grinned at me nicely.

Book

2010-09-24T22:03:00.004+02:00

Můj medvěd Flora, text and illustrations by Daisy Mrázková, 1st edition in 1973, re-edition 2007 by Baobab

Kids find a dirty old teddy bear in the snow, it is one of those that look like Winnie the Pooh in the original book. They take it home, take care of it, wash it, fix it and play with it. I like that there is a whole page picture on every double page and a short and sort of poetic text. The story isn't anything but it doesn't matter. Actually, kids might like it.

Robot

2010-09-21T12:23:00.001+02:00

Edited:

It is a robot, an amateur robot. Little antropomorphized. Looks like a fat man with a square head. Domík wanted a robot to cuddle with. I think the robot's expression makes up for everything.

September in the village

2010-09-19T21:25:00.001+02:00

The kids went to see new born kittens. The kids are cute but not always. Their games almost always turn into a fight or a disaster of some kind. It is hard to watch it from distance. Sometimes I step in it and I don't know if I do it right.

Doll House

2010-09-15T21:43:00.001+02:00

And also those tiny house shoes. And a straw and a cup. My kid watched me having fun. I felt like making a worm house that we saw in a picture. The worm changed in a butterfly and flew out when the puppets in a story lift up the box lid. Not ours. Ours is a 70s (again!) little doll and her house is furnished sort of utilitarian in neo-functionalist style. She likes mushroom picking.

1. Martinka
2. sleeping bag, ready-made, originally a wrist warmer for baby Domík
3. pillow, whipped up at place
4. bed, made from the cardboard that was in the shoe box the house is from
5. mushroom, modeling clay, painted
6. basket, laying abandoned under a bookshelf in our living room
7. table, ready-made, a cup for bigger dolls
8. flower, modeling clay, made after watching Mio Mao
9. carpet, 100% wool

And Dominik added his touch, urban graffiti on a facade. The house will not survive very long, I am afraid.

2010-09-11T22:30:00.003+02:00

Summer pictures. The last one is my baby doll carriage from the 1970s. A miniature of real contemporary baby carriages. They are back in fashion - those wide ones with big wheels. Linda is laying inside. She is the only one left. Marcelka, Evička, Zdenička, Janička, Jůlinka, where did they end up, I wonder.

Blanket

2010-09-05T14:18:00.005+02:00

While strolling through the Metropolitan museum in New York we came across a small exhibition by Anne Ryan and her textile collages. We paid just a little attention to it, my husband even said something like Her stuff is too nice, sorry, and I thought Yes and it is exactly what I could do just for myself, like some kind of an art therapeutic project. And later, along with my little guy playing, I played with scissors and paper and pretended I was making a blanket. Ryan's stuff is much better though, collages are hard job, we undervalued her.

Fish

2010-09-01T20:17:00.003+02:00

I am proud. Because this really looks like a fish. He didn't know it was a fish, only after I told him. He was proud. His doodling hasn't resembled much of anything, although it has been a nice confusion of lines but this is something new. He likes paints in tubes. He threw a fit that he wants those in tubes so his daddy had to go and dig out some old nice and professional gouache paints in a closing box. I had promised him to get him temperas after the weekend and he remembered it. So on Monday he took his new temperas out of a plastic tray that they sell them in, dumped his little cars from a suitcase and carefully assembled the paints in it. A day later I found them rearranged again in a plastic tray. I also want to play with tubes, cars and dolls.

Lysá nad Labem

2010-08-30T20:52:00.006+02:00

We went to see this place, it is a little town half an hour from Prague, few odd streets, old square, church with baroque sculptures looking down on you from the wall, chateau, turned into an old peoples house, romantic park and French park, view into the river Labe valley. The park was a big surprise, so nice and grand and so little known. We had to find it, it was part of the thing, a discovery. We made it up the hill, strolled in the grass in the wilder side of the park and then, finally, when I was almost to give up, I saw it, bony sculptures set among trimmed trees. 18th century.

What I remember

2010-08-28T11:47:00.003+02:00

The summer has been too short. I am having a post summer spleen. Although I like autumn in general. I like to curl in warm sweaters. Maybe, if I went and bought a new autumn sweater I would get rid off my late August melancholy.

Company

2010-08-25T00:08:00.005+02:00

It was good to have bigger girls around. They were good for doing my projects, batiking, drawing, picking flowers. How to make a nice bouquet like the one Marketka made: grab flowers and whatever comes under your hands with full fists. Domik liked his cousins, he was rolling and crawling on them like crazy. He didn't need me at all. First I liked it but later I was sorry. It was closest to the feeling son leaving his mummy. I knew everything would be back to normal soon and I would wish for having the girls around again. And so it is.

Mushroom Hunting

2010-08-23T20:13:00.004+02:00

I recognize only boleti, it is the only mushroom I can pick. Well, maybe two or three other kinds but I don't see them often. I actually don't see many mushrooms at all, I mean those edible ones that every one knows and goes hunting for. My aunt used to be a specialist in mushroom picking. But my uncle didn't believe her knowledge and used to go hunting for his own mushrooms. In their house, they had two jars of dried mushrooms, one belonged to him, the other one to my aunt.

2010-08-13T14:15:00.003+02:00

Romare Bearden

More pictures from New York on request. With collages from Metropolitan Museum and one collaged photograph between them.

I am having my second holiday right now. It is raining. When it is not raining we go mushroom hunting. We dont find much because everybody goes and all of them get up earlier than we do. Domík says that we want to pick happy mushrooms and when he sees one that has been eaten by animals he calls it an angry mushroom. When it is not raining we ride a bycicle, sit at the river and throw stones in water. We are expecting Domík's cousins so that Domík can go crazy with them. If it is not raining tomorow we go to see a puppet show at the castle. I made Domík an ordinary pair of sweatpants and a teddy-bear from the leftover. It looks like a fox.

Report from the trip

2010-08-07T11:46:00.012+02:00

I received a refund from Paypal, it was faster than I expected.

Rivane Neunschwander

We visited New York for three days. I wrote to someone that we stayed in the very heart of Manhattan. Only later I could see that Manhattan has several hearts. How naive I had been. Everyone wants to be on that piece of land, no wonder that all the nice and interesting things are piled up in several rows and several layers. I was curious about the spirit of the parts of New York and they are particular at every street, no deaf spaces between them. I can also see how neurotic the city could be. For all the reasons mentioned above.

We stayed in East Village, right in St. Marks Place. Above a noisy pizzeria and punk girls begging for food for their dog, they said. The apartment had nice architectonic features from the turn of the centuries. On the last day I found a mouse trap bellow a sink, realized the dark side of the city and was ready to go home.

We didn't take little guy on this trip. Instead, he had a good time with his grandparents. I like that the first picture looks like taken from over the meadows and fields around the city. In reality, it is from a roof top of the Metropolitan museum.

PAYPAL ROBBERY

2010-08-05T21:58:00.005+02:00

Welcome back from holiday and find out that your account has been hacked. How does that feel? I am talking about paypal. So almost all the money that I made on Etsy are gone, somebody stole them and there is nothing I can do about it. I can scream out of the window like a crazy. Go complain at the train station. Write e-mails frenetically to paypal and imagine how they laugh out loud.

What is more, one of the parcels I had sent before my departure, never got to its destination. I am obliged to refund it somehow. Which I will, but considering all the circumstances, I feel bitterness on my tongue.

I want to complain how all that embroidery business of mine was all in vain.

I went into the cupboard and found out that somebody has defrauded all the liquor too. While I was gone. A woman who watered the plants?

2010-06-21T13:06:00.008+02:00

Maybe you were wandering what I am trying to communicate through these pictures. No, I am not going to pretend my three years old kid is a little Munch. They are little notebooks that I made for him and I used some treasures of world heritage as a hardcover for them. I saw similar hand made ones at ever inspiring Tiny Happy. I had actually made some before, they were like little play books with cut out reproductions of real book covers. With these I am going to face up long sitting in the airplane. Anyway, first drawings have already appeared in some of them. It looks like my three year old is a little Surrealist.

P.S. By the way, the real reason for making these was that I could play with scissors and paper, no way that I care what his little notebooks look like.

Mieke

2010-06-19T11:14:00.004+02:00

Dear Mieke and Veronike, your parcel is on the way to you!

Delete

2010-06-19T10:56:00.010+02:00

As I am leaving for longer time next week I decided to put an end to few things on the etsy shelf. They are available for half a price now which I think is quite a good deal. Good bye, embroidered bags! They are there till next Wednesday noon, then I am leaving and the shop will be empty since then (but not forever).

I may show up here before I go. Good day to everybody!

Tarkovskij

2010-06-11T22:03:00.005+02:00

Polaroids taken by Tarkovsky in Italy and Russia. Aged still-lives, faded colors, it adds to their beauty.
Check also the other posts, like this one, on Odessa, or this one on the unbearably crowded apartment of a Russian film director.

2010-06-09T15:46:00.005+02:00

I thought that I misuse the technique of Sashiko too much so I tried to do the basic running stitch only, and I enjoyed embroidering it as if I had done it for the first time, pretending I didn't know how to keep the lines straight. And, here we are, it looks very kindergarten kind of work but I like kids' art so I like this too. It has a birdie on the other side.
The upper birdie belongs to a bag, though, another mini bag for little girls.