Hey Plain Jane

Jack will begin prep school at the end of January, and hey, where did those five years go? Seriously.

But loooooooooook, his ickle black school shoes we bought today. So ickle. So shiny. Although I note with some grrrr that he has already managed to scuff both of them as he lollopped about the lounge room in them. He’s very excited. Gary, who visited this afternoon for a cup of tea, said “well aren’t they just the very bricks of love.” I thought it apt. There is so much love in our eyes as we gaze at their chunky, shiny goodness.

Whenever I’ve mentioned the shoes to anyone today they ask if he got the brand “Bata Scout”, which to many people around my age is the name of the coolest pair of school shoes imaginable. Bata Scouts looked like any normal black school shoes, but they had secret properties; the lion paw imprint it left on the ground for a start, and the most secret squirrel hidden compass nestled in the heel. They were de rigour and deliriously funky stuff. Oh course I had a pair, are you nuts? As poor as my parents were, they got me a pair of them. You can still buy them, but alas, without the miniature compass.

Okay, as I did promise myself, I’m nutting out the finer points of the resolution.

Seeing as I completed the rehearsal draft of Cake in the very early hours of this morning, and seeing as the dramaturg has already called to say it all looked fine, I felt at liberty to approach one of the resolutions with caution…..”be organised”. I cannot contemplate entering into this year with an urgent agenda to smarten up my organisational skills. With Jack starting at school, a school that is miles away from where we live, a school that starts at 8:30 every morning, sharpish, I cannot afford to have no routine and nothing sorted, and great piles of  project related things strewn about, and the fridge in an uproar, and meals planned hickity-pickity, and everyone eating dinner at 8, and me staying up til all hours, and sleeping in til 8am. What am I like?

So.

A routine. I will draw up a schedule of general daily events. A chart. For the wall or the fridge. 
I printed out a shopping list, even remembered to take it shopping. But I hadn’t done a plan of all the meals for the week, so still it all felt ad hoc. Even worse, the meal I had planned for tonight, Fried Ginger Fish with Mirin dipping sauce, was stymied when John announced he was “not in the mood for fish”, Never mind. The goal here is to develop a weekly menu planner, and a weekly shopping list to match it. There are bound to be stumbling blocks like men with contrary tastebuds!

Piggy bread 2

Originally uploaded by luckysundae

Oh, now please! This Piggy Bread is so impossibly cute. The woman in charge of this and other outrageous culinary fare, Lucky Sundae, should be given a medal for kitchen tolerance above and beyond the call of duty. She makes many of her creations (like the bento box one I looked at a few posts ago) for her children.

Just how appreciative her children are of her efforts remains moot. Some children do dig this sort of attention being lavished on their food. Others…meh. My own son falls in the ‘meh’ group more often than not.

In working on Cake, the latest play of mine, more recently I have been exploring what it is to want to give your children extremely beautiful memories of their mother’s food. It’s like a chronic deep-seated need in many women I know; the need to lavish. It’s really ridiculously primal. I’ve been know to hurriedly whip up an entire chocolate cake at 3pm, having it iced and waiting for Jack for his return from day care. He has a slice, then runs off, thanks Mum.

It’s not just food either. The urge runs to making clothes memories, toy memories, book memories, the lot. I’m making a quilt for Jack made up of fabric he chose. I’m hand sewing this quilt on time that I don’t have. We live in the tropics and we certainly do not require a quilt any more than one week a year or the odd sick day. But it is the thought, the look, the memory that I am chasing on his behalf. Madness.

But don’t get me wrong. It is a wonderful madness. It is a pleasing one to me. Perhaps 10% of what I do in this regard will seep through to his long-term memory. That 10%, how precious!

A couple of books came in the post for me yesterday; Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes, a wonderfully exotic cookbook to go with the author’s sojourn through the spicier locals of Europe, and the book seen above, an utterly delicious quilting book by two Australian women who own their own quilting business Material Obsession. I’ve already made one of their designs, a king single quilt called Annie’s Garden. I’m twitching to make this one of theirs:

known as Holiday Morning. Oh yes, just what I need! More projects! Please, more projects, because I’m so bereft of things to do here.

One day. I swear.

The linen stacked under the Material Obsession book is a small haul I took this morning at a thrift store in a country suburb, Freshwater. This particular store, which is tiny I will add, was having a linen bonanza sale. I was going to leave it until this afternoon because I am up to my tiny nostrils with a serious play writing commitment, but thank goodness I didn’t. I shot out there as soon as Jack was ensconced in his day care. The shop was chockas full of hunters, all rummaging madly. Alas, even at 10am, we were all a bit late. The store had sold out of most of its very beautiful old linen by 9 o’clock. I managed to scrimp a few tablecloths, a couple of embroidered tea towels and a doily or two. Oh..and a small crocheted lap rug:

When my mother comes to stay this Winter, I’m going to have to insist she teach me how to crochet. I adore this fuddy-duddy crocheted squares look. My mother is ace at it.

On top of the rug is a picture of the chocolate slice I made this afternoon for Jack’s Oyatsu. Oyatsu is a special Japanese word that means an after-school snack for children. I never fail to think Oyatsu instead of the phrase ‘afterschool snack’. Weird. Chocolate slice -this version of it anyhow- has special meaning for me historically; my sister Carmel and I always made it to cheer ourselves up on cold dull afternoons.

A pleasant Easter has passed us by. Some lovely friends, mountains of chocolate, and a very well behaved boy despite the inevitable chocolate rushes. I cooked Jewish Simnel Cake again seeing it was such a huge hit last year. We iced biscuits, we invited Susan’s daughter and boyfriend over to brunch, we had a egg hunt, we watched TV marathons….the usual fare.

My mind turns to business even though it is officially still holiday time. I have determined that I will make just ten toys for the gallery to see how they go. They are not a huge time investment, nor are the materials involved such a huge investment either. I have nothing to lose. If they sell well, okay, I’ll put in more. Today I sketched out some designs and developed a few patterns. Dolls, cats, wolves, squid, a Robot Cop, and things such as that. So, it’s not Art with a high capital A, but it’s creative pursuit and mildly entertaining. I long to have the money and wherewithall to print onto my own fabric because that would make the toys have more gallery credentials than what I’m about to do.

There’s been an interesting and heated debate online recently about the general credentials of contemporary craft as opposed to value of (capital L) Learned (capital C) Craft. Shoddy craftsmanship is one thing, but calling a stuffed toy craft or even Art is perhaps a grey area. For me, it depends largely on the materials and how they are employed, whether it is with some wit or originality.

I’ve been sliding about the web, a slippery and sticky place, gazing fondly at lovely things. It’s wonderful to just plunge in and click and keep clicking. It’s sort of like feasting at a large table, wantonly taking a bite of everything and throwing it down, moving on to the next dish of goodies while I’m still chewing a mouthful from the next. Some lovely things: