Asemic writing

 

Hi dear reader!

 

 

We had an enjoyable and quiet Christmas and tomorrow will already be the very last day of this year. It is a miracle! Where did all those days go, I mean were there really 364??

 

On the web I see lots of people reflecting; the year mainly, their blog, achievements, did they stick to their chosen word and the like.

 

The only reflection I tend to do, but not only at this time of the year, is looking again at my old blogposts, mostly I choose a category and then the reflecting begins!

 

On the whole this looking back fills me with joy, contentment and sometimes a little pride. And I learn of it, of course. Like today...
 

The other day I discovered a lovely blog about asemic writing. I instantly recognized the topic and felt (not knew) that it had to be the opposite of the word semantic. Now that is a word I do know, since I have been tought the several languages that I speak today.

click the images to enlarge

sample of asemic writing in one of my quilts

 

Of course I googled the word and it was amazing to find that a) the word had exactly the meaning that I expected and b) I recognized that I have been using asemic writing often in my former work, both textile and paper. Now how funny is this? In my art I like to use (parts of) words, without meaning often, just letters or digits and I have always contributed this love for the written to my heritage of being a typographer's daugther. To those of you with an art training that may have been known with the topic of asemic writing: I can imagine that you smile a bit about my 'discovery'. But since my training was in a quite different professional field I learn by trial and error, reading as much as I can and by simply doing what I like... and I am so happy to once again have found a quite new source of information. See more about this topic here and on this site

 

series of six smaller quilts with the use of asemic writing

 

I wish all of you a healhty, creative and prosperous

2014

 

Thanks for reading

 

Regina

Kitchen update

 

The situation when we bought the house, before renovation; 'would you need a more up to date kitchen, my dear?', he asked...

the stove was almost antique, from Britain as some people suggested, but nobody knew for sure.

And I? For sure I saw a different kitchen- future ahead...

 

 

so out went all the very dated stuff!

 

and slowly we built it into this

 

 

 

new, state of the art kitchen (special feature: dishwasher on solar energy). Needless to say that I am happy!

 

Enjoy!

 

Regina

Front door

(clickable image)

 

Hi!

 

Let me show you the results of some of last week's work...

 

The front door that goes from our verandah (naya in Spanish) to our living room was painted white when we bought the house. The paint was damaged, brittle and existed of several layers of both oil paint and varnish. You can see how it was on the right (and yes, you can click the image to see the vineyard in the back, the Meditarrenean Sea is behind the trees!)

 

It was a hell of a job to remove the old paint and get rid of all the little white parts that got stuck in the panels and corners and still showed on the brown wood. But hey, we did it and this is the result! Now our door is more like the rest of the doors inside, which means in the traditional Castillean style.

 

 

On another note: six solar panels for the underfloor heating and sanitary water have been installed on the roof, but they still have to be connected with the system inside the house. The technician who is supposed to do this part of the job had serious family issues last week, but will hopefully return tomorrow... This year there will be no Christmas celebration in our new home at the upper floor, but in our temporary appartment in the underbuilt. But that is not too bad, since it is cozy and warm!

 

Thanks again for visiting,

 

Regina

Dots and circles

 

 

... always and everywhere!

 

While browsing through pictures of my fiber and paper work, it struck me how many of these contain dots, circles and the like!

 

It is a design element that apparently is very, very popular with me...

 

The brown part of this dyptich is the bottomside of a rusty iron scaffolding that stands at the side of our house at the moment; my attention was drawn to the light coming through the circular openings, thus showing the beautiful pattern and regularity. The right part shows some (maybe familiar) metal pans, in which the former owner made some holes herself. Not as regular, but with handmade charm nevertheless

 

This is about the only creativity coming from me currently, oh no, I forget to mention that I sewed myself a new tunica this week. It is antharacite colored, with white dots!

 

Happy Sunday, thanks for visiting!

 

Regina

Savannah

 

 

As I am preparing a number of dyptichs and tryptichs from pictures of our USA trips, I browsed the map 'Savannah'. This was the last city of our 2012 trip and we had ample time to enjoy its beauty...!

 

The tryptich above is composed of details I captured with my camera; simply walking the streets and looking, well, everywhere; there was such an abundance of stunning architecture and lovely details in this historic city.

 

 

I have a love (and a collection)of lanterns, the porch in the centre speaks for itself, with the wrought iron poles and gate, and the street signs in the historic part of this city were totally in style

 

 

Savannah...

precious memories and just some eye candy on a sunny winter day in Spain

 

Regina



Four summers ago, end of first trip

On the due date, our son arrived at Tacoma Seattle airport and after our great stay in Washington's Olympic area, we were ready to travel on: Vancouver was our next goal.

Driving a motor home in a very big city is not our hobby, so we headed to one of the suburbs that had  a campground plus a perfect public transport connection with down-town Vancouver.

 (all images are clickable)

What a lovely city! We had noticed the difference with the USA already, in the sizes of the parking lots, the overall image the buildings offered, peculiar... I guess we did all the touristy things. We saw a steam clock, especially the men in our company were intrigued by that ;-)! I enjoyed the galleries on our walk, the brick stone buildings, the people and yes, Chinatown was great too. The only thing we did not do, however,  was shopping. The city of Vancouver seemed to offer mainly similar shops that can be seen in every big city, that was not what we had come for. Though at the same time I realize that the nicest, most funny little special shops can usually be found in the area around down town. But this was not a shopping trip...

Next day we left for our trip North. Our son had done his research and composed his wishes for this Canadian part of the trip, so we mainly followed his advice. We came along Hell's Gate, saw for the very first time the huge damage in the infested trees that was caused by pine beetles. From this journey on we would see the warnings every year again, in each and every state that we traveled through. We also noticed that Canada has an extensive railway net for freight, we never had one night sleep without the whistling and passing of seemingly endless trains...

After a few days we arrived in Jasper, a starting point of the Ice field Parkway, a route that connects Jasper with Banff, both cities situated in and connected by National Parks, see for a map this site

Being no ice lovers at all, we were nevertheless very impressed with this wonderful winter land in summer. Snow capped mountains, ice fields, the most wonderful colored lakes, lots of them, huge waterfalls and an overall glorious landscape. We visited the Athabasca Glacier and Columbia Ice Field, Peyto Lake, the Johnston Canyon and last but not least Lake Louise. One place was even more gorgeous than the other. By then the end of our trip came near, so we had to travel back to the Billings, Montana. We crossed the Kootenay Rockies, made a short stop for a quick dip in Radium Hot Springs and left Canada at Coutts.

 

Once we arrived in Billings we had to clean and winterize our motor home and take it to the storage facility. Our son flew back to Holland; we took the plane to our island via Denver and Miami. This first USA trip, four summers ago, had been fantastic, there were so many memories to cherish!

This first series of five posts recording our travels throughout the United States have been written with the help of my memory, our RV Road Atlas and the many, many pictures that we made. Next year it will be easier, for from that trip on I kept a journal... parts of the voyage are described here, in this post and here

I hope you enjoyed reading, thank you for visiting my blog,

 Regina

The weather is wet and grey...

... inside the house it is warm and cozy.

 

Pictures I made a while back in a friend's home at the island. Metal sun in terracotta dish, black and white patterns are details of two vases in her kitchen.

Combining naturel with black and white: always attractive and never boring me...

 

no punishment to be inside, with my pictures, computer and PS

 

Have a lovely Sunday!

 

Regina