Lineanongrata

moving

 

Where to begin after such a long time of absence ? It's hard to say because it's hard to figure out where from I'm writing.

Moving indeed, from one country to another, back, or forth, depending on how I look at it.

After almost eleven years in France, moving back to Germany is not as easy as I thought.

You know how it goes. You live in one place and you think that everything will be better in another. All your dreams will come true. In that other place.

That's the reason I moved to France in the first place. That and some odd wish for adventure, which I still feel today.

But when you do that, when you go live in another country, you decide to venture far out of your comfort zone. Everything is still to be done.

When I went to France, I didn't know anyone there. I needed to find a place to live, friends, make a routine for myself, create a new home zone.

 

I thought I'd never come back (go back ?). All my plans for a future played out in France. 

But all the while I stayed attached to my home country. Came back for all the holidays, had most of my friends in Germany, and I have to admit that I had a hard time connecting to the French. I didn't make so many friends. Not the kind I had 'back home', at least. The kind you always come back to and everything is as it always was.

Homesickness hit a while ago and all of a sudden I thought everything would be easier for me in Germany.

 

In a way it is. Easier. I missed nordic nature and feel much more comfortable in it than I could ever feel in the South. Friends and family are very much present and care.

But still: What a fool was I to have thought that I would come back with no effort at all. That everything would be gloriously easy.

 

Everything has to be done all over again. The search for a place to live, the paperwork, making a routine, and all in all, the glimmer of 'new' and exciting is painfully missing. After all, I'm coming back, not going somewhere new.

Or, let's say, in a way I'm going somewhere new because I'm not used to adult life in Germany, but it all feels terribly old and sometimes I have to remind myself that there is adventure in this, too.

inside my sister's head

Showing you these images will provoke a phone call or some kind of comment, I already know. But that's all right. We haven't spoken in a while, Hanna and I. Because we're both crazy busy at the moment. While I pack stuff to go to Berlin, she's preparing and packing to spend a couple of months at Madrid.

For all of you who are not familiar with Hanna: She's my little sister, and these two drawings are hers. No, she's not four or five, she's just three years younger than me, and these pictures are mementos I kept and that just resurfaced as I'm packing my belongings into boxes to move.

I kept these illustrations because I think they're hysterically funny. But when I looked them over closely late yesterday evening, they kind of worried me. What if the two people who are about to be struck by lightning in the first image are our brother and I or our parents ?

And have you seen that poor lion who just jumped through the burning hoop and ended up a burnt pile of ashes ? 

I mean, gee, I have lived close to a disturbed mind for years without knowing !

domestic goddess

How did you guess that we're not talking about me here ? We're talking about Natalie, actually, who took over the house and everything domestic from me a year ago. And whom I very much wish I could take with me to Berlin. You see, she's really courageous, too. Facing some pretty big obstacles around here every day. Or let me express it differently: We have a permanent domestic clash in this house.

While I'm a great believer in the 'let it soak' theory (anything, any number of days. Who knows. It might just clean itself eventually), Natalie is for tackling dirt and dust right this second, so the kitchen will look spotless. When she does the laundry, the sheets already look folded on the clothesline. When I do it, somebody (probably Natalie) has to spend much time untangling them - after they're dry. 

I'm not an absolute fan of having every single object in my household aligned with available table tops or the window sill, but if it's what it takes to be able to eat off the floor, I'm all for living geometrically.

And could somebody please enlighten me as to what one has to do in order to make the kitchen look neat all through the process of meal preparation, please ?

We harvested by hand today (and I'm no my way to bed, at nine pm, because I'll just crash with fatigue in about five minutes) and Natalie and I have been plotting the food arrangements since yesterday. When she left at five thirty yesterday evening, the kitchen looked impeccably tidy, two salads were prepared, sausages bought, the knifes, forks, plates and glasses counted and laid out, and...

 

beer, water and alcohol free beer in the fridge. Because we both knew it would be hot out today. But only Natalie thought about what it would take to make the day good in spite of that.

Oh yes. I forgot to mention: She also cleaned the fridge. Because when I put things in the fridge... (you know the drill).

my new obsession

It might be that I'm in a frightening sanitary state myself at the moment, with harvest going on around here, or maybe I just like the colors. I definitely love the different scents, though.

My new love is called soap.

Making soap is like knitting. You can do it even when you're completely exhausted because it doesn't need a whole lot of thinking. Just measuring. I can do that. It's one more reason to like soap making.

Of course, one could (and I do) spend a lot of time researching ingredients. And in many aspects it touches herb lore and ancient knowledge. Which I absolutely love. ... But try putting 'herb lore' into pretty photos. So you see, for the moment it has to be all about the pretty colors.

the unparalleled project

This is still a post about 'optimizing', or 'scaling down' as Amy has called it, but I disguised it. So as not to bore you more than necessary (says she, listening to 'Sunny' on her iPod and wriggling dance-like in front of her computer. Harvest season really is exhausting for body and for mind.).

As you have probably guessed, I'll be reporting on socks tonight.
They come in pairs and have, thus, a kind of a parallel. At least literarily speaking. Let's not talk mathematics because I almost failed High School because of a complete lack of mathematical understanding. Our maths teacher, a great fan of carrot cake and the healthy life, sighed greatly (and I mean greeeeeaaaaatlyyyy) and gave me the mark that had me pass - barely.

 

So socks come in pairs. And when you have knit a pair, you're sure to be left with a tiny rest of sock yarn. My sister tried to buy the same yarn again to knit a new pair and maybe finish the yarn this way, but she eventually got bored of the color scheme and was still, and very surprisingly, left with a rest of sock yarn. Which is kind of magic, if you ask me.

 

There are several, or actually, many of these tiny balls of yarns in my possession. And while I would move them to Berlin without any regret, I can just imagine myself opening a box in Berlin, in a new home, already quite distraught because of the moving stress, packing, unpacking, cleaning and being generally in a bad mood. And it's - oh, it's another leftover ball of untidy sock yarn. Great. Where shall I put that ?

Which is why we are starting the 'unparalleled project' here on the winery. The goal is to knit up any leftover sock yarn into funny socks that don't match and are thus unparalleled (in a literary sense, of course).

Anyone want to participate ? This is a challenge. I'm ready to employ terms like 'could not' and 'would not' and can't'. If anyone of you knits up a pair or more of these, I'd start my first flickr group (oh, what excitement there would be in store for me) and if you blog about them I'd blog about them, too. But really, there is no reason to go public. It's actually fun to knit socks that are not the same old same old all the time.

try me

The boys, or rather Pierre-Yves, painted this trailer a light blue today and there was much discussion going on about the color and whether or not he should add pink flowers. And while I get the impression that the menfolk on this winery think about color only in terms of 'rustproof' or not, they still got into the game enough to challenge me about those pink flowers.
Terms like 'dare not' or 'cannot' or 'won't' were used, if I remember right.

Well, watch me if I can't.

I just wish I would be able to get up at five thirty to see the men tomorrow morning when they discover their trailer. Or I would very much love to be at the nearest village the next time Pierre-Yves has to explain to one of our neighbors why our trailer is in full bloom.

optimizing

As we are preparing to leave the winery, thoughts about what we should take and how the move(s) should be organized have come up.

For my part, I have been trying to optimize. To be able to take as little as possible, at least for the first couple of months. 

'Optimizing' has been to use every cream or perfume that I would not want to move but would have a hard time throwing away. Boy, I tell you: My feet are pampered these days. You wouldn't suspect it was harvest time by their smooth appearance. It's a pity Christian will throw me out of the cellar every time I try to sneak in in flip flops. Safety, he says... I imagine it is only jealousy.  'Optimizing' has also manifested itself in the attempt to use everything that has been stored in the larder... for quite a while, I have to admit. Resulting in a good but rather adventurous pecan pie (used every syrup and false honey for diabetics I could find, which didn't taste like much on their own but turned out to make a worthy pie filling) and new sandwich inventions (good thing the boys will eat basically anything in great quantities, if available.).

 

But I have also given thought to the material I have been collecting. All the papers, paints and the likes. Not to mention the huge stacks of magazines with inspiring pictures or articles. There is no argument that would justify moving those across 1500 km. Just to stay inspired.

But I did remember a blog entry that Lori over at Campcreekpress wrote quite a while ago, and that I didn't find today, because I am in a little bit of a hurry. It was about sketchbooks and the collection of ideas. Even at the time my fingers itched to start one right away, but as always, urgent things came up and I got distracted.

However, the really magic 'optimizing' let it come back to memory and I got out one of my many empty moleskine books (I can never resist purchasing new and empty pretty books, it's quite a character default in me), starting ripping out the pages and photos I wanted to keep out of my collection of magazines, and creating collages or just simple 'remind me' pages with them.

 

Nothing artistic, it's more about pattern, structure, color and ideas, really. It has been a great source of inspriration, has helped me reduce a huge pile of magazines to a small stack of papers, and it has been oh-such-bliss to just cut out chickens, pies, christmas ornaments, summer houses and whatever else I came across in the evenings, after another harvest day. Just what my tired mind can handle at the moment.

sometimes life just wants to be ordinary life

As I wander from work table to computer and back, I try to find a fancy story to tell you. Something witty to make you laugh. And maybe me, too. That's what blogging is about, at least for me. A glimpse in someone else's day, and for the writer a reminder of the good, and sometimes bad events that happened. An exercise in finding the positive and the funny.

There have been both, here on the winery, of course. The good and the bad, the funny and the angry.

But I can't find a way to tell you about it all. The fancy words are on holiday, and maybe sometimes life just wants to be life. One day after the other, more or less the same. And that's fine with me.

Not that we were resting. Harvest has started more than a week ago. The first red grapes came in today. But the photos I took are exactly the same as last year, the words that come to mind are nothing new. I can't find a new angle to the same procedure.

This will be Vincent's and my last harvest. We are leaving the winery. In October I will go to Berlin, to work as an illustrator again. I'm full of hope and also greatly relieved to be able to do what I like best full time.
But there's also sadness at leaving this place, at leaving the people here. Sadness also because Vincent wants to go to Marseille, where I don't want to go, and I want to go to Berlin, where he doesn't want to go.

Meanwhile we're waiting for the lady who will take over our work to arrive, to help her get started. It feels very much like a bubble in time. We're full of new projects and ideas but we're still here, still responsible for parts of life on the winery, for the welfare of our team, for the way harvest plays itself out. 

Sometimes our nerves are stretched thin and near the breaking point, but at the same time things always flow forward. Like I said: One day after the other, more or less the same, and it doesn't really matter if they're pleasant or not, even though I would prefer them all to be one happy stretch of memories. The important thing is that things move forward.

how naive of me...

to think the potted plants had a chance now the dogs are grown up (more or less).

Minus the cat had six kittens about two months ago. Conversation between Vincent and me at dinnertime is down to zero. All we do is watch the tiny warfare going on everywhere on the terrace, uttering remarks like 'oh, have you seen the grey one jumping ?', or 'huhu, loooook !'.

summer thoughts

Summer is reality.

Really and actually here. With temperatures so hot it's difficult to go outside at noon, and wonderfully slow evenings spent on the terrace.

While thoughts of days at the beach go through my head, reading, daydreaming and maybe falling asleep in the hot sand, a first inkling of fall is tickling me.

It has always been like that for me. When a season is in full swing, at it's peak, I always always start thinking of what's to come: A falling leaf, a peek of the first green, a snowflake drifting or the first barefoot walk in the grass.

And so, while this new bag I made for myself is initially thought of as a beach bag, large enough to put in books, sunglasses, sunscreen, towels, pencils and whatever else one absolutely needs in order to survive a day at the beach (did I just forget bottled water ?! Oh, and let's not forget the mascara and blush, the cold cream, the hairspray... everything one needs to pass for a real girl.), there is room for wool, knitting needles, maybe a warm blanket and the same old books and pencils in there, too.

Just in case autumn comes sooner than expected.

a finished quilt and a scary ghost story

We might say that I'm no better person than before. Time still is a concept that escapes me. Completely. I underestimated the time it takes to quilt a queensize by about a week.

Now that I think about it, I like time in a historical sense. The time you can name. In ... Julius Cesar had a bad stomach ache because Brutus... . The time I need to do something is a kind I don't manage well and which thus has it's threatening sides.

I managed to finish Hanna's birthday quilt while she was already preparing desert for her birthday barbecue.

After sewing straight through a couple of nights and more than one entire day. Quilting it took so much longer than I anticipated. Very very veeeeeery long.

Scary, too. The last night before my sister's birthday I got home later than I wanted to and decided to sew a little bit before going to bed. At around three in the wee morning hours I went into the kitchen (may I  mention that I was alone at home and that my parents live in a rather big house...) and saw two glass bottles in a place I was sure I hadn't put them in. Really absolutely sure. Because when we were little, putting glass bottles into that space would have meant certain death. Death by housekeeper.

Oh yes, that lady sure had rules.

So there was no doubt I had put the bottles there and had forgotten. It was impossible. 

But nobody else had been in the house the entire day, I was sure.

Immediately I started sweating and my illustrator's fantasy got to working overtime.

You know the drill: 'What about those ghosts and monsters' and the likes. 

Cellar - check. First floor - check. Second floor - check. Third floor, nobody either. Neither monster nor chainsaw murderer to be found anywhere, not even under the beds (God, am I glad nobody was at home to see me peek underneath the beds and behind every door.It's the stuff family legends and family jokes are made of.).

I got myself another beer to assure better sleeping, switched on the alarm and told myself there was no way anybody could get into the house or move downstairs without me knowing.
Which is the absolute truth by daylight.

Only at night I continued hearing noises from the kitchen. Glass making 'clink' against glass. Ghosts putting bottles where they're not supposed to be put.

At five thirty I fell asleep like a stone. Put out by the last beer and sewing straight lines across a quilt for hours.

To wake up at eight because the housekeeper (the one with the strict rules who still works with my parents) made the alarm go 'iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii' and didn't know how to turn it off. Which might have been a good thing because I didn't really go back to sleep and started sewing again earlier than I would have otherwise, finishing the quilt just in time.

Oh, and about the housekeeper with the strict rules ? Turns out she was in the house the night before, while I was still at a friend's house. She came to take in the milk and yoghurt left on our doorstep by the milkman and she seems to have taken to putting glass bottles into no-glass-bottle places.

So what about death by misplacing bottles and breaking the rules, I wonder. The world is coming to pieces if you ask me.

But the quilt is fabulous. Absolutely worth it scares and work. When my sister unwrapped it (got the cheesiest wrapping paper, too. Silly circus scenes on dark blue. After all my parent's house is in a village of 8000 people and an estimated six ghosts per person. One can't expect to find anything super fancy there.) she uttered 'oh my...'. And something about a lot of work.

I quilted each circle circly and every square separately with straight lines. One with a larger space between seams, the next with minimal space between them, and the result is something very lively. The back is white, made of old cotton sheets that still show my grandmother's and great grandmother's monograms.

 

Thank you, Amy, for sharing the roundabout design.  

home

Home is where putting on a winter sweater in the middle of July is acceptable.

it just needs binding

 

Do you remember Benoît ? The huge blond man who works with us ?
He just had his second son. Yanael. Little Yan in breton. Has us all wonder who in the family is from Bretagne...
Benoît sais the baby is perfectly normal: Every time he sees his father he starts screaming at the top of his lungs.

I don't know if 'stacked coin' quilts are a symbol for wealth or not. The name sure makes me assume so. And I don't know if, that being the case, a stacked coin quilt and the implied wish for wealth is really something one should give a baby.

There seem to be a hundred better things one should wish a newborn.
But the stacked coin quilts are pretty, no matter what might be their symbolism. I like their simplicity and the way they are quietly colorful.

So I guess once this quilt is bound and finished, it will go to Yanael to accompany him for a while.
With my best wishes.

becoming a better person

'Dogs again' you think. But the picture is there because I can't post pictures of what this post is actually about.
Because it's a secret !

If you are my sister Hanna, you may read this post, but you shouldn't click on any link and under no circumstance should you head over to my Flickr page. Really, don't. You'd spoil it for both of us.

For all the rest of you, if you would like to see pictures of what all this is really about, head on over here. And here, keeping in mind that it will be my sister's birthday on July 29th. Now that I think about it, you should have a peek at this, too, because Amy makes such beautiful things.

At this point my family is howling with laughter because I managed to start a gift three weeks before the birthday. That's a first. Usually I come home and tell everybody 'I've got such a neat gift for you, I just need time to make it'. In June, when it's a christmas gift, for example.
So bets are probably up that I'll get home with something half-finished that I need to finalize in the wee hours before my sister's actual birthday. We'll see.
They'll see. I'll try. To be a better person, in at least one tiny way.

If you comment, could you please not mention the words (the q-word, for example) that would reveal to Hanna what she's going to have ? You may break out in admiring 'oh's and 'ah's and we'll just have a good time all together without her, discussing the roundabout... something.

That's evil, isn't it ? Having people in more than three countries know what she'll get and pretending all the while that I do it only to be a better person ?

we'll probably pay rent at the veterinarian's very soon

Would anyone care to take a guess as to how many times I have been at the Vet's last month ?

An unbelievable six times, the checkups and pulling out of stitches and picking up of sick dogs after a day's observation not counted.

One with a fever, one with herbs in her ears, one with a head that almost got bitten off and one with a herb that got under his skin and had to be taken out.

Every time the same show: Only Orion would jump in the car on his own. The other two had to be lifted (! by me !). Once I have them at the Vet's, they'll start whining incredibly loud until my ears fall off and everybody looks at us accusingly.
On the way home they have to be lifted in the car again, by me.
And now I have one that looks as though he had a zipper around his throat and when you open it, his head falls off.
And the other who looks as though he put on his Tuxedo to take his girlfriend to the Prom.

'He should rest' the Veterinarian said.
'Sure', I think, the question is just: How ?