Freedom

Today we celebrate Freedom Day. And although the flag appears a bit tattered, it is still flying strong and we have much to celebrate and be thankful for in our great country.

I will be ducking off to Hermanus to be with my family. A bit of freedom from work. But back tomorrow to the slavery of my editing project.

Patterns

A while ago a very dear person (and friend, I would like to call her) gave me this beautiful piece of mud cloth. I look at it every single day and as I look at it my love for it grows and grows. It is beautiful. It is perfect. And if she knows how much joy it brings me, she will be very happy, I'm sure ...

It inspired me to make some mud cloth doodles in my moleskine. (Tippex is one of my unnecessary necessities, remember? In addition to obliterating proofreading marks, it is also really good for making patterns on black paint ...)

Companions

Coming up for air ... and to say how I miss your company! Before I started this current editing project I made a family for The Doll, as Sarah Jeweller and Sarah Dollmaker suggested. My three dolls were meant to keep me company as I worked, but oh, they are not half as fun as my sweet bloggy friends. No, they are a sorry substitute. They've settled themselves on top of a cabinet in the livingroom, soaking up the sun, discussing the Philosophy of Dressmaking amongst themselves, while I sit in the dark and dingy study at the back of the house ...

Dear friends, I hope you are all well and happy! I'll be visiting you all. Soon, I hope.
xxx Anairam

Unnecessary Necessities

I was considering a few days ago how there are objects that I feel are absolutely necessary to my life. Whereas in fact, they really are not necessary at all, and I have done without them perfectly well in the past. So I started a moleskine series ... I will post more next week.

What are your unnecessary necessities?

Work update: Well, I am still busy (not nearly finished ... see below)  and reading about amazingly interesting things - like hydrogen displacement reactions and mutual magnetic induction and Lewis diagrams and so forth. Riveting stuff. But hear my little tale of woe: I worked flat-out from last Wednesday evening to Monday afternoon, throughout the weekend, up to 2 am some mornings. Yes, I was cross-eyed and hunch-backed and jittery from caffeine-overdose and my fingers stained with red ink, but I was a proud woman! I had finished more than half of the pile! And then the publisher emailed me (too damn scared to pick up the phone, I'm sure) to notify me that (unfortunately) they had given me an older version of the text. By mistake. WTF??? Yes really, dear friends, these things do happen. But, I ask myself, why do they always seem to happen to me? Oh, I can write a book about the publishing industry.
And I will.
One day.

Fluttering thoughts.

I liked this quote by Edna St Vincent Millay when I read it a while ago, so made a little moleskine illustration for it.

Most of my thoughts tend to be of the fluttering kind - unconnected to other thoughts (or sometimes reality) - they go here, they go there, they twirl a little when a breeze comes along, they cannot really decide where to land ...
PS Have a great weekend, all! Think thoughts. Fluttering or not. (I will be editing. It is going sooooooo sloooooowly.)

A Moleskine Musing ...

Well, what do you think?

... unromantic as Monday morning

"Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto."
(from Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë)

Dear friends, I have to rise and betake myself to a new editing project. Science, off all things. The next few weeks will be busy, but I have some moleskine doodles lined up so I will endeavour to post three times a week as usual. Have a great week, each and every one of you!
xxx Anairam

An Abundance of Love

Dear friends, thank you for your messages of concern! I am quite okay now, still on some medication, but that pesky poisonous yellowtail is a thing of the past ... xxx Anairam

(Art Journal Page - origami hearts, book page hearts, tissue paper hearts, torn out hearts from magazine pages, embroidered heart, plastic mesh heart - all covered with layers of paint and tissue paper.)

May you find an abundance of love this weekend. (Just look below the surface.)