15 kilos

No art today because I am travelling, all packed to Ryan Air’s precise requirements. These are photographs I took during a drive with my sister the other day, all things we won’t see for a while. The farmer who sold us honey that day insisted that we come down to pick the tomatoes with him so that we could appreciate the layout of his farm. The tomatoes were amazing with some herbs we picked and chevre on bread.

terraces

The other day a group of us went picnicking by the river hidden in all that foliage. The house with the green shutters is abandoned, but so desirable – it has a view, beyond the garden, of both the ruins of the castle and the mountains off in the distance. The part of the castle most visible from there is the part blown up by dynamite, part of a standing skeleton.

Later, I bought a lovely sketch of the church in our neighbouring town from an artist there who has an upcoming show of paintings of local architecture. The sketch is charming, very lively, making me think again that it’s wrong that drawings get so little respect.

cheval

These are views of the town today, local products day, but I spent my food money for the next few weeks on these streets yesterday at the vide-grenier (flea market) on bits for assemblages, so I enjoy the fragrance of the food only. The live music and dancing last night had everyone out late after our street dinner party (good company, delicious food).

This is a big part of today. The horse and rider on the course did some amazing manoeuvres, the blond with the forelock is a total sweetie.

Besides hundreds of horses, ponies, and burros there are traditional woodworkers, blacksmiths, and a small herd of sheep to be shorn. It’s time for me to head back out, there is a whole section of town I didn’t get to this morning with fowl, rabbits, pottery, and more food, of course. Then tonight is a concert of Andean music.

summery

It is hot! A good reason to take a break and walk along where the horses will be during the market this weekend.

I will not be actually buying a horse (this week anyway), but will be taking photos for a piece I am working on. The winds have started to blow down from the hills so the temperatures should be cooler by then.

view

This is the view I should have been looking out on today as I worked…but did not. It is the fourth and last day of the village festival, even tonight people only started showing up around 11-ish when the band got going, it will taper off about 4am, thus the reduced daytime productivity. I did notice the pétanque balls were clinking all day (it is such a satisfying sound somehow), apparently unaffected by the late nights.

I have little experience with village festivals in any country, but to me the crowd here looks far more urban than party-goers in les Etats-Unis outside of the big cities NY, LA, SF, Boston & Miami, and the range of ages on the dance floor is much wider. The eight-year-old daughter of my neighbour began the evening at 9:30 on the bumper cars and was dancing with no sign of slowing down at midnight.

Next weekend is the vide-grenier (flea market) and horse sale, I don’t want to eat this week so that I can buy more bits for assemblages.

tulip rete

Whenever I pass by I admire a beautiful astrolabe in the clock repair shop around the corner. There are many lovely things in the window, but I’ve always been especially fond of these instruments. The Museo di Storia della Scienza has a great collection, and the British Musem has this – a rare ‘pocket’ version found some years back.

fields

What an amazing number of people can pack into a house when there is a band, eh? Especially when there are violins, a mandolin, guitar, whistles and a bodhrán (that last is essential). One of the violinists was 12 years old, a 78-year-old sang two solos. Of course towards the end of the evening the songs of separation and rebel tunes came out. Athenry was summoned, and a song that started with an Irish boy losing his leg in the American civil war ended with Bush and his Iraq war. Predictable, but perfect.

lace

I'm forging leaves and swirls for some jewellery and an assemblage book. The bits of wire sticking out will be removed as the rivets go in, and I am starching pieces of lace to be stretched between them.

Cutting up the lace, even though it is damaged, is hard - I love making things but have a very hard time breaking something rather than restoring it. Friends have told me I'll get over that someday, but it hasn't happened yet and occasionally I think about going back to school (again!) because I'd love to do restoration, especially on textiles.

Finally I got to see who has been dropping clouds of pigeon feathers from the jacaranda and leaving wings to flutter down at odd times. This is the first time I have seen one of these in the fountain, he had three watery baths plus a sun bath because that water is cold!

clock beetle

I'm letting this piece sit for a while until I figure out where to go with it. I spent much of today drilling tiny, tiny holes in wire which I will rivet tomorrow, also experimenting with odd-shaped rivets of various materials.
Last Saturday was a day of coincidental meetings. At the show (which was in another city) I ran into the lovely woman who was my neighbour for the last seven years until she bought a house this summer. Later, at dinner in a Peruvian restaurant, it turned out that the woman sitting next to me had been in the same Chinese (language) school that I was in, for the same three years, but we had never met before this. Two friends on my left told us they ran into each other on a sidewalk in New York last month, neither knew the other was planning to be there.

vitreous

I was thinking that I should be putting more photos of my work on here, and thinking about how dull yesterday’s post and photo were (repeated apologies to the readers who clicked in to just that post from Korea, the U.S.A., and Cork, Ireland!), but today I’ve been asked to write an article for a magazine and the part of the project I’m working on is not yet visually interesting. What to do. So then, here is one more wave from last week’s day at the beach, and I’ll be over my ocean photo quota for the season. Also over my post-about-writing-a-post quota.

And I’m thinking I shouldn’t make a habit of posting before my morning tea. Or in the hours after midnight.

chemicals

Now that the weather is cooler and windows on three walls are not wide open day and night this production needs to move to an area that can be sealed off and ventilated separately. A side effect of moving could be better organization since the first effort was so rough, or I might just focus on getting everything moved fast so that I can spend time filling several boxes in a great used book store that is closing down (family owned for two generations, in a historic building, but bought for demolition by the city).