what made us tremble and shook

winter insomnia

A good time for a knitting project, I am staring a new one today. It's a secret!

because i love

let me tell you about my tape recorder

One little song for A, too far away in Bilbao. Grow feathers and fly here.

the last snowstorm of the year

It's cold in Geneve, and apparently even colder in NYC, where I am going to on Friday to meet up with two of my favourite girls in the whole world! I hope you are keeping warm and safe and building beautiful philosopher snowmen.

barcelona gingerbread pavilion

We made our first ever gingerbread houses, loosely modeled on the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies Van der Rohe. So fun! Although decoration was a challenge, since m&ms and liquorice swirls seem out of place on a stark modernist building.

merry christmas!

baked goods

S is supposedly FINALLY arriving tonight (fingers crossed), and since that movie Clueless taught us that you should always have something in the oven when a boy comes over, I whipped up some shortbread shooting stars. I love christmas!

The recipe was care of my mum: thanks, lady!


MOTHER’S FAMOUS SHORTBREAD RECIPE
1¼ cups flour (140 grms)
60 grams ground rice (rice flour) optional [I didn't have this so I replaced it with semolina]
3 scant tablespoons (85 grms) castor sugar
140 grms butter

One of the main things about making shortbread (like any pastry) is that it should be quite cold when you put it into the oven (rested, as they say). The ground rice gives a special kind of crunch but personal taste and not a
big difference.  I should confess that from time to time I have simply put everything in the blender and blended it (but not too much!) then turned it out on to floured board and as per the following …

Sieve flour, ground rice and castor sugar into bowl.  Add butter, knead and squeeze into the dry ingredients (using one hand only – this to reduce the heat of the hands transferring to the pastry) until mixture is combined
into a smooth, stiff dough.

Divide the dough into three or four pieces and wrap each in glad wrap and put in the fridge for half an hour.

Take out the dough and gently press out into rounds about as big as a saucer and as thick as you would like (it shouldn’t really change shape much in cooking).  Pinch the edges, slice into eighths or whatever you prefer and
prick with a fork. [I cut them into shooting stars, obviously]  Lay out on a baking tray and again return to fridge for
at least another half hour.  (Baking tray can be lightly greased).

Bake in a  slow oven for 15 – 20 minutes until light golden.  They will be extremely soft when you remove from oven.  Allow to set on the baking trays before removing to a wire cooling tray.

things i have made

merry christmas, everyone! 

mistaken for strangers

hell yeah

Every minute

Somewhere

In the world

Parents are

Finding their

Children in drag

                  - rene ricard

what is love?

poisson process

to feel myself beloved on the earth

puppies

these marc tetro pop-outs are the cutest! if only i hadn't already finished my christmas shopping...

lac ness monster

some new friends have moved into lac leman... but i couldn't see ms pacman anywhere! where is she?

cos my mama raised me right

rip norman hetherington

.. creator of mr squiggle, the man from the moon. 

what is love?

"I'm a lucky man. I've had ten years longer than I or anyone expected. Pure Gravy. And don't forget it."

chrismukkah shopping in milano

I may have promised S that I won't get a Christmas Tree until he arrives to help decorate, but I am seriously considering checking out a different tree to get my fill of holiday cheer in the meantime... Cherie's Tree House is a biannual exhibition that takes place in Milan in May and December, where emerging artists and designers have a chance to showcase their work and are curated along with a mix of food, DJs and bands - in a treehouse! Sounds like such a fun idea (and a great excuse to spend a weekend in Milan).

Does anybody want to go with me?

love is a mixtape

The European Commission has been keeping my snowman-wingman up too late saving the world, so I made him this little introduction to australian music for middle of the night desk dancing. Of course, some things were too sacred to share with an outsider, so you won't find any John Farnham on this mix (sorry, baby!).

what is love?

tilt shift united nations

Too late at work again tonight - but now it's over. happy weekend, everyone!

More Paris

Who can get enough, really?

still in the suburbs

while it might not have my suburb in it (cf the video for "we used to wait"), the new spike jonze/arcade fire clip is pretty nifty.

Two snowmen are standing in a field. One says to the other "Funny, I smell carrots too".

Today I went up to the Jura for my first snow of the season. So beautiful! Icicles, frozen ponds, snowball fights, hot chocolates. A perfect sunday.

a great idea

the cutest movie ever?

no christmas while i'm talking...

I think this weekend I might start my christmas shopping - the keenness of stores to get their decorations out earlier and earlier is actually useful for those of us who have to send gifts to the other side of the world - and anyway, is there anything better than an excuse to buy presents for all my favourite people?

Can you guess what I'd like for christmas? Maybe next year...

the possibility of flight

... in an homage to some happy childhood memories - and the last fading days of autumn - I made a kite. To paraphrase (okay, horribly misquote) George Bush, Jr: "it's about freedom, stupid". And my hope for a few more clear windy sunday afternoons.

Who wants to go fly it with me?
UPDATE: Mum sent me through a response to this post that I had to include! Junior Katy, Kim and Laura, long time kite lovers, first time callers...

winter is coming...

I've been fighting it for weeks as the days got shorter & temperatures dropped; but it's time to face reality. No snow yet but coats & gloves & soup weather is definitely upon us: snowmen can't be far behind. Secretly, I can't wait! So many good reasons to stay inside & drink cocoa & knit & cuddle & go tramping in the frozen mountains. 

What do you want to do this winter?

Congratulations, Jimmy!

Sun Joo is the luckiest girl ever! I'm so proud of you guys & I'm already getting excited about the wedding!

adopt-a-word

Is an awesome project organised by the oxford dictionary to keep words from falling into disuse and disappearing from the language. I adopted vocitate, which means "to name or call".

a murmuration of starlings

beautiful woodcuts by lynd ward, these are so lovely and inspiring!

up too late on a school night

Grega looking far too cheerful at 11.30pm last night. Little did he know that we still had two more hours to negotiate... Ah, the United Nations.

At least we ended up with an outcome.

pollock pong

P had the neatest idea: a mixture of action painting and action ping pong!