glasfaden

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 18:26:00 +0200

Many of you knew, that I sang in a choir. What most of you don't know is, that I quit the choir this year. I realized, it's time to go for a new challenge, as singing in the choir didn't fulfill my musical need anymore.

I've been wanting to learn violin since I was small (my parents didn't let me though - I had to learn instruments, which my sister was learning), but meanwhile I am not sure, either the left hand position and the high tone of violins are really my thing. Thus, I decided to learn cello instead (I started with mandolin too, because I was too impatient to wait until the cello lesson began in March) and luckily I could rent the instrument from the music school before I get my own (I hope, I'd get my own one day - I didn't realize a good cello is SO expensive before *sigh*).

My teacher comes from classic, but I don't see my end there. Thus, I always look for cello musicians, who do different things than classical music. The CD on the photo is the one I'm listening since a few weeks. This video underneath will show you a bit of my favorite group. I listened to their music and watch their videos on my iPod back and forth during the whole winter.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:24:00 +0200

I haven't been very creative since I work full-time and it has been ages since I worked with clay. Yesterday while watching TV (which I do quite often ever since we got the cats, as they come for a cuddle - they turn my life upside down, I tell you ;)) I had a desire to sculpt, so I did.

For the first few minutes I could only knead and re-knead and repeat - I guess, my hands already forget how to sculpt. I first shaped the body of the little cat and worked on the bust before I finally finished the face of the little cat. My only tool: nail filers - the only thing, which was in my reach in the living room.

I'm pretty pleased with the results and so do the cats, I think ;)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 May 2013 01:10:00 +0200

I'm quite a visual person, thus I love books with pictures. But I love not only children's storybooks, but especially dictionaries and encyclopedia.

It started with a German pictorial dictionary, which I bought when I learned German. It was *the* book I read before I came to Germany - I spent hours looking at the illustrations and the descriptions.

I even made indexes for faster access. Oh yes, it was a long time before internet has made everything so simple as nowadays :)

A few years later, when I studied computer science, I bought a dictionary about computer science, which also has some pictures in it. Not really exciting pictures as in the books in this post though (thus, to be frank.. I forgot to take a picture of it this afternoon)...

I found this French dictionary in a second hand shop a few months ago. As a person, who cannot speak a word French, I bought it because of the pictures. It's old - from 1916 -, so I was delighted to find some colorful illustrated pages in it.

My latest discovery was this music encyclopedia, also from the second hand shop. I almost missed out on this, as I seldom browse in the music book part, which is just above the art book part. But the yellow linen cover attracted my attention and as I leafed through the book, I was very excited about the typical kind of illustrations from the 70's (the book is from 1977).

I knew do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti. In this book I learn something new: ja-le-mi-ni-ro-su-wa. I never heard of it before. I'm sure, I'll learn some more new things from this book, which is actually for children.

I hope to find more of such pictorial dictionaries in the future.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:46:00 +0200

You might have enough of our cats for now (esp. if you follow me on Flickr), so for a change I'd post something different today ;)

One thing I dislike about living in this part of Germany is the lack of fresh seafood. In Indonesian I was a great fan of shrimps. Since I often only found some cooked ones here, I seldom eat any. But last time, I got a big bag of deep-frozen, uncooked and unpeeled shrimps.

Normally I simply sauté them in margarine, spice them only with salt and pepper and a bit of lemon juice and eat them with rice - that's how I loved it in Jakarta (margarine is not the thing I normally prefer to cook with, but in this case I do, since it brings my taste buds back to my childhood - the best shrimp dish on the street restaurant!). Today I got some green asparagus and mixed color chillies, so I mixed them in - yumm!

What'd you cook, if you had those ingredients?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:17:00 +0200

Happy Easter! ^o^
I hope, you found many eggs. My son and I didn't search for any, cause we found two better "eggs" with ears and tails - cats. Yes, we finally got our own cats from the pet shelter.

As a dog type of person I've been hesitating for so long to let cats into the house. I knew cats only as scratching, wild creatures (for my grandma's cats were more or less wild ones), but since we moved into this apartment, our visitor had taught me for the better. I never met a cat more gentle and cuddly than him. My son on the other hand loved cats before he could talk. He'd cuddle all cats he met even if he got scratched. Thus, in January I decided to took two cats home, but the pet shelter didn't have any "house cat" at that time.

Last week we finally got a call. We visited the two and my son felt instantly in love with the black one, which came to greet each of us. Since they came together to the pet shelter, we didn't want to took them apart (and neither did the pet shelter).

Our cats have of course their own characters. S, our black cat, is curious, fearless and cuddly. But having an experience with his long claws twice, I now cover myself with a blanket before snuggling with him. But I think, he realizes the issue now and starts to be more careful with his paws when I pet him.

Probably like any other cats too, S loves high places. Each day he looked up to the highest places in a new room. On the first day he managed to climb the locker, on the second day the cupboard in the kitchen.

Since the first day he's been thinking how to get onto the book shelf in the living room. This morning he did it, jumped straight away from the backrest of the sofa.

Before we got the cats I wanted to hang an artwork behind the sofa, but now I'm going to turn the wall into a catwalk.

H, our tabby, is rather a shy and skittish one. She needs time for everything. But once she feels secure, she is very cuddly and very gentle.

Watching the two in their activities are much better than any egg hunting :)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 00:08:00 +0100

Just came back from her concert.

Although I was dead tired and she first let us wait for quite some time, the patience was worth it - great voice! I really enjoyed it.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:53:00 +0100

Some colors in these white-gray-days.

I really love the above photo. The atmosphere in it is like which in paintings of an old master and it seems as if the narcissus want to tell us a story. Well, at least to me - probably because I saw too much old master styled paintings and photography lately ;)

Never managed to nurse my orchids to bloom longer than two or three weeks :( Yet I find the fragility of the parched petals somehow beautiful.

Not sure, what kind of berries they used to be. The firey-orange-red color on the tree on the foreground of a white winter scenery on the last week Sunday walk has caught my attention. I've been wondering: have the flesh of the berries been eaten by birds or what happened to them? A friend and I had to choose another walking route because of the icy path in the forest (and everywhere else).

Here are two photos of our walk.

Two variants of the last photo - experiments using the Flickr app's filter on the iPod. I have wanted to post them last week via the iPod, but the format was horrible, so I had to wait till I got on my PC again today.

***

BTW.. sometimes, having really hard time is part of your life and it'd be great, if you got people to support you. No, I'm not talking about me in particular. But some old friends are doing a raffle to support her.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 23:27:00 +0100

Remember me "struggling" to hang my art collection on the wall in my living room three years ago? I wasn't really satisfied with the result. Especially when I saw a drawing by my son a few months after that, which I wanted to have on that wall, too. I took all frames down again and tried this and that arrangement on the floor, tried different pictures in different frames, but was never satisfied with the result. In the end all frames stayed stacked on the cupboard and the wall empty with the ugly nails for many, many months. But finally(!) during the long holidays I managed to arrange part of my collection to my satisfaction *big smile* The big owl picture was drawn by my son at school; the vintage owl plate was a find on a flea market, made by a (no longer exist) pottery studio in Switzerland, next to our city; the tiny owl sculpture is a souvenir from a trip to Taiwan ages ago (thus, also vintage ;)); the portrait was a find from a second hand shop; four original art works were from Etsy (Marina Collings, Vivian, Laura Ferrara, Betty & Marcos Suarez), one from BuySomeDamnArt (Yelena Bryksenkova) and one by me.

This arrangement ist old (and still love it :)), but it got two additions. I bought the cat (and a donkey) as my son was a baby from an old man, who carved and sold his work on the street. I just couldn't give it away, when we were cleaning my son's room from old toys. The small owl sculpture was a find from a second hand shop. Yeah, got even more of Laura's lovely art work :) This room is often cluttered (or as a friend said: "being lived" ;)), so I have to hold this moment in picture. Yes, there's still an empty wall. The frame of the art work for it is still waiting to be repaired. My son said, it's like in a museum - it seems, part of my dream comes true already :)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 16:17:00 +0100

Where has the time flown? I've been so busy and always tired, that I rarely spent time on the PC anymore in the evening. I hope, you all are enjoying a wonderful holiday at the moment - merry Christmas to you all, who celebrate it! Over here the sun is shining the whole day, so I went for a walk on the lake before lunch. I'm not alone with the idea. Many people were enjoying the sunny day too - alone, with the family, with the dog(s),... sitting, walking, jogging,...

Even the swan family enjoyed the day ;) From the distance I first thought, they were some man-made sculptures, since they had all their heads under the water LOL

I took my camera, but forgot to check at home - no SD-card inside (and this is not the first time it happened to me lately - arghh!). Luckily I got the iPod with me. The quality is of course not the same, but at least I could show you what a beautiful day it was ;)

I'm wishing you a grand start into 2013 and may the new year will bring you health, luck and happiness!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 20:33:00 +0200

I came, I saw, I bought. I fell in love with these cards, when I went to the city today. Portrait and flowers - a combo of two my favorite things - how could I resist? They'll be framed and hung on the wall.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 17:16:00 +0200

For music and documentary lovers: here's the place to support the series.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 7 Oct 2012 17:13:00 +0200

Bought their CD last month and couldn't stop to listen especially to the song above (minus the orchestra, yet just great). Too bad I don't have the suitable gadget to install this.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:18:00 +0200

----> stumbled upon this today

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 23:48:00 +0200

It's been almost three weeks since I'm back home, yet I'm
still in the travelling mood. Not sure, either I've ever told
you, that the connection from this city to other places are
quite bad. Travelling with the train is a pain - no direct
connection to bigger cities and/or quite expensive.

Luckily I discovered a new alternative to travel: by bus
(while regular long distance buses are not so unusual in
other countries, it is in Germany up till now. Everything'll
change in 2013 though - yayy for that!).

I've been to Munich twice since then. The first time was
to test the bus connection and visiting some interesting
places (this place among others). I also managed to visit
the lithography days and met Eva and Antok there, even
if it was only for a short while. One thing I regretted, that
I didn't manage that weekend: an exhibition.

It was the reason for my second travel to Munich today.
It might sound crazy to travel approx. 7 hours by bus
only to visit an exhibition, but all I can tell is, that it was
worth the effort. It was one of the most inspiring exhibition
I've ever visited - he is an inspiring person!

I hope, you all had a great weekend as well.

(All photos are taken today. I didn't took much photos
the last time - only photos of the gray sky and clouds ;))

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 4 Sep 2012 23:51:00 +0200

Phew, two months silence. My life was pretty stressful in
July. The vacation was then well needed. It started (and
ended) with a not so great experience with the train. But the
sky was amazing that day - through the tainted train window
it looked nearly surreal.

And (much) later, we saw a rainbow circle. I'm literally
over the clouds!

In the first week I had to struggle with jet lag - couldn't
sleep or getting awake in the middle of the night. Even in
the second week I was still very tired. So, we only did
some day tours around Melbourne - Great Ocean Road,
Melbourne Zoo, Ballarat, Olinda (yummy pie!), etc.

My brother drove us around patiently (thanks, dude!) and
since he knew, I love art & craft, he took me to the
craft shows at St. Kilda and at the Melbourne Art Centre.
Craft Cubed was also on going when we were there, that
I got the chance to visit some studios during their open studio
time - e.g. this studio showed us, how they print on their
Heidelberg machine. They even handed out the results to
the guests. I was excited - you know, how I love letterpress
prints. This studio gallery got some lovely print works and
they kindly pointed me out to the next gallery too. Actually,
some days later I came back to Fitzroy, because there are
many interesting smaller stores around.

Once we went to the city too. I didn't really like it though -
too crowded. The only good thing was these guys. Look
at this video - how could one not like them ;)

But the best of all is at my parent's home. My mom and my
sister in law spoiled us with Indonesian food. My son, who
loves fruits, could eat different kind of citrus fruit from the
garden - kumquat, lemon, lemonade, etc. The chili and some
other ingredients for cooking are also from the garden. And
of course there are orchids, succulents and other plants. My
father has a very green thumb.

I really enjoyed the vacation. It's a balance between relaxing,
crafting (yup, got my fingers on mom's sewing machine :))
and action. If you are interested, please check my gallery for
more photos.

I hope, you all had (or are still having) a great summer too!

BTW, Maki has posted the result of her Japan project and
reported her visit in Japan. The project is still on-going.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 01:13:00 +0200

I'm working on two sewing projects at the moment - a
sleeveless top and a long skirt. Both have to be finished
tomorrow (oh wait.. it's already Saturday, so they have to
be finished by evening), cause I want to wear them on the
choir performance on Sunday. I started last Saturday, but
haven't got the time to finish them this week. My kitchen
(where I sew because of the bigger table) is a completely
chaos - even more than my usual chaos.

Talking about chaos... remember the disaster that struck
Japan last year? They are still recovering and still need help.
A ceramic artist started a Help Japan Project last year -
that was when I got my birds. This time she starts the Help
Japan Project 2, thus if you want to help (and get similar
birds or.. - nah, I won't reveal it here..), please take a look
at her last post how to do so.

Birds by Maki; coaster was a souvenir from a dear friend

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 00:16:00 +0200

Yesterday I went to the museum, and let me guided through
the exhibition of a forgotten artist. Her work is stunning and
her life is so sad - somehow I could feel for her.

Afterwards I went to the Cathedral - up to the tower for the
first time. The view is amazing, even if it was still cloudy
when I was up there. Here are some of the pics I took and
you could see more here.

Back home I was hungry, but didn't got anything to cook
quickly, as I planned to get my hands on soba. Thus my
hunger has to wait. Making soba is not as it looks like (I
read some instructions and watched a few videos the night
before). The mixing part is not the problem, as I am used to
kneed my noodle dough with my hands, but the rolling and
cutting parts are tricky. I tried to roll it out using the pasta
machine, but I was afraid, that it'd break, so I went back
to do it by hand. As the result my soba was all short and
thick ^_^

In my soba:

180g buckwheat flour

20g corn starch

300ml hot water (or 250ml? add little by little)

a pinch of salt (normally, it doesn't belong to soba, I think)

a pinch of matcha powder

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 8 Jun 2012 00:33:00 +0200

It was time to harvest some strawberries today before the
slugs, insects and birds eat them all up.

I also pulled and picked some greens - borage and lemon
balm. My garden is full of borage. They sowed themselves.
Each year more and more, since I wasn't able to pull them
out as soon as they started to bloom - the bees & bumble-
bees love them so and I love bees & bumble-bees.

A friend was so kind to cook chicken soup and brought me
some last week. I don't want to bring the boxes empty back
to her. So I was thinking of bringing her some strawberries.
But the strawberries were not sweet at all - too much rain
and too little sunshine. So I decided to make chutney and
fill it up in glass jars.

I had the rest of the chutney for dinner with some baked
potatoes - yumm!

In the chutney:
Strawberries - cut the big ones in halves
Ginger
Onion
Chili - with the seeds
Sugar
Lemon balsamico
Cidre vinegar
Salt
Pinch of cardamom seeds
Pinch of Black caraway seeds
Pinch of dried Rosemary
Lemon balm

For the baked potatoes: mix sweet paprika, cumin, salt and
pepper with olive oil, put the potato wedges in and mix until
all well covered with the mixture. Bake them in 220°C oven
for about half an hour until they are golden.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 6 Jun 2012 23:17:00 +0200

I thought, I'd better saved all the last opened peonies from
the rain, when I was removing the withered petals in the
garden. Perhaps a silly action, but I need a reason for cutting
so many flowers at once :-P

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 6 Jun 2012 00:35:00 +0200

Two things I made lately.

a lavender wand and a collage

I had to crop (part of) the lavender very early this year. The
weather (and the fact that I didn't trim them this spring) made
them grow enormously and blocked half of the pavement.
But then, the buds are not yet well developed. Normally people
would cover the buds. But I thought, I'd rather cover the leaves,
which also have great scent. Also, normally people would use
ribbon. I didn't have any suitable ribbon, but stitch yarn in
lovely colors. It took a lot longer to make, but weaving is like
meditating.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 2 Jun 2012 12:44:00 +0200

I finally found this video again.

When I first saw it back in 2010, I thought he's SO right.
At least it applies to me (not only in creativity, but in many
cases of my life - with or without my real effort), but I know
this doesn't necessarily apply to others.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 1 Jun 2012 15:54:00 +0200

I loved my mom's ikan pepes. She used averrhoa bilimbi
and they makes her ikan pepes so special. I miss Indonesia
a lot at the moment, especially the food (of course, my son
would say, only food in my head lol). Looking at what I
have in the fridge, I decided to do my own take on ikan
pepes for lunch..

... and failed shamelessly! lol I don't know - either I used
too much lime (as substitute for the bilimbis) or my tongue
hasn't been able to taste everything right. I could taste the
hotness of the chilli, although it was not as hot as I expected
using two chilis, but I couldn't taste the sourness at all - only
the bitterness (the last rice cakes I ate yesterday was also
bitter instead of sweet). Weird!

But at least I had some fun with my kitchen waste while I
was waiting for the fish to cook ;-)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:34:00 +0200

Sick on holiday - arghh!! The summer flu has caught me.
Again, I cannot smell and can only barely taste anything.
Thus, when I made some rice (cup)cakes yesterday (well,
it started as a rice noodle experiment and ended up in
strawberry rice cakes), I thought they were not so sweet,
but my son told me that they're very sweet o.O

The rice cakes are more an Asian style of cakes - steamed.

I used the following ingredients, but I'm going to vary a bit,
to make the cakes less sticky (and also perhaps less sweet)
next time (if ever ;-) as I'm not such a sweet tooth actually).
For 8 cups.

150 g wholemeal rice flour
50 g starch (mine was a mixture of rice/corn/tapioca)
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
200 ml hot water (or 250 ml? - I forgot..)
2 Tbsp sugar

Mixed everything up and wait for half an hour.
Add one egg (size L). Mixed again.

Prepare a steamer (I used a similar setup as here, but used
the steamer basket of my pressure cooker instead of the
bamboo steamer). Arrange the muffin cups in the steamer.
Fill in 1 Tbsp dough in each cup. Steam them for around
5 minutes. Cut strawberries in half and arrange two halves
in each cup. Cover the strawberries with dough. Eventually
sprinkle with some coconut rasps. Steam again for another
15 minutes.

Taste better, when the strawberries are still warm (but then
the cake is also stickier...).

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 May 2012 18:34:00 +0200

It feels like I'm having my first holiday in years. When I was
self (and at the same time part time) employed, I couldn't
really switch my head off of business even in my free time.
How liberating it is to work in a 9-to-5 for a change (though
guess what I dreamed about at night of my first holiday lol)!

On my last day before the holiday, I could finally enjoy
walking home again without my head spinning around what
to do next, but simply observing the wild plants growing
along the way and took a few home for an arrangement
(first I wanted to put them together with the peony from
the garden, but they are so lovely on their own).

Yesterday I finally work in my poor, neglected garden
and also the plants on the windowsill got some attentions.
How bourgeois I became to take a holiday only to spend
time in the garden? A side-effect of the 9-to-5 job? :-P
No, normally when I got home from work I'd cook and
dine with my son. But this week he was on camp with his
class, so that I could work in the garden until it got dark.

Remember the violas I planted back in 2009? I collected
the seeds, but they keep sowing themselves and even took
over the flower box, where the strawberry used to grow
(there is still one strawberry plant left, tiny and almost non-
existent among the violas). It's interesting to see, that I got
new hybrids (the one above reminds me of a dalmatian ;-)).

Also, some flowers changed their colors. When they were
just blooming, they're partially white or yellow. Within the
next days, the white parts would turn into light purple like
in the picture above. Again the next days they'd turn darker
as you can see on that tiny bit on bottom left. Since I never
change the soil in the box, I wonder, either it's because the
soil has become so acidic now..?

I'm looking forward to see my Japanese hydrangea blooming.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 May 2012 22:59:00 +0200

In the past weeks I've been eating much more meat than
I usually did. Although one bad experience with a butcher
weeks ago reminded me that it's time to reduce it again,
somehow I couldn't stop carving for meat dishes. Yet, I
am no longer willing to buy anything from that butcher
anymore. I need an alternative.

I remember, my grandma used to have vegetarian days and
eat fake meat dishes. As I was more a vegetarian than I am
now, I used to taste them too and I had to say, I liked fake
meat.

top: before and after cooking the dough
below: fake chicken in murgh badami style

After watching some videos and reading some posts about
homemade seitan, I finally tried to make my own to cook
murgh badami (or rather a murgh badami inspired dish). I
start with wheat gluten, instead of flour - it saved me time
(and water).

My homemade seitan was too chewy, especially the bigger
pieces. The smaller pieces was better (although my son was
still not convinced - he's rather a real meat lover). I need to
do some experiments to improve the texture. Isn't cooking
fun? :-)