hidden places

This week , a busy week... of discovering hidden places... and I am so reassured by how little J coped... the book festival (while J enjoyed rhymetime, sticking and colouring and people watching, I discovered gorgeous new fairytales by Carol Ann Duffy), train travel (our favourite way to travel), castles (and a whole room dedicated to weaving tapestries for me to enjoy), lakes, trees, colours, faces and turkish delight ice cream. She took it all in her stride.

hey, love, castle

My house is my castle and full of the things I call treasure ... but the roof is leaking again and I am uncertain of many things. yet rather than brood, I always seem to be somewhat observational in these situations and perhaps ever hopeful that fortunes will change... I would like to type this sitting in the kitchen sink, for I am in a rather Cassandra Mortmain sort of mood today...

Everything is so pretty but there is a terrible draught...

white bears

Gosh... we have colds and runny noses, little toddle-belle and I. We are truanting from playgroup and hiding indoors today with homemade soup, The Lion , the Witch and the Wardrobe on DVD (with some scary bits fast forwarded as she is too small), play doh and fairy lights...

The temperature has dropped to zero now and there is frost and rolling mist. I am re-reading North Child by Edith Pattou. It is wonderful, based on the fairytale East of the Sun , West of the Moon, a white bear takes a girl away to a place carved into rock. Oh how I love it. Set in Norway and another of the animal groom fairytales I love so... Just as Beauty in Beauty and the Beast has her room of books in Beast'd castle due to her love of reading, so Rose in this story has her room in the white bear's castle full of threads and yarns and a loom due to her love of making things.

There is also The Princess and the White Bear King. This book's artwork adorns my daughter room...

How I love white bears.

The Lying Carpet

We are in the library at least twice a week so I always spot the new titles and am often the first person to hire things out (!) Last week I took home The Lying Carpet by David Lucas. It is the most head spinning book. I think it reminds me that life is a choice, its about truth and lies, inertia versus adventure, whether to watch or whether to 'do'.... that sort of thing. It involves a talking tiger rug which frankly I just love... and a beautiful little girl statue called Faith. The drawings are perfect too. Anyway its wonderful, mysterious, a fairytale, a bedtime story... and now I want to own it so I might read it whenever I like.

a hummingbird with a paper heart

If I were a word, I would be verb. A 'doing' word. I do not stop. I am never static. Like a hummingbird I must keep flapping my wings, must keep thinking, changing, making, doing, becoming...

I have been taking some time to gather ideas this week. To be inspired... by the blogs I read of course and also by some new books, both bought and borrowed, and by the slow turn of summer into my favourite season, autumn.

Last night I read Magical Hoofbeats . I imagine galloping towards woodland on the back of a white mare. Do you know I have never been on a horse? I have added it to my list of 101 things I must do soon, or at least, sooner or later.

I have read LOTS of books this week. Each will be mentioned in their turn.

And I have been playing with paper. So I have also finally started my little scrapbook project. I keep a paper journal you see. But lately I took a notion that I would like to 'depict' as well as write my life on to paper. So my new scrapbook journal is in words and pictures. Therefore it is less rambling and more satisfying... but oh, I see that I have started to ramble on this blog instead...