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.

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.

Twinkle Twinkle

Here is the little outfit I made baby j:

Here is baby j rocking the little outfit:

fairies, fairy cakes and stars

When Baby J and I got up at 6am this morning we saw a fairy who had fallen asleep on our back door. We didn't wake her.

I spent the day baking for Baby j's birthday. Her cake is a mini iced star motif cake wrapped in a polka dot ribbon. She only needs 1 candle. Its surrounded by fairy cakes that spell out her name. I also made some extra cupcakes topped with little hearts made with the new mini cutter I just bought. Mr K ate the extra bits of cake that were leftover. Baby J stuck her hands in the icing and smeared it around a bit. mmmmmm.

Tonight I am drinking white wine with strawberry milkshake concentrate added to it (is that wrong?) and letting the dishwasher do the work...

I am so in the mood to watch Marie Antoinette. (if I ever have another daughter I might call her that.)

White as Snow

I have already written about my tendancy to move from obsession to obsession when it comes to fairytales... Most recently it was The Princess & the Pea and for the longest time Beauty & the Beast was my fixation. Over the past weeks it has been Snow White. I find that these obsessions overtake me quite naturally. I will be sitting there and suddenly think "I must read Snow White". I think its because in some ingrained way these tales are part of my psyche and whenever I need a little help to work things out, the right tale for the job pops into my head.





If you analyse it, Snow White is about puberty and the steps we go through to reach maturity. I may be married with a house and a kid, but I still need to enter that glass box now and again for some thinking time. We all do. Or maybe take a long hard look in the mirror mirror?



I really love the above edition by Josephine Poole which I amazingly found in the charity shop around the corner from my house. Why do people give these things away? It was 35 pence.




I also love this edition by Berlie Doherty which i bought ages ago in 2004:

Just look how beautiful Snow White is in the illustration.

So now I am inspired to design a Snow White themed journal... since my Princess & the Pea journal worked out so well (and recently sold on my Etsy , yay!)

princess & the pea bedside journal

My Princess & the Pea inspired Bedside Journal is finished!

Atop a pile of pretty mini mattresses sits a padded mattress-esque journal notebook...

The Royal Pea sits atop the journal acting as a button fastener for the notebook...

And this will be FOR SALE soon...
Yay!

On peas and princesses...

I seem to move from obsession to obsession, especially when it comes to reading and fairytales... Whatever the tale, I read every version I can find, I buy the editions I can afford, I read the literary crit on the tale and then come up with my own interpretations too...
This month I have been obsessing over 'The Princess & the Pea'. Its certainly a very pretty tale. I say this because there is so much art work out there, like that above by E. Dulac, which has been inspired by it.

It is a very visual tale. It conjurs up strong images of soft versus hard, little versus big, rich versus poor, lies versus truth and not forgetting a very Royal Pea indeed.
I just love the idea of the tower of mattresses. I wish I could sleep on a bed like that. I also love the idea of the pea itself. Where does this come fom I wonder? I can find so little that attempts to explain any underlying meanings to this tale. Its joy comes from the fact that it is so simple and so short. Perhaps this is why there is so little written about it in response?

I have just finished reading Lauren Child's gorgeous photo art version of the tale. Its such a beautiful book. Oh and also I re-read The Pea and the Princess by Mini Grey, told from the perspective of the pea. ha! I remember reading this for the first time many moons ago when I worked in children's publishing. It made me laugh. It still does.

So of course, this months obsession has influenced some of my new designs.

First I started making peas. There is something entirely satisfying to me about having the ability to sew a sphere. Especially a tiny one.
I wasn't sure exactly why I was making peas, but now I do know. The Princess & the Pea inspired loveliness will be revealed soon.