23rd July 2009
My grandma made me this hand-stitched, paper-pieced, queen sized quilt for me when she still lived in Adelaide, when I still lived in a sharehouse. She kept it for me and told me she would give it to me when I got married. It was to be my “Nuptial Quilt”. At some point she gave up waiting, and gave it to me anyway. It was probably about the time that it was clear I would be spending my life with Phil but would go around shouting that I was “NEVER going to get married – there was no point to such an outdated tradition” etc etc. So we had it on our bed and then we decided it would be kind of fun to have a wedding (party-dress-rings-friends : what’s not to like?) and so we got married anyway.
The floral patches are made from hundreds of little scraps of Liberty material and it has a kind of timeless charm. It’s a beautiful, but delicate quilt. About a year ago, we decided we needed to store it as it was not standing up to the love of small children. Bed jumping (and the resulting spilled coffee), vegemite hands, smeared banana and the tunneling games, cocooning games, underwater adventure games were all starting to take their toll. We have replaced it with a lovely Nathalie Lete quilt which does the trick but isn’t quite so special, because Nathalie isn’t my 93 year old grandma.
22nd July 2009
Our house is full of Moomin paraphenalia… how could it not be? The Moomins and all things Tove Jansson have been a life-long love for me and now my girls. I grew up in a Moomin kind of family in a Moomin kind of house and now I even have my own Mimble and My as daughters… I will tell you a secret; if you love the Moomins and you meet another Moomin fan (a guenuine one, mind you) you can be sure that they are a pretty nifty kind of person, and most likely worth making friends with.
A handful of my kind friends know & understand my passion and indulge it with gifts of figurines and books, mugs and fabric (oh so good!), stamps and inflatable snufkins… but my most special piece is the little framed drawing that Amelia did when she was three or so of Mimble, Snufkin, Moomintroll and Little My. It sits in the kitchen just near the stove and is quite often splattered with spaghetti sauce but I like to look at it often.
** By the way, if you happen to have a copy of The Dangerous Journey:
- in very good to excellent condition, pref. in English, please let me know if you would be willing to work out some kind of trade for it, (loobylu rabbit? Kokeshi? print? illustration?) because you would make me very happy ***
20th July 2009
Pip is hosting another “A Week of” – this week it’s “A Week of Special Stuff” – and I am going to take part because I have lots of special stuff piling up around the house. I have lots of not-special stuff piling up too, but maybe that will be next week.
This notebook doesn’t actually belong to me, but it’s in my house at the moment and it’s pretty bloomin’ special. It’s my Mum’s first of many cookbooks: “The Robertson Family Cookathon Guide; 1970 est”. One day I will inherit this piece of family history but for now I am borrowing it to mine it for gems for our own sequel “The Robertson McCluskey Cookathon Guide; 2009 est”.
Top: Cover
Middle: Mum’s fab marble cake recipe which I loved as a kid – it was always pink, vanilla and chocolate. And yes, it did tend to be dry.
Bottom: My illustrated recipe for Coconut biscuits – c. 1974 (I know it’s around 1974 because that’s my brother in my Mum’s arms. She did have boots like that. Doesn’t every mother of a newborn… no?)
*** update… hang on, it can’t be 1974, that would make me 2 and I doubt I was writing like this at age 2… so maybe it’s more like 1977 or so ***
