1m² - the story

Last weekend there was a new handmade event in Hasselt, Belgium: één vierkante meter, 1 square meter in Dutch. That was the space the participants were given to present their work. It was a challenge, but inspiring. Most participants let us know how much fun they had had preparing. And we were blown away with their creativity both in quality of work and in their presentation. We is Mitsy from Artmind and myself, we organised this event together. An impression:

Moving

Somewhere in June, July we'll be moving. We found an house from 1928 in the a tiny village in Zeeland in the Netherlands. It has been for sale for 4 years and the price had come down considerable to something we could afford. Which we could not imagine it ever would, but last night we signed the sales agreement.

It does need some renovation, new kitchen, bathroom and lots of insulation. We'll take our ideas we had for the straw-bale house with us. We will insulate the walls with natural fibre and the stucowork we'll do with loam instead of plaster.

We will of course keep the original tiles n the hall way

This is the garden and the view over the fields behind with some nice cows :)

The front of the house with top section of the windows with glass in lead panes, real nice.

An indoor green house, can't wait to grow our own tomatoes, salad, herbs and much more

A library which we'll change into an office/shipping room/gallery for my work.

There will be a separate atelier to play with silver, porcelain, glass and clay, with a view to the garden.

The current living room with veranda and  2 lovely fireplaces. This will become the heart of the house with a soft seating area with woodburner, dining table and kitchen with AGA (or similar) stove.

The corridor upstairs, I do love the lead in glaze window at the end.

A very late 1970's bathroom, which we'll replace in time. Note; it has one of the first hanging toilets. 

The view from the bathroom.

The room that will be our bedroom in time, which has a view over the garden and fields too and a terrace.

The back of the house.

We'll start middle of June with getting one room ready for us to sleep in. Than we can move and start renovating bit by bit. There's plenty of room, so any one wants to come give us a hand, you're more than welcome and you can stay overnight too.

Spring has arrived

All the little insects are coming out of the woodwork :)

Special Day Story Bowls

Couple of weeks ago I was commissioned by Conlibrio (the company for which I do all the work in the back ground, admin, maintain website and such) to make 6 story bowls.

Today they have an event for their clients and the theme is story telling. they send the invitations on 6 special days each with a story. I created a bowl to go with each of these days. Conlibrio holds this event every year on the 1st of March as it is special day too. It used to be new years day, once our calender had only 10 months. December means 10th month in Latin. With the Gregorian calender July, named after Julius Ceaser and August, named after emperor Augustus were added.

For one relates to Sinterklaas on which day gifts are gving and songs are sung. 

One particular song starts with "See the moon shines through the trees...;"

The second relates to midwinter, or the winter solstice, so I created a miniature Stonehenge. 

You can shine a light through a hole on the side of the dish to mimic the solstice.

Next one relates to " Verloren Maandag" lost Monday, the first Monday of the new year when people still have to get back into action and spend more time wishing their colleagues a good new year than that they work. In Antwerp you can get sausage rolls in every pub to celebrate this day.

Fourth bowl relates to Chinese New Year, the new year being the year of the dragon.

Of course Valentine had to be in their too :)

And last but not least, leap day. 

This bowl has an old interior of a watch woven into it, to keep the bowl together, 

as leap day keeps time together.

Lapland day 4

We had set our alarm at 2 and 4 in the night to see if the skies had cleared, but no such luck, snow kept falling through the night. We had to say goodbye to Lapland without really seeing the Northern lights.

After breakfast, it was time to say good bye to the new friends we made during these few days, 

wishing them luck to see the aurora as some where staying longer. 

Time to say goodbye to the sweet huskies too, they didn't mind the snow at all.

Some even preferred lying in the snow to lying in their doghouse.

 A taxi took us back to Ivalo airport over the snow covered roads.

Past the nice wooden houses in the nice red colour.

The airport was just as covered in snow as the country side we'd just driven through. Soon the machines set to work to clear the runway for the arrival of the plane which would take us back to Helsinki.

Without any delays we arrived in Helsinki, were we bought some nice goodies, reindeer sausages, Finnish cheese, some herbal teas, vodka with lingonberry, birch juice and chocolate with liquorice. I always thought the Dutch wee the only ones with a liking for liquorish, but I was clearly wrong.

This is us at Helsinki airport, happy but also bit sad, 

as we had had such a good time and would have loved to stay longer.

Back in Belgium we were welcomed by the setting sun. 

A nice ending to 4 wonderful days.

Lapland day 3

A flying visit as this was was already our last full day in Lapland.

We had another lovely breakfast, with porridge and hot chocolate and much more

After breakfast it was time to go snow shoeing, I had in mind the  racket for tennis type thingies, but that has changed since than (of course what was I thinking)

So off we went, through the hills with our guide of the day; Lotta.

She explained that the fluffy bits, a kind of lichen, on the trees are called old's man beard. These only grow where the air is very good. There was a lot of old man's beard in the trees :)

We came across a coral full of reindeer, but they quickly scattered, so we did not get close look. 

Lotta said never ask a reindeer-herder herder how many reindeers he has, as it is the same as asking how much do you earn or what is in your bankaccount.

Beautiful birch bark, Lotta peeled some off, as kindle, to make a fire later.

Up the hill was though going but so well worth the view.

Time to let our snow shoes rest and have some lunch.

We all had been given a bag with a flask full of lovely warm berry juice and a pie and some sausages each. We heated them up over the fire and tasted just so good.

After lunch it was time to had back down, so much easier and with the sun coming out behind us, we hoped we would be lucky and see the Northern lights later.

Back at the hotel we had another look around the husky yard, 

where this cute little ball off fluff had appeared.

Time for a drink by the fire and another sauna. 

After dinner we went for a walk, the huskies had just returned from a trip a longer way away and were brought back on this truck, each in it's own washing machine ;)

We had heard there was going to be a wedding on Tuesday. 

The ceremony would be outside by the alter, carved from ice. 

It had starting snowing by than and we sat a bit in the shelter by the lake with the nice fire.

Wouldn't mind something like this in our garden.

And than we were off on the snow mobiles, we had some practise rounds around on the lake and than off through the woods, over more lakes. It was great. We ended up on the lake were we had been aurora hunting last night. But the snow kept falling, so clouded. again we could see there was a lot going on behind the clouds, were the clouds were thinner. 

Here's the proof, all of us, me and Robin on the far left, in front of the camera with a shutter time of 15 seconds; it did capture us with the green lights behind the clouds.