Erster Advent

Dear S.,

today was the first of advent. To us german- speaking christmas freaks, this is a long known tradition, while in other countries the "countdown" until Christmas is not particularly celebrated. Read up about advent on wiki, if you like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent

It is not only celebrated in church context but also in almost all families. An essential part of advent is the advent wreath - der Adventskranz. It holds 4 candles, one for every sunday until Christmas Eve. You can buy advent wreaths in any flower shop with us at home, only people who like it very traditional bother to make them themselves. I really wanted to make one this year. All the green material I used is from our very own garden. I had to climb pretty high to find beautiful branches!


Also, It was freezing cold today- as in literally freezing all day long. It felt really good to be outside and collect fir branches, holly and ivy.

This is what my Adventskranz looks like:






It reminds me of the advents time together with my family.. I miss them these days.

Oh, I wanted to let you see what Charlie is doing these days (next to destroying all kinds of things :s ):










Aren't we all jealous?

I really enjoyed our breakfast together, dear! It was nice and cosy :)
and I'm also looking forward to you having internet in your new place! Hopefully the moving of your furniture went alright today?


Yours,

M.

cake it!

Dear S,.

a thing I have always wanted to have: a cakestand.
They are rather expensive though, and you hardly ever find beautiful ones on flea markets and in second- hand shops. Somewhere, I don't remember on which blog exactly, I read about making a cake stand yourself- this is what I did.
In the second- hand shop in my street, I found a beautiful, middle sized plate with blue ornaments. Second thing I needed: a vase with two straight ends. I had some beautiful flowery decorated vases in my hands, but eventually I chose to keep it plain. Total kost price: 75 cents.
Then I went to a Brico shop and asked what kind of glue I could use to fix them together; either a special kind of silicone or just try it with superglue. I also got the useful tip to put a small piece of wood/ other material between the two ceramic items. The only thing I found around was a piece of a very thin wooden teabox- worked like a charm! First i glued the piece of wood to the plate. Let it dry; put glue on to the thinner end of the vase and glue it as central as possible to the wood on the plate. Done! I'm really happy with the result, especially because it was my first try.









Of course, I had to try it out on the same day! I made some Carrot and Nut Cupcakes with creamcheese topping, voila:





It was a recipe I have tried for the first time and I found them SO nice!
So I want to share this recipe out of a beautiful cupcake book:

170g of finely grated , try to squeeze out the excess fluid
120g of soft butter
120g of light demarara sugar (rietsuiker/ Rohrzucker)
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
1 eating spoon of lemon juice
1 ts of cinneamon
1 ts of spicecake/ speculaas herbs
1 pinch of salt
100g of flour
half a bag of baking powder
50g of ground almonds
50g of roughly chopped walnuts or pecans
1 es of milk

How to:

Mix butter and sugar until light and cremy. Add the eggs and beat all for a while. Now add all the other ingredients to the batter, stir gently but thoroughly. Add the grated carrots as last ingredient. Fill the dough into cupcake forms with paper cups. This batter should be enough for about 12 cupcakes. Bake them in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. The should rise a bit but stay rather soft- they don!t get a crunchy top. Don't worry if there is some orange fluid when you get the cakes out- it's just carrot juice.

When they are cooled, glaze them with a cream cheese and lemon frosting:

300g of cream cheese (Philadelphia or noname)
60g of powder sugar
juice of a (small) lemon
zest of a lemon.
mix all the ingredients thoroughly and let it rest in the fridge for a while.

Decorate and enjoy!

Love, M.


ps: cats have the tendency to attack these cakes wildly. take precautions if you'd like to eat them yourself :)

Freitag

Dear S.,

friday afternoon. I'm sitting at my table, staring outside. Charlie captured my lap half an hour ago, so I'm bound to sit here. Actually I should be working for Uni, but there are too many things taking my thoughts off.
Hm. I'm discovering Roland Barthes at the moment. I really love "A lover's dicourse: fragments". Here are three small excerpts:

"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it)"


"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure. "


"Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits."

so, here's some thinking material for us :)

Ok, and here are some ongoing projects:




my future winter scarf. I should speed up knitting it, it's utterly necessary already!


tea mixture: camomile, apple and cinneamon


drying apples above our heating.. mmmh!



make-up bag for N. Her colleague singers started to laugh at her because she used to keep her make-up and toothbrush in a deepfreeze- plastic bag. Not any more ;)

My dear Frederike, I'll go on with other blury business now. And see you later tonight, for spaghetti. Maybe even at your new place?

M.

Job

zie je het staand zitten?
als je me zitten ziet zag ik het niet meer staan.

I'm sitting on a wooden cube, my left foot on a podest, my right leg crosses my left leg. my right arm leans on a chair. 15 people are staring at me. They measure my proportions with knitting pins. Her shoulders are much wider than that. I ever so slightly turn my head downwards a little and check out my shoulders. Inner sigh. I can see the canvas of an older guy right in front of me, the knees are placed right. He scratches his backhead, where his few remaining hairs are bundled into a ponytail. What on earth did he do to my breasts? The right one is quite alright, but the left one is a sad saggy flap of skin. After a few minutes, I feel the fingers of my right hand falling asleep. This is going to hurt. The next guy is a drawing disaster, but he seems to be improving, finally! oh, wait.. my feet are two misshapen chubby lumps on his canvas. No improvement. Apparently, feet are the most difficult parts to draw. In the break, after 45 minutes of immobility, I wander about and check out how the others see and draw me. One of the drawings is really good- until I realize that my face looks like that of a 50 years old woman. A little old, isn't it?, the teacher murmurs next to my ear. Yes, indeed. I quickly pass that woman's canvas who drew me from behind. No comment on her depiction of my backside. (or do I really look like this? I continue eating my chocolate bar. sugar is necessary.)
The teacher gives his students a sign, that the lesson resumes. Once again I have to drop my bathrobe, take place on the podium and sit still. 30 eyes staring at me. At times coming closer, real close, to check out my knuckels. There is good music, Tchaikovsky, oldies, balkan, Portishead, swing. Suddenly I get happy, inexplicably happy. I just sit and breathe, I am. Naked happiness. This is one of the things I really enjoy about my work, you just have to be. nothing more. But you are forced to be. You can't run away and distract yourself with anything, only with glimpses of yourself which the canvases encircling you show.
Three hours later, the lesson is over. While most of the people are already packing, sprayfixing my lumpy legs and alien ears, rolling up my saggy breasts, I still sit. Waiting for the last people to finish. Those who are not very talented leave my face blank and my limbs unfooted and unhanded. But everyone of them drew my single curl.

Love, M

Trying to be frederik

dearest m.,
i just come home from our festive activities at your place. together with l. and n.

It was a rather funny thing to do , we did things together on our own. which remindes me on a book titel " zusammen ist man weniger allein" of anna gavalda.
but sometimes i have to admit i even feel alone among the people i really care about. so some confession, today i felt inside as grey as it was outside. which makes me feel a very unlovabel person. and i get all tensed and closed, and don't enjoy my own company... which makes me feel incredible guilty to acompany other people. because usually i like to show my more embracing side.

there is stress in every little bone and fibre in my body, i have neck pain and abolutely no appetite. i don't know why...
to be honest i don't even wonder about it, because it always happens at this time in the year.

it's my master year and i start to be realy unsure if i choose the right way for me. if i should be an artist. in away it's in me and i just create things constantly in my minde. which includes the problem, my minde is this hughe space and there is just to little time in one day to do everything, besides i am not a genius in organising and i'm constantly tiered. and to be creative as a profession is extremly demanding, never a break, constantly aware that the inspiration can just disapear, never shure if ideas are strong enough, doubts; oh-so-manny doubts ...
maybe i just should have a little easy job to earn money, and do the creative stuff in my free time.

i also have the feeling again that i just want to disolve and disapear in my private little world in my head, and knowing that this is quite impossible... i want to travel to fare away countries. most people say you get closer to yourself when you travel, for me it's quite the opposite i loose myself and i enjoy that alot. losing fears, feeling strong, trying out how it would be to be a different person...

enough of ths wineness.
the message is greynes gets me, but than i have this storage of former adventures, travels adn stories ( you know i'm a story teller) which remind me of some other sides of me... like in the book " frederick of leo lionni, in which a litle mouse colectes, colours, sun rays and stories for the cold grey winter days...




conclusion, thank you that we can be alone together. and that we manage so often to remind each other of stories, sun rays, colours, smells and all.

let's hope the headaches and stomacpains will disapear soon, which will make that alot easier

kisses
s.

sneezy

Dear S.,

I'm really impressed with the engagment around the Castor transports in Germany! It is so utterly dumb to just ignore the obvious dangers of these final nuclear waste storage plans.. Come on, you just need to apply a little logic to see that their plan sucks! -->

Yet I find it such a great sign to see that (some) people do actually still care. And some political activism really suits you! you should do that more often. and take me with you. The last political activity I joined was an anti-fascism demonstration last year.

ok, now something about what I've been doing today: sneezing.
and some sewing works around that topic, ziezo:







I just got tired of the view of the tissue box and packs lying about. So I covered them :)
And I discoverd, that sewing 3-D corners is not easy at all.

Yesterday I also crafted a little something to organize my working place. It is a sort of ribbon you can pin paper on to, including some holders for pens and stuff. I'm afraid it's not all too visible on the picture, as it is black on dark wood.



See you later, for some "festive" activities to celebrate St. Martins day! (I'm completely ingoring the fact that today is a public holiday in Belgium. )

yours,

M.

germany besides food

dear m.,
one week of germany, one week which i really needed.
the first couple of days i just enjoyed my family. my parents weren't home so i spend time with my brother, cousin and aunts.

and than i went to berlin. well you now the deutsche bahn... it's almost impossible to travel without trouble.but this time it actually went out good for me, the chaos made me arrive in berlin 2 hours early.

in berlin i met two friend with whom i spend a lot of time in my erasmus time in porto. it was so nice and naturall to see them back. alot of keeping up, talkin and cooking. they both had uni at day time so i just walked alot on my own through different parts of berlin. and in the evenings we would meet. it was so great to see somethig new, but not feeling the urge to see everything. more a kind of a floating. nice breakfast, good art, some coffe...

A really good tip was the " hamburger bahnhof" an old train station and now the museum of contemporary art. partly setteled german artists as beuys and one of my favorites anselm kiefer, partly changing exhibions as "soma" of carsten höller (http://www.hamburgerbahnhof.de/exhibition.php?id=25193&lang=de)
fisrt time that i saw living animals in a museum and even the security people were still wondering a bout it.





a short note. one night i went with the bicycle through berlin. i stoped at the monument for the killed jews in germany . i saw so many pictures in advance but it's impossibe to take fotos wich discribe the feeling to be there.




and now i have to become a bit political...
saturday morning my plan was to go back to my home town, because i needed to be in antwerp on monday to sign the contract for my appartement (yes, finally i am not homeless anymore!!!) .

but my friend would go to a hughe demonstration in gorleben against nuclear energy...
so i went with them. getting up at 6 in the morning, driving 3 hours by car adn than ariving some where in nowhere. well, thats not really true sinds 30 years this little village is verry known in germany and also across the borders.
before i wasn't really aware of the problems of nuclear energy. not the producing of the enrgy itself is the biggest problem but the before and after.
the mines to get the ressources for nucelar enregy are really against human rights.
and what to do with all the waste? the nuclear wst is really hot, so for 40 years or so it is kept in a certain stok to cool down. when its transported it's still a few hundert degrees hot. it's transported from france to germany where it is stocked in a old salt mine. this includes severall problems. first of all it's not save enough, than the heat really washes all the minerals out of the walls, they desole into ths earth and the river above, which changes the sourounding drastically. the farmers really get a problem, becasue plants don't grow on salty soil.



since years it was a hughe demonstration again, because actually germany wanted to leae the nuclear program in 2012 but decided now to go on for 15 more years. which means 15 more years of verry dangerous waste.

next to the demonstrations ther were sit-ins on the streets and railways where the transport had to pass, and also a more radical action called "shottern" tringing to remove the little stones between the railways so it would be to dangerous to pass by train.

there were a few thousand police men who tried to keep activist aay from the area. in a few cases it was violent from both sides,but mainly the intention of the activists was pacifistic.

I was deeply impressed on how good it was organised, nobody had to feel allone, there was a big feeling of accepting each other but making our voices against the politics visible. helping each other, showing solidarity.
and evrything on donations. nothing had a a certain price every body gave as much as it was possible. a duch kitchen called " rampenplan" was in the camp which took me in to provide the food. people helped cutting veggies and washing dishes.
there were tents for averybody, straw to sleep on, adn blankets. containers with fire against the cold at night.
and besides that it froze it was such a good atmosphere. it took away alot of fears of me, because i saw that there are people who look for each other and who stand together.
the camp i was in is called " x tausend mal queer" .




well as you already see i didn't went back on saturday but selpt in a camp. and than sunday morning it was a moment chaotic and i didn't know how to gt back. but than a women just brought me and a nother girl to a street, where a nother guy took us with his car to the next trainstation and i got home after a few hours ( i talked to so many people in the train after that weekende of getting to know a lot of peolple).
a dinner at my aunts place, one night in my bed, ad another chaotic train trip to belgium where i signed my contract...
and here i am
kisses
s.

FOOD!!

Dear M.,

one week of germany ... all about food.
I get even more obsessive.
First I had a delicious salad at my aunts place, some wine and keeping up talking.

and than I went of to berlin... first time!!!
and tried out alot of new things.
For exampel: draggon fruit ( tasts a bit like kiwi) , a hallumi burger, curry wurst (I had to try it because it's typical for berlin, not my favorite), dried guava, mulberry, papaya and cumquats, iced tea south american style : matcha brause, green tea berry cacke... and so on
my friend j. also made me a late ( as the tradition) birthday present, I was alowed to go crazy in a chocolat shop in düsseldorf ... I got muscat-rum-vanilla cocoa, vanilla-wild strawberry sugar, alot of pralines and suggary rose leaves... love it












the vöner= vegetarian döner singn is for you
kisses
s.

the woods have eyes

My dear S.,

this week I went into the woods. it was only for three days really, but it was so nice.. I loved the fresh air, the colours, the evening cosiness and the silence of the Ardennes. Back in Antwerp, I was rather diappointed by the uglyness of the streets and my lungs manifested their dislike as well. hmmm.. just look at the pictures and let the colours of the woods inspire you!















The last picture is a beautiful cake N. and I made.. bisquit filled with cherries and whipped cream with vanilla, covered in marzipan. It's inspired by little cakes like this you can buy at the baker's for loads of money. It was - even if I say so myself - SO nice!

here's a perfect bisquit recipe, it always works with me:
3 eggs
150g powder sugar
3 tablespoons of water
150g flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder

seperate the eggs, whisk the eggwhites until really firm. then whisk the eggyolks, the powder sugar and the water for about 6 minutes, until the mixture is really white. Now fold in the flour+ baking powder, then the egg whites. bake it for 10-15 mins at about 190°C. THis is enough dough for a round cake form to cut in half. If you want a really big cake just make more dough ;)

Next planned projects:
do something with my working spot
finish knitting my scarf
making a black shopping bag for myself

and now I should still read a hundred pages at least. "Die Klavierspielerin" by Elfriede Jelinek is on the menu right now. What a strong book! I am really enjoying reading it. Especially with the stingy little hits against typical austrian-ness..

love,

M.

just another cookie craze

Dear S.,

today was a holiday. yuk. (as in: I have a severe dislike for church holidays. I'm always feeling kind of out of place on holidays, they are spooky..)
however, I'm learning to deal with them ;)
I let myself go in crafting cookies today. some of them are with jam and marzipan, some with chocolate ganache and marzipan, some of them with chocolate only, some of them plain and some with their own cuddly toy.
enjoy!

M.