Let sleeping cats lie

I am cat sitting again. This time for Tommy. He is an older cat who spends his days sleeping, and his nights sleeping. I swear I get tired just by looking at him. This is his favourite place if I am on the couch.
And this is his favourite place if I am somewhere else.

When he wakes up to change positions, I feel like quoting the famous line from the old Frankestein movie: 'It's alive!' I swear I have never seen a cat sleep this much. That is, until I am sitting at my work table with any kind of paper.

Then he streeetches himself all over my paper and can't understand why I keep shoving him away! 'How would you not want to pet me when I am lying here in all my splendour?'

'You are just here for my amusement. No work, just play!'

Hard to get anything done with his claws deep into my writing arm.....

Don't like!

I don't like mushrooms! I am not talking about eating, though. I don't like seeing mushrooms popping up when I walk in the forest. They are the first sign of fall. Unfortunately.

I mean, I like fall. I am a Libra, after all:) It is just that winter comes on the heel of fall. I am not cherishing the thought of winter again. Sigh.

But liking or don't liking them as signs of future coldness aside, I came over this one earlier today. I hadn't seen these for awhile. We call them 'fly mushrooms' for some reasons. For me they will always be a fairytale mushroom. You kind of expect a chimney to pop up from the roof:) Here is another sign of fall. There is always one that is earlier than the others, like they have to prove something to the others.

Our neighboors at home had a row of birches in front of their houses. One would always be the first one to turn green in the spring, giving us hope and dreams of another summer to come. However, the same one would be the first one to turn yellow - bringing with it the melancholy of fall. You would think it could have at least tried! to stay green another few weeks?! But no.

Oh well. Fall is craft time:) Here's a sneak peak of what I am working on at the moment.

Words to live by

A few weeks ago I saw a picture of this poster on one of my many blog runs, and it just hit me - straight between the eyes and straight into my current life situation. How profound. And how simple:) When I read the story, it just added to the rightness of it all.

This is the third of a series of posters made by the Ministry of Information in UK at the beginning of WWII, 1939, in an effort to offer the public reassurance in the dark days which lay ahead.

The two first ones; 'Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution will Bring us Victory' and 'Freedom is in Peril' were distributed in September 1939 and immediately began to appear in shop windows, rail way platforms etc, but this last one was kept back, intended for use only in times of crisis or invasion.

It was never used and practically unseen until a secondhand bookstore found one of two copies still left, sitting in a box of old books they bought in an auction. Barter Books hung the poster up in their stores, and it became so popular they started to reprint it in 2001.

Having worked with communication for most of my life I am humble in the presence of the incredible simplicity of the statement. The author of the message is still unknown, sadly enough.

My copy is already up on the wall:) A message from past years that still speaks to us today.

Read more about it on their blog: Barter Books, Mary's Blog

Wet, wet, wet

I love the glassiness of the water as it goes over the waterfall. It isn't easy to get a picture of it, but you can see some of it.
You would think I was sick and tired of water by now. It has rained and rained this summer. I haven't had any opportunity to enjoy my plantstair that I got earlier this summer, at all!

This weekend was the Norwegian celebration of my friends wedding in December, for all those who could not come to South-Africa. High summer in Cape, with nice weather before and after, just that one single day with rain. And then the party in Norway, in the summer - would you believe it rained that whole day, too! They say it is lucky to get rain in the veil on your wedding day. However, she is wondering how much luck they seem to need?

Hehe... we had fun, though, rain or not. Great day had by all:)

Oh, just wanted to give a peak. Got some beautiful fabric for a gift. It's for a blog reader though, so only a peak!

Help! They are taking over!

My DJ's are taking over my apartment!

This is my living room wall,
and this is the wall in my den. And it is still not enough! I still have 36 triangles, 65 blocks and four corners! Not sure I have walls enough.... Fun to have them out, though. I look at them and try to remember how I made them, and how satisfied/not satisfied I am with them:)

So.... maybe next summer I will be done? I think I left the most difficult ones for the end!

Happy trails

Growing up, our family would use Sundays for hikes or skitrips, depending on the season. At least once a summer, we would take this hike up to a fire warning tower. As I am in a 'revisiting the past' mode at the moment, I decided to take the trip again, almost 30 years later.

I did not remember much about the trail, but what I did remember was the root filled trails.

This is a trail that has been in use for almost 100 years, as long as the tower has been up. It is amazing to see the root systems of the trees and how they don't care at all about being stepped on and lying out in the open.

As kids we would trundle and climb up to the tower, and then run like the wind back down, jumping and skipping from root to stone to trail. It is a miracle we did not stumble and fall. I guess we were feet-nimble:) At this time in my life though, I realised I were more careful as to where I placed my feets:)
This troll were a new thing, though. Turned out a frequent hiker kept seeing a troll in this stone and decided to give it a clearer face.

Halfway through the hike we get to this lovely, quiet lake in the woods. I remember we never rested here as the consensus was that if we stopped, we would never get ourselfs going for the last part - the hardest climb.

But then suddenly you are up, up at the tower. If you have the guts and are not suffering from fear of heights, you can climb all the way up and get the most incredible view of a huge enormous area of forests. Every summer for 100 years someone lives here for three months, looking out for forest fires. The current watcher has been there for 8 summers. The record is 32 summers, and I think he wants to beat it:)

I think it said somewhere that this is now the only manned fire warning tower in northern Europe.

The view up there is magnificent. The forest in the horizon is Sweden, by the way.

Along the way I saw a few of these, trees that had fallen over because of the wind. As children we were told that we should not go under the roots of these trees, because they could sudden turn up again. Hmh... I wonder how that came around.... I think the only time it would happen it would be around five minutes after it fell:)

I moved away from this area at 19, and am close to have lived for the same amount of years in my current area. Walking through these 'childhood forests' I was amazed to find how more comfortable I felt here. I wonder why it still feels like I am trespassing when walking in the forests around my current home. Strange.

Water lilies and ghosts

Went for a walk in the woods today. Whenever I pass this lake I am struck by how much it looks like 'de dødes tjern' from the movie. Tell me it doesn't look like the same one! Imagine it in the dark, with little wisps of fog coming up... in black and white.
De Dødes Tjern, or the lake of the dead, was a movie made from a book back in the old days, when they still did black and white. It was a psychological thriller about a ghost turning a man into a copy of his own mad self and not leaving until it killed off two people and the one possessed. Allegedly. I remember seeing it when I was a kid, and it scared the living daylight out of me!

I don't know what made it scarier, the black and white calmness of the forest lake, the thought of what hides down there, or the ghost with a wooden leg and a black crow with just one leg! Probably would not make such an impression today, but it did then! I do NOT go swimming in forests lakes! You never know what is down there, dragging you down down down....

There were water lilies in the lake, too, and though those play a role in the movie, it reminds me more of a childhood memory. I have a seven year older brother, my only sibling. With such an age gap and with lots of other kids in our own age range roaming around the farms, we did not spend a lot of time playing together. He played pranks on me which taught me to run and dodge - fast! I was the best in my class in dodge ball. I, on my side, would sneak into his room and play his music on his stereo, the only one in the house for a long time, and mess about with his stuff. Not sure if he ever knew that:)

But we both grew out of being obnoxious pests and can even have civilised conversations with each other these days:) Actually, I enjoy our conversations. He has, as I do, a very broad specter of interests.

Anyway, one happy childhood memory is from one of our summer trips up north to visit family. We spent a day on a cabin by a lake filled with water lillies, and my brother and my cousin spent the day rowing around and picking me a huge bouquet of water lilies.

So what if it was an excuse to use the boat for the day? It is a happy memory for me:)